7 ms·

Meanwhile, Windows has become an acceptable Unix. (I'm not trolling.) I don't want to admit this, but I've been wondering whether, over the long term, FOSS stuf

Meanwhile, Windows has become an acceptable Unix. (I'm not trolling.) I don't want to admit this, but I've been wondering whether, over the long term, FOSS stuff really can't match the quality of a sustained commercial endeavor.

rbanffy 7y ago
Working on updates 30% complete Don't turn off your computer
- pjmlp 7y ago
  I just saw our Macs on the office do the same thing.
  - bad_user 7y ago
    Does it do that automatically, closing apps doing stuff? (I have a Mac, it never did) One trick sysadmins did on Windows was to keep Notepad with an unsaved file running, because it was able to interrupt the forced system restart.
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      I am mostly on Windows, but in both cases those updates get actually forced on all machines by IT remote management tooling.
      - bad_user 7y ago
        We don't have "IT remote management tooling". I would be surprised if it happened for Macs, since it's one of those things that can lead to work being lost and it's incredibly stupid. Also the situation I described happens for personal computers outside of remote corporate control. When Windows updates, you get a dialog saying that the computer will restart soon and if you're not there to stop it from doing that, it will force close all apps. One side effect is that you can't leave it alone to process something and heavens forbid leaving it on as a personal server for you to connect remotely to it because it will shut down. And to make matters worse, Microsoft is pushing those updates frequently and depending on whether you got the shitty version or the expensive version, you can't disable this behavior.
        pjmlp 7y ago
        We surely have it on any enterprise I have worked for with Macs around. And they even have anti-virus running due to compliance with security regulations.
  - Karunamon 7y ago
    They probably weren't kicked out of what they were doing or lost work as a result. MacOS is comparatively much better-behaved when it comes to update behavior.
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      Actually they were, remote update push from IT.
      - rbanffy 7y ago
        When an admin, local or remote, tells a computer to restart, it should restart. That's the computer working as intended. What we are talking about is a program that updates the system kicking users out and spending a very long time doing things the user finds opaque.
  - rbanffy 7y ago
    Fetched 1,321 kB in 1s (1,054 kB/s) Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done All packages are up to date.
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      Anecdote
- garaetjjte 7y ago
  Failure configuring Windows updates Reverting changes And it does that (update and revert cycle) every boot..
newsoul2019 7y ago
You may be right (about Windows) but I am not going to pay $100 (for a new Windows license) or so to find out. edit for clarity
- alphabetam 7y ago
  You can buy online-only keys for about 10€ on amazon. They work well, although they are not transferrable to a new pc.
  - genera1 7y ago
    Those cheap Amazon keys are still not legal, so you might as well pirate Windows
    - jhasse 7y ago
      Pirating Windows is a lot riskier (think downloading random unlock.exe files) while the key gives you a fully working functional official Windows without any hassles.
    - sekh60 7y ago
      Thank you! I hate people on Reddit who advocate for those cheap keys. If you don't follow the license you are pirating it. Simple as that. Now whether or not piracy is okay is a whole different issue.
- JaimeThompson 7y ago
  You can just download a trial from MSFT if you want to try it. https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/virtual-machines https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/virt...
- pault 7y ago
  FWIW I was a die hard Linux user for ten years, and I usually never ran a desktop environment in favor of tmux and vim. About a year ago I started a new job at a dotnet shop and had to switch to Windows. I dreaded it at first, and I still do have to fight the OS to preserve my privacy, but overall I am loving it. Vscode with the new wsl extensions and vim bindings is the best IDE I've ever used, and the new terminal emulator is amazing. The upcoming version of WSL will be shipping a full linux kernel, and having the software library of Windows with the productivity of Linux is a win win as far as I'm concerned. Using so much closed source software makes me feel yucky, but I've never been more productive. YMMV.
mixmastamyk 7y ago
It also comes with some ugly trade-offs, like giving up the notion of privacy.
alpaca128 7y ago
For me, "acceptable" implies full control over updates, among other things. In that regard Windows only got worse. Their system's update behaviour would only be justified if the updates were absolutely perfect on all devices. They aren't, not even on their own Surface hardware. And after one of the updates started without even giving me time to close files and then proceeded to completely wipe my system drive I can't see me using Windows ever again unless drastic changes are made. I fail to see the supposed "quality of a sustained commercial endeavor" here.
- nec4b 7y ago
  An update wiped out your system drive? Sounds very unlikely. There are millions of Windows 10 PCs if something like that happened it would be major news.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    It literally happens all the damn time, and it does make the news. Microsoft has had to recall several update roll outs on Windows 10 because they can't seem to make them stop breaking shit.
  - wila 7y ago
    It was major news [1], but afaik it "only" wiped all user data. Which quite frankly is just as bad. [1] https://www.windowscentral.com/windows-10-october-2018-update-seems-be-deleting-users-data https://www.windowscentral.com/windows-10-october-2018-updat...
    - nec4b 7y ago
      That's terrible, I thought that Microsoft had a somewhat better QA program. Though to be fair that is not what i would call wiping out the system drive, because you are still able to boot into Windows and similar things do happen on other operating systems.
      - toast0 7y ago
pjmlp 7y ago
Back in the NT days, had Microsoft actually invested into their POSIX subsystem, instead of having it around for DoD contracts, Linux would never had taken off. As proven by those that buy Apple to develop for Linux, a large majority only cares about having a POSIX like experience around.
- btilly 7y ago
  I doubt this. Back in the NT days, there really was a religious war of Microsoft vs everyone else. They really were seen as the evil empire, using anti-competitive behavior to force crap down everyone's throats. A lot of people felt that way, including me. For me it was easy to buy an Apple to develop for Linux. Why? It was Unix, and it wasn't Microsoft. If Microsoft had sold the exact same laptop with exactly the same operating system, I would have refused to buy it. Remember the motto Embrace, Extend, Extinguish? See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis... if you've forgotten. I've matured. I laugh at myself. But I have a deep sympathy for the old Unix people that I saw when I was young who had spent a lifetime fighting IBM only to see IBM playing nice with open source and having trouble accepting it at face value. Because no matter how much Microsoft tries to change, I still have trouble seeing them as anything other than the company that they were back in the late 90s, early OOs. Give them opportunity, and I'm still on alert for when the "extinguish" bit is coming.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    I felt that OEMs had a major role to play, it is so easy to blame Microsoft alone. Poor OEMs, enjoying their license deals. The same ones that now fill Android handsets with crap.
- Analemma_ 7y ago
  I'm not sure that's true. Windows did just fine siphoning off marketshare from the commercial Unixes without a POSIX subsystem, and Linux's original supporters were people who wanted a free Unix they could tinker with, and it started gaining market penetration when those people started getting sysdmin jobs and Linux was what they were most familiar with. I can't imagine they'd have used Windows instead just because it had a POSIX userspace- remember, this was when Microsoft was peak Evil Empire.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

rbanffy 7y ago

Working on updates 30% complete Don't turn off your computer

pjmlp 7y ago
I just saw our Macs on the office do the same thing.
- bad_user 7y ago
  Does it do that automatically, closing apps doing stuff? (I have a Mac, it never did) One trick sysadmins did on Windows was to keep Notepad with an unsaved file running, because it was able to interrupt the forced system restart.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    I am mostly on Windows, but in both cases those updates get actually forced on all machines by IT remote management tooling.
    - bad_user 7y ago
      We don't have "IT remote management tooling". I would be surprised if it happened for Macs, since it's one of those things that can lead to work being lost and it's incredibly stupid. Also the situation I described happens for personal computers outside of remote corporate control. When Windows updates, you get a dialog saying that the computer will restart soon and if you're not there to stop it from doing that, it will force close all apps. One side effect is that you can't leave it alone to process something and heavens forbid leaving it on as a personal server for you to connect remotely to it because it will shut down. And to make matters worse, Microsoft is pushing those updates frequently and depending on whether you got the shitty version or the expensive version, you can't disable this behavior.
      - pjmlp 7y ago
        We surely have it on any enterprise I have worked for with Macs around. And they even have anti-virus running due to compliance with security regulations.
- Karunamon 7y ago
  They probably weren't kicked out of what they were doing or lost work as a result. MacOS is comparatively much better-behaved when it comes to update behavior.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Actually they were, remote update push from IT.
    - rbanffy 7y ago
      When an admin, local or remote, tells a computer to restart, it should restart. That's the computer working as intended. What we are talking about is a program that updates the system kicking users out and spending a very long time doing things the user finds opaque.
- rbanffy 7y ago
  Fetched 1,321 kB in 1s (1,054 kB/s) Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done All packages are up to date.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Anecdote
garaetjjte 7y ago
Failure configuring Windows updates Reverting changes And it does that (update and revert cycle) every boot..

newsoul2019 7y ago

You may be right (about Windows) but I am not going to pay $100 (for a new Windows license) or so to find out. edit for clarity

alphabetam 7y ago
You can buy online-only keys for about 10€ on amazon. They work well, although they are not transferrable to a new pc.
- genera1 7y ago
  Those cheap Amazon keys are still not legal, so you might as well pirate Windows
  - jhasse 7y ago
    Pirating Windows is a lot riskier (think downloading random unlock.exe files) while the key gives you a fully working functional official Windows without any hassles.
  - sekh60 7y ago
    Thank you! I hate people on Reddit who advocate for those cheap keys. If you don't follow the license you are pirating it. Simple as that. Now whether or not piracy is okay is a whole different issue.
JaimeThompson 7y ago
You can just download a trial from MSFT if you want to try it. https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/virtual-machines https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/virt...
pault 7y ago
FWIW I was a die hard Linux user for ten years, and I usually never ran a desktop environment in favor of tmux and vim. About a year ago I started a new job at a dotnet shop and had to switch to Windows. I dreaded it at first, and I still do have to fight the OS to preserve my privacy, but overall I am loving it. Vscode with the new wsl extensions and vim bindings is the best IDE I've ever used, and the new terminal emulator is amazing. The upcoming version of WSL will be shipping a full linux kernel, and having the software library of Windows with the productivity of Linux is a win win as far as I'm concerned. Using so much closed source software makes me feel yucky, but I've never been more productive. YMMV.

mixmastamyk 7y ago

It also comes with some ugly trade-offs, like giving up the notion of privacy.

alpaca128 7y ago

For me, "acceptable" implies full control over updates, among other things. In that regard Windows only got worse. Their system's update behaviour would only be justified if the updates were absolutely perfect on all devices. They aren't, not even on their own Surface hardware. And after one of the updates started without even giving me time to close files and then proceeded to completely wipe my system drive I can't see me using Windows ever again unless drastic changes are made. I fail to see the supposed "quality of a sustained commercial endeavor" here.

nec4b 7y ago
An update wiped out your system drive? Sounds very unlikely. There are millions of Windows 10 PCs if something like that happened it would be major news.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  It literally happens all the damn time, and it does make the news. Microsoft has had to recall several update roll outs on Windows 10 because they can't seem to make them stop breaking shit.
- wila 7y ago
  It was major news [1], but afaik it "only" wiped all user data. Which quite frankly is just as bad. [1] https://www.windowscentral.com/windows-10-october-2018-update-seems-be-deleting-users-data https://www.windowscentral.com/windows-10-october-2018-updat...
  - nec4b 7y ago
    That's terrible, I thought that Microsoft had a somewhat better QA program. Though to be fair that is not what i would call wiping out the system drive, because you are still able to boot into Windows and similar things do happen on other operating systems.
    - toast0 7y ago

pjmlp 7y ago

Back in the NT days, had Microsoft actually invested into their POSIX subsystem, instead of having it around for DoD contracts, Linux would never had taken off. As proven by those that buy Apple to develop for Linux, a large majority only cares about having a POSIX like experience around.

btilly 7y ago
I doubt this. Back in the NT days, there really was a religious war of Microsoft vs everyone else. They really were seen as the evil empire, using anti-competitive behavior to force crap down everyone's throats. A lot of people felt that way, including me. For me it was easy to buy an Apple to develop for Linux. Why? It was Unix, and it wasn't Microsoft. If Microsoft had sold the exact same laptop with exactly the same operating system, I would have refused to buy it. Remember the motto Embrace, Extend, Extinguish? See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis... if you've forgotten. I've matured. I laugh at myself. But I have a deep sympathy for the old Unix people that I saw when I was young who had spent a lifetime fighting IBM only to see IBM playing nice with open source and having trouble accepting it at face value. Because no matter how much Microsoft tries to change, I still have trouble seeing them as anything other than the company that they were back in the late 90s, early OOs. Give them opportunity, and I'm still on alert for when the "extinguish" bit is coming.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  I felt that OEMs had a major role to play, it is so easy to blame Microsoft alone. Poor OEMs, enjoying their license deals. The same ones that now fill Android handsets with crap.
Analemma_ 7y ago
I'm not sure that's true. Windows did just fine siphoning off marketshare from the commercial Unixes without a POSIX subsystem, and Linux's original supporters were people who wanted a free Unix they could tinker with, and it started gaining market penetration when those people started getting sysdmin jobs and Linux was what they were most familiar with. I can't imagine they'd have used Windows instead just because it had a POSIX userspace- remember, this was when Microsoft was peak Evil Empire.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]