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Comment by jamal-kumar | Hacker News Reader

Has anyone become so disillusioned with windows that they just have a windows pc sitting around collecting dust?

Sometimes I still need to use some legacy program or whatever on there but I feel like the last time I booted into that thing was over a month ago now.

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Windows is nowadays required for maybe 2 major things: games (I know, Wine is a thing, but let's be honest: it is very much still a hit or miss), and some video conference software (e.g. webex with camera).

I install Windows only for job interviews. Usually I install it 2 days ahead, and keep running windows update repeatedly, until it finally finishes with everything, and I can use the system for a 30 minutes call, before I would install a usable OS.

Maybe a bit tangential: until about 10 years ago I used only Windows. One day I tried make something bluetooth related work on it, I don't even remember what. I just remember that it kept failing in a very cryptic way. It got me so angry after many hours that I just deleted the whole OS, and swore that I will learn Linux starting immediately, and that will be my main system going forward. It became my career after a few months, lol. Don't know if I should be grateful for Windows or not.

> Windows is nowadays required for maybe 2 major things: games (I know, Wine is a thing, but let's be honest: it is very much still a hit or miss)

I'll be honest: I find it that it's very much a hit nowadays, rather than a miss.

With Valve doing so much work around Proton I can basically buy a random Windows-only game off Steam and... it just works. I don't even remember anymore a time when a game I wanted to play didn't just work.

(Of course this doesn't include multiplayer games with anti-cheat. If you like those then yes, you still need Windows.)

Seconded, Proton has made it absurdly easy, to the point where if you aren't told there's a compatibility layer it's hard to know it's even there.

Possibly you are right. Must admit, I don't play a lot on my PC. I play sometimes the Portal series, which runs natively on Linux. My data set for my previous statement is admittedly not a big one: the one that I wanted to use Wine for was the Syberia series (I'm old), which has reports ranging from "doesn't work" to "works perfectly". It didn't work for me: it randomly either crashed, or just froze a few minutes into the game. Granted, haven't tried it since at least a year or so.

> games (I know, Wine is a thing, but let's be honest: it is very much still a hit or miss)

I used to dual-boot for a few games, but nowadays I just don't bother anymore. I check protondb beforehand and most of the games I played just ran without issues. I think the last time I booted Windows for games was for Space Engineers a couple of years ago (which seems to work now, but looks like a pain to set up).

I still use Windows for Photoshop and for games. Sure, more and more games seem to work with Steam's thing, but I sometimes get a noticeable performance boost when playing the same title under Windows compared to Linux. There was some Tomb Raider game which could barely do FHD on Linux but worked perfectly with max settings and 4k under Windows.

> and some video conference software (e.g. webex with camera

Meh, IME webex works fine enough in a browser (Firefox/X11). I haven't had any more issues under than Linux than my colleagues running Windows. Even Teams is just as crappy under Linux.

> [bluetooth]

I like when people complain about Linux and the proverbial crappy sound issues. The best Bluetooth headphone experience I've ever had was hands down Linux (though I've never had AirPods). It's the only one which connects reliably to my phones right away (macos was usually good enough at this) and it's also the only one that can use the better codec (ldac).

And Android ROM stuff. All the vendor-specific ROM flashing apps are Windows only and I don't have the balls to run it via Wine. Sadly not even macOS (my main system) is an option.

There are usually linux alternatives. Heimdall is a pretty good alternative to Odin

I started this thread and I will chime in on this

Lmao nah that shit doesn't work

YMMV, but in my experience it works flawlessly.

If that fails there are chip specific tools you can use to read/write to the right partitions, such as the fantastic EDL tool for Qualcomm devices:

https://github.com/bkerler/edl

I started my machine for the first time in a couple of months yesterday; I mostly use it for gaming.

The taskbar “Search” box had a new “fun” little icon representing whatever search item they wanted to advertise to me today. Had to find windows “tips” site to work out how to turn it off…

Not as egregious as “full screen game adverts on login screen by default” though.

> The taskbar “Search” box had a new “fun” little icon representing whatever search item they wanted to advertise to me today. Had to find windows “tips” site to work out how to turn it off…

It boggles my mind how people don't find it absolutely infuriating. I watch quite a lot of streams and people always have 3 things enabled that I personally would disable instantly:

- huge searchbox taking a good 1/3 of the taskbar (I've yet to see anyone use this control for initiating a search)

- the playful icon in this huge searchbox (you mentioned it)

- Weather widget in the taskbar (just why?)

I assume that vast majority of Windows users just don't care.

> "I assume that vast majority of Windows users just don't care."

Most of them it's not so much that they don't care as it is that they've been literally brainwashed their entire lives to believe that Windows holds the top market position because it's somehow "superior" to other operating systems. They really truly believe the decades old Ballmer FUD about other operating systems. It's impossible in their minds that Microsoft gained such a stranglehold over the PC operating system market through completely unethical, borderline illegal means, and no amount of well-documented historical fact can change their minds about it. It's very nearly a literal cult.

It's really not that complex for me: I work in games, lots of game development tools only work in Windows and/or have horrible, undersupported Linux ports at best. I have no allegiance to Microsoft, I can still rotate around to Linux. but it's no surprise I end up mostly in Windows.

now with all that said, on topic: I haven't seen this search fun icon nor really any ads on W11. Don't know if that's because I opted out of any personalized targeting or whatnot, but I wasn't nagged much once I got everything installed and customized my toolar.

I've found wine good enough to run nearly any windows programme I want to use; the only exception is VR games, but I've found myself just not playing VR as a result

Your system will probably become unusable, because anytime Windows is shut down or disconnected too long, it will immediately crave gobs of updates upon boot, and you may be powerless to stop it.

For that reason, I made sure I rotated through all my VMs about once a month, just spin up and down for no other reason but updating.

I do, but I’m an independent software contractor, so sometimes I need to do windows stuff. It’s also useful to lend to house visitors.

Same here

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