Using Windows after 15 years on Linux | Hacker News Reader

Using Windows after 15 years on Linux

duncanlock.net

299 pointsdflock562 comments

From a quick look at the article, I can see a few subtle "omissions" or "rants that have easy fixes". I can't tell how long the author has spent on Windows (it's not in the article) so it's hard to know how much effort they have put in getting adjusted. It takes a really long time to switch platforms and feel comfortable in them, and without spending a long time adjusting, it's too easy to complain and quite hard to provide a fair review...

For a more positive spin, I'll leave here my own review of Windows after being off the platform for 25 years, spending 15 of those on macOS, and then spending the last year primarily on Windows. TL;DR: I'm quite happy with the switch, but obviously there are many things that could be different/better and some of the issues that the OP highlights are valid.

The intro and index: https://jmmv.dev/2022/03/a-year-on-windows-intro.html

[edit: wording]

Funny, I've read the "finale" part and the PowerShell part. When I read you, my fealing is that PowerShell is not there yet and telemetry and Defender have big issues (telemetry 'cos it allow MSFT to remove feature, spy on me) and Defender ('cos sometimes it just eats my time)...

As a dev/data scientist/netflix/websurfer/photo-sorter/privacy-aware dude, well, my Linux box just rocks and Windows is not fun (although it does the job).

> Speaking of keyboard shortcuts provides the right segue to the clipboard behavior. I don’t know who had the brilliant idea of making copy and paste preserve the formatting of the source text. This is almost never ever what you want.

> I can't tell how long the author has spent on Windows

About 3 1\2 months so far. I tried to be fair - but my article is not as comprehensive as your series!

I've read some of your series and I didn't see anything, but you don't happen to know if you can get primary selection middle click paste on Windows? That's the only thing so far that I've got no kind of solution to at all.

I am told, every time someone claims *nix isn't a good desktop, that having to fix things is unacceptable; if a problem can be fixed by editing a config file/setting or installing an additional program, that proves the platform will never be good enough for desktop use. I am perfectly happy to watch NT failing by the same standard.

Mostly the same experience having had 10+ years on Mac before a switch to Windows. Powertoys[0] are great although some are slow (especially the one acting like Mac's Spotlight). UI is different but not a bad experience once you've used it for a couple weeks. I didn't see any mention of file explorers (i.e. Explorer vs Finder) in your articles but it's fascinating how those two concepts are the same thing yet so different in their strengths and weaknesses - and to be honest, my explorer experience improved once I started using QTTabbar[1] to customize everything to my liking.

I'm surprised your WSL article is so short, because WSL2 is so incredibly convenient for Linux and keeps on improving steadily. I've been able to set up and practice on virtual kubernetes cluster using KinD[2] (Kubernetes in Docker) thanks to the seamless integration of Docker for Windows into the WSL subsystem. VSCode can tap into Linux VMs with pretty much no delays too. Shutting down the whole thing to free up resources takes one line in Powershell and happens within a few seconds. The terminal app despite having a bit of a clunky UI is highly configurable and just works, etc.

There are things that scare me about Windows though, for example the mandatory real-time "defender" file scanning that you have to disable either manually at every boot or disable entirely through registry thus losing the virus scanning functionality. The amount of clunky Cortana stuff that really took a while to remove. The store app that feels flimsy, the games dependency on Xbox apps and subsystems which can lead to annoying bugs, and certain UI delays that make the system sometimes feel not so fast compared to the tricks Macs can pull to make you feel at ease. Consequently I'm not very likely to touch Windows 11 as Microsoft is seemingly trying to enforce more things in configurations and UI.

[0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/

[1] https://github.com/indiff/qttabbar

[2] https://kubernetes.io/blog/2020/05/21/wsl-docker-kubernetes-...

>It takes a really long time to switch platforms and feel comfortable in them, and without spending a long time adjusting, it's too easy to complain and quite hard to provide a fair review...

I agree.

Some of the fixes for his complaints are effectively customizations, not unlike the customizations I'd make in Linux. I'm not sure some of these differences are really that different.

Yeah from reading the article that's the impression I'm left with is someone who is just baffled by new things and generally not very good at computery stuff. /s

I learned a lot of Windows tricks from this one article written by someone who supposedly hasn't spent enough "effort getting adjusted".

I'm halfway through it, awesome review!

Very well-done. This should be the OP article.

I can see where OP is coming from but it sounds like he hasn't allowed him/herself to learn to do things the windows way.

You maybe used to coreutils/binutils and piecing together things in bash like a lego but Powershell in many ways allows you to build powerful scripts or compose one liners like with bash except you have access to .NET and any .NET assembly you can load! Don't even get me started on WMI or GPO.

"Windows wasn't made for me" right... it isn't made for anyone that wants to use it like a unix system, it is an entirely different OS. Just like you shouldn't expect Linux to work like windows.

It really isn't a competition. Windows is messy in its own way and that affects its performance as well. If you want to feel like you are in control, windows isn't for you. If you want to get things done, windows is a mediocre but acceptable platform.

The very things that make Linux powerful and controllable like shared library all over the place, package managers, and more make it more fragile and time consuming to administer.

I spent at least 8-10 hours a week getting things to work on Linux when I had it as my daily driver for over a decade. The weeks I didn't do this, it was because I did nothing outside of browsing the web. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed most of that time, and I did feel like I was in control up until distro maintainers decide things for me and my only choice is to beg and plead and be told to fork it if I disagreed.

All I am saying is every platform exists for a reason and has issues.

> I spent at least 8-10 hours a week getting things to work on Linux when I had it as my daily driver for over a decade.

What did you spend that time on? I never need to look at anything; it's a big reason I use Linux: my system today is the same as it was yesterday, and last year. And will be the same tomorrow, and next year. Of course Firefox and the Linux kernel and all these tools get updates, but overall it's pretty stable from my user-visible perspective. I certainly don't have upgrades which completely change the UI like Windows 8/10/11 "forced" on me, and if something does go wrong (which it rarely does), I can usually figure things out – Windows: not so much.

You SOUND reasonable... But... Try to write a script on windows that takes in a URL with an "=" character and replace that with a "-"

Try to write a 100 line script in CMD. Oops, actually it needs to be in powershell. Convert the CMD script to Powershell.

Program has an update? Time to reinstall the entire program. How could we possibly remember your settings? No... You need to do that all over again in this UI that changes to a new size on every page.

Oh, admin access wasn't available or we didn't bother to ask? Don't worry, I already know what to do. You wanted this on the C drive in %appdata%. What? You have a small SSD C drive only for the OS but your programs are installed on massive HDDs? Well that sounds like a YOU problem for not using our OS correctly.

Backing up a game data? We got you. That's why we created %USERPROFILE%/Games to replace %USERPROFILE%/Documents/Games. Oh you're a developer but your game might not be unique? That's fine, just use %USERPROFILE%/Documents/Games/Games. Oh you want admin access because you're installing a root kit... I mean anti cheat program? That's fine, I give you permission to use %appdata% or %userdata% to bypass the user having to have admin access. That would just be inconvenient. Also we duplicately installed the data to every previously mentioned folder just incase some program needs it. However, we are only reading from 1 source... Per line. Ish. We need all of them, to be clear, but most of the changes are read directly from only one of these duplicated install locations. The others are critical dependencies that corrupt the OS if you delete them, so don't do that.

We installed your game to C:\Game. Oh, you wanted to put it where literally every other game is? Well we uninstalled part of it and then re-installed most of it in C:\Program Files(x86)\Game\Game. Oh you didn't want it in the games dir? Fine. Specify a custom path. C:\Program Files(x86)\Game? Fine. We put it in C:\Program Files(x86)\Game\Game. Oh still not ok? Well literally too bad because the registry files are hard coded to where we installed it.

Also, we created C:\Program Files\Game as a second install just for fun. Also, it's installed in %appdata% for no real reason. IDK. Game dev hard you're not allowed to criticize me. Also, here's a shortcut on your desktop, and start menu, and again in the start menu, and we created a new folder in the start menu with a shortcut to the program but it actually links to the uninstaller instead.

> All I am saying is every platform exists for a reason and has issues.

Hardly an inspiring sales pitch for Windows.

The reality is that Microsoft allowed a lot of things to stagnate in Windows that it shouldn't have:

  - the C runtime
  - the terminal and shell
  - UTF-8 support (lol)
  - package installation
  - CLI admin tooling

To their credit, they've been doing a ton of catch-up work on all of those things lately. Yes, PowerShell is nice. Yes there's a lot of very nice APIs and protocols. Active Directory is good enough (though I think Microsoft may be resting on its laurels with AD).

Impressions made 20 years ago continue to be true-ish now, though, again, Microsoft is finally making progress towards remediating those, but inertia counts for a lot. Eventually, maybe, just maybe, Windows might recover a lot of the mind-share it lost to Linux.

This is a business where mind-share is kind. It's interesting to see a number of companies that benefited enormously from mind-share they built then fail to keep it up. Mind-share is the biggest lock-in.

> The very things that make Linux powerful and controllable like shared library all over the place, package managers, and more make it more fragile and time consuming to administer.

How is

    apt update
    apt upgrade

to make ones whole system is up-to-date fragile or cumbersome?

Upgrading to a whole new major version means basically the same, just change repository sources and use apt full-upgrade, one can even continue to work while that's happening - try that on windows..

> did feel like I was in control up until distro maintainers decide things for me and my only choice is to beg and plead and be told to fork it if I disagreed.

Assuming that begging and pleading actually happened for a legitimate reason (sometimes some maintainers can indeed be a bit of an arse, iow., humans are humans); how does that compare to Windows/Microsoft where you cannot even get close to anybody of the team to voice your needs or complaints, at least if you're not friend with one by accident (and seemingly even working there may not even give you the chance)?

IMO that complaint really reads like "it's not 100% perfect, so it's way worse than on the other side, where I cannot even do the same, nor have _any_ power over my system, at all". I'm still just baffled about the different standards that Windows and Linux is held up against.

I also need to pile on:

"I spent at least 8-10 hours a week getting things to work on Linux"

This is ridiculous. I've used Linux exclusively for 10+ years. You're either not telling the whole truth of your use case, or you're in the bottom 5% of tech literacy, or you're obsessive.

What were you doing to it for 8-10 hours? A week?

This is mind boggling to me. I’ve run Debian as my main workstation OS for years now, and I’m not doing 8-10 hours a year maintenance, if you don’t count the actual time running aptitude updates/upgrades (and that’s not a lot either). I’m not even running “stable”.

> I can see where OP is coming from but it sounds like he hasn't allowed him/herself to learn to do things the windows way.

I think that's an unkind way of phrasing it although I get what you probably mean. I know more people like me who started with Windows and had used it for years and suddenly... on Linux (or a Mac, to a degree) everything made sense and what was annoying and tedious was suddenly easy and intuitive.

You can absolutely know the Windows way and hate it. And the author of this post was just critical, whereas I actually hate it. Working on Windows feels like working with my hands tied behind my back and I don't think that will ever change.

8 to 10 hours? Not my experience at all and I am pretty esoteric in my approach - I use xmonad among other things.

I've switched various OSes in my life, adapting to them and adapting them to my needs as possible NOT trying to bring the old one paradigm in the new OS. PowerShell IMVHO might be more powerful than shell scripts BUT is so horrid just in mere language terms that I doubt more than very few Windows users would learn it.

Consider a thing: usability matter.

A second one: my OS is mine, not one that decide on my back, surprise with silent upgrades that lock shutdown or bootup, that show ads inside something bought to work with etc. All this characteristics makes Windows a crappy system no matter any paradigm. In Windows the user is not at the center, is just a data cow to be milked giving back crumbs in exchange.

GNU/Linux is still crappy for many reasons, but at least have a certain usability and stability, witch make it far less crappy than Windows.

In Enterprise terms Windows have done far more work than GNU/Linux witch formally makes Windows admin a far easier job in an enterprise, however I see Windows admins always stressed and without much free time to evolve the infra they manage, while GNU/Linux ones sometimes are stressed but not for most of the time and those who want can spare time to improve...

Windows is a product made to munge money, nothing wrong with that but that's means that's an anti-user product. And that's matter MUCH.

I use linux exclusively for ~15 years on all my computers. Last year i bought a Ryzen5 PC with an RTX3070 after only using laptops for around 10 years. I absolutely expected difficulties with the GPU but it was all smooth sailing from the beginning. I through the newest Ubuntu on there and checked install non-free during the installation. I haven't had to deal with drivers at all for years now.

I've actually done kind of the opposite recently.

I've used Linux a lot in the past, and especially on servers pretty much exclusively - but I've always had a Windows PC for gaming and a Mac for everything else for personal use.

In the last few months I put together a tiny low power AMD PC (the 35W 8 core 5750GE!) - and I am massively impressed by how well everything works.

Proton/Wine and the OSS AMD graphics stack run older Windows games better than Windows 10 or 11 does. The DP MST setup I have just works (unlike on Windows + NVIDIA where it loves to break). Using KDE as a desktop is more consistent as a UI than Windows 11 is.

It's come a long way, and the user experience (as someone who was expecting to dislike it) is seriously improved & seriously impressive.

edit: a lot of the niggles I used to hit have just gone away - I don't get tearing, multimonitor just worked. I haven't tried disparate DPIs and I expect that would be an issue, but even so... I'm impressed.

It seems his complaints boil down to:

1) You don't have the choice of multiple Desktop Environments (When was the last time this was not true? Litestep?)

2) Windows applications and utilities tend to be GUI based. (I thought that was the whole point of Windows...)

2a) Stuff is stored in the registry (I thought linux people loved digging into and tweaking settings)

2b) Paths are different. (No kidding. But we've known this since DOS vs Unix)

3) Windows sometimes restarts itself (Again, there are settings that help, but Windows has done this for quite some time now.)

4) No apt-get|zypper|etc, must install exe or msi from the internet. Or use the awful Windows Store. (No debate there, the Windows store is awful. But installing the latest Firefox is a lot easier on Windows than Debian Stable. I rather like not having to fight with a central repository of applications.)

Those have been the complaints of linux users for over 20 years. I feel like I'm arguing on Arstechnica circa 1998.

Use the tool that's best for your job. I don't bitch about my socket set being metric when I need SAE. At this point the differences are known and well understood.

> Use the tool that's best for your job. I don't bitch about my socket set being metric when I need SAE. At this point the differences are known and well understood.

Completely agreed, and clearly the author of the article did not understand the differences before their endeavor, or they are trying to make a point -- one in which we all already know.

One real strong opinion about Windows I have is the registry, which is at its core a flawed and archaic system. It tries to bring every setting and registered library into one single infrastructure and it has been the bane of developer existence for far too long. The registry needs to die. There is nothing the registry provides that can't be done simply within the sandbox of the application. And applications should be sandboxed.

And don't get me started about NTFS. I find it odd, that the author, who claims they are coming from Linux doesn't complain about just how godawful slow NTFS is. To me this is the most egregious Windows issue. Sure, NTFS works, but when it takes 3-4 minutes to compile the same code on the same language/compiler in Windows that takes 30 seconds or less to compile in Linux, clearly something is wrong. I simply cannot develop on Windows -- efficiency is completely lost.

It's funny that with the registry being SO AWFUL and BAD, every other platform basically has the same thing.

MacOS has the /Library/Preferences and ~/Library/Preferences hierarchies, with plist files inside of them representing individual keys and being accessible by a programmatic interface that abstracts the files away. This is the same as the Windows Registry aside from implementation details.

On Linux, at least in the Gnome side of things, there's dconf, which is again exactly the same thing as the Windows Registry, and it even has a similar implementation: a binary database file. Amusingly, the dconf wikipedia article has a whole little section full of misleading and downright inaccurate ("Most Windows applications still store their user settings in individual .ini files spread across the disk") copes to obscure the fact that dconf is the same thing as the registry.

All of this Windows hate is so tiresome. Bitter Slashdot-tier commentary from people who don't actually know anything about operating systems.

I've noticed in particular that hobbyist Linux users think that they have a profound understanding of the OS because they used a command line and text editor to do system configuration instead of a GUI, and have to type arcane incantations from Google to fix their broken systems periodically. But in reality, they know very little. See, for example, any thread with hysterical complaints about systemd. They can't even explain what systemd is, what problems it solves, and why almost everyone who actually does linux system development for a living is pretty happy with it. But they're sure it's an evil conspiracy to steal the innocence of their precious OS. They think they know a lot, but they actually know nothing.

I'm sorry but you seem to be misplacing a lot of your judgments. NTFS is awesome. What's not so awesome is the performance of Windows's I/O subsystem when opening files, and this doesn't really have much to do with NTFS. Also I don't know how you're compiling files, but if you're using GCC and observing it to be much slower than on Linux, you should be aware that that's a GCC issue and not an OS issue; it neither happens with Clang, nor with MinGW versions of GCC. As for the whole "registry is flawed" thing, I've never heard one good argument for that assertion. It's a meme people keep repeating without even bothering to make good arguments for it. "Trying to bring every setting and registered library into one single infrastructure" is literally what the filesystem does too. Except if you're on Linux it drags in random stuff like /proc and /dev in for the ride. All the registry is is a very fast and well-implemented hierarchical key-value store for small bits of data. Either you want such a thing, in which case the registry is a great implementation, or you don't, in which case the problem isn't the registry. I haven't experienced greater joy dealing with ~/.config or dconf than the registry, but if you want those you can always use %AppData%.

Heh, clearly people think they know more than they do and accuse me of the same. No worries, I really couldn’t care less what others think of me. I know how my systems perform under multiple OS conditions and configurations, I’ve developed for every single OS natively, and I’ve yet to experience anything close to the multiple issues on windows with the subject matter I described on any other OS.

Keep fighting the fight, though! I mean it’s not like your favorite OS is going anywhere.

Yeah, I used to get very pissy about everything in windows being stashed in the registry but...how is that different from everything being hidden inside systemd, or in a /etc/config file that is silently changed by services?

The big difference is that stuff in /etc/, ~/.config, etc. are discoverable and something that can be made sense of. The Windows registry is something I never really could make sense of. For example to change Caps Lock to be Ctrl you need to change "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout\Scancode Map" to "hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,1d,00,3a,00,00,00,00,00". To disable that stupid Thumbs.db generation you change "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\NoThumbnailCache" to "dword:00000001".

These are for Windows 7, from my old files – may be different now. But how is anyone ever going to figure that out? xmodmap can be somewhat hard to use, but a least it's documented, and you can play around with it to discover stuff. Some random hex values in some registry thing? Yeah ... good luck with that.

> in a /etc/config file that is silently changed by services?

I'm not really invested in the Windows vs Linux thing but config files in /etc never get silently changed or removed. If they are, it's a critical bug, although I've never really seen it happen.

If there are any updates to the service files, they'll be installed alongside the original file. For example, on Arch Linux, it'll be /etc/systemd/journald.conf.pacnew while the original journald.conf file will never be touched.

Having Windows restart itself is a pet peeve of mine, but as long as you have Windows 10 Pro there are some local admin policies you can set to make sure it never restarts while you're logged in. This is the one key thing I do and it prevents Windows from restarting and losing your work.

https://superuser.com/questions/1110265/how-to-prevent-windo...

Reboot blocker utility https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19265417 (Windows Home, etc.)

At least linux doesn't restart itself by default.

Funnily, I'm almost exactly in the same situation right now, having recently switched jobs. With the exception that I don't have admin rights, and our sys admins as a matter of principle refuse to install any additional apps.

Windows does not come with any compilers or scripting languages installed out of the box (or so I thought. Thanks to HN - see below - I've now learned that there are some for .NET). But luckily, I discovered HTAs, and so now I'm happily implementing a small Emacs clone in it to get out of Notepad hell and back onto a path of sanity.

Also, I'm looking for a new job.

For what it’s worth, there are a small number of interpreters and compilers included in Windows. They are for older versions of languages, so you will not be able to use the latest features.

wscript.exe can run JScript and VBScript.

PowerShell can run scripts. It has access the whole .NET runtime, so you can even make GUIs if you are determined enough.

There is a C# (csc.exe) compiler under c:\Windows\Microsoft.NET . There is also MSBuild.exe to run build scripts. If you want to get more off the beaten path there are also VB.NET (vbc.exe) and JScript.NET (jsc.exe) compilers.

If you can try typing “python.exe” in a command prompt on newer versions of Windows 10 and 11. It should open the Microsoft Store to install a modern Python interpreter.

Cool! Happy to hear there is a C# compiler, that should definitely come in handy.

I cannot install anything, but if the compiler is preinstalled, that will be a godsend.

Fortunately, an Emacs clone doesn't really have high requirements for a GUI, but if I end up finding HTAs too limiting, it shouldn't be too hard to port it to JScript.NET (I hope). For now, I find the ability to just use HTML/CSS for what is needed quite comfortable.

> sys admins as a matter of principle refuse to install any additional apps

This is one reason why Excel is a popular programming environment!

I used excel macros to run stuff that was banned on corporate PCs for many years. Never used it as a spreadsheet in that time!

+1.

The funniest part (in a shocking kind of way) was my conversation with them on the first day where I asked whether they could install Emacs for me, and the guy's reply was: "What is that?"

I think powershell is considered a scripting language. Even though the version that is included with windows is outdated you can still do quite a bit with it.

And if you can use WSL you basically have all the linux cli stuff available to you.

And if they don't blacklist all executables you can probably just download and run zipped packages -- powershell core, python, go, vim/neovim, and probably emacs can all be run as if they were portable apps and for most things you won't need admin rights.

Technically, yes, I could do that - but they made it pretty clear what the company policy is, so I will certainly not download and install third-party software even where admin rights aren't necessary. But of course, the thought crossed my mind, too...

WSL would be a dream, but they said to me that they basically want all machines that they're responsible for to be the same. You see, there are two kinds of sysadmins: those who take their job to be enablers for the rest of the staff (within certain constraints) and there are some that want to make it as easy as possible to themselves, nevermind if that restricts the actual users.

You don't need administrative permissions to install many tools, including Visual Studio Code, or even xcopy-able emacs clones if that's more your jam.

If you mean you're not allowed to run any executables at all unless in a whitelist then WTH, what kind of company expects developers to use such an environment, and what for?

AFAIK you don't need to install emacs on Windows, you just can unzip the binaries you can download on the official website on any folder, even your desktop, and run the EXE file on the \bin folder, without the need of admin privileges.

True, but that would certainly be against the "spirit" of their policy. It crossed my mind, though.

Wow, HTAs. I didn't remember the last time I heard that.

Frankly, I had never heard of them until a couple of weeks ago. :-)

> This is not how we do things in Linux land:
> $ uptime

> 09:33:15 up 56 days, 16:33, 1 user, load average: 1.36, 1.29, 0.91

We have to move beyond using uptime as the measure of stability. Unless you're live patching (and I doubt most people are) all this does is tell the world you're not applying security updates in a timely manner.

Absolutely. The last time any of my current Linux systems rebooted for anything other than a power failure, hardware problem, or a kernel update was ... never.

Same for my Windows servers.

Unlike Windows, you CAN shutdown a service in Linux, update it, and restart it.

Uptime gets the *system* uptime, not a service uptime. And only Kernel and glibc require reboots... And with hotpatches, a reboot isn't strictly required either.

You can do the same on Windows, though this isn't done for client editions as they're mostly for interactive use - and on Linux you might run into issues the more complex dbus-y GUI bits you use too. There's even kernel hot patching, although it's exclusive to some cloud server editions as they're a known environment compared to desktop systems.

I was thinking about the kernel, 65 CVEs so far this year.

Ehhh not really. Linux is just generally bad about saying you should reboot when you really should reboot. For example if any of the commonly used libraries (like gtk) are updated, you really really should reboot or you'll get random bugs and glitches.

If you're running a server and you can be sure to do a full restart of that service including any other dependencies then sure. But isn't that functionally a reboot anyway? It's not like keeping just the kernel alive meaningfully changes anything. Your services were still interrupted.

Back in the day, I ran Windows 2000 for 100 days without rebooting just to kill the meme that Windows was an unstable mess.

I only rebooted because I was scared of the growing pile of security updates.

If you are coming from a Linux background, you should use WSL 2 instead of PowerShell. Using the Windows SSH client? Hell no! I install everything (even Docker) inside WSL, the only thing I have outside is VS Code, but all the extensions are also installed inside WSL, and I only have WSL window open all the time, keeping all my files inside the WSL filesystem. Much more convenient and less learning of Windows things.

> all my files inside the WSL filesystem

Is this a necessary limitation of WSL?

I've been using Cygwin instead, so I can access Windows-native files using Linux-y tools.

Can WSL 2 interact with files outside itself yet? For example, can it run imagemagick commands on a file in C:/Users/name/Downloads? The last time I used it you couldn't do this and all the mounting workarounds had a chance to break the file.

Yes! I've been using Windows as long as I've been a developer, and the combination of WSL(2), Terminal, and VSCode (running as Windows process) has been solid for me. I don't use Windows without WSL anymore. PowerShell just never did it for me.

Early in my career I "ran Linux/BSD at home", so it was a natural transition to Windows + WSL.

And on Win11, WSLg gives you gvim as an easy option.

EDIT: But :) There are still plenty of Windows (specifically Win11) things that aggravate me still after so long.

Nah...

I have SSH OTB (its OpenSSH after all), docker-desktop and vscode all outside WSL. Why would I use WSL with its vastly inferior shell ? Docker desktop sucked tho, but its now pretty hassle free.

What do you mean, its much more convenient to use virtual machine instead of real thing ?

Even better, use Windows Terminal. It integrates any number of shells (Powershell, cmd, and Ubuntu via WSL2) into a single terminal application.

How do you install vscode extensions in WSL? If vscode is inside Windows, then don't the extensions get installed in Windows as well?

This is the way. (my setup is 1:1 it sounds like)

Still won't solve the update reboot problem.

Maybe I just don't understand The Linux Way but I've truly never actually seen the point in the package manager debate. There exists some website that is the authoritative source for the software. That may be a normal website or it may be a GitHub but it is there. A package manager associates it with some slug, but so does the browser, the latter just has more dots in it. A package manager pulls it from some centralized archive, but you weren't manually inputting the URL to begin with. It does in fact centralize the update flow, but that's only beneficial when you update everything at once, which I don't have any reason to be doing: either I want it on latest, with the only interruption being not quite yet, or I don't want it updating at all. The primary meaningful value-add of a package manager is the package archive being manually checked for compatibility, which is actually bogus if you scratch the surface and regardless not really necessary on Windows where everything just works. Downloading and executing an MSI does not seem to be a meaningfully different operation than writing the apt-get command; I think it is a lot more to do with the visual effect of it not happening in a web browser and showing up in the downloads list.

Aside from a centralized, trusted packge archives, with signed packages and vetting, and secure downloads and verification, one difference is that with individual install.exe's - that installer can do whatever it wants. Windows package managers are just a facade over this and just run the installer for you.

An actual Package Manager _is_ the installer - they are part of the OS and know how to correctly install and fully uninstall things. Someone else in this thread wrote a nice summary of this aspect here: https://jmmv.dev/2022/03/a-year-on-windows-winget.html#unins... This part is mostly true with MSI's, they're just a package format like .deb or .rpm - they just don't have any of the other infrastructure around them.

> It does in fact centralize the update flow, but that's only beneficial when you update everything at once, which I don't have any reason to be doing: either I want it on latest, with the only interruption being not quite yet, or I don't want it updating at all

Having this all centralized is actually really nice, so I wouldn't discount that. If you want to pin a package at a particular version, you can and the package manager will leave it alone. If you don't want things updated yet, just don't run the update yet.

I'm always uneasy when I install software in Windows because it means I have to trust another third-party. If I have 100 programs on my Windows PC, I've had to trust 100 third-party organisations with my computer and all the data on it. Not only that, but I've also had to trust my own judgement to find the correct website for all those programs, and not copycats that wrap the program in malware. Sometimes I check Wikipedia to find the official site and sometimes I find an official-looking GitHub repo with a lot of stars and work back to find the official site, but sometimes it doesn't matter anyway because the program itself becomes malware (eg. CCleaner.)

With a package manager I have to trust one organisation, which is the same that I get my operating system from. I don't even have to trust the website that hosts the packages, since the packages are signed. It's true that someone might try to sneak malware under the package mantainer's nose with obfuscated source code, but that's much harder than sneaking it in a binary. You're practically guaranteed that the software running on your PC matches the publicly available source code, and it's built with the latest compilers and hardening flags. (7-Zip used to build without any hardening flags because they made the binary larger.[1])

It's not even just security issues I'm concerned about when it comes to trusting software. I also have to trust the software not to make global, permanent changes to my system, which isn't uncommon with Windows software[2], but basically unheard of with Linux packages - and when it does happen, it's Microsoft doing it[3]. So I'd say the primary meaningful value-add of a package manager is trust.

[1]: https://landave.io/2018/01/7-zip-multiple-memory-corruptions... [2]: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20081211-00/?p=19... [3]: https://www.preining.info/blog/2018/06/microsofts-failed-att...

> Downloading and executing an MSI does not seem to be a meaningfully different operation than writing the apt-get command;

For fetching development libraries, it's huge.

If I run `make` and it turns out I need libfrobnicate-dev, I can just quickly `sudo apt install libfrobnicate-dev`. I don't need to pull up a browser, Google it, find the MSI, make sure I'm grabbing the right version (Seriously why the hell does 32-bit Windows still exist?), download, and run it.

Oh, and what about when that dev library gets a new version? `sudo apt upgrade`. Done. All my libraries get updated, no need to track down 20 MSIs.

> Downloading and executing an MSI does not seem to be a meaningfully different operation than writing the apt-get command

If nothing else, unlike downloading and executing a MSI, apt will download the package, verify its checksum, and verify the signature of the package itself.

A debate requires two sides. The package manager "debate" only has one side. I've never seen someone defend the Windows way of downloading apps (until now).

Probably because "the windows way" seems normal and its not something most people even think if it could be done differently, let alone if it should be done differently.

In my, albeit limited, experience of showing someone how to get something on linux, the reaction usually is : "what? ....why? is it installed now?", shortly followed by : "Is there like an app i can use to install what i need instead?"

Windows 10 is quite tolerable for me as a gaming machine. Although, Proton is fantastic there's still a few things that "just work" on Windows in terms of gaming so I like to keep an install around.

>This lets me pick the distro that’s closest to my needs and customize anything I want to change. I’ve been using Xubuntu for years and it suits me - but there are hundreds of Linux Distro’s to choose from.

That's really what it comes down to for me, it's simply how ugly I think the interface is in terms of visuals and usability. It's difficult to describe but navigating the OS feels so painful and easy to get lost in. I'm sure it's mainly to do with me lacking familiarity with it but I've never felt that way on my Mac that I use for work.

Linux is a far cry from having the perfect window manager UX but it does have plenty of options so it's easy to find something that clicks.

I simply love Cinnamon these days.

I gave Plasma a go but felt it was designed like the mid-2000s MS products -- tons and tons of features but buried and not discoverable.

Gnome3 is a joke. More and more reduction and laggy on every system I've used it on.

XFCE has never been my flavor; I typically use LXDE when its needed.

Xmonad and openbox were a lot of fun for awhile. I'd probably still use Xmonad if I had time to tinker.

Cinnamon, the fork of Gnome2, gets a lot right in my view. Or maybe I'm getting old.

> Windows 10 is quite tolerable for me as a gaming machine. Although, Proton is fantastic there's still a few things that "just work" on Windows in terms of gaming so I like to keep an install around.

Gaming is the only reason I'm not on Linux.

Yeah, gaming on Linux is getting better, but Windows "just works" as you said.

The author is coming from Linux. Given that, I'm surprised that they don't have more complaints about the blatantly user-hostile stuff that Windows does, as opposed to user interface experience/patterns.

They don't mention the Windows 11 forced-cloud-account requirement, but that's because they got a Windows 10 laptop. Lots of their other complaints (GUI tools instead of command-line, environment variables, software installation) are incidental or the result of different design paths. They mention the forced restarts, but that's about it.

I'm surprised they don't mention the stuff that Linux users (and power users who actually care about controlling their device) usually get upset about. Why not talk about the awful, slow start menu rework with its web-search-by-default? Cortana? Installation process full of dark patterns? Telemetry? Windows Hello? Dark patterns meant to trick you into using Edge? Windows Defender automatically turning itself on after you disable it?

Your last paragraph is getting my blood pressure up.

I use Linux for myself but support a number of Windows computers, and use Windows at my (non-tech) job.

The Edge dark patterns and the start menu are two particularly sore points with me. I've wrestled with both of those several times.

Another new pain point is that at work there's a piece of software on the intranet that needs Internet Explorer, and Edge keeps forgetting that it's supposed to use IE mode for it. Oh, and as far as I can tell, Edge just ignores some group policies.

Yesterday there was no way to close the 'sign in to your account'-ish setup screen that popped up after an Edge update. Should have taken a screenshot; wound up terminating the process.

Why are you disabling Windows Defender?

Performance overhead for very little gain if I'm not web browsing or downloading stuff from the internet, and just running software on my machine that has already been scanned.

Meanwhile Ubuntu on my XPS 13 decided to accidentally break wifi by installing 2 network managers. Why are there even 2 of those in the first place (of course it's not actually just 2, there's way more than that!)? Do people really want choice in network managers? Because I sure as heck don't.

Sometimes customization is useful. But Linux goes way, way too far, and the result is a system that never really meshes quite right as all the core systems can't be relied upon to be a consistent base system. Like X11 vs. Wayland - GUI apps need to support multiple compositors because of a ridiculous situation, adding complexity to the stack. Or the systemd battle, where again there's a fundamental system that should have all sorts of robust tools & UIs built on top of it that just doesn't because again there's customization where there really doesn't need to be.

Audio is almost not a joke on Linux anymore with things kinda standardizing around pipewire, although that's because it's just taking on the burden of supporting all the various APIs from all the various systems that didn't need to all exist itself.

You know what I also never have to worry about on my Windows machine? Whether or not hardware video decoding is supported & working or not.

Yes I want customization with network managers. Personally I use iwd because of its simplicity, last time I checked, there are a lot of people that use network-manager instead (it's also default on a lot of distros).

I've been using Linux exclusively for ~15 yrs. I've recently started a fantastic new job -- the only wrinkle was that it came with a Windows 10 laptop.

This is my first time using Windows after a 15-year break. This is how it's been going.

> Screw you software, I’m in charge, not you.

This is exactly my reaction: I don't understand how people can be Ok with this. I remember seeing this more than ten years ago already: you demand your computer to shut down (maybe you're done with your work, and you need to catch a train, and your laptop needs to shut down _right now_) and it replies with a command: "Do not shut down the computer". WHAT? Why is my computer not doing what I ask it to do? I don't think it's healthy to tolerate this kind of behavior.

The thing about Windows is it doesn't get out of way and let you work. It constantly badgers you like some bad 90's shareware. And this doesn't surprise me. What does surprise me, is people accept it.

I guess it no different that eating crappy fast food everyday for lunch or dinner.

Right! Some people still watch TV which is interrupted by commercials, too.

I have had the same complaints for a while. I switched to Mac OS X around 2004 because it was just massively better in terms of quality of life for the user. The OS has continued to improve while Windows has been epically stagnant. Even with major pushes to modernize things, it still feels like it's been bolted together with duct tape and bailing wire. It's just horrible.

It seems like virtually any linux distribution you can pick at random with a dart and it would have overall better quality of life on things like a basic terminal app. Microsoft has even tried to improve their terminal a few times and it still totally feels terrible. If I didn't have to use windows for a few work things, I would never go near it again. And in future jobs, me using it at all for work is definitely off the table.

I am truly curious what terminal app in Linux you feel is better than Windows Terminal at this point. While the terminal experience in Windows languished for many years, Windows Terminal has quickly evolved to be one of the (if not the) best there is on any platform.

But I certainly could be missing out on a great Linux terminal. If there's one that is better than Windows Terminal, I could switch to it under WSL/WSLg on Windows 11.

Bonus: Windows Terminal's release notes occasionally include some fun nuggets like:

> You spoke up about the scroll bars being WAY TOO THIN, so we chonked them up

> Our confidence in the settings UI's Save button has led to us no longer backing up the settings JSON file. We won't be deleting the 61,000 backups we did leave on your hard drive, but what's a couple thousand kilobytes between friends?

> The breadcrumbs have been picked up and will no longer navigate you to strange cottages

> No longer will dropdown menus and combo boxes fly wildly off the screen if you scroll or drag the window! Rejoice!

:-)

I use Konsole. Yakuake for quick access. Yakuake just runs Konsole in a drop-down application made with Qt. I like Qt and KDE a lot, so I'm probably biased in that sense.

Ive been using tmux with these two for years. It's everything I need and more. Ive never tried windows terminal, i usually only boot up the windows PC for gaming, and honestly once EAC and Proton work together I won't even need to do that anymore. I'll have to check out windows terminal next time im on that PC though, thanks for sharing. Always curious to hear what others are using.

> I am truly curious what terminal app in Linux you feel is better than Windows Terminal at this point.

I like suckless terminal. It emulates a terminal in X11. It adds copy/paste and a few other conveniences. It does nothing else. There is no scroll bar, there is no configuration, there are no menus and no combo boxes. It's just a terminal emulator, and it works.

Kitty is the most superior Linux terminal. Ones like gnome-terminal are outstanding too, but not that much better than the stuff you'll find on Windows, e.g. PuTTY. The way I judge them is this: can the terminal render 60fps mpeg videos as ansi without delay using printvideo.com?

Last I used Windows was Windows 7 and the terminal was serviceable but not as useful as kitty. It wasn't as fast for sure. I also don't think it used a text-based configurtion file I could edit and check into my configs repo.

I would say kitty is still better than Windows Terminal - although the gap is narrowing, for my use cases.

> I switched to Mac OS X around 2004 because it was just massively better in terms of quality of life for the user.

I find it really hard to take these comments seriously with the incredibly obvious flaws you run into in the first few minutes of basic operation using MacOS.

In MacOS:

- Clicking the maximize button (the green circle) for any application won't maximize the app consistently. Sometimes an app will grow slightly, sometimes it will only grow vertically, sometimes an app will shrink slightly, sometimes an app will maximize and sometimes an app will go full screen hiding the top window bar.

- There are no keyboard shortcuts for moving or resizing windows around.

- If you have an app/file selected in Finder (MacOS' Explorer), pressing Enter will rename the file. To open the file you must instead press Cmd + Down.

These are basic operations. These are the kind of issues you'd expect from a hobby homegrown OS, not a serious product.

> Clicking the maximize button (the green circle) for any application won't maximize the app consistently.

Option-click on the maximize button consistently maximizes.

> If you have an app/file selected in Finder (MacOS' Explorer), pressing Enter will rename the file. To open the file you must instead press Cmd + Down.

Or Cmd-O. But Enter is the standard rename shortcut on macOS. It might not be your preference but that doesn't mean it's wrong. (I find it intuitive - I have no idea what the rename shortcut is on Windows because it's not so easily discoverable.)

I guess it's got something to do with repeat rates or animations or something, but Windows' cmd prompt (or just DOS itself) has always felt better to type in, to me, than any other terminal I've ever used.

I don't like it otherwise, but that part's nice for some reason.

I feel pretty fortunate to be able to turn down jobs where I'd need to use windows as a daily driver. I don't mind using it occasionally, and I've gotten quite good at targeting Windows cross compiling from Linux, but using it daily just grinds me into a paste.

I mostly use Macs for work now, and while they do a pretty good job of exposing a Unix environment, they've been getting steadily worse over the past couple of years. I've had so many problems with recent critical OS patches that I'm debating convincing my employer to let me have a Linux machine, not that I would ever recommend that for a company who wants their employees to be productive.

That being said I'm actually really impressed at how good Linux on the Desktop is right now. I've got my whole family running KDE on NixOS and it's basically flawless.

Same all around. It's my first 'do you have any questions for us?' at every interview. My company now is starting to hint at clamping down the screws, and I was honest in saying I'd just go elsewhere before being forced to use a gimped Windows laptop daily. We'll see.

I've used desktop Linux for a long time, and it's really, really good now. I cannot even remember the last time something didn't just work out of the box(probably my laser printer).

Still working on the last part. Parents buy and use tax software each year for some odd reason, and I don't feel like even trying to navigate through WINE.

> not that I would ever recommend that for a company who wants their employees to be productive.

As someone who has moved to Linux from MacOS (Gnome 42, Debian Bookworm), it has been a near seamless transition.

I expected it to consume a lot of time in overhead maintaining it - but it hasn't. It has been great so far. MacOS is still more ergonomic in a lot of ways by comparison to Gnome, but Gnome 4x has come a long way in the last few months.

At this rate it, by the end of the year I would think it the best desktop environment offered by any platform.

I'm in a similar boat, but I turn down jobs that require osx use. my current job I was told I was able to use osx, windows, or kubuntu, whichever I prefer. I chose kubuntu, and was handed a mac on day 1 because of chip shortage. it was the worse 3 months of my professional career, finally my Dell came in and I could actually get work done. I don't understand how people use them, I don't consider them a viable alternative to a nic environment.

all you people here surprise me, I consider windows + wsl a better development environment and more nix like than osx. but maybe I'm just hurt in the head and missing something...

If you want to please corporate, maybe suggesting Suse is a good idea. I have a VM for remote desktop with OpenSuse and it has been good so far.

> I'm debating convincing my employer to let me have a Linux machine

Could you just install Linux on your mac? That way you could also dual boot in case you need macOS on occasion.

What workflow do you use to target Windows builds from Linux? For myself I've used mingw64 to compile, then NSIS as an installer. Only problem is that quite a few Windows anti-malware systems automatically flag NSIS compiled based packages as suspicious.

Also, any good guides for targeting Windows APIs for Linux programmers?

>> not that I would ever recommend that for a company who wants their employees to be productive.

That's a little odd to read considering you've got your whole family on it. I could imagine a lot of work going into internal software for the most part, are there other reasons you'd advise against it these days?

I can't get my brain to use a mac with a windows/Linux style keyboard

If you install git for windows, https://gitforwindows.org/, you get a ready to go Cygwin installation of most tools you need, including bash.

But probably WSL is you best bet for a saner environment.

If the way to make Windows better is to install things that make it more like Linux, then I have to ask, why not just use Linux instead?

That gets you a better shell, which is great.

Unfortunately it still leaves you with a terrible terminal emulator. IDK if you can use MSYS2 with "Windows Terminal", though. I haven't bothered to try.

This is actually mingw-based, not cygwin. Regardless it still works very well.

git bash is definitely one of the first things I install on any Microsoft Windows build -- gives me a half-way decent terminal, vim, and of course a complete and modern git.

You don't need coreutils on Windows if you just embrace PowerShell. It has everything you need built in. Grep, wget, curl, jq, you name it and PowerShell already has it.

For environment variables you only have to set them via the environment variable:

    $env:SOMETHING = 'something'

I appreciate everyone's taste and opinions on UI, but this seems a lot like confirmation bias. Windows has warts. Linux has warts. OSX has warts.

I'd say in terms of consistent UI, OSX probably is the biggest winner. Both Linux and Windows are the losers in UI consistency. Yeah, you can customize it, but customization, in my opinion, can be a real time-suck and it doesn't make you any more or less productive, it's just visual enhancement.

Unix is the real commandline winner, because piping and good underlying tools, and as a result, OSX and Linux do very well here. I'm not familiar with the powershell equivalent, but at the very least, it's just a copy of how unix works.

Application installs is a very mixed bag across the board. Every distro of linux has their flavor of installs in commandline, and some have graphical. I've never had a lot of success mixing the two, it always puts some package database in a corrupted out-of-sync state. OSX is primarily graphical installs, but there are cli tools like homebrew - neither seem to fight each other, though. Windows is download/installer based. There is a store, but the store is mostly paid applications, and the Windows ecosystem has a large amount of free installer tools that will almost certainly never be on the store.

The article doesn't even talk about hardware. My typical experience is hardware "just works" in OSX and Windows, and will often/mostly "just work" in Linux, but also there can is usually is some tinkering (as well as do I want the free/open source drivers vs the binary blobs in cases like graphics cards).

So I guess in summary, Windows doesn't suck, in the same way that Linux and OSX don't suck. Every OS has a mess in some capacity, and I would say Linux's biggest mess is there is too much room for customization that will always lead to rabbit holes. For context, I use a company-given OSX laptop for work, and use Linux for my personal computer/daily driver, but have a Windows partition for gaming.

Lets not customize it then.

What OS vendors should do is give as bare bone version of SO - kernel + package manager. We can take it from there with scripts. With simple strategy to keep those scripts online like vscode keeps your settings would be definite solution but even without it you are one git clone away from your repo that contains all customizations. We could have option in Windows to export system settings as PowerShell script.

Its really not that hard, its just that nobody relevant wants to do it.

Microsoft, if you are listening, I would even do it for free (because ultimately it would save me time). Just gimme jurisdiction/authority and we can have that.

The thing you are proposing sounds like absolute customization, unless I horribly misunderstand. "Take it from there with scripts" means not only is it fully customized, but you don't even have a trusted vendor to provide the scripts, which sounds like a nightmare to me.

Powershell is not "just a copy of how unix works". Powershell lets you work with objects instead of wrangling text. You call real functions with real objects as real parameters and get real objects returned back to you. You can pipe those objects, iterate over them, etc. You can call into .NET and even Win32. In bash, all you have is 1) executing binaries and 2) hacks emulating real variables and functions and control flow but that are really just parsing and passing strings around.

Bash gives you access to FILES.

Those files can be text or they could be binary data representing objects of ANY kind.

Your definitional separation between functions and binaries is at best incredibly thin. Bash itself is turing complete. Other shells offer other (better) languages as well.

Linux uses D-Bus which has similarities to COM, but nobody has seen the point of replacing normal POSIX with it. Nothing is stopping you though.

> Sadly, nobody has ever really figured out how to make GUI software like this - general purpose & composable.

Somebody did figure out how to make general purpose, composable GUI software: Microsoft, in the 90s, with COM.

COM is a superior model for software composition because it goes beyond the Unix metaphor of the pipe: a single communication channel that produces and accepts streams of unstructured bytes. COM objects have well-defined, strongly-typed, discoverable APIs, can live in- or out-of-process (with the same call semantics for each), and allow seamless integration between components. A custom control, for example, can be placed and configured in a visual GUI builder just the same as the controls that came with the builder.

Unix almost faded away in the 90s, and Linux never won, because Windows was simply better. More consistent, easy to use, and a joy to develop for. Old Unix hands like Larry Wall looked at what was possible in Windows and COM and said "Wow, I wish my environment let me do that!"

Microsoft's move away from component-based development and towards an "app model" is really one of the great tragedies of modern Windows. That and Windows turning into Bonzi Buddy tier spy/ad/nagware.

I was a Windows desktop application developer during the 90's, so I've done COM development, with VB, Delphi and a tiny bit of C, so I know what you mean.

I would say that COM is more special case and embeddable, rather than general purpose and composable? And this is all on the developer side, rather than the user side too. If the OS and applications had just been shipped as pre-packaged collections of COM objects - which you could reuse and remix into new tools and applications, with writing piles of code, then yeah. It was close for a while, but never got all the way to userland, sadly.

I use windows full time for a desktop OS and I find myself agreeing with everything in here, I just don't normally notice it day to day because I'm used to it.

I wish CAD software companies would support linux, I've tried FreeCAD and whatnot, but they're nothing like Fusion360.

Have you tried using Wine?

I've an architect friend who wanted to ditch Windows - except for his cad software - which we run in a VM on the home server so can access anywhere.

I haven't, my experience with Wine is a long and complex setup, and then the software updates and breaks everything.

I find this direct comparison completely bogus. Windows was never a toolbox to begin with. It's messy but part of it for backward compatibility (important market force.. Microsoft is not GNU). Windows GUI are not composable, news flash: almost no graphical app is, and even in linux it's not the case AFAIK. Fun point, some Desktop Environments have worse keyboard navigation than Win95.

I can choose to have anything in linux, but I rarely do (I did LFS twice, now I have dreams of lisp os and smalltalk images). And I'm tech savvy.. the percentage of world population that will even care for dealing with the papercuts of tooling / scripting is probably minuscule (based on my interactions with them normies, even to my best pedagogical efforts, I realized that it's not in their life goals, no matter how much time and money it may save them). The author may fail to realize how many people interact with software in full rote mode.. they memorize sequences of locations on screens and buttons and that's it (which I infinitely understand, I'm not judging).

Linux does have a better long term feel though, less moving parts than Windows. I have to admit that often, using windows feels like fighting a living thing that constantly want to make me experience bloat.

>using windows feels like fighting a living thing that constantly want to make me experience bloat.

Never has my professional life been distilled to such an accurate description.

It's sad Microsoft is lazy on this, it could be a marketing lever to make people have really simple and stable experience on their OS. And there's enough infrastructure to programmatically ensure "immutability" to some degree. Alas they have other unicorns to chase these days.

I've become convinced that the same things that make GNU/Linux good for us are exactly the same things that make normal people dislike it. Freedom means responsibility, in this case the freedom to configure your computer means the responsibility to understand its behavior, something people naturally avoid. They don't even mind learning things to avoid it; Microsoft and Google completely rearrange everything twice a decade meanwhile I still have my FVWM2 config from when I was 15.

This whole effect even predates Linux: You can watch the archives of the "Computer Chronicles" from the late 80s to see it. You have everyone bringing in the fanciest new software wearing suits (because TV used to cost a zillion dollars a minute) and explaining state of the art OOP abstractions in the GUIs so that the machine "does the right thing" when you drag x onto y and the user "doesn't even have to think about it" (an idea that disturbs most of us because we know it's going to do the wrong thing probably 30% of the time and then you're going to have to untangle the mess.) Then they pan over to the guy at SCO who's got 5 Xclocks/Xterms on the screen who says "look, we've got graphics now! That's why people haven't been using Unix on the desktop in the past."

It's not about the graphics, it's not even about learning new UIs or paradigms like shell scripting. People genuinely do not like personal computing.

These are interesting aspects of it. I cannot disagree with the burden of responsibility. I felt it, and I have a sweng diploma (at the same time I don't consider myself that smarter than average and I cringe hard at the fake complexity of programs we force people to use). We all want freedom .. if we get what we want easily. Otherwise we enjoy sharing the duty and going back to a consensus (market / companies search for what is 80% best and I'll accept that because I don't have to care).

Anthropology, ergonomics, pedagogics and economics all matter for an object. I've been seeking joy and productivity in software for a while, but for people computers are rarely that.

- a requirement (especially since the web re-rooted society and administration)

- a confusing toy (you pay 1000 to click and consume music/film)

- a strange tool at work

another thing is that the computing field has either a glowing magic aura, or a dark cloud around it. Some people will be amazed by things that are not especially amazing relatively speaking [0] and some will be scared by any software or keyboard.

[0] it's easy to forget the intricacies, subtleties, beauty of pre-computer things.

Your comment reminds me of a talk that was on LibrePlanet 2022: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQM-GWKdHsU There's a point at which complexity becomes irreducible. Computing freedom requires that the user elevate themself by learning (not the other way around).

I don't disagree, there is a level of difficulty that comes from Linux being so configurable.

I would say though that it doesn't discount sensible defaults that work for the majority of people. I only briefly used it but it seemed like elementary was on its way to towards that goal (before what seems like an implosion on the side of the company).

That's never going to eliminate the problem, the user can always screw something up or bugs rear their ugly head. The one thing is though there has to be a reason to most non-tech people outside of conceptual ideas like Freedom. Like if my dad doesn't want to spend the money for a new rig but not have the OS slow to a crawl, then I might suggest Linux. If everything is working fine, then I probably wouldn't bother.

> Windows GUI are not composable, news flash: almost no graphical app is, and even in linux it's not the case AFAIK. Fun point, some Desktop Environments have worse keyboard navigation than Win95

The author also ignores (or is ignorant of) that tools in PowerShell are generally far more powerfully composable than Linux tools in a bash-like environment.

I didn't want to go in on the powershell side of things, it's still too early, but it fits my needs as a tech user to have a smaller learning surface, safer (typed objects vs stringly typed bash) and potentially faster (maybe awk still beats powershell I don't know).

Last year I found out, powershell 5+ included a generic hashmap/table viewer, so you can get stupid simple output presentation on the fly with one pipe.

Maybe I am old, but I think that all modern operating systems are great. I prefer using Mac OS as my Desktop Environment, but this is probably because I am used to Apple Machines. But my home server runs Ubuntu, and my entertainment machine is a samsung book pro running windows 11 because it is light weight as a tablet but without the limitations of a tablet. Mac Book Pros are too heavy to be used outside a table in my option.

Yeah, windows have different window styles and a lot of different places to configure stuff. So what? I f* don't care.

I could run linux on the Samsung PC? Yeah, I even have it on dual boot, never use it. It is not one of my development machines, and even when I use it for things like doing experiments or learning a new language, I can fire WSL2 and run Emacs on Windows Terminal or VS Code.

I used NT 3.5, I used 90's Slackware, I used Mac OS classic. Jesus, I used MS-DOS. Any modern OS is great to me.

I feel the same way. All of them have come a long way and are more or less usable for anything you might want to do on a computer. There are strengths and weaknesses of course (e.g pro audio on Windows is pretty bad, gamedev/3D art on macOS is not quite good enough) but they can all do most things reasonably well.

I just wish Linux had more high-quality commercial apps. Open source is great and all, but I'd like to just be able to pay people for building things that I rely on.

This article just comes across in bad taste, or lacking a bit of self awareness. Linux is not really a viable alternative for most mainstream non technical users.

I really really don't see how you can take holier than thou view of installing software on Windows vs Linux when it seems half the packages I install on Linux never even start!

Windows is built around legacy support. They're spinning a lot of plates, which is why it feels and looks the way it does to some extent.

> Linux on the other hand is just better for people who don't value their time as much and are happy to tinker with things at a very low level

You criticize the author for lacking self awareness, but then turn around and do the same.

Many linux users (myself included) do not spend time 'tinkering'. I've had the same experience as the author. I've used linux almost exclusively since around 2000 and the few times I have to use windows, I'm completely stuck. It takes forever to get things done. Just helping my parents out with simple things like 'move these files', 'rename these photos', etc take hours and hours of work, whereas on linux it's like a minute.

> Linux is not really a viable alternative for most mainstream non technical users.

Perhaps that's true, but technical users are ... still users.

> They're spinning a lot of plates, which is why it feels and looks the way it does to some extent.

That's great, and while it may excuse their poor operating system, it doesn't suddenly make it a great OS.

*>things like 'move these files' [...] take hours and hours of work

Just how, may I ask? I never needed more than a few seconds to trigger the moving files action via the GUI.

> Linux is not really a viable alternative for most mainstream non technical users.

I would dare say that's the target audience for which Linux works best, because their main usecase is to fire up a web browser. Just like a chromebook would fit their needs.

Lack of funding/alternatives/support/or interest in free/OSS software make it a hard switch to professionals doing video, photo, music, CAD, etc. work.

It's a great desktop for power users, developers and tinkerers.

Thanks to Valve investment in the platform gaming support on Linux is excellent, while not being the main target of developers. Excellent, in my opinion, cause I don't play AAA games that need ~rootkits~ kernel-level anticheat software, thus native+proton got me covered.

Queue Linus Tech Tips videos with them having issues on Linux.

gaming minus all of the popular multiplayer games isn't exactly excellent

For really casual users (who don't really need much beyond web browsing for example), Linux is actually often a lot better than windows. It's more consistent and changes less often.

The target group of the article (and hacker news) was mostly directed to "mainstream non technical users"?

> half the packages I install on Linux never even start

This doesn't sound right. Are you sure you're starting them correctly?

Can argue the intended audience is experianced users, so it's not meant to sway mainstream/non-technical users.

That was surprisingly balanced and reasonable. Even as long time Windows user I have to agree with everything he wrote and don't really have any real quibbles.

Really? It's balanced even though the only advantage he gave to Windows is that firmware updates happen automatically?

It's about the most biased thing I've ever read. He even lists some advantages (it doesn't have two different copy/paste buffers) as a disadvantage.

What happened to:

* Hardware all works mostly without issue.

* Software is easy to install even if it isn't in the official store (e.g. apt).

* Power management (sleep etc.) works reliably.

* Settings are almost all GUI-accessible. You rarely have to fiddle on the command line etc.

All those points are true for me using Ubuntu on a Dell XPS 13.

* Every piece of hardware has worked flawlessly: Ultrawide monitor, printer, wireless keyboard and mouse, Bluetooth mouse, Bluetooth headset, usb drives.

* I am able to install most things I want using the software installer GUI or using command line apt, but sometimes I download a deb file directly, to install something that is not in apt. Other times I just download the executable and I am done (kubectl for example).

* Never had a problem with sleep, it works fine for me every time, and I use it daily.

* Settings are GUI accessible. It would be rare to be required to do something command line. I do a lot of command line work for development, but it is not really needed just to configure the OS or desktop environment.

I'm guessing those things didn't apply to him or his use case. Yes, hardware support is better, but if your needs are simple you buy smartly, Linux also works pretty well.

Yes, installing third party and closed source software is much easier on Windows and there is much more of it to chose from. This is in fact my main reason for using Windows. However if you're a developer and your entire job can be done using open source dev tools then this doesn't matter.

Power management is better on Windows, but I wouldn't say it works "reliably". I've pulled many a hot, dead laptop from my backpack after it decided to wake up and kill itself after I thought it had gone to sleep. Apple is the only company that really be said to have solved this in my opinion.

Settings being GUI-accessible is at best questionable advantage. It's nice for people who don't want to use the command line and don't see its point, but if you're used to and comfortable with the command line (like the author seems to be) it is far from a selling point. Plus just because the setting exists in GUI, that doesn't in any way solve the problem of actually locating where and how the set that setting.

> * Hardware all works mostly without issue.

> * Power management (sleep etc.) works reliably.

Man, I don't know. I just got a new HP work laptop at the end of last year. Some HP "enterprise" model, nothing fancy, which only officially supports Windows. It came preloaded with win 10 pro, even though "HP recommends Windows 11". Whatever. (The pc was manufactured in November 2021, so Win11 was already out).

When I turn it on, my first impression was "damn, that's a dim screen". Even turned all the way up, with auto-dim disabled, it would still be just "meh". I rebooted in the BIOS, and it burned my eyes off.

Install Linux: I get the full brightness. Brightness keys work out of the box, light sensor, sound / mic mute leds light up as needed, Wi-Fi, BT, IR camera, fingerprint reader, everything just works.

I figure I should install a Win 11, just in case (I daily drive Linux, but work for a windows shop). What a freaking shitshow. Mostly nothing works out of the box. No brightness keys, not brightness sensor, no volume keys, the touchpad is barely usable. I have to go through multiple Windows update reboots (on a freshly created Windows install USB stick), and then start going through all the HP drivers, complete with reboots. For some reason, after the updates, the USB Ethernet adapter (from HP) doesn't work reliably anymore. And after all this song and dance, there's some USB controller that has an exclamation mark in device manager, and the webcam isn't detected. "Update the driver" doesn't find anything. There's also some weird lag with the audio LEDs. It has no idea there's an ambient light sensor. And if I tell it to sleep, it'll go to sleep and wake up after a while for no reason ("Wake up for updates" is of course disabled).

> * Settings are almost all GUI-accessible. You rarely have to fiddle on the command line etc.

But you have to fiddle with the registry. I wouldn't say that's that much better. Also, bonus points for whatever settings you do being undone on an update.

And in turn, your proposed advantages are easy to call disadvantages;

* Hardware mostly works, using the manufacture's drivers and all their bundled bloatware.

* The official store is so bad that you have to go get software a different way.

* Sleep I'll grant with the caveat that it's also mostly flawless on Linux these days so that's not really an advantage.

* Settings are all in GUIs. Want to script your configuration? Good luck!

> It's about the most biased thing I've ever read.

I gather from this that you either have not read many things in your life, or you are yourself an outlier. I found it to be completely unbiased, just reporting the facts of what it is like to use Windows after having become accustomed to Linux.

> Hardware all works mostly without issue.

I have not had a hardware issue with Linux in almost twenty years.

> Software is easy to install even if it isn't in the official store (e.g. apt).

./configure && make && sudo make install is pretty damn easy to do.

> Power management (sleep etc.) works reliably.

A fair point, although it has gotten tremendously better. One of my laptops has never had a single sleep/suspend issue, and the other has an issue every several months (which is still too frequent).

> Settings are almost all GUI-accessible. You rarely have to fiddle on the command line etc.

I want all settings to be in text files, period, neither the command line nor a GUI. Just let me edit the settings!

> * Software is easy to install even if it isn't in the official store (e.g. apt).

You can install any .deb package not in the "official store" simply by typing: `dpkg -i package.deb`.

This has essentially never failed in my decade+ of using Debian-based Linux OSes.

It's pretty dang easy to install anything nowadays.

I get all 4 of those points with Linux.

This neatly sums up the issues I have with Windows, but it also misses the most important point. That is, the increasing contempt for user choice. On the few occasions I start Windows, it almost always demands that I enable their privacy invading options using a full screen prompt that I can't swiftly dismiss. It also bombards me with ads. It installs software I didn't ask for. It won't even respect my choice of browsers.

No other OS that I'm aware of shows this much hostility and contempt towards its users. It's the single most issue that turns me off from Windows in recent years.

the complaints in the beginning about theme and style are accurate, but there is a good reason for those things: backwards compatibility.

Those control panel applets still exist because of COM interoperability with other things. Those deep-down dialogs that still use WinForms are there because some feature that MS is supporting relies on the library that produces that dialog to be present and unchanged for compatibility reasons.

Apple DGAF about backwards compatibility, which definitely has advantages when it comes to keeping things up to date, but I'd like to see someone on Apple run a game or application released for OS9. I can run games released for Windows 95 all day long, and they run well.

Those hard corners in Windows are there for good reasons. They're ugly, they give a bad impression, and the customers who rely on them are extremely grateful for them.

I expected this to be about how Windows was better/worse fifteen years ago. Instead it's just a list of whining about every little way Windows differs from Linux. We get it, you're pissy because your boss is making you use an OS you don't like.

Oh man, I'm pissy for that reason too. Windows sucks at window management, having to position your windows every day rather than have the DE handle it (as KDE has for decades) is infinitely annoying. Yes, you can use third-party scripts (Autohotkey, etc.) but, like, wtf is the window manager for then?? /rant

I've read this comment 6 times now and I'm still not sure what your rant is directed at.

> having to position your windows every day rather than have the DE handle

Are you after a tiling window manager? If so, why aren't you using a tiling window manager?

> Yes, you can use third-party scripts (Autohotkey, etc.)

Are you after shortcuts for positioning your windows around? Windows already has those.

Well, when "every little way that Windows differs from Linux" is that it's worse, that's a pretty big deal.

They didn't just throw their hands up and say, "this sucks" either. They really dove in to using Windows 10 for work.

I use Linux and Windows at work and home, and both have advantages and disadvantages. I've been migrating more and more to Linux as my daily driver, so my Windows home machine is basically all games at this point, with a Visual Studio install for occasional software development or things that have to be done on Windows. I used scoop (https://scoop.sh) for software installs and it was almost as nice as any Linux distro's package management.

UI issues aside, which I'm not that sensitive too, my biggest complaint with Windows is... I can't easily swap CTRL and CAPS LOCK. Every solution I can find involves becoming an Administrator to edit the registry, or install the SysInternals device driver (!!!) - madness!

I used to have a Mac, and it was a toggle setting. Linux as well, if gnome-tweak or the equivalent for whatever desktop is installed. And at home, I can become Administrator to do this. But at work I can't, the systems are very locked down. However on Linux even as a lowly regular user I can setxkbmap and do it.

This annoys me a ridiculous amount every time I have to work on a Windows machine.

> my biggest complaint with Windows is... I can't easily swap CTRL and CAPS LOCK.

If your laptop is not too locked down, maybe you can try the AutoHotKey portable version. Unfortunately in one particular corporate laptop I couldn't even run non-whitelisted executables so that was out.

> Windows is such a mess! It’s sort of shocking how much of a mess it is. Desktop Linux is often criticized for this, but Windows is much worse, somehow! It’s really inconsistent. Half of it is “new” UI and half of it is old Win32/GDI type UI

I've been daily driving Linux (at least on my machine, work is unfortunately MacOS) for a year after 20+ years on Windows. Almost entirely GNOME, I recently switched to KDE for variable refresh rate support (it's easy enough to make KDE behave like GNOME). I had to boot into Windows 11 this weekend, after not using it for a few months, and it was a very jarring and unpleasant experience.

But it's not because of inconsistent UI which, to be fair, has seen some rapid progress. Before switching to Linux I very rarely had to visit the old control panel. I can't actually put my finger on why, maybe it feels half-baked compared to GNOME/KDE? It just feels awful to use, within the first 10 seconds. Printers are significantly more reliable with Linux. WSL is fucking fantastic.

I feel as though year of the Linux desktop is on the horizon, it's definitely a possibility.

> I feel as though year of the Linux desktop is on the horizon, it's definitely a possibility.

What would that mean, for you? It seems like free desktops already work quite well for you.

Mainstream adoption, at least near to the ground Apple have been able to make against Windows.

> What isn’t fine, is that they’re stored in the Windows Registry, apparently? If you update these, either using setx %var% value, or the GUI… you have to restart your shell - i.e. you type exit, the window/tab goes away, and you open another one. Just let that sink in for a moment.

I mean, it's the same story, sort of, on Linux. Edit your profile, rc files, whatever on Linux to define/change an environment variable, and it doesn't magically update in your current shell, either. Use "set" instead of "setx" and it'll affect the current shell, but not other currently running processes. Change your profile? Yeah, restart whatever app to pick up the changes. Somehow expecting this to change environment variables of already running processes? Yeah, no, not so much. Doesn't work that way on Linux, either. Processes inherit env variables from the parent process by default on both Linux & Windows. Not really sure what the concern or issue is here other than a lack of understanding of how environment variables work.

I just realized I've been using windows for 30 years... wow!

The main problem here is that this is a work machine. Generally you can't do what ever you want on those. I imagine Linux is harder to lock down in a corp environment and the complaints are rooted in that notion. WSL fixes many issues, I don't think I'd be spending much time in power shell if I had the option to use WSL.

Got you beat by ... 1 year ;-)

It was a pretty big change when our (already outdated at that time) lab in college scrapped the PDP11-44 and replaced it with 20 Windows 3.0 machines and 10 Macs.

Been using Linux since I picked up a Yggdrasil CD in 1993.

Sorry to hear you can't use WSL ... it's great IMO.

Don't forget there is still Cygwin. I recently had to work on Windows, and Cygwin was actually the rescue, with a terminal which just works and proper bash commands that put PowerShell at shame.

I guess WSL is similar but still painful/impossible to install if you don't have BIOS access for enabling CPU virtualization.

What can you do in bash that can't be done in PowerShell? To me, it always felt like there is a lot more stuff you can do in PowerShell. For example, it's easy to read the registry, create COM objects, etc...

Never bothered learning powershell, it’s just too verbose for my taste. bash has been my shell for two decades, not going to change anyone soon.

why bother learning powershell, as it's extremely unlikely to run in production (or any other linux box) environment. Bash works well and it's ubiquitous with tons of documentation.

I had a similar experience coming from 10 years of exclusive Mac usage. I had been a Windows guy in the 90s/early aughts before I was given a Mac Mini as a thank you after finishing an internship. I bought a gaming PC at the start of the pandemic as something to do. My general feelings were “This is it? This is Windows 7 with a coat of paint”

The single thing that the author didn’t touch on that I do love is WSL. My guess is it would have been a cop out for them, but it’s where I spend most of my time these days. I even have it set up so I can ssh into my PC from Windows, which curiously takes me to a C:\ prompt, but typing WSL and hitting enter brings me to the good stuff. It has some weird limitations though, I can’t access network mounts, namely my NAS from while ssh’d into Windows for instance.

My feeling about WSL is that if you have to install another operating system into your main operating system, clearly the main operating system has problems.

100%. Windows is the problem to solve, not the destination. If you're stuck on Windows though, it can make it somewhat usable.

> . My general feelings were “This is it? This is Windows 7 with a coat of paint”

My general feeling is if Windows 7 still receive free secure updates, I'd be using it. I have no real need for anything more than Windows 7 but more secure, and don't see how any computer OS has improved in the past decade.

> My general feeling is if Windows 7 still receive free secure updates, I'd be using it.

For security, you can Micropatch it.

I tried W7 recently and it was even better, more polished than I remembered. USB3 drivers could be an issue though. Depends on the motherboard.

Addendum: It is impossible to turn Windows Update off unless one is running an Enterprise License.

I'm fairly certain you can accomplish it with a pro license as well.

You can, by pointing your windows to a WSUS for updates. That WSUS doesn't have to really exist.

I'm on Enterprise, and you can't actually turn it off permanently, after a time (maybe a reboot, or scheduled that i can't find) it just turns itself back on, and usually knackers my nvidia drives, even though i have it set to not update drivers, and even though i killed the medic service as well ffs.

Found a trick where you basically remove windows access rights to wuauclt.exe and wuaueng.dll, causing an error code 5 whenever it tries to run its update service.. so far its been stable. Not sure if this would work for other versions.

I'm about to embark on a journey myself of abandoning Windows(11) completely on my primary/gaming PC. The way I use the PC I'm prepared to deal with the trade-offs (and I'm making a backup, but trying to make it not super "easy" to run back to Windows, that way I commit to Linux for a while). Might document this whole process.

Proton/etc isn't 100% there yet- but it's doing so well at this point, I want to experience the trade-offs and see if I can live with them. Always can go back to Windows as a last resort.

I do know some trade-offs already, from my test-runs (done via dual-booting). Proton + controller vibration issues might be the top issue for me. In Rocket League vibrations happen- but like 2-3 seconds after the feedback should have happened- making vibration useless as a feedback mechanism.

I have tons and tons of games installed- many I've tried work flawlessly on Linux so far (or with easy adjustments from suggestions on ProtonDB).

I'm sure there are games I may completely lose out on- and that's what I want to experience for myself- if those gaps are fine- or maybe if committing will actually help prod me to be part of the feedback/dev/etc communities trying to improve gaming on Linux for everyone.

Either way, this is all personal hardware- work laptops are separate- so this should be a fun experiment with very little downside- I don't do anything critical on my primary home PC that requires Windows

I upgraded to 11 on my laptop and I hate it. I am so glad I still have 10 on my desktop. I'll hold off as long as possible. This is coming from a daily Windows user for almost 30 years now. I use Linux a lot as well but Windows has always been the home desktop PC OS.

I forced 11 to be more like 10 to make it work for me, used various utilities/etc to have a custom taskbar/start menu, bring back normal right-click context menus, etc. So, there are ways to force 11 to work better for you- I agree users shouldn't have to go to those lengths, but the options are there. After those changes, it was close enough to 10 to not bother me.

But after trialing Linux for a while, there is so much I enjoy about it. Things are so snappy. Built in screenshot tools are so much better. So many options for utilities and small little apps that just do one thing well. Theming/customizing is great. Sure it all has its quirks, but compared to Windows it's a breath of fresh air. Respectful OS update systems (no forced restarts).

I feel like even the networking efficiency of the OS itself feels better. For instance, on Windows 11, even with 300mbps internet connection- if I download a large file in browser window A while watching a Twitch video in browser window B- the Twitch video will hiccup and buffer/etc. For some reason this never happened to me on Linux. I don't know if it's just doing better internal QoS-like things at an OS level, or if I got lucky? But it was an awesome, noticeable difference.

Same with opening many tabs at once. If I want to open a folder of 10-20 bookmarks- on Windows, doing that while watching a video causes the video to stutter for a couple of seconds. Again, this is on a 300mbps connection, 10th gen i7, GTX 3070, NVME-drive system. On Linux- I can open like 50 tabs at once with no hiccups at all. Amazing.

That's why I think the time has come for me to make the full switchover. That, and Proton's increasing maturity (and even ability to quickly work for some new titles, like Elden Ring).

>Windows is such a mess!

My thoughts everytime using Windows.

>Sadly, nobody has ever really figured out how to make GUI software like this - general purpose & composable.

Sounds like an interesting concept.

>which means that it doesn’t have this foundation of composable software tools

They instead have an object-focused environment (PowerShell) with a foundation of composable commands (cmdlets).

>It turns out that answer to this is to install Windows Terminal.

I prefer Cmder (basically preconfigured ConEmu bundling some other programs).

>No Middle-Click Paste

There used to be True X-Mouse Gizmo but idk if it works in recent Windows versions.

I've found the new version of WSL plus the Windows Terminal pretty good. I have a small side project using Docker/Docker Compose and it was pretty easy to get WSL to talk to Docker for Windows just as if I were using my work Mac using Docker for Mac.

There's still all of the numerous headaches of Windows, but everything has its own headaches. My work Mac for example, loses its monitor arrangement for my dual monitors about once every other day, so much so that I have a shell script to fix it.

There's a bug in your sidebar's CSS on large screens

https://imgur.com/a/eSMPtiR

Thank you, I'll look into it!

I remember trying ubuntu for the first time in cca 2007. Then few years after that, I bought my first mac. Both linux and mac os felt like the UI was a veneer on top of the actual system. I grew up with windows, old version like 95 or 98, they never felt like a veneer or facade, the user interface was the OS for me. Well, windows 11 feels like a facade, cheap toy interface bolted onto an ageing platform.

> You can’t customize anything!

Fails to provide single customization he is missing. Stopped reading there.

From different perspective I was trying Linux every few years in last 2 decades only to surrender it's unusable and gave up trying few years ago.

Btw. on my work laptop I keep Windows 10, I refreshed wife's laptop and deliberately chose W8.1 (instead W10/11) and not even gonna upgrade to W10, I dont see any benefit, I even think in hindsight I should go with W7 for the best performance, that was peak Windows, W10 is still somewhat usable, but from what I read about W11 I am for sure skipping that version and I see no benefits in my daily usage since W7, they are actually making my user experience with each version worse.

I like the idea of switching away from Windows, but sadly app I need for work (golden standard in my field) is not available on Linux and everything else is vastly inferior and not gonna run this power hungry app through WINE if it even worked.

Btw. my Win never restarts itself or automatically installs anything without my approval, seems like OP didn't do basic search to configure system properly.

Windows is made as a product to be sold, that's means that any part of it is designed to maximize Microsoft and it's partners revenue, not for users. That's why anything is not integrated, incoherent etc.

And that's why GNU/Linux itself is far less integrated than classic desktops (Xerox, LispM), after Xerox starting from IBM, desktops was devastated to the point that from end-users desktops, flexible power tools in users hand are evolved into rigid and limited tools that try to conquer users absurdly mimicking physical desktops/classic office works (see General Magick UIs as a good example) instead of pushing a new far superior model.

The common ground is that most users do not want/fear changes, so they are easy conquered by those who sell miracles without paradigm changes, of course they regularly fails but since they captured users it's too late for them to escape. People who know something better for a reason or another suffer from the actual state of things, but that's is...

A social change is needed to change actual IT, it's not just a matter of code.

WSL2 has eliminated the need to use linux for me. Its got usb passthrough, graphical app support (with windows 11), as well as super clean VSCode integration.

If you are into ML, the Nvidia drivers also support running from WSL2, so you don't even need to touch windows for that.

The only reason to run Linux is because its free, and you get more customization of the base OS. I run i3wm under Mint on my laptop for example.

It baffles my mind the length companies who run Linux in PROD will go to NOT provide Linux to their devs and how much effort is put into making Windows and macOS to LOOK LIKE Linux.

Common put half as much effort to make Linux work with whatever is so important on the other OSes (what is it? AD/kerberos? Anti-virus? Some spying software?), and let the devs who want to use Linux and be productive!

I use Ubuntu & Mint as my daily driver. I have relegated Windows to a VM (Windows 8.1) and need it for iTunes (which has no Linux alternative). I also have an old version of Photoshop installed in the VM which I use a lot. I don't connect the VM to the Internet for security (what if I get a rogue .DOCX or Excel macro script trying to download malware?).

Stop fighting the platform:

1. winget is great and is not abandoned, but yes, don't count on it to do software updates for you. Central third-party package updates are not a thing on Windows or MacOS (outside of their app stores). Every application is in charge of its own updating.

Linux distributions can pull this off because the software they install is almost all open source. On Windows and MacOS, it's proprietary software shipped as binaries. You could force them to go through an app store, but that would require closing the platform to non-app-store installs in order to get uptake.

Microsoft is trying to encourage people to distribute software as msix packages, but because it's a backwards-compatible open platform, uptake is optional.

2. Powershell is great. You do way less text wrangling and escaping and such non-sense as you have to do with bash, and instead you interact with real functions ("commands" or "cmdlets") that take objects as arguments. You can also call into any .NET function. You can embed C# class definitions. And you can even call win32 functions with a little more work (but it's rare you wouldn't be able to accomplish something with either powershell commands or .NET functions).

BUT, it is more verbose. Accept this and you will be happy.

3. Windows is extremely customizable. You probably just don't know it. Certainly, with registry tweaks you can customize way more than you can in Gnome. And if you're willing to do some win32 shell programming, you can make it do just about anything. Hence companies like Stardock that will happily sell you software to customize Windows any way you want.

4. You can definitely get middle click paste working with, e.g., an AutoHotKey script.

5. Most of your points are petty complaints about defaults you can easily change.

Yeah, I was surprised that even with Windows 11, we still have some subsystems using the old interface. It is better than it was (Windows 8... having to look in multiple places to change various settings, yuck), but still far from consistent. I do wonder why they didn't (couldn't?) update everything to the latest standard by now.

BTW, you can theoretically set "active hours" for Windows, so that updates and such don't bother you so much. This is far better than it was, where Windows would basically say "I'm going to restart, you have 5 minutes to save your work". [1]

If you need to run X apps remotely, there are various X servers you can get. I've been using X410 with PuTTY successfully, though most of the time I'm in WSL instead.

Also, since you did skip the last 15 years, you have missed the "joy" of UAC prompts with Windows Vista, so you should count yourself lucky there.

[1] OK, it wasn't quite _that_ bad. But it was kind of bad.

> I do wonder why they didn't (couldn't?) update everything to the latest standard by now.

Many people has been asking this same question on this thread. The answer is simple: backwards compatibility. That begets tough trade-off decisions. Otherwise, no product designer loves inconsistency.

The other alternatives are either to never innovate, or to keep support timeframes short.

Windows 1.0 had 100% consistent UI.

Windows is for:

- People who know nothing about computers and don't want to.

- People who are being held hostage by some third party software that isn't built for ARM/Mac/Linux.

One can argue that Mac's satisfy the first condition as well.

Linux is for people who either don't mind learning how certain things work or outright require an understanding of how they work. Or who just want more choice in how they interact with a computer. Freedom from corporate data-mining and the privacy nightmare that is Windows...and coming soon to MacOS/iOS...is another big reason to seek alternatives.

The modern truth is that, for people with relatively simple needs, there are plenty of Linux flavors that just work as long as your hardware is not from Apple.[>=M1] These flavors have app stores that help even the freshest of newbies find media players, games, office apps, browsers, whatever. The fact that so many contemporary apps run either in a browser or use things like electron also further diminishes the requirement of Windows.

Even Microsoft realizes that Windows OS as a thing isn't something to explicitly sell to people anymore. They have been taking a page from Apple and trying to market how lovely it integrates with Xbox, Teams, the CloudPC versions, whatever. They've also hilariously made Windows 11 look like MacOS/various Linux DEs by transforming the taskbar into a dock and making the start menu look incredibly like Whisker/KDE's menu setup. They are also introducing stuff like virtual desktops, etc like they are some sort of revolution despite being on Linux DE's for eons.

Truth is that there's never been a better time to re-evaluate your computing needs and make some thoughtful choices about your workflows, your privacy, what you actually need vs what's actually on offer in these platforms.

I disagree.

Windows is for:

- People who just want an OS that works without tweaking anything

Linux is for:

- People who want to customize their OS

- People who don't want their data to be collected & shared

- People who don't believe closed-source software is ethical

It's simple as that.

> Windows is for:

> - People who know nothing about computers and don't want to.

> - People who are being held hostage by some third party software that isn't built for ARM/Mac/Linux.

- people who like to use a wide array of hardware without giving a f** about compatibility concerns [1]

Those same people might know about computers at least as much as you and as a bonus point, might be less arrogant than you.

[1] Because it's the hardware manufacturer's responsibility to make their hardware compatible with Windows, and the vast majority of them do it, competently enough.

There is a third category: "People who may become or currently are my clients or others I want to maintain positive relationships with."

There are plenty of reasons to use Windows. There are more compelling reasons to use Linux for my personal tooling, but I am not the other person. In this case, its a choice of good, better, and best. Personally, I don't care if my car mechanic is a Windows user so long as they can do their job.

If you think Linux protects from viruses, corporate data mining, or more privacy, I suspect you either only use a command-line based browser, are a white-lister with pihole, or are unaware just how actively many utilities are collecting info on you.

I was on a same boat, but perhaps slightly less to the extent. But I was doing Linux primary for 10 years or so, change to Windows primary around late Windows 7, and now Windows 10/11 mostly.

Some of my observations:

1) Linux is great when it is working. It handled at higher load better than Windows. Being able to choose lighter DE when working on a lesser powerful machine were great. Being able to customizing definitely make this more versatile in different environment. Windows does provide modest default -- there are things I don't like about it but at same time (personally) it doesn't bother me too much.

2) Update is more or less caused unpredictable outcome on Linux -- hibernation stops working from one version to another for instance. It actually got worse as the update cycles accumulates. On earlier version of Windows, OS rotting was a thing, but this seems to be bit more severe on desktop Linux these days.

3) International support is bit weak on Linux. (Particularly Japanese in my case.) Most I could make it work. It ranged from input method is not showing up in correct place (bit common -- annoying but easy to workaround) and more severe ones (like Chrome bug[1] -- issue that seems to exist from version 55, still open.)

4) Command line wise, PowerShell definitely made it light years improvement over "command.com" or "cmd.exe" on Windows. I actually like PowerShell that I was using PowerShell Core on Linux for later part of my "Linux era" too.

Both Windows and Linux has its own strength, and weaknesses. But I don't know if I miss Linux so much as a desktop, to be honest. (and if I'm so inclined, these days I do have mean to use WSL for some edge cases where I need Linux.)

[1]: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=952181

The whole multiple design languages in the UI is insane and I can't believe they didn't fix it by Windows 11... rather they're poking at it slowly / poorly.

But aside from that Windows is fine for me... I don't find there's anything I can't do easily.

"I am a software & web developer - and Linux is a toolbox, full of highly polished tools, crafted over decades by software developers, for software developers. Windows is… not that. It’s a commercial OS, aimed at users of Word, Excel & Outlook, pretty much. You can feel this difference all the time that you’re using it - it pervades everything."

Isn't this just familiarity?

When I use Linux I hardly imagine it to be some magic developer playland, at least not without a lot of my own work put into it to make it so... just like my experience in Windows.

> The whole multiple design languages in the UI is insane and I can't believe they didn't fix it by Windows 11... rather they're poking at it slowly / poorly.

That's because MS's basic selling point is that nothing gets removed. I mean, obviously over time some things do get removed, but they're deprecation timeline is measured in decades.

Some of the things they deprecated in Vista they notified people they were going to deprecate when they released the new versions at the launch of XP. That's how long they gave people to shift over.

I think the poking / changes they're doing in Windows 11 indicates that they are happy to change things. But they're just really bad at it / should have done it all or not at all until they were ready.

They seem to have finally picked some UI overlords to make decisions, but sadly they're bad decisions... and doing it bit by bit.

Heh, the point about multi-monitor setups breaking window layouts really resonated with me... on Linux. I move my laptop between a dock in the office and a dock at home, and it basically never docks with the correct monitor layout. Sometimes only the laptop screen is recognized, and I have to physically unplug/replug one of the monitors. Sometimes one of the monitors is on, and the other is not. My windows are never in the right place, and always have to be moved to where they should be. I have scripts that try to configure the monitor layout, but they randomly don't work. At home, my machine always hard freezes when connected to the dock (same model as in my office!) and has to be rebooted.

Now, the lesson here is not "Linux sucks" but rather, avoid Nvidia.

I moved to debian testing on my home machine after Windows 11 left the worst taste in my mouth, and I can confirm the multi-monitor support (at least out of the box) is shockingly bad even without Nvidia. I've been pleased with some things, irritated by others. As far as I'm concerned, macOS is still the closest to a great desktop environment, but just like politicians ALL operating systems suck.

Of course, I didn't write a rant article about switching to Linux because I'm sure a lot of problems stem from my own lack of experience. I wish this author had recognised the same thing.

If you are going to work on a Windows box for a while, you can install some Unix tools and have a poor Unix experience, use WSL, or learn PowerShell. Some places are Windows only environments so learning PowerShell might cut down the frustration and allow you to do the automation you want.

Me using Linux after 25 years of Windows:

Wow, Linux on the Desktop is in great shape!

After Microsoft went to far with their Edge bullshit and "always online and always logged in" and hidden ads and spyware I had enough. So, I've started to play around with some Linux distros in a VM. It was OK. Ubuntu LTS was great. Fedora, too. Linux Mint also.

Some weeks later I installed Linux Mint on my workstation. I had to resolve one smaller issue with the NVIDIA driver, but using Linux was one awesome experience. Super fast, super easy. Linux Mint is really nice and easy for people coming from Windows.

I've recently installed Ubuntu 22.04 LTS beta and it is simply fantastic. (Note: Wayland has fractional scaling issues, so I recommend XOrg if you need fractional scaling.)

WSL + Windows Terminal could be great, but if your organisation uses Windows Secure Channel, you can't use Git on it. Which pretty much renders it useless for me. I endure Powershell, but even after six months on Windows, for a professional software developer it still feels like coding with boxing gloves on. It's a second rate experience vs. Mac/Linux in almost every way.

I don't think I'll ever understand why there are about 8 versions of System Preferences in Windows 10. And they all look different. Can anyone tell me what the difference is between Control Panel, Settings, Computer Management, Systems Configuration?

Yes, that secure channel thing was a bummer. I saw your Stack Overflow question a couple of days ago (I seem to be your sole upvote on it) and tried to come up with some kind of workaround, but no dice. Not a problem for me personally, but I was hoping I could get you some idea. It's still bugging me.

Question - Does secure channel come into play on every git operation? I would expect that it only comes into play when dealing with a remote repository (e.g. clone, push), right?

If so, what's the breakdown of your git operations that requires remote repo access? Would it help if you pushed using Git for Windows but did most of your other operations in WSL?

> I'll ever understand why there are about 8 versions of System Preferences in Windows 10

There's no good excuse for it; just legacy cruft. Same as with the different window styles.

Oof, as someone who had a similar perspective:

Don't use scoop. The community and developer aren't sufficiently active. Use choco. Chocolatey should ship with the os.

Otherwise, have at it. Yes, Windows Terminal is great and should ship with the OS.

Been using Linux for about a year now and was not aware about the middle click being a separate clipboard than the usual Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V. That explains some head scratcher moments I've had trying to use it before.

This week I got a new MacBook that was setup clean. I spent 45 minutes trying to figure out how to use literally anything other than Vi to make a Mercurial commit. It was extremely difficult to specify what text editor to use. And no, don’t you god damn dare reply with any sentence containing the word “just”.

I’m a life long Windows user (game dev). I’m fully convinced that Linux and macOS are both garbage dumpster fires for development. Linux and Mac users are fully convinced that Windows is a dumpster fire for development. I’m not sure who’s right and whose wrong.

There’s a lot to be said for the devil you know.

I use Linux at home and Windows at work, because I have to; however this is just one of those "it's cool to shit on Windows" posts. Most of the points are half-assed semi-criticisms.

I have been using Linux for 15+ years as my main desktop(via dual boot but I only boot into windows 3~5 times a year to do my annual turbotax which did not have a linux version)

Recently I started to do linux development under Windows10/WSL2, worked very well so far except I can not do mouse select/paste easily. It's more responsive than running a virtualbox+linux inside Windows. I still do my work with Linux, Windows is just a host OS for that, and WSL2 is good enough to the point I no longer use Virtualbox+linux.

i've had a similar experience in past, winding up with an employer mandated windows desktop after a decade of pure linux (thanks canonical and debian and everybody else!) was jarring to say the least. in the end i found my way, but it was not fun.

the big issue i have with windows is that it normalizes a whole bunch of approaches to computing that i think are bad. i think this is particularly problematic in the context of software design and development. people are influenced by what they interact with everyday...

No mention of WSL?

yeah, surprised by this, as this answers some of OP's issues. Windows is still a mess, and WSL kind of adds a third inconsistent UI, but being able to essentially have two platforms in one is the nice part.

WSL + Windows Terminal is enough for 90% of what I need to do. I say this as someone who uses Linux on all my personal machines. You'll even get WSL automatically these days if you install Docker Desktop for Windows.

The most annoying part, for me, is having to double-install certain tools both inside and outside of WSL (e.g. having to install git or openjdk twice). But it's a comparatively minor irritation, given how much better WSL2 works in general than previous solutions.

Mentioned in the article but glossed over:

Why do I still need both Control Panel and Settings?

Where is the cohesive, discoverable model for the (admittedly shedload of) possible settings?

I understand MSFT like to keep backwards compatibility but as a 20+ years Windows native user (and later MSFT shop sysadmin) at this stage I use a browser and google to tell me where to find the setting I need.

To be fair, as a light linux user I do the same for linux. But that isn't a money making enterprise for millions of users.

Wow, this was almost my exact experience (except that I had somehow gone through life never using Windows). Using WSL is working out pretty well for me for the most part, except networking seems to break when the corporate VPN is on that I'm required to use (which is very irritating). I find myself prototyping things on my personal Linux laptop and only using the corporate machine for required company stuff. It's been an awful experience.

> Did it Just… Restart Itself and Lose All My Terminals‽

Even better when it ruins a $1000 piece of billet by rebooting the computer controlling a CNC mill in the middle of an operation.

But Linux is working on catching up. For example, Fedora now ships this "systemd-oomd" that will randomly kill very large processes on system with >64GB ram even when there are terabytes of memory free and which won't stay disabled if you disable it with conventional tools.

I use Windows as my main OS on my personal computer. The only way I find Windows usable is with an LTSB/LTSC iso. One thing I appreciate about Windows over any Linux DE is that it is relatively stable in comparison. I have had weird UI bugs/quirks with every Linux distro I have ever tried, usually after an update. Currently I use Linux Mint XFCE on my work PC, and I'm afraid to change to anything else at this point.

A couple of notes from a Windows user:

Your powershell profile script path is also available using `$Profile`. You can access a clipboard history by pressing Win + V.

> Installing things is still, mostly, going to random websites, downloading an .exe (or a .msi if you’re lucky) [...] This is slightly terrifying and pretty mind-blowing in 2022!

You must be kidding me. I wouldn't want to be in charge of distributing proprietary software on Linux. That would be a nightmare. Downloading an .exe might be prehistoric, but it is a piece of cake for the developer.

That's the heart of the problem: proprietary software.

By making your software closed-source, you take responsibility of distribution, and that's a significant cost.

Doing it the Windows way makes it easier for you, sure, but it doesn't make it better. It makes it more difficult and dangerous for your users, which in turn devalues your product.

May be the wrong place to ask this - but would be interested to know what peoples experiences are and the advantages of using Windows in a commercial environment over say your distro flavour of choice or Mac?

Be interested in hearing both sides of the coin, from laptop to server. Everyone seems to love bashing on Windows (including me) but someone must like it...

(except for the obvious DirectX & games reason)

> Screw you software, I’m in charge, not you.

Ahh, this guy didn't get the memo. With modern Windows you're just temporarily borrowing the computer, but Microsoft is in charge of it. They decide what programs you can run, which folders you can look in, which files you can delete and yes, they decide when it updates, even if you're in the middle of something important.

With modern x86 or ARM CPUs, you're doing the exact same. The OS you're running on the high-level OS cores being perceived as less unfriendly doesn't change this state about your hardware's monitor OSes (AMD PSP, Intel ME, Qualcomm QHEE/QSEE, other ARM TrustZone, ..) at all.

I don't think linux is ready for prime time. My latest experience trying this on a framework laptop was not pleasant and involved 3 installs in short succession.

So I installed Fedora. I find it doesn't have a tray to minimize icons into due to a conscious design decision going forward. Unfortunately two obscure pieces of software that I use require this: steam and seadrive. Well shit. I find some tweaks that enable this, most don't, and after half an hour I can get it to show a tray. I install keepassxc from their app store and it can't open my database or key file because the file browse window doesn't seem to open. I also have issues with seadrive but plugging in a external usb mouse solves it and I realize I can't right click wit the touchpad.

So I wipe it and try Manjuro. Taking care not to destroy my windows partition which is the default option it boots fine. I update everything and the wifi card no longer shows up in settings. I mean I can lsusb, find it with dmesg but it has errors.. After an evening of tinkering and trying suggestions online ranging from changing windows power settings to editing config files to installing older drivers nothing can get it to work. No reasonable consumer would be into this.

So I wipe it and install Manjuro again. Everything the same and it works after updating so I chalk it up to a failed update. This is on a laptop basically designed to run linux with a small set of possible hardware.

Plus to boot, I am happy I printed my bitlocker key because windows refused to initially boot with secure boot now disabled.

> I don't think linux is ready for prime time.

I still don't really understand why people say this, but it made me a little worried when making the switch from macOS two years ago. My experience has been incredibly smooth. I run arch on a System76 Lemur Pro and, for the most part, this has been the most problem-free system I've ever used. I had some kernel issues at some point which were solved by just keeping the kernel version back until the bug was fixed. By contrast, I never had that option on macOS when something stopped working or became annoying.

I have a number of colleagues who use various flavours of ubuntu on different machines (Dell, Lenovo, etc.) and do almost no configuration and they seem to be perfectly happy (with a small exception: compositor issues when sharing screens on zoom, but that seems to be it).

Manjaro.

But yeah, Windows is designed like the author said for people that use word and outlook and excel. So if you don't need much but the usual buttons to click it just works.

But it's so limited. It's designed to just work for the broadest user set, and over the iterations has been honed for that user set, if you're a power user of a machine it's too limiting. Linux is freeing, but that usually means a little rocky start and some setup. Once that's done though, you've got it made. You won't be clicking through a bunch of dialogs and GUI stuff, unless you really want to.

"Linux isn't ready for prime time" isn't exactly right, it's not for prime time. Like all free software, it is for people who can get utility out of it, no more, no less.

For a lot of developer type workflows it is often necessary to add a reference to an unofficial package source or simply using curl to download something. I still prefer this to downloading an MSI and worrying about what might happen to the registry but both are equally unsafe outside of Linux being a less popular target.

I agree with the maddening UI and library inconsistency on Windows.

I disagree with the non-composable software comparison. Comparing Windows GUI composition with CLI composition is apples and oranges.

Let's leave GUI tools out of this and compare the Windows apples to the Linux apples. Windows has PowerShell and what's even better: it's about robust object-oriented composition rather compisition by fragile text parsing. In PowerShell, you can pipe well-formed command output (objects) as well as tell which information you want to see and in which format. List, tabular, JSON... You can also use this shell on Linux because Powershell Core is cross-platform.

Sure, there are strong arguments in favor of the more Unix-like shells too but I strongly disagree that Windows commands lack composition. It did for a long time, but that's many years ago now.

Environment Variables: I honestly find I'm updating env vars mid-session and wanting them refreshed immediately pretty rare these days. But if you must have this, I hear Chocolatey installs a helper utility to re-read them (refreshenv) that can also be grabbed "stand-alone".

Bad Terminal: The much improved Windows Terminal is preinstalled with the latest versions of Windows and can be set as the default terminal.

Clipboards: Try Microsoft PowerToys for multiple clipboards and much more. No computer enthusiast should honestly be on Windows without PowerToys.

SSH: So this is no issue as Windows has Powershell, in turn with a normal SSH client. I don't really understand this one. I'm confused over which Windows version he is comparing to.

Map Win+Enter to open Windows Terminal impossible?? Interesting one, because the Windows key is normally off limits due to being reserved for system shortcuts. But that just makes for a fun challenge. Two tools involved to achieve this: Windows enumerates shortcuts via the task bar area. The first icon activates with Win+1, the next Win+2 and so on. The aforementioned PowerToys allows reassigning existing shortcuts to new shortcuts. See where I'm going here? Put the Windows Terminal icon somewhere in your task bar. Assign Win+(position) to Win+Enter in PowerToys. Done!

---

This article really highlighted to me how deep the Windows ecosystem in fact is, and how it matters to stay on top of things. Especially since Satya Nadella took Windows out of its slumber and straightened out past misdirections since the Ballmer era, things have moved pretty quickly forward. Today, I find Windows to be a pretty strong development platform with the mature Powershell, as well as the smoothly integrated WSL2.

> Clipboards: Try Microsoft PowerToys for multiple clipboards and much more.

I have that installed, I think? Are you talking about this: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/ ?

As far as I can see, there are no clipboard things in PowerToys, currently?

Either way - I don't want multiple clipboards or history or a clipboard manager, though, I just want the Primary Selection thing from Linux. I just want any text selection anywhere to be automatically kept somewhere and allow me to paste it in on a middle mouse click. I would _love_ to be wrong, but I don't think that's a thing on Windows?

The choco script is called Update-SessionEnvironment (alias refreshenv). It works for both cmd and Powershell.

> Clipboards

Or use CopyQ wich is FOSS, the best and x-platform

Thanks! I've has a look at CopyQ and I don't think it can do what I want on Windows: https://copyq.readthedocs.io/en/latest/scripting-api.html#li...

I don't want multiple clipboards or history or a clipboard manager, I just want the Primary Selection thing from Linux.

I just want any text selection anywhere to be automatically kept somewhere and allow me to paste it in on a middle mouse click. I would _love_ to be wrong, but I don't think that's a thing on Windows?

For install and update software on Win like repos on linux, I use chocolatey. It is not perfect, but I don't have to download installers from random websites anymore. And update is just one command in cmd.

- https://chocolatey.org/

The points about non-composable software and paths is why I try to keep all of my development work when using Windows relegated to WSL2. I have no interest in dealing with Windows paths and figuring out syntax for PowerShell when I will never actually interact with a Windows Server in my life.

If you are stuck in such job, set up openssh server on the Windows laptop, then get a Linux laptop and use Windows laptop as an annoying but necessary network router. That reduces the need of dealing with Windows.

I wouldn't want to deal with Windows as a daily driver by any means.

You mention that no one has figured out how to make GUIs as composable as command lines. I would argue Apple is actually getting there with Shortcuts. Combining that with the Share Sheet/Share Menu and you get some pretty nice composability.

Microsoft did with VBX, OLE and later ActiveX, the entire point was to have embeddable reusable UIs. They sabotaged themselves by tying those to separate products you had to buy though instead of having a simple drag-and-drop form/window designer to put things - basically something like the QBasic equivalent of Visual Basic but also closer to the original idea of VB1 where instead of writing basic code you'd drag connections between controls to activate methods or pipe data between them.

X11 supports this by allowing programs to "swallow" each other - the XEmbed protocol as well as normal IPC can be used for communication between them. Older desktop environments and window managers (CDE, FVWM, etc) can use this to compose programs. Some minimalistic window managers rely on this using single-purpose tools like dmenu.

BeOS, as mentioned elsewhere also has a very limited form of OLE-like functionality.

I'm sure there are others but TBH i think MS came closest, but they abandoned the entire idea after they decided to focus on .NET. FWIW the underlying tech is still there and in theory such QB-like-VB-lite app could be made but nothing really exposes reusable controls anymore so it'd be pointless. After all having the tech and ability is only half the battle at most, you also need applications to support it and nowadays everything GUI is made to be cross platform agnostic so any such solution would need to work everywhere there is a monitor, a keyboard and a mouse - not impossible but much harder nowadays than when computers were synonymous with Windows.

Apple has been there since the start of OS X thanks to NeXT.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UiGnpmwAJk

There are consultants that make quite a bit of money writing glue software that automates processing of data through the various Office applications.

> how to make GUIs as composable as command lines

beos did

Well this is a tragedy. People should use what they like. If I started a new job and they mandated Linux, I would be equally upset. Windows isn't for everyone, as evidenced by the same complaints over and over.

I've heard plenty of arguments for why Windows sucks and plenty for why Linux sucks too. And anytime I read those arguments, there's a distinct lack of care taken to understanding the other's perspective. Pick your poison basically; for most normal users, Windows/Mac has fewer annoyances than Linux and for devs, Linux has fewer annoyances than Windows/Mac. Yes, most normal users would prefer not to use a terminal, which any troubleshooting in Linux basically requires. Yes, most devs would prefer to be able to manually or programmatically update settings, which Windows tries to actively avoid. There's not a lot of discussion to be had here other than advice that can be taken from one to another and try and accommodate as many workflows as possible.

I'm surprised that the bloat and ads in the start menu were not mentioned.

Enterprise and Pro editions don't have the same bloat as Windows Home, in my experience. Since the author is using a work computer, it's likely that they didn't encounter Candy Crush pre-installed and pinned to their start menu.

Very much disagreeing with the putty comment, otherwise it's spot on (for the things I care about).

It's not that putty is better than using ssh in my terminal of choice on Linux, it's more that it has the only decent terminal implementation on Windows that I know of. I am a daily user of Linux and Windows and the copy/paste workflow in cmd.exe and powershell is just broken for me, in putty it's reliable enough that I am fine.

The only way I can stomach development on Windows is a) VS Code + Remote extension and have a terminal in VS Code open and before that worked b) QtCreator for C++ or anything Javabased where I simply don't need a CLI. Well ok, I still need a CLI for git, but not the usual stuff. I am a heave user of cut/sed/awk/grep etc.

As to the middle click mouse http://fy.chalmers.se/~appro/nt/TXMouse/

Does anyone know of a recent fork for evolution for windows? It is one of the few things that I miss when dual booting back to win10.

Similarly I love the gnome spotlight search and wish it was also useful in windows.

Windows is mostly fine for Windows development, as long as one doesn't try to bring their UNIX habits.

After all, someone is writing software for all those 80% market share desktops and Xbox games consoles.

> There’s a new shell now, called PowerShell, to run inside your terrible 1980s terminal window, but the terminal it’s running inside, still sucks.

Well no, PS and pwsh has their own terminals.

All console subsystem executables on Windows are hosted by the same application (today known as “conhost”[2],) which provides the UI and terminal emulation facilities and implements the Win32 console APIs.

PowerShell, therefore, uses the same console host as the legacy Command Prompt does[1]. It just styles it differently.

[1]: The version of PowerShell that comes with windows also ships with something called the “PowerShell ISE,” which is a different UI for PowerShell that offers no terminal emulation capabilities and bears only a passing resemblance to a console window.

[2]: it used to be part of CSRSS, but in Windows 7 it became a standalone application.

> technically correct, the best kind of correct

While this is true, the UX of PS/pwsh and default cmd differs enough what to me their behaviour is differs enough to treat them differently.

The Displayport issue is related to the GPU too. My AMD card does not do that, Intel GPU does it (Windows 8 though). Not sure who's to blame.

I used to use GNU/Linux on the desktop for many years, now I mostly use macOS. I became the same kind of person I used to argue with online.

This is a article of a Windows hater. Period.

> PuTTY ... but it’s… not good, at all.

Pls explain.

I've used putty on windows at a job, and tried to use it on my home machines. It works, it's alright. That is, until you use ssh in a *nix terminal. Then you're like "why the hell have I been dicking around with putty?"

It's good for serial stuff.

It's good for saved session profiles. In a heterogeneous environment many of those many many settings actually need to be set to something.

The problem is mainly just that standard putty stores those in the registry instead of files, but there are forks that fix that. I even have one I made for a former employer that makes those session files clickable, and has a few other enhancements like detecting your default printer for passthrough print automatically so you can save a session that has working printing without hardcoding a local printer name.

I can't point to that right now because the company was sold and the new company took down everything that had the old company name on it. I have to de-brand it then I can put it back up, but by now I think several other forks are as good.

No mention of WSL, for a web developer... looks like this person intentionaly chose the hard path.

I was using Windows 15 years ago and had already solved almost all these complaints with Cygwin.

Please don't forget WinGet for package management. No need for Scoop/3rd party.

I think most of the issues he brings up can be pretty easily addressed with WSL.

Before I started using Linux I used OS/2. The system had many idiosyncrasies and was quite ramshackle in a lot of ways but it did multitask quite a bit better than Windows. Its main problem was the dearth of good software, a problem which was "solved" by the addition of WinOS/2 which enabled you to run Windows 3.1 applications in OS/2. It ran most Windows software quite well, often better and faster than "real Windows". Did this solve OS/2's problems, though?

It did not. All it did was tell OS/2 users about the world of Windows software. When Microsoft finally launched a slightly less horrid version of Windows most users migrated to it, leaving OS/2 but a footnote in history where it concerns desktop use.

Enter the current situation: Windows is a horrid mess, it consists of layers of plaster upon plaster upon jury-rigged interfaces built on quicksand. For those who are used to the way things work on Linux it feels like an enormous step back, like having leaden shoes and gloves fitted for no good reason. This problem is supposedly "solved" by the addition of WSL which enables you to run Linux applications in Windows. It runs most Linux applications quite well even though performance is lacking in many ways. Does this solve Windows' problems, though?

Then we read different articles. Window arrangement, multi-monitor mode, depth of the Windows Store, and automatic rebooting are still bothersome after tuning a perfect WSL.

Addressing issues by installing a complete different OS sounds very similar to just giving up.

Middle click paste is awful and I'm glad Windows doesn't do that.

>Half of it is “new” UI and half of it is old Win32/GDI type U

windows blows.. I only use it for gaming.

This is classical case of comfort zone. Nothing to see here. Every single thing said is wrong and embarrassing (I mean, even $HOME works ffs).

One important benefit of Windows is that nobody has ever told me "submit a patch" after I complained about some part of Windows.

Plug in 2 random external monitors that may or may not be the same resolution

Laughable. There was 0 research, most of the claims can be proven wrong with a simple web search.

I find it always amazing how Linux users claim you can't customize or tinker Windows, which is plain wrong. Basic search in Windows docs shows it:

> You can’t customize anything!

You can customize a lot of things, and even, make your own Windows "distribution": https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufactur...

> It’s a commercial OS, aimed at users of Word, Excel & Outlook, pretty much.

The dev-tools are not included, yes, because most of the users doesn't need it. The windows devtools are excellent. Take a look at Event Tracing for Windows as an example.

> Non-composable Software ... The command line tools

Yeah and Powershell exists ? You can pipe objects with Powershell.

> Paths

Sigh: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/usmt/usm...

> Installing Software

chocolatey.

> multiple clipboards

win+v

> to match my Linux workflow

Exactly, stop, don't, you will scream at a Windows user if they try to use their Windows workflow on Linux, why are you doing the same thing ?

Yes, its total nonsense. I use both and ANY THING CAN BE DONE ON BOTH OS. To claim differently shows only that one sucks and didn't RTFM or experiment enough.

> The dev-tools are not included

PowerShell is excellent dev tool OTB. Anything else is cinst/winget install away in seconds. While winget is new thing, Choco is there for around decade and it has everything and most up to date, on par with Arch.

You can tinker a lot with windows but your changes will likely be undone with one of the next few updates.

> > Paths

> Sigh: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/usmt/usm...

Can you explain this a bit more? If I type cd CSIDL_DEFAULT_DOWNLOADS does that take me to the Downloads directory of $USER? And does that mean I can script against that envvar path?

I think part of the issue is these kinds of Windows accessibility improvements are not as discoverable as the ArchWiki. You mentioned spinning your own distro of Windows but where are the Medium articles or distro respins out there?

> > Installing Software

> chocolatey.

To be fair to the author, they did conclude scoop was the best choice (with examples of use aplenty) and I agree. I much prefer scoop to choco but I'd like to hear why you prefer it.

Both Windows and OS X have become utterly unreliable for my professional and increasingly personal use.

Here's the smell test:

If I stop working on something and go to the shop, or to sleep, or say "It's 8pm on Friday, I can pick this back up on Monday", can I reliably walk away and have my stuff (apps, sessions, etc.) where I left it when I come back?

Not. A. Hope.

I've done all the regedit hacks, the group policy changes, the mouse jiggler, but it's never enough.

Your computer shouldn't fight you. Homeservers have uptimes measured in weeks or months, that's what I need my desktop to be like.

I have three machines: Linux, Windows and a Mac.

The uptime of my Linux machine (general server/media machine) is… A few months at least. Probably half a year at this stage.

The Mac (main work machine) has an uptime of at least 1-2 weeks.

The Windows (gaming) machine. Haha, no. Turn off in the evening, start up in the morning. Loads Steam UI in full screen, and nothing else. Given its purpose, I feel a mixture of love and loathing towards it.

So, my personal experience agrees with yours, with the exception of MacOS. It'll definitely be where I left it.

Windows, sure, but OS X? Not in my experience. It's been rock solid and utterly reliable.

I haven't personally experienced that issue on a Mac accept for one with some awful corporate software that prevented sleep from working.

Ok:

  - enable sleep after 20mins
 
  - enable hibernate, after 50mins 

  - disable all timers interrupts

That would make your machine hibernate itself w/o dumb restarts, activity. Ugly as ugly goes, but it appears to be better

Current uptime 33 days :)

I have disabled updates and defender among other things tho.

ive not had this problem, my windows desktop currently has an uptime of 33 days

I did the same around 2 years ago after 15+ years of Linux Desktop as primary OS but I had completely different experience and have not gone back to Linux and see little reason to do so.

> when you install a Linux distribution, it’ll start off either all KDE or all GTK,

Yes, you definitely start off with that... and you may even be able to maintain that with GTK to some extent... but if you want to use KDE, you will most definitely end up with a few GTK apps which will look out of place. And don't even get me started with other DEs.

Windows, with all the 10 vs 11 and old style vs new style apps, feels much more coherent.

> You can’t customize anything

You don't need to because things actually work.

> I am a software & web developer - and Linux is a toolbox, full of highly polished tools, crafted over decades by software developers, for software developers.

Huh? I do all my development on Windows + WSL2 and run all my software on Linux servers. There is exactly ZERO tools I miss.

> Non-composable Software

Absolute nonsense. Not only does PowerShell is extremely powerful, you can also pipe output from a PowerShell command to a Linux command. The following shows an example of grepping through PowerShell history.

    cat (Get-PSReadlineOption).HistorySavePath | wsl grep "ssh .*ubuntu@"

> Environment Variables look like this: %PROFILE%, instead of this: $HOME; which is fine, just different; although PowerShell seems to accept either form, which is nice.

Unless you want to run legacy batch files, there is absolutely no reason to use legacy cmd.exe over PowerShell on a Windows terminal. Environment variables are accessed differently with $Env:VAR_NAME, which will take some getting used to, but it's fine.

> No Middle-Click Paste

There are 3rd party applications to do that and more.

> you can also pipe output from a PowerShell command to a Linux command.

Agreed - PowerShell <-> WSL integration is pretty nice. Just remember (mostly for others reading) that PowerShell has a nasty habit of automatically appending a trailing newline when piping to external commands like WSL. So you often need a "tr -d '\n'" in the WSL part of your pipeline.

> You don't need to because things actually work.

Customization is not about things working but about user experience.

> There is exactly ZERO tools I miss.

Yeah, because even if you do, WLS or not, you can have them on Windows in single line: cinst curl wget less jq vim grep gnupg whatever

> Non-composable Software

Not only PowerShell which is amazing but you had few more different composing technologies all the time such as COM.

Incredible amount of misinformation in one post.

Care to elaborate?

Terminal is not for Windows, at least for now. Please don't bring the Linux usage mindset to use Windows. Accept it and make it useful for you.

Not everyone at Microsoft agrees with that stance, or they would have never created PowerShell.

Somebody is wrong on the Internet.

I use Linux (RHEL7) at work and have grown to love it. I feel ultra-productive in Linux and completely unproductive in Windows.

That said, some of the Windows criticisms seem silly compared to the situation in Linux, and Linux isn't without its warts.

> Did it Just… Restart Itself and Lose All My Terminals‽

My DE at work crashes and closes all my stuff somewhat regularly (perhaps once every 1.5mo or so)--much more often than Windows does. To be fair, I do more in Linux, so perhaps that's to be expected.

Beyond the occasional DE crash, there are also several other baffling glitches that I've simply learned to live with, most visibly: randomly the graphical theme will switch from dark to light. It switches back to dark simply by opening and closing the appearance settings.

Linux still feels extremely unpolished to me, but I'm vastly more productive in it.

I have used GNU/Linux on a daily basis since 1997. And I must say that I am very disappointed with Linux on the desktop. I currently have two computers (that I was given by my employer) and there is a lot of trouble. On the laptop, the trackpad randomly stops working. If I kill -HUP xorg, it starts working again. The audio system has taken a lot of effort simply to keep it functional between distro updates.

The desktop machine, sadly has an nVidia card. Every time the screensaver comes on and provide credentials, it seems to operate at 1% capacity for a time period (that depends on how long I've been away from the computer).

Installing the nVidia drivers caused my machine not to boot any more, because SecureBoot was enabled. I tried to do the kernel module certificate signing, and failed (this process is a useful thing to present to someone who says Linux is ready for the desktop - good luck when grandma wants to sign kernel modules). I had to disable SecureBoot eventually, and now it nearly works, except the part about the screensaver. Linux is great, but the desktop system is a tragedy.

Linux desktop might (also) be a tragedy for other reasons, but your post appears to be almost exclusively about Nvidia being a tragedy.

( in particular, gnome is an astonishing regression in usability compared to the alternatives, or even what was standard a decade ago)

Recently moved to an AMD gpu. My God are things better now.

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