this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
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Microsoft Can't Stop Being Annoying About OneDrive | They make you take a survey every time you close OneDrive on your device.::They make you take a survey every time you close OneDrive on your device.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Excuse me, do you have a moment to talk about GNU/Linux? 🙃

When I got my senior mom a computer she had never used Windows. Instead of having her learn that I installed Debian with Xfce and Firefox. Now that’s all she knows, I laugh at people who tell me Linux is too hard when my mom without any tech knowledge uses it as her daily computer. If I had to switch her to Windows or a Chrome browser she’ll make a fuss about it.

How about a live OS as a free trial? Not only free as in free beer, but free as in freedom, and always will be free. You own your OS, not vice versa.

Become a Linux user today, while keeping your precious Windows 11 or whatever. I raise you Tails if you do this at all.

  • Get an unused USB stick, download Tails and make a bootable USB. Typically this will take less than an hour.
  • Restart and boot your computer into Tails.
  • Congratulations! You’re a Debian user now, even on Tor. Meaning your real IP is hidden. Privacy strikes back!
  • Start Tor Browser and enjoy Lemmy. Libre world is usually Tor-friendly (though lemmy.world may be behind CF).

I’m not saying you should ditch Windows today, but you might want to do some experiments? There are other OSes too, if you think yours is (becoming more and more) annoying!

[PS: lemmy.world is indeed behind Cloudflare (CF). You may not be able to use it directly via Tor. I’m okay because writing/reading this from a different, privacy-friendly instance. Though CF is MitM, some people believe it’s necessary. Be careful, though: everything you send, including your password, may be visible to this MitM as plaintext.]

[–] AlecSadler 9 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Any recommendations for replacement utilities for Power Toys and DisplayFusion? Most notably the monitor profile & snap zones short cuts without having to use a mouse, the high order characters, and the multi-clipboard?

Thanks in advance!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

I'm not certain exactly what you're referring to, but my experience is that KDE has almost everything built in.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A friend of mine is a programmer, he used i3 as a window manager and that has shortcuts for window snapping build in (and much much more), but is rather difficult to set up

[–] AlecSadler 3 points 1 year ago

Cool! I'll check it out.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Not sure what you mean by high order characters, but KDE has KZones, which can be used to define snap zones, and you can also do the snapping using custom keyboard shortcuts. Multi-clipboard support is also present out-of-the-box in KDE, provided by Klipper.

[–] AlecSadler 2 points 1 year ago

Perfect. I'll check it out! Thank you.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

If what you’re talking about is something OS-level, chances are that you can trivially do the same thing. But if it’s application-level (a tool for Windows): while there’s a way to run a Windows application, apparently it’s not always perfect. If you really need to use a program that only runs on Windows, that’s a valid reason for you to keep using Windows. I hope you can find a libre alternative. You’re free to code your own tool (which behaves exactly the way you like), but admittedly that option is not always realistic.

Nevertheless, at least when doing something generic like browsing web pages or writing email, you don’t need to do that on a privacy-invasive OS. If more and more users start noticing that, Micro$soft might realize that annoying paying customers is a bad idea in the long run.

It’s preposterous to pay (buy an expensive license) to be abused!

[–] AlecSadler 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I should've been more clear. Right now PowerToys and DisplayFusion let me customize where windows go when I use keyboard shortcuts (upper left, centered with large borders to each side, full top to bottom right, bottom right, etc.). On my 49" ultrawide this is a godsend for window management. Was just curious what program on Linux would offer similar behavior.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I recall using gtile previously, which worked very well with my ultrawide. I forgot to re-install it on my current laptop, so I had to look it up just now. I normally have a 3x2 grid.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I hope the day comes soon when I can ditch Windows completely and switch to Linux. But that day is certainly not today.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It doesn’t need to be today. You don’t need to ditch it completely, but if you’d like to, you can use two machines side by side. It’s about freedom. No one should force you to do anything. Good luck!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would like to try Linux Mint, but there are no Corsair drivers for my CPU AIO cooler. There are workarounds, but it is not ideal. It is a choice between how much Windows annoys me compared to the lack of hardware support in Linux. Currently Windows is still winning. Maybe when Windows 10 is out of support I will switch.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I may be ignorant here, but why do you need drivers for a cooler? Just run it off the mobo headers and let the bios run the curve.

Hardware support has gotten to the point where generally only some very minor bits don't work (which I don't need, like the fingerprint reader on my old lenovo). That said, next time you build/upgrade, start looking at Linux compatibility for hardware to be sure.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The Corsair software allows you to create a custom curve for fan speeds by CPU temperature, which I use. It also has a lot of temperature and speed monitors which are sometimes useful, and RGB effects, which I never use. I believe there are others ways to achieve the fine grained control of fan speeds in Linux (or maybe the BIOS), but it is something I would need to get to grips with before considering moving to Linux.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why don't you program the curve in the BIOS?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Because I didn’t even know that was an option until I read this thread. I would need to check what my BIOS supports. This is a recent Gigabyte motherboard and latest BIOS, so I imagine you can do it. Thanks for the tip.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Also dist upgrades. There's always some shit package that's breaking at probably a dependency for some others

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Is there a way to block all comments including the word "linux"?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Fortunately no but I've gone ahead and blocked you :)

Remember you're on the fediverse, which is a FOSS version of social media....self hosted by Linux nerds. You're pretty much in our territory.

Seriously though, give it a try...you'll be surprised how much it "just works"* and how terrible windows is once the tinted glasses are removed.

*Some conditions apply

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I like Linux but if you do more with it than just internet browsing then "just works" isn't how I would describe it

[–] BURN 2 points 1 year ago

Me either, but say one thing bad about Linux or that it’s still not a fully functional gaming OS you get 12 comments saying “but have you tried this distro?”

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

That should be easy if you do some script-fu, etc. Perhaps not so easy on Windows, though.

I understand that you may feel depressed, or even annoyed, for example when told, “Solving the problem foo is trivial if you use bar” when bar is not trivial nor realistic for you (or so you believe). For example, 2^149^−1 is easy to factor if you use elliptic curves, but studying elliptic curves may feel daunting (though it’s not so hard as you might think).

I do understand how you may feel in such a situation. I may be sometimes in a similar situation too.

Obviously, though, not trying to read about the solution bar wouldn’t solve the original problem foo. Not learning ECM doesn’t enable you to factor 2^149^−1 for example. Not trying to listen to about the L-word wouldn’t fix the annoyance of Windows. Annoyance itself may be harmless but everyone knows Windows is privacy-invasive and vulnerable to malware, viruses, keyloggers, etc. So staying too long there, refusing to learn some solution, something really bad might happen to you eventually. Honestly, something like that did happen to ourselves recently. Our community lost a lot of money, apparently stolen by attacker(s)—exactly what happened is still unknown, but the victimized wallet was on Ubuntu connected to Windows 10 via SSH.

You don’t need to ditch Windows. I respect your freedom to use non-free software. In fact, many L-word systems do include non-free blobs too!

That being said, may I suggest that you try different OS(es) just for 10 minutes, booted from a USB stick, when you have time, to see what it’s like. You might be surprised because it just works, actually more intuitive, you can use it easily, not to mention you’re not forced to see ads. Or no invasive telemetry. Feel free to ignore this suggestion if you really love Windows, thinking it’s the best OS ever. I respect freedom of thought!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I’ve found two possible solutions:

  • If you use some kind of Lemmy reader instead of using a browser, it may have a filtering function, like “hide post including this word” like using regex.
  • “After complaining yesterday about seeing too much Linux content in the Fediverse” — this Lemmy user seemed to have experienced a similar problem, and finally found a fundamental (albeit rather unexpected) solution. Read more: https://lemmy.world/post/8107430