Ads in the OS
ng5p.com
ng5p.com
The ads is also another problem, I am a mini sysadmin controlling not only my computers but my parents one. And I need to keep their computer in a safe state that they dont get in trouble by a misleading ad, but also, unable to do something because of an anti-ad pop up or similar.
And having them being stressed out because onedrive/office365/nobackups pop up is asking stuff they dont understand is getting on my fucking nerves.
I tried Manjaro, the concept is very cool, but adding my Canon Pixma 5051 driver was extremely difficult, and adding OneDrive support was also difficult (getting some errors at compile time, no matter what package from AUR I choose), so I decided not to use it.
Furthermore, I also tried Fedora, Mate edition. I was really surprised how unpolished it looks compared to any other Mate editions (Mint, Manjaro, Solus (solus is the most polished of them all), Ubuntu).
It is my understanding (and I am not an expert in Linux at all), that deb is better than RPM, so can I ask you, why Fedora?
By the way, you can install Windows 10/11 Enterprise (10 IoT will be supported till 2035), which has none of these problems.
That is the only experience I got. But it is a fairly popular cheap wifi dongle, and I think that fedora just has better compatibility. I am not sure about deb/rpm. I am more familiar with deb. But honestly, I prefer that things just work.
I have a windows 10 enterprise on my work laptop and I can still see several pop-up and annoyances. I am also not sure where would I be able to get a windows 10 IoT key that I can use and is reasonably priced. But I will have a look. thank you.
I had a similar problem with Fedora some 5 years ago.
I used software called RaiDrive on the desktop a while ago and they have an ad-supported free version - there is a banner that shows up on top/bottom of the app window, IIRC: https://www.raidrive.com/
If developers need money but users want free software, wouldn't that be a possible option in the case of OSes and desktop software, in addition to that being the status quo on mobile? Then smarter users who don't want to pay can use a PiHole or something like that, users get the software and devs get some additional money, OR people can straight up pay for an ad free version and/or more features, or use an open source alternative.
I think the only thing holding us back in that regard is a lack of proper sandboxing for most desktop software, e.g. the user data that you agree to give it, rather than having spyware/PUP getting installed and so on. I do wonder why there are no good reputation ad networks for desktop software and such, say, AdSense for Windows/Linux.
IMO too late. Pretty much my entire network that I'm aware of refuses to use Microsoft anything - Windows, Teams, Visual Studio, .NET etc. The only exception to that are gamers but these people seem less and less as we all get older.
I enjoyed writing C# back in the day, its a great language, but I probably never will again.
No matter how hard MS wants to push it, those don't change. If I need a text editor I use one, if I need a full IDE I use those. This Frankenstein abomination has zero purpose.
I don't like Microsoft, and before VS Code I had high hopes for Atom. VS Code became nearly everything I wanted on an editor.
I could never get used to "full IDEs". I find them awkward and I always feel constrained by them, not in a good way.
I experience zero typing latency on VS Code (and I'm very sensitive to that). Granted, memory usage could be better but along with the browser it's my main work tool so I don't mind much that it uses a considerable amount, as long as it doesn't bog down my machine.
Of course, to each their own. I hate Microsoft as much as the next person and I wish someone would step in and give me a modular editor with extensive LSP support and an excellent extensions marketplace to replace it. I would consider paying for such a product if it was adequate.
I had high hopes that Jetbrains Fleet would be that product, but after having tried its pre-release a few times I'm not holding my breath.
I say all this as a former hardcore emacs user.
Jetbrains Fleet is already looking to be a let down, with it being a larger resource hog by VSCode.
I'd say they are in a better place in terms of developer relations and perception compared to a couple years ago. Might be my network bias though.
This I don't get. Microsoft is copying Apple in this case. When you use OSX then you are more or less obligated to have an iCloud account. And then they ask you if you want to have iCloud+.
What is difference between Apple and pestering me with getting iCloud and Microsoft pestering me with getting Microsoft 365.
Both are convenient and provide great value and a better UX.
In my opinion, it's much less time to configure and get Linux working than Windows. For example, just last week I was on Debian, but then I decided I wanted to switch back to Fedora (just some minor preferences, nothing major), and I was able to reinstall and get back up and running within an hour or two–including reinstalling programs. And I had a separate /home partition, so I had all my data separate and just switched out the OS.
Using Windows when Linux is available is just like using WhatsApp when Signal is available. It's a matter of mass-adoption and really not much more (ie the platforms are nearly functionally identical). So help spread the word! :-)
Are you saying that Signal is better than WhatsApp more than just philosophically?
I've been using both WhatsApp and Signal for years and I find it difficult to say which is better from a UI/UX point of view.
However, I prefer my Linux desktop (Fedora/Sway) to my Windows 11 desktop experience in every way I can think of.
(It should be reletively easy to remove it from the open source clients though)
Inevitably they open network connections to untrustworthy content.
One of the best unintended side effects to happen in recent months was that the NSO group weaponised ads, via the ad-serving infrastructure at least in mobile devices, as a means to deliver malware.
They couldn't have stuck a knife into the heart if a nicer industry.
Now the mere presence of "advertisements" is a legitimate cybersecurity concern. Adblockers, and configuring browsers to stop ads is at the same level as firewalls and updates.
Advertisements baked into the Windows operating system is no mere question of "annoyance", it's a sound, rational reason to dump Microsoft in favour of something more secure.
The biggest problem remaining is what to do with email as I need access to it on the road and I've got used to outlook/o365 for that. A half decent neutral IMAP service would do the job. Any recommendations?
Fastmail is a good service, not free but imho good service doesn't need to be free.
Edit: scrap that. I needed to pay for it first! It's working now.
[1] https://mastodon.social/@robinwhittleton/111011217374727839
Or buy some gaming console.
And you can only game on it, you can't do anything else with it. In 2 years you easily spend up to 1000 dollars on it, which in comparison could get you the most expensive GPUs other than the 4090.
Microsoft kills products this way. In Win 8 they killed OneNote which was a pretty good product by pinning 3 icons for it in the task bar. And putting it in all kinds of context menus, and putting it in as a printer, and trying to stuff it up your nose. It had a decent XML file format that I could extract content from but what really killed it for me was when it went cloud only and those files went away.
Then there is the strange case of SkyDrive, that they failed to run a trademark search on before launching, so they had to rename it to OneDrive. They set the default for Office to save to OneDrive. Well once I forgot to save elsewhere and OneDrive wasn’t working so I couldn’t save. And this is a product that is always harassing me about some document I didn’t save 5 years ago. That’s not how you kill a product, that is how you kill it, kill it again and kill it once more.
A lot of time is spent synching to the cloud. Also, "Date modified" metadata was all reset at the time of transition, so distinguishing "pre-OneDrive" files by date is not a thing anymore.
I've used other O&O software (backup) and found it to be pretty solid, so when they first released this tool back for Windows 10 I was surprised to see it free.
AppBuster is another good freebie from them.
Two other things that irk me with Linux is Remote Desktop and internal drives. Remote desktop on Windows has been solved at the basic+ level for years (RDP, Terminal Services). VNC on Linux is often barely useable or a lag filled struggle, even on LAN. I know there are 3rd party solutions, but none are cheap (TV, AnyDesk, etc) or as elegant (NoMachine, etc) out of the box as RDP. I should be able to turn on a toggle "Enable Remote Desktop" and connect from a client machine. I guess that's why Gnome is moving that way? I don't know.
The next is on Windows I typically have a plethora of random internal drives I use for storage, scratch disks for downloads or video encoding, temp storage, etc. These just format and assign a drive letter and done. Maybe I haven't done it enough but it always requires a guide, editing fstab, getting permissions right, mounting it as a folder or other witchcraft. Again this is probably me, but it's harder than it needs to be, IMHO.
Back on gaming, Steam really doesn't get enough credit. They have pushed developers to consider Linux for the first time in history. They have helped create the tools and the store front. The steam deck is a good PoC. And now that game engines are allowing cross platform type tools, it's never been easier.
Time will tell, but just like Firefox, I hope Linux on the desktop sticks around.
The only reason I boot into windows is for windows-only games. Life gets a little less stressful when you have some options and choices.
At which point did this Operating System become a Persistently-Shovel-Things-In-Your-Face System instead of being a tool to operate the system and thus disappears to let you efficiently go on with your work?
There are three things driving me mad at the moment. One, despite having my audio muted I still get audible notifications for something, haven't figured it out. Two, volume control no longer works with my Jabra bluetooth earphones. Third, no amount of trying to convince Windows Explorer otherwise can I stop my downloads folder and it's sub-folders from going back to being grouped by date, which I hate.
I remember when OEM Windows came with a bunch of crap. Now there is no version of Windows that isn't full of crap.
I am always facepalming when I see these articles like “you can’t read Postscript files on MacOS anymore” because it seems to me that reading files is a user space thing and you are infantilized or the computer is using you instead of the other way around when that is happening.
It's a couple of hours but I am sure I would've wasted much more time trying to get win32 and directx applications to run on Linux. So there's that.
I paid for the product, stop showing me ads.
Maybe at home. So many businesses relies on software only available on Windows.
Move on until a month later when an update either adds more advertisements, or just changes you back to the default settings?
> or just use another OS
Sure, but lots of people can't. There's plenty of Windows-only software which is crucial for some people. Ignoring macOS, because the obvious problem there is that Macs are expensive, and Hackintoshes require lots of troubleshooting and configuration, translation layers, like Wine and Proton, have made huge progress, but there's some stuff that's just completely impractical, or currently impossible, to do with translation layers. Plus, even some games that could run on Linux are just refused support by their publisher. For example, Destiny 2 uses BattlEye for anti-cheat, which has Linux support, but Bungie refuses to enable it, instead banning anyone who plays Destiny 2 on Linux. There's more examples of this, but I won't go on about it further.
And don't get me started on running a Windows VM with passthrough. That's a big, confusing pain to set up. I've used Linux for years and couldn't get PCI(e) passthrough working, so it's unreasonable to expect someone just migrating away from Windows to be able to set it up properly. And it doesn't really solve anything if you're just going to be using Windows all day anyways.