8 ms·

I very rarely use Windows now (at the time this happened I was working with it M-F doing support) - I’m not convinced it’s any better now is it? I downloaded an

I very rarely use Windows now (at the time this happened I was working with it M-F doing support) - I’m not convinced it’s any better now is it? I downloaded an “IETester” image from Microsoft to confirm behaviour of a clients site from a Windows PC - it literally spent more time installing updates and rebooting than I did either downloading the entire vm image file or actually testing the thing I wanted to test. How fucking convoluted is Windows that every single update that can only install via a reboot, then suddenly produces more such updates? How on earth does anyone still use this on a daily basis?

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
I agree with your assessment, and as a daily Windows user I believe I can answer your question: because the alternatives are still somehow worse.
- stephenr 7y ago
  We clearly have different ideas of “worse”.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    Yes, and? When it comes to "what OS should I use on my computer", is it your assertion that I should use your definition instead of my own? If so, you're probably a Linux Desktop evangelist.
    - officeplant 7y ago
      Thanks for the hourly reminder to praise GNU
    - crispinb 7y ago
      They'll do worse - any reason you put forward for not using their fetishised system will be summarily dismissed, regardless of content, and ultimately even your own experience with said fetish will be denounced as a lie.
    - stephenr 7y ago
      Ah, when someone questions your assertion, jump to what you perceive as an insult against them. (a) no, I'm not saying everyone should use the same thing, or that my "definition" of worse is more valid than yours. But consider this context: The original linked email is about a list of glaring usability failures in Windows, experienced by someone who should at the very least be very familiar with the product. I commented and asked if it's really any different now, with some of my own perceptions and experiences, to which you replied and confirmed that it's not better, but that you somehow believe the alternatives are worse. This follows on as: (b) no, I'm not a Linux Desktop evangelist. I mean, I'd definitely use it before I use fucking Windows, but I also don't recommend it to people. Servers? Absolutely. Desktops? I honestly don't have recent enough personal experience with it to recommend it. So, somehow you've managed to agree with the premise that Windows is a dumpster fire of usability bullshit, but then also suggested every alternative is worse, and made a baseless claim about both what I believe, and my likelihood of pushing others to adopt the same viewpoint. Great job.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
        > and made a baseless claim about both what I believe, and my likelihood of pushing others to adopt the same viewpoint. I did not. I said that if you believed your definition of "worse" was a better metric for me to choose my operating system than mine, then you were probably a Linux Desktop evangelist. A claim I make in full confidence because I've been having to put up with Linux Desktop evangelism for 20 motherfucking years now.
  - NicoJuicy 7y ago
    Perhaps with you, but looking at the market share he is mostly right.
    - computerex 7y ago
      To be fair, the market share being dominated by Windows has a lot to do with history and strategic deals Microsoft made with the OEM's. Vast majority of devices ship with Windows.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
        ...and Macs being expensive and Linux Desktop being an incoherent mess. Literally couldn't even beat Windows by giving the latter away.
        computerex 7y ago
        I think that's being very unfair. Linux is not the same "incoherent mess" it was 10-20 years ago. There are some OEM's that ship with linux pre-installed, some of them are: - Dell - System76 - Purism > Literally couldn't even beat Windows by giving the latter away. Beat in what sense? That's merely your opinion and doesn't necessarily reflect reality. Especially when you don't support it with any facts. Fact is that the linux story and experience has improved dramatically over the past 10 years. That's why there are now OEM's that provide linux as an alternative to Windows, and there are some OEM's that target linux exclusively. My daily driver is a Dell Latitude E7450 and everything worked out of the box with Manjaro linux. Driver/hardware support in linux these days is quite good.
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
        > Fact is that the linux story and experience has improved dramatically over the past 10 years. Yes, and it still sucks in a lot of the same ways it always has, and a few new ones (bloat, more incomprehensibly tangled base system than ever before...). Just yesterday I watched PCManFM, when told to copy a directory from an SMB share, copy the folder but none of its contents. This kind of basic functionality being completely overlooked is common, because there are about 100 implementations of anything and about 250 different distros combining those things in differently broken ways. Oh, I hear you say, you shouldn't use those obscure distros, but a more polished one like Ubuntu. Only it was Ubuntu 19.04 with the latest updates. This is without even getting into absolutely retarded design decisions like .desktop files.
fty66gg 7y ago
You seem to be assuming that behavior is a daily occurrence for most users? End users are not updating dependencies or even installing that much new software on a weekly basis, let alone daily. Also a lot of software wants to reboot for no reason other than “just to be sure”. That’s hardly a Windows issue when a random developer includes behavior that isn’t needed.
- stephenr 7y ago
  None of the rebooting or installing I’m talking about was new or third party software. Just whatever the hell they call windows update now.
  - fty66gg 7y ago
    I see. So you downloaded an out of date VM. Try grabbing an ISO of Ubuntu 16.04 and see what happens after you run apt-get upgrade? Spoiler: you’ll be asked to reboot to update kernels. Maybe more than once! Again what you saw is not a daily thing but very specific to a certain set of circumstances. Not sure how you came to extrapolate that as a daily usability issue. Maybe learn how to measure better?
babypuncher 7y ago
This isn't the typical user experience if you power on your computer more than once every few months.
- robocat 7y ago
  No, but it is a typical experience for many developers that need to test our versions of IE. Why do Microsoft think it is OK to waste our time when we are validating against their software? Why is MS making the work developers and testers need to do so hard and wasteful? At the time I was using Windows, and downloaded these VMs, and I swore black and blue at Microsoft for the very same thing GP noticed. And the VMs expire after six months, so you have to go through the whole process again if you are not careful - arrgh.
  - computerex 7y ago
    I use the Microsoft IE vm's to do IE testing in virtualbox and I have never had to install an update.
    - stephenr 7y ago
      Great, so I guess the rest of us must be imagining it then?
      - computerex 7y ago
        I don't know what images the "rest of you" are using, but I have literally never had the windows update problem. I have never had Windows update go off at all when using the images provided here: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/ https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/v... Even if you run into a situation where Windows update is for some strange reason bugging you (even though the vm's provided are only for testing purposes) then you can always run through the update and simply snapshot the vm so that you don't have to go through the process again, as described by the usage instructions: > These virtual machines expire after 90 days. We recommend setting a snapshot when you first install the virtual machine which you can roll back to later. I haven't done that though and have been using the same Windows 7 VM to test IE changes for close to a year now.
jammygit 7y ago
I installed Manjaro xfce recently and have been extremely impressed by how easy so many things are. I had been using gnome before that, Mac before that, and yet earlier Microsoft had not added telemetry so I used windows
- shrimp_emoji 7y ago
  Take a peek at KDE sometime; it's my favorite (and IMO most usable) DE of the pack. Xfce is at the "light but jank" end of the pool. Try changing your password via Settings: you can't. Thunar, its file manager, is extremely basic. Dolphin, KDE's file manager, is even better than Windows's Explorer (you have split directory views, way more options, terminal integration, etc.), which always amazed me. How is this free GUI product made by a handful of volunteers exceed the thing this megacorporation has offered for decades?! Meanwhile, Gnome's file manager mimics Xfce's in basicness, and on top of that you can't use Dropbox or any other tray apps cuz kek B o l d D e s i g n(TM)(R).
  - jammygit 7y ago
    If by Kde you mean plasma, I found plasma is too modular: every part of every window is it’s own window that can be opened independently, making search and navigation very strange. I like manjaros package management GUI, file manager (for the tree view), and generally good defaults for things (drop down terminal without needing to install guake) Plasma definitely looks nicer and has better animations.
  - willtim 7y ago
    What about the Deepin desktop? I haven't tried it but many magazine sites say it's now the most polished. I'm fairly happy with i3, until I need to plug in additional screens...
    - shrimp_emoji 7y ago
      Deepin's, elementaryOS's, and Pop!_OS's DEs look nice, but I've never tried 'em. I generally avoid "niche", satellite distros/software because, well, you can't expect them to work as well as the their major competitors. Cinnamon IS a major DE and a stylistic competitor to KDE and Xfce, and it's quite nice too (but not offered as a Manjaro flavor, sadly). >I'm fairly happy with i3, until I need to plug in additional screens... I've never been brave or OPEN-MINDED enough to try those kinds of DEs... I welcome reinforcement of my biases; w-...what happens when you plug an additional screen in? :v
linuseouyt 7y ago
I have an Ubuntu dedicated server. I reboot it every Sunday, yet there is rarely a week where on Friday I don't see this when SSHing in due to auto-updates: 0 packages can be updated. 0 updates are security updates. *** System restart required *** Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS Linux ubuntu 4.15.0-34-generic #37-Ubuntu SMP Mon Aug 27 15:21:48 UTC 2018 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
- parliament32 7y ago
  This is just an Ubuntu-ism. Linux doesn't require a reboot for anything other than kernel updates (and dbus in special cases). On a side note it's a bad idea to run Ubuntu on a server in prod. Ubuntu is great for desktop and pretty trash for everything else. You'd be better off just running Debian, it's a lot more stable.
  - linuseouyt 7y ago
    > Linux doesn't require a reboot for anything other than kernel updates You can say the same about Windows updates. Ubuntu has a new kernel update every 3 weeks, unless CVEs force sooner ones. https://wiki.kubuntu.org/Kernel/StableReleaseCadence https://wiki.kubuntu.org/Kernel/StableReleaseCadence Anyway, parent was saying that Windows is shit because it forces frequent updates. Ubuntu, which as you say it's the closest to a user friendly Linux dist does the same thing.
    - JamesT_Kirk 7y ago
      Not really. Linux Mint is more popular and is far more usable and stable in my experience. And it does not force updates.
    - PhasmaFelis 7y ago
      > Anyway, parent was saying that Windows is shit because it forces frequent updates. Ubuntu, which as you say it's the closest to a user friendly Linux dist does the same thing. Windows will kill all your apps and reboot your machine in the middle of the night on a regular basis, unless you do some serious digging in the registry. (And they may have closed off even that by now.) Is that "the same thing" as Ubuntu?
jml7c5 7y ago
From a user's perspective, there are signs it's getting better. The most noticeable is that applications that were unloved for years, those low-priority no-group-wants-to-own-them ones like the terminal and Notepad, are finally getting attention. It feels like in the past development was much more design-by-committee with little room for anyone to actually fix broken or substandard things. The biggest problem seems to be that there is insufficient pushback against bloat. E.g., the calculator is 10MB and takes a quarter second to load on a very fast PC. Lots of little things like that. The whole push for the a new, separate mobile/tablet/Metro environment was a major mistake. It's left a schism between the extant and greenfield worlds. This is exemplified by the disaster of what are effectively _two_ control panels, each of which can only control half of the OS's settings.
- shrubble 7y ago
  Skype for Business, signed in and loaded - 157MB RAM. Microsoft Teams, signed in and loaded - 300MB+ . They still have a lot of work to do...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago

I agree with your assessment, and as a daily Windows user I believe I can answer your question: because the alternatives are still somehow worse.

stephenr 7y ago
We clearly have different ideas of “worse”.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  Yes, and? When it comes to "what OS should I use on my computer", is it your assertion that I should use your definition instead of my own? If so, you're probably a Linux Desktop evangelist.
  - officeplant 7y ago
    Thanks for the hourly reminder to praise GNU
  - crispinb 7y ago
    They'll do worse - any reason you put forward for not using their fetishised system will be summarily dismissed, regardless of content, and ultimately even your own experience with said fetish will be denounced as a lie.
  - stephenr 7y ago
    Ah, when someone questions your assertion, jump to what you perceive as an insult against them. (a) no, I'm not saying everyone should use the same thing, or that my "definition" of worse is more valid than yours. But consider this context: The original linked email is about a list of glaring usability failures in Windows, experienced by someone who should at the very least be very familiar with the product. I commented and asked if it's really any different now, with some of my own perceptions and experiences, to which you replied and confirmed that it's not better, but that you somehow believe the alternatives are worse. This follows on as: (b) no, I'm not a Linux Desktop evangelist. I mean, I'd definitely use it before I use fucking Windows, but I also don't recommend it to people. Servers? Absolutely. Desktops? I honestly don't have recent enough personal experience with it to recommend it. So, somehow you've managed to agree with the premise that Windows is a dumpster fire of usability bullshit, but then also suggested every alternative is worse, and made a baseless claim about both what I believe, and my likelihood of pushing others to adopt the same viewpoint. Great job.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
      > and made a baseless claim about both what I believe, and my likelihood of pushing others to adopt the same viewpoint. I did not. I said that if you believed your definition of "worse" was a better metric for me to choose my operating system than mine, then you were probably a Linux Desktop evangelist. A claim I make in full confidence because I've been having to put up with Linux Desktop evangelism for 20 motherfucking years now.
- NicoJuicy 7y ago
  Perhaps with you, but looking at the market share he is mostly right.
  - computerex 7y ago
    To be fair, the market share being dominated by Windows has a lot to do with history and strategic deals Microsoft made with the OEM's. Vast majority of devices ship with Windows.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
      ...and Macs being expensive and Linux Desktop being an incoherent mess. Literally couldn't even beat Windows by giving the latter away.
      - computerex 7y ago
        I think that's being very unfair. Linux is not the same "incoherent mess" it was 10-20 years ago. There are some OEM's that ship with linux pre-installed, some of them are: - Dell - System76 - Purism > Literally couldn't even beat Windows by giving the latter away. Beat in what sense? That's merely your opinion and doesn't necessarily reflect reality. Especially when you don't support it with any facts. Fact is that the linux story and experience has improved dramatically over the past 10 years. That's why there are now OEM's that provide linux as an alternative to Windows, and there are some OEM's that target linux exclusively. My daily driver is a Dell Latitude E7450 and everything worked out of the box with Manjaro linux. Driver/hardware support in linux these days is quite good.
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
        > Fact is that the linux story and experience has improved dramatically over the past 10 years. Yes, and it still sucks in a lot of the same ways it always has, and a few new ones (bloat, more incomprehensibly tangled base system than ever before...). Just yesterday I watched PCManFM, when told to copy a directory from an SMB share, copy the folder but none of its contents. This kind of basic functionality being completely overlooked is common, because there are about 100 implementations of anything and about 250 different distros combining those things in differently broken ways. Oh, I hear you say, you shouldn't use those obscure distros, but a more polished one like Ubuntu. Only it was Ubuntu 19.04 with the latest updates. This is without even getting into absolutely retarded design decisions like .desktop files.

fty66gg 7y ago

You seem to be assuming that behavior is a daily occurrence for most users? End users are not updating dependencies or even installing that much new software on a weekly basis, let alone daily. Also a lot of software wants to reboot for no reason other than “just to be sure”. That’s hardly a Windows issue when a random developer includes behavior that isn’t needed.

stephenr 7y ago
None of the rebooting or installing I’m talking about was new or third party software. Just whatever the hell they call windows update now.
- fty66gg 7y ago
  I see. So you downloaded an out of date VM. Try grabbing an ISO of Ubuntu 16.04 and see what happens after you run apt-get upgrade? Spoiler: you’ll be asked to reboot to update kernels. Maybe more than once! Again what you saw is not a daily thing but very specific to a certain set of circumstances. Not sure how you came to extrapolate that as a daily usability issue. Maybe learn how to measure better?

babypuncher 7y ago

This isn't the typical user experience if you power on your computer more than once every few months.

robocat 7y ago
No, but it is a typical experience for many developers that need to test our versions of IE. Why do Microsoft think it is OK to waste our time when we are validating against their software? Why is MS making the work developers and testers need to do so hard and wasteful? At the time I was using Windows, and downloaded these VMs, and I swore black and blue at Microsoft for the very same thing GP noticed. And the VMs expire after six months, so you have to go through the whole process again if you are not careful - arrgh.
- computerex 7y ago
  I use the Microsoft IE vm's to do IE testing in virtualbox and I have never had to install an update.
  - stephenr 7y ago
    Great, so I guess the rest of us must be imagining it then?
    - computerex 7y ago
      I don't know what images the "rest of you" are using, but I have literally never had the windows update problem. I have never had Windows update go off at all when using the images provided here: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/ https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/v... Even if you run into a situation where Windows update is for some strange reason bugging you (even though the vm's provided are only for testing purposes) then you can always run through the update and simply snapshot the vm so that you don't have to go through the process again, as described by the usage instructions: > These virtual machines expire after 90 days. We recommend setting a snapshot when you first install the virtual machine which you can roll back to later. I haven't done that though and have been using the same Windows 7 VM to test IE changes for close to a year now.

jammygit 7y ago

I installed Manjaro xfce recently and have been extremely impressed by how easy so many things are. I had been using gnome before that, Mac before that, and yet earlier Microsoft had not added telemetry so I used windows

shrimp_emoji 7y ago
Take a peek at KDE sometime; it's my favorite (and IMO most usable) DE of the pack. Xfce is at the "light but jank" end of the pool. Try changing your password via Settings: you can't. Thunar, its file manager, is extremely basic. Dolphin, KDE's file manager, is even better than Windows's Explorer (you have split directory views, way more options, terminal integration, etc.), which always amazed me. How is this free GUI product made by a handful of volunteers exceed the thing this megacorporation has offered for decades?! Meanwhile, Gnome's file manager mimics Xfce's in basicness, and on top of that you can't use Dropbox or any other tray apps cuz kek B o l d D e s i g n(TM)(R).
- jammygit 7y ago
  If by Kde you mean plasma, I found plasma is too modular: every part of every window is it’s own window that can be opened independently, making search and navigation very strange. I like manjaros package management GUI, file manager (for the tree view), and generally good defaults for things (drop down terminal without needing to install guake) Plasma definitely looks nicer and has better animations.
- willtim 7y ago
  What about the Deepin desktop? I haven't tried it but many magazine sites say it's now the most polished. I'm fairly happy with i3, until I need to plug in additional screens...
  - shrimp_emoji 7y ago
    Deepin's, elementaryOS's, and Pop!_OS's DEs look nice, but I've never tried 'em. I generally avoid "niche", satellite distros/software because, well, you can't expect them to work as well as the their major competitors. Cinnamon IS a major DE and a stylistic competitor to KDE and Xfce, and it's quite nice too (but not offered as a Manjaro flavor, sadly). >I'm fairly happy with i3, until I need to plug in additional screens... I've never been brave or OPEN-MINDED enough to try those kinds of DEs... I welcome reinforcement of my biases; w-...what happens when you plug an additional screen in? :v

linuseouyt 7y ago

I have an Ubuntu dedicated server. I reboot it every Sunday, yet there is rarely a week where on Friday I don't see this when SSHing in due to auto-updates: 0 packages can be updated. 0 updates are security updates. *** System restart required *** Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS Linux ubuntu 4.15.0-34-generic #37-Ubuntu SMP Mon Aug 27 15:21:48 UTC 2018 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

parliament32 7y ago
This is just an Ubuntu-ism. Linux doesn't require a reboot for anything other than kernel updates (and dbus in special cases). On a side note it's a bad idea to run Ubuntu on a server in prod. Ubuntu is great for desktop and pretty trash for everything else. You'd be better off just running Debian, it's a lot more stable.
- linuseouyt 7y ago
  > Linux doesn't require a reboot for anything other than kernel updates You can say the same about Windows updates. Ubuntu has a new kernel update every 3 weeks, unless CVEs force sooner ones. https://wiki.kubuntu.org/Kernel/StableReleaseCadence https://wiki.kubuntu.org/Kernel/StableReleaseCadence Anyway, parent was saying that Windows is shit because it forces frequent updates. Ubuntu, which as you say it's the closest to a user friendly Linux dist does the same thing.
  - JamesT_Kirk 7y ago
    Not really. Linux Mint is more popular and is far more usable and stable in my experience. And it does not force updates.
  - PhasmaFelis 7y ago
    > Anyway, parent was saying that Windows is shit because it forces frequent updates. Ubuntu, which as you say it's the closest to a user friendly Linux dist does the same thing. Windows will kill all your apps and reboot your machine in the middle of the night on a regular basis, unless you do some serious digging in the registry. (And they may have closed off even that by now.) Is that "the same thing" as Ubuntu?

jml7c5 7y ago

From a user's perspective, there are signs it's getting better. The most noticeable is that applications that were unloved for years, those low-priority no-group-wants-to-own-them ones like the terminal and Notepad, are finally getting attention. It feels like in the past development was much more design-by-committee with little room for anyone to actually fix broken or substandard things. The biggest problem seems to be that there is insufficient pushback against bloat. E.g., the calculator is 10MB and takes a quarter second to load on a very fast PC. Lots of little things like that. The whole push for the a new, separate mobile/tablet/Metro environment was a major mistake. It's left a schism between the extant and greenfield worlds. This is exemplified by the disaster of what are effectively _two_ control panels, each of which can only control half of the OS's settings.

shrubble 7y ago
Skype for Business, signed in and loaded - 157MB RAM. Microsoft Teams, signed in and loaded - 300MB+ . They still have a lot of work to do...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]