Why can an ad break the Windows 11 desktop and taskbar?
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Computers are about the applications you run and what you make with them. Nobody wants to know the name of their OS vendor, or buy anything else from them. Sorry, Microsoft. If something is good, I'll find out about it. (Happy to pay for Github, for example!)
Maybe they could set it up so that Windows is free with ads, but subscribers can turn everything off and get full control.
Instead, in Microsoft's minds, this is a use-case exclusively of interest to embedded-device system integrators (i.e. the people building the world's ATMs, billboards, gas pumps, slot machines, ticket kiosks, etc.) So that's how they market it: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/iot/
Make no mistake, though, you can just download and install Windows IoT Core onto any random PC; and (mostly) arbitrary Windows apps can be installed and run on top of Windows IoT Core.
The only proviso being, that IoT Core is maybe a bit too minimal for your use-case: IoT Core assumes you don't need a desktop (because you're likely remotely managing the device, and deploying a full-screen kiosk-style app that isn't meant to be broken out of.) It still has a graphical "control plane" shell sort of thing, but it's entirely built on the Metro/UWP UX, with no ability to launch programs in windowed mode. (Essentially, there's no window manager running.) I believe this means that Win32 apps that try to spawn multiple windows (e.g. old versions of Photoshop that make the palettes their own windows), won't work on IoT Core. Most modern stuff avoids that, though.
I would note that this "remote-deploy and boot apps in fullscreen, with access to Win32 but not GDI, graphics only though UWP" paradigm, closely mirrors the experience of using an Xbox One in developer mode. I bet the "distro" of Windows used between IoT Core and the modern Xbox are near-identical.
But the assumption in those use-cases is that you as the system-integrator are either also the developer of the app being embedded, or at least have access to the engineers of the ISV who developed the app; and so you can get the app recompiled [and potentially slightly rewritten in the process] for the target profile (UWP) that IoT Core supports. IoT Core doesn't support just taking arbitrary Win32 GDI apps and kiosk-ifying them.
...but Windows IoT Enterprise does! IoT Enterprise is just Windows Pro LTSC but with IoT Core's virtual-appliance versioned-image deployment and management process. You can totally kiosk a "legacy" Win32 GDI app using IoT Enterprise. That's what a lot of modern billboard manufacturers and the like are still doing (until they finish redeveloping their signage apps for IoT Core), which is why you'll still sometimes see e.g. an airport terminal sign sitting around on the Windows desktop when its kiosk app failed to boot. That's an IoT Enterprise deployment.
But IoT Enterprise isn't any more minimal than Pro LTSC, it's just different, so it wasn't really the point of the discussion here. If you're a home user putting Windows on your own PC, you'd want to use Pro LTSC, not IoT Enterprise. (Unless "your own PC" is your RaspPi that you're trying to set up as a smart-fridge weather widget or something. Then maybe you do want IoT Enterprise.)
A copy can be a pain to get a hold of because Microsoft only want to licence it to corporate clients, so it’s usually not possible for individuals to buy a licence at any price. Microsoft really don’t want regular people to have access to it.
but if you look on your favourite piracy site you should see it. Then use a Windows keygen and presto it’s activated.
(they used to be public)
I'd love to see numbers on how much long term projected revenue their captive audience telemetry and ad delivery platform are valued at. I wouldn't be surprised if it renders the actual OS license sales look like a drop in the bucket.
It's gonna be ironic if one day Wine becomes the best way to run those applications because Microsoft ruined their own platform with ads and surveillance.
https://www.reddit.com/r/winehq/comments/he1pc0/went_overboa...
Microsoft is giving away Windows. Remember that not that long ago you had to pay €$200+ for an OS.
Official MS pricing: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/b/windows?activetab=pi...
I'm guessing they're not going to drop those fees, so whatever ad or product-placement revenue comes in is probably on top of that?
https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2167558-explicit-inst...
Someone told me this when I made a similar comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27671028
But it expanded from there - there are ads in Settings encouraging browser choice and discouraging changes to default applications.
Ads all over your first-run experience.
Ads in the taskbar encouraging you to use Edge and Teams.
The ad system is heavily integrated into Explorer / taskbar. Which is how poorly constructed ads can break such vital operating machinery.
But yes, a mainstream Windows user pays for a Windows license, either through a direct license purchase, or through the baked in price of a machine.
Most users did not pay to upgrade machines from 7/8/8.1 to 10, but that was a bargain with the devil, as it made it easier on the decision-makers at Microsoft to find other ways to make money off of Windows 10 users.
https://winaero.com/how-to-disable-telemetry-and-data-collec...
It probably won't be long before the Windows 11 version is here.
Bargain with the devil? Most users didn't pay to upgrade machines from 7/8 to 10 because they had nothing to gain from the upgrade. You only bargain to get things that you want.
Look at the number of people who upgraded from 7 to 8.
It's not surprising they're trying to add adverts. Sucks though.
If you paid 30 bucks you paid for a stolen or otherwise illegally sold license.
> You've been able to upgrade for free for at least 10 years
Actually it's 6 years. There were no free upgrades before Windows 10 as far as I'm aware.
Citation needed.
https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/reviews/get-windows-10-free-...
> Now, let's address the elephant in the room. While we can't vouch for all of them, websites selling lower-priced Windows keys are likely selling legitimate codes. One popular site, Kinguin, has 37 merchants worldwide selling Windows keys. Mark Jordan, Kinguin’s VP of communications, told Tom's Hardware in 2019 that Kinguin's merchants acquire the codes from wholesalers who have surplus copies of Windows they don't need.
> "It's not a gray market. It would be like buying Adidas or Puma or Nike from a discounter, from TJ Maxx," Jordan said. "There are no legal issues with buying it from us. It's just another marketplace."
> According to Jordan, Kinguin's merchants have sold “several hundred thousand” keys and are not one-time sellers posting listings for codes they don’t want. As part of its fraud protection, a Kinguin employee randomly buys a key “every now and then” to make sure they’re legitimate, he said. Jordan added that it’s rare for a customer to get a key that’s been resold, but if they did, customer support would help them get a new one for free.
Windows 7 was released in 2009. If you bought it then you've had free upgrades for 12 years.
To relive the experience again, I just tried installing a VM from a 98SE retail ISO and besides installing rather quickly and booting up in around 5 seconds from power-on to desktop, the whole experience felt very serene in comparison to installing anything Win8 or later --- no continuous disk activity from a hundred background processes, no in-your-face adverts or notifications pestering you the first time you see the desktop, and no attempts at being cutesy or infantilising. You get one "Welcome to Windows" app that you can easily close (and it's a regular window, not a full-screen horrorshow) and elect to not show again, and the closest thing to an advert is a single "Setup MSN Internet Access" icon on the desktop. It doesn't do anything else until you tell it to. The OS behaves more like a tool, instead of treating you like one.
More amusingly, the IE5 icon looks remarkably close to the Legacy Edge one --- it's just as flat --- and the VM shuts down in around 1 second.
That's because the computers at the time simply couldn't handle that kind of load. Things like telemetry and feature-usage tracking would have been things in the mid-1990s if we had the spare computing overhead space and persistent Internet connections, which we didn't - but now we do - so we have them.
> the IE5 icon looks remarkably close to the Legacy Edge one --- it's just as flat --- and the VM shuts down in around 1 second.
That's because you're likely in 16-color or 256-color mode instead of high-color (16-bit) or true-color (24/32-bit) modes - the desktop IE logo has never been flat-colored, though the logo itself is flat-colored in many places in Windows 98, also lets agree that the IE 7 logo is the worst IE logo ever.
> and the VM shuts down in around 1 second.
That's because it's a VM on modern hardware - on period-correct hardware it will still take Windows a while to boot and to shut-down.
Though while Windows 9x does shut-down rather quickly, there's a reason for that: it doesn't have the same OS and filesystem consistency protections that Windows XP and later had: there's a reason we all typically reinstalled Windows 98 every 6 months or so: things break easily - whereas my current laptop hasn't had Windows reinstalled ever in the 4 years I've had it.
https://chromeunboxed.com/windows-11-insider-preview-chrome-...
Microsoft was already overriding your default apps regularly. But now to change back the default browser it looks like it will require many manual steps if I understood correctly. Multiply that by multiple machines...
It's pretty, and it (mostly) "just works." I legitimately believe this project is on its way to eat Windows and Apples pies.
Worth watching the progress of: https://elementary.io/
Once you've used a few dozen different Linux distros, which I have over the 20 years I've used Linux for things, you find that almost all of them are basically the same. Occasionally there's an outlier like Gobolinux or Rox that everyone ignores but even they still has most software in common.
In my experience people respond better when you actually explain and provides arguments to why you think “package management is a stupid way to manage applications” and not simply say this blanket statement.
For instance, I believe that *not* having a package system is a stupid way to manage applications because:
- you have to trust many more parties than a single repository;
- you incentivize people to do unsafe things like running downloaded exes from sites;
- now you need to also trust that no one tampered with the websites and have to manually checksum and verify authenticity of each application whereas a good package manager should do this for you;
- Removing applications without package managers is a worse experience.
Now I would love to hear your arguments and, maybe, change my mind.
I have done this many times on HN, and it almost universally results in downvoting.
> Now I would love to hear your arguments and, maybe, change my mind.
Fine, whatever. I don't need the fake internet points. Let me start by saying my complaints here are specifically in regards to the way Linux packages, repos, and managers work to avoid someone from Haiku showing up to tell me I'm wrong:
- Repos are no better than walled gardens except that they are typically maintained by unpaid third parties
- Said unpaid third parties sometimes introduce bugs or arbitrary changes to the software
- You can't install applications to different disks or have multiple versions of the same application
- Copying applications from one computer to another is massively complicated because most package managers never consider this use case at all
- Package managers encourage the kind of interdependency hell and reliance on fixed paths that makes them necessary in the first place
- The proliferation of package formats and package managers has made packaging binaries for Linux an incredible pain in the ass
To address your points specifically:
> - you have to trust many more parties than a single repository;
This is true even in the repo world. You have to trust the developer of the application and the maintainer of the package for that repo at the very least. There is no reason someone cannot curate a repository of software that is not managed by and tied to a package manager and, in fact, there are many of these to choose from.
> - you incentivize people to do unsafe things like running downloaded exes from sites;
Yes, but I think that speaks to a failure of non-mobile OSs to implement proper application sandboxing once the internet became the dominant distribution medium for applications. I also think this threat is given far too much weight in comparison to being constrained in your choice of software.
> - now you need to also trust that no one tampered with the websites and have to manually checksum and verify authenticity of each application whereas a good package manager should do this for you;
Yes. Again, I don't think this is a big deal, especially when compared to restricting my choice in software. The thing I think makes personal computers valuable is that people can install pretty much whatever they want, make their own stuff, and easily pass it around. Package management and repos overcomplicates this.
> - Removing applications without package managers is a worse experience.
Only under "installer/uninstaller" paradigms. "Portable Applications" in Windows, or Application Bundles on Mac or NeXT, or the original Macintosh's single-file applications, or RiscOS AppDirs, or even DOS's buncha-files-ina-folder paradigm make removing an application as simple as deleting a single object. Not to mention they make copying or moving applications, or running them on different media, as trivial as any file operation.
I probably won't change your mind as a lot of this is subjective, equally your arguments do not sway me. Suffice it to say, the Linux community agrees with you, and that is part of the reason I don't want to use Linux.
The RPM Package Manager itself is an example of this. It can be configured to be installed to a custom location via the build system, but it has hard-coded paths in some scripts so the package manager would break when it hits this code months after appearing to work correctly.
At the end of the day, it's the same difference to me.
AppImage is pretty great, I wish more projects used it.
I get that snaps are easier for developers because managing versions can be painful. Pushing that pain onto the users isn't the solution.
The difference is there is a set of base windows libraries that you can expect, so if you just use those with your win32 program then it's good. But most dotnet apps don't do this. It's just like using Appimage.
Jokes aside, I am mostly in a complete agreement with you on it. I'd only add that both approaches should exist, and that the package-people should (learn to?) provide a more portable variant of their software. I don't have much experience with Linux (which some of my comments just might show), but all that "black box magic" that happens behinds the scenes never sat right with me... especially since I have a supernatural ability to hit some edge cases where install fails halfway, and now you can't deinstall nor reinstall, and you're stuck in limbo. (Or finishes, but just won't run on account of something not working in the background, and, well, good luck finding out what exactly and how.)
Sure, portable-style applications on Windows are not immune from not working here and there, but across two decades now - it's mostly been set it and forget it. Different versions of software can usually co-exist, or even the same one (e.g. I specialize one for specific purposes), some even co-run.
I do miss some features of the Linux (file system versatility, mostly), but I've grown to live with it. And while Microsoft is increasingly making Windows unbearable, as long as I can bypass/block their idiotic decisions (Start menu, telemetry, updates) and make them work when I want, and how I want... I guess I'll stick to it.
[[Now, when the hell does Microsoft plan on fixing up the Exporer shell and its antiquated 25X-char path issues? (LONGPATH is enabled, but Explorer still shits itself on such a path. But I try to use DOpus, anyway...).
Also, custom(izable) open/save dialog replacements, I'd kill for those.]]
The great thing about portable applications is that you can still put them in a repo and use software to manage them, you just don't actually have to!
The proliferation of formats is pretty irrefutable; you're meant to put your source code out there and let the distro maintainers worry about it. That's no help of course if you want to ship closed-source binaries, but Linux emphasizing open source goes a little deeper than package managers.
Anyhow, maybe these are counterarguments and maybe it's just "some people who agree with you wrote a package manager." The main thing is the downsides can be fixed, and have been.
If you ask me, it's an incredibly overengineered solution to a problem that is entirely self-inflicted. Still, it might eventually be preferable to Microsoft's current direction with Windows.
It's a garden alright but there is no wall. I've made packages out of my own programs and installed them on my system. Arch Linux literally has a repository of user packages.
> Said unpaid third parties sometimes introduce bugs or arbitrary changes to the software
Yeah. Debian is famous for their patching. Not all distributuons do this though. Arch Linux offers unpatched software.
> You can't install applications to different disks or have multiple versions of the same application
I don't get the multiple disks thing. Personally I want to virtualize disks away into a single magical root file system. Do you mean like portable Windows applications? That's possible, but would require a lot more static linking than distributions are comfortable with.
Windows makes this easy because the application's directory is magically added to the library search path. Applications can just dump all their DLLs into the same folder as the EXE and it will work. They essentially statically link their dynamic libraries. Users end up with tons of duplicated DLLs, distributions don't like that.
Multiple versions of applications and libraries is technically possible, some distributions have attempted this. Most reject this idea because it would increase maintainer workload.
> Copying applications from one computer to another is massively complicated because most package managers never consider this use case at all
This use case is strange to me as well. When I set up a new computer with Linux, I download the applications from the repository.
> Package managers encourage the kind of interdependency hell and reliance on fixed paths that makes them necessary in the first place
Yes. Linux users and distribution maintainers usually look at the operating system like a complete system, not just a support layer for applications. When maintainers package software, they integrate the software's parts into the overall system, every file in its proper place, every link is maintained. I believe this is cultural.
> The proliferation of package formats and package managers has made packaging binaries for Linux an incredible pain in the ass
It's better to just release your software. The community will package and integrate it for you if there's enough demand.
Alternatively, I've found that Arch Linux packages are really easy to create. Just one simple shell script and there's plenty of documentation and examples online. I just ignore all the other distributions.
What I'm saying is, you have to go out of your way and put in a bunch of work to install something if it isn't in the repo. This is not the case on Windows or MacOS (or DOS, or RiscOS, or the original Mac, or NeXT, or basically any desktop operating system that has ever existed except for Linux).
> I don't get the multiple disks thing. Personally I want to virtualize disks away into a single magical root file system.
It's a bad abstraction that hides the true origin of files and causes significant problems if one of those disks ever disappears. In sane desktop operating systems I can run applications off of a USB drive and remove it when I'm done. This is possible in Linux, of course, it's just that absolutely nothing is designed to handle it so you have to put in a ton of work to make it happen.
> but would require a lot more static linking than distributions are comfortable with.
You don't even need static linking, you can use LD_LIBRARY_PATH and a custom startup script in a lot of cases, it's just a lot more work than it should be and fails in weird ways because no one expects this kind of thing. Trust me, I've been doing this for years and years now.
> Windows makes this easy because the application's directory is magically added to the library search path. Applications can just dump all their DLLs into the same folder as the EXE and it will work. They essentially statically link their dynamic libraries. Users end up with tons of duplicated DLLs, distributions don't like that.
Which is silly in my opinion, and also an artifact of Linux Desktop never having the concept of separation between platform and application. This makes Linux great for appliances and shitty for a personal computer. When you have a reliable base system of commonly used libraries a lot of the problems go away, you get security updates for libc and openssl and whatnot, and chances are whatever other DLLs you're using you are the only application on the system using them anyway[0].
> Multiple versions of applications and libraries is technically possible, some distributions have attempted this. Most reject this idea because it would increase maintainer workload.
Yeah, poorly thought out ways of doing things have consequences like that. In sane desktop OSs you don't need an army of unpaid third party maintainers. I've used some of those distributions you're talking about (Gobolinux, for instance) and they never caught on because the community hates the concept.
> This use case is strange to me as well. When I set up a new computer with Linux, I download the applications from the repository.
What about computers not connected to a network? One that I have to drive several miles away from a non-metered network to get to? This is my point, many such use cases are never considered.
> Yes. Linux users and distribution maintainers usually look at the operating system like a complete system, not just a support layer for applications. When maintainers package software, they integrate the software's parts into the overall system, every file in its proper place, every link is maintained. I believe this is cultural.
I agree, and it's why I think Linux will never make a good desktop because all that neat and orderly curation means things will break the second the unpaid third party package maintainer leaves, or a core library makes a non-backwards-compatible ABI change, or someone dared to try and install a library that "conflicts" (usually by being more up to date) with one you already have installed. This is why you only have a choice between crusty-but-stable distros and rolling release distros that break frequently. I can run almost every program available for Windows today on Windows 7, which is nearly 12 years old. I can run applications compiled for Windows 95 on Windows 11 without writing a single line of C or changing a build script.
> It's better to just release your software. The community will package and integrate it for you if there's enough demand.
If it is open source, and if there's a enough demand. I think that's bullshit. I should have the freedom to put any license I want on my software and the user should still be able to have a low-effort install experience. I shouldn't have to kowtow to some unpaid third party package repo for distribution, I should be able to mail my application to you on an SD card. That, to me, is the freedom of personal computing.
> Alternatively, I've found that Arch Linux packages are really easy to create. Just one simple shell script and there's plenty of documentation and examples online. I just ignore all the other distributions.
I don't think I should have to setup finicky build environments and compile software from source to make my own package just to use some goddamned software. I honestly don't know why Linux desktop people think this is a reasonable expectation.
Needless to say, I have a very strong opinion on this point, and you haven't made any arguments I haven't seen before in my 20 years of using Linux. You are not going to change my mind, just as I am not going to change yours, because we have different priorities and culture regarding the tradeoffs of the different methods.
Knowing this, you felt for some reason it was necessary to argue with me, why? The only reason I can think of is that you want to argue for the sake of some imaginary "undecided" reader, as a form of advertisement for Linux. Unfortunately this happens literally every time I mention not liking Linux, hence my initial reluctance to even mention why I don't like Linux. Because another reason I hate the Linux desktop is that its community is full of people who feel the need to engage in performative argumentation.
I didn't see it as an argument, more like a conversation. I wanted to understand your opinions better. Your post mentioned several points I had never thought about before and it was interesting. Certainly made me rethink a few things such as offline software sources. I even agree with you that many of these differences are cultural and those are slow to change.
> The only reason I can think of is that you want to argue for the sake of some imaginary "undecided" reader, as a form of advertisement for Linux.
I don't do that. I'd rather Linux remained an obscure programmer's operating system, actually. I don't really care about the Linux desktop.
You don't even need a startup script to adjust the library search path, ELF binaries have the DT_RUNPATH field for that where '$ORIGIN' refers to the directory containing the executable. Using the -Wl,-rpath,$ORIGIN flag when linking gives you more or less the Windows behavior, just make sure to escape the $ORIGIN appropriately so it is passed as is and not expanded by the shell/make/your build system. And if you want, you can even put libraries in a subdirectory.
At any rate, I would be genuinely curious to hear what specifically you don't like about Linux beyond tautological statements like not liking its paradigms and calling package management "stupid" without any supporting rationale.
I have repeatedly complained about Windows[0] in this thread, and the very second I mention not liking Linux people really seem to want to recommend me Linux distros or ask me to tell them why. I have never seen anyone do this for any reason other than performative argumentation.
> At any rate, I would be genuinely curious to hear what specifically you don't like about Linux beyond tautological statements like not liking its paradigms and calling package management "stupid" without any supporting rationale.
I don't even need supporting rationale for an opinion. I could say I don't like any of the distro logos and that would still be a perfectly valid reason not to want to use Linux. At least in a sane world it would, but Linux users apparently have some bug up their ass about needing everyone to agree with them about how great it is.
[0] With great hostility and in the context of expecting it to eventually drive me to use Linux
It's not perfectly valid if the purpose is to have a discussion that's meaningful to other people who don't have your exact set of preferences and pecadilloes. Saying you don't like a logo isn't a useful piece of information because for 99% of people that's not going to be a reason to use or not use a piece of software. Either you don't realize that or you're being willfully combative for its own sake.
I don't see how what other people find meaningful has any bearing at all on whether or not I want to run Linux. Remember, before everyone crawled out of the woodwork to talk about Linux in this 'fuck Windows 11' thread I only said this:
> Don't get me wrong, I have plenty to complain about in Linux too which is why I'm still on Windows
An offhand remark about not liking Linux is apparently an open invitation for every evangelical Linux desktop asshole to berate me until I give them arguments to attack.
> Saying you don't like a logo isn't a useful piece of information because for 99% of people that's not going to be a reason to use or not use a piece of software.
By that reasoning everyone talking about privacy and security in regards to their choice of Linux should shut the hell up too because the market is pretty clear it doesn't care.
This whole "blah blah blah other people blah blah blah 99% blah blah" is what I mean by performative argumentation. It isn't about my preferences, which are really all that matters when it comes to what I should choose to run, it's about putting on a show for other people, evangelising and advertising your favorite OS.
I happen to disagree with that opinion. However, it makes no difference to me whether you run Linux or Windows (or CP/M, RSX-11 or AmigaOS for that matter) as your daily driver.
It's both rude and obnoxious to pound on you for your unpopular opinion, especially since that's based solely on your personal preferences and not objective facts.
As for the downvotes, they are just shorthand for "I disagree with you but don't feel like putting the time and effort into rebutting your argument."
And the obverse (WRT upvotes) is also the case.
tl;dr: I think you're wrong and disagree wholeheartedly. That said, I'm glad you chose to express yourself and hope you continue to do so in the future.
While I disagree strongly with GP, your argument seems to completely miss their point. GP expressed her opinion as to the utility/viability of Linux for their use case.
We both disagree with GP's arguments, but even we almost certainly don't share the same "set of preferences and pecadilloes."
Mostly, I think it's pretty closed-minded to denigrate someone who expresses an opinion (unrelated to facts presented in an objective reality).
Give the GP a break. If their "preferences and pecadilloes" don't match yours, why is that any skin off your nose? As such, why do you feel it necessary to belittle the opinion of some rando on the 'net?
I'll say it again just to make sure you understand that it's your tone and attitude that disturbs me and not the content of your argument: widespread use of package managers have completely changed Linux for the better IMHO. What's more, I find the arguments provided by GP to be both weak and unpersuasive.
You're right, that specifically is not skin off my nose or anyone else's. By the same token that you're not disagreeing with the content of my argument, I'm not disagreeing with GP's[0] opinion per se, but just pointing out that the hostility they're getting is a self-fulfilling prophecy brought about by the way they're expressing it. I'm not belittling their opinion, I'm belittling the fact that they are coming to this discussion with a position of 'Linux is bad because I don't like it for Reasons™ and if you disagree with that you're just another hater I don't have to explain myself to'. It's lame and unproductive and combative and not a quality contribution.
[0] Sidenote: I've never seen the term "GP" before - clearly you're referencing u/AnIdiotOnTheNet in some fashion similar to "OP" but would be curious to know what exactly that means.
> I'm belittling the fact that they are coming to this discussion with a position of 'Linux is bad because I don't like it for Reasons™ and if you disagree with that you're just another hater I don't have to explain myself to'.
I didn't come in to this thread to argue about things I don't like about Linux or convince anyone that my unpopular opinions are right [0]. I offhandedly mentioned I didn't like Linux, and then people came out of the woodwork to ask me why. As I've mentioned I've been through this many, many times and the result is always the same: they ask me why, then they engage in performative argumentation with my reasoning. They don't care why I don't use Linux and aren't interested in changing my mind, it's all a performance to sway others and I'm pretty damned sick of it.
[0] Which is not to say I haven't done this in other threads where it is more on topic.
Except they did explain[0] themselves. Granted their arguments were unpersuasive (at least to me), but claiming that they're not at least attempting to justify their assertions is flat wrong.
>[0] Sidenote: I've never seen the term "GP" before - clearly you're referencing u/AnIdiotOnTheNet in some fashion similar to "OP" but would be curious to know what exactly that means.
"AnIdiotOnTheNet" was spot on in their reply about this[1] to you. I guess using "grand" for previous up-levels of comments isn't as pervasive as I thought. Apologies for any confusion.
While on Linux I type in my terminal:
paru -S <software name>
On Windows each time I install the system from scratch I have to spend a day downloading and installing all the programs, on Linux I can install all the software that I need by simply launching a single one line command.
Or I could just keep using Windows where I don't have to do anything so silly.
Having to setup build environments and compile applications from source absolutely takes significantly more time than simply downloading and running a binary.
Again: I didn't come in to this thread to complain about Linux, I came here to complain about Windows. I offhandedly mention not liking Linux and people practically begged me to complain further. If you don't like it, talk to them.
Edit: I realize now that it is possible you mean make AppImages for my own programs, not other people's. In which case: A) I rarely release on Linux for other reasons but B) when I do, I release static portable executables.
No judgment, just bemusement. I will always choose the freedom to configure over a set-in-stone approach.
I also strongly disagree with the "limitless variations". Most Linux distros are just another distro (usually Ubuntu) pre-bundled with a specific set of packages. Almost all of them use the same shells, the same application distribution model, and roughly the same set of disparately developed software. The differences are largely cosmetic.
> I will always choose the freedom to configure over a set-in-stone approach.
Ironically, this is why I don't like package management and repos: I like to have complete freedom over what software I install and that model is restrictive. One of the things I like about Windows is that if I go to some rando's site where they've written some niche application, I have nearly 100% certainty that the executable I download from them will work without me doing anything special. In Linux I usually end up having to go through the hassle of creating a whole build environment (in a container because I'm not insane) to compile their github repo... after I hunt down and compile their dependencies that also weren't in my distro's repo of course.
Also, HN points are meaningless. It's better than reddit but people will still downvote good posts for the stupidest of reasons. It's better to just speak your mind and ignore the "consequences", if you can even call downvotes that.
Only if it has been compiled and/or packaged for such a use by someone, which is rare. The problem isn't technical, it is cultural. I don't know why I keep having to repeat this point.
One of the issues with Linux is that it is no more "an operating system" than an automobile engine is a car; myriad operating systems exist which contain the component named "Linux", and most of them are designed to cater either to people who love getting into all the possible customisations or to people who share most of the same preferences as the designer(s).
The extreme customisability of most operating systems which include the Linux heart (kernel), tends to lead to inconsistent software behaviours and user interfaces. For instance, one OS with Linux might have _most_ applications respond to Ctrl-Q for "quit/exit", while a few stubbornly insist on Alt-F4, and sparse few use something else entirely. One result of this is that people's choice of a particular Linux-based OS and particular options (KDE vs. Gnome, Emacs vs. vi, ported vs native to their OS, and thousands more…) can also become a holy matter dear to their hearts.
It's perfectly reasonable for anyone to turned off by or annoyed by aspects of a system that clash with their familiarity or use-case. I hope you get more gentle responses in the future. Cheers.
linux is a nice operating system and the community developed aspect is neat but be real
I was surprised how better it got, one example, everything worked well out of the box, and I installed Arch Linux not Ubuntu, no problem at all, GNOME 40 is great, fonts are good out of the box, gestures that works, things like screen brightness works, Wayland is finally stable, printer installs without too much trouble.
OK OK the point is, it should be the user's choice to (easily) switch. Even if they are wrong!
Are they implying that it won't be more difficult to default to Firefox? I ditched Chrome already.
> 2.5.6 Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript.
I have nothing against Edge. I just already know where everything is on Chrome. That's why default changes annoy me.
Nowadays it's not even supported to remove Edge since - according to certain Windows news outlets - Edge is somehow integrated into Windows 10 so by removing it you could break the OS. (Just why??) The aforementioned news outlets also ask why you would ever want to remove Edge - "Have you tried the new Edge browser? It's quite fast nowadays!"
To clarify: I am not opposed to Edge itself in any way, but the whole "Why would you ever want to do that?" rubs me the wrong way.
Another "Why would you ever want to do that?" story: IIRC, in Windows 8 there was a semi-official way to place your home directory on a different drive than your system directory. Back then I had a 128 GB SSD I wanted to use as a system drive for Windows, but because my downloads folder quickly accumulates a lot of baggage (> 50 GB) I wanted to place it on another drive. A few years down the road the upgrade to Windows 10 failed with a mysterious error code. Again, after a few days of scratching my head I found out that my setup (with the home directory on another drive) is not supported for the Windows 8.1 to 10 upgrade.
Common Windows news outlets and forums also commented this issue along the lines of "Why would you ever place your home directory on another drive?" I guess I was too spoiled with the UNIX way (of separate mount points inside a unified hierarchy) to see the error in my ways... (/s)
[1] Sorry, I don't remember the specific error code or update number anymore. Perhaps the 2004 update?
One technical reason is probably that the majority of it - the engine - is also what drives Webview2 (a web view that you can embed into your applications just like you could embed IE into your applications).
Or better yet, build the Edge browser so that it's actually an app using webview2 to help ensure that webview2 has a great API experience and is actually easy to use.
FWIW it's totally possible to mount a volume at a folder location instead of assigning a drive letter, so you actually can mount a separate drive at C:\Users separate from the rest of C:\ or whatever your system drive letter is.
Holy cow, thank you so much! Pretty sure it was updating from 20H1 KB5003214. I was stuck on that one. I've been having this exact problem, which is pretty annoying because of the combination of how easy it is to accidentally update and that "undoing changes" takes about 3x longer than the update itself. Looking at "Installed Updates" after the fact it says that it pushed through KB5004331 in mid August, but I kinda don't believe that, as it has been continually giving me this BS; it literally happened last night. Installing Edge just now fixed it. I only really use Windows for leisure, so I was lamenting having to deal with a reinstall, which was what I was reading was the needed course of action.
That bit was eventually fixed – while I had to move the ProgramData folder back to C:, I successfully upgraded from 7 directly to 10 with my home directory on a different drive.
Although yes, it's apparently still not officially supported – supposedly it breaks installation of apps from the store (but so far, I don't really care about the store anyway), and somewhat more annoyingly, I suspect that during major OS upgrades some misguided migration routine that is hardcoded to C: gets to run, because at least twice now I've noticed file paths in the registry being rewritten to suddenly point to C:\Users, when they actually need to point to D:\Users.
which is why "I'm out" after 20 years or so on Windows.
I don't want an OS that sends me messages like that, supports adverts, or (initially at least) demands to be always connected to the internet to store my "stuff" in their cloud.
I haven't booted into Windows for (checks `uptime`) about 4 weeks now.
I switched to Arch Linux and, outside of the few pain points which weren't a big deal for anyone who's used to "google, read docs, apply" workflow everything went great!
I would be hopeful for the future of gaming on Linux, and then you see things like kernel-level anti-cheating and Valorant adapting their anti-cheat to support TPM 2.0. I'm not a gamer anymore (at least not as much as I used to play) but stuff like that make me shrug my shoulders. 1 step forward, 2 steps back.
I decided to try GNOME 40, everything was sort of okay until I couldn't even even pin custom applications to the dock... I had to write .desktop files or something and I just gave up. I also tried ElementaryOS but still ran into tons of usability issues.
Granted, a lot of those issues are because some apps are missing Linux specific functionality and developers aren't really focused on supporting Linux, but honestly there are power users waiting to get away from Windows right now. Every other week my friends are talking about how once there's a good Linux alternative they're switching and never looking back. Now with Valve's Proton things are looking better than ever for gaming, but it still feels like Linux has a long way to go.
This is wrong. Linux is very good for an average person.
Well, if that average person wants to do something unusual and doesn’t want to invest even a fraction of their time into learning the system… well, blame on them. Making a desktop file is no rocket science, and something you can learn how to do within half an hour at most. Don’t listen to someone who makes such a bold statement as ‘Linux in such a bad state’ and then immediately shows their lack of competence with showing they are unable to make a desktop file. It is not Linux, it is you and all those guys who upvoted you to become the top voted comment on this thread.
ElementaryOS is trash, just get yourself Fedora Workstation or even Ubuntu, if you have no idea of how to deal with Linux, changes are it will be much easier for you with those distros.
I run into non-stop issues with Linux. I ran into a bug where I can't even boot into a Linux OS without artifacts if I have more than one monitor turned on. I ran into sound driver bugs where my microphone pitch is completely off on Discord and other apps. The Fedora installer didn't even open for me.
Linux is not accessible. If it was, you'd see hundreds of power users moving to it. You're doing the Linux community a disservice by writing it off as "people being impatient".
Linux is extremely accessible.
Most popular linux variants can be downloaded for free, and it's easy to find solutions to most common issues you run into. I'd be surprised if there isn't a StackOverflow post or two that have solutions to the issues you ran into, and even if there aren't, you can usually get answers just by asking.
Some linux variants are better than others, and YMMV per use case, but saying "linux is not accessible" is incredibly inaccurate.
I install a distro, I experience problems, there's not a lot of info out there. I hit #linux or some forum and I am told that what I really have is an XY problem, and the real problem is that I am running the wrong distro.
So I install Distro #2. And my problems have vanished! But ... but there are new problems that were not there in the first distro. So I hit the forums again and get someone nearly identical telling me that what my actual problem is is that I just have no idea how to pick a decent distro, and what I should really be using is ...
People do not want to cycle through one distro after another. That is not accessible. It takes time to pick out the next one and install (less now), and then you go through your stuff until you hit yet another brick wall.
Linux is great and an incredible testament to the power of open source.
But my god, it’s made by nerds, for nerds - which is great for folks like us, but there is absolutely no taste or consistency in UI/UX in any of the distros I’ve seen.
ElementaryOS is perhaps the prettiest Linux distro, yet it is so much uglier than even the perennial virtual corporate suit, Windows.
I just want an OSS Linux distro that’s beautiful, intuitive, and deeply customizable when I want to put on my power user hat. Is that too much to ask?
‘It’s not how it looks like, it’s good it works’ is the phrase we believe Steve Jobs kept saying. Well, here it is. Linux is very ugly from the beautiful UI standpoint. But at some point you may realize you just don’t need any interface, and that’s where the beauty starts.
I have no great skill set and mess around with machines at weekends. I got Ubuntu desktop running on the metal and in a VM on both Proxmox and ESXi with everything passed through and working nicely and did so without any particular issues (bar thunderbolt, but that turned out to be hardware and a new machine was shipped to me and it now works).
This was on a Nuc, but the different experiences point to something being very wrong.
It has less to do with technical abilities of the user and more to do with their general outlook and what they value. If you look for deficiencies, you'll find them. If you value the freedom and no bullshit experience, research the hardware and put in some effort to make it work.
When I am facing issue in Windows, I google it, then I got some regedit trick to perform. If that works, that's great. If not, then I need to search for another trick until it works. Since windows command line sucks, I have to hop through different configuration windows to try solving the issue. A very frustrating experience.
Could an average Windows user could able to diagnostic their problem and confidently perform an action knowing it will work? My experience is they just ask their friend, family or ask for immediate solution on social media. If they can't solve it, then maybe just buy a new one.
I think Windows is just as accessible as how many friends and family using Windows.
This just doesn't happen that often in Windows, at least for the majority of hardware.
Yeah yeah, I know everyone has an anecdote of some graphics card driver update screwing up their multi-monitor setup, or that cheap no-name Chinese headset or camera bought off Amazon that never worked (and which they promptly returned).
But chances are, if you buy a well known branded component at Best Buy or Staples or even online, and you're not running some ancient version of Windows, the drivers will work. At worst, you might have to ask the IT guy at work or your kid who's more tech savvy, and they'll figure it out by downloading the drivers off the OEM's site. They certainly won't need to jump into a command line and compile a patched driver into a kernel like you'll end up having to do on Linux.
The reason for this is because the software engineers who wrote the drivers spent 90% of their time ensuring it would work in "most" versions and configurations of Windows, 9% of their time getting it to work with Mac (maybe), and anywhere from 0% to 1% for Linux.
When I was younger, I really enjoyed the challenge of digging into Linux and learning about how drivers and various subsystems worked. But now... I don't want to spend half my weekend to get a $40 USB camera or headset to work properly. I get paid decent money to write and fix software at work, 50 hours a week, and the novelty of doing it on Linux has long worn off.
Brand is Microsoft and it is designed for Windows 10. (Non-affiliate link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078T3R8YS)
Plugged it into a USB 3.0 port on my Windows 10 machine. Hardware not recognized. Clicked, "Search automatically for drivers" (which has maybe worked once, ever), No drivers found.
Went to Google... All the "support" answers that you see from microsoft when you google "drivers for windows 10 xbox controller" provide basic IT support responses and no links to drivers. Found a link on reddit somewhere to a microsoft page where I finally found drivers that worked.
> if you buy a well known branded component at Best Buy or Staples or even online, and you're not running some ancient version of Windows, the drivers will work
Microsoft brand main stream product (over 5000 reviews on amazon), doesn't work out of the box on Windows 10...
I can't say that my personal experience is in line with anything you mention, re "things working out of the box on windows more than mac or linux".
I am more productive when enjoying higher IO throughput on linux file system. Windows's program was always unresponsive and hurting my productivity.
Another example is an unknown driver bug could cause Windows system process go up to 100% CPU usage and there are no obvious solution to the problem. I don't think average user like it. They just think computer is generally buggy and accept that. They don't know anything better.
Today, I just want my tools to work, and I want to use those tools to get things done.
I’m squarely in the linux happy path (I bought a Thinkpad because they’re known for good linux support) and it’s amazing, far better than Windows. But that’s also because staying in the happy path is a conscious choice: I actively avoid the stupid kinds of tech pain that eat entire weekends. For all that stuff I keep a Windows box around, which I power up once a month or so.
I’ve never had any one of the problems you prescribed because luckily my system parts were all linux compatible.
Don’t blame linux for this, its your manufacturer who didn’t bother with the compatibility.
The only thing holding me back at home is anti cheat support for proton.
I use linux in my home pc. I play games and code. I've been tinkering with linux since 1999. With FreeBSD since 1997. Linux has come a long way, but still has A LOT of HUGE rough edges.
Anyway, unlike with Windows the choice is possible on Linux distributions. You can try KDE/Plasma, Budgie, Cinnamon, lightweight Xfce or MATE, or other more advanced solutions like one of tiling window managers. But if for whatever reasons you still wanna stick with GNOME, you can "patch" it with extensions that may give you Windows-like programs menu, desktop icons (the lack of these in GNOME Shell is often bring up as one of the worst offenses), a proper taskbar or dock, more customization for tray icons and notifications or even tweaked animations. It takes time but results are satisfying. Some distributions like Manjaro Linux offer ready to use layouts which are setting up necessary extensions to mimic behavior of other OSes, while on other you need to work through this alone.
GNOME in current form can be "tamed" but if you really want yo make your workflow "yours" or bring familiarity to Linux distribution, then KDE/Plasma customization would be best solution. Here you can have an example what can be done: https://youtu.be/2GYT7BK41zk
However, Ubuntu Mate is pretty great and does everything I want or need.
And you can install Mate on an existing Ubuntu install and the suckage goes away.
Lovely.
(Global Share/Print/Cast/Project was a good idea, just needed more apps to support it.)
"The user may want to return to Cortana. WNF"
It's simple really: Microsoft doesn't have any competent developers working on the Windows user interfaces. My guess is that if you display any competence you wind up being moved to somewhere they care about like Azure, PowerShell, or the licensing team.
At this point I'm wondering if it is worth trying to build my own desktop on top of Windows Server Core.
It’s compounded by clueless salespeople who don’t know their products well enough to push the improvements that their customers want.
Copy text and an image from an email? Images paste in all broken.
Copy just the image from the email? Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
Copy the image from the email, paste it into Paint, crop the canvas, then copy from Paint into whatever? Works every time.
Copy text, data, etc from wherever
Paste it into Notepad
Copy it again
Paste it where you want it and then apply any formatting according to the destination app's formatting rules
Not a great workaround but at least it works.
https://superuser.com/questions/407113/shortcut-in-word-or-e...
I also do that. I 100% attribute that to browsers and people who want to copy/paste HTML and have it all colorized and formatted in the destination app.
Oh please. Do you really think that MS has nobody with any level of competency on any single team in their entire org? Do you really think that low of others? Could it possibly be that sometimes... things have bugs? Shit breaks in ways you don't expect. Things happen.
Painting an entire group of people you've never met with such a large brush is gross. It's just software and these are just people.
I dunno, let's see:
> Microsoft doesn't have any competent developers working on the Windows user interfaces
Looks like I am specifically calling out one subset here in particular. So I would say that no, no I don't believe what you're implying I believe.
> Could it possibly be that sometimes... things have bugs? Shit breaks in ways you don't expect. Things happen.
Bugs happen to everyone, but the people working on the Windows interfaces have poor architectural choices, nonsensical user-hostile decisions, and a history of reinventing the wheel with slower (and buggier!), less featureful, interfaces.
> Painting an entire group of people you've never met with such a large brush is gross. It's just software and these are just people.
This is the image they project into the world, if they want to be thought of differently then they should actually do something to project that image instead.
There are a LOT of us out here that remember how well things were designed and implemented 20, 30, and 40 years ago, and how disgustingly broken everything is now, and how everyone nowadays ACCEPTS THIS AS NORMAL.
Microsoft Teams is a steaming pile of shit. Windows Desktop Explorer is a steaming pile of shit. The XAML bullshit they're using for the Start Menu button in Windows 10 (and I'm guessing Windows 11, since I am not going to be installing it) is a steaming pile of shit. Microsoft's invasive advertising and telemetry IN A DESKTOP OPERATING SYSTEM is a steaming pile of shit.
People need to stop pretending this shit isn't broken. People need to stop calling people who point out how fucking broken this shit is "trolls".
* Blog complains about Windows being a mess
* Comments about how the Mac workflow is better
* Blog complains about how the Mac is too restricted
* Comments about how Linux is finally good now®
* Blog complains about Linux desktop
* Comments about how WSL2 saved them from the nightmare that is GNOME/KDE/etc
repeat ad nauseum
Previously on more user friendly distros like Ubuntu I didn't feel that the advantages over Windows were significant enough to warrant certain software suites being unavailable (adobe, autocad, etc.). And lightweight distros like Arch caused too much headache even with the wiki and knowing "what you were doing."
Arch now feels both relatively easy to use day to day, while still being incredibly customizable with almost no bloatware. The only real problem is certain almost non-negotiable utilities like PulseAudio not necessarily being as high quality as most of the user utilities.
I absolutely refuse to use an operating system for casual use that requires daily terminal knowledge and endless googling to remember and use.
It is what it is, but I do enough of this stuff professionally that I want an operating system that works from the second you push the power button with peripherals and software that work instantly after plugging in.
The second I'm digging through old forums looking for some multi-line arcane terminal script to paste to make things work, I boot back into something else and delete the linux partition
If you complain your mechanic is slow and expensive, a load of other mechanics will come and tell you (and probably rightly so) that the job is more difficult and complex than you know of. But you don't see that often with devs, which is a bit disappointing.
Of course you could say they should stand up against this, but again, whilst theres this hostility towards other devs, why are you going to risk not being able to put food on the table for someone on the internet who thinks your an idiot?
(As an aside, the analogy doesn't really stretch that far since developers are hired by companies whereas mechanics are paid directly by customers. Perhaps car designers would be a better fit here, but again, other car designers would be quick to point out the problems with your complaints, but thats by the by)
Very few developers are in the position of starving if they refuse to implement terrible ideas. If they are in that position, fine, but at least feel an appropriate amount of shame for the garbage you're making.
> Perhaps car designers would be a better fit here, but again, other car designers would be quick to point out the problems with your complaints, but thats by the by
I think the car designer version supports what I'm saying: Tesla wants to replace the steering wheel with a yoke and people are rightly criticizing them for it.
(I tried passive aggressively quitting by insisting they put my day rate up expecting them to say no but they did)
Surprisingly I have heard of this being done. Mechanics placing stickers on windows without permission.
Jesus Christ, is the dealership playing me to advertise their business on the item I just paid them money for?! If not, then take that branding shit off!
As I said, could be wrong though, maybe developers arent alone in not liking each other
of course there are other groups of people that don't like other people. have you seen the world today?
Of course I'm not dead serious, but there is some seriousness implied. You called out devs specifically not being alone in not liking one another. I made a reference to another profession that doesn't like their direct related counterparts. What in the world did you think that meant? There are not chefs that don't like other chefs or that there are not chefs that don't like devs?
Sorry, this bugs me. Forming groups of humans that dislike other groups of humans is as old as humanity itself.
It kind of makes sense actually, of course I hear of more developers being hostile to other developers compared to say mechanics, but that could be because I hear from more developers full stop. There's probably a term for it and everything.
That being said, I'm sure I've come across a lot more camaraderie amongst other professions than developers. Anecdotally, I know theres been a few times I've complained about or seen people complain about a certain profession and seen a wave of posts come in from other workers defending them. Then again, its possible those just stick out in my mind more than the many times that presumably hasn't happened.
If you have Microsoft's resources, you should be able to compete with a good UI. They can't. To me, that's a sign of complete incompetence. Excuse it however you like, but those guys are getting paid and failing at the job.
I don't understand the need to apoligize for shit software. It's shit. I don't care that some idiot spent their whole life taking that shit. It still smells, looks, and tastes like shit. I'm not going to enjoy it as a delicacy because they "care".
It broke because it could not hit an unessential cloud service. This is absolutely something someone should have expected.
It's ok, we rushed the implementation to meet this sprint's goals, the fix is part of the next sprint. /s
That fixed release cycle might make certain things easier, but it also causes a forced lag on all changes and encourages shipping code that isn't actually complete so you don't have to tell people to wait another 2 weeks for the change.
I wish some of Kanban was more widely accepted, especially things like making sure you have enough worked planned in the backlog to just keep taking tasks and working on them till completion.
Putting time outs and other error handling around remote endpoints is prettier much the first lesson you’re taught when interfacing with remote end points.
Yes mistakes happen and I’ve seen other companies ship products that have failed in similar ways, but I’ve always believed Microsoft is thought of as a FANNG and to see a school boy error in their flag ship product a couple of months before it ships really makes me question the standard of leadership running the team.
Who’s QAing it? Why wasn’t those functions covered in unit tests? Who peer reviewed that code? And who’s running the development teams that allow all this guardrails to fail? It’s not just one engineer who had to fuck up to cause that bug.
It would look bad on my resume. And given how much of a mess it is, it sounds like a terribly stressful job. I think any dev who doesn't see those red flags (or care about them) is very, very likely incompetent.
Honestly, even they weren't it's like a self fulfilling prophecy. It's fairly incompetent to take a job that people believe is for incompetent people. Unless you totally turn shit around, which obviously nobody has.
Well, to be fair, the cause and effect in this case shouldn't even be connected in a way that allows for this. It's like a bad CD in your car stereo causing your engine to fail. A smart car manufacturer makes it so that the data bus cannot send information from the public areas to the engine area. A bad car manufacturer does not put up those blocks.
They crash all the time. They’re absolutely awful quality. they are made almost exclusively with cheap foreign engineering. It’s really the wild west when it comes to things.
The vehicle interfaces are usually subsystem modules in the radio. Your Linux side talks to your “vehicle side” over usb, uart, SPI, etc. There is still a good module there most of the time, but it has 100% trust of its main processor.
Since 2018, US vehicles since almost all come with a firewall to separate the radio/telemetric/infotainment busses from the vehicle busses.
Their solution wasn’t to harden the fancy systems, it was just to separate them from the important ones. So the vulnerabilities are still there, just moved a little.
I despise these big stupid complicated displays that encourage accidents.
A catastrophic failure of the head unit can impact the electrical system which can do weird things with the spark plugs or other systems.
He said no such thing.
Verbatim quote. The commenter being responded to said exactly that.
It seems the did in fact say such a thing that you said they didn't say.
I imagine you're misinterpreting what I said. That's reasonable, I can see how I was not clear.
I was saying that there's no way there's a single team at MS that does not have a competent person on it, not that there's no way ALL teams have 0 competent people on it.
Everything I go near from them is a monumental crapfest these days. They could be a good platform if they stopped this schizophrenic direction changing and actually fixed shit rather than hiding it behind layers of new shit.
Perhaps we should consider software welfare as well.
“Clean up your shit or we’ll fine you”
Oh, I'm not the only one thinking this then! That's good to know. For years I've been tinkering at the edges of this by having my own app launcher, and my own desktop widgets, and an explorer style start menu navigation app.
All I need is to hook into the systray (although, do I need that? it's just a distraction), and put together a good/fast app switcher app, and I could ditch explorer.exe and the startmenu app completely.
Do not mistake domains you don't understand as being bad at things. Programs and extensions that are 26 years old are still running strong on Windows 10 today. The economy runs on ancient tools that rely on that compatibility.
Throwing together a pretty context menu isn't as important as making sure that all of the UI elements are accessible to screen readers and other tools. It's also trivial compared to ensuring that old programs that assumed they could just click on the third menu item to make something happen keep working even if you redesign the menu.
I realize most of the terrible bloat, adware, security holes etc are probably caused by external factors, but at some point I think it's important to take responsibility for your own work and either push back on or move on.
I have and regularly use machines with all the major desktop platforms in my house - Windows, OS X, Linux, Chrome OS. While I cycle between them, I strongly prefer the Windows machines. The alternatives are all are missing all sorts of window management things such as snapping to screen quadrants and multimon borders, keyboard shortcuts for moving and snapping windows. Monitors with different DPIs is a challenge on Mac and hopeless on Linux. There are all sorts of UI affordances in Windows to do things like open new copies of an app (middle click on the taskbar icon), close an app (middle click on the taskbar preview), and so on.
There are a number of changes I strongly disagree with in Windows 11 such as removing the ability to put the taskbar on the side, but as a whole I still think the Windows desktop is an excellent piece of software that's significantly more usable than the alternatives.
Its not ready for the desktop.
Supposedly there used to be all sorts of third party shells. Only thing I’ve found to still exist are a few black box ports though.
Someone in another comment here mentions Raymond Chen. He is from the "old Microsoft", and probably has significantly less power than he used to.
Edit: I am dumb. Please disregard.
edit: <snark now unnecessary>
And that they’d rather is $0.001 over your desktop experience as your desktop usage doesn’t generate them income.
Early sources, such as this classic book
https://www.amazon.com/Image-Guide-Pseudo-Events-America/dp/...
frame public relations and marketing folk as cynical manipulators who don't fall for the illusions they create.
The post-modern environment has had about 60 years to develop since that book was written and I think the culture has deteriorated and I believe that, today, the image makers really do live in the "the matrix" they've created and have trouble distinguishing it from reality. (I think of how Valmont in Dangerous Liaisons really fell for his victim Madame de Tourvel.)
My contacts with local business people and people who sell ads for radio and newspapers have convinced me that prices for advertising were too high for a long time because the people who buy advertising get gratification from hearing their name on the radio and the people who advertise won an auction because they get more gratification from hearing their name on the radio more than anyone else.
Years ago somebody who was an "influencer" would try to appear authentic (not an "influencer") but today authentic people will try to look inauthentic ("i pretend to be an influencer even though I don't get paid") to get credibility.
People under this spell will run ads in situations when they clearly shouldn't and they'll be astonishingly resistant to anyone who tries to talk sense into them.
(Your desktop usage does make income for Microsoft since your OEM bought Windows for you. If they annoy you enough you might switch to Linux, MacOS, etc. Unfortunately your OEM probably wants to wreck the value of a $2000 computer they sold you by selling $2 worth of annoying ads.)
The registry isn't the place to do it, and I'm surprised anyone still bothers with it in 2021. All my software relies on config files, and this is the pattern Microsoft themselves have promoted for years with .NET
The bug is really the only thing that is new here.
No real way to build a skyscraper or produce a state of the art feature film on free software.
Stallman was as wrong about just as much stuff as he was right.
It turns out that a few hundred billion dollars of paid software engineering effort can't simply be waved away as "nonfree, so irrelevant". The whole world moved on to devices where not only is the software nonfree, there is not even an option of choosing free software, and, even if there were, there is no comparable free software to choose.
Why? Because they work better and allow you to get more things done in less time.
It's true that it's unreasonably hard to get a decent mobile device that's also free by his definition, but there definitely are free app choices which are often superior to their closed equivalent if you step outside of the apple ecosphere.
When it comes to predicting the future correctly, 50/50 is a pretty good track record IMHO.
I'm on Team Free Software but I'm also on Team Productivity and it turns out that software engineering matters a lot to the latter and the quality and quantity of engineering effort put into free software is a tiny, tiny fraction of that put in to nonfree software.
I doubt the right way to change this is by yelling at/chastising users and developers. If it were, Stallman would have been successful. As it appears, he's been mostly a failure.
It also turns out that few hundred billion dollars of paid software engineering was greatly subsidized by volunteer open source work. Every Android phone in the world uses an open source kernel as one very obvious example.
I for one am very grateful for Stallman and everyone else. I use Linux for everything. Works great, meets all of my needs with zero complaints. If it wasn't for them, I'd have no choice but to use Windows or MacOS.
If they (or their ideology) can't, then nothing else they say has any relevance.
> But their contributions are very valuable and needed.
How so? Decades of their braying has not solved the problem; indeed things have gotten much worse.
> No real way to build a skyscraper or produce a state of the art feature film on free software.
Yes, CAD software is a known issue in FOSS land, but you can still run them in wine on linux when you have to. It is getting better though, lots of consistent updates to some of the foss-cads.
Blender on the other hand, is now often the backbone of the feature film industry. As a matter of fact a large portion of the industry is moving more and more towards at least OSS. (https://www.aswf.io/projects/)
> The whole world moved on to devices where not only is the software nonfree
This is a blanket statement and not true. What about the fact that foss generally runs the vast majority of the internet that allows those non-free devices to function? You've basically got a bunch of linux boxes at the edge of every residential network. Reminds of that time I got into an argument with the Guardians senior technical editor who tried to tell me linux was irrelevant... The supercomputing top 500 certainly doesn't reflect such claims, since you mentioned "state-of-the-art".
> there is not even an option of choosing free software, and, even if there were, there is no comparable free software to choose.
In the vast majority of the cases, there are plenty of FOSS alternatives to choose.
> Why? Because they work better and allow you to get more things done in less time.
Why? Because the school system got locked into to proprietary software when it shouldn't have and thats all they train people on for the most part. Not because of inherent issues in the software interface.
And if you have any issue at all and need technical support, the company will say "That is not a supported configuration, sorry." and you're on your own.
> This is a blanket statement and not true. What about the fact that foss generally runs the vast majority of the internet that allows those non-free devices to function?
And non-free software runs the networking hardware that that internet runs over.
> Because the school system got locked into to proprietary software when it shouldn't have and thats all they train people on for the most part.
Because the school system trains people on what is actually being used, and not on what should, theoretically, be used, in a hypothetical scenario where everyone has weeks or months to relearn everything they know about computing (like how to install and use Linux, and then how to install and use Wine, and then how to install and use their proprietary business tools on Wine on Linux and solve any bugs that come up).
I don't know much about building skyscrapers, but we neither need "state of the art feature film" nor are incapable of producing perfectly adequate film with the tools currently available as free software. There are also countless feature film and animation tools that run and are used on Linux all the time.
Irrespective, I do actually think your viewpoint is valid generally speaking in that FOSS operating systems are inadequate for general purpose computing. They're great for servers or specific tooling, but they suck horse chestnuts if you just want something you can install whatever you want on them and just expect it to work as well as you can on something like macOS or Windows. Those who deny that usually are power users that don't see things from the perspective of the average person who isn't a software engineer or tinkerer.
Of course, this is a failing of both the system and society itself. We ought to know better, but we are too lazy and too hooked on convenience to care enough.
Dealing with updates is such a pain that it built the habit of ignoring updates as much as possible by default.
The only thing that made things a bit better for users with little technical knowledge is the fact that more things are done in the browser nowdays, and this is true for any operating system.
Had AT&T been allowed to sell UNIX from the get go, Stallman would have had to base his endevours on something else.
Then again, it doesn't matter given the amount of GPL-hate nowadays that everyone goes with business friendly licenses.
So glad I saw this coming about windows 8/10 and left windows land never to look back.
- How can I pay microsoft to never see an ad in windows? (paying for office 365 gets rid of most of them, but not all)
- How can I pay my cable provider to not see unskippable ads in on-demand content?
- How can I pay my newspaper to have an app that doesn't show me an ad every couple of pages?
- How can I pay google to just show me the results, without filling the majority of the page with ads? (Paper cut: this used to exist, but google got rid of it before I ever found out it existed.)
The fact that all software seems to be migrating towards being totally funded by ads or subscriptions is distressing.
I just want to pay a fixed price and own something again. It drives me nuts that now-a-days everything is about rent seeking or shoving ads into view (or both, see streaming media services).
I would be interested to see how effective ads are for different groups of people. Are the people who are paying to get rid of the ads more or less susceptible to buying products based on an ad?
As a person who gets annoyed at ads, I would be LESS likely to buy something that I've seen from an intrusive ad.
"Okay, that's cool, I want this, but not from you."
Theoretically, you could break down these groups and offer no ads, then some ads, then some more ads, etc, but the more complicated you make it, the more people you turn away at the same time.
Hence the most optimal solution for the seller is to sell a product/service to both customers and advertisers. However, technology gives sellers better opportunity to group people in various tranches and sell differently, so maybe we will see a more accurate price point develop.
Basically if there's an option to remove ads the platform hosting ads will be incentivized to pick _worse_ ads to get people to pay up the removal fee.
A lot F2P smartphone games are examples of this in action... they offer a way to remove ads by paying but then in return have some of the worst unskippable ads before you've paid.
The frog is already medium-rare, and MS knows that.
I did buy a Surface Go 2 a few weeks ago, and I returned it after 3 days in large part because of this behaviour.
The LiteStep web site and forums still seem to be up, but I don't think it's been under active development for quite a while. I've also seen some scattered praise for Classic Shell / Open Shell (although I'm not sure whether that's a full shell replacement) and heard of a handful of people running the ReactOS shell on Windows.
Is this still at all viable, or has MS made an intractable mess of the relevant APIs over the years?
Windows 10 Explorer has a couple of mods that change its functionality, but I guess that it could be replaced by a third party application entirely. There are both Explorer-style and Norton Commander-style (dual pane) file managers that would do the job just as well if not better than the stock application. Notepad and Task Manager also seem very easy to replace with freeware alternatives. I haven't tried such measures recently, but I can see no reason why they should fail.
If you want to mod away the Windows 10 taskbar (which is the one thing I actually like about Windows 10), you may want to check out RetroBar. It's a C#(?) replica of the classical-style Windows taskbar from 95 to XP eras. It even has the same icons and hides the original Windows 10 taskbar. It actually feels uncanny, running something so close to the real thing on such a new OS. It's very nice.
Other than that, I don't know of anything that would e. g. get rid of the new Control Panel or other mandatory parts. In practice, if you replace the things I listed above, it's really unlikely that you'll come across the stock Windows UI in the course of normal daily use.
Only thing that bugs me to no end is that they never released a "final" version that has all available security and quality updates included, so one does not need to run Windows Update for hours after a fresh SP1 install (after wasting hours getting WU to run in the first place, it broke thanks to some signature hashing update).
Here's the current MOTD: https://motd.ubuntu.com/
Because the network the developers are on ALWAYS connects to the cloud service so nobody ever ran into an issue.
A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable
Although I wasn't expecting a Windows 11 desktop machine to be a distributed system!
It's not about being ok with it, it's about only having the nuclear option, switching OS entirely, as the alternative
Now I'm in no rush to install Win11 whatsover, even though my main PC that I built last year actually has the Asus TPM module (added later) as I needed Bitlocker.
My high end Asus motherboard at over AUD$500 didn't include this $50 module, which is a Win 11 requirement. (Well it cost me that much when including postage).
A pet gripe with Win10: Entering your name as part of a normal setup creates a screwed up username, which is very annoying when using command line paths. Doing an "offline" installation lets you pick your own, but still inundates you with stupid "are you sure" questions and forces you to give 3 kinds of "what's your favourite colour" answers when setting up a password.
The above is so annoying, when almost everything else has gotten so good.
(Very notable exception: The fact that I even have to see the words "candy crush" in my start menu when done, and that Store tries to force you to log in every time you get something from it eg Terminal or Ubuntu for WSL2).
I'm sure Win11 will make keeping in control even harder. I predict this is going to be another failure. Tic-toc, never fails for them.
I'm wondering if it was related to some of this. You're absolutely right that an OS should never "soft-lock" on cloud/networking issues. It's insane to me that we still deal with this as programmers in the year 2021. Write asynchronous code. Expect network slowness or weirdness.
Windows Search is heavily cloud-dependent, and yes it’s performance suffers under poor network conditions.
Just a couple months ago we were bemoaning the issues in macOS Monterey, including VPN apps just not working. If you don't want bugs, don't run the beta.
Edit: why the downvotes? A bug in a beta is the only news here. Ads in Windows are not new. Critical bugs in Windows are not new. Windows updates and services breaking Windows is not new. Literally the whole point of the beta program is to find bugs like this.
Why pay lip service to the fact that you're intentionally running beta software if that won't affect your view? Yes, your beta software broke. That happens.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/24/22548738/microsoft-teams-...
Is there a good reason to believe that that ad space will be treated differently in the long term from any other space?
>I’m not saying Microsoft needs to remove its account, cloud gaming, entertainment, software delivery, and other cloud services.
No need.
Millions of people have been saying it for a while.
but joke aside, I don't get ads in the taskbar or start menu
If you want to see stuff like this change then use an OS that actually views its users as more than ad revenue.
I've always considered Microsoft as the "McDonalds of Software" -- they sell billions of copies, but the product isn't of quality or healthy.
this is very sad on many levels
windows needs a full reboot, and even that i'm not sure it's gonna be saved, it's poorly managed
they can't even agree on what this version is, internals says windows 10, marketing team says windows 11
billion dollar company, they said
Looks like this innovation has finally landed in Windows!