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Comment by Syonyk | Hacker News Reader

How much does Microsoft make from being able to tie logged-in user behavior to a particular email address? It seems the answer is "a lot," from the ever-increasing hostility to offline/local only accounts.

Every time I have to touch Windows, it seems there's some new, shiny, irritating thing I have to dismiss. I want my operating systems to run things I tell them to, not try to drag me into their clicktrap ecosystem, or randomly reinstall "free to play" games, etc.

I'm aware I can disable this stuff, but I shouldn't have to. And it's annoyed me enough over the years that I no longer run Windows on the iron on anything - even games are "decent enough" under Linux now.

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The joke’s on them because I have relegated my windows box to gaming only. When another OS meets my gaming needs, microsoft’s os will be finally gone from my network.

What are you playing?

I was shocked just how many things work well with Steam on Linux (Ubuntu LTS is what I run). I'm not a big fan of the "aggressively online, kernel anti-cheat" stuff, which I consider malware in a shiny package, but I've been surprised by just how well stuff works, either natively (more than I'd have expected), or with Proton.

Not the GP, but the areas I use windows still for gaming is VR since I apparently have to do a lot of hacks to get it to work on my system that I'm not willing to try and fail. And then I play Lethal Company and similar, but that starts to struggle and have problem when you want to do anything modded since the modding tool available have trouble with it not being windows and break often when run though proton/wine. I've eventually got it to work, but only with hacky work arounds like changing the launch options in steam since the "Start Modded" button refused to work. I think most things running in electron fail to run through proton/wine right now (on my machine at least.)

In the end if I was playing a game alone I'd hack on it for days just to get it working so I can enjoy it on linux (hacking away at the game specifically not the linux install like needed for VR). But when I want to play a game with friends spending days (or even hours) isn't an option since they'll be onto something else by then.

I'm using r2modman on Arch for Lethal Company and RoR2, has that worked for you? I have it and steam installed from the AUR/Repo's, I suspect flatpak would cause issues.

I definitely get just keeping windows around. I'm lucky enough that things usually have Just Worked, and I don't use VR.

r2modman is also what I use, at this point I think I have 3 versions, Windows Exe, AppImage and pacman. I don't remember what one worked in the end but I remember one couldn't find the game even if manually located. One failed to render anything other than a black image and the last (working) one is just really slow until I get into the actual mod selection, then as before the working one can't actually start the game for some reason, it does give you the parameters you need to throw into steam to start the modded version instead. Maybe I'll poke at it again soon, I just don't want to run into issues when my friends are already ready to play the game.

That's annoying to deal with for sure. I got really lucky with things Just Working.

Being able to just play a game is worth a lot.

Indeed, however there are still a few legacy games that I love playing that still do not work on Linux so I still keep Windows around for these. One of those long tail problems I guess.

Proton is good enough, that I haven’t booted windows to play a game in 3 years. Lutris has been good for those not on steam. I tend to play a lot of indie games with a couple multiplayer competitive. YMMV

Me too. I play a TON of VR stuff (mainly streaming to oculus quest) so Windows is still 100% needed.

Edit: As mentioned by Cieric below.

> I'm aware I can disable this stuff

It's not that simple.

* You can disable some of that stuff, but not all

* Some of your preferences will be reset with the next update

* Some of your preferences will be reset at random

* Some new stuff will be introduced and you will need to disable it individually

* As for some stuff, you will never know unless someone smart figures out something grey is going on under the hood, publishes their research, this research reaches you, and you decide to act on it

Same thing with Windows Mail. I just got a message telling me, "We've decided to move you to Outlook (which I don't want) instead of the Windows Mail client that you're happily using." Now I've got to go searching for the magical wizard spell I need to cast in order to stop it from doing this.

I really wish a Windows Product Manager could comment here and explain why the hell they keep doing this shit despite the user not wanting any of it. I know they won't. They're ashamed of what they are doing, and/or hide behind some "do not post online" corporate policy.

Why can't operating systems just stay out of the user's way? Go schedule the CPU, manage the filesystem and network peripherals, and stop with the user behavior modification experiments.

I switched back a few times but it keeps doing it automatically more and more frequently, and the new app is absolutely crippled and hideously slow (all operations are over the network and the latency is insane).

I just switched back to Thunderbird (which I haven't used since the 00s) instead. It's still ugly, but it isn't getting in my way.

In which way is Thunderbird ugly?

Ugly visually and ergonomically.

Default choice of fonts, mishmash of visual styles from across decades of development in the various widgets, non-native/non-pixel-aligned font rendering, context menus that relegate the most common actions to submenus while elevating actions that you're not going to use as much, alignment issues abound, use of modal dialogs for things that are taking place in the background and should be progress bar widgets instead, dialogs that need focus being placed under dialogs that can't be used until the backgrounded dialog is interacted with, etc.

It's dense, and requires a pixel perfect pointing device to use.

In other words, it's a desktop app, through and through.

If you're used to stuff that's mobile-first, it's a rather jarring change - I can see how one would consider it ugly. I happen to find it "dense, usable, and does the job fine." I wouldn't call it pretty, but neither do I mind a utilitarian interface to do things like "read my mail."

Those weren't my reasons, actually — I am old-school and prefer information-dense layouts designed for use with a mouse (though Thunderbird needs a lot of work to be usable via keyboard). I posted another comment with my actual reasons.

As someone who has been on the email client hunt ever since Google Inbox was taken off my feet I can say that I'm a very happy customer of eM client and it's actually one of the few apps that make it painful to leave Windows (since the devs have no intention of porting it to Linux).

It's pay once and it comes with a free version if you just wanna give it shot, the only bad thing for me was how annoying the website was with dark patterns trying to push sales, the software itself is great.

Hello, what do you mean by dark patterns on our website? I am not aware of such things.

Regards

Michal Burger eM Client CEO

It's mostly about lock-in I imagine. Default save to OneDrive in Office apps goes right along. In the future, Windows itself will be running in the cloud, further locking you into their ecosystem and subscriptions.

They are doing it, far more than you'd expect.

"Thanks to the GDPR, users in Europe who download the Outlook for Windows app, will be greeted with a modal pop-up dialog that displays a user agreement and requires its users to consent. The breathtaking aspect of this is that the dialog starts right out stating: “We and 772 third parties process data to: store and/or access information on your device, develop and improve products, personalize ads and content, measure ads and content, derive audience insights, obtain precise geolocation data, and identify users through device scanning.”

https://borncity.com/win/2024/01/18/new-outlook-app-monitori....

Good, in that they were forced to say the quiet part out loud!

But 772? For an email client? No, sorry, my email behavior is not that many people's business.

TBH, a number like that pretty much seems to be what you get by default when you include any third-party ad system to your site these days. I doubt even the ad company realized how many "partners" they have until they were forced to start counting them.

And 99% of users will now give their explicit consent (due to cookie banner fatigue and/or not caring because they don't want to pay), and probably to more than before, rather than it being a grey area

Thanks, GDPR, and the law of unintended consequences!

There are two reasons why anybody would buy a Windows computer: 1. Price 2. Some Windows-only software they need to use.

So until Apple lowers prices on their computers to compete with the cheapest (never), Microsoft can treat their customers however they please.

Does Apple not realize that they could destroy MS right now by cutting their Mac prices.

Apple realizes they could not do this, because Windows is popular because Windows apps only run on Windows.

In a way they've done that with the iPhone. There are a lot (billions?) of people who would have bought a computer, but got a smart phone instead.

You forgot one: 3. Linux is not a pre-installed option in some countries.

Ah, year of the Linux desktop...

I'd like for Linux to be an option for desktop computing, but it is not and will never be. Non-enthusiasts are not able to troubleshoot problems in Linux.

> Non-enthusiasts are not able to troubleshoot problems in Linux.

Fair, but that does not really reflect the HN crowd. That said, at the rate MS is going, ChromeOS is looking like the better deal, and, surprisingly, it has less nagging/ads than Windows does!

I doubt most non-enthusiast users of Windows can troubleshoot their own problems. All desktop operating systems require some knowledge to poke around and fix things. The only reason Windows gets a pass is due to its market share and support from vendors.

I'm sure if you have a problem from a piece of software running on Linux that is supported by a vendor and asked for help, you would get it.

Non enthusiasts are forever doomed to M$ nags and App£e premiums then. I'll keep running Linux rather than get annoyed by any of those. Best desktop ever. Even Gnome is highly ergonomic nowadays, more so than MacOS.

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