18 ms·

If you must run Windows 10

161 points by _o-O-o_ 7y ago

owenwil 7y ago
I see a lot of angry posts like this, but fail to understand how it's reflected in reality in 2019—I agree that Windows 10 was a little messy at launch, but it's come a long way from where many of these complaints seem to stem from. Yeah, Windows has a bad rap, but in the last 2-4 years has come leaps and bounds from where it was—implementing great, thoughtfully designed features on a regular basis, for free. With WSL2 and the other developer-focused improvements in tow, most of these are a shitlist of nitpicks, than things you'll run into every day. I switched from macOS about two years back, and couldn't see myself going the other way anymore ever again. But, that said, I can see why people want to stay there! That's the beauty of choice. These types of posts are based on historical grudges, rather than modern experiences with Windows. Sure, there's going to be annoying things to change out of the box, but every machine, with any OS, has that.
- zsrxx 7y ago
  See, your comment is the typical comment of someone who comes from macOS. The angry posts come from people who've been using Windows since forever.
  - inscionent 7y ago
    I honestly miss actively using both. Better to be angry with everyone.
  - owenwil 7y ago
    I was historically a Windows user and started my career as a Windows sysadmin for a few years—I switched to macOS for a few years and came back as it became increasingly buggy and Microsoft's development story changed. The complaints seem to come from heavily technical folks that think LTSB branches are reasonable things for normal people to run. I wouldn't want to run one on my own machine.
    - zsrxx 7y ago
      I've been using LTSC/LTSB for years. What's wrong with it?
      - owenwil 7y ago
        Sure, it's Windows 10 without any of the cruft—but also, none of the good bits. Believe it or not, but the Windows Store is great; managed updates of everything from Slack to Spotify, without individual updater components. Photos app, with support for HEIC files and so on, built in. These things are actually useful!
  - magashna 7y ago
    The missteps were W8-8.1 and WS2012. W10 and W2012R2 and beyond have been much better. Not perfect, but leagues better than the those disastrous years between. Remember when Windows Server 2012 didn't have a start menu button, but instead a pixel? I hope someone was fired for that blunder.
    - owenwil 7y ago
      Oh man, I'll tell you—Windows 8 was a beast of its own. I think that is how people remember Windows, and assume that Windows 10 is the same. But god, don't remind me of that awful full-screen server start menu..............I remember that's when we actively started to try and go full headless with Windows Server, but it was also half-baked back then.
  - Numberwang 7y ago
    I've been on Windows since forever and could not be happier. It's a great OS and apart from 10 minutes of customization it works fine. If I was on Linus I'd spend all my time on configurations and customization instead of more important things.
  - mikelyons 7y ago
    I was a windows guy, then did the "I got a mac and never looked back" and now I'm back on windows 10 and, yes I'm pissed off, but this comment is pretty well realistic. People have a tendency to say "never" when you really shouldn't say never.
- willis936 7y ago
  A serious and legitimate gripe with windows is how messy it is to automate things. It's hard to look at the command prompt the same way I look at bash. I resort to almost anything other than batch when I can.
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    Also try JScript. It's underrated.
  - JeremyBanks 7y ago
    It's hard to look at Bash the same way as I look at PowerShell. I resort to almost anything other than Bash when I can.
  - Analemma_ 7y ago
    If you are using batch scripts on Windows in 2019 you are most definitely Doing It Wrong. PowerShell (which for my money is better than bash) is the "official" scripting environment on contemporary Windows and batch file support is only included for backward compatibility with legacy scripts. Don't use it, ever.
  - pizza234 7y ago
    As Joel Spolsky put: > What are the cultural differences between Unix and Windows programmers? There are many details and subtleties, but for the most part it comes down to one thing: Unix culture values code which is useful to other programmers, while Windows culture values code which is useful to non-programmers. See https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/12/14/biculturalism https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/12/14/biculturalism.
    - JustSomeNobody 7y ago
      > Unix culture values code which is useful to other programmers, while Windows culture values code which is useful to non-programmers. I don't even know what that's supposed to mean.
      - 7y ago
- hackcasual 7y ago
  Some people are tired of an OS that by default phones home about actions you do on it, include advertisement in your start area, and regularly push updates to add new features that also break existing software.
  - owenwil 7y ago
    The 'phones home' argument doesn't really add up—there's plenty of control over this at this point, and every OS is calling home, macOS included, to some degree. The advertisements thing happens out of the box, and is trivial to remove (if my memory is correct, Safari harasses you about being the default browser, too, if you try to change it). The updates to add features thing.... isn't an issue for me, but YMMV.
    - fkdo 7y ago
      > every OS is calling home to some degree. It's funny to speak in absolutes. Plenty of operating systems don't phone home regularly, just not ones popular with consumers.
    - eslaught 7y ago
      > Safari harasses you about being the default browser But does it advertise to you by default? This seems not comparable at all. Pretty much every browser will want you to set it as default (and at least the option to stop the nagging is usually front and center). Maybe this is just me, but advertising by default in something as basic as a start screen seems very user hostile....
      - plorkyeran 7y ago
        I get semi-regular notifications in macOS telling me I should give Safari another try and I haven't found any way to turn them off.
        ymolodtsov 7y ago
        That’s interesting, I switched to Chrome months ago and haven’t seen any — even though I might open Safari from time to time.
- president 7y ago
  From a feature standpoint, Windows has definitely improved in the last few years, however, I don't see much improvement in terms of UX. To me, Windows development was always about "let's get this feature in so we can claim that we do X" but Microsoft has never proven themselves in terms of providing a cohesive experience in terms of inter-app behaviors or just UI/UX streamlining. This is extremely apparent when you look at their office apps (Outlook, Word, etc).
  - owenwil 7y ago
    The UX is incrementally improving in every release. Through just the last few major releases, you've gotten Airdrop-style sharing (the new Share menu), full system-wide indexing and instant search, a unified control panel and a ton of other things. They're moving fast, but incrementally enough that it may not be noticable—but I vastly prefer the fast-follow improvements over the 1-3 yearly 'big bang' releases Apple has done with macOS.
    - Arcanum-XIII 7y ago
      I’m not following the reasoning here. macOS is delivered anew once per year with more often than not big new feature (like a new File System). Those last year, macOS was released for free - and without tracking or ads. Windows is evolving twice per year, for the same free price, or at least till a new major version is out. The two update more or less offer big change in only one of those. For me, it feels the same at the end, with the exception of ads and tracking - that is a major difference.
    - hyperman1 7y ago
      That's basically the problem: If they stay on cours improving the UI, in 5 years or so we reach the consistency, polish, performance and usability that windows 2000 used to have. There are some nice improvements since then too, but also a lot of user-hostile functionality. It doesn't seem wort the trade off to me.
      - wvenable 7y ago
- bpyne 7y ago
  I use macOS at home but have Win10 in the office. I've been using Windows in some capacity since 3.1. Win10 is the first one I've found usable. Going from Win XP at home to OS X, I found it astounding that my PowerBook could go months without a reboot. Likewise, my MBP astounds me daily that I can't remember when I last rebooted. My employer's Win10 laptop is like that as well: I don't think about rebooting it anymore. MS is on a good trajectory, finally, with its os.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  I'm not a real power user - so my only real grudge with Windows 10 at that moment is the fact that control panel is a bifurcated mess - I really just want to get back to the classic window control, but I have to fight through the windows 10 UI until I get there.
- sdegutis 7y ago
  I think my main gripe with Windows is that it has one less app-accessible modifier key. As a power user, this is invaluable to me and Mac has it.
- charlesdaniels 7y ago
  As someone who has used Linux (with a few brief stints into macOS and BSD) for quite some time (since about 2012) coming from Windows before that, I don't understand the people who constantly defend Windows in these types of posts... In principle, the feature set that Windows 10 ships could be useful. I don't find it appealing personally, but if it works well for you then that's great. The issue that I have had is that every version of Windows I have used (from XP up to 10) has had serious reliability and performance problems. As a specific example, it seems that the one Windows machine that I keep around to play games on needs a complete re-install every 6-12 months, usually because Windows tries to update and bricks itself so badly that even "Windows Recovery" cannot salvage the install. This is a relatively nice machine (Haswell i5, 24GB DDR3), and I tend to stay on the happy path of just running the vanilla install plus Steam and a small number of games (never any programming, web browsing, etc.). In cases where I've had to use Windows for work, I've found that most of the built in programs lag and take a long amount of time to respond to keyboard or mouse inputs (in the specific cases I'm thinking of, this was on top-of-the line Dell Precision notebooks at the time). Most of my code seemed to run subjectively much slower natively on Windows than it did in a Linux VM running on the same machine. I'm not trying to be a power user of Windows, as I generally try to avoid using it as much as I can due to the bad experiences I've had in the past. I'm not doing any crazy registry editing or anything like that. Just pretty basic development work and gaming over the years. In that time, I've never had a Windows install where the features reliably worked, and the install remained stable for any period of time. This is all anecdotal of course. It's possible I've just be incredibly unlucky, or that I've had a string of a half dozen machines that have hardware that's somehow broken in a way that only affects Windows. So what I'm wondering is: all you people who keep chiming in on these types of posts claiming that Windows works well for your use case -- what are you doing? What's the secret to having it actually function reliably? I've not been able to replicate any such success.
  - owenwil 7y ago
    I've been using Windows 10 as my daily driver for web (PHP/Node/JS) development for over two years without the need to recover/format/reinstall at all. This is the exception, rather than the rule, at this point: https://char.gd/blog/2019/the-state-of-switching-to-windows-from-mac-in-2019 https://char.gd/blog/2019/the-state-of-switching-to-windows-...
- tootie 7y ago
  I really wish developers at least would be more indignant about Apple's closed ecosystem. The fact that you can't run OSX VMs, can't run iOS simulators anywhere but OSX, can't run builds without OSX. You have to pay Apple to deploy software to your Apple phone from your Apple computer. Microsoft was never this bad.
  - kakwa_ 7y ago
    Well, at least for OSX, you can technically run VMs, I've been doing it for a few years now (I needed one to troubleshoot CMake issues specific to OSX). For iOS, I would grant that. One last point is that OS X is partially Open Source (at least Darwin is) even if in actuality, nobody really cares about it (like building something on top of Darwin). In the end, neither of MS or Apple is my preferred choice anyway. I much prefer an OS I roughly understand (at least to some degree) each pieces and on wihch I could generally troubleshoot things (Linux, *BSD), even if I do acknowledge I'm far from your typical user being a "dev/sysadmin/devops/whatever it's called these days".
    - Osiris 7y ago
      He meant that you can't run OS X inside a VM.
- tomc1985 7y ago
  Many of us don't want new features, we want a stable OS that we control that stays out of our way. Windows 10 is not that.
- bbmario 7y ago
  I don't think the issues with Windows 10 bloat is historical. In fact, I recommend removing 10 and using 7 instead. 10 is just a bad joke that makes a brand new PC look like times square.
- stoolpigeon 7y ago
  I did a fresh windows 10 install on a brand new machine within the last month. There is advertising in the launcher (can't remember what windows calls it but the start menu). There are popups on the desktop from Microsoft that I haven't been able to stop. (Something about "Teams" and it's tied to having installed MS Office). I had to be sure I bought the Pro version, there are a lot of skus that don't include full disk encryption built in. Setting up bitlocker is not nearly as easy as setting up full disk encryption on Apple or Linux. I don't really consider that an optional feature so I don't understand why it's considered some kind of premium thing. Did you see in the linked article what it takes to turn off telemetry? Are you saying that this is not longer necessary and now it can be done in an easy, convenient way? It took me a while to clean up all the garbage apps MS bundle into it. The things that I see listed in the link are current and real.
- Scramblejams 7y ago
  I'm glad you like it, but I use Windows 10 daily and I have a bunch of ongoing issues with it. I had to have IT reimage a Win 10 Enterprise machine because Cortana had somehow gotten so screwed up (how? I turn it off) that my Start Menu stopped returning results and I couldn't launch anything by typing. On another Enterprise machine, my Start Menu periodically starts coming up black and then disappears. I have to force kill the Cortana process to get it working again. When I switch from corp to outside networking, DNS and routes often stop working correctly and I have to run a magic dance of network reset commands to get things going again, unless I want to reboot. Which I don't. A few months ago I started up a batch job to run overnight on a Win 10 Pro box. A Windows Update dialog popped up saying it was going to reboot my machine. I clicked the button to reschedule it for the next day. An hour later I passed by the machine and saw it rebooting and applying updates. (After that user hostile experience I switched the machine to Mint and haven't looked back. It ain't perfect, but it's much better, and I actually feel like I own the OS now.) To stop the telemetry I have to use a Pihole-like setup, which is great ... until I take my laptop somewhere else. Let's talk maintenance. When something goes wrong, Windows can be brutally complex to troubleshoot. That's why when you start having non-obvious problems with a Windows machine, most IT's knee-jerk answer is to reimage. And that's not even irrational. It's a rational response to the difficulty of diagnosing problems occurring in a complex black box. It ain't worth the time, so just wipe the thing. In contrast, I've never had to reinstall a production Linux machine due to misbehavior -- troubleshooting has always solved the problem. And force installing Candy Crush?! https://www.howtogeek.com/342871/hey-microsoft-stop-installing-apps-on-my-pc-without-asking/ https://www.howtogeek.com/342871/hey-microsoft-stop-installi... No no no no. Microsoft's treatment of their OS users can feel so exploitive. For me I place high value on feeling like I own my OS, and that includes requiring a modicum of stability and troubleshooting ease. For my sample size of however many Win10 machines I've dealt with over the years, that bar has not been cleared.
  - slenk 7y ago
    While I agree with some points, the computer restarting, DNS not working, etc seem like restrictions implemented by your corporate IT - not issues with Windows 10
- mcny 7y ago
  The main pain points for me come from Windows not being Unix-y enough (or at all). WSL2 will probably help with this. I am still at 1803 on my work computer so not holding my breath for WSL2 any time soon. It isn't really Windows' fault that my work computer has an i5-8500 six core processor coupled with a single DIMM of 8 GB and a $20 hard disk. I won't blame Windows for that. I won't blame Windows for Symantec Endpoint Protection that just has to check every single file just as I need to do npm install. My manager is sympathetic but we are powerless. I want to say something good about Windows as well: as far as I can see, there is no memory leak in Windows. Windows 10 is pretty solid. I still think there are two very low hanging fruits: 1. Prohibit OEM partners from shipping Windows 10-based PCs booting from a mechanical hard disk (yes even "SSHD"). Vendors can add a mechanical hard disk but may not boot from it. 2. By default, no automatic reboot without manual consent especially for consumers. Long term, look very hard into what kind of update requires a reboot and why. Be willing to break compatibility where required.
- switch007 7y ago
  WSL2 is going to cement this episode of Embrace, extend and extinguish, in part as it requires Hyper-V and therefore prevents the use of VirtualBox, VMware Workstation/Player etc. The freedoms of Linux (such as not having a boot loader assume it's the only OS on the disk) will be forgotten as people take the easy path of running WSL2 on the OS their computer came with. Is this a sufficiently-modern criticsm for you? A blog post from late 2018, which references things like an October 2018 Windows update, counts very much as a modern experience with Windows. I don't think it's fair to try to smear the author in that way.
  - jedieaston 7y ago
    VirtualBox can use the Hyper-V/Windows Hypervisor API to create full speed VMs even when Hyper-V is active. https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#hyperv-support https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#hyperv-support
    - switch007 7y ago
      I did not know that. However, a couple of caveats (from your link): > This is an experimental feature > When using this feature, you might experience significant Oracle VM VirtualBox performance degradation on some host systems.
  - jodrellblank 7y ago
    > this episode of Embrace, extend and extinguish Hyper-V is over ten years old. If it hasn't killed VirtualBox in that time, Microsoft offering a convenient Ubuntu VM is not going to be the death knell, trapping people who don't want to use Hyper-V in a nightmare situation of "having a removable Linux VM". > The freedoms of Linux (such as not having a boot loader assume it's the only OS on the disk) will be forgotten I've never noticed this as a complaint about developers using macOS for its Unix underpinnings, that they and Apple are not giving sufficient weight to the importance of a Linux bootloader.
- aznumeric 7y ago
  Windows 10 October 2018 update (1809) deleting users files from the My Documents folder hardly counts as historical.
- Arn_Thor 7y ago
  A substantial portion of requests blocked by my pi-hole is Windows telemetry. And I can't turn it off. That alone justifies a high level of righteous anger at Microsoft. And then, in the last update, it installed Teams, and caused it to always open on startup. Never did I agree to that installation. How can one trust a company that does that?
- maxheadroom 7y ago
  >...implementing great, thoughtfully designed features on a regular basis, for free. Haven't we already learned the underlying issue with the moniker of "free" from the likes of Facebook and Google?
- pergadad 7y ago
  I bought a new HP Envy for 900€ but spent more than an hour getting rid of all the bloat. There's McAfee and HP stuff due to McAffee but it's my first new win10 laptop (previously just upgrade 8->10 and I am utterly appalled by the amount of crapware Microsoft included. Pre-installed MS software, and ads and unwanted products everywhere. Candy crush and similar junk included in a fresh clean start menu. Microsoft OneDrive in autostart. Cortana permissions pretty much make you agree to ads and constant listening (no thanks!). Lots of telemetry. Self-installing updates that reset settings. Nags to use Edge and Microsoft services everywhere. It took me far too long to even find (and even recognise) all the different always-hidden and ambiguously phrased buttons to switch all these features off - and the next update will turn them on again. Why do I pay around €80 of the sales price for a license and still have to deal with all this intrusive upselling and ads?
gibspaulding 7y ago
There's some really great info in here! The school I work for has been pushing out an LTSB image to most of our PC's and I can attest that it is a huge improvement over Pro. The article also recommends Optimize-Offline and O&O ShutUp10 for users who can't get a license for the LTSC image. I hadn't heard of Optimize-Offline, but ShutUp10 is great for making Windows 10 way less annoying and invasive. I'll be checking out Optimize-Offline tonight!
- STRiDEX 7y ago
  I had a good experience with "tronscript" found here on reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/TronScript/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TronScript/ It removes a lot of the crap that ships with windows 10 along with disabling telemetry. It was a decent place to start with a new windows computer. github: https://github.com/bmrf/tron https://github.com/bmrf/tron
Kuraj 7y ago
I would be all over LTSB for all the things except lack of support for Microsoft Store apps, which I consider a vital feature - because for some apps this might be the only distribution channel available.
groundlogic 7y ago
I've been using Win 10 on my main desktop for the past four years or so. I almost feel embarassed for saying so. Microsoft definitely has a systemic "Software Quality Problem". It does get really embarassing at times. Or, at least I would hope someone there is embarassed. I'm not sure. Maybe Raymond Chen is the single one embarassed person and everyone else are new recruits happy to be there? Really, the only reason I run Windows 10 is that it's the fastest way to use the web, which is what I do all day long. The browsers are optimized for Windows in three critical ways: a) general rendering speed b) font rendering quality c) site quality/functionality - a particular browser not working with a particular site is a much more urgent issue on Windows, where 90% of the users are than anywhere else.
- oonis 7y ago
  Is this site saying that for 240 dollars I can buy LTSB? I've been trying to get a hold of a copy but unsure about the legality of those 30 dollar keys online since I don't understand licensing.
  - groundlogic 7y ago
    Mis-reply or spam? I dunno.
  - zamadatix 7y ago
    The site details the process and requirements pretty well, not sure if there is something in particular you are looking for it doesn't describe? As for the 30 dollar keys you can find online they will activate Windows but it won't actually be "legit", the requirements listed in the site are correct and you need a VL agreement and a CAL.
- beatgammit 7y ago
  Isn't ChromeOS faster than Windows in accessing the web? That's literally all it does, and it does it pretty well.
stuartd 7y ago
Another option without Edge, Cortana and Candy Crush is Windows Server 2019 which is what I have on my Dev PC. I’ve always run desktop server when I could - back to NT4 - initially to avoid any differences between local behaviour and deployed, though this is not really ever the case now. So now it’s for this reason - to avoid the cacophony of recent Windows versions, weird behaviour from updates and the like. I don’t know offhand how much a license is, mine is MSDN.
- ocdtrekkie 7y ago
  There are a number of challenges with using Server as a desktop OS. Sometimes utilities I want to use are $20-40 for a desktop PC, and $1000+ to install on a server OS, even though they are the same software. Sometimes apps just won't work because they are checking what OS you are using and don't like it. Recently I tried setting up a Windows Server 2019 install... to use as a home server... on my Intel NUC, only to discover that the Ethernet driver on the NUC has been intentionally omitted from Windows Server compatibility, because Intel wants you to use enterprise class hardware with Windows Servers. (If you plug in a USB to Ethernet dongle that uses a Realtek chip, Windows Server works fine on the NUC, but this is hilarious. There are also bad-hack ways to modify the Intel network driver so it installs on the Server OS.)
  - stuartd 7y ago
    I have had a few issues like that with software over the years, but nothing that there weren’t alternatives for. Never on hardware though. But you’re right, it can be a challenge.
  - user5994461 7y ago
    Last I worked on that, drivers had to be quite explicit about which OS version they support. Intel wouldn't be able to make drivers compatible with Windows Server 2019 given the OS was probably just released and the driver probably predates it.
    - ocdtrekkie 7y ago
ocdtrekkie 7y ago
LTSC is not intended as a desktop operating system. What people should be looking for is Enterprise: Which has all of the telemetry 0 options and such, but still works with modern Windows applications. It's highly likely especially after Windows 7 goes EOL, you'll start seeing a lot more consumer applications that depend on Windows 10 functionality that's not going to work in LTSC.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- throw0101a 7y ago
  > What people should be looking for is Enterprise: Does it take more effort to de-crappify non-LTSC Enterprise? Things like games, Store, Cortana, etc. Perhaps people are going with Enterprise LTSC because 'regular' Enterprise is still filled with too much garbage. Perhaps that should be telling Microsoft something.
  - ocdtrekkie 7y ago
    The problem here is your misunderstanding that the store is a problem: Many drivers and Windows features are now available via the Store (Here's the Intel Graphics Control Panel: https://www.microsoft.com/store/productId/9NDLCLMMTMRC https://www.microsoft.com/store/productId/9NDLCLMMTMRC), and this will continue over time. Literally Notepad is transitioning to distributing via the store next year. I think even Apple transitioned to recommending the Store-based install of iTunes on Windows. Cortana is being phased out of Windows 10 into a separate app, and eventually a replaceable component. Enterprise should install without any games/ads AFAIK.
- blub 7y ago
  The enterprise edition is not much better. The Dutch ministry of justice and security hired a company to investigate this and the conclusion was "New DPIA on Microsoft Office and Windows software: still privacy risks remaining". https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/rapporten/2019/06/11/data-protection-impact-assessment-windows-10-enterprise https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/rapporten/2019/06/11...
chadlavi 7y ago
Holy hell, I had no idea it was that bad over in PC land. I mean you _hear_ things, but jesus.
imposterr 7y ago
I've tried LTSC, and to be honest, I prefer Windows Server 2019. It had the ability to set the Telemetry to 0 as well, and has less stuff pre-installed.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Someone1234 7y ago
  Indeed true, but Windows Server 2019 is more expensive. [0] https://www.cdw.com/product/microsoft-windows-server-2019-essentials-license-1-server/5301531?pfm=srh https://www.cdw.com/product/microsoft-windows-server-2019-es...
astine 7y ago
I work for an MSP which supports Windows installs. The support teams apparently hate our LTSC customers because they require manual upgrades unlike the standard version.
bhauer 7y ago
Microsoft needs to realize they are doing their name harm by not giving power users and evangelist-style technologists an obvious and easily-selected low- or zero-surveillance Windows version. If this article is mislead to select LTSC instead of Enterprise as that option (as is suggested in this thread), the confusion of Microsoft's messaging is largely to blame. Microsoft should have marketing material aimed at individual technologists who want a premium Windows experience with ~0 surveillance.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > Microsoft needs to realize they are doing their name harm by not giving power users and evangelist-style technologists an obvious and easily-selected low- or zero-surveillance Windows version. Why can't they do this for everyone?
  - beatgammit 7y ago
    Because regular users don't seem to care, and Microsoft obviously gets some value out of it. If it's easy for power users to do it, it should be pretty easy for regular users to do so as well, it's just that power users would think to check.
jayess 7y ago
I guess I'll just say it. I love windows 10. I tried a mac for a couple of years and it feels like the OS is stuck in circa 2008.
timw4mail 7y ago
Maybe I just don't use Microsoft's built-in software that often, but I haven't had many issues with Windows 10.
radus 7y ago
Counter-anecdote: I'm the happiest I've ever been with Windows both as a development platform and for everyday use. The release of WSL has solved a lot of daily annoyances, and I'm hoping that the new Windows Terminal app will soon be usable so I can replace cmder which has been great, but a little clunky and slow in my experience. Other new features that I enjoy: Windows Sandbox, new Snip and Sketch, the current iteration of OneDrive (though I think I still prefer SkyDrive from many years ago..), Your Phone app for sending messages, emoji keyboard, clipboard history, local PIN instead of password.. I could go on but those are all things I use on a frequent basis and they make for a great experience.
- bytematic 7y ago
  Also the basic one that essentially all games work best on windows, if they even work for other platforms. And most applications have windows binaries keeps me using it at home. Love my mac for work dev, but once I'm home I feel very comfy with my windows 10 machine
- blub 7y ago
  Spying on users through so-called telemetry and the silly games are a fact, not anecdotes. I'd suggest that Windows fans should raise their standards a bit, otherwise for Windows 11 they will get a nice progress bar at each boot "uploading data to MS for mindcrime verification" and you have to pay for Windows in IAP gems you collect by playing games and watching ads.
  - radus 7y ago
    The bulk of the linked page talks about aspects of Windows 10 other than telemetry. If Windows 11 boots up with a progress bar that says "uploading data to MS for mindcrime verification", and requires me to play games and watch ads to pay for it, I will reconsider my OS choice. For now, I'm enjoying the OS and have dialed down the telemetry to a level that I am comfortable with.
chx 7y ago
This is so tiresome. I posted this to reddit: I installed my first Linux in 1994, before there was a Linux 1.0. I use Linux to this day on my router and my server. I have been using Linux as my daily driver 2004-2017. You can't say I haven't tried. I maintain anyone advocating to use Linux on a notebook has Stockholm syndrome or more amicably, uses a very narrow set of hardware and services ("plain" wifi, no bluetooth, no printers, no scanners, no Thunderbolt). Windows has a Linux subsystem, use it, it's great. Your choices include using Ubuntu or a similar system where the six month OS upgrade will break your system so badly you won't be able to work for days. Or you can use Arch where at least the main body of your system will stay alive (most of the time but not always) during rolling upgrades but "insignificant" pieces like MFC devices or bluetooth will break all the time. Mind https://xkcd.com/619/ https://xkcd.com/619/ And if you ever need to work with enterprises, their wifi, their VPN... the company will have an IT helpdesk ready to help with any glitches if you are running Windows or Mac but if you are running Linux? Sucks to be you. And it does suck. I now have an external GPU via Thunderbolt. I plug in, my monitor plugged into lights up, all my running programs move there. It's a nonevent. So is undocking. How would that work on Linux?? The hot-plugging-an-nVidia-GPU might be supported on paper but I am very happy not to need to configure that and even more not to need to keep that configuration working. And I don't think moving apps from one GPU to the next GPU would just work without an X restart. Nope. The driver support is so far superior in Windows it's not even funny. Sure the command line sucks but oh well, just use WSL. Use O&O Shutup to kill the controversial reporting back features. Enjoy. And then I got some answers and I looked up other Thunderbolt uses under Linux and the results... oh my. A quick check shows the Aquantia 10 GbE chipset driver [broke](https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/58174 https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/58174) from 4.15 to 4.16 fixed in 4.17 and then from 4.20 to 5.0 again and there is a patch but the [bug report](https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=202651 https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=202651) is still open (every affordable, single port 10 GbE TB3 adapter utilize this chipset).
- throw0101a 7y ago
  > Your choices include using Ubuntu or a similar system where the six month OS upgrade will break your system so badly you won't be able to work for days. Or Ubuntu LTS, where you only have to worry about things every five years (or two if you want to update). This is what is used by my local helpdesk, and things generally haven't been a problem from what I can tell.
throw0101a 7y ago
This post recommends LTSC because it has been pre-de-crappified (e.e., no Candy Crush pre-installed). However in January 2020 Microsoft will not support Office 365 (ProPlus?) on LTSC. This is because the 'official' LTSC use case is for things like medical devices, and not "regular" desktops. It's just that many IT sites got tired of the Windows 10 what-a-mole with non-helpful features, phone home stuff, etc, that they went with the cleaner version. Doing a quick search, it seems people are saying "just buy Office 2019" to square this circle. Can anyone comment the pro/cons of using Enterprise LTSC or not?
- jiggawatts 7y ago
  I'm facing this decision right now. To LTSC or not. I have to build a virtual desktop environment for an isolated network that is almost-but-not-quite a SCADA system. It's the monitoring and management bits, without the direct control. It's not ultra critical, but there's a strict uptime requirement, and a general preference for long-term service releases of everything where possible. Security and prevention of "data leakage" are also very important. Windows 10 just. does. not. work. out of the box as a VDI operating system. It will absolutely massacre your shared storage subsystem (even if it is all flash!) because every now and then it just "decides" on its own that applying a 4GB update to Minecraft is the most important thing in the world right now. For Enterprise editions there's on the order of 200 GPO settings and about 20 PowerShell scripts required to make it "behave", but these settings will break as soon as the next semi-annual release is applied because Microsoft is actively trying to circumvent customer controls over their own environments. For example, did you know that they use deliberately misspelled domain names such as "microsft.com" for telemetry URLs to try and trick hapless firewall admins? This is to work around their desperate customers who resorted to blocking "microsoft.com" in order to prevent the endless torrent of information leakage out of their secure networks. But Microsoft just can't have that. No sir! Got to get that juicy telemetry out, no matter what. I'm waiting for Microsoft to piggy back telemetry on DNS requests or use some other method that is indistinguishable from an Advanced Persistent Threat. It's just a matter of time, mark my words. Check this horror show out: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/manage-windows-1803-endpoints https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/privacy/manage-windows-1809-endpoints https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/manage-windows-1903-endpoints Notice that the list keeps changing with each release? You also can't block everything in those lists, because then legitimate functions such as Root CA updates will break. Sure, you can override that with a local Root CA update, but the complete workaround procedure for all such services is not documented in any one place, so you're looking at something like 3 months of effort. Enjoy! Or you can just use LTSC and need only about 10 settings and a couple of days... guess which one I went with? Microsoft "suggesting" to their customers that they should use the semi-annual channel is self-serving crap, and I'm not falling for it.
secabeen 7y ago
Look at his list of terrible things in Windows, and compare to MacOS. Other than telemetry, MacOS is very similar: * no Cortana (MacOS has Siri on all systems) * no semiannual feature upgrades (Mac OS upgrades annually) * not a single tile on the default Start menu (UI difference, mostly personal taste) * telemetry can be set to 0 (the lowest level) (MacOS has some telemetry, although the specific amount is less, and Apple has been a lot less transparent about what they track) * no "Show suggestions occassionally in Start" (This is stupid, but easy to turn off) * despite some misbelief, WSL and Hyper-V work just fine (Apple doesn't offer virtualization at all, you have to buy a commercial product) * receives security and stability updates for ten years (unlike Windows 10 Home & Pro versions, which reach "end of service" after just 18 months from their initial release) (MacOS only receives security updates for 2 years, approx.) * no Metro/Windows 8-style/Modern/Windows Store/Universal/Windows apps like Store, Edge, Calendar, Camera, News, Weather, etc. (Apple has all of these apps in the App store too) * no zombie games like Candy Crush Soda Saga, Bubble Witch 3 Saga, March of Empires, etc. that refuse to die (part of Microsoft's plan for "post-license monetization opportunities beyond initial license revenues" much like the recent Mail app debacle) (Plenty of these in Macos) All in all, the differences here are pretty minor. Unless you're willing to run Linux on your desktop, your only options are pretty balanced in the unpleasantness they offer. MS supports Windows 10 for many years, Apple requires a full OS upgrade every two years. Both have App stores full of both good and bad apps. MS does a little more pushing of apps and suggestions, but it all can be disabled, and with Group Policies, it can be disabled centrally. The main difference is in the telemetry, and MS gives you plenty of options (at install, even) to turn those down/disable those.
- musicale 7y ago
  - macOS gets security updates for 2 previous versions usually, and Macs themselves get OS updates for 5 years (though sometimes longer) - macOS isn't bundled with unkillable freemium games
- charwalker 7y ago
  This list is mostly manageable by capable IT or a power user willing to learn or find the right tools. PoSh can remove built in apps and apply a clean template start menu and pinned apps. With MDT this can be automated and a deployment completed in under half an hour. A power user may need to log in as a default admin, set things up, then create and use a secondary basic user account for their regular use (the Start menu/pinned app changes only apply to new users when pushed via PoSh). I have a short list/folder of tools and scripts to start a new build with at home mostly built and tested for the MDT system I used to manage. It's pretty slick.
jscholes 7y ago
> If you must run Windows 10 I must, because it's the only viable choice for a blind, screen reader user (me) who wants to get real work done.
- latexr 7y ago
  I’m curious about this in case you wish to expand on it, such as what you mean by “real work”. Perhaps there are no macOS equivalents to the apps you need for your occupation, but generically claiming one can’t get “real work” done on macOS is inaccurate for several jobs. Unless you’re referring to the screen reader, but my impression is Apple is generally regarded as the best in what comes to accessibility features, and they keep improving. They’re so proud of it they frequently brag about it in promotional videos they present at high-visibility events such as WWDC. Which makes me even more interested in your experience, since you live it.
  - jscholes 7y ago
    > Unless you’re referring to the screen reader I am. I would never claim MacOS couldn't be used by professionals in a more general sense. > but my impression is Apple is generally regarded as the best in what comes to accessibility features, and they keep improving. They’re so proud of it they frequently brag about it in promotional videos For screen reader users, they're the best in terms of what they ship with the OS. You get a fully accessible experience out of the box, which includes a tutorial for first-timers. You can even run with text to speech in the Recovery mode e.g. to format your disks. Contrast that with Microsoft, with Windows 10 being the very first version to offer an accessible setup/installation process, no obvious way to use a screen reader in Safe Mode, and next to nobody using Narrator in their day-to-day computer use because it took so long to be developed to any usable degree. One of the most popular Windows screen readers (JAWS) also costs hundreds of dollars - thousands over a user's lifetime if they purchase upgrades along the way. Apple are definitely winning there. Everything is free and just works, and I'm quite happy for them to brag about it. Where it starts to fall apart is when you want to actually get things done outside of a core set of Apple apps. For example, Office support is pretty lacking, with poor or no accessibility for advanced word processing and spreadsheet features. The terminal support is so bad that an enterprising blind user made his own terminal screen reader to combat it[1]. There are other problems, such as the screen reader's slow performance making the entire OS feel sluggish. Plus, if there are any bugs in it, you have to wait for an entire MacOS update before it gets fixed. That's annoying when it's a Window Manager bug, but can be completely disruptive when your only gateway to your computer won't read your email for a while without crashing. There are also tons of more opinionated stuff that users can (and do) argue about, like the efficiency of the way you browse the web with VoiceOver on MacOS vs the way Windows screen readers do it. But once you've assessed that the core accessibility experience isn't going to work for you, debating the rest is pretty pointless. Plus (and this is entirely anecdotal) it can become exhausting trying to have a discussion about these problems, only to have hordes of users tell you that you're wrong even though they're unemployed (or employed in a different field) and don't have people relying on them to get anything advanced done in the first place. Sometimes I think there's a tendency to want to justify how much money they've spent on expensive Apple hardware which, realistically, they didn't really need, especially if the cost of a cheaper Windows laptop plus JAWS would've been less or the same anyway. And these days, there's a fantastic free, open source screen reader for Windows[2]. [1] https://github.com/tspivey/tdsr https://github.com/tspivey/tdsr [2] https://www.nvaccess.org https://www.nvaccess.org
eberfreitas 7y ago
There is basically one reason why I use a Windows machine and that is games. I know linux has seen a lot of movement in that area (tks Valve) but I've tried it, and it works great, but performance is better in Windows for my machine. So I bought this machine where I can game (it is not anything fancy) and I would really like to work on it as well. I have a notebook with Ubuntu installed and if you would ask me I would rather work on the linux machine, but I'm trying to push the envelope with WSL2 to develop with RoR... Weird bugs and slow sometimes (better than WSL1 tho). Oh well...
- twiceaday 7y ago
  The sneaky bit about gaming is that it means your most powerful computer is reserved for Windows. I'd love to treat my Windows pc as a gaming console and keep a Mac as my personal computer but that would cost a lot more money so I just put up with Windows.
  - LilBytes 7y ago
    Ironically I do the same, work provide a laptop for us that you're free to choose within reason and comes with a mandatory MDM (enforce encryption, remote wiping) and an anti-virus and that's it. Besides that you can use the laptop pretty close to a BYOD model. I sold my Dell XPS 13 and now I use my work provided MacBook Pro for nearly all other purposes besides Gaming. It's my first Mac and I've found developing on it to be a dream after 10~ years of Windows use. I'd love to run MacOS on my gaming PC for when I'm not gaming. Unfortunately, Hackintosh' is possible but seems like a time sink and I'd rather spend that time you know, playing games, or working on my homelab (e.g. breaking it).
  - beatgammit 7y ago
    Why not dual boot?
habitue 7y ago
I feel like there's this continuum: Linux: Free, Doesn't spy on you MacOS: Costs money, Doesn't spy on you ChromeOS: Free, Spies on you Windows: Costs money, Spies on you
- user5994461 7y ago
  You must be kidding on Linux not spying on you. The ubuntu start menu is sending everything you type to the internet and filling the menus with ads.
  - throwaway-9320 7y ago
    [citation needed]
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - jodrellblank 7y ago
      Circa 2012, and disabled-by-default since Ubuntu 16, but still a system wide toggle instead of a per-use option: > Ubuntu, a widely used and influential GNU/Linux distribution, has installed surveillance code. When the user searches her own local files for a string using the Ubuntu desktop, Ubuntu sends that string to one of Canonical's servers. (Canonical is the company that develops Ubuntu.) > [..] Ubuntu uses the information about searches to show the user ads to buy various things from Amazon. https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/ubuntu-spyware-what-to-do https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/ubuntu-spyware-what-to-do https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ubuntu-spyware.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ubuntu-spyware.en.html
- m463 7y ago
  Some points: - macos phones home a lot (and this has increased release by release) - so does ubuntu (snap)
- jodrellblank 7y ago
  Ubuntu, to livepatch the kernel between reboots, you need to sign in (== some kind of user tracking for free patching). After three machines you need to pay: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/canonical-kernel-live-patch-in-ubuntu-18.04-1-750x563.png https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/canon... They advertise this paid service in the MOTD: https://linuxconfig.org/images/02-change-welcome-message-ubuntu-18.04-server.png https://linuxconfig.org/images/02-change-welcome-message-ubu... That's not fundamentally any different to Microsoft advertising Office 365 in Windows, is it?
AcerbicZero 7y ago
If Win10 would just let you do what you want instead of forcing you down various half baked paths it wouldn't be too bad. I ran Server 2016 for awhile, which had a few drawbacks, but overall was a much better experience. The lack of customization for basic stuff is obnoxious both in Win10 and Server2016, and third party solutions to core windows things (Start Menu is a good example) can be hit or miss. I'd be a little more generous if this most recent round of Win10 update hadn't messed a bunch of stuff up which was working, and rather than spend 4 hours googling esoteric windows registry settings I think I'll just switch to Server 2019.
jevgeni 7y ago
Could everyone chill with this already? We get it, you’re super clever and super privacy conscious. Now let people enjoy the products they like.
- Koshkin 7y ago
  It’s almost like saying to a rape victim, “Yada-yada, we get it. Couldn’t you just relax and enjoy it?”
  - bgdnyxbjx 7y ago
    Holy hell did you just compare telemetry to rape?
    - jevgeni 7y ago
      Thank you!
  - dang 7y ago
    Please don't do this here.
squarefoot 7y ago
Before I abandoned the Windows ecosystem, I loved Ninite (https://ninite.com/ https://ninite.com/). It repackages most well known free software creating a single installer which will contain all of them, minus bloatware, adware, toolbars etc, so that one can replicate identical installs of the same software on several machines very easily and much faster. Another interesting repository was http://www.aplusfreeware.com/last_freeware_versions.html http://www.aplusfreeware.com/last_freeware_versions.html It contained the last free version of lots of well known software before their makers decided to turn them commercial, add adware or discontinue them.
- lysp 7y ago
  Ninite also has an updater. It checks for all apps (that it knows about) and if they are out of date can silently install the latest version of all apps at once in 2-3 clicks.
mythrwy 7y ago
The investments I've made in learning Linux well have paid off so many times over. Like VIM, there is a hump, some annoyance and then you get all your time back invested and so much more. At this point I find Windows so hideously unpleasant I believe if I were forced to use it as a daily driver I'd go into another line of work. Life is too short to be annoyed all day and not have control over your surroundings.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

161 points by _o-O-o_ 7y ago

I see a lot of angry posts like this, but fail to understand how it's reflected in reality in 2019—I agree that Windows 10 was a little messy at launch, but it's come a long way from where many of these complaints seem to stem from. Yeah, Windows has a bad rap, but in the last 2-4 years has come leaps and bounds from where it was—implementing great, thoughtfully designed features on a regular basis, for free. With WSL2 and the other developer-focused improvements in tow, most of these are a shitlist of nitpicks, than things you'll run into every day. I switched from macOS about two years back, and couldn't see myself going the other way anymore ever again. But, that said, I can see why people want to stay there! That's the beauty of choice. These types of posts are based on historical grudges, rather than modern experiences with Windows. Sure, there's going to be annoying things to change out of the box, but every machine, with any OS, has that.

zsrxx 7y ago
See, your comment is the typical comment of someone who comes from macOS. The angry posts come from people who've been using Windows since forever.
- inscionent 7y ago
  I honestly miss actively using both. Better to be angry with everyone.
- owenwil 7y ago
  I was historically a Windows user and started my career as a Windows sysadmin for a few years—I switched to macOS for a few years and came back as it became increasingly buggy and Microsoft's development story changed. The complaints seem to come from heavily technical folks that think LTSB branches are reasonable things for normal people to run. I wouldn't want to run one on my own machine.
  - zsrxx 7y ago
    I've been using LTSC/LTSB for years. What's wrong with it?
    - owenwil 7y ago
      Sure, it's Windows 10 without any of the cruft—but also, none of the good bits. Believe it or not, but the Windows Store is great; managed updates of everything from Slack to Spotify, without individual updater components. Photos app, with support for HEIC files and so on, built in. These things are actually useful!
- magashna 7y ago
  The missteps were W8-8.1 and WS2012. W10 and W2012R2 and beyond have been much better. Not perfect, but leagues better than the those disastrous years between. Remember when Windows Server 2012 didn't have a start menu button, but instead a pixel? I hope someone was fired for that blunder.
  - owenwil 7y ago
    Oh man, I'll tell you—Windows 8 was a beast of its own. I think that is how people remember Windows, and assume that Windows 10 is the same. But god, don't remind me of that awful full-screen server start menu..............I remember that's when we actively started to try and go full headless with Windows Server, but it was also half-baked back then.
- Numberwang 7y ago
  I've been on Windows since forever and could not be happier. It's a great OS and apart from 10 minutes of customization it works fine. If I was on Linus I'd spend all my time on configurations and customization instead of more important things.
- mikelyons 7y ago
  I was a windows guy, then did the "I got a mac and never looked back" and now I'm back on windows 10 and, yes I'm pissed off, but this comment is pretty well realistic. People have a tendency to say "never" when you really shouldn't say never.
willis936 7y ago
A serious and legitimate gripe with windows is how messy it is to automate things. It's hard to look at the command prompt the same way I look at bash. I resort to almost anything other than batch when I can.
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  Also try JScript. It's underrated.
- JeremyBanks 7y ago
  It's hard to look at Bash the same way as I look at PowerShell. I resort to almost anything other than Bash when I can.
- Analemma_ 7y ago
  If you are using batch scripts on Windows in 2019 you are most definitely Doing It Wrong. PowerShell (which for my money is better than bash) is the "official" scripting environment on contemporary Windows and batch file support is only included for backward compatibility with legacy scripts. Don't use it, ever.
- pizza234 7y ago
  As Joel Spolsky put: > What are the cultural differences between Unix and Windows programmers? There are many details and subtleties, but for the most part it comes down to one thing: Unix culture values code which is useful to other programmers, while Windows culture values code which is useful to non-programmers. See https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/12/14/biculturalism https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/12/14/biculturalism.
  - JustSomeNobody 7y ago
    > Unix culture values code which is useful to other programmers, while Windows culture values code which is useful to non-programmers. I don't even know what that's supposed to mean.
    - 7y ago
hackcasual 7y ago
Some people are tired of an OS that by default phones home about actions you do on it, include advertisement in your start area, and regularly push updates to add new features that also break existing software.
- owenwil 7y ago
  The 'phones home' argument doesn't really add up—there's plenty of control over this at this point, and every OS is calling home, macOS included, to some degree. The advertisements thing happens out of the box, and is trivial to remove (if my memory is correct, Safari harasses you about being the default browser, too, if you try to change it). The updates to add features thing.... isn't an issue for me, but YMMV.
  - fkdo 7y ago
    > every OS is calling home to some degree. It's funny to speak in absolutes. Plenty of operating systems don't phone home regularly, just not ones popular with consumers.
  - eslaught 7y ago
    > Safari harasses you about being the default browser But does it advertise to you by default? This seems not comparable at all. Pretty much every browser will want you to set it as default (and at least the option to stop the nagging is usually front and center). Maybe this is just me, but advertising by default in something as basic as a start screen seems very user hostile....
    - plorkyeran 7y ago
      I get semi-regular notifications in macOS telling me I should give Safari another try and I haven't found any way to turn them off.
      - ymolodtsov 7y ago
        That’s interesting, I switched to Chrome months ago and haven’t seen any — even though I might open Safari from time to time.
president 7y ago
From a feature standpoint, Windows has definitely improved in the last few years, however, I don't see much improvement in terms of UX. To me, Windows development was always about "let's get this feature in so we can claim that we do X" but Microsoft has never proven themselves in terms of providing a cohesive experience in terms of inter-app behaviors or just UI/UX streamlining. This is extremely apparent when you look at their office apps (Outlook, Word, etc).
- owenwil 7y ago
  The UX is incrementally improving in every release. Through just the last few major releases, you've gotten Airdrop-style sharing (the new Share menu), full system-wide indexing and instant search, a unified control panel and a ton of other things. They're moving fast, but incrementally enough that it may not be noticable—but I vastly prefer the fast-follow improvements over the 1-3 yearly 'big bang' releases Apple has done with macOS.
  - Arcanum-XIII 7y ago
    I’m not following the reasoning here. macOS is delivered anew once per year with more often than not big new feature (like a new File System). Those last year, macOS was released for free - and without tracking or ads. Windows is evolving twice per year, for the same free price, or at least till a new major version is out. The two update more or less offer big change in only one of those. For me, it feels the same at the end, with the exception of ads and tracking - that is a major difference.
  - hyperman1 7y ago
    That's basically the problem: If they stay on cours improving the UI, in 5 years or so we reach the consistency, polish, performance and usability that windows 2000 used to have. There are some nice improvements since then too, but also a lot of user-hostile functionality. It doesn't seem wort the trade off to me.
    - wvenable 7y ago
bpyne 7y ago
I use macOS at home but have Win10 in the office. I've been using Windows in some capacity since 3.1. Win10 is the first one I've found usable. Going from Win XP at home to OS X, I found it astounding that my PowerBook could go months without a reboot. Likewise, my MBP astounds me daily that I can't remember when I last rebooted. My employer's Win10 laptop is like that as well: I don't think about rebooting it anymore. MS is on a good trajectory, finally, with its os.
SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
I'm not a real power user - so my only real grudge with Windows 10 at that moment is the fact that control panel is a bifurcated mess - I really just want to get back to the classic window control, but I have to fight through the windows 10 UI until I get there.
sdegutis 7y ago
I think my main gripe with Windows is that it has one less app-accessible modifier key. As a power user, this is invaluable to me and Mac has it.
charlesdaniels 7y ago
As someone who has used Linux (with a few brief stints into macOS and BSD) for quite some time (since about 2012) coming from Windows before that, I don't understand the people who constantly defend Windows in these types of posts... In principle, the feature set that Windows 10 ships could be useful. I don't find it appealing personally, but if it works well for you then that's great. The issue that I have had is that every version of Windows I have used (from XP up to 10) has had serious reliability and performance problems. As a specific example, it seems that the one Windows machine that I keep around to play games on needs a complete re-install every 6-12 months, usually because Windows tries to update and bricks itself so badly that even "Windows Recovery" cannot salvage the install. This is a relatively nice machine (Haswell i5, 24GB DDR3), and I tend to stay on the happy path of just running the vanilla install plus Steam and a small number of games (never any programming, web browsing, etc.). In cases where I've had to use Windows for work, I've found that most of the built in programs lag and take a long amount of time to respond to keyboard or mouse inputs (in the specific cases I'm thinking of, this was on top-of-the line Dell Precision notebooks at the time). Most of my code seemed to run subjectively much slower natively on Windows than it did in a Linux VM running on the same machine. I'm not trying to be a power user of Windows, as I generally try to avoid using it as much as I can due to the bad experiences I've had in the past. I'm not doing any crazy registry editing or anything like that. Just pretty basic development work and gaming over the years. In that time, I've never had a Windows install where the features reliably worked, and the install remained stable for any period of time. This is all anecdotal of course. It's possible I've just be incredibly unlucky, or that I've had a string of a half dozen machines that have hardware that's somehow broken in a way that only affects Windows. So what I'm wondering is: all you people who keep chiming in on these types of posts claiming that Windows works well for your use case -- what are you doing? What's the secret to having it actually function reliably? I've not been able to replicate any such success.
- owenwil 7y ago
  I've been using Windows 10 as my daily driver for web (PHP/Node/JS) development for over two years without the need to recover/format/reinstall at all. This is the exception, rather than the rule, at this point: https://char.gd/blog/2019/the-state-of-switching-to-windows-from-mac-in-2019 https://char.gd/blog/2019/the-state-of-switching-to-windows-...
tootie 7y ago
I really wish developers at least would be more indignant about Apple's closed ecosystem. The fact that you can't run OSX VMs, can't run iOS simulators anywhere but OSX, can't run builds without OSX. You have to pay Apple to deploy software to your Apple phone from your Apple computer. Microsoft was never this bad.
- kakwa_ 7y ago
  Well, at least for OSX, you can technically run VMs, I've been doing it for a few years now (I needed one to troubleshoot CMake issues specific to OSX). For iOS, I would grant that. One last point is that OS X is partially Open Source (at least Darwin is) even if in actuality, nobody really cares about it (like building something on top of Darwin). In the end, neither of MS or Apple is my preferred choice anyway. I much prefer an OS I roughly understand (at least to some degree) each pieces and on wihch I could generally troubleshoot things (Linux, *BSD), even if I do acknowledge I'm far from your typical user being a "dev/sysadmin/devops/whatever it's called these days".
  - Osiris 7y ago
    He meant that you can't run OS X inside a VM.
tomc1985 7y ago
Many of us don't want new features, we want a stable OS that we control that stays out of our way. Windows 10 is not that.
bbmario 7y ago
I don't think the issues with Windows 10 bloat is historical. In fact, I recommend removing 10 and using 7 instead. 10 is just a bad joke that makes a brand new PC look like times square.
stoolpigeon 7y ago
I did a fresh windows 10 install on a brand new machine within the last month. There is advertising in the launcher (can't remember what windows calls it but the start menu). There are popups on the desktop from Microsoft that I haven't been able to stop. (Something about "Teams" and it's tied to having installed MS Office). I had to be sure I bought the Pro version, there are a lot of skus that don't include full disk encryption built in. Setting up bitlocker is not nearly as easy as setting up full disk encryption on Apple or Linux. I don't really consider that an optional feature so I don't understand why it's considered some kind of premium thing. Did you see in the linked article what it takes to turn off telemetry? Are you saying that this is not longer necessary and now it can be done in an easy, convenient way? It took me a while to clean up all the garbage apps MS bundle into it. The things that I see listed in the link are current and real.
Scramblejams 7y ago
I'm glad you like it, but I use Windows 10 daily and I have a bunch of ongoing issues with it. I had to have IT reimage a Win 10 Enterprise machine because Cortana had somehow gotten so screwed up (how? I turn it off) that my Start Menu stopped returning results and I couldn't launch anything by typing. On another Enterprise machine, my Start Menu periodically starts coming up black and then disappears. I have to force kill the Cortana process to get it working again. When I switch from corp to outside networking, DNS and routes often stop working correctly and I have to run a magic dance of network reset commands to get things going again, unless I want to reboot. Which I don't. A few months ago I started up a batch job to run overnight on a Win 10 Pro box. A Windows Update dialog popped up saying it was going to reboot my machine. I clicked the button to reschedule it for the next day. An hour later I passed by the machine and saw it rebooting and applying updates. (After that user hostile experience I switched the machine to Mint and haven't looked back. It ain't perfect, but it's much better, and I actually feel like I own the OS now.) To stop the telemetry I have to use a Pihole-like setup, which is great ... until I take my laptop somewhere else. Let's talk maintenance. When something goes wrong, Windows can be brutally complex to troubleshoot. That's why when you start having non-obvious problems with a Windows machine, most IT's knee-jerk answer is to reimage. And that's not even irrational. It's a rational response to the difficulty of diagnosing problems occurring in a complex black box. It ain't worth the time, so just wipe the thing. In contrast, I've never had to reinstall a production Linux machine due to misbehavior -- troubleshooting has always solved the problem. And force installing Candy Crush?! https://www.howtogeek.com/342871/hey-microsoft-stop-installing-apps-on-my-pc-without-asking/ https://www.howtogeek.com/342871/hey-microsoft-stop-installi... No no no no. Microsoft's treatment of their OS users can feel so exploitive. For me I place high value on feeling like I own my OS, and that includes requiring a modicum of stability and troubleshooting ease. For my sample size of however many Win10 machines I've dealt with over the years, that bar has not been cleared.
- slenk 7y ago
  While I agree with some points, the computer restarting, DNS not working, etc seem like restrictions implemented by your corporate IT - not issues with Windows 10
mcny 7y ago
The main pain points for me come from Windows not being Unix-y enough (or at all). WSL2 will probably help with this. I am still at 1803 on my work computer so not holding my breath for WSL2 any time soon. It isn't really Windows' fault that my work computer has an i5-8500 six core processor coupled with a single DIMM of 8 GB and a $20 hard disk. I won't blame Windows for that. I won't blame Windows for Symantec Endpoint Protection that just has to check every single file just as I need to do npm install. My manager is sympathetic but we are powerless. I want to say something good about Windows as well: as far as I can see, there is no memory leak in Windows. Windows 10 is pretty solid. I still think there are two very low hanging fruits: 1. Prohibit OEM partners from shipping Windows 10-based PCs booting from a mechanical hard disk (yes even "SSHD"). Vendors can add a mechanical hard disk but may not boot from it. 2. By default, no automatic reboot without manual consent especially for consumers. Long term, look very hard into what kind of update requires a reboot and why. Be willing to break compatibility where required.
switch007 7y ago
WSL2 is going to cement this episode of Embrace, extend and extinguish, in part as it requires Hyper-V and therefore prevents the use of VirtualBox, VMware Workstation/Player etc. The freedoms of Linux (such as not having a boot loader assume it's the only OS on the disk) will be forgotten as people take the easy path of running WSL2 on the OS their computer came with. Is this a sufficiently-modern criticsm for you? A blog post from late 2018, which references things like an October 2018 Windows update, counts very much as a modern experience with Windows. I don't think it's fair to try to smear the author in that way.
- jedieaston 7y ago
  VirtualBox can use the Hyper-V/Windows Hypervisor API to create full speed VMs even when Hyper-V is active. https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#hyperv-support https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#hyperv-support
  - switch007 7y ago
    I did not know that. However, a couple of caveats (from your link): > This is an experimental feature > When using this feature, you might experience significant Oracle VM VirtualBox performance degradation on some host systems.
- jodrellblank 7y ago
  > this episode of Embrace, extend and extinguish Hyper-V is over ten years old. If it hasn't killed VirtualBox in that time, Microsoft offering a convenient Ubuntu VM is not going to be the death knell, trapping people who don't want to use Hyper-V in a nightmare situation of "having a removable Linux VM". > The freedoms of Linux (such as not having a boot loader assume it's the only OS on the disk) will be forgotten I've never noticed this as a complaint about developers using macOS for its Unix underpinnings, that they and Apple are not giving sufficient weight to the importance of a Linux bootloader.
aznumeric 7y ago
Windows 10 October 2018 update (1809) deleting users files from the My Documents folder hardly counts as historical.
Arn_Thor 7y ago
A substantial portion of requests blocked by my pi-hole is Windows telemetry. And I can't turn it off. That alone justifies a high level of righteous anger at Microsoft. And then, in the last update, it installed Teams, and caused it to always open on startup. Never did I agree to that installation. How can one trust a company that does that?
maxheadroom 7y ago
>...implementing great, thoughtfully designed features on a regular basis, for free. Haven't we already learned the underlying issue with the moniker of "free" from the likes of Facebook and Google?
pergadad 7y ago
I bought a new HP Envy for 900€ but spent more than an hour getting rid of all the bloat. There's McAfee and HP stuff due to McAffee but it's my first new win10 laptop (previously just upgrade 8->10 and I am utterly appalled by the amount of crapware Microsoft included. Pre-installed MS software, and ads and unwanted products everywhere. Candy crush and similar junk included in a fresh clean start menu. Microsoft OneDrive in autostart. Cortana permissions pretty much make you agree to ads and constant listening (no thanks!). Lots of telemetry. Self-installing updates that reset settings. Nags to use Edge and Microsoft services everywhere. It took me far too long to even find (and even recognise) all the different always-hidden and ambiguously phrased buttons to switch all these features off - and the next update will turn them on again. Why do I pay around €80 of the sales price for a license and still have to deal with all this intrusive upselling and ads?

gibspaulding 7y ago

There's some really great info in here! The school I work for has been pushing out an LTSB image to most of our PC's and I can attest that it is a huge improvement over Pro. The article also recommends Optimize-Offline and O&O ShutUp10 for users who can't get a license for the LTSC image. I hadn't heard of Optimize-Offline, but ShutUp10 is great for making Windows 10 way less annoying and invasive. I'll be checking out Optimize-Offline tonight!

STRiDEX 7y ago
I had a good experience with "tronscript" found here on reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/TronScript/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TronScript/ It removes a lot of the crap that ships with windows 10 along with disabling telemetry. It was a decent place to start with a new windows computer. github: https://github.com/bmrf/tron https://github.com/bmrf/tron

Kuraj 7y ago

I would be all over LTSB for all the things except lack of support for Microsoft Store apps, which I consider a vital feature - because for some apps this might be the only distribution channel available.

groundlogic 7y ago

I've been using Win 10 on my main desktop for the past four years or so. I almost feel embarassed for saying so. Microsoft definitely has a systemic "Software Quality Problem". It does get really embarassing at times. Or, at least I would hope someone there is embarassed. I'm not sure. Maybe Raymond Chen is the single one embarassed person and everyone else are new recruits happy to be there? Really, the only reason I run Windows 10 is that it's the fastest way to use the web, which is what I do all day long. The browsers are optimized for Windows in three critical ways: a) general rendering speed b) font rendering quality c) site quality/functionality - a particular browser not working with a particular site is a much more urgent issue on Windows, where 90% of the users are than anywhere else.

oonis 7y ago
Is this site saying that for 240 dollars I can buy LTSB? I've been trying to get a hold of a copy but unsure about the legality of those 30 dollar keys online since I don't understand licensing.
- groundlogic 7y ago
  Mis-reply or spam? I dunno.
- zamadatix 7y ago
  The site details the process and requirements pretty well, not sure if there is something in particular you are looking for it doesn't describe? As for the 30 dollar keys you can find online they will activate Windows but it won't actually be "legit", the requirements listed in the site are correct and you need a VL agreement and a CAL.
beatgammit 7y ago
Isn't ChromeOS faster than Windows in accessing the web? That's literally all it does, and it does it pretty well.

stuartd 7y ago

Another option without Edge, Cortana and Candy Crush is Windows Server 2019 which is what I have on my Dev PC. I’ve always run desktop server when I could - back to NT4 - initially to avoid any differences between local behaviour and deployed, though this is not really ever the case now. So now it’s for this reason - to avoid the cacophony of recent Windows versions, weird behaviour from updates and the like. I don’t know offhand how much a license is, mine is MSDN.

ocdtrekkie 7y ago
There are a number of challenges with using Server as a desktop OS. Sometimes utilities I want to use are $20-40 for a desktop PC, and $1000+ to install on a server OS, even though they are the same software. Sometimes apps just won't work because they are checking what OS you are using and don't like it. Recently I tried setting up a Windows Server 2019 install... to use as a home server... on my Intel NUC, only to discover that the Ethernet driver on the NUC has been intentionally omitted from Windows Server compatibility, because Intel wants you to use enterprise class hardware with Windows Servers. (If you plug in a USB to Ethernet dongle that uses a Realtek chip, Windows Server works fine on the NUC, but this is hilarious. There are also bad-hack ways to modify the Intel network driver so it installs on the Server OS.)
- stuartd 7y ago
  I have had a few issues like that with software over the years, but nothing that there weren’t alternatives for. Never on hardware though. But you’re right, it can be a challenge.
- user5994461 7y ago
  Last I worked on that, drivers had to be quite explicit about which OS version they support. Intel wouldn't be able to make drivers compatible with Windows Server 2019 given the OS was probably just released and the driver probably predates it.
  - ocdtrekkie 7y ago

ocdtrekkie 7y ago

LTSC is not intended as a desktop operating system. What people should be looking for is Enterprise: Which has all of the telemetry 0 options and such, but still works with modern Windows applications. It's highly likely especially after Windows 7 goes EOL, you'll start seeing a lot more consumer applications that depend on Windows 10 functionality that's not going to work in LTSC.

deleted 7y ago
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throw0101a 7y ago
> What people should be looking for is Enterprise: Does it take more effort to de-crappify non-LTSC Enterprise? Things like games, Store, Cortana, etc. Perhaps people are going with Enterprise LTSC because 'regular' Enterprise is still filled with too much garbage. Perhaps that should be telling Microsoft something.
- ocdtrekkie 7y ago
  The problem here is your misunderstanding that the store is a problem: Many drivers and Windows features are now available via the Store (Here's the Intel Graphics Control Panel: https://www.microsoft.com/store/productId/9NDLCLMMTMRC https://www.microsoft.com/store/productId/9NDLCLMMTMRC), and this will continue over time. Literally Notepad is transitioning to distributing via the store next year. I think even Apple transitioned to recommending the Store-based install of iTunes on Windows. Cortana is being phased out of Windows 10 into a separate app, and eventually a replaceable component. Enterprise should install without any games/ads AFAIK.
blub 7y ago
The enterprise edition is not much better. The Dutch ministry of justice and security hired a company to investigate this and the conclusion was "New DPIA on Microsoft Office and Windows software: still privacy risks remaining". https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/rapporten/2019/06/11/data-protection-impact-assessment-windows-10-enterprise https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/rapporten/2019/06/11...

chadlavi 7y ago

Holy hell, I had no idea it was that bad over in PC land. I mean you _hear_ things, but jesus.

imposterr 7y ago

I've tried LTSC, and to be honest, I prefer Windows Server 2019. It had the ability to set the Telemetry to 0 as well, and has less stuff pre-installed.

deleted 7y ago
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Someone1234 7y ago
Indeed true, but Windows Server 2019 is more expensive. [0] https://www.cdw.com/product/microsoft-windows-server-2019-essentials-license-1-server/5301531?pfm=srh https://www.cdw.com/product/microsoft-windows-server-2019-es...

astine 7y ago

I work for an MSP which supports Windows installs. The support teams apparently hate our LTSC customers because they require manual upgrades unlike the standard version.

bhauer 7y ago

Microsoft needs to realize they are doing their name harm by not giving power users and evangelist-style technologists an obvious and easily-selected low- or zero-surveillance Windows version. If this article is mislead to select LTSC instead of Enterprise as that option (as is suggested in this thread), the confusion of Microsoft's messaging is largely to blame. Microsoft should have marketing material aimed at individual technologists who want a premium Windows experience with ~0 surveillance.

saagarjha 7y ago
> Microsoft needs to realize they are doing their name harm by not giving power users and evangelist-style technologists an obvious and easily-selected low- or zero-surveillance Windows version. Why can't they do this for everyone?
- beatgammit 7y ago
  Because regular users don't seem to care, and Microsoft obviously gets some value out of it. If it's easy for power users to do it, it should be pretty easy for regular users to do so as well, it's just that power users would think to check.

jayess 7y ago

I guess I'll just say it. I love windows 10. I tried a mac for a couple of years and it feels like the OS is stuck in circa 2008.

timw4mail 7y ago

Maybe I just don't use Microsoft's built-in software that often, but I haven't had many issues with Windows 10.

radus 7y ago

Counter-anecdote: I'm the happiest I've ever been with Windows both as a development platform and for everyday use. The release of WSL has solved a lot of daily annoyances, and I'm hoping that the new Windows Terminal app will soon be usable so I can replace cmder which has been great, but a little clunky and slow in my experience. Other new features that I enjoy: Windows Sandbox, new Snip and Sketch, the current iteration of OneDrive (though I think I still prefer SkyDrive from many years ago..), Your Phone app for sending messages, emoji keyboard, clipboard history, local PIN instead of password.. I could go on but those are all things I use on a frequent basis and they make for a great experience.

bytematic 7y ago
Also the basic one that essentially all games work best on windows, if they even work for other platforms. And most applications have windows binaries keeps me using it at home. Love my mac for work dev, but once I'm home I feel very comfy with my windows 10 machine
blub 7y ago
Spying on users through so-called telemetry and the silly games are a fact, not anecdotes. I'd suggest that Windows fans should raise their standards a bit, otherwise for Windows 11 they will get a nice progress bar at each boot "uploading data to MS for mindcrime verification" and you have to pay for Windows in IAP gems you collect by playing games and watching ads.
- radus 7y ago
  The bulk of the linked page talks about aspects of Windows 10 other than telemetry. If Windows 11 boots up with a progress bar that says "uploading data to MS for mindcrime verification", and requires me to play games and watch ads to pay for it, I will reconsider my OS choice. For now, I'm enjoying the OS and have dialed down the telemetry to a level that I am comfortable with.

chx 7y ago

This is so tiresome. I posted this to reddit: I installed my first Linux in 1994, before there was a Linux 1.0. I use Linux to this day on my router and my server. I have been using Linux as my daily driver 2004-2017. You can't say I haven't tried. I maintain anyone advocating to use Linux on a notebook has Stockholm syndrome or more amicably, uses a very narrow set of hardware and services ("plain" wifi, no bluetooth, no printers, no scanners, no Thunderbolt). Windows has a Linux subsystem, use it, it's great. Your choices include using Ubuntu or a similar system where the six month OS upgrade will break your system so badly you won't be able to work for days. Or you can use Arch where at least the main body of your system will stay alive (most of the time but not always) during rolling upgrades but "insignificant" pieces like MFC devices or bluetooth will break all the time. Mind https://xkcd.com/619/ https://xkcd.com/619/ And if you ever need to work with enterprises, their wifi, their VPN... the company will have an IT helpdesk ready to help with any glitches if you are running Windows or Mac but if you are running Linux? Sucks to be you. And it does suck. I now have an external GPU via Thunderbolt. I plug in, my monitor plugged into lights up, all my running programs move there. It's a nonevent. So is undocking. How would that work on Linux?? The hot-plugging-an-nVidia-GPU might be supported on paper but I am very happy not to need to configure that and even more not to need to keep that configuration working. And I don't think moving apps from one GPU to the next GPU would just work without an X restart. Nope. The driver support is so far superior in Windows it's not even funny. Sure the command line sucks but oh well, just use WSL. Use O&O Shutup to kill the controversial reporting back features. Enjoy. And then I got some answers and I looked up other Thunderbolt uses under Linux and the results... oh my. A quick check shows the Aquantia 10 GbE chipset driver [broke](https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/58174 https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/58174) from 4.15 to 4.16 fixed in 4.17 and then from 4.20 to 5.0 again and there is a patch but the [bug report](https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=202651 https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=202651) is still open (every affordable, single port 10 GbE TB3 adapter utilize this chipset).

throw0101a 7y ago
> Your choices include using Ubuntu or a similar system where the six month OS upgrade will break your system so badly you won't be able to work for days. Or Ubuntu LTS, where you only have to worry about things every five years (or two if you want to update). This is what is used by my local helpdesk, and things generally haven't been a problem from what I can tell.

throw0101a 7y ago

This post recommends LTSC because it has been pre-de-crappified (e.e., no Candy Crush pre-installed). However in January 2020 Microsoft will not support Office 365 (ProPlus?) on LTSC. This is because the 'official' LTSC use case is for things like medical devices, and not "regular" desktops. It's just that many IT sites got tired of the Windows 10 what-a-mole with non-helpful features, phone home stuff, etc, that they went with the cleaner version. Doing a quick search, it seems people are saying "just buy Office 2019" to square this circle. Can anyone comment the pro/cons of using Enterprise LTSC or not?

jiggawatts 7y ago
I'm facing this decision right now. To LTSC or not. I have to build a virtual desktop environment for an isolated network that is almost-but-not-quite a SCADA system. It's the monitoring and management bits, without the direct control. It's not ultra critical, but there's a strict uptime requirement, and a general preference for long-term service releases of everything where possible. Security and prevention of "data leakage" are also very important. Windows 10 just. does. not. work. out of the box as a VDI operating system. It will absolutely massacre your shared storage subsystem (even if it is all flash!) because every now and then it just "decides" on its own that applying a 4GB update to Minecraft is the most important thing in the world right now. For Enterprise editions there's on the order of 200 GPO settings and about 20 PowerShell scripts required to make it "behave", but these settings will break as soon as the next semi-annual release is applied because Microsoft is actively trying to circumvent customer controls over their own environments. For example, did you know that they use deliberately misspelled domain names such as "microsft.com" for telemetry URLs to try and trick hapless firewall admins? This is to work around their desperate customers who resorted to blocking "microsoft.com" in order to prevent the endless torrent of information leakage out of their secure networks. But Microsoft just can't have that. No sir! Got to get that juicy telemetry out, no matter what. I'm waiting for Microsoft to piggy back telemetry on DNS requests or use some other method that is indistinguishable from an Advanced Persistent Threat. It's just a matter of time, mark my words. Check this horror show out: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/manage-windows-1803-endpoints https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/privacy/manage-windows-1809-endpoints https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/manage-windows-1903-endpoints Notice that the list keeps changing with each release? You also can't block everything in those lists, because then legitimate functions such as Root CA updates will break. Sure, you can override that with a local Root CA update, but the complete workaround procedure for all such services is not documented in any one place, so you're looking at something like 3 months of effort. Enjoy! Or you can just use LTSC and need only about 10 settings and a couple of days... guess which one I went with? Microsoft "suggesting" to their customers that they should use the semi-annual channel is self-serving crap, and I'm not falling for it.

secabeen 7y ago

Look at his list of terrible things in Windows, and compare to MacOS. Other than telemetry, MacOS is very similar: * no Cortana (MacOS has Siri on all systems) * no semiannual feature upgrades (Mac OS upgrades annually) * not a single tile on the default Start menu (UI difference, mostly personal taste) * telemetry can be set to 0 (the lowest level) (MacOS has some telemetry, although the specific amount is less, and Apple has been a lot less transparent about what they track) * no "Show suggestions occassionally in Start" (This is stupid, but easy to turn off) * despite some misbelief, WSL and Hyper-V work just fine (Apple doesn't offer virtualization at all, you have to buy a commercial product) * receives security and stability updates for ten years (unlike Windows 10 Home & Pro versions, which reach "end of service" after just 18 months from their initial release) (MacOS only receives security updates for 2 years, approx.) * no Metro/Windows 8-style/Modern/Windows Store/Universal/Windows apps like Store, Edge, Calendar, Camera, News, Weather, etc. (Apple has all of these apps in the App store too) * no zombie games like Candy Crush Soda Saga, Bubble Witch 3 Saga, March of Empires, etc. that refuse to die (part of Microsoft's plan for "post-license monetization opportunities beyond initial license revenues" much like the recent Mail app debacle) (Plenty of these in Macos) All in all, the differences here are pretty minor. Unless you're willing to run Linux on your desktop, your only options are pretty balanced in the unpleasantness they offer. MS supports Windows 10 for many years, Apple requires a full OS upgrade every two years. Both have App stores full of both good and bad apps. MS does a little more pushing of apps and suggestions, but it all can be disabled, and with Group Policies, it can be disabled centrally. The main difference is in the telemetry, and MS gives you plenty of options (at install, even) to turn those down/disable those.

musicale 7y ago
- macOS gets security updates for 2 previous versions usually, and Macs themselves get OS updates for 5 years (though sometimes longer) - macOS isn't bundled with unkillable freemium games
charwalker 7y ago
This list is mostly manageable by capable IT or a power user willing to learn or find the right tools. PoSh can remove built in apps and apply a clean template start menu and pinned apps. With MDT this can be automated and a deployment completed in under half an hour. A power user may need to log in as a default admin, set things up, then create and use a secondary basic user account for their regular use (the Start menu/pinned app changes only apply to new users when pushed via PoSh). I have a short list/folder of tools and scripts to start a new build with at home mostly built and tested for the MDT system I used to manage. It's pretty slick.

jscholes 7y ago

> If you must run Windows 10 I must, because it's the only viable choice for a blind, screen reader user (me) who wants to get real work done.

latexr 7y ago
I’m curious about this in case you wish to expand on it, such as what you mean by “real work”. Perhaps there are no macOS equivalents to the apps you need for your occupation, but generically claiming one can’t get “real work” done on macOS is inaccurate for several jobs. Unless you’re referring to the screen reader, but my impression is Apple is generally regarded as the best in what comes to accessibility features, and they keep improving. They’re so proud of it they frequently brag about it in promotional videos they present at high-visibility events such as WWDC. Which makes me even more interested in your experience, since you live it.
- jscholes 7y ago
  > Unless you’re referring to the screen reader I am. I would never claim MacOS couldn't be used by professionals in a more general sense. > but my impression is Apple is generally regarded as the best in what comes to accessibility features, and they keep improving. They’re so proud of it they frequently brag about it in promotional videos For screen reader users, they're the best in terms of what they ship with the OS. You get a fully accessible experience out of the box, which includes a tutorial for first-timers. You can even run with text to speech in the Recovery mode e.g. to format your disks. Contrast that with Microsoft, with Windows 10 being the very first version to offer an accessible setup/installation process, no obvious way to use a screen reader in Safe Mode, and next to nobody using Narrator in their day-to-day computer use because it took so long to be developed to any usable degree. One of the most popular Windows screen readers (JAWS) also costs hundreds of dollars - thousands over a user's lifetime if they purchase upgrades along the way. Apple are definitely winning there. Everything is free and just works, and I'm quite happy for them to brag about it. Where it starts to fall apart is when you want to actually get things done outside of a core set of Apple apps. For example, Office support is pretty lacking, with poor or no accessibility for advanced word processing and spreadsheet features. The terminal support is so bad that an enterprising blind user made his own terminal screen reader to combat it[1]. There are other problems, such as the screen reader's slow performance making the entire OS feel sluggish. Plus, if there are any bugs in it, you have to wait for an entire MacOS update before it gets fixed. That's annoying when it's a Window Manager bug, but can be completely disruptive when your only gateway to your computer won't read your email for a while without crashing. There are also tons of more opinionated stuff that users can (and do) argue about, like the efficiency of the way you browse the web with VoiceOver on MacOS vs the way Windows screen readers do it. But once you've assessed that the core accessibility experience isn't going to work for you, debating the rest is pretty pointless. Plus (and this is entirely anecdotal) it can become exhausting trying to have a discussion about these problems, only to have hordes of users tell you that you're wrong even though they're unemployed (or employed in a different field) and don't have people relying on them to get anything advanced done in the first place. Sometimes I think there's a tendency to want to justify how much money they've spent on expensive Apple hardware which, realistically, they didn't really need, especially if the cost of a cheaper Windows laptop plus JAWS would've been less or the same anyway. And these days, there's a fantastic free, open source screen reader for Windows[2]. [1] https://github.com/tspivey/tdsr https://github.com/tspivey/tdsr [2] https://www.nvaccess.org https://www.nvaccess.org

eberfreitas 7y ago

There is basically one reason why I use a Windows machine and that is games. I know linux has seen a lot of movement in that area (tks Valve) but I've tried it, and it works great, but performance is better in Windows for my machine. So I bought this machine where I can game (it is not anything fancy) and I would really like to work on it as well. I have a notebook with Ubuntu installed and if you would ask me I would rather work on the linux machine, but I'm trying to push the envelope with WSL2 to develop with RoR... Weird bugs and slow sometimes (better than WSL1 tho). Oh well...

twiceaday 7y ago
The sneaky bit about gaming is that it means your most powerful computer is reserved for Windows. I'd love to treat my Windows pc as a gaming console and keep a Mac as my personal computer but that would cost a lot more money so I just put up with Windows.
- LilBytes 7y ago
  Ironically I do the same, work provide a laptop for us that you're free to choose within reason and comes with a mandatory MDM (enforce encryption, remote wiping) and an anti-virus and that's it. Besides that you can use the laptop pretty close to a BYOD model. I sold my Dell XPS 13 and now I use my work provided MacBook Pro for nearly all other purposes besides Gaming. It's my first Mac and I've found developing on it to be a dream after 10~ years of Windows use. I'd love to run MacOS on my gaming PC for when I'm not gaming. Unfortunately, Hackintosh' is possible but seems like a time sink and I'd rather spend that time you know, playing games, or working on my homelab (e.g. breaking it).
- beatgammit 7y ago
  Why not dual boot?

habitue 7y ago

I feel like there's this continuum: Linux: Free, Doesn't spy on you MacOS: Costs money, Doesn't spy on you ChromeOS: Free, Spies on you Windows: Costs money, Spies on you

user5994461 7y ago
You must be kidding on Linux not spying on you. The ubuntu start menu is sending everything you type to the internet and filling the menus with ads.
- throwaway-9320 7y ago
  [citation needed]
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - jodrellblank 7y ago
    Circa 2012, and disabled-by-default since Ubuntu 16, but still a system wide toggle instead of a per-use option: > Ubuntu, a widely used and influential GNU/Linux distribution, has installed surveillance code. When the user searches her own local files for a string using the Ubuntu desktop, Ubuntu sends that string to one of Canonical's servers. (Canonical is the company that develops Ubuntu.) > [..] Ubuntu uses the information about searches to show the user ads to buy various things from Amazon. https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/ubuntu-spyware-what-to-do https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/ubuntu-spyware-what-to-do https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ubuntu-spyware.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ubuntu-spyware.en.html
m463 7y ago
Some points: - macos phones home a lot (and this has increased release by release) - so does ubuntu (snap)
jodrellblank 7y ago
Ubuntu, to livepatch the kernel between reboots, you need to sign in (== some kind of user tracking for free patching). After three machines you need to pay: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/canonical-kernel-live-patch-in-ubuntu-18.04-1-750x563.png https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/canon... They advertise this paid service in the MOTD: https://linuxconfig.org/images/02-change-welcome-message-ubuntu-18.04-server.png https://linuxconfig.org/images/02-change-welcome-message-ubu... That's not fundamentally any different to Microsoft advertising Office 365 in Windows, is it?

AcerbicZero 7y ago

If Win10 would just let you do what you want instead of forcing you down various half baked paths it wouldn't be too bad. I ran Server 2016 for awhile, which had a few drawbacks, but overall was a much better experience. The lack of customization for basic stuff is obnoxious both in Win10 and Server2016, and third party solutions to core windows things (Start Menu is a good example) can be hit or miss. I'd be a little more generous if this most recent round of Win10 update hadn't messed a bunch of stuff up which was working, and rather than spend 4 hours googling esoteric windows registry settings I think I'll just switch to Server 2019.

jevgeni 7y ago

Could everyone chill with this already? We get it, you’re super clever and super privacy conscious. Now let people enjoy the products they like.

Koshkin 7y ago
It’s almost like saying to a rape victim, “Yada-yada, we get it. Couldn’t you just relax and enjoy it?”
- bgdnyxbjx 7y ago
  Holy hell did you just compare telemetry to rape?
  - jevgeni 7y ago
    Thank you!
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't do this here.

squarefoot 7y ago

Before I abandoned the Windows ecosystem, I loved Ninite (https://ninite.com/ https://ninite.com/). It repackages most well known free software creating a single installer which will contain all of them, minus bloatware, adware, toolbars etc, so that one can replicate identical installs of the same software on several machines very easily and much faster. Another interesting repository was http://www.aplusfreeware.com/last_freeware_versions.html http://www.aplusfreeware.com/last_freeware_versions.html It contained the last free version of lots of well known software before their makers decided to turn them commercial, add adware or discontinue them.

lysp 7y ago
Ninite also has an updater. It checks for all apps (that it knows about) and if they are out of date can silently install the latest version of all apps at once in 2-3 clicks.

mythrwy 7y ago

The investments I've made in learning Linux well have paid off so many times over. Like VIM, there is a hump, some annoyance and then you get all your time back invested and so much more. At this point I find Windows so hideously unpleasant I believe if I were forced to use it as a daily driver I'd go into another line of work. Life is too short to be annoyed all day and not have control over your surroundings.

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