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Comment by habeebtc | Hacker News Reader

Timely. I was recently force upgraded to Win11. Today in fact.

Last week I force-downgraded after I got an exception because it is my busy time of year. That exception was not respected and I realized fighting it weekly would be the same time investment as fixing compatibility issues.

"What compatibility issues? Win11 is fine, I have had no problems." My coworkers say.

Well on Day 1, 2 pretty important pieces of software crashed and exited on first run. And then the screen snipping tool failed to take a snapshot and helpfully suggested I reinstall the OS.

I actually really like the MSFT stack, but I know enough to avoid any totally new release for a while. I actually feel confident enough that I no longer try and skip major releases (like I skipped Vista, 8).

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I loved and lived Windows for a decade and felt so cozy and at home in it, but when the first force-upgrade happened, I knew it was time to move along.

Just cannot accept things changing without my consent on my workstation.

Mac and Linux do the same thing. I know people who still prefer the OSX 10.3 and the GNOME2 GUIs, or for instance the way nytimes.com looked back in 2010. That's the problem with making GUIs the thing you love. Some goons stop by your home every few years and toss up the furniture. Apple is the gold standard since it pretty much looks the same as it did in the 80's and each major version tunes subtle things. Microsoft makes big changes to look, but at the end of the day its substance is the same. Then there's Linux where each GUI update is a radical break with tradition that continually reinvents its own identity.

> Mac and Linux do the same thing

The earlier responses in the thread were talking about forced upgrades. I'm not sure about MacOS since I don't use it much, but most Linux distros do not forcibly apply upgrades like Windows does; you can continue to use old packages and even reboot the machine indefinitely. Sure, you might not get security fixes or keep unrelated packages up to date beyond a certain point, but that's not at all the same thing as updates being applied without actually being invoked by the user.

Force is a strong word, since Windows provides ways to opt-out of feature upgrades. It's also probably possible to opt-out of bug fixes too. If you want to put a rosy spin on things, you could think of it as a free system administration service. There's a lot of people out there who are working really hard, for you, to make sure it goes smoothly. It's also common for Linux distros to use the opt-out model these days too.

> Force is a strong word, since Windows provides ways to opt-out of feature upgrades.

I dunno, I've heard multiple reports of people leaving their machine alone and coming back to it having upgraded and rebooted into a new version, sometimes into an unrecoverable blue screen.

How would they have opted out of that?

Went through that with Win7 a few times. Eventually found a way to disable.

In this case, the forced W11 upgrade was forced on me by my company via push.

Whenever there's a way to disable it, it's usually discovered after the fact, and then next month a new setting is introduced which must also be disabled.

Fool me once, etc.

> I'm not sure about MacOS since I don't use it much, but most Linux distros do not forcibly apply upgrades like Windows does;

Eh, not very accurate in my opinion. If you want to use the latest software you are very much forced to upgrade Linux because they have no concept of separating the platform from the applications that run on it. Either everything is bleeding edge or nothing is. Or you compile things from source like it is 1979.

There are Windows programs released today that will run just fine on Windows 7. How many Linux programs released today will run on Karmic Koala without recompilation?

I'm not sure who you mean by "they", but there's a lot of difference between distros, and many different ways to put the pieces together (or leave them out)

Compiling from source is the most reliable way to run the latest and greatest version of a particular application that I've found to date, leaving out all the middlemen like package mantainers, whose competence I may or may not trust.

And generally speaking, I'd trust a several-decades-old technique much more than something just released.

As far as Windows software goes, I've found Wine to be a much more reliable platform for old Windows applications than Windows 7 or 10, although there's nothing better than emulated Windows 9x for running programs of that era.

(I make "any browser" websites, so running 1995+ software is something I do on the regular.)

Karmic Koala is within the support vector of Actually Portable Executable. Since if you can get it to run on that, it'll most likely run on all the other distros too. Plus these binaries run on Windows 7, Mac, and BSDs too. They even run without an operating system. No need for recompilation. No virtual machine required. They aren't bloated either since the binary footprint starts at 12kb. See https://justine.lol/ape.html and https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan Best part is you can still use the compiler that comes with your Linux. All it does is reconfigures the compiler so that, rather than producing a binary that can only run on one version of one distro of one operating system, your program magically becomes capable of running on all of them.

I just looked up what Karmic Koala is, and it is Ubuntu 9.x.

I have not tried to use that recently, but I am quite happy running 14.x today, and it runs everything I need.

I use IntelliJ 13.x for my Git stuff, Geany for most of my text editing, a dozen different browsers at whatever versions they are for my Web things, and whatever versions of mpv, mc, LibreOffice, etc. it came with for what those programs do.

With only 1GB of RAM it's not always as snappy as I'd like, but I use the periods of swapping to meditate.

I don't have to use programs released today, only ones which I need today.

My point is that there's a difference between "you need to update to use certain things" and "your computer literally is forcibly updated even if you don't want it to or aren't ready". I agree that Windows is probably ahead in terms of backwards compatibility, but the first few comments in the thread were talking about machines getting updated without them applying the updates, which is not a thing I'm aware of happening on most Linux distros.

Mac does it, which is why I also quit mac.

Some GNU/Linux distributions do it, but not all of them. And I have way more control over it when it does happen.

Apple was pretty solid until around Mountain Lion. Once I saw them messing with "Save As", I jumped.

I've had good experiences with LXDE and Xfce so far on multiple distros.

Anything Gnome are no longer in the running, however.

Looking at Google Trends for GNOME,KDE,LXDE,XFCE from 2004 to present is interesting. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%... Back then GNOME and KDE stood head and shoulders over all alternatives, whereas these last twelve months, all the Linux desktop choices appear more or less in the same league. Open source sort of behaves the opposite way as markets where instead of shakeout we get shakein.

Interestingly just removing the US location restriction it looks quite different, with KDE being far more frequently searched for than the others at the moment. Searches for Linux desktop environments look to have reduced a lot in total since 2004, on Google at least. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F0...

macOS does not force updates or upgrades.

> Linux do the same thing. [..] Then there's Linux where each GUI update is a radical break with tradition that continually reinvents its own identity.

If you're using a "mainstream" desktop environment (e.g. GNOME), then yeah, but that's not universally true. I've been using exactly the same desktop environment for something like ~12 years; I love Linux because if you set it up right it's essentially zero maintenance (significantly less than Windows and macOS), and almost nothing changes without your consent. The only forced change during those 12 years that I've noticed was the migration to systemd, and Firefox reskinning their GUI for no good reason every other release.

The forced changes to the init system and desktop gui are far more radical than anything Microsoft or Apple ever did. The init system change was also due to the GUI people. GNOME told everyone they must adopt SystemD or else you can't use GNOME anymore. It made people so unhappy there were forks, protests, and even suicides. If a system administrator woke up from a 15 year coma, they would have no clue how to use any of this stuff and would have to start over from scratch. How can we as open source developers, present a better alternative to big tech products if we keep dividing and conquering ourselves? To think about how unfair that is to the thousands of volunteers who worked hard to create these desktops and systems and treasure troves of stack overflow answers, that just get swept away two years later, it's a failure of leadership.

Bah. If a sysadmin woke up from a coma, systemd would be the least of their worries, since it has a comprehensive manual, working backwards compatibility for most standard interfaces, and is in most cases much, much easier to deal with than what was before it.

They might scream in horror at how containers often get (ab)used though.

More like compound tragedy. The world's largest search engine used to run on a single computer. Now the world's smallest app has its own kubernetes cluster.

Come on, let’s stop this bullshit about systemd. It was goddamn voted on multiple times by debian maintainers, in a system that is markedly more democratic than anything we have in a country, and won with huge margins.

Also, previous incarnations were hard to maintain, had no logging before the mount of filesystems, had ill-defined service life cycle, etc. Booting is a hard problem. Having it all around the system in million shitty bash script is a ridiculous idea. Make it declarative as much as possible and have it handled by a single core program. And systemd does these perfectly, my only gripe with it is that it should not have been written in C, but such is everything in linux land.

It's obvious you feel strongly about this from your language, but there is no need to call someone else's opinion bullshit.

The reality is that systemd's wide adoption has made many people unhappy, for many reasons, some outlined in the Wikipedia article[1]. Systemd is overly complex, to the point of being obfuscated; systemd has many interlocked dependencies; systemd takes control away from the sysadmin and puts it into a fat binary; systemd goes against the Unix philosophy of "do one thing well"; systemd creates a pattern of homogenizing Linux architecture, and so on.

Lucky for us, unlike with Windows and Mac, there is no "One And Only GNU/Linux Distribution", and instead there are many options and alternatives, many of which have not integrated systemd at all, or only ported small parts of it.

Every day I am ever so grateful for the miracle and gift of FOSS. Thank you. Gracias. Spasibo. Dyakuyu. Merci. Danke.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemd#Reception

Wow look at the names on that list. None of them had a choice though since the decision was made unilaterally. They woke up one day and were told to hand over control of their boot, userspace, ssh auth, and dns to this new program with binary logs that speaks nonstandard binary protocols. Open source essentially boils down to free candy from strangers on the Internet, and the thing that's historically made that work is transparency. Without it, you've got a system that requires faith and is fueled by the fumes of trust painstakingly built by those before you. That's why the old guard is unhappy about it.

I really don't understand the systemd hate. It's fine. It works. I never had any problems with it, neither on my desktop, nor on the servers I maintain. People I personally know also don't have any problems with it.

> It made people so unhappy there were forks, protests, and even suicides.

...a suicide over a different init system? Seriously?

You could look it up on Wikipedia, as with most things one seeks to understand...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemd#Reception

Summary: It's overly complex, it has many interlocked dependencies, it takes control away from the sysadmin and puts it into a huge binary, it goes against the Unix philosophy of "do one thing well", it creates a pattern of homogenizing Linux architecture...

People who still prefer GNOME2 GUIs are using MATE, what is the OSX 10.3 lover to do?

I googled for some screenshots and MATE doesn't look like GNOME 2 to me. See https://www.server-world.info/en/note?os=CentOS_5&p=x&f=1 and https://int3ractive.com/blog/2019/things-to-do-after-install... I found some screenshots of MATE desktops from ten years ago. Those did look like GNOME2. However it appears that since then MATE chosen to embrace a new identity too.

Look instead at MATE's homepage: https://mate-desktop.org/ Or their screenshots. For Ubuntu MATE, select "Traditional" in your link's step 1. You can also look at the final screenshot of https://learnubuntumate.weebly.com/traditional-menu.html

Sure, MATE has evolved to give more options, and distros seem to like defaulting its look to something non-traditional, but the traditional look is still very GNOME2 and very much alive. I've got an old desktop from 2009 that's run Gentoo the whole time , I never upgraded to GNOME3, but I did switch to MATE when it came out, and haven't had to mess with it since apart from trying out different icon sets or other small theme changes. It looks basically the same as ever, even compared to my old laptop screenshots from 2007 -- I still have my wobbly windows from Compiz (fka Beryl) too.

TBH, both Ubuntu and Gnome have completely lost my trust as far as making stable and predictable environments.

The Mac-like global menubar which they've grafted on without being able to adopt the applications is an atrocity IMO.

I consider Windows 95 / NT4 / 2000 to be "peak desktop GUI" and use distros which allow me to emulate that look, feel, and behavior. I use it until it fails to deliver that experience and then keep trying other distros until I find another one who has not yet rotted out.

So far, I have only had to switch distros a handful of times.

Windows 2000 was a thing of beauty. It was Peak Gates. What do you think of SerenityOS? It's written by this guy from Apple who ended up leaving his job so he could do the same thing to Windows 2000 that Steve Jobs did to Mac OS 9. Now that's a dangerous idea.

I'm a huge fan of SerenityOS and Andreas, but I've not had a chance to try it yet.

I used Windows 2000 starting three betas before gold, downloading each build over dialup from AOL warez scene releases and didn't stop until a while after they stopped patching Pro, don't recall having any issues. What an amazingly solid OS.

My choice today is Xfce with the Chicago95 script, I can barely tell the difference.

I'd say Mint has the best default tuning for Xfce, with Manjaro I have to add the fewest additional packages on top of the base install, and Fedora is somewhere in between.

Thanks for the memories :)

> [...] Linux do the same thing.

My Arch + AwesomeWM setup I've been running for the last 5+ years would disagree with you. Kinda one of the reasons I went with this setup, I have total control over all updates, installed software, etc.

>I loved and lived Windows for a decade

I know it's probably a typo, but I can't help but imagine the wonderful OS that Windows 6 never was :)

Not sure where the supposed typo is, I started with 3.11, then used 95, NT4, 98, 2k, and around XP/Vista is where I realized it's time to move on because of the increasing upgrade nags and the UI being changed without my consent...

I still stuck around until Windows 7 because I had just grown so into it, was very comfortable with keyboard controls, etc. Then a computer I knew upgraded itself to Windows 8 without being asked to, and started booting into a bsod...

There was never any free and forced upgrade to Windows 8, I assume you mean Windows 10?

You may be right, perhaps it was Windows 8 to Windows 10. But even in the days of XP, upgrade nags were already in effect, and one keypress or mouse click at the wrong time (when the popup appeared) could send you down that road. Unless you already anticipated it ahead of time (from past experiences) and went through the settings and disabled automatic update checking.

The overall intent and attitude matters more to me than the details, and the general intent of Microsoft (and Apple, and Gnome, and Ubuntu, and many others) seems to be "we know how your desktop should look and operate better than you do."

This is completely the opposite of what I want, which is to have a workstation which is configured to facilitate my work, where nothing changes without my explicit REQUEST.

I hate updates with the fire of a thousand suns. I'm still on Windows 7 and will stay on it for as long as possible. Parts of my PC are from 2010, the case from 1990, the screen from 2007. And you know what? It works.

Might come in useful to others on Win11:

To get the snipping tool working, close the snipping tool, manually set the date to around the start of October. Reopen the snipping tool and it should be working. The date can now be set back.

The mind boggles at imagining the code that could possibly be responsible for this behavior.

It was actually caused by a digital certificate which expired last month

https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2021/11/04/releasi...

I went to Windows.old, and copied out the all the executables in System32, as well as the locale folder (en-US for me). Pinned snippingtool.exe to start menu, and then uninstalled the W11 snipping tool.

My snipping tool again works, and exactly how I need it to.

I upgraded to Windows 11 and the volume bar simply does not show when left clicking on the sound icon on the lower right of the task bar.

No amount of things I've tried makes it work, so to change the volume I have to either use keyboard shortcuts or open the volume mixer in the control panel.

Well volume ain't that bad — I can't open widows defender after the update. It just acts like the app was unistalled and tells me that .lnk is defective.

Meanwhile the defender itself keeps running and preventing me from installing latest qBittorrent because it decided that it's malicious and to overwrite I need to open Defender...

Why not just get LTSC? You get zero feature updates (ie. the breaking kind) pushed on you, but you still get security updates for up to 10 years.

Last I checked, you need an enterprise license to get the LTSC version of Windows. Individual consumer users can't just purchase it on their own

getting an enterprise license isn't hard, see: https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2167558-explicit-inst...

Ignoring the licensing issues, LTSC failed for me. Just literally wouldn't boot one day.

It's probably something hardware related, but the Pro version works great so far, even if it ignores update time and sticks my files into a black hole because it thinks it's a virus.

Hopefully the last version I'll use on bare metal as I move away from soldered processors and more centralized garbage.

LTSC is only in windows enterprise, but what any windows pro user should use if they want to avoid the bleeding edge is switch to CBB, which is generally a lot more stable than the consumer releases of windows (which effectively are public betas during their first few months).

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/...

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