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This is incredibly bad. In general I have a positive opinion about what MS is doing lately, but Windows is a glaring exception, it’s getting worse and worse at

This is incredibly bad. In general I have a positive opinion about what MS is doing lately, but Windows is a glaring exception, it’s getting worse and worse at an alarming rate. In the last two months we had two consecutive updates that broke basic functionality for users who disabled web results in Windows Search (which is a very common setting among those who care about privacy) https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-1903-microsoft-details-search-fix-as-new-update-bug-hits/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-1903-microsoft-deta... Now, MS is trying to force upon customers this cloud login garbage, which is obviously not acceptable if you are privacy conscious. I build my own PCs and have spent hundreds of dollars in Windows 10 retail licenses, I pay for the service so I don’t want to be the product. I’ve always assumed that I’m locked into using Windows but after all this crap I’m starting to look into alternatives even though they’v got shortcomings on their own. (Edit: replaced Amp link with real link, sorry I didn’t realise it was Amp)

snagglegaggle 7y ago
It is bad, but I do not think you are stuck. But there are two fronts -- business offerings are going the same way. There is lots of pressure to use almost exclusively MS hosted services. And, in that market, not everything has a good replacement.
- mastazi 7y ago
  The reason why I feel like I’m stuck is based on my personal use case. Basically I need two things: A. Being able to use some proprietary software not available on Linux B. Being able to self build so I can select the HW that works for me With Linux I lose A and with Mac I would lose B. I’m thinking that a combo Mac Mini + Tower PC with Linux could work, but using two OSes at the same time, even with shared NAS, KVM switch etc., would not be the best in terms of UX (Edit I had mixed up “A” and “B” in my sentence)
  - craftyguy 7y ago
    > A. Being able to use some proprietary software not available on Linux What software is this? Perhaps it runs under Wine?
    - mastazi 7y ago
      Adobe Suite, Ableton Live with various VST plugins. I’m going to investigate the Wine route, as I’m hearing that it supports many applications nowadays
      - Nux 7y ago
        None of the Adobe stuff works under Wine, alas.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        paulcarroty 7y ago
        Fake news! Use latest PS and Lr.
        tanr54ok 7y ago
        I’m not saying you’re wrong. But winedb gives garbage status to the latest, the installer on playonlinux is unverified and posted by a banned account. I have found no testimonial that the latest works now other than yours. So here’s the thing. Even if you’re right (and not confusing some older version as the latest.. that often happens in these discussions... what do you think is the latest version of adobe CC?), this is a terrible support story and not something that most pros that rely on adobe tools want to mess around with. One of the winedb reviews says this: “adjusting parameters in some effects such as lens blur makes program unusable (must kill app)” Wonderful.
        paulcarroty 7y ago
        > playonlinux is unverified playonlinux is dead last two years, authors decided to rewrite it. > what do you think is the latest version of adobe CC? 2019. About 1star reviews - guest mostly people are confused about installer, it doesn't works for years.
  - mappu 7y ago
    If your proprietary product is in any way niche (i.e. not the usual adobe/autocad example) I would suggest petitioning the company to support Linux (or web) clients. Software developers are often pro-Linux and a few customer suggestions might be enough to force the issue.
    - mastazi 7y ago
      Oh yes that is always a good thing to do, even though Linux is not currently my main OS, I always tell devs they should support it.
  - ViViDboarder 7y ago
    You could go the hackintosh route. Though I haven’t tried it in a decade or more, I’ve seen some people with pretty cool setups. Certainly more work to maintain than just Linux or an official Mac.
    - lasagnaphil 7y ago
      Recently hackintoshed a XPS 15 9550, and holy shit it became the best laptop I’ve used so far. Everything (including bluetooth and wifi) works, no butterfly keyboard shenanigans, still decent performance, lots of ports (including hdmi and usb 3), the touchpad works perfectly (with all multitouch gestures).
      - arbol 7y ago
        I don't suppose you have a link to a write up or guide you followed?
        vetinari 7y ago
        Try r/hackintosh vanilla guide. You may find, that other guides are refering to old/obsolete tools, and thus will not work with current macOS. Also expect learning new things and spending several evenings trying. Compared to hackintosh, installing Linux on random hardware is a walk in the park.
        Wowfunhappy 7y ago
        > Also expect learning new things and spending several evenings trying. Compared to hackintosh, installing Linux on random hardware is a walk in the park. I've been a Hackintosh user for the past decade. I've not done it yet, but the next time I need to do a brand new Hackintosh setup, I'm planning on using ESXI. It seems perfect—you're getting very little performance loss in exchange for a setup which is (kind of) officially supported by Apple. Maybe when I actually do it, I'll discover some terrible downside, but it seems incredibly appealing.
  - viraptor 7y ago
    What about C: use Linux for the main desktop, use Wine for things that require Windows, use a VM with windows exclusively to launch that one annoying app which won't work under wine?
    - tanr54ok 7y ago
      There isn’t just one app, there are plenty. Excel and adobe cs are the obvious ones. If you’re not in programming (exclusively) you’re stuck on Windows or Mac.
      - viraptor 7y ago
        Latest excel has gold level support: https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=34983 https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iI... I know there are plenty of things that don't work with wine, but realistically, how many of them does each person need to work, and how many are "defaults"? For example if you spend 90% of your time in illustrator, do you need excel specifically, or "an app with text in cells"? And if you're crunching market data in excel all day, do you need Adobe, or just something to draw an arrow on a screenshot?
        rk06 7y ago
        You got those examples and mixed up
        dkersten 7y ago
        I had a similar discussion with my mother recently. She was buying a new laptop and went to check it out in the shop a few days before she actually went to buy it. The lady in the shop on the first visit tried to upsell her some office package for some crazy money. I instead got her to think about what she actually needs and wants and got her to realize that for the odd document or letter she writes and prints (and doesn't share files with others where pixel perfect formatting is important), so a copy of Libre Office actually does everything she needs and then some, and saved her, I don't remember how much, $200 or something.
        7y ago
  - snagglegaggle 7y ago
    Maybe is not appropriate to "convert" you here, but I recommend self building so you get good Linux support, and then running Windows in a VM. Usually you can run program in WINE, but VM should always work.
    - mastazi 7y ago
      Thank you. I’m hearing from many other comments in this thread that Wine works very well nowadays, I’ll give it a shot (alongside a Win VM) before investing in a Mac Mini
  - rocho 7y ago
    If you have enough RAM you can run VirtualBox alongside your other programs on Linux. I used to run Android Studio in a Windows VirtualBox and it worked perfectly. Never had an issue.
    - chopin 7y ago
      I run that with no problems in Linux.
  - spc476 7y ago
    I use the combo Mac Mini and PC tower at home. The crucial piece of software that makes this work for me is Synergy. It allows you to share a keyboard and mouse across Linux, Mac and Windows (and support cut-n-paste of text across all three). It works like a charm.
craftyguy 7y ago
> which is a very common setting among those who care about privacy Sorry, but if you use microsoft products you either do not actually care about privacy, or do not understand how microsoft is not taking your privacy seriously.
- krilly 7y ago
  So people can either care about privacy as much as you do, or not at all? There is an in between you know
  - craftyguy 7y ago
    Nope. You cannot 'kinda have' privacy.
- t-writescode 7y ago
  Or you could use a pihole to block their telemetry collection practices. Or you could prefer to play games and recognize there’s only one real option for playing the new ones Or you could hate them, but you work at a Windows shop. Please don’t assume everyone forced to use Windows enjoy Microsoft’s practices. Do you eat Nestle food? Are you aware of the evils of that company? Are you in support of those evils, despite being a consumer?
  - cycloptic 7y ago
    I'm not trying to diminish your situation, but it seems a bit hyperbolic to suggest that anyone is forced to use Windows. If you really are being physically forced to do so against your will, that seems like even more reason to avoid them as much as possible.
    - jammygit 7y ago
      The standard for “being forced” doesn’t have to be “gun to the head.” It can also be “is unemployed”
bsder 7y ago
> In general I have a positive opinion about what MS is doing lately, but Windows is a glaring exception, it’s getting worse and worse at an alarming rate. Ayup. Win10 finally broke the camel's back and I started the process of figuring out how to transfer as much as we can to Linux. The hardest part is that our embedded development stuff is all Windows. :( I've been trying to get VSCode, Segger, and embedded boards to play nice together. I haven't been sufficiently successful that I could start pushing it onto the dev team yet.
- G4E 7y ago
  As a fellow embedded software engineer, I made the migration from Windows to Linux some time ago. You'll see that except for old targets (or highly proprietary ones like fpga) most if not all tools used today are actually open source ones (ide based on eclipse, gcc toolchain, jtag debugger...). Once you understand how they all play together you'll see that it's actually easier to work on Linux, as those tools are in their primary element, not half bad ports to Windows !
  - adwn 7y ago
    > You'll see that except for old targets (or highly proprietary ones like fpga) [...] Your overall point is stronger than you think: Xilinx's FPGA toolchain [1] has official Linux support, and their embedded software toolchain (based on yocto and gcc) actually depends on Linux! [1] Xilinx is the market leader for general purpose and high-performance FPGAs. The situation is slightly different for space-grade and very low-power FPGAs, although Microsemi has been supporting Linux for many years as well.
    - JetSpiegel 7y ago
      Official Suport for Xilinx means "should work some of the time", provided you use this old and bloated daemon to communicate over USB. You will still need a separate hardware killswitch to work remotely, because the driver is flaky as hell.
      - 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
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m0zg 7y ago
>> getting worse and worse at an alarming rate That's because Windows Division does not exist anymore as a separate business unit within MS. It's now a part of Azure. And Azure doesn't really care all that much about making desktop excellent. It'll just keep it good enough for you to buy more Azure, but not more than that.
- iforgotpassword 7y ago
  I'm wondering if this is really the right move as in "desktop is definitely going down and everything will be web based". In that case sure, why bother throwing money at it. But should we realize in a couple years that this was overhyped and desktop OS and apps won't go away, everyone will have migrated to OSX or Linux if Windows quality continues to decline at that rate.
  - m0zg 7y ago
    And MS as a company would probably be just fine with that. They could even port Office to Linux then. 70+% of Azure is Linux already, so Windows is rapidly becoming a costly liability in Azure. Office customers are captive, it's not like there's anything else available that could compete anyway, so they'll tolerate a lot of abuse. Until there's a realistic prospect of losing significant revenue, MS isn't going to give a shit. It's (tactically, but not strategically) the right thing to do. Win 10 with minor tweaks is going to easily last another decade or more. Who cares if Mac is better: LOB apps don't run there anyway.
  - hrktb 7y ago
    The contention might be on the time frame. Desktop OS and apps won’t go away for the next 10 or 20 years by sheer inertia of the corporate market, and the halo effect on home users. And I guess the past month/years issues don’t affect business users (corporate managed desks will have any problematic feature disabled from the start) “Everyone” migrating to OSX/linux won’t happen for many many years, even if they keep screwimg up home and hobbyist market. Corporate market is also their strong point, so money wise they’ll be fine with that.
Iv 7y ago
> In general I have a positive opinion about what MS is doing lately Dont get fooled. They got better because they have competition. The company is still mostly a marketing firm longing for the days when it could abuse positions of monopoly. There has been no changes in their structure that would change their core ethics.
moontear 7y ago
Thanks for that search problem link I am exactly one of those users and start menu search just isn’t working. I have switched to Launchy as an alternative after years of being happy with the start menu search. I can finally look for a solution now, nice.
- theclaw 7y ago
  May I recommend Keypirinha [1] over Launchy? I recently tried all of the launchers I could find for Windows and KP was by far the best, and does not get enough recognition in my view. [1]http://keypirinha.com/ http://keypirinha.com/
  - ElCapitanMarkla 7y ago
    Just started using keypirinha a couple of weeks ago. Love it
  - moontear 7y ago
    Giving it a shot, I just remembered Launchy from the good old days. I‘m happy with the start menu search as my launcher when it works.
  - rbanffy 7y ago
    Don't use Windows, but I love the name.
  - gnud 7y ago
    Keypirnha is apparently only for "keyboard ninjas", so I'll stick with something made for the rest of us.
    - rovr138 7y ago
      I don’t see how it’s that different from launchy. Hit a key combination, GUI launches, you type.
    - dspillett 7y ago
      You may have just sold it to me as something I need to try though! Different (key)strokes for different folks.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Kuinox 7y ago
They didn't removed it. The title is misleading, The button is still there, but they renamed the button. It's under "Domain Join Instead" https://i.imgur.com/tA9fo1R.png https://i.imgur.com/tA9fo1R.png And there you can create an offline account: https://i.imgur.com/eBLi5cv.png https://i.imgur.com/eBLi5cv.png
- wayneftw 7y ago
  My initial thought was that they completely removed the option only in the Home version of Windows. Since (I don't think) you can join Windows Home to a Domain, is that true? Is the option for a local account now only available in Windows Pro, unless you install Windows Home disconnected from the Internet?
  - Kuinox 7y ago
    Ah ! Maybe. I only get Windows Pro editions, so i can't test this. In both case, the outcame is sad: Everyone here felt for something that is not checked(lacking vocabulary for this sentence), or Windows is getting worst for their users.
  - batrat 7y ago
    Nope. I recently installed windows home for a friend and I had the option for offline account.
    - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
      How recent? It looks like this change is very new. (You should still be able to force an offline account by disconnecting for the internet during install, but, that requirement is terrible.)
- Krasnol 7y ago
  Nice...no normal user would click that. This is terrible.
  - 7y ago
SquishyPanda23 7y ago
> I pay for the service so I don’t want to be the product. I think this is worth thinking about for a bit. The trope is that if you're not paying then you're the product. But it doesn't follow that if you are paying you are not the product. That depends entirely on business decisions that customers have little visibility into. For any product you pay for, there may eventually be a decision to extract additional revenue streams by monetizing your data or attention. The fact that this happened with cable TV and advertising before the era of the internet indicates that this is far from a new pattern. I expect to see it a lot in the next few years.
- api 7y ago
  The trope is backwards. If a business doesn't charge they have no choice but to make the user the product. If the user pays they have the option.
  - rock_hard 7y ago
    Not really though Look no further than TV manufacturers, the moment one of them decided to substitute below market prices with selling people’s data the others had to follow to stay competitive!
    - Silhouette 7y ago
      I still wonder how true this really is. Every time this subject comes up, all I seem to find are people who just want a good screen, and often who don't mind paying a higher price for it. Presumably there are also people who are sufficiently price-sensitive when buying a large flat-screen TV that the reduction from having bundled junkware makes a difference, but as far as I know, I have yet to meet one. If anything, by now I'd say "smart TV fatigue" is setting in, much the same as "smartphone fatigue" a little while ago. Enough people have had these devices for long enough to see all the a-bit-too-clever software get out of date and stop working, and then they start to see the bundled online services and so on as a negative and start asking their more techie friends and family for advice on how to avoid the problems next time.
proc0 7y ago
Games is literally the only reason keeping me installing Windows. Hoping this changes with some viable alternative.
- mcny 7y ago
  > Games is literally the only reason keeping me installing Windows. Hoping this changes with some viable alternative. If you have the money and the space for a second computer, use the computer with Windows for that specialized task and use a real* computer for everything else? We've been whining about this nonsense for over two years now and I think we need to take a hint. * that does not force you to restart at its whims
  - __MatrixMan__ 7y ago
    The barriers to using both is really only a question of disk space. Dual booting isn't difficult (just install Windows first).
    - dragontamer 7y ago
      Dual booting isn't "difficult", but is frought with a lot of little issues that probably should be understood. Ex: UEFI Boot vs Legacy BIOS. Bootloaders, Grub vs Windows bootloader, etc. etc. I prefer buying a 2nd flash drive and dual-booting across different drives entirely, so that Windows / Linux don't even share the same bootloader. Its not like $200 for another 1TB Flash drive is expensive, and apparently I need the space anyway.
  - heyitsme 7y ago
    I have little time to play games these days, but I do that. Have two machines, both always on, one of them a windows one for games, the other runs linux for everything else. I use a usb switch to, on-the-fly, change all the relevant devices (mouse, keyboard, headphone dac/amp, etc) and adjust the monitor input to use one or the other. It works extremely well, and takes ~1-2 seconds to switch.
  - proc0 7y ago
giancarlostoro 7y ago
Wonder what happens if you try to install without any network connectivity whatsoever. Like when it asks for internet just dont connect. I feel like it falls back to an offline account.
tikiman163 7y ago
I disagree with your premise. For many people this will force increased personal security and make their accounts more easily recoverable in case they forget their passwords. I'm something of a security expert, having consulted on architure implemented by several of the largest anti-virus distributors and retailers in the world. My honest opinion is that people need a dramatically better understanding of how domains work. If they want the increased privacy they should need to understand how to setup and use a local domain well enough to find the new location for creating a local account. For those who cannot do this, their device security and therefore personal privacy is far better served by registering a microsoft account. Any privacy concerns stemming from trust should be addressed by laws governing the acceptable use of user data. California is already pursuing such laws, and we should be supporting those efforts because they are addressing the true root cause of most modern privacy issues.
- mastazi 7y ago
  I agree with the last paragraph of your comment, but still I think users should be able to choose. “Security by dark pattern” doesn’t sound to me like the best solution we could possibly come up with.
- mycall 7y ago
  Where is the increased security of using an online identity verses a local machine account? Windows Hello?
muststopmyths 7y ago
It really seems like the current management is hell-bent on destroying any remaining goodwill among Windows users. >I’ve always assumed that I’m locked into using Windows but after all this crap I’m starting to look into alternatives even though they’v got shortcomings on their own. Yeah, I really wish there was an alternative I liked better.
infectoid 7y ago
I friend of mine recently moved from Windows to Mint (Linux). Reckons it's great.
dspillett 7y ago
> In general I have a positive opinion about what MS is doing lately, but Windows is a glaring exception, it’s getting worse and worse at an alarming rate. I think following the money shows part of why this is true. It used to be that MS had three cash-cows: Windows, Office, SQL Server. Everything else, even Exchange, sharepoint, etc, on their own, made relatively little or a loss but were part of the larger ecosystem and therefore used to sell the other three. It is now the case that the cash-cows are Azure (including AzureSQL), Office, SQL Server (on-prem). Windows is very much off the top list and is there mainly to sell the rest of the ecosystem and the fact that dumping it (or even just de-prioritising it too far) would look very bad. That MS ecosystem is increasingly OS-agnostic and going forward this is going to continue to be the trend. SQL Server runs on Linux too now. VSCode is cross-platform and either that will continue to grow more of Visual Studio's features of VS itself will start to become cross-platform. Office has online versions which while having many notable feature gaps are pretty useable for many tasks and are getting more so. Much of what runs on Azure is not Windows either very much so (i.e. is running on Linux in VMs) or effectively so (running as app services where neither the dev nor the admin cares about the OS underneath as long as the right APIs are available). Given the amount of effort desktop Windows must take, I'm sure they'd be happy to dump it sooner rather than later: let someone else deal with all that hardware compatibility faf and all those "real" man-on-the-street demanding-but-clueless end users on the desktop and all the security issues that come with them, keep server Windows going for Azure/similar (where the range of virtual hardware can be nicely constrained compared to real hardware variance and the security surface can be easier to manage too), and support other OSs in VMs as well as possible to make running them on Azure resource as friction free as it can be (aside from the friction of needing to pay!).
ptah 7y ago
why can't you use linux instead?

snagglegaggle 7y ago

It is bad, but I do not think you are stuck. But there are two fronts -- business offerings are going the same way. There is lots of pressure to use almost exclusively MS hosted services. And, in that market, not everything has a good replacement.

mastazi 7y ago
The reason why I feel like I’m stuck is based on my personal use case. Basically I need two things: A. Being able to use some proprietary software not available on Linux B. Being able to self build so I can select the HW that works for me With Linux I lose A and with Mac I would lose B. I’m thinking that a combo Mac Mini + Tower PC with Linux could work, but using two OSes at the same time, even with shared NAS, KVM switch etc., would not be the best in terms of UX (Edit I had mixed up “A” and “B” in my sentence)
- craftyguy 7y ago
  > A. Being able to use some proprietary software not available on Linux What software is this? Perhaps it runs under Wine?
  - mastazi 7y ago
    Adobe Suite, Ableton Live with various VST plugins. I’m going to investigate the Wine route, as I’m hearing that it supports many applications nowadays
    - Nux 7y ago
      None of the Adobe stuff works under Wine, alas.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - paulcarroty 7y ago
        Fake news! Use latest PS and Lr.
        tanr54ok 7y ago
        I’m not saying you’re wrong. But winedb gives garbage status to the latest, the installer on playonlinux is unverified and posted by a banned account. I have found no testimonial that the latest works now other than yours. So here’s the thing. Even if you’re right (and not confusing some older version as the latest.. that often happens in these discussions... what do you think is the latest version of adobe CC?), this is a terrible support story and not something that most pros that rely on adobe tools want to mess around with. One of the winedb reviews says this: “adjusting parameters in some effects such as lens blur makes program unusable (must kill app)” Wonderful.
        paulcarroty 7y ago
        > playonlinux is unverified playonlinux is dead last two years, authors decided to rewrite it. > what do you think is the latest version of adobe CC? 2019. About 1star reviews - guest mostly people are confused about installer, it doesn't works for years.
- mappu 7y ago
  If your proprietary product is in any way niche (i.e. not the usual adobe/autocad example) I would suggest petitioning the company to support Linux (or web) clients. Software developers are often pro-Linux and a few customer suggestions might be enough to force the issue.
  - mastazi 7y ago
    Oh yes that is always a good thing to do, even though Linux is not currently my main OS, I always tell devs they should support it.
- ViViDboarder 7y ago
  You could go the hackintosh route. Though I haven’t tried it in a decade or more, I’ve seen some people with pretty cool setups. Certainly more work to maintain than just Linux or an official Mac.
  - lasagnaphil 7y ago
    Recently hackintoshed a XPS 15 9550, and holy shit it became the best laptop I’ve used so far. Everything (including bluetooth and wifi) works, no butterfly keyboard shenanigans, still decent performance, lots of ports (including hdmi and usb 3), the touchpad works perfectly (with all multitouch gestures).
    - arbol 7y ago
      I don't suppose you have a link to a write up or guide you followed?
      - vetinari 7y ago
        Try r/hackintosh vanilla guide. You may find, that other guides are refering to old/obsolete tools, and thus will not work with current macOS. Also expect learning new things and spending several evenings trying. Compared to hackintosh, installing Linux on random hardware is a walk in the park.
        Wowfunhappy 7y ago
        > Also expect learning new things and spending several evenings trying. Compared to hackintosh, installing Linux on random hardware is a walk in the park. I've been a Hackintosh user for the past decade. I've not done it yet, but the next time I need to do a brand new Hackintosh setup, I'm planning on using ESXI. It seems perfect—you're getting very little performance loss in exchange for a setup which is (kind of) officially supported by Apple. Maybe when I actually do it, I'll discover some terrible downside, but it seems incredibly appealing.
- viraptor 7y ago
  What about C: use Linux for the main desktop, use Wine for things that require Windows, use a VM with windows exclusively to launch that one annoying app which won't work under wine?
  - tanr54ok 7y ago
    There isn’t just one app, there are plenty. Excel and adobe cs are the obvious ones. If you’re not in programming (exclusively) you’re stuck on Windows or Mac.
    - viraptor 7y ago
      Latest excel has gold level support: https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=34983 https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iI... I know there are plenty of things that don't work with wine, but realistically, how many of them does each person need to work, and how many are "defaults"? For example if you spend 90% of your time in illustrator, do you need excel specifically, or "an app with text in cells"? And if you're crunching market data in excel all day, do you need Adobe, or just something to draw an arrow on a screenshot?
      - rk06 7y ago
        You got those examples and mixed up
      - dkersten 7y ago
        I had a similar discussion with my mother recently. She was buying a new laptop and went to check it out in the shop a few days before she actually went to buy it. The lady in the shop on the first visit tried to upsell her some office package for some crazy money. I instead got her to think about what she actually needs and wants and got her to realize that for the odd document or letter she writes and prints (and doesn't share files with others where pixel perfect formatting is important), so a copy of Libre Office actually does everything she needs and then some, and saved her, I don't remember how much, $200 or something.
      - 7y ago
- snagglegaggle 7y ago
  Maybe is not appropriate to "convert" you here, but I recommend self building so you get good Linux support, and then running Windows in a VM. Usually you can run program in WINE, but VM should always work.
  - mastazi 7y ago
    Thank you. I’m hearing from many other comments in this thread that Wine works very well nowadays, I’ll give it a shot (alongside a Win VM) before investing in a Mac Mini
- rocho 7y ago
  If you have enough RAM you can run VirtualBox alongside your other programs on Linux. I used to run Android Studio in a Windows VirtualBox and it worked perfectly. Never had an issue.
  - chopin 7y ago
    I run that with no problems in Linux.
- spc476 7y ago
  I use the combo Mac Mini and PC tower at home. The crucial piece of software that makes this work for me is Synergy. It allows you to share a keyboard and mouse across Linux, Mac and Windows (and support cut-n-paste of text across all three). It works like a charm.

craftyguy 7y ago

> which is a very common setting among those who care about privacy Sorry, but if you use microsoft products you either do not actually care about privacy, or do not understand how microsoft is not taking your privacy seriously.

krilly 7y ago
So people can either care about privacy as much as you do, or not at all? There is an in between you know
- craftyguy 7y ago
  Nope. You cannot 'kinda have' privacy.
t-writescode 7y ago
Or you could use a pihole to block their telemetry collection practices. Or you could prefer to play games and recognize there’s only one real option for playing the new ones Or you could hate them, but you work at a Windows shop. Please don’t assume everyone forced to use Windows enjoy Microsoft’s practices. Do you eat Nestle food? Are you aware of the evils of that company? Are you in support of those evils, despite being a consumer?
- cycloptic 7y ago
  I'm not trying to diminish your situation, but it seems a bit hyperbolic to suggest that anyone is forced to use Windows. If you really are being physically forced to do so against your will, that seems like even more reason to avoid them as much as possible.
  - jammygit 7y ago
    The standard for “being forced” doesn’t have to be “gun to the head.” It can also be “is unemployed”

bsder 7y ago

> In general I have a positive opinion about what MS is doing lately, but Windows is a glaring exception, it’s getting worse and worse at an alarming rate. Ayup. Win10 finally broke the camel's back and I started the process of figuring out how to transfer as much as we can to Linux. The hardest part is that our embedded development stuff is all Windows. :( I've been trying to get VSCode, Segger, and embedded boards to play nice together. I haven't been sufficiently successful that I could start pushing it onto the dev team yet.

G4E 7y ago
As a fellow embedded software engineer, I made the migration from Windows to Linux some time ago. You'll see that except for old targets (or highly proprietary ones like fpga) most if not all tools used today are actually open source ones (ide based on eclipse, gcc toolchain, jtag debugger...). Once you understand how they all play together you'll see that it's actually easier to work on Linux, as those tools are in their primary element, not half bad ports to Windows !
- adwn 7y ago
  > You'll see that except for old targets (or highly proprietary ones like fpga) [...] Your overall point is stronger than you think: Xilinx's FPGA toolchain [1] has official Linux support, and their embedded software toolchain (based on yocto and gcc) actually depends on Linux! [1] Xilinx is the market leader for general purpose and high-performance FPGAs. The situation is slightly different for space-grade and very low-power FPGAs, although Microsemi has been supporting Linux for many years as well.
  - JetSpiegel 7y ago
    Official Suport for Xilinx means "should work some of the time", provided you use this old and bloated daemon to communicate over USB. You will still need a separate hardware killswitch to work remotely, because the driver is flaky as hell.
    - 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

m0zg 7y ago

>> getting worse and worse at an alarming rate That's because Windows Division does not exist anymore as a separate business unit within MS. It's now a part of Azure. And Azure doesn't really care all that much about making desktop excellent. It'll just keep it good enough for you to buy more Azure, but not more than that.

iforgotpassword 7y ago
I'm wondering if this is really the right move as in "desktop is definitely going down and everything will be web based". In that case sure, why bother throwing money at it. But should we realize in a couple years that this was overhyped and desktop OS and apps won't go away, everyone will have migrated to OSX or Linux if Windows quality continues to decline at that rate.
- m0zg 7y ago
  And MS as a company would probably be just fine with that. They could even port Office to Linux then. 70+% of Azure is Linux already, so Windows is rapidly becoming a costly liability in Azure. Office customers are captive, it's not like there's anything else available that could compete anyway, so they'll tolerate a lot of abuse. Until there's a realistic prospect of losing significant revenue, MS isn't going to give a shit. It's (tactically, but not strategically) the right thing to do. Win 10 with minor tweaks is going to easily last another decade or more. Who cares if Mac is better: LOB apps don't run there anyway.
- hrktb 7y ago
  The contention might be on the time frame. Desktop OS and apps won’t go away for the next 10 or 20 years by sheer inertia of the corporate market, and the halo effect on home users. And I guess the past month/years issues don’t affect business users (corporate managed desks will have any problematic feature disabled from the start) “Everyone” migrating to OSX/linux won’t happen for many many years, even if they keep screwimg up home and hobbyist market. Corporate market is also their strong point, so money wise they’ll be fine with that.

Iv 7y ago

> In general I have a positive opinion about what MS is doing lately Dont get fooled. They got better because they have competition. The company is still mostly a marketing firm longing for the days when it could abuse positions of monopoly. There has been no changes in their structure that would change their core ethics.

moontear 7y ago

Thanks for that search problem link I am exactly one of those users and start menu search just isn’t working. I have switched to Launchy as an alternative after years of being happy with the start menu search. I can finally look for a solution now, nice.

theclaw 7y ago
May I recommend Keypirinha [1] over Launchy? I recently tried all of the launchers I could find for Windows and KP was by far the best, and does not get enough recognition in my view. [1]http://keypirinha.com/ http://keypirinha.com/
- ElCapitanMarkla 7y ago
  Just started using keypirinha a couple of weeks ago. Love it
- moontear 7y ago
  Giving it a shot, I just remembered Launchy from the good old days. I‘m happy with the start menu search as my launcher when it works.
- rbanffy 7y ago
  Don't use Windows, but I love the name.
- gnud 7y ago
  Keypirnha is apparently only for "keyboard ninjas", so I'll stick with something made for the rest of us.
  - rovr138 7y ago
    I don’t see how it’s that different from launchy. Hit a key combination, GUI launches, you type.
  - dspillett 7y ago
    You may have just sold it to me as something I need to try though! Different (key)strokes for different folks.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Kuinox 7y ago

They didn't removed it. The title is misleading, The button is still there, but they renamed the button. It's under "Domain Join Instead" https://i.imgur.com/tA9fo1R.png https://i.imgur.com/tA9fo1R.png And there you can create an offline account: https://i.imgur.com/eBLi5cv.png https://i.imgur.com/eBLi5cv.png

wayneftw 7y ago
My initial thought was that they completely removed the option only in the Home version of Windows. Since (I don't think) you can join Windows Home to a Domain, is that true? Is the option for a local account now only available in Windows Pro, unless you install Windows Home disconnected from the Internet?
- Kuinox 7y ago
  Ah ! Maybe. I only get Windows Pro editions, so i can't test this. In both case, the outcame is sad: Everyone here felt for something that is not checked(lacking vocabulary for this sentence), or Windows is getting worst for their users.
- batrat 7y ago
  Nope. I recently installed windows home for a friend and I had the option for offline account.
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    How recent? It looks like this change is very new. (You should still be able to force an offline account by disconnecting for the internet during install, but, that requirement is terrible.)
Krasnol 7y ago
Nice...no normal user would click that. This is terrible.
- 7y ago

SquishyPanda23 7y ago

> I pay for the service so I don’t want to be the product. I think this is worth thinking about for a bit. The trope is that if you're not paying then you're the product. But it doesn't follow that if you are paying you are not the product. That depends entirely on business decisions that customers have little visibility into. For any product you pay for, there may eventually be a decision to extract additional revenue streams by monetizing your data or attention. The fact that this happened with cable TV and advertising before the era of the internet indicates that this is far from a new pattern. I expect to see it a lot in the next few years.

api 7y ago
The trope is backwards. If a business doesn't charge they have no choice but to make the user the product. If the user pays they have the option.
- rock_hard 7y ago
  Not really though Look no further than TV manufacturers, the moment one of them decided to substitute below market prices with selling people’s data the others had to follow to stay competitive!
  - Silhouette 7y ago
    I still wonder how true this really is. Every time this subject comes up, all I seem to find are people who just want a good screen, and often who don't mind paying a higher price for it. Presumably there are also people who are sufficiently price-sensitive when buying a large flat-screen TV that the reduction from having bundled junkware makes a difference, but as far as I know, I have yet to meet one. If anything, by now I'd say "smart TV fatigue" is setting in, much the same as "smartphone fatigue" a little while ago. Enough people have had these devices for long enough to see all the a-bit-too-clever software get out of date and stop working, and then they start to see the bundled online services and so on as a negative and start asking their more techie friends and family for advice on how to avoid the problems next time.

proc0 7y ago

Games is literally the only reason keeping me installing Windows. Hoping this changes with some viable alternative.

mcny 7y ago
> Games is literally the only reason keeping me installing Windows. Hoping this changes with some viable alternative. If you have the money and the space for a second computer, use the computer with Windows for that specialized task and use a real* computer for everything else? We've been whining about this nonsense for over two years now and I think we need to take a hint. * that does not force you to restart at its whims
- __MatrixMan__ 7y ago
  The barriers to using both is really only a question of disk space. Dual booting isn't difficult (just install Windows first).
  - dragontamer 7y ago
    Dual booting isn't "difficult", but is frought with a lot of little issues that probably should be understood. Ex: UEFI Boot vs Legacy BIOS. Bootloaders, Grub vs Windows bootloader, etc. etc. I prefer buying a 2nd flash drive and dual-booting across different drives entirely, so that Windows / Linux don't even share the same bootloader. Its not like $200 for another 1TB Flash drive is expensive, and apparently I need the space anyway.
- heyitsme 7y ago
  I have little time to play games these days, but I do that. Have two machines, both always on, one of them a windows one for games, the other runs linux for everything else. I use a usb switch to, on-the-fly, change all the relevant devices (mouse, keyboard, headphone dac/amp, etc) and adjust the monitor input to use one or the other. It works extremely well, and takes ~1-2 seconds to switch.
- proc0 7y ago

giancarlostoro 7y ago

Wonder what happens if you try to install without any network connectivity whatsoever. Like when it asks for internet just dont connect. I feel like it falls back to an offline account.

tikiman163 7y ago

I disagree with your premise. For many people this will force increased personal security and make their accounts more easily recoverable in case they forget their passwords. I'm something of a security expert, having consulted on architure implemented by several of the largest anti-virus distributors and retailers in the world. My honest opinion is that people need a dramatically better understanding of how domains work. If they want the increased privacy they should need to understand how to setup and use a local domain well enough to find the new location for creating a local account. For those who cannot do this, their device security and therefore personal privacy is far better served by registering a microsoft account. Any privacy concerns stemming from trust should be addressed by laws governing the acceptable use of user data. California is already pursuing such laws, and we should be supporting those efforts because they are addressing the true root cause of most modern privacy issues.

mastazi 7y ago
I agree with the last paragraph of your comment, but still I think users should be able to choose. “Security by dark pattern” doesn’t sound to me like the best solution we could possibly come up with.
mycall 7y ago
Where is the increased security of using an online identity verses a local machine account? Windows Hello?

muststopmyths 7y ago

It really seems like the current management is hell-bent on destroying any remaining goodwill among Windows users. >I’ve always assumed that I’m locked into using Windows but after all this crap I’m starting to look into alternatives even though they’v got shortcomings on their own. Yeah, I really wish there was an alternative I liked better.

infectoid 7y ago

I friend of mine recently moved from Windows to Mint (Linux). Reckons it's great.

dspillett 7y ago

> In general I have a positive opinion about what MS is doing lately, but Windows is a glaring exception, it’s getting worse and worse at an alarming rate. I think following the money shows part of why this is true. It used to be that MS had three cash-cows: Windows, Office, SQL Server. Everything else, even Exchange, sharepoint, etc, on their own, made relatively little or a loss but were part of the larger ecosystem and therefore used to sell the other three. It is now the case that the cash-cows are Azure (including AzureSQL), Office, SQL Server (on-prem). Windows is very much off the top list and is there mainly to sell the rest of the ecosystem and the fact that dumping it (or even just de-prioritising it too far) would look very bad. That MS ecosystem is increasingly OS-agnostic and going forward this is going to continue to be the trend. SQL Server runs on Linux too now. VSCode is cross-platform and either that will continue to grow more of Visual Studio's features of VS itself will start to become cross-platform. Office has online versions which while having many notable feature gaps are pretty useable for many tasks and are getting more so. Much of what runs on Azure is not Windows either very much so (i.e. is running on Linux in VMs) or effectively so (running as app services where neither the dev nor the admin cares about the OS underneath as long as the right APIs are available). Given the amount of effort desktop Windows must take, I'm sure they'd be happy to dump it sooner rather than later: let someone else deal with all that hardware compatibility faf and all those "real" man-on-the-street demanding-but-clueless end users on the desktop and all the security issues that come with them, keep server Windows going for Azure/similar (where the range of virtual hardware can be nicely constrained compared to real hardware variance and the security surface can be easier to manage too), and support other OSs in VMs as well as possible to make running them on Azure resource as friction free as it can be (aside from the friction of needing to pay!).

ptah 7y ago

why can't you use linux instead?