Microsoft is using malware-like pop-ups in Win11 to get people to ditch Chrome
theverge.com
theverge.com
But I can't stand the scammy adware infused OS Windows has become and will be moving to Apple Silicon full-time when the next gen M3 Desktop hardware is out.
As a recent M2 Macbook Air owner I'm surprised how much software supports ARM/Apple Silicon natively, where everything I use daily as a .NET developer worked OOB [1]. It's also great for running multiple OS's, e.g. you can install a headless Ubuntu with `brew install lima` or install and run latest ARM Windows 11, Ubuntu and Fedora OS's with UTM [2] which saved me a Parallels License I thought I needed to run Windows on macOS.
[1] https://servicestack.net/posts/postgres-mysql-sqlserver-on-a...
In my experience though I stopped buying laptops for personal use and started buying desktops. Easier to upgrade, usually cheaper and better support for Linux just by virtue of not having things like a Wifi or BT card.
Afaik they're exactly the same as Lenovo: a Windows PC manufacturer that happens to be popular with Linux users, and which doesn't go out of their way to break things for Linux users. But they've shipped laptops that had broken power management on Linux on launch day, for example. They're not a Linux hardware vendor.
(The Bluetooth thing sucks though.)
As for Linux support for your M1, did you check out Asahi Linux? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zHoZK4FoIo Its development is progressing rapidly, so be sure to check out the latest development status at their site: https://asahilinux.org/
it is blazingly fast. No kidding around... everything just snaps on when clicked.
If this is the future I may have to start buying apple hardware
I've used the 'big three' (windows/macos/linux) desktop OSs at work and home in recent years. Here's my ranking:
1) Linux 2) MacOS 3) Windows
Where I have control to use what I want, linux is my choice. At work though, I need to jump through endpoint management and security theater nonsense, so I am stuck choosing between MacOS and Windows.
I'm already running multiple Docker Linux containers, headless Ubuntu on lima and GUI Ubuntu and Fedora VMs in UTM, so don't feel like I'm missing out on the Desktop Linux experience.
I could definitely do most of my development on Linux given .NET SDK and JetBrains products supports it, but I'll be waiting a few years at least for Asahi Linux to get feature parity before running it natively.
I’ve been looking around and the only two 12-14” options I can find that match that description are the HP Dragonfly G4 and ASUS Zenbook S OLED (AMD), and those still fall several hours short of the M2 Air, and the M3 Air will likely widen that gap with its SoC being on a smaller process node.
> ASUS Zenbook S OLED (AMD)
I went for the asus proart studio book. high screen resolution, high refresh rate, the oled display is gorgeous (although the touch screen overlay is slightly visible, not an issue once used to it) and it feels more robust than a macbook. also trivially upgrade-able short of cpu and gpu. had to patch my acpi tables for sound support, and no asus dial compat yet. every now and then i get my hands dirty and i might be able to hack something to get it working. thus got a new hobby as well :-)
Also, Linux is coming along rather well on Apple Silicon machines.
To me, that’s far from “decent enough”, not even taking into account the other (more minor) differences you name.
The battery doesn't last as long as an M mac, either. But then again, I rarely use it away from a desk. I could technically use one of those mini pcs that I'd cart around, but for the 1% of the time when I do use while out and about, it's a good compromise.
I don't understand why they cheap out so much on displays. These could be very nice little laptops... My 10 yo MBP's display is running circles around them...
I'd never had a PC with a trackpoint before the hp, but I can't get used to it. How do you configure it? I find it's either uncontrollably quick, or slow as molasses. I like the idea of being able to drive it without moving my hand to the trackpad.
Not my experience at all. High end Windows laptops have plenty good trackpads nowadays.
My main issue was with the hardware though. I would spend $3,400-$4500 on a nice machine only to have the keyboard break and be told they would replace the entire motherboard, etc. Then to have a screen break due to a poor cable connection and be told I would have to replace everything again.
I said fuck it and bought a decent machine with open hardware and a good-enough screen. It's no mac display, but damn... I haven't had to fight with hardware or software in about three years. The kicker? My machine only cost me $1,100 and battery isn't half bad. I get 9 hours with it.. which I never believed was possible with Linux before.
I find Apple to be too annoying for my tastes. Less annoying than Microsoft, but that doesn't mean much.
I'm thinking that a lot of this depends on what you're doing with your machines. Linux isn't ideal for certain things (that happen to be things that don't matter to me), for certain. Just as other OSes aren't ideal for other things. Your experience, I suspect, largely depends on what your use case is.
You're joking right? Sure, something built in 2002 will probably still work well in Linux, but that's often the case for Windows, and on a Windows system, the hardware AND the proprietary software it came with will probably still work.
Meanwhile, in Linux land, if you don't buy very very very specific hardware you can never hope to have functional sleep.
Not as much as you.
Windows 11 won't (officially) install on any system lacking a TPM v2.0. The only reason that Windows 11 can be installed without hassle on modern hardware is because every motherboard manufacturer started scrambling to outfit their systems with such a TPM by default. Also, for Windows Vista they completely rewrote their driver model for many devices, which means that no printer/scanner/sound card/graphics card from the year you mention has functioning drivers for any current Windows version.
So no, something built in 2002 will most definitely not run current Windows. Even most systems built in 2018 will not run Windows 11.
I think at this point I have nothing keeping me using Windows other than the rare game that Proton doesn't support, but my old gaming rig still works and plays most games, so I can easily swap. It pisses me off though, because my Windows 10 box for some reason, at some point, any new program I install does not show up in the start menu whatsoever. I've not even been able to find anything on Google that remotely answers why its broken. At least with Steam I dont have to worry about it, but if I hit Windows Key and type anything, I dont see any programs I installed like three years ago. Freaking weird.
Anyway, I think moving forward I'll be buying Mac or Linux Systems. I'll let employers buy me Windows boxes.
Edit: Typo'd Proton as Photon ;)
So back to Windows it is, and hoping that they respect the GDPR enough to protect me from the worse of their snooping.
> Unfortunately Linux is still far from ready.
Depends on person. I use it for over decade, exclusively for few years since my Windows install bricked itself and recovery partition few years ago (and I discovered that I have no idea how I should reinstall Windows)
But GoG is a website, not an application. The games they've ported/adapted to Linux work great, at least for me. I've never had the slightest trouble.
https://github.com/Heroic-Games-Launcher/HeroicGamesLauncher
People run third party software all day every day. Third party software runs your browser, inside and out. Many commercial products leverage open source projects. Bottom line is you start Windows and you’re running third party programs. If you want Windows apps to run on Linux you need wine/proton/bottles etc. If you want it to be easy, you run Lutris or Steam or Heroic. Sure you can do it yourself too, but that’s harder.
I switched off windows easily, and play 90% of the games I want and have very few problems with productivity software. I use PopOS but I could have gone with half a dozen other distros just as simply.
I admit that I am not daunted by computer problems, but the worst case scenario is you choose a different distro with different priorities. Get yourself a couple memory sticks.
If your heart is set on a cheese sandwich, there is likely no non-dairy alternative that is going be good enough for you. But if you can stand Gimp instead of Photoshop and Libre office instead of MS Office, you’ll do fine.
> But they make it really hard to rely on. From random shutdowns, GPU unreliability to data corruption and performance differences with just using Linux directly, I had to move away from it and back to Linux because I felt like I slowly losing my mind troubleshooting these issues.
> Latest issue was that the virtual disk file continued to grow beyond 500GB large while Linux still reported that it was just 20% full from the inside. So, reading about things, I gave optimize-vhd a try and boom, full disk file was corrupted.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37308850
I wish it was working properly, because I have to use Windows for other things anyways and I don't really care about ads because I don't feel like they're getting in the way when I use the OS. But that WSL basically doesn't work properly is such a showstopper.
* Time doesn't stay in sync after sleeping, which breaks package updating.
* It doesn't get the DNS servers it should from DHCP, so you have to go manually edit /etc/resolv.conf
* The filesystem is super slow, and git commands take multiple seconds.
All stuff that can be worked around, but I don't have to deal with this crap when just running Linux, and all Windows gets me is a clunky UI and ads. It's mystifying to me that everyone is somehow capable of managing fleets of Linux servers just fine, but for some reason managing developer Linux workstations is impossible, so we end up with these Rube Goldberg machines.
Enabling Hyper-V also meant that virtualbox completely lost the ability to have a clock that ran properly - each VM was seeing the hardware timer out by 3 seconds every minute, and thus the only fix there was to run ntp every minute. vmware wasn't affected somehow.
Ugh, this is a known issue in WSL if you try to use git on the host operating system (/mnt/c/Users/path/to/repo)... there are cross-system file system virtualization issues in WSL2 when reading from the Windows hosts.
Workaround is to have your git repos within WSL itself (~/my-git-repo) to have native performance.
I'm the same. I use WSL daily at work, but it's more of a "better than nothing" sort of thing for me. Every time I use it, I wish I had a real Linux system instead.
I walk back to it and 5 out of 6 times it's Windows update blue full screen that essentially reads "we're changing settings for browser". That one time is BSOD
Stay smart, stay protected.
One thing I really like is that it's so much more similar to Linux than Windows. Many of my favourite Linux server tools also run on Mac. They're either included or are a "brew install x" away.
Everything from cron to nginx (for local web dev) works like a charm. Combine this with the extreme ease of doing office-type work on a Macbook: Excel works, printing / scanning works. Add in multi-day battery life and a kickass CPU. Price this the same or lower than the equivalent Windows machine. It's a learning curve to go from Windows to MacOS, but well worth it, and a total no-brainer for most non-gamers.
And I am talking about power users, not the hypothetical grandma. Although grandma is ALSO better served by a Macbook.
I love my iPad for video and games like chess. Even some people who draw like theirs for that.
Yes, cause maybe it's a work machine and they don't want to (or aren't allowed to) screw with the system, whether it's by messing with the registry or especially installing some debloater.
MacOS is covered in non-removable Apple adware like this but somehow always gets a pass.
... yes apparently I can install an app that force quits Music every time it launches, or I can modify system permissions, but...why can't I just uninstall it?
I don't have that issue with play buttons on Windows. Never tried media keys on linux.
But it's still better than Windows.
I just wish Apple would fix their idiosyncrasies, I may have gone into the eco-system more fully. I guess they don't need the business of undecided people.
See also: fake search results when looking for chrome in bing
https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/6/23736289/microsoft-bing-ch...
I’ve tried running Docker for development environments on macOS but gave up because writing and reading files from macOS host was 2 orders of magnitude slower than native performance.
Set up the drivers for a professional level ASUS motherboard last night, during the installation of the drivers, which was essential because LAN and Wifi didn't work without them. It showed me ads for Norton 360 and WinRar over and over during the installation that seemed to take way longer than it should.
Then it told me an update was required and preselected in the update was install WinRar and Norton360.
Like ASUS, please I'm begging you, just charge me the $0.20 to $1 more that these ads earned you direct to me. Please just charge what you need to make a quality professional product and have some self respect for what you're shipping.
This only happens because it's become normal all across windows software and tools.
The tooling and workflow is just as good on Windows as I’m able to use Jet Brains Rider / VS Code to develop .NET projects on both.
Having a full native Unix Terminal and using tools like Docker is nicer on macOS, installing and building OSS projects is better supported but Finder is worse than Explorer which is IMO the biggest drawback.
As a longtime Mac user, I agree. Quicklook is nice, but that's about it.
Nope, not malware. Just Windows.
https://i.imgur.com/xVstzqc.png
https://www.reddit.com/r/microsoft/comments/15u6gx8/windows_...
By my exp, I'd wager it was a third party using Windows' baked-in nag system, via Chrome.
That is, you've got a bit of crapware in Chrome that is sending notifications and Chrome cheerfully forwards them to Windows. I see this on customer systems with some regularity.
Degrading a user's experience seems to be one place where MS and Google are happy to cooperate.
https://promos.microsoftrewards.com/US/en/SS/88/rules
Edit: Chrome isn’t even installed, I use Firefox.
[1] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/how-to-opt-out-of-...
Cool. I appreciate you solving the mystery.
> Nope, not malware. Just Windows.
Yeah, I got one the other day promoting some game or game studio.
Honestly, there outta be a law. We don't need this kind of "innovation."
Apple does it. Canonical does it. Windows does it. Google does it (kinda a duh, I agree). Stop this madness.
The manipulation and excessive proliferation has to stop, but I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with a business being able to reach out to tell people about what they're selling. There just needs to be strong regulation to speak for other interests in society.
The legality of puffery is ridiculous.
Advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry who spends millions yearly on figuring out how to manipulate us into buying things we don't need. The average person has no chance against this manipulation.
So yes, burn it all to the ground.
If I’m driving through, say, Georgia, I’m not there as a tourist, I’m desperately trying to get away from it, probably via the interstate.
But I’d rather stop at an interesting restaurant that I spot via a billboard than whatever fast food chain happens to be camping out at the next interchange.
That's only easy if I have infinite time to take up a big personal IT migration project, which I don't. I've got other stuff that's much more important. So does everyone else. Which is why market solutions to stuff like this don't work.
The market doesn't solve for best or even good, it solves for "not so crappy you don't buy it."
2 <<< ∞
Doing a fresh install of something is like the smallest, most insignificant amount of work involved when doing a migration.
99% of the needed time will be solving dozens of problems like "can I get my P-touch label maker working with Linux," and if can I, does the solution actually meet my needs?
That's awfully hard to do when my employer requires that I use Windows.
So, it was indeed malware.
This lesson continues to reverberate with me over 40 years later.
People on this site "govern" our computers and devices as much as we can, so when these things happen, they stick out like a sore thumb, and we set about stopping it from happening again. Even after 30 years of "being on the internet," I am RUTHLESS about spam. When one shows up in my inbox, I deal with it, so that, by and large, every email that comes through is of interest and needs my attention.
The people who use Windows for any more than gaming (and a lot of them, too) are the kind of people that have 10,000 unread emails in their inbox, all of which are spam for services and offers they agreed to be spammed by, because they couldn't be bothered to at least tick the opt-out box (which only works half the time anyway). When the vast majority of these users see a popup like this, they simply click the button to dismiss it, just like hundreds other digital annoyances they put up with all day long, which they do not understand, and which they do not know how to turn off.
It doesn't matter that we get upset about this. It's already been proven several times over that we cannot influence this situation. The economics just don't matter to Microsoft. I have to conclude that the size of the "power user"/developer community on Windows is dwarfed by the rest. The only surprise here is that The Verge wrote a piece that is overtly negative about Microsoft.
In case it can be as useful for you, or anyone else, as it has been for me: https://www.fightspam.gc.ca/eic/site/030.nsf/frm-eng/MMCN-9E...
I have a few points against this.
First is that it is not that important if we can revert M$ (yes, sorry, I'll refer to them this way for this comment) behavior, the most important is that we should have alternatives. For that we must push hardware and software vendors to support other OS's, specially Linux.
Second is that, by making a choice, we can influence statistics and this influence may be becoming strong enough to give us some bargain powers (a lot of recent open source drivers only became economically viable because of that). I don't know how much worse is the Android-land but most "normal" people are using their mobile devices more than their desktops, the same shift doesn't happened to power users. This made the share of power users on desktop to grow significantly recently, specially after the pandemic. Actually, I partly assign to this the current uptick of the Linux desktop (more than 3% with ChromeOS above 4% recently).
We may be a minority, but we are no longer a minority that can be ignored. A share of 7% of under served proficient users is a huge market wanting to be pleased. Vendors can not ignore us any longer.
We should not waste our efforts trying to convince M$ not to turn their OS into a ad-infested wastebasket; Let it be! We should concentrate our efforts so that we can comfortably live without depending on M$.
Same for people who don't curate their phone notifications. I was standing in line at a fast food restaurant and had a good look at some guy's phone he left unlocked on one of the tables. It was just notification after notification. Ding, buzz, ding, ding, buzz, ding-ding, ding-ding, buzz-buzz, ding, ding. The top notification area had something displaying there 100% of the time. How can people even live like that?
Another example. My elderly parents still watch cable TV. When I visit them, I can't even bear the loud and constant ads, but it doesn't even phase them--they don't even notice them. My brain is about to explode after watching an hour long show.
Normal people don't even know of a world without being constantly bombarded with interruptions and messages.
Yet recently on Ubuntu Server I mistyped a Ceph command related to Rados Block Device (rbd), transposing the last two letters I wrote "rdb". Ubuntu told me:
user@server:~# rdb
Command 'rdb' not found, but there are 22 similar ones.
user@server:~#
The specks in Windows are barely noticable in comparison to these planks. Or compared to the poor functionality of macOS finder against Windows Explorer. These are among the hundreds of other digital annoyances Linux users put up with all day long which they "don't understand and can't fix" or rather, which their reference frame has excluded from consideration. (see also: Zawinski's Cascade of Attention Deficit Teenager's development model[1] - they're so used to broken software replaced with broken software endlessly that they can't imagine anything else). Wait, which is the speck and which is the plank? The lesson is Linux users/developers dumb hurr hurr, was it?
[1] https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html
[edit: have you opened Windows Notepad and pressed F1 for help recently? You'll be greeted with a Bing search for 'get help with notepad in windows'. Who is that supposed to help??].
Uh, thanks? The phrase, "damning with faint praise" comes to mind.
Indeed, my point was precisely the one you, yourself, referenced, but then you turned "most people just don't even notice any more," (because they don't see it like the people on this forum do) into "Windows users are dumb." I simply didn't say that. If you're implying that because I said they don't know how to turn notifications off, I didn't say that because I think they're too stupid to learn how to do so. A simple search would fix it. They just don't feel it's worth the effort. They don't want to spend time shaving that yak. And I sometimes can't blame them, because, in another month, there's going to be another set of notifications to squash from the continual churn of new purchases and signups. It's an eternal vigilance.
> The lesson is Linux users/developers dumb hurr hurr, was it?
I.. don't know what to say to that. It's like you were responding to a different comment than mine or something.
What's your reason for saying that Windows users who use Windows for things other than games "do not understand computer annoyances" or how to turn them off?
--> https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1992/12/02
> "They just don't feel it's worth the effort."
... of course we do. The same way, and for the same reason, you swat spam. And no we don't have 10,000 unread emails because we also get rid of spam.
I know very few people outside of gamers that have a full computer outside of one given for work.
This is one of the many reasons that my windows computer is solely for gaming (and I use a debloated Windows 10 LTS install) and never has anything sensitive on it. Any general computing tasks happen on my Mac.
I would love to ditch Windows and go to Linux for gaming but as good as proton is. I value being able to play my games without hassle more.
This is seriously disgusting behavior from Microsoft (and not the only example of Windows turning into an ad machine) but they also realize they have a stronghold so what is the choice for most normal consumers. It’s not Linux as much as technical people love to say it is.
They did. But they looks in the wrong mirror from the wrong angle. They probably asked a few business people in microsoft what can the company do to increase revenue, and that's what they came up with.
> I would love to ditch Windows and go to Linux for gaming but as good as proton is.
The more people that play on Linux and leave negative reviews for products that don't work the more vendors will spend time on it. Id's say voting with our wallets is worth it.
Doing so costs money for a small portion of the community. Ultimately these studios are businesses and have to make financial choices.
I do fully recognize that this is a chicken and the egg problem. But proton is not a perfect solution and I even had to install Windows on my steam deck to play some of the games I want to play.
At the end of the day I’m a gamer first and a fanboy second. I want to play the games.
You can also call it free market research. Here's someone who wants to play your game enough to go through this extra effort.
You knew what the game did and did not support when you bough it. If you choose to do something outside of what it says, it's your problem not theirs.
My approach: Find someone whose opinion/taste I trust. Make decisions based on the full text of their review. Ignore Metacritc/Rotten Tomatoes/Steam User Reviews like the plague.
There is no fanboying in wanting to use a product whichever way I see fit. It's mine.
For every hardcore Linux gamer who would leave a negative review on a game because it's not available on their platform, there will be several regular gamers who would leave a negative review because it doesn't work well on the Steam Deck. Enabling Linux support without actually working at supporting it for real is a risk that game studios rightly avoid.
Steam could probably help with this by giving you a way to bypass the publisher's recommendation with lots of warnings (and maybe disabling negative reviews if you do), but that that doesn't exist is on Steam, not the publisher.
Linux gamers have NEVER been tolerant of bugs. They are the exact people who make bug reports to niche indie developers on an ultra specific, custom configured system that some small part of the game doesn't work, and get extremely entitled and pissed when the dev says "I literally can't afford to take the time to fix that, even if I knew what the hell in your system is borked".
However, when you paid for the product you should know how something is supported. If you buy it to do something that is not supported you should not leave a negative review. You are punishing them for your choice.
There needs to be a serious discussion about what exactly steam did with the steam deck and proton. They put out a new platform and basically told developers, it's now your job to support this. Yes a lot of the work is done by proton but it is not a silver bullet but normal consumers don't understand this. If your game breaks on proton most likely the company just doesn't consider it a platform to test, which is perfectly valid when they never said they supported it int he first place. Yet consumers go to the developers to complain? That makes no sense.
I'm asking because IMO you initially claimed something more broad than your second comment indicates.
The flip side of this coin is that when they don't restrict it, it's viewed as supported, and they get bad reviews when it doesn't work perfectly on those platforms they don't test on.
So I feel like most normal consumers have already made that choice and they don’t need windows or Mac.
Are students just using ipads these days? I guess I'm getting (am?) old. Without a general purpose computing device in the home, my life would have been radically different.
Obviously if you are going for programming thats an exception but thats not everyone.
Most people that I know do the vast majority of their computing tasks on their phones. I think it's very telling that apps like Threads launched first as an app and the website came later.
Gaming is basically the exception for most people that I know.
You might be able to argue that some of these tasks are better on a PC, but is it worth it if you already have a tablet or you just want fewer devices.
And again to be clear, I am talking about a personal computing device vs a work supplied computer.
This isn't new, Instagram itself did the same over a decade ago. It was phone-only until shortly after Facebook bought it.
But I agree with your other point, PCs (mostly laptops if you want to make that distinction) are for business use, while phones and iPads (because other tablets suck) are general purpose devices. And to take it from there: browsers are increasingly irrelevant, and videos won over text.
But I don't think laptops are going anywhere for business use, as merging them with tablets never really took off.
I definitely agree with that for the vast majority of use cases, I do think there are a few outliers where the portability of tablets likely outweighs any benefits that could be gained from a laptop. Particularly if you are in a setting that you don't often sit and work at a desk. But those are the exception.
But that does mean that the usage of Windows (and Mac) is further and further switching from general computing and more constricted use.
We are seeing that change in some situations. Like with doctors or just yesterday I went to a therapist who uses an iPad instead of a laptop (however both of those I think bring up a question if did they ever use a laptop or did they just skip over that step since it really wasn't that long ago that both would have been paper based).
Given that I work in tech its kinda hard for me to really comment on what is happening in other more traditional office settings
Many of these students grew up using a tablet first and foremost, so it is the device they are most accustomed to.
Did I misunderstand this somehow?
I'm starting to think that this is what Microsoft's goal is.. pushing people to the mobile platform deliberately and getting people use to it. where there is less control over the experience.
I'm so glad I switched to PopOS[1] Last year.
[1]: https://www.scottrlarson.com/publications/publication-transi...
I see no evidence that the desktop will "die out". It may change form, and it may be used by a smaller percentage of the computing public, but the idea that we're going to see a time without significant usage of desktop (or laptop) computers within the foreseeable future just seems laughable to me.
It smacks, to me, of the idea that the only thing worth being in the market is the very top: the company selling the biggest product, making the most money—otherwise you might as well not even bother.
This is toxic thinking.
But they did! It's the thing that the browser runs on. And since ads in the browser belong to Google and Facebook, MS has only the OS and their own apps left to cash in on ads. /s
I wish it would just quietly die in a corner.
As a developer Windows has brought us such highlights as:
* backslash instead of forward slash
* magic paths with drive letters, spaces, and tildas (for you kids, that 8.3 DOS compatible path names)
* its own custom C/C++ project format rather than make, that accidentally gave birth to CMake
* VBA, and all associated viruses
* exclusive file locks
I can't be bothered to go on, but the man-hours/years/decades/centuries spent on making code work on Linux and Windows is spectacular.
Why not try Start -> Run c:/windows and see what happens?
> "magic paths with drive letters, spaces, and tildas (for you kids, that 8.3 DOS compatible path names)"
Linux systems have magic paths like /sys and paths with tildes (isn't that where /~username in URLs came from?) and path/filenames with arbitrary byte sequences which cannot even be displayed safely: https://dwheeler.com/essays/filenames-in-shell.html
> "VBA, and all associated viruses"
VBA is Visual Basic for Applications, it came from Office not Windows.
The best Linux api is Win32.
Oh, and that also means if you wrote Windows API compliant code in 1998, it still works today.
I play all my games on Linux via proton without hassle. I made the switch 2 years ago and haven’t run into any major issues. At one point, I was playing Elden Ring hassle-free while my friends playing on Windows faced stuttering issues. I am unable to play sim-racing in VR because iRacing uses a Linux-hostile anti-cheat, but that’s the only time I’ve had an issue. Personally, I’m fine avoiding anti-cheat because I don’t like how it interacts with my personal device. Currently, I am playing Baldur’s Gate 3 on ultra settings, and it has worked phenomenally since day one.
Overall, I would say my gaming experience is surprisingly better on Linux than it was on Windows, and I’m absolutely shocked that’s the case.
We've been here too long, and we know what Microsoft is and what they do.
Switch operating systems, or push for EXTERNAL changes in law and policy.
The other stuff is futile.
First steps are to talk about it. We've handled shitty companies before, with regulation and other means, we could do it here. Or at least try, which is worth it.
I build my own PC and bought a new license for Windows Professional and it still is filled with adware and other MS bullshit. Like what does "professional" even mean?
Steve Jobs said it best: they have no taste.
"Microsoft’s behaviors here are totally beyond a simple webpage prompt. I shouldn’t have to be dismissing pop-ups that appear on top of my apps and games, or ones that magically appear after I update my copy of Windows."
Windows 11 is doing what it was programmed to do: https://youtu.be/Ag1AKIl_2GM?t=57
Sadly, this kind of user-hostile behavior is increasingly common and a form of enshitification (https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/) of the operating system.
What should Windows 11 users do to let Microsoft know that such behaviors are intrusive and offensive?
They'll tell you to use the Feedback Hub, but all of that feedback promptly gets discarded or drowned out in the SNR of overzealous "insiders" acting as free QA for Microsoft praising every horrible decision they make.
We've been in this world long enough, and we should be smarter about understanding that.
Leave it for a proper OS.
It might not be possible for your company issued computers if they don't allow you to use something else[1][2] but for your personnal uses it is fairly easy.
[1] I doubt it would be configured to receive popup ads in that context anyway [2] Having a toxic work environment is a good reason to change job. I personnally count being forced to use Windows as a toxic env.
> It might not be possible for your company issued computers if they don't allow you to use something else[1][2] but for your personnal [sic] uses it is fairly easy.
It's not that easy, unless you're willing to make a bunch of sacrifices for the sake of using a different OS. Windows is by far the dominant desktop OS, and there's a lot of software people need and want to use that's available only for it.
I've heard that, but I'm skeptical. I'm assuming "most apps" don't include MS Office. How much wrestling is involved? Can you just run a Windows installer and have it work? Do updates break things?
This is mostly a mindset issue.
A bit more than 2 decades ago I would have said you would have pried photoshop from my cold dead hands.
Then I got fed up by a lot of things in this ecosystem, and I left it completely. I may not have access to the same applications, but I have access to decent applications that allows me to get the job done. And it applies to a very broad range of domains.
There are a few exceptions of course, but rarely ones you encounter in a non professionnal setting. In these very few and rare use cases there are options:
1. wine if it works would be the preferred one 2. accessing an app running on a windows through rdp, either as a full desktop or as a standalone window.[1] OK granted you are still using windows in that case, in the background, but you can do that only sporadically by launching a cloud windows vm instance for the small amount of time in a year you definitely need that dirty OS for personnal use.
Obviously YMMV but the barrier is mostly psychological imho.
[1] I think there was a project to facilitate that for office, adobe applications called winapps, see the different active forks here:
https://techgaun.github.io/active-forks/index.html#Fmstrat/w...
there is also this: https://github.com/ne0YT/Linux-Subsystem-for-Windows_Seamles...
The Steam Deck has shown that there are no essential technical barriers to rendering the Windows operating system irrelevant.
This is good work, and it should be done.
IT is often engrained in Microsoft's environments. It is by no means easy to walk away from Microsoft unless it is personal computing.
At least now at work, I was given a research ticket to find out which legacy Windows OS applications are viable to run in WINE. And how viable it would be move our main product application away from Windows.
PS. You have to pay me to engage with Microsoft and run Windows OS.
Downgrade to Windows 10.
If enough users did this, they might realise that people still want to use Windows, but without the user-hostility, so will be more incentivised to change things back to how they were instead of just squeezing harder on what remains of their userbase.
> Downgrade to Windows 10.
Windows 10 introduced things that would have been (and were) deemed unacceptable by people who care about things like this at the time, too. You could have said all this about Windows 8 or Windows 10 with a retreat to Windows 7 being the prescription. Many people did.
The only message a move like this sends is that if Microsoft moves slowly enough, people will accept basically anything as 'the less user-hostile alternative'.
I actually think its about connectedness. We're too overconnected for our own good, the connections are shallow and manipulative and that connectedness is exploited by the powerful to connect more of us further in ways. Downward spiral of dystopian future ensues...
For the controlling corporations instead of employee's you have exploitees and the rest of humanity are the exploited.
In fact just before I wrote this I felt bad about reading a different forums post of a stranger complaining they got a cream pie thrown in their face and then finding out later it showed up on Tik-Tok. I too have too many shallow meaningless connections which can be used against me... even if its empathy for a stranger affected by some dipshit wanting likes for their social media account. And all that's with some level of anonymity - I didn't even watch the video. Telemetry is way more evil and calculated and directable...
We're definitely overconnected these days. I think it'd be a net positive for humanity if the centralized social networks and mega services died.
At this point, I'd like to return to the days of paying $129 for a Windows upgrade if it meant ripping all this junk out of my OS. Windows 11 feels pretty snappy to me, there's lots of stuff I like in it - but every week, every day brings a further encroachment into my user experience with this nonsense. Edge has already completed its character arc from upstart browser to beloved alernative and to bloated annoyance.
Once this software gets written and demonstrably makes money, it will never get un-written. The more likely outcome is that if Microsoft thinks you (the market) are willing to go back to paying $129 for Windows, then you will pay $129 AND they keep the notifications, junkware and malware.
Been using Linux and Firefox as my daily driver for 5 years or so now without any problem.
Windows 10 was another nail in the coffin. Windows 11 was the final nail.
Trying really hard to figure out what I miss, probably Visual Studio IDE (not Code), but that's it.
I'm not even sure if MS even care any more. They have multi-billion dollar "pillars" of Office, XBox, Azure, etc. Windows OS could wither and die and it wouldn't make much of a difference to the bottom line.
The corporate computing future is adverts. If you want to use any significant piece of software at scale, something needs to pay for it.
E.g. my mother even has Office 365 and still constantly gets offers to upgrade to Office 365 shoved in her face. With the pathetic shit that MS is pulling these days I wouldn't put it beyond them to somehow be able to sign up & pay twice for Office.
Can the people working at Microsoft chime in whether they feel any shame? I'm sure it's great for their metrics but it's shows 0% respect for users and also themselves. Some journalist should ask Satya how he feels about being the CEO of the largest panhandler organization in the history of mankind.
I get nagged to backup my Android phone. It's a thinly-veiled upsell to their Google Drive product. There is no way to tell it to STOP ASKING ME. I have an alternative backup system that I use. I will never pay for Google Drive.
The same is true for the iPhone. If you forget to turn off the Apple iCloud stuff on your phone, you'll hit the free limit at some point, then get an endless amount of nagging to BUY THE ICLOUD UPGRADE.
How is this not any different than a popup in Windows nagging me to switch to Edge? Or to buy O365?
The worst part is that none of this stuff have a permanent opt-out. Everyone has adopted the dark pattern of only providing Yes or Remind Me Later as options. It's just endless harassment from these large, bloated companies seeking more rent, rather than actually doing any substantial innovation.
The implementation. I would argue Microsoft is far more egregious on how it shoves “recommendations” in your face compared to Apple or Google.
Lots of sites have ads for example, but you can quickly discern well integrated ads vs ones that are distracting.
Google is using Google search to shove ads for Chrome in your face.
Microsoft is using Windows showing ads for Bing in your Face.
Apple is using the settings app to shove ads for TV, Fitness subscriptions, etc. in your face.
And system notifications to shove ads for Safari in your face. Same with Windows using system notifications to advertise Edge. Luckily, the popular Linux distros aren't that tacky yet.
[0] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/web-links-from-out...
It's not about ads being 'the only source of revenue for our business' anymore, it's about "product managers" being able to dominate the UX and development conversations by convincing organizations like MSFT that they can contribute additional value/revenue by using preexisting customers as expansion opportunities.
If you are a UX designer especially, fight back – otherwise this downward pressure to squeeze water out of a rock will simply end with users jumping ship. I'm already transitioning to Jitsi because Zoom pulled this shit.
The pressure should take into account the power in the hands of these vendors: it is not the same if Google is using dark patterns than if they are used by a small site. Both are wrong but big tech has a completely different advantage.
- Do most employees think and accept this is ethical for the longterm of the IT?
- Do they not think it is destroying the reputation?
- Do the employees not think if they later found a browser or other OS - such behavious is immoral from both economic and technological perspective?
Remember, so many of them don't even use Windows itself. They're so unabashedly removed from the actual user experience that I doubt anyone working with them can change their minds.
You're saddened by the wrong thing. Most employees have little to no power to change anything. Protest is a kind of insubordination that would likely do no good and lead to personal hardship and little else.
The only people with power in a company are the owners and their designated employee-agents (executive managers). Even in a heavily unionized company, employee power doesn't extend much beyond influencing pay and working conditions.
"We see .idea files in your repository, do you know that VSCode can make your hair grow again"
"You are running Linux, but have you tried Linux in Windows with WSL2, free 30 days license by clicking here"
VS Code is like milk, but with an unknown expiration date. At some point, it will be spoiled by MSFT injecting their marketing garbage into the experience. This will take priority over improving performance and fixing bugs. And they've already added spyware into the software by default.
I've realized I would have been better off just sticking to Emacs/Vim entirely, where I can rely on my tools for decades to come. They're not constantly changing the UI/UX, because the maintainers of those products are actually doing useful work, rather than busy work.
I’ve heard installing windows with language set to English Europe or world makes the experience a lot better. Is that true?
It’s not confusing at all; Microsoft builds up reputation in order to have some reputation to get away with doing the crappy things they really want to do. EEE.
1. Microsoft isn't a person and doesn't have values.
2. Businesses behave their worst when they are dominant players in a space, and their best when they are weak or marginal in a space.
Microsoft has been responding to their relative weakness when it comes to certain kinds of developer tooling with relatively user-friendly 'open core' freeware. They have nothing forcing them to 'play nice' when it comes to their desktop operating system. So they won't! And they haven't, for a very long time. Windows has a host of other defects (stability, UI inconsistency, etc.), but aside from those its enshittification (infestation with adware, push towards online accounts via dark patterns, continual piling on of more telemetry, etc.) has been going on longer than the 'new Microsoft'. It's not a turning away from some newer, nicer Microsoft in any way— it's been continuous and simultaneous with that new Microsoft the whole time.
In gmail I often get a popup telling me the recommended browser is Chrome.
On the iPhone, my gmail and google maps apps pretend to ask for my preference on which browser I want to launch, and then conveniently forget my preference every so often.
Even though 99% of the developers at Microsoft don't have anything to do with Windows, it's so bad I would never apply for a job there strictly based on the association. It's terrible.
The amount of crap they are constantly shovelling down your throat is jaw-dropping. Add in the growing UI inconsistencies, options I turn off re-appearing after every 'feature update' and its just not worth it.
Also, not sure if I'm running on the beta channel right now, but damn is the thing unstable as anything, opening task manager takes FOREVER, explorer is incredibly slow and crashes frequently.
I'm afraid the grass isn't greener on the other side. Yeah, you get UNIX niceties, but as far as a daily-driver desktop, I could tolerate Linux even less than Windows. Seems like I should just go back to overpaying and to Apple.
Really scummy stuff to see (and disappointing to see it).
Microsoft recently made edge the only browser that will open email links from outlook... and the way to turn it off is so buried I don't think the average user knows how to do it. Lastly, this setting (much like system default browser on major windows update) resets upon a major outlook update.
Doing on-site work, I will sometimes process a queued Windows update on several machines. I don't always see these "Hey Baby..." efforts universally. They'll appear on some systems but not others.
Uneven deployment would be a good method to hamper crowdsourced detection. And it would invite to that-forum-guy to gaslight someone who reports it in a thread.
one of the most fascinating ideas that got ingrained in the last 50 years was the idea that TV HAD commercials. a 30 minute show would be only 22 minutes while 8 would be reserved for ADS. since the ads were part of the programming, there was no other alternative but to sit through them.
Today, youtube has the same in video ads and people just sit through them. Its not jarring or making them feel uneasy because thats the same thing on TV as well.
Now, microsoft is adopting the same thing, I'd say apple too because i recently after a long time tried an apple device and the music app was pushing HARD to get the music + or something. Plus, app store now has ADS. on a thousand dollar phone. in a first party app.
i remember the stupid reasoning of xiaomi when they started having ads in the system (oh we are just subsidizing cost of phone with ads) that did nothing to help pricing but gave them additional revenue source. fuck them.
i have a moto phone which has stock apps. 0 ads. all apps are uninstallable without any fusss. i dont have google signed in the phone. i have pi-hole at home.
here is my idea. imagine if i buy a mobile in cash and don't connect it to internet, am i really causing any financial harm to anyone? if no then removing ads should not affect anyone also.
"think of the creators" is often talked on youtube ad blocking.
what about microsoft and apple who shove ads on a paid software and a paid device? why should i see ads there? what "benefit" do i gain? same for google ads across the web.
not to talk about tracking
I wonder if this is a regional thing. On my old iphone, I've had a few "try music+" or whatever it's called a few times when it came out. Then, on my new iphone, it even sent notifications to try that out, but only like three times. The message was a bit different, though, something along the lines of "you're entitled to 3 free months with your new phone". Whatever. I ignored it, and haven't seen anything since. The Music app doesn't try to sell me anything, either.
something similar but i don't remember exactly what it was.
on my android, google tries to push hard for "enable play protect". every often on an app update or app install it tries to convince me to press accept. i refuse but they dont refuse to keep trying.
same for other google apps like phone or messages. they want me to opt in for sharing of data.
I'll probably revisit that computer and install Linux Mint with KDE Plasma, and do the same on their W10 machine.
If push comes to shove and they need some Linux incompatible app that I can't get to work with Wine, I'll just buy a used Macbook.
W10 is bad enough and W11 is not a viable option.
Still user hostile nonsense, but can be worked around. I think a part of the reason they're pushing it is that it makes a lot of the OS able to work in pretty slick ways - you can just get your files syncing right away, your tasks and notes apps are logged in instantly. Browser, same thing, bam all bookmarks etc. are there, Mail and Calendar automatically get your stuff. It's that Apple style smoothness that people go gaga over.
And way worse than MacOS’ occasional prompt to switch to safari that I think happens once per version upgrade and is just a typical modal prompt.
Microsoft acts like their OS is free. I paid $120 for this stuff.
Because it effectively is. Between the discounted OEM pre-installed copy (effectively free to the casual user), the people happy enough with "Please activate Windows" in the corner and most functions working, and the "I found a deal on a legit activation key with a steep discount" crowd, very, very few people paid even a tenth as much as you.
Not free; just hidden. The retail laptop models I looked at last month discounted the price exactly ₹10K (~ 120 USD) when I chose the no pre-installed OS option.
And I bought a copy at retail (for $120) because it was easier than going through their “you changed the hard drive and now have to find the key from years ago.” And it does the same thing.
My sound menu changed the offered me 3rd party apps to buy from the store for audio codecs. My start menu aggressively searches the internet for nothing I'll ever want. My computer came pre-loaded with a ton of garbage I never wanted. My iPhone images in HEIC codec require a microsoft store transaction to view.
They are making money after the fact when they sell you the OS. Marketing the hell out of every single click, phoning shady telemetry back home.
It's not really my computer anymore. And it's been 20 years since I first used linux, and it's not taking-over fast enough. Shitty game developers like Blizzard and Bethesda (Both now owned by Microsoft BTW) are keeping people on Windows.
It was kind of weird for a decade there to think of MS as being kind of nice and useful.
I had this exact situation last week on a Windows 10 VM I normally never browse from, and literally Microsoft was trying to add that same banner pointed out here over it! It literally disgusted me, and I couldn't close Edge fast enough, disgusted I had to see what Microsoft has once again become.
This is why I use Linux, windows only lives here to run Visio on in VM.
If for any reason you're stuck with Windows at home, congratulations - you're officially a whale to milk. This attitude is not entirely new (there were glimpses, back in the early 2000/XP days, before the need to get rid of 2000 resulted in XP getting a cleanup), but now it fits perfectly with MS business model.
I've got multiple installs of Windows 11 going, which I only did minimal pref settings to eliminate default search toolbars, and not using Edge or anything.... Chrome default. Never any popups.
This is mostly fud here.
The setting up your device prompts where you have to skip their attempts to upsell an office 365 subscription, change the default browser, link your phone, etc, which run before you can login after every biannual feature update.
That bing/store search results appear before more relevant installed programs or files when searching the start menu. I like having them sometimes, just not the way they're ranked, and the lag which causes me to select them when it gets inserted before what I was just about to click.
The paid version you talk about does exist: LTSC Edition. It's just ridiculously overpriced out of retail viability.
Windows has become ---let's face it--- a kind of malware. The various tricks they use to force you to use Edge & Bing are deplorable.
I almost only use Ubuntu now, which is much, much, much faster than Windows. I only use Windows for PhotoShop.
That said, some other Microsoft products and technologies are excellent: Office, Visual Studio Code, TypeScript to name a few...
With Microsoft, it's hate or love :)
WIndows 7 was nice though.
Every month or so Android nags me to turn on photos backup, messages nags me to use RCS messages or whatever.
I can't turn off any of these nags and they keep popping up regularly.
That's a lot more annoying for me.
- Excel on iOS won’t let you open files without signing in. Then it loses the session and you have to sign in again.
- Microsoft AutoUpdate on macOS jumps in your face every day multiple times. No way to uninstall it.
At this point, I treat Microsoft as cancer. Avoid touching anything from them at all cost.
I wonder what the intended behavior was.
Yes, the pop-up is annoying and Microsoft shouldn't do that. But also popping-up the message over a game seems to be a UI glitch. And I'm not sure even what "malware-like" means: A lot of malware uses pop-ups, but pop-ups are not unique to malware. Also a borderless pop-up with rounded corners, perfectly positioned over the system notifications area is quite malware-unlike.
Finally, the pop-up does not try to get people to ditch Chrome but switch to using Bing as the default Chrome search engine. Which is low quality reporting, if not biased reporting. (This has been corrected in the meantime but original title is still preserved in the HN title.)
Why do MS/Google/FB employees just not care about anything other than compensation these days?
This aligns with that. file it as a bug if it pops up when DND is on
I think it is very likely it was packaged in a Edge update.
https://fortune.com/2023/08/29/leaked-microsoft-memo-manager...
We need Nvidia to fully support Linux.
I have not rebooted to Windows for over a year and I probably won't for at least another one. All my games run just fine under Steam or with the help of Lutris.
Oh, no, they don't! I'm forced to browse using Windows right now because the radeon driver crashes when I open new pages in Firefox. Most of the time it resets itself and I get the display back, but sometimes it crashes completely and I have to press the reset button.
(Gentoo, 5.15 kernel, Radeon HD 4250 onboard video)
Besides, it's not like the kernel Matrox driver has any bugs and that's waaaay older than radeon.
Ain't happening, y'all. Time to grow up.
Just cross selling their products using the medium they own.
They are deliberately interfering with your choice of using someone else's web browser, and they are doing so for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the functional considerations of their product.
In a normal world this would attract legal scrutiny given their history (and in the EU, does).
The Google behaviour you're talking about is using a typically free service as a marketing channel. That is to me not quite in the same category.
If there was evidence that Google was arbitrarily hobbling non-Chrome browsers when using Google's online products (and I am in no way saying there isn't!!) then _that_ would be comparable, I think?
Hobbled Firefox on YouTube via ShadowDOM and polyfill? Hobbled internet explorer on windows mobile for both YouTube and google maps.
Google on iOS and android does the same shitty nonsense as Microsoft here.
For starters, Windows is an operating system, not a website contained in browser. There are many differences in usage, privacy, security, etc.
Also, unlike a website or browser, if you got fed up and decide to leave, then changing the OS can range from challenging to practically impossible (outside your control).
But I reckon most will tag along all the way into the cloud, and lose ownership of their own content.
Go to settings / Privacy and Security / Ad Privacy.
By default, you give permission to: a) mine your history and provide it to websites / ad services b) mine your use within a website and provide it to ad services. c) feed telemetry back to ad services.
So much for consent. You need to manually opt-out of settings you didn't even realize were there.
All big companies do it.
Just opening google.com reliably gives me a "Google recommends using Chrome" popup in the corner, and on some kind of timer you get the same popups in Google Drive and most of the other google products.
The browser wars are alive and well, just not in the way I want them to be.