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Comment by AussieWog93 | Hacker News Reader

>It feels really nice using products that respect me, as opposed to services that are actively hostile because of advertisers.

Hot take, but IMO Windows has far more respect for the user than Linux does.

Everything is far more QA'd (and designed to be QA-able) and at least tries to minimise user frustration. There are exceptions to this, like "suggestions" in the Start menu, but outside of this it's designed in a user-first way.

(Desktop) Linux, on the other hand, seems to be more of an intellectual experiment designed to please the people who are writing it rather than a consumer-focused product. Performing basic tasks are unnecessarily complex, entire design paradigms are thrown out on a whim and compatibility issues continually arise because there's no single dominant standard.

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Is this satire??

Respect for the user…

While it forces a reboot

While it tries to trick you in to upgrading to 11

While it sends huge amounts of telemetry to Microsoft

When it forces you to sign up for an non-local account

When it use dark patterns to get you to use Edge and upgrade to Windows 10

When it forces updates on Home users

…

I agree with most everything else you’ve said, but I feel like I’m using a different windows than everyone else when they talk about “forced reboots”. This never happens to me! I’ve seen prompts, but they were always able to be delayed. Is it something that only kicks in if you go ages without manually rebooting?

At a certain point though, I’d say forcing users to install critical security updates is the user-centered option.

I've been using Windows 10 for the past year and a 4 months now, after some 10 years 100% on Linux. I had to disable a weird setting which would forcefully update and reboot the computer when it considered to be "Not Active". I believe it was called "Active Hours" and by default had no way to turn off: you had to choose some hours of the day when you're supposedly not using it. Lost some work like this and had to do some tinkering, not sure if register or otherwise. Or maybe I just disabled automatic updates I guess.

So, in conclusion, no, an OS taking control off my hands forcefully is not user-centered, no matter how much in programming circles updates are seen as "crucial". Nothing is more crucial than the computer being predictable to its owner.

People forget the security hell that preceded Microsoft's obsession with updates. You get half the internet's bandwidth used by a worm or you get forced updates. I haven't seen anyone propose a viable compromise.

the right solution is updates that don't require any restart or service interruption. but that is technically difficult atm

Obviously auto security updates, and make the other updates optional. Microsoft does not bundle the security and "feature"/telemetry updates for your benefit.

It’s not when it reboots in the middle of the night while you had open documents and apps, and the OS didn’t save any of that.

However, the forced reboots are trivial to disable in Group Policy.

I can't use Group Policy because when I upgraded from Windows 8, it upgraded to Home edition

it's Home edition because that's what came with the laptop's Windows 8, it was never an issue on Windows 8 because you could disable stuff on Windows 8 without using Group Policy

There are several ways to safely enable it on home.

That list mostly seems a bit odd.

This Windows computer doesn't force reboots (though it does nag me), it hasn't tried to trick me to upgrade to 11, it isn't sending telemetry to MS, it has never forced me to sign up for a non-local account.

I think it does force security updates on me, which I think is clearly pro-user, though arguably not respectful.

I also decided to use Edge to access my job's shitty Outlook stuff, and every ten minutes Edge tries to trick me into doing something, including but not restricted to making itself the default (you can pry my Firefox from my cold dead...). Until I decided to try Edge, it has not ever done anything to try to get me to use Edge.

That said, I'm not agreeing with GP that Windows "has more respect for the user than Linux does", that just seems confused to me. But I also think that I read a lot of criticism of Windows that seems laughable.

> it isn't sending telemetry to MS

How? Literally even LTSC builds have some amounts of telemetry. Are you running some nonstandard build of Windows?

Well, maybe I'm wrong about that. It's a standard build of Home, with an hour or two invested in config maybe a decade ago when I installed it (back when it was 7, or something, before 10 existed). I spent a little time on Wireshark seeing what it was doing, but not much time, and that was a long time ago. So maybe I'm wrong. :thinking:

Ah, yeah, that’s true, but the point is that you should be respected by default (even if they just asked yes or no). It’s on by default, turns back on almost every update, and some level is on at all times (mandatory).

Previously when I installed Windows, I had the option to create a local account. I had to click on a few misdirections but I was able to do it.

Recently though, I had to reinstall Windows to do something, and I could not find a way to create a local account at all. AFAIK they removed the option now, or made it much harder to find.

I did a Windows reinstall on a Surface in the Spring, it installed with no MS Account.

Mine doesn't do any of that. (Except maybe the telemetry, which I don't care about.) You've configured yours wrong if it is doing that.

And yet, my software from 20 years still works on Windows.

On Linux, I have to spend days to months figuring out how to port code to the latest snowflake distro flavor dependency. And that's something that takes an software skilled individual, imagine how disrespected your average user is in this process.

> (Desktop) Linux, on the other hand, seems to be more of an intellectual experiment designed to please the people who are writing it rather than a consumer-focused product

Honestly can't tell if you're joking, but I guess yes. Linux is the most stable OS I've ever used. There's a reason most mission critical and online services that require constant uptime run almost exclusively on Linux.

Windows used to have a nice GUI attached to a mostly unstable system. That was 20 years ago. Now Windows feels like a predatory product that's borderline unusable.

> There's a reason most mission critical and online services that require constant uptime run almost exclusively on Linux.

That argument only applies to servers. Places where you don't need to wrangle x11, the audio stack, gpu drivers for less common cards, conflicting gtk and qt versions for different apps you might use on a whim, hidpi support in old apps, theming issues... I've no idea how many of these are still a plague these days, but they certainly have been for long.

Servers are way more predictable linux configurations.

For desktop, win32 is as solid as it gets (too bad it's shipped within a desktop filled with increasingly many dark patterns).

Audio has come a long way, pipewire just works in my experience. And Wayland is in daily driver territory, so X11 is only needed if you have some specific requirements. Steamdeck/proton has massively improved gaming.

That’s not to say it’s not still Linux, there will be some tinkering. But compared to a decade ago there’s way less banging my head against the wall.

If you’re already competent in administration Linux you might find it’s time to revisit the desktop.

I don't need to wrangle with x11 because I use Wayland, and I don't need to wrangle with the audio stack because I use pipewire

What year is this post from?

ymmv and this evidence is anecdotal of course, but our team has used linux on framework laptops now for more than a year and we experience way, way less issues than on windows.

I can't remember the last time I had a problem with linux as a desktop, everything just works. Of course, framework makes sure it does, just like every other manufacturer of laptops does with windows.

EDIT: multi-monitor support, bluetooth headset, printing, various audio devices, etc: this is all just plug and play in my experience, feels much smoother than on windows.

You are thinking of BSD, which is far more stable than Linux for servers etc.

> Linux is the most stable OS I've ever used. There's a reason most mission critical and online services that require constant uptime run almost exclusively on Linux.

You’re talking about servers, while the comment you’re responding to is about desktop usage.

> Hot take, but IMO Windows has far more respect for the user than Linux does.

You need to be more specific about what desktop Linux flavours aren't holding up in your eyes because window managers like XFCE and Cinnamon are bulletproof as far as I'm concerned and I've never had issues with them. Especially XFCE.

> there's no single dominant standard.

This is a common criticism and I totally get you here. Not knowing what's going to work for you is annoying and truthfully, no one really wants to shop around for window managers and the only reason I know what's good in the first place is because I spent weeks in my youth test driving everything available, something I no longer have the energy for.

Maybe 5-10 years ago, but today’s Linux desktop has evolved to be much more user friendly and stable. Applications have a standard containerized format (Flatpak), the most popular distributions ship a software store to update your apps and system with one click, and the stability of things has improved to a point where (in my experience) things almost never break unless you’re running the absolute bleeding-edge latest-gen hardware. I would highly recommend giving it a shot if you haven’t at least tried it as a daily driver before. (To get started, just look up a tutorial for how to dual-boot with Windows or play around with it in a Virtual Machine)

There's more ads on a clean install of Windows than most streets of New York City. Why does a professional OS come with Candy Crush installed by default?

> Everything is far more QA'd (and designed to be QA-able) and at least tries to minimise user frustration. There are exceptions to this, like "suggestions" in the Start menu, but outside of this it's designed in a user-first way.

I feel like windows is deliberate about being user hostile. Just because they're very slick about being user hostile doesn't make it any different.

Linux feels like someone with my best interests at heart made a good attempt and half succeeded.

Your take on desktop Linux is quite accurate, but Windows feels less QA'd than Linux to me nowadays. Windows will give me a popup begging for a reboot, then when I reboot it asks for another reboot. For months there was a bug where the settings window would become tiny and resizing didn't work. The Microsoft Teams "get started" window takes on the order of 30 seconds to close - that is I click the X button, no immediate reaction, and then it closes half a minute later.

Your perception of desktop linux and its creators sounds like it is based on a cursory trial from at least ten years ago, frankly it sounds quite disrespectful to the makers.

I couldn't disable the anti-virus in Windows 10 that kept checking my hard drive (yes, my laptop is so old it has a hard drive) and making it slow down

then I just downloaded a program that let me disable it, and I also disabled the firewall

but without the firewall service, I can't get updates (why is that service a pre-requisite for updates?), and I forgot how to re-enable it because I don't remember what program I used to disable it since it's some hack anyway

so now my Windows partition is not really usable, and I'm typing this on Linux where I can just change stuff without breaking everything

Windows has never respected users. Not in version 3.0, and not today in 11. Millennium Edition and Vista were particularly egregious, and 11 took it to a brave new world.

There is no such thing as a single Linux experience, each distribution targets different personas and goals.

If you want a curated Linux desktop experience, then try Elementary OS. It is very aligned to a Mac experience.

None of what you said is true. Use gnome and a popular distribution. Everything will just work out of the box.

Eh, honestly with GNOME ymmv. Many API breakages, most recently with extensions in version 45. It's also not very light. GNOME's UX is also quite opinionated but some people like that.

I just use gnome, I am sure other desktop environments suit others better. But I know gnome just works. Windows and MacOS have the same issues you pointed out with gnome though.

> Use gnome ...

Yeah no. You often need to install extensions to get icons on the desktop etc., which break when you upgrade Gnome. Talk about user-hostile design.

With popOS maybe, but I would never hand Ubuntu Desktop to a non-dev. I can't remember the last time where it properly installed (including getting NVIDIA drivers working) without using the terminal.

Ubuntu installed just fine for me. Broke on update, though

What's more complex. Executing a command in the terminal or clicking through 117 nested layers of menus and using regedit to solve your problem?

This is an extraordinarily uninformed take

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