9 ms·

As a longtime Windows 7 fan that refused to upgrade until I finally bought a new laptop with it I have been absolutely shocked by Windows 10's aggressive user-h

by guelo 8y ago

As a longtime Windows 7 fan that refused to upgrade until I finally bought a new laptop with it I have been absolutely shocked by Windows 10's aggressive user-hostility. The way they reset settings after forced upgrades should be criminal. The way the user has no control over certain Microsoft processes unless they have been lucky enough to be allowed to pay for a Group Policy Editor license should also be criminal. The ads, the nags, the surveillance. It is not an operating system I can use anymore. They have lost me for life. I'll be switching to Mac and Linux from here on out.

amatecha 8y ago
Yeah, I just helped someone set up a new Win 10 laptop and I felt so bad for them with how unintuitive and instrusive of a process it was. It pushes you towards making/using an online Microsoft account, and making a non-internet account on the computer is a tiny text button (no outline, just text) which NO computer novice is going to know. Can only guess how many users have their online identity now permanently linked with their home computer usage because they thought they have to. Just seems so predatory and manipulative. I mean, at the bare minimum, software companies (especially the most prominent and prevalent ones) should be adopting the "principle of least astonishment"[0] and not enabling sketchy crap by default. Also simply starting up a new computer and getting going shouldn't require paging through 5+ pages of inexplicable configuration steps that cannot possibly be effectively summarized by a one-line 12pt-font description. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishmen...
- exodust 8y ago
  I'm about to set up a new PC for a relative with Win 10 Home, parts have just arrived. Any advice on set up procedures or things I can do to keep Microsoft from spying on them and collecting their data? Or is it just not possible any more? Surely I can install the OS without creating a MS account? My intention is to disable all the nags, bloat and advertising bullying, leaving only an essential OS that doesn't bully my non-technical relatives.
  - lurker_primo 8y ago
    You can have an offline account which is not connected to a microsoft account in any way. They try to force you to connect a microsoft account. There are scripts that disable all telemetry - reddit.com/r/tronscript is a good resource. The issue is that we don't know when Microsoft turns it back on.
    - exodust 8y ago
      Okay thanks. The PC I'm assembling is for an 80yo guy who doesn't trust the internet, and would be horrified to learn how much Microsoft wants to track his usage. I won't be telling him about that. He deletes emails and even text messages as soon as he's read them, for fear of them causing problems. The last thing he wants is Windows popping up some message, contextually trying to be smart and know what he's doing without him inviting that bot into his world. Microsoft (and other giants) simply don't get it.
      - zozbot123 8y ago
        > The PC I'm assembling is for an 80yo guy who doesn't trust the internet Why are you setting this guy up with Windows 10 then, instead of a system that actually respects the user and has decent security, like Debian GNU/Linux? (There is an enduring notion that Debian systems are hard to install or administer for the casual user, but one might argue that it is 5 years out of date - maybe even 10 years out of date.) Does he rely on some Windows-only hardware or software of some sort - and if so, could he run that on a dedicated, airgapped system?
      - Casseres 8y ago
        Does he need any Windows-only software? If not, set him up with Linux. He's less susceptable to clicking on the wrong thing and getting malware as well. There are some very user-friendly GUIs out there that are easy to install.
    - eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
      I’ve been running my Windows 10 desktop this way for a while. Prepare for a lot of nags about logging in to a Microsoft account.
blitmap 8y ago
The only user-hostile behavior I mostly agree with his forced, frequent updates. It would be better if: 1) Microsoft didn't beta-test with actual customers. 2) Microsoft figured out how to update things without restarting so commonly (as I understand, this is due to how files are locked and how dependent services are updated). 3) Microsoft didn't push out unnecessary crap as "critical" or essential/important updates. 4) Microsoft didn't force updates on shutdown. I mean Apple has made their phones the preferred secure devices of several organizations because of how well they keep them updated. It's a pain for me in IT when an app wants to require a recently-released version of iOS, but I do see the benefit to forced, frequent updates.
- jstimpfle 8y ago
  My Win10 PC sometimes wakes up in the night to complete an update and reboot. My working sessions are lost as a consequence. And since my PC reboots to Linux it stays up until I wake up due to the humming. Quite annoying. This morning I researched a way to turn off these forced updates but Win10 wouldn't let me apply the option without entering some obscure credentials that I don't know.
  - shawnz 8y ago
    But wouldn't it be better if your apps supported hot exit, so you could wake up the next morning with updates already installed AND all your work still there?
    - rcxdude 8y ago
      It would be better if updating didn't require a restart.
    - jstimpfle 8y ago
      Well, they don't. And more generally, restoring the original session state, whether after a "hot exit" or not, is not really possible. Processes are bound to a running OS. Shutting down causes closed file descriptors, broken TCP connections, and what not. No matter how much effort you are willing to put into restoring a session, it will be unreliable at best.
131012 8y ago
What enrages me most is the fact that they ask us to f* pay for it! The implicit deal with Facebook, Google and other free services is that you pay them with their data. Fine. But paying for being spied on? This is scam pure and simple.
- linuxftw 8y ago
  There's a (more than one, really) wonderful free operating system alternative that you can install on almost any PC. At the very least, you can dual boot. Critical mass starts with you.
  - monetus 8y ago
    How do you feel about critical mass for average users though? Debian updating its repositories every two years is kind of antithetical to the android and mac idea of software repositories. I've not tried elementaryOS, but I thought it was similar.
    - linuxftw 8y ago
      Plenty of software vendors provide packages that are compatible across releases such as google chrome and mariadb. Checkout Mariadb's releases for Ubuntu: http://mirrors.syringanetworks.net/mariadb//mariadb-10.3.11/repo/ubuntu/dists/ http://mirrors.syringanetworks.net/mariadb//mariadb-10.3.11/... Just the system packages need to be stable (eg, distro's repos). Also worth mentioning is snaps and flatpacks (though I'm not personally a fan, they do exist).
    - zozbot123 8y ago
      Debian updates its stable release repositories every two years (aside from pure bugfixes and the like, of course) because this is what it takes to have a rock-solid software release-- with a truly negligible amount of issues for the computer-naïve "average user" to be bitten by-- given the resources they have at present and the overall state of upstream software. If people want more frequent updates, coupled with the same overall reliability that Debian has always been known for (far more than many other Linux distributions), they're welcome to contribute.
zozbot123 8y ago
Many free-software and open-source advocates would of course not be shocked at this. They would tell you that this is why it is a grievous mistake to rely on proprietary software for your baseline computing needs. And of course Microsoft LOVES open source these days, so it has selflessly embarked on a mission to prove them right.
Taylor_OD 8y ago
I've noticed my computer now restarts, reopens all the applications I had running, and sometimes even has them all in the same positions I left them in. If I didnt get signed out of Steam and my VPN wasnt open I wouldnt even notice half the time. I want to be able to decide if my computer updates... It's not even that big of an ask.
- kowdermeister 8y ago
  > reopens all the applications I had running, and sometimes even has them all in the same positions I left them in That's a really great feature. I'd love to see even better window management in 10.
  - saltyshake 8y ago
    Its super annoying with YouTube. Even a full Shutdown/Restart, I open the machine and boom, Chrome opens and the speakers are blasting whatever I had playing on YouTube the day before. Shutdowns should be respected. What if I had something inappropriate open before doing the shutdown ?
    - gknoy 8y ago
      Incognito mode should prevent one aspect of that - Chrome won't remember what it had open as soon as the tab is closed (useful for bank account info, etc).
      - totony 8y ago
        Except this is Windows re-opening the apps (probably from hibernated RAM), so incognito would likely not work
        lostmsu 8y ago
        I don't think it's possible. Must be the apps themselves.
    - 8y ago
Digital-Citizen 8y ago
> They [Microsoft] have lost me for life. I'll be switching to Mac and Linux from here on out. The power you rightly object to is not limited to Microsoft, or the Windows OS. That power comes from the power of proprietary software over the user. All proprietors possess that power and leverage that power largely in ways we can't describe in detail until it is too late to stop it from being used against users. But we know that all proprietary software is untrustworthy precisely because it doesn't respect a user's software freedom. Microsoft got caught leveraging that power against their users before, this isn't new. But given how long it took us to learn about some of their abuses, it's a safe bet that there are other ways they have of using the Windows OS to report on the user without their consent and do anything else the endpoint is capable of doing. After all, Microsoft has a universal back door on every version of Windows. Since a lot of those endpoints are connected to the Internet, it is not hard to get those endpoints to do whatever Microsoft wants them to do. https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-microsoft.html https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-microsoft.html has a list of Microsoft's back doors, insecurities, DRM, instances of surveilling users, and more. Switching to Apple won't address the underlying problem -- a lack of software freedom. There's plenty we know about Apple's proprietary malware too listed at https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-apple.html https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-apple.html. But picking one proprietor over another isn't gaining freedom, it's switching masters. Consider a free software GNU/Linux distribution (some are listed at https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html) and run it on hardware you get to control (https://www.fsf.org/ryf https://www.fsf.org/ryf has pointers to such hardware), and then install nothing but free software on top of that. That will go quite a ways to keeping you in control to the degree you're willing to look into things or have others do this work for you. I find it's a big job I can't do all myself, so I have to trust others in this. There's no known guarantee against malware. But a free system is the best practical means to avoid malware, and computer security is impossible without free software. The structure of proprietary software immediately tells me that we simply can't do away with the malware you mention if we run proprietary software. You'll also need to have a stiffened spine against those who try to frame the issue around convenience -- run the software on this website, install and run this program, etc. -- because there are a lot of ways to run proprietary software on your computer these days (installed or not). Liberating yourself from forced upgrades, ignored/reset settings, advertising, nagging, surveillance, DRM, and more is all possible. But not with proprietary software.
Crosseye_Jack 8y ago
> The way the user has no control over certain Microsoft processes unless they have been lucky enough to be allowed to pay for a Group Policy Editor license should also be criminal. regedit.exe All the tweaks I make to friend's & family's machines can be done in either the registry or in GPE, Its just GPE is a bit more user friendly than regedit but when I've come across a home licensed machine I can still make all the needed tweaks in the registry. > The way they reset settings after forced upgrades should be criminal. They have stopped the resetting of privacy settings after updates. I only notice major resets with large insider build updates (But those updates are more "refresh installs" then "Update installs" so I will let them off on that one) apart from one thing... Audio. Seems like they are transitioning audio config from control panel to Settings and every now and then they reset my preferred audio settings But I do have a pretty weird audio set up.

by guelo 8y ago

amatecha 8y ago

Yeah, I just helped someone set up a new Win 10 laptop and I felt so bad for them with how unintuitive and instrusive of a process it was. It pushes you towards making/using an online Microsoft account, and making a non-internet account on the computer is a tiny text button (no outline, just text) which NO computer novice is going to know. Can only guess how many users have their online identity now permanently linked with their home computer usage because they thought they have to. Just seems so predatory and manipulative. I mean, at the bare minimum, software companies (especially the most prominent and prevalent ones) should be adopting the "principle of least astonishment"[0] and not enabling sketchy crap by default. Also simply starting up a new computer and getting going shouldn't require paging through 5+ pages of inexplicable configuration steps that cannot possibly be effectively summarized by a one-line 12pt-font description. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishmen...

exodust 8y ago
I'm about to set up a new PC for a relative with Win 10 Home, parts have just arrived. Any advice on set up procedures or things I can do to keep Microsoft from spying on them and collecting their data? Or is it just not possible any more? Surely I can install the OS without creating a MS account? My intention is to disable all the nags, bloat and advertising bullying, leaving only an essential OS that doesn't bully my non-technical relatives.
- lurker_primo 8y ago
  You can have an offline account which is not connected to a microsoft account in any way. They try to force you to connect a microsoft account. There are scripts that disable all telemetry - reddit.com/r/tronscript is a good resource. The issue is that we don't know when Microsoft turns it back on.
  - exodust 8y ago
    Okay thanks. The PC I'm assembling is for an 80yo guy who doesn't trust the internet, and would be horrified to learn how much Microsoft wants to track his usage. I won't be telling him about that. He deletes emails and even text messages as soon as he's read them, for fear of them causing problems. The last thing he wants is Windows popping up some message, contextually trying to be smart and know what he's doing without him inviting that bot into his world. Microsoft (and other giants) simply don't get it.
    - zozbot123 8y ago
      > The PC I'm assembling is for an 80yo guy who doesn't trust the internet Why are you setting this guy up with Windows 10 then, instead of a system that actually respects the user and has decent security, like Debian GNU/Linux? (There is an enduring notion that Debian systems are hard to install or administer for the casual user, but one might argue that it is 5 years out of date - maybe even 10 years out of date.) Does he rely on some Windows-only hardware or software of some sort - and if so, could he run that on a dedicated, airgapped system?
    - Casseres 8y ago
      Does he need any Windows-only software? If not, set him up with Linux. He's less susceptable to clicking on the wrong thing and getting malware as well. There are some very user-friendly GUIs out there that are easy to install.
  - eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
    I’ve been running my Windows 10 desktop this way for a while. Prepare for a lot of nags about logging in to a Microsoft account.

blitmap 8y ago

The only user-hostile behavior I mostly agree with his forced, frequent updates. It would be better if: 1) Microsoft didn't beta-test with actual customers. 2) Microsoft figured out how to update things without restarting so commonly (as I understand, this is due to how files are locked and how dependent services are updated). 3) Microsoft didn't push out unnecessary crap as "critical" or essential/important updates. 4) Microsoft didn't force updates on shutdown. I mean Apple has made their phones the preferred secure devices of several organizations because of how well they keep them updated. It's a pain for me in IT when an app wants to require a recently-released version of iOS, but I do see the benefit to forced, frequent updates.

jstimpfle 8y ago
My Win10 PC sometimes wakes up in the night to complete an update and reboot. My working sessions are lost as a consequence. And since my PC reboots to Linux it stays up until I wake up due to the humming. Quite annoying. This morning I researched a way to turn off these forced updates but Win10 wouldn't let me apply the option without entering some obscure credentials that I don't know.
- shawnz 8y ago
  But wouldn't it be better if your apps supported hot exit, so you could wake up the next morning with updates already installed AND all your work still there?
  - rcxdude 8y ago
    It would be better if updating didn't require a restart.
  - jstimpfle 8y ago
    Well, they don't. And more generally, restoring the original session state, whether after a "hot exit" or not, is not really possible. Processes are bound to a running OS. Shutting down causes closed file descriptors, broken TCP connections, and what not. No matter how much effort you are willing to put into restoring a session, it will be unreliable at best.

131012 8y ago

What enrages me most is the fact that they ask us to f* pay for it! The implicit deal with Facebook, Google and other free services is that you pay them with their data. Fine. But paying for being spied on? This is scam pure and simple.

linuxftw 8y ago
There's a (more than one, really) wonderful free operating system alternative that you can install on almost any PC. At the very least, you can dual boot. Critical mass starts with you.
- monetus 8y ago
  How do you feel about critical mass for average users though? Debian updating its repositories every two years is kind of antithetical to the android and mac idea of software repositories. I've not tried elementaryOS, but I thought it was similar.
  - linuxftw 8y ago
    Plenty of software vendors provide packages that are compatible across releases such as google chrome and mariadb. Checkout Mariadb's releases for Ubuntu: http://mirrors.syringanetworks.net/mariadb//mariadb-10.3.11/repo/ubuntu/dists/ http://mirrors.syringanetworks.net/mariadb//mariadb-10.3.11/... Just the system packages need to be stable (eg, distro's repos). Also worth mentioning is snaps and flatpacks (though I'm not personally a fan, they do exist).
  - zozbot123 8y ago
    Debian updates its stable release repositories every two years (aside from pure bugfixes and the like, of course) because this is what it takes to have a rock-solid software release-- with a truly negligible amount of issues for the computer-naïve "average user" to be bitten by-- given the resources they have at present and the overall state of upstream software. If people want more frequent updates, coupled with the same overall reliability that Debian has always been known for (far more than many other Linux distributions), they're welcome to contribute.

zozbot123 8y ago

Many free-software and open-source advocates would of course not be shocked at this. They would tell you that this is why it is a grievous mistake to rely on proprietary software for your baseline computing needs. And of course Microsoft LOVES open source these days, so it has selflessly embarked on a mission to prove them right.

Taylor_OD 8y ago

I've noticed my computer now restarts, reopens all the applications I had running, and sometimes even has them all in the same positions I left them in. If I didnt get signed out of Steam and my VPN wasnt open I wouldnt even notice half the time. I want to be able to decide if my computer updates... It's not even that big of an ask.

kowdermeister 8y ago
> reopens all the applications I had running, and sometimes even has them all in the same positions I left them in That's a really great feature. I'd love to see even better window management in 10.
- saltyshake 8y ago
  Its super annoying with YouTube. Even a full Shutdown/Restart, I open the machine and boom, Chrome opens and the speakers are blasting whatever I had playing on YouTube the day before. Shutdowns should be respected. What if I had something inappropriate open before doing the shutdown ?
  - gknoy 8y ago
    Incognito mode should prevent one aspect of that - Chrome won't remember what it had open as soon as the tab is closed (useful for bank account info, etc).
    - totony 8y ago
      Except this is Windows re-opening the apps (probably from hibernated RAM), so incognito would likely not work
      - lostmsu 8y ago
        I don't think it's possible. Must be the apps themselves.
  - 8y ago

Digital-Citizen 8y ago

> They [Microsoft] have lost me for life. I'll be switching to Mac and Linux from here on out. The power you rightly object to is not limited to Microsoft, or the Windows OS. That power comes from the power of proprietary software over the user. All proprietors possess that power and leverage that power largely in ways we can't describe in detail until it is too late to stop it from being used against users. But we know that all proprietary software is untrustworthy precisely because it doesn't respect a user's software freedom. Microsoft got caught leveraging that power against their users before, this isn't new. But given how long it took us to learn about some of their abuses, it's a safe bet that there are other ways they have of using the Windows OS to report on the user without their consent and do anything else the endpoint is capable of doing. After all, Microsoft has a universal back door on every version of Windows. Since a lot of those endpoints are connected to the Internet, it is not hard to get those endpoints to do whatever Microsoft wants them to do. https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-microsoft.html https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-microsoft.html has a list of Microsoft's back doors, insecurities, DRM, instances of surveilling users, and more. Switching to Apple won't address the underlying problem -- a lack of software freedom. There's plenty we know about Apple's proprietary malware too listed at https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-apple.html https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-apple.html. But picking one proprietor over another isn't gaining freedom, it's switching masters. Consider a free software GNU/Linux distribution (some are listed at https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html) and run it on hardware you get to control (https://www.fsf.org/ryf https://www.fsf.org/ryf has pointers to such hardware), and then install nothing but free software on top of that. That will go quite a ways to keeping you in control to the degree you're willing to look into things or have others do this work for you. I find it's a big job I can't do all myself, so I have to trust others in this. There's no known guarantee against malware. But a free system is the best practical means to avoid malware, and computer security is impossible without free software. The structure of proprietary software immediately tells me that we simply can't do away with the malware you mention if we run proprietary software. You'll also need to have a stiffened spine against those who try to frame the issue around convenience -- run the software on this website, install and run this program, etc. -- because there are a lot of ways to run proprietary software on your computer these days (installed or not). Liberating yourself from forced upgrades, ignored/reset settings, advertising, nagging, surveillance, DRM, and more is all possible. But not with proprietary software.

Crosseye_Jack 8y ago

> The way the user has no control over certain Microsoft processes unless they have been lucky enough to be allowed to pay for a Group Policy Editor license should also be criminal. regedit.exe All the tweaks I make to friend's & family's machines can be done in either the registry or in GPE, Its just GPE is a bit more user friendly than regedit but when I've come across a home licensed machine I can still make all the needed tweaks in the registry. > The way they reset settings after forced upgrades should be criminal. They have stopped the resetting of privacy settings after updates. I only notice major resets with large insider build updates (But those updates are more "refresh installs" then "Update installs" so I will let them off on that one) apart from one thing... Audio. Seems like they are transitioning audio config from control panel to Settings and every now and then they reset my preferred audio settings But I do have a pretty weird audio set up.