Microsoft shows full-screen Windows 11 upgrade ads with two 'yes' buttons
neowin.net
neowin.net
Not suggesting Linux is for everyone, but if you happen to use it or are thinking about it, it's nice.
Both OSX and Windows feel like an archaic mess when you go back to them.
How are system restarts still a thing?!
I miss that so much when I'm on windows and not on KDE.
KSplice, for example, lets you update the kernel without rebooting.
E.g. a shotgun pointed at your feet
I also have experienced performance, usability, and integration problems with every Linux desktop environment that I've used.
Linux desktops are certainly not "nicer period". They're better than Windows and macOS along certain axes (e.g. transparency and modularity of internals) and worse along others.
Hah! I could say the same for Windows! I'm the family IT support person and I've experienced all those problems and a whole lot more in Windows. Especially after Windows upgrades (e.g. going from Windows 7 to 10 or 10 to 11).
At least with Linux there's always a way to fix it. It might be in some obscure StackOverflow post or the Ubuntu forums or the Arch wiki (which is fantastic BTW) but there's always a solution.
With Windows there often isn't a solution other than, "wait for the vendor to fix it." There's not even good troubleshooting options in Windows because the built-in logger is the worst in all of the history of computing and I don't know how anyone can put up with it!
Now I acknowledge that I’m helpless on any platform.
In before, “Yeah, we’ll, I just don’t use that feature so it doesn’t bother me.”
It's been this way for 30 years.
And yes, this counts for "fully supported" hardware.
Let's see: in the last couple of years, my Linux laptops have made me... spend a few minutes googling for how to get systemd to leave dhcp-provided dns servers alone, and one time where I couldn't get a serial driver to install cleanly. Meanwhile, my (work) Windows laptops have tried to burn down my house.
I expect that at some point in the future Asahi linux will be mature enough and someone will have finally figured out how to support the trackpad properly so we really can enjoy Linux on Apple’s incredible hardware.
Then I’ll have some kind of awakening where I realise it’s not normal for The Animals to play an outro to every meeting, and well… it’ll be goodbye macos my old friend of 20 years.
> someone will have finally figured out how to support the trackpad properly
We're there, if you use Wayland. In Firefox I have pinch-to-zoom, forward/backwards swipe shortcuts and KDE has 1:1 desktop navigation gestures. I'm using a wired Magic Trackpad, but I'm sure the behavior is the same on all of Apple's trackpads. Give it a whirl this weekend, if you've got the stuff lying around!
This with M1 is the smoothest UX I've ever had, even compared to my powerful Windows computer. While Linux and SwayWM did feel a bit more snappy, the other part of the UX was lacking enough that I spent too much time tweaking and not enough time getting shit done.
Wirth's law says software gets slower more quickly than hardware gets faster.
There are other similar eponymous laws, but they're basically those two laws stated differently or with different attributions.
I feel like this is being over-used at this point. Modern gnome works fine.
For me, I like the simplicity. I don't need any extensions. I don't have to hunt around for settings in ten different places with different user interfaces (windows, I'm looking at you). I have never got on with the window management in OSX, but some clearly prefer it.
I guess KDE is what people who want everything to be customisable out of the box should use, but I haven't tried that in years.
Fedora supposedly is amazing because always ahead, and I would, except that I'm terrified of upgrading because every time I do, gnome breaks plugins. Gnome without plugins is not usable from my perspective (system tray), which essentially managed to create this horrible situation where I have to delay upgrading for 6 months to be on the safe side.
Kubuntu on the other side, is ubuntu. Canonical messed up badly with Pro, so I'm looking for alternatives. That's when I realized that my only problem with Fedora IS GNOME. Next time, I'm sticking to KDE, I don't care what the most common one is, KDE seems to be more stable and that's important to me.
And the window manager is way more flexibility for heavy multidesktop users...
Try XFCE or some other low-resource UI.
Windows + "putty" would regularly lose keystrokes at the beginning of the word. And for whatever reason, typing "putty" would not select "putty" as the top choice, but "puttygen".
And then I wrote a text in Notepad where I had to paste in some information. Ctrl+V and started typing. Boy was I surprised that the paste command was delayed and pasted halfway into the next word.
Like WTF Microsoft? You have 4 CPU cores boosting to 4+ GHz and you can't keep up with my typing speed in the core UI of your OS? Is this thing dedicated entirely to vision-impaired retirees?
Ergo I stuck with Windows and used Linux in VMs when required. Then I dived out back into macOS about 3 years ago. This was just expensive, volatile and obtuse. If you stay within the rails it just works though and I'll give them their due; the hardware, particularly ARM is top notch. But again some stuff I need to do just doesn't work well on it and it's very pay to play. I feel a little exhausted if I'm honest after riding the rollercoaster on that.
So now, here I am with an ass end desktop PC again running windows 11 pro and it really does just work fine. I got one annoying notification which was gpedit'ed out and it's been wonderful so far with no further eye pokings. I don't get ads thrown at me. It keeps out of the way. There was one hardware issue which was fixed by replacing an HDMI cable with a DisplayPort cable. It's absolutely boring which is how I like things. If something does go wrong, a thousand people will have had the same issue, so I can fix it with Google in 10 minutes.
Edit: I feel dirty giving Microsoft some credit here.
Edit 2: notable commercial apps I use: Photoshop (sorry gimp doesn't cut it), Lightroom (and no darktable doesn't cut it) and Excel (libreoffice nope). I also have a Lenovo T495s Ryzen here running Ubuntu that hangs after 2-3 minutes on the desktop consistently.
This is the hilarious thing: https://ubuntu.com/certified/201906-27170
And yes it hung on 18.04 LTS as well.
I don't have the time or energy to deal with that shit in my life.
The issue is related to Radeon and power management. That’s as far as I got with debugging before my crushed soul put windows back on it so I could get some shit done.
Randomly (maybe when Gnome is upgraded) most of my plugins break and leave everything in a bad state.
There was the time when ArcMenu broke and left me with no launcher or way to get to anything short of finding my way to a terminal and blowing away my config.
There's the fact that my Logitech MX Ergo is unusably laggy unless I configure a text file: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Bluetooth_mouse#Mouse_lag
There was the time that Dash to Panel was retired and replaced with the same code but in a new location.
There's the fact that most usable window managers don't support enough zones to snap windows or keyboard shortcuts to do so, and that if you mention this everyone will tell you to use a tiling window manager and act like you're "not a real engineer" for using anything else.
There's the fact that all Linux window managers forget that multiple monitors exist. WMs with launchers will have launchers only on one monitor. Using i3 on multiple monitors is endless pain.
There's the fact that there are a million Linux package managers, they're all feuding with each other, and software developers who care about users more than political infighting have largely given up. Updating Discord on Linux is a nightmare; if I don't use my Linux laptop for a month or two even Google Chrome will be stuck in a state where I have to manually download and reinstall a new package.
I started using Linux in 1997 with Red Hat 5.2. I've used it throughout my career, and 26 years later it's still not ready for every day desktop/laptop use.
So you're saying that the apps that aren't available on linux, aren't available on linux?
What a great surprise!
Windows is built for the average person who just needs their computer to manage itself. The average Windows or macOS user wants the system to prompt regularly and for the "yes" button to just make it work.
For most users, that's just *way* too hard to do, so it never gets done.
With Windows, it'll force updates on you at some point, so Grandma will be updated whether she wants to or not, even if she's in the middle of something. Users like that *need* this.
That's *way* too hard for many users. If it isn't done completely invisibly in the background, or completely forced on the user, then it just won't get done.
And then there are these ultra dedicated people who do everything to be independent from others to the point of social isolation.
What is happening?!
Still, when Grandma won't update her computer because clicking a few buttons and typing a password is too much work, we can't point to the past here: she wasn't updating computers in her younger years either, and usually wasn't using a computer at all. Even middle-aged people now are using computers and smartphones, when in their younger years they didn't have those things.
But if someone is like my brain damaged sister (who drinks their lives away) and is incapable of grasping any information, I make a simple script with just a single command (that I put in a folder called 'scripts' under root) to run at a specific time in the background to do the updating (Typically during hours of non use). The only time it really has to be rebooted is when a new kernel is installed. Well, I let the user take care of that whenever they reboot, or shutdown their machine.
In fact, to make life easier, that is what I do for all of my household computers so that I don't have to think about it (because I am lazy).
Ever think of doing that?
2. The two 'yes' buttons shows Microsoft is really shaky on the concept of consent.
Why is Microsoft pushing Windows 11 so strongly? Is there an economic advantage for them to have a user on W11 instead of W10? I haven't owned or dailyed a Windows computer since before Windows 8 was released, this question comes from a place of curiosity as an outsider.
At the same time they're also making it user hostile with all the suggested offer crap so I'm sure it won't get much marketshare. Normally the idea is to wait with this hostile monetisation until you have the marketshare lol.
I have to use it at work though because MS lobbied heavily to make it the standard browser there
Microsoft controls the default homepage of Edge. The homepage which most certainly receives millions of daily views owing to how few people change defaults.
Unfortunately I haven't found a blocker for the recurring nag screens from Microsoft asking me to switch from a local account to a Microsoft account to log into Windows.
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/02/01/windows-10-now-unlocked-wi...
And Ghacks got their info from a reddit post
Link should have been updated with original source.
The other is a website you visit for a specific genre of news.
I'll rant. MS can go to the ninth hell with Zuck and Larry Page et al for all I care, the only part I cannot swallow is Bill Gates now wants to play the good old man. Everything MS does today is exactly as he would always have done it. I'm sorry bill but the precedent immoral fools like you and jobs set is worth more shit and shame (and damage to culture) than your old age could ever make up for, you're a disgrace unto this world and may the memory of these men rot in a dungeon up to par with their ethical hygiene. I hope this is the year of linux on the desktop.
There's better targets for it than technology companies and their former CEOs.
What even IS this response?
Of course, whether any particular group or individual is a better target of hatred than another is subjective, but I tried forwarding some groups which seem quite universally reviled.
Stop it.
I’d personally rather pay for extremely high quality OS updates, but I know from personal experience that most people don’t care enough to pay. They’d stick with the old OS until they have to buy a new computer, which could be 5+ years.
So for Microsoft, they either have to support large amounts of users on old OS versions or make the upgrades free. Unless Microsoft can start making large profits on the hardware like Apple does, this is really the only business model that makes sense.
Apparently shoving ads at people is more profitable than providing an actually good product.
People expect mobile games to be “free”, even though console and PC games typically cost $20-$60. Good luck finding consumers to pay even $20 for a mobile game, much less $60.
Similarly, good luck finding consumers to pay $500 an OS upgrade now that they think it should be “free”.
But yes tracking, monetising and marketing the shit out of people, no thanks! Hardly worthy of the Pro moniker when you see that.
The XP UI was so much better. Technically I think I remember 7 as working better but I didn't like it as much.
More on-topic: Windows 98 is not only nostalgic but it also represents a past time when we were more in control of our PCs, and understanding them fully was a less daunting task.
Watch there be some retro computing enthusiast (unintentionally?) running Back Orifice out there. Like a shadow ecosystem of archaic malware.
I was not prepared for that sudden blast of feelings.
If I really had to be running a Windows desktop today the first thing I'd do is look if there's a viable server edition. Wikipedia tells me that Server 2022 will be supported until 2031.
Not that I foresee having to do that anytime soon but would still be curious to hear if people are still doing this and if it's still the way to go.
So is there any real risk to disabling so-called "Trusted Platform Module"?
Windows has been rolling out, on some processors and configurations, a feature called "Device Encryption." Which is basically BitLocker except it is on by default, included in Windows 11 Home, and escrows a copy of your key to your Microsoft Account (which makes the MSA requirement for "more security" make a little more sense)...
Though with only 18% of Windows users on Windows 11, and Windows 10 going EOL in 2 years supposedly... maybe they are that desperate. Having to extend Windows 10's service life would be humiliating.
They have been there at least since Candy Crush appeared in the Start menu.
(now looking for a good alternative to the Atom text editor because I refuse to use VSCode)
Perhaps if MS started releasing a numbered windows every year people would be less resistant to installing it.
I think you just missed them. iOS gets constant issues - at least they stopped breaking the alarm clock. Each MacOS is a "what will I have to debug for a day this time" experience. Linux depends on a distribution, but Ubuntu at least is trying hard to join the release-breaking group.
The only one I personally never complained about is Android. (I'm sure others have...)
Think of the office communicator, lync, Skype for business crap. Nothing changed just branding crap. The SfB binary was called Lync till the end.
Or Yammer to Viva, O365 to M365. Intune to MEM. They just love forcing busywork on us admins.
Honestly, these are most likely the people who would benefit most from being dragged kicking and screaming into updating, lest they fall victim to randomware.
And it'll be better to forcefully migrate in a slower progressive/staggered manner rather than everyone all at once, to reduce the impact of bugs.
I'm always surprised to see so many complaints about it here, where I would expect most of the audience is somewhat tech literate and could easily configure it the way they want in a matter of minutes.
Sorry for the strong words but "What the fuck" was my only thought as I realized what was going on for a product for which I paid hundreds.
Microsoft should treat consumers better.
If consumers don't like this, then they should find alternatives. Microsoft treating consumers badly is nothing new.
They were saying the truth: as a corporation, their primary fiduciary responsiblity is to return value to their shareholders.
Definitely worth watching: https://archive.org/details/The_Corporation_
The only way to get past it is to hit Continue and click through like six ads one by one, finding the hidden skip button on each ad. All this under the guise of "let us help you get more out of Windows!" as if they were not forcing me to run a gauntlet of ads before being able to use my computer. Talk about dark patterns. This is not even the first time it's happened on this machine.
I already use a Mac for work, so maybe it really is time to let go of my Windows-only PC games, install Linux, and escape Microsoft's orbit.
Dell support also cannot answer whether they can be downgraded to 10 from 11, even though most refurbs in their outlet originally shipped with 10.
The best thing about it was the ability to revert to Win 10. It was time limited - you could only do this within 1 week after the "upgrade". I explicitly paid money to Microsoft for a Win 10 license to be treated like this.
- In general, most things are implemented with even worse design and UX/UI taste than before. Example: Drop-down/context menus have these dead zones between every row, a few pixels tall, for no particular reason where no row is highlighted. That particular thing was driving me up the wall. It just makes no sense.
- So much weird jank in basic Win32 components.