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Comment by lionkor | Hacker News Reader

Windows 11 is in almost every way (except for the Scarlett Johansson voice) the exact same as Samantha from the 2013 movie "Her".

There is simply no better way for me to express exactly what I mean. It gaslights, assumes, auto-updates, blames the user, and really eventually leaves you in an abused state where you think you need it, just because youre so used to its complications and way of doing things that everything else seems backwards.

See people switching to Linux from Windows who go "I tried installing this program by downloading and running it from AwesomeSoft.co.uk.com.to and it complains libraries are missing! This OS sucks, why isnt there just an installer?".

So, I hope people learn to see that the OS is designed to be abusive, unless you have the entreprise-y versions, and stop praising it. Is there really anyone who is upset that its now no longer nagging you and using bad UX to trick you to upgrade to Windows 11?

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It feels like I've been reading the same laments since Win95. The specifics of Microsoft's bad practices may have evolved, but the fundamentals seem the same.

In 2023 I can install Debian without messing with XFree86 configs or dealing with kernel modules. Modern Linux desktop systems just work, out of the box. Of course there are still a few hiccups here and there and I probably minimize their magnitude because of my familiarity. However, I don't spend hours futzing with it like I did as a kid in the late 90s. Linux has come a long way.

One of the reasons I enjoy a Linux desktop is that the fixes for common issues aren't usually arcane - they are reasonably easy to understand and usually make sense. There is very little "Run the troubleshooter" type fixes that are more or less placebo.

The push to upgrade to Windows 11 is so aggressive that I turned off the fTPM on my machine in the firmware so that Windows 10 won’t try to upgrade to Windows 11 because "my computer does not meet the minimum requirements".

Sad that’s the only way to tell Microsoft to fuck off.

I tried the above method, but I didn't see any change in Windows update.

What seemed to work for me was a group policy (requires local admin, and probably the non-'home' version of win10):

gpedit > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Update > Windows Update for Business > Select the target Feature Update version

Then, set "product version" to 'Windows 10', and "Target Version" to '22H2' (or whatever you want).

Seems to work; after that, the Windows Update pane will say "Some of these settings are managed by your organization", and (for me, so far, at least) there isn't any more browbeating for Win11 installation.

Agreeing with placesalt here. I did the same thing and haven't been bothered for a Win11 upgrade once.

> Sad that’s the only way to tell Microsoft to fuck off.

Lol. The way monopolies work is precisely like this. You will have fewer ways to ask them to fuck off.

> "I tried installing this program by downloading and running it from AwesomeSoft.co.uk.com.to and it complains libraries are missing! This OS sucks, why isnt there just an installer?

The Linux model would never scale to the vast quantity of existing Windows software.

Instead of the Python foundation creating one universal Linux Python installer, you have each major Linux distribution needing a package manager for Python. Good luck if you use some obscure software.

In a way, containers are exactly what Windows installers are - one self-contained universal way of running a piece of software, packaged by the creator.

I think it scales perfectly well, which is why it's kinda normal to have a couple thousand software packages from different vendors in a Linux system, while it is rare to have more than a couple hundred on a Windows.

There is also this huge tendency for everything to become a "software suite" which tries to do everything and the kitchen sink in Windows and app store OSes while you can still find "do one thing" packages in distros.

There isn't one Linux model for installing software. There's your package manager, sure, and I'd agree not everything can (or needs to be) in there.

We have flatpaks and snaps. We also have AppImages. The last one feels the most like the experience I had in my Windows days just downloading software from random websites, except it's still better than Windows, because it doesn't leave random garbage all over my system and require a potentially buggy uninstaller to remove.

Ten years ago I wouldn't have advised most people to run Linux on their desktop. Windows has gotten worse since then and Linux has gotten better. If we assume your hardware is 100% supported (basically you're using a desktop PC or a laptop model with explicit support), and you don't need any Windows-only apps... I don't see why Linux wouldn't be the better choice.

> I don't see why Linux wouldn't be the better choice.

It's pretty easy to get Linux in an unusable state (for a regular user). Windows it's much more resilient to various kinds of errors, including user errors.

That doesn't exactly line up with my experiences. I have generally had to actively work to avoid Windows from messing itself up. That or put in work to get basic functionality working. A regular user isn't going to be able to do that.

As a Linux user, I'm actually amazed people use anything else. I do understand the need for proprietary stuff so I also own some Apple devices but when I work on my Linux systems, I'm happiest.

Every time I sit at the computer it's a "zen garden" type experience.

Yes there are bugs here and there but a bit of patience helps and, because it's open source, you can even contribute to maintaining the zen garden, which is also beautiful.

> because it's open source, you can even contribute to maintaining the zen garden, which is also beautiful.

I don't want to be forced to do that whenever I find something missing, though. Sometimes I'm just trying to get something done and don't have the time to dive into an unfamiliar project and recompile parts of my system.

When you find a bug on windows, which, for me, is about once a week or so, the only thing you can do is open their Feedback Hub app and report it.

In open source software, you can report it and get feedback on your report, and even see progress/timeline (or lack thereof) of it being fixed. The fact that you can say "well i can tell this is a one line fix, let me just PR it" is just an added bonus.

On Windows, the entire world can collectively report a glaring deficiency and not have it fixed for years. See taskbar labels.

On Linux it varies widely by software, but a ton of maintainers don't have time for your issue because they're busy fixing their own, and they expect you to fix your own as well.

Neither one is perfect.

You’ve clearly not used Linux for sometime. I’ve not had to compile anything for years to fix my systems

Things have improved a lot.

...you have to recompile the binary in order to incorporate changes you have made to the source code.

As for the last time I used Linux, it was just earlier this year when I tried Fedora Silverblue. The Nvidia driver just Broke when I swapped motherboards, and since the system is immutable, I couldn't even attempt to debug or fix the problem.

Of course, immutable distributions are the only ones that have that specific problem, but I haven't found a distro yet that doesn't have some problem.

I will admit, though, that GNOME Wayland is a better DM than Windows, for sure. And its trackpad support is comparable to macOS. (As in it has plenty of convenient gestures, supports right-click-drag, which Windows does not, and even supports middle-click-drag, which neither Windows nor macOS do.)

Linux and nvidia have had a strained relationship, nvidia did announce they are finally open sourcing the driver mid-2022 (partially iirc?) so your experience may be better now since nvidia is kinda playing nice but I haven't check the progress on it.

> nvidia did announce they are finally open sourcing the driver mid-2022 (partially iirc?)

IIRC, the new driver is "open source" because they moved the important bits into the firmware

Honestly, if that's what it takes, I'm all for it. Cheers to a future of being able to use the most powerful piece of hardware in a PC without having to redistribute proprietary blobs with the OS.

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