Linux

I recently had a spare machine sitting around doing nothing and was feeling a bit masochistic, so I decided to install Windows 11 on it just to see what it was like. I've used Windows 10 a tiny bit but essentially haven't touched Windows in years. A couple of the fun things I noticed:

• After installing, I was going to set a new wallpaper. I double-clicked on a jpeg file and instead of opening it, it popped up with a window asking me what I wanted to do with this apparently unknown file type. I literally said out loud, "what do you mean, it's a fucking jpeg." Then it did the same thing for a .zip.

• I also made a restore point once I had all the basics installed, so I could roll back when Windows inevitably fucked up doing an update. I then did the first big update and it fucked it up. "No worries" I thought, "I made a restore point!" I went to restore it, and discovered that for some unknown reason Windows only saves one restore point. This wouldn't have been a problem, except that Windows had decided to fuck itself up, and then automatically overwrite the manual save point with it's own save point from immediately after it fucked itself up, leaving that as the only thing to restore to.

I then quite sensibly formatted the drive and went back to using Linux.

I'm assuming the windows machine is a work PC and the Linux is yours right?

Because what you describe doesn't sound like a "windows" issue but rather an IT management issue.

You can put off updates and reboots a very long time. And always be able yo postpone them.

Applying updates on boot daily sounds dumb to me. But I'm also figuring your IT dept has poor (or no) sense in managing their inventory well. Most updates can be applied silently at a scheduled time.

Also, your machine sounds old and/or poorly maintained the way you describe it. If its more than 5 years old your company is just cheap.

I'm all for griping about Windows but this seems off to me.

This sounds like a problem with your organization. I use windows at the hospital where I work, and we don't run into these kinds of issues. Yeah it is rife with other issues like goading you into using microsoft edge, one drive, and more, but updates are handled by IT.

I've only worked at one software company where devs where allowed to install Linux as their OS. It was awesome... except when there was an update and then you had an urgent request from management while you where fixing what the update broke

You want to use Linux and yet you don't know what a newline character is?

I have a channel on my team's Slack were I just vent off on these kind of situations 😬

#windows-is-the-best, inspired from #gitlab-is-the-best, the chan were everyone vents off when the CI refuses to pick up workers 😅

I actually would really prefer for companies to just provide us virtual machines and I can connect to vpn and then to the work hosts. This way I can use my own setup.

I unplugged my company issued Windows 11 Dell laptop from its charger yesterday so that I could go ask a manager a question in their office, and the entire computer just shut the fuck off despite having full charge. I'm so glad I moved all my personal stuff to Linux.

Fuck Windows and Microsoft really.

🙏🙏🙏 testify, brother.

Windows also used to show me the ugly face of Trump in the start menu even if I didn't ask for it. That was more than 4 years ago. Recently was accidentally hovering over some 'copilot' button in Edge of a friend. And again - pop-up with Trump. So yes: fuck Windows, fuck Microsoft

Our work is the opposite. As soon as a new machine arrives we go straight to BIOS at boot, switch the settings and install Linux immediately. Windows never sees the light of day. I do feel for you as we do do sales calls and in the middle of sales calls the people that we are calling have their computers reboot on them, do an update, or I've just got to restart and on restart it does an update and huge amounts of time are wasted on those people.

Windows probably costs the world millions a day in wasted, for time for shit like that.

because it takes a like 3 or 4 minutes to boot

What kind of PC is this? Does it have an SSD?

Windows fr thinks that getting updates done is more important than getting work done.

I’m no Windows fanboy but I have to use it quite a lot, at home and at work. I don’t know what versions or settings you guys have set up but I’ve never had a Windows update I can’t postpone, ever.

I've been saying this for 30+ years, but no-one wanted to listen.

my boss told me today if we moved to literally any non-microsoft platform or software, i'd be out of a job.

and he's right. most of us only have careers because microsoft can't push out a software that's more than barebone functional - and everyone use them even if there are far superior alternatives out there literally only because of familiarity.

i'm not planning to stop giving microsoft shit of course. they should be criminally prosecuted over their exchange service even and how it's blacklisting competitors to force businesses onto the platform a la microsoft classic tactics. but eh.

This. If updates are SO important, then Windows can do it while it's shutting down.

luckily i can wipe my work laptop and install linux (for now, there are discussions about not letting unmanaged devices on the network at some point...), but what annoys me is seeing how much tax money we send straight to microsoft. i work in the education sector in europe and the majority of the company's funds comes from the government, to send millions of that straight to the US, especially with the politics going on right now, seems like a horrible idea. and SO many others are doing the same thing, i swear if we invested just 10% of it into FOSS the world would be a better place already and we'd all save money.

If you’re stuck with Windows for corporate-issued computers, the next time this happens you can abort shutdowns in Windows.

Command Prompt:

shutdown /a

Saved me several times over the years.