this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2023
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Linux users realizing Windows is fine.
Windows is not “fine” aside from all the non-UI stuff, they’re UI is annoying and slow to me, they moved things behind extra clicks/commands to make it “clean”- stuff I actually use.
And then there’s the whole tracking usage to drop adds in your notification thing… which is a privacy nightmare.
I mean I'm cheering for Linux adoption too, but I've never received an ad beyond the initial install crapware app stubs. I do a sweep on the system settings, clean the junk, and I'm off to the races.
For the unsuspecting users, the privacy concerns are quite bad though.
On win 10 that crapware would reinstall on every feature update.
I havent had that happen, either - between 6 machines I manage and about the same number of reinstalls over the years, from 10 rtm to present 22H2 (or whatever its up to now); I've heard the claim by many, but my evidence is nil.
I keep seeing ads in my notifications on my windows installation for windows store items or bing.
Out of curiosity, do you have a screenshot? Unless I have always been the B/control group in A/B testing or something, it sounds super weird.
No, I only boot into windows when I game, so its been a couple days since I've gotten one of the notifications.
isn't the windows search bar a giant always on ad for edge and Bing?
also windows advertises a lot of their cloud/subscription services in notifications and settings to me
I suppose - I always disable it as part of my initial setup steps, I have actually never used it.
I've only seen shilling for 360 in the account panel, though. Never in the notification tray.
+1
i have to use microshite crap every day.
It outdoes oracle at generating curse words.
and it gets worse. i'd take windows 2000 or nt4 over whatever shit they force on me at work.
windows peaked at windows 7/xp then went down the drain
I got a goddamn pop-up ad for an XBox controller. That really says all you need to know. When there are advertisements in the operating system, the operating system is fired.
I loved it when windows recently started giving me Xbox achievements (aka ads for Xbox) notifications just for playing any PC game on my computer. Like I'm trucking along, playing a steam game, and Xbox game bar shit, just has to wake up from its slumber to say: we randomly noticed you played something on this computer! Have you considered Xbox today?
It did something like that to me when I played Minecraft just not an Xbox ad. I think it was something about the game bar. (which I would absolutely love to disable if possible for just one user)
Eh, you only notice it when it's bad, most of the time for most users it's okay, though I generally argue they just make an unconscious decision to ignore most issues, even before trying out Linux I was flabbergasted at how people literally lose time and get flustered at a problem but then refuse to accept it as such.
Ya’ll are nuts. I logged in to a windows 10 pc after ~1 year so that I could flash a SD card. Windows immediately updates and literally bricked an ssd. How is that “general computing”
Because that is not a common experience in the least bit. Windows 10/11, as far as general usage (Internet, media, games) works 99.95% well for those use cases. I haven't got a blue screen or had to reinstall an OS for like...idk 6 or 7 years now. You might not like the level of customization or data collection, but most folks don't care about that.
Meanwhile on Linux desktop (servers and infrastructure excluded) nerds (I use deprecatingly) get excited about idempotent updates so snap can't break their shit because fuck usability, or gpl god must be appeased.
As someone who uses Linux servers and software all day Windows gives them normal user a far far more stable experience on the desktop.
Yeah for real, trying to get people to switch by saying that windows crashes all the time/ has driver issues/ bricks hardware or software is just not the selling point people think it is because windows doesn't do that 99% of the time.
And does Linux ever do that? "wellllll yeah sometimes it can but only if you're using it wrong."
Linux community is like the dark souls of computers
It's managed to completely mess up my efi partition to the point where I had to boot from a live usb to be able to do anything... (after going less than a month without booting into windows)
A lot of older people I know only use their PC every few months and get frustrated by the involuntary updated.
Also note that blue screens are almost always bad drivers, which isn't a fault of Windows itself as the drivers are written by device manufacturers. It's like blaming a Linux distro for crashibg all the time when the issues are actually entirely caused by the closed-source Nvidia driver.
A lot of drivers should be provided by the os though, for instance the touchpad on my controller works fine as a mouse only on Linux... (I know it's a niche case but it's just an example)
There's two types of drivers shipped with OSes.
There's generic drivers, for example any USB keyboard or mouse can use a generic driver. That's usually developed by the OS developer, so for example Microsoft wrote a driver for this, there's a driver in the Linux kernel, etc.
The other type are drivers for specific hardware. On Linux, sometimes this is written by contributors, while other times the manufacturer itself writes the drivers (eg Intel wrote a lot of the kernel drivers for their hardware like CPUs, network cards, etc). On Windows, these are almost always written by the device manufacturers.
The generic drivers are usually very solid but have limited features since they have to work for a large range of devices. It's the manufacturer-written ones that tend to be buggy.
Some say the stress helps you grow a long white wizard beard.
Tbh, I thought Windows was fine too, until I had to use it last summer.
I installed it recently in a VM for something and my first thought was "what the fuck?". My last proper Windows installation was 7 and W11 is barely recognizable. The amount of preinstalled garbage alone really shocked me. The system menus have become even more convoluted too and I actually seriously struggled to find various settings. I remember the first attempt at re-categorizing the system settings in I think it was Vista but this is even worse.
Really made me appreciate Plasma even more.
The number of times W11 menu has tried to convince me to install TikTok immediately destroys the OS’ legitimacy in my eyes.
And then there’s the lack of customization; the shovelware and bloat; the random crashes and hangs with only a blue screen with an emoticon frowny face; the constant advertising; and the tracking of everything you do with the OS to feed advertising; the forced integration of cloud services like OneDrive…
Fuck windows. I’m not a programmer but I’ve been running Manjaro (I know, I know) as a daily driver on three different devices for 7 years now. The only true problem I’ve ever had was theming grub2 and fucking up the config, which was entirely my own fault.
The privacy concerns were one of the main factors why I moved away from Windows. And when the "free" W10 upgrade killed itself, along with my system partition, I decided that it's the point where I have to make the jump.
Manjaro isn't as bad as its rep. I had way more issues with EndeavourOS, which also eventually nuked itself, which Manjaro never did in the (much longer) time I was using it.
Is most of the UI fine? Yes, absolutely. It's just the rest of the OS that sucks.
Eh, it's okay for most people, I guess. I am just not comfortable being the product. I want to be in control of the things I own.
There is no shortage of different programs that can neuter Windows telemetry and ads but they're always finding new ways to fuck your shit up and I'm done playing the game.
Depends. what version of Windows? 10? I can agree for the most part that yeah, it's fine. Most users loved 7, I...never paid it much mind (mostly because it was good, i guess? Got nothing bad to say about it, at least) and 8 was...Windows 8.
Windows 11 tho? Eh....the UI's ok. I like it better than 10's, at least. Ish. But whose bright idea was it to limit the number of items in the context menu? Or to hide the ribbon that, again, shows you more options? Or basically force ya to make a Microsoft account to even use the thing? (there's apparantly a way to revert some of these things via messing with the Registry) Like, Windows 10 was fine like you said, dunno why 11 needed such drastic changes. And that's without mentioning ads or the habit Windows has of reverting some of the setting you set after an update (tho that was a thing since 10, tbf. Still annoying)
I think Windows 10 was peak Windows. Controversial for many, I used a start screen too. The only thing I like more about the aesthetics of 11 than 10 is the window outlining with the color of your choice.
I'm not logged into my Microsoft account on Windows, nor do I see adverts. When you boot Windows 11 for the first time there is a trick into getting it to offer the option of a local account. I'm not sure why I don't see adverts. The only mod I've done is to turn off web searching in the start menu. Where do you see adverts?
I'm inclined to agree with ya there since I have no strong feelings towards Windows 7 in particular and I've never tried earlier versions. Yeah, I can live with Windows 10 if i had no other choice or say in the matter, and it wasn't my old install (see the other parenthesis if you care to know)
The ads are on the Start menu search. They're not that bad as far as I remember, but i can see for others why'd they'd be annoying--in particular, those who paid for the software liscene already. it's the small little annoyances when it came to Microsoft's decisions (and the fact i wanna believe my Windows was just messed up from the word go...seriously, that thing was laggy as it was slow and just...strange is the best word I can describe using it, compared to other machines running Windows 10. So yeah, I already had one foot out the door as it was) and the fact I realized I had a choice that was NOT apple that moved me to Linux and it's been pretty good, considering 95% of my needs are met on Linux
It was fine on Windows 7. Now you can't open the start menu without 5 ads jumping into your face or open any app without a popup promoting a Microsoft alternative (note for the whoosh people, this is hyperbole). It's even worse than the pop-up/pop-under phase of web ads.
If Linux was fine, then I wouldn't have gone to the trouble of looking for an alternative and taken the time to teach myself Linux. I don't know anybody else who uses it so it's not like somebody twisted my arm
Only the weirdly customized taskbar. Oh, wait, it isn't customizable.
It's very constricting and now with ads and forces updates upon the user that cause more problems than they solve (at least in my experience) but other than that I think it's ok, just not for me.
Pirate images all the way man
They don't get updates? Or how would that help, genuinely curious for the three times a year I use windows.
The pro versions of windows don't get as disrupted as windows home (the version everyone complains about because they don't know there's a difference). And the pirate ones I'm mentioning usually are iso images that have been preemptively unshitified as to not have most of the unnecessary bullshit out of the box but still get the security updates.
Used to be you had to pick and choose updates or get your system gimped for not being a legal copy but Microsoft kinda gave up on that when they went freemium
did something happen? is plasma just windows now?
Some people don't like that Plasma is usually (depending on the distro) offered with an aesthetic that reminds to windows, so it's easier for newbies.
For me that's a plus. I like that layout, which Windows also slowly starts to move away from now.
I think Windows more and more looks like a Plasma desktop though, like visually. That process is not super new and somewhat gradual over the versions but it is noticeable. There's also some desktop features that made its way into Linux that felt very close to some that are present in Linux for many years.
Exactly! I think Nicco Loves Linux (from KDE) mentions it in some video