32 ms·

Not-so-great features coming soon to Windows 11

• andrew_ 4y ago
  I have the same sorts of gripes with VS Code; stubbornness from the people running the project at MS and refusal to listen to the userbase. It seems to be a pervasive trait at MS.
• runjake 4y ago
  Microsoft is a services company. Expect only more of this. By the way, Apple is also a services company. The difference here is that most of Apple’s customers want to use at least some of their services.
• shaggie76 4y ago
  The best feature in Windows 11 I've seen so far is the downgrade feature; after I gave it a spin and found the new taskbar to be intolerable the revert to Windows 10 was remarkably painless!
• npteljes 4y ago
  What a pile of shit Windows has become. The user hostility was present from day 1, but they really visibly ramp it up over the years.
• Maxburn 4y ago
  I use windows server at work and even the newest ones are pretty agreeable. There might be a real case to be made to just user a server license for desktop. I wonder what the drawbacks of that are these days for say gaming or trying to use it on a laptop?
• superchroma 4y ago
  I would have rather stuck with ballmer. His worst was better than this.
  • ehvatum 4y ago
    I assure you that Ballmer would at the very forefront of aping the latest disreputable, scummy dark patterns while missing the point and forcing tasteless, trashy, ineffectual money grabs that do much to waste your time and little to benefit Microsoft or anybody else.
    • superchroma 4y ago
      I know, I was there, but they didn't fuck with the basics.
      • cjbgkagh 4y ago
        But they wanted to. Billy G was still hovering around pouring cold water on some really stupid ideas. He finally relented on getting rid of the start menu and that turned out to be a total disaster.
• eric__cartman 4y ago
  It's such a shame because Windows is a good operating system for a lot of desktop use cases that happens to be smeared with shit all over the user interface. Honestly I'm expecting them to introduce mini advertisements in the task bar any time soon. It's not like those pixels are being used for anything when there aren't many windows open right?
  • dole 4y ago
    The Weather/News Flash taskbar pretty much does this already. Nothing like an angry red triangle warning to keep me up on the latest celebrity news.
    • 323 4y ago
      So why don't you switch it? I've put it to show Weather only and I actually like it a lot.
      • PascLeRasc 4y ago
        Not who you asked, but my employer won't allow me to change it.
        • Nextgrid 4y ago
          Surely that's just an oversight from whoever set up the group policy, and notifying them should fix it for everyone in your company.
          • deleted 4y ago
            [deleted]
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• idiocrat 4y ago
  Was not Win 10 the last operating system version?
  • fredoralive 4y ago
    Apple stopped using 10.x versions for Mac OS, so Microsoft had to respond. (I guess the real reason is stuff like the TPM requirements and no 32 bit version meaning it drops support for some systems Windows 10 runs on?)
  • layer8 4y ago
    That was never an official MS statement: https://www.pcworld.com/article/394724/why-is-there-a-windows-11-if-windows-10-is-the-last-windows.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/394724/why-is-there-a-window...
• JSRR1991 4y ago
  Bad time to be pushing this crap with the Linux desktop wooing the gaming/ power user overlap crowd now that steam deck is on the scene. I have been using Windows my whole life but now I have a PC dedicated to Linux for the 1st time and I'm thinking about seeing one up for my wife, as I'm sure Linux will be perform better on the older laptop I'm considering 'upcycling'. People forget that tech trends often flow outwards from the nerds who will actually try something new, then evangelize it to the world - see chrome for example
  • dzdt 4y ago
    Yes 2023 is sure to be the year of the Linux desktop. (/s) The reality is the computer form factor involving a keyboard is slowly becoming more and more of a niche. Windows has a lock on this niche for business and gaming. For other home use there is strong competition from apple and for education there is strong competition from chromebook. Linux is still not really in the running, sorry.
    • als0 4y ago
      The year of the Linux Desktop already happened, just not in the way people wanted - Android and Chromebooks.
      • nibbleshifter 4y ago
        Tbh, everyone I know who has used an Android "laptop" or "Chromebook" has abandoned it after ~6 months for a "real computer". Turns out Native > Webshit for many things.
        • Mistletoe 4y ago
          I'm never buying another Chromebook and Chromebox because Google sunsetted my perfectly fine working laptop and Chromebox and now it can't do things like play streaming movies from HBO Max because the chrome version is too low. Spotify doesn't work either. Leaves few things left to do with it haha.
• BirAdam 4y ago
  This kind of crap is what made Windows 10 unusable for me. Everything was infuriating. I’m not a fanboy of anything either. Win2K was great. macOS 10.1-10.4 was wonderful. BeOS, RISCOS, IRIX, NeXT, and even DRDOS have warm places in my heart. These days, I use macOS because I find it the least annoying. It still has too many approval dialogs and notifications, but it isn’t quite as hostile as Windows. Linux and BSD are “fine” but there are other issues that I have with those ecosystems as far as usability is concerned. I really hope SerenityOS continues its fast paced development and becomes usable for daily computing…
  • null_object 4y ago
    > It still has too many approval dialogs and notifications, but it isn’t quite as hostile as Windows I’m genuinely intrigued by which approval dialogs and notifications you find so hostile in MacOS? If it’s SIP or Gatekeeper you’re talking about, there are easily implemented workarounds. Otherwise I really can’t think of any “notifications” from the OS
    • Jasper_ 4y ago
      I have a MacBook I use occasionally for work. I don't have an AppleID and don't want to make one (same as Microsoft Account). Every time I boot the system, there are about 20 untagged login prompts and have to manually cancel.
      • atty 4y ago
        That’s interesting. I have a MacBook for work with no Apple ID and I don’t think I’ve ever been asked to sign into anything. I wonder if there are fleet management controls my company is using to disable a lot of that stuff.
    • coder543 4y ago
      Just to provide one example, I definitely have seen macOS pop up notifications advertising that Safari is better than everything else, and I should switch back to Safari.
• dzink 4y ago
  This is in the email that microsoftadvertising.com is sending unsolicited to the support email account of one of my sites: “Microsoft Advertising 88 MILLION new desktop searchers joined last year Search is at the center of online shopping 88-90% of online shoppers used search. Meanwhile, only 39% used social in their shopping journeys. Two. Most searchers are open to switching brands In fact, 3 out of 4 searchers we studied visited multiple brands' websites while they shopped. Entice them to buy from your business with Dynamic Search Ads. Three. Online shopping journeys vary greatly On average, 45% of purchase journeys lasted 30+ days. But some, like grocery shopping, lasted only 2 days. Target ready-to-buy shoppers with In-market audiences.“
  • return_to_monke 4y ago
    I am sorry, but that sounds like a scam. I doubt that it's an actual ms domain.
    • alxlaz 4y ago
      If it's a scam, it's a damn clever one, because a whois query reveals a domain registered to Microsoft, with azure-dns name servers and a Microsoft contact email. Also one that's, erm, been flying under the radar for a long time because I've been getting these things for years. Not sure about parent but this is pretty well-known by people who've had to deal with it.
      • lucb1e 4y ago
        Been looking for ten minutes now and I can't find how to differentiate between Azure customers and Microsoft official websites. Observations: - the advertising domain is not bought by markmonitor whereas microsoft.com, office.com, and outlook.com all are. Maybe this advertising domain isn't an important enough brand or maybe some other reason. The DNS servers for all four domains are NS1-{0..99}.azure-dns.com, NS2-{0..99}.azure-dns.net, and two other TLDs for NS3 and NS4, and always in the same order - IP space is all AS8068 and AS8075 (checking the same four domains) - I tried duckduckgo for "how to differentiate between azure customers and microsoft ip space" but didn't find anyone asking that question anywhere. Probably bad phrasing on my part - I tried looking for websites hosted by Azure to see if there is an IP space for customers by searching ddg for "powered by azure" and "hosted with azure" but I only get results from Microsoft themselves, random garbage, and things like "azure lessons" that aren't hosted with azure at all (heh) I would also have expected this to be not-Microsoft-owned and a scam, but I'm failing to prove that hypothesis. That would mean Microsoft is not the company that I thought it was: I thought the difference between Facebook,Google and Microsoft,Apple is that some are in the business of manipulating people and others sell honest products (even if I have other issues with locked-down Apple devices, at least it's not adtech). Looking for revenue streams, I found <https://www.kamilfranek.com/assets/images/microsoft_revenue_segments_breakdown_chart.png https://www.kamilfranek.com/assets/images/microsoft_revenue_...>. So not quite adtech but ads was the biggest growing product last year and has been growing for at least a decade (also based on other sources). Interesting.
• elektrontamer 4y ago
  The company software auto updated my machine to Win 11. There were many issues but two of them really struck out 1. The right click context menu change 2. The highlight around windows on Alt + Tab got very hard to see I just gave up in a week and got a new machine with Win 10 from IT. Had to install everything from scratch.
  • layer8 4y ago
    It seems they improved #2 in 22H2, but at the same time removed the registry option for the classic Alt+Tab dialog.
• abraxas 4y ago
  Is there a version of Windows that lets you pay your way out of this bullshit? I may need a Windows machine for work next year and this shit is terrifying. I haven't touched Windows since around 2006 so I'm not familiar with their offerings. They used to have a consumer and a professional edition of Windows in the olden days with the latter being far less annoying.
  • nolls 4y ago
    The policy editor should let you disable most (all?) of these things. It comes with the pro edition I think.
  • agluszak 4y ago
    You can use stuff like https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10 https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • tester756 4y ago
    Wouldn't Pro versions of Windows don't have this mess?
    • freeone3000 4y ago
      No, they still have these features on Pro and even HPC SKUs of Client. Server and LTSB don't, but are missing other features you might actually want (like DirectX).
  • mhb 4y ago
    Win 10 Pro with Open Shell and auto updates off is quite pleasant.
  • MrStonedOne 4y ago
  • 4y ago
• datatrashfire 4y ago
  After years of thinking "wsl2 is enough for me", I switched to fedora as an experiment and I have not looked back once.
  • soulofmischief 4y ago
    Welcome to the fold, friend. Stoked to see another soul has seen through the smokescreen.
    • SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
      Yes, I’ve always thought that OS discussions needs more tribalism.
      • soulofmischief 4y ago
        If you can't understand the difference between solidarity and tribalism, that's something you should work on. If you can't understand the political, philosophical and sociological nuances of selecting between Windows and Linux as computing environments, and why this is more than just a simple UI preference, that's something you should work on. Sarcasm is also something you should work on. See you next time.
        • joemi 4y ago
          I'm not the person you responded to, and I would never have replied with sarcasm as they did, but "Stoked to see another soul has seen through the smokescreen" comes across as more tribal than solidarity, IMO, if those are the only two options.
          • soulofmischief 4y ago
            Did you read the article? It's about how Microsoft is gaslighting the user about the future of computing. There is absolutely a smokescreen in place, which the majority of Linux-based distributions do not employ.
• maxbaines 4y ago
  I say it every time I see similar posts, but these kind of features and being tied to an Ms account has made me leave windows for Linux and MacOS.
  • layer8 4y ago
    You can still use Windows 11 with just a local account, see for example https://www.windowscentral.com/how-set-windows-11-without-microsoft-account https://www.windowscentral.com/how-set-windows-11-without-mi....
    • maxbaines 4y ago
      Yes you can however every so often I see the let’s finish setup screen will appear to prompt you, again you can continue without an account and then be nagged again.
      • layer8 4y ago
        Go to the Notifications page in Settings and untick “Offer Suggestions on How I Can Set Up My Device”.
        • maxbaines 4y ago
          Thank you that's useful, ill sure be setting it. I just wish it was not necessary, certainly in Pro version.
  • maxbaines 4y ago
    For context I used and loved Windows since I was a teenager with Windows 3.1 but for me I just find an OS with such features to jarring for daily use. Also note Mac OS has its problems too. I was so excited for W11 and generally love most of it. Oh and I run Linux on a Surface Laptop.
• ReptileMan 4y ago
  Ugh... Why? Who is the human that this will benefit. What are MS execs smoking? Obviously it is the good stuff. They lost the mobile phone because of their stupidity. Now trying to lose desktop too?
• tester756 4y ago
  I can't believe that right click Menu has has "more" option which shows basic features of that context menu, like what the fuck? what's even the reasoning with this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN-WEBd8obc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN-WEBd8obc But select text and search in browser option seems to be really reasonable.
  • shostack 4y ago
    Just wait for ads in the right click menu.
• _8j50 4y ago
  If you're gonna pirate (well, use leaked activation keys) then install the enterprise version which has less of this crap to deal with. I hate start menu ads and edge default pages because they have animation which beings rdp to a crawl.
  • afarviral 4y ago
    Maybe this is why my Windows just leaves me to it maybe.
• api 4y ago
  This can all be summarized as: Microsoft is going down market. Of course if Apple starts with this stuff they too will start going down market and open an opportunity for someone else to own the high end. If I pay for it it better not have ads. If something I pay for starts adding ads I cancel.
  • coffeeling 4y ago
    This. A services company is inherently downmarket. Easy positioning for MS, but Apple's eyeing becoming a services company too, which fights against their high end hardware business' demands.
• dahart 4y ago
  What really kills me about the ad-spam being added to menus everywhere is that eventually they start having problems and drag my computer to its knees. I end up with behaviors where the Start Menu takes several seconds to appear, or a search will stall, and when navigating folders in the File Explorer have very serious and noticeable drag, taking one or two seconds. So far I’ve eventually been able to figure out how to turn them off with registry edits and fix the delays, but it seems to be getting harder to do, and MS is definitely omitting controls from the control panel. It very well may be superficially my fault these things happen, due to customizations or features I’ve enabled or disabled, or software I’ve installed, or due to my company web policies and firewalls, but I have no way to track down the causes. The true culprit though, IMO, is the blurring of the line between application software and operating system. Allowing all these hooks into basic OS functionality seems like a bad idea. It’s crazy that opening the menu to log out or shut down will first go out to the web to scrape some news headlines or shopping suggestions for me, crazy I say!
  • Helmut10001 4y ago
    Install Keypirinha [1] and you don't need the Start menu anymore. [1]: https://keypirinha.com/ https://keypirinha.com/
    • BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
      I know I don’t need it, but I want to keep using it. And, I lament that the company I already paid money to for an OS license can’t help itself by putting in so many intrusive advertisements and dark patterns on what is supposed to be just an operating system.
    • LorenDB 4y ago
      Or use Powertoys Run
      • crabmusket 4y ago
        It's better than the start menu for sure, but still takes an irritatingly long time to become available after a boot. At least it's possible to disable all the web search features etc. and have it just open my apps like I wanted.
• pbhjpbhj 4y ago
  Firefox (mobile) was pushing ads at me on [what is supposed to be] my home screen last week (Addidas and Nike being put in the first two slots). Why would Microsoft not advertise in their browser when supposed competition is doing the same. Like, switch to Google and get their tracking, switch to Firefox and get their ads, ... "might as well stay with Edge" becomes a more realistic proposition every day. [I'd personally probably move to links before using Edge, but that's just me.]
• croes 4y ago
  Windows Start Menu is a PITA, can't count how many times it doesn't find installed programs. It was much better when it didn't try to be smart.
  • Derbasti 4y ago
    Startallback has been a revelation
  • deafpolygon 4y ago
    > Windows Start Menu is a PITA Slow as molasses.
  • phendrenad2 4y ago
    I just use it like Windows 98 and scroll through the list to find the program. It works.
• tkuraku 4y ago
  Between the adds infiltrating every part of the os and the arbitrary decision to not allow my computer to run windows 11 (no TPM, though it is plenty fast) I have had enough. I've daily driving Linux for 7-8 years with only occasional windows use. There are certainly some rough edges with Linux, but it is perfectly workable.
  • Tenoke 4y ago
    I installed Windows 11 last week, disabled all personalization/tracking/ads settings I could find and I don't think I've noticed any ads whatsoever.
    • account-5 4y ago
      It's a sad day indeed when you pay for an OS that you then have to manually opt out of targeted ads and tracking.
  • MrStonedOne 4y ago
    TPM2.0 is required because it allows for running of encrypted binaries and microsoft will need that feature to ensure people can't modify away any user hostile features.
• JohnFen 4y ago
  It's truly amazing how Microsoft insists on making Windows worse with each release. It makes me miss the old odd/even releases where at least half of them weren't bad.
  • twiddling 4y ago
    I love digging into every new version of Windows to find an old NT-era dialog box on some low level setting
  • Scaevolus 4y ago
    Technically Windows 11 is an even release, since Windows 9 was skipped. I, for one, am looking forward to the revolutionary Taskbar with Titles in Windows 12!
  • shp0ngle 4y ago
    They still don’t really have any serious competition, other than macOS (that push you Apple services) and Chromebooks (that push you Google services).
  • layer8 4y ago
    The MS employees who “get” it and actually use stock Windows themselves stopped being in charge. See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30019307 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30019307.
    • userbinator 4y ago
      The key point in that thread is the UI/UX designers don't use Windows and use Macs. ...which explains the disturbing similarity between macOS 13's System Settings and the same in Windows 11.
      • layer8 4y ago
        I suspect the managers and execs also don’t, or only sanitized Windows Enterprise setups, or else they wouldn’t let the designers have free reign here.
• sharikous 4y ago
  Windows as a curated platform is a lost case at this point. They probably don't make enough money from it to justify investment. Their market is the enterprise world where they have a lock in, plus gamers and PC users who cannot afford a Mac. It shows. Not a problem for me. I have no issue using a bad OS if a company is paying me for using it, and at home I don't use Windows.
  • secondcoming 4y ago
    I don't use a Mac because they're overpriced. The new CPUs are interesting but the rest of it can go do one.
    • clay-dreidels 4y ago
      • djtriptych 4y ago
        Reads like ChatGPT
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    • shepherdjerred 4y ago
      One thing to consider is resale value. When I tried reselling old Windows laptops like a Surface or XPS, the value dropped off a cliff from the MSRP. I would spend $2000 on a laptop and then it was selling for $700 used on ebay a year later. With MacBooks (and other Apple products) you can often recoup 70%-80% of your initial cost as long as it's in good condition.
      • smoldesu 4y ago
        If it's not a base-model. If you're one of the unlucky shmucks running an 8/256 M1 Macbook Pro, you'll be lucky to get $500 for it on the secondhand market.
• QuadrupleA 4y ago
  Sorry for an emotional expletive-laden post here, but this enrages me so much. My computer is my main professional and creative tool, and for MS to do this shit without my permission or control (like it already does with fucking Edge and OneDrive nags every time it installs an update) feels so exploitative, greedy, and evil. And stupid - their execs are chasing myopic short term gains with aggressive stongarm tactics, while long-term I and probably a million others are running for the exit, and doing our best to never use Windows, Azure, Outlook, Office etc again. So few companies out there seen to care about their long term reputation.
  • humanistbot 4y ago
    > while long-term I and probably a million others are running for the exit, and doing our best to never use Windows, Azure, Outlook, Office etc again. So few companies out there seen to care about their long term reputation. Sadly, the number of people who will actually run for the exit is much, much smaller. People on HN are completely unrepresentative of the general population. I'm pretty sure MS has people who do user retention as part of design research, it is standard in the industry before rolling out a feature to all users. Especially when switching costs are high, even people who hate ads get used to them after a very short time. Plus, everyone who can afford a Mac and doesn't mind being locked-in to the Apple ecosystem is already there. Every mainstream platform is already inundated with ads. Social media is full of ads and sponsored posts. Most 'news' sites have gotten so bad that content is only 25-50% of the screen. E-commerce marketplaces from Amazon to Walmart are compromised and corrupted. People may run from one ad-saturated platform or site to another, but the norm is ads everywhere. If they're not running from that, would they notice or care about this?
    • QuadrupleA 4y ago
      Well we're often the ones who recommend a computer to our parents and grandparents. Or the ones who decide which cloud hosting platform or email service provider to use in our organizations. People and governments are collectively getting fed up with surveillance capitalism. One can hope.
• ramesh31 4y ago
  >More attempts to impose Edge I don't particularly mind this. Apple already forces Safari down our throats at every turn. And Edge is honestly a pretty great browser. Unless you're a Mozilla purist, there's really no better choice on Windows at this point.
  • starky 4y ago
    You should be pissed off that your OS doesn't give you the freedom to choose which browser you use as a default. While you may think Edge is good, I use a different browser and my OS shouldn't be allowed to override the preference.
  • oefrha 4y ago
    > Edge is honestly a pretty great browser Edge is the only browser I’ve ever used that tries to sell me some sort of credit card deal or reward points or some shit. Got a popup just yesterday when testing a browser extension of mine on Edge.
  • InCityDreams 4y ago
    >Unless you're a Mozilla purist, there's really no better choice on Windows at this point. Oh, yes,here is. It's the browers I chose to prefer to install, and its the only one i chose* to use on a daily basis.
• butz 4y ago
  What about using a custom shell on Windows 11? I remember using LiteStep, bbLean and geoShell on my old Windows 98 and XP. If they are no longer developed, this might be a niche market for Windows 11 users who are tired of constant "improvements". I bet some users would be very happy with "classic" Windows 7 shell too.
  • yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    Part of the problem is that MS made it harder to replace the shell with every version Edit: Although apparently "Open Shell" can replace the Windows 10 start menu, so I guess it's not impossible.
  • layer8 4y ago
    You can, for example using Shell Launcher: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/kiosk-shelllauncher https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/kios... But people usually prefer replacing just the Start menu, or just making tweaks to how the regular task bar works.
• slicktux 4y ago
  So, impositions, ads and lacking ability to disable…
• humanistbot 4y ago
  Most people will go along with this. Most people don't care. Those that do have already left Microsoft for Apple a long time ago. HN is not representative of the general population, and these comments really show how out of touch people are on this site.
  • BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
    I feel like many users do care but are not comfortable enough with technology to realize they can turn some of this stuff off, or they aren’t comfortable with switching operating systems - much less installing Linux. I can’t tell you how many people I encounter who don’t realize AdBlockers are something they can install. Once I get uBlockOrigin set up for them they tell me it is a night and day difference. Such technologies have been available for years but they either never realized it was an option, or thought it required some hackerman level of configuration to make it work.
• pjmlp 4y ago
  Windows is still my favourite OS, but I surely am not rushing to adopt Windows 11 beyond work requirements. It is just another Vista.
  • karmakurtisaani 4y ago
    > Windows is still my favourite OS Now there's an unpopular opinion if anything. I've heard the "yeah it's kind of shit, but the games/applications I use only really work with Windows" a million times, but this one is kind of new. Edit: this comment was indeed intended to be read in the context of HN crowd.
    • pjmlp 4y ago
      Unpopular in HN and FOSS circles.
    • shepherdjerred 4y ago
      You don't know anyone that prefers Windows? It sounds like you're a bit out-of-touch. Anyone who is familiar with Windows is going to prefer it over the alternative which, in reality, the only alternative that most people would use is macOS. People in my life who prefer Windows include: * Pretty much anyone who went to school with me K-12, since that's what we primarily used * Anyone who was in my CS program in college since we were expected to use Windows machines, and most graduates when on to companies where devs used Windows * Anyone at any of my previous jobs who wasn't in a developer role (save the rare manager who has strong preferences) * Anyone who play video games on a desktop aside from those who are technically inclined I personally prefer macOS/Linux. I use Windows when I have to. Most people find Windows to be fine. Regardless of validity, I rarely hear non-tech people complain about the issues with Windows that HN rants about.
      • howinteresting 4y ago
        A bit of an aside, but CS and software engineering programs should be based on FOSS to the greatest extent possible, with proprietary software only being used when necessary. The idea that CS programs would use Windows or macOS by default is pretty horrifying to me.
• Aperocky 4y ago
  Linux Gaming cannot come fast enough. I'm so ready to uninstall Windows on my only Windows machine which happened to be a gaming computer, however there are just a few games that I want to play from time to time that does not support Linux. For now I can live with Windows 10 which had a workable WSL so I can pretend that windows have a terminal (Some modding needs code!)
  • azemetre 4y ago
    I will say myself personally, that after I got my steam deck I haven't turned on my desktop in 6 months. Slowly in the process of converting my windows desktop into a media server. My two laptops are not windows machines. I have't looked at the steam surveys but I hope there's enough users to encourage more publishers to make games linux compatible. I know for me personally, all the games I enjoy are available for linux gaming. Even "recent" titles like Spiderman and God of War.
    • Aperocky 4y ago
      Too bad if you're interested in playing Age Of Empires 2 and older titles like Medieval Total War... There are some concern about graphics performance as well, it seems most titles are not tuned for Linux. Do you have the same graphic performance under linux?
      • MagicMoonlight 4y ago
        Linux can play pretty much anything under Proton now. And older games tend to work better than on Windows because Proton runs the actual code instead of trying to force it through the current windows OS that is 10 versions on and doesn't have any of the APIs anymore. A lot of old windows games don't even run on windows anymore.
        • Aperocky 4y ago
          Thanks, I might need to try that, does Proton require SteamOS or I could use any linux flavor I like?
• iansinnott 4y ago
  I used to run a windows box occasionally for gaming, but have completely replaced it with PopOS. Proton is truly amazing tech IMO. My whole steam library runs as well as it did on windows. Posting this here for others that might not have known. I could have switched away from windows for gaming long ago but Steam oddly doesn't promote / enable Proton by default.
  • smoldesu 4y ago
    It's really miracle tech, I'm not sure if people really understand how good it is. I've got a library of ~300 Steam games, and less than 10 of them don't launch with Proton. I think I've had more problems on Windows...
• howinteresting 4y ago
  The horrifying descent of Windows is one of the great tragedies of our time. It's never been great, but it's generally been OK. This is monstrous. Every single exec involved in this should be publicly named and shamed, and driven out of the tech industry.
• CWuestefeld 4y ago
  Last week I allowed it to "upgrade" to Win 11 22H2. Part of the upgrade involved silently resetting a heap of my default apps. When the upgrade was done, Firefox was no longer my default browser, it was changed to Edge. Also, the default apps for PDF, JPG, PNG, TXT, MKV, and probably others that I haven't yet discovered, were set to their MS equivalent apps. Microsoft, this was not a nice thing to do to a user.
  • ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    >Firefox was no longer my default browser, it was changed to Edge I'm wondering how does this happen? I have Chrome as the default browser on my Win11 machine for a year now, and after all the updates, Chrome is still the default. The default apps for PDF, music and video play-back were also kept between updates. Updates never did anything funky for me, just added improvements and new features, which kept me contempt with it. Really curious why this would happen to you but never happened to me. I have Win11 Pro edition, installed from scratch from the official ISO (not OEM), if that makes any difference. Maye OEM or Home editions behave differently?
    • mmis1000 4y ago
      People blindly click ok in dialogs ,think it will be fine and thus get their setting changed or install unwanted softwares. And the dialog that nukes your app default pops up in OOBE of every win 11 major update. (To clarify, I don't think the dialog should be there at first place. A dialog that defaults to give user a big problem is just dumb)
    • a2tech 4y ago
      You're extremely lucky then. On our (very large, very strictly managed Windows 10 fleet) Edge is CONSTANTLY becoming the default PDF handler. Its a real PITA and MS has failed to give admins the tools to manage this correctly. These anti customer dark patterns are going to drive a wedge into the golden goose of corporate sales. At the same place as in my first statement, Macs are slowly showing up in places you'd never have guessed before. Clinics, law offices, regulated environments. IE corporate MS bread and butter. Someone over there needs to get their head out of their corporate ass and see the writing on the wall and turn the ship before it hits the iceberg they're heading at under full steam.
• beached_whale 4y ago
  Windows 10, unless things change will be my last windows machine. I use it for testing with msvc, and my tax software that i like. But all this imposition into software i paid for isn't how i want to use my computers. Like Windows is pretty solid, it is MS by doing this has lost all credibility as a company that views me as their customer. I don’t need them
• EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
  I just run W10Privacy program every now and then, and it disables all the ads, telemetry and bloatware in Windows. Takes 5 minutes. No such program exists for Android or iOS, it just can't exist.
  • themoonisachees 4y ago
    My pro 1 running lineageOS begs to disagree. Android can be customized to your liking if you know what you're doing. You may argue that that is removed from the default experience enough that it's not that valid of a use case, but w10privacy hardly is a common use case.
    • EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
      W10Privacy takes 5 minutes to run. Frankly, how long did it take you to go through all the lineOS hoops? And how many apps still don't work on your phone?
      • themoonisachees 4y ago
        All of the apps I've ever installed have worked. The longest i've spent tinkering was to get gpay working after root, and I was trailblazing. The procedure I wrote then is still effective. The only non-working app i've ever encountered was called "cats and soup" (an idle game) and I just had to hide lucky patcher. In total I'd say I spent about 4 hours total on it. Sure it's more than the 5 minutes for w10Privacy but I get significantly more out of it, such as yt vanced, lucky patcher inapp payment emulation, OASP mods, and xposed and magisk modules, not to mention system-wide adblock.
• MagicMoonlight 4y ago
  I left Windows for Mint about 2 months ago and it's just so much better. All that stupid bullshit you have to deal with on windows just went away, I felt actual relief. No more ads, no more forced updates because you walked away from your computer, no processes that it forces you to run so that it can spy on your mics. It just works. If you want it to look like windows 7 you can, if you want it to look like an iPad you can. I've made mine into a weird hybrid of windows 7 and OSX which I love. My start button actually shows my programs instead of loading bing and showing me 100MB of pictures of nigerian football players. The only thing that was stopping me before was games, but games all work on linux now. Other than one or two that require specific anti-cheats that use 0days to hijack windows, there's basically nothing that doesn't run on linux now. In fact, a lot of my games actually work better because proton dynamically patches out bugs from the original windows implementations. I don't think I've found any software or anything that I use that hasn't got a linux version. Windows is dead to me, I haven't used it since.
  • Maxburn 4y ago
    Me too my friend, I find mint a decent general desktop OS and I rarely touch windows for personal use. Still struggling with iTunes though.
    • wombatpm 4y ago
      Everyone struggles with iTunes. And every update makes it worse. I’ve used it on Mac and Windows and both suck
      • Maxburn 4y ago
        I just don't have a mac, that's really the only issue here. I went out of my way years ago to try and wrap my head around itunes, all the (too many) things it does etc. They mess that up a bit with updates (not as bad as windows) but it isn't terrible once you realize it's a whole bunch of apps rolled up into one. It doesn't do any of them really great but it's just a gateway to my devices so it isn't horrible.
      • 4y ago
• fxtentacle 4y ago
  My new gaming build is Linux-only, PopOS to be precise, and the experience so far has been smooth. AMD CPU and NVIDIA GPU and stuff just works. And thanks to Valve's investments, all the games that I care about just work, too. I'm also pretty sure that no upcoming triple-A game is going to ignore Linux, now that all the cool kids with money bought a Steam Deck.
  • AB1908 4y ago
    Do you know of any alternatives to Playnite? I use that and GameActivity to try and track my play time.
• expert_here 4y ago
  I usually stay on Microsoft's happy path, running the latest versions of the OS on fully supported hardware. And I rarely change default settings, I'm not bothered by an icon for one of their games in the start menu. But those little icons for holidays, etc, that showed up in the search bar really bugged me. It bothered me so much that I searched for a way to get rid of them. If Microsoft manages to annoy a fanboy like me, they've really missed the mark.
• bowsamic 4y ago
  Windows is aggressively regressing since Windows 7. Bizarre move
• progman32 4y ago
  Linux/*BSD may still be that awkward friend who sometimes misreads your intentions and causes awkward moments or knocks glasses over, but at least tries to respect you (snapd excepted). Windows these days doesn't seem to respect you. There's a difference in my mind between struggling to make your computer do something (because nobody made it easy yet) and struggling to make your computer do something (because a marketing team decided to try to stop you). Resolving the first scenario feels like working for myself, the other feels like fighting an adversary. I try to not use products that don't respect me. That's fundamentally what keeps me almost exclusively on FOSS. Better alignment of incentives for what I'm trying to do.
  • nicbou 4y ago
    Windows is the guy that makes you watch your drink at all times, because he clearly doesn't take no as an answer.
    • the_gipsy 4y ago
      Are you sure? Why not? C'mon. Yes? Haha ok that definitely is a yes.
      • rolenthedeep 4y ago
        Do you want to upgrade your OS? Why not? C'mon, it's free! Please? Please upgrade your OS? Oh hey! I upgraded your OS while you were sleeping, no need to thank me.
  • berkes 4y ago
    As much as I dislike snapd, I don't see how that is a lack of respect. It's just unfinished not ready for production mostly, i'd say.
    • progman32 4y ago
      I see these things as being disrespectful about snapd (happy to be proven wrong): - apt install firefox and other packages actually install via snap on Ubuntu. My intent was to install via apt. It should prompt me instead of silently using a different tool with different implications. For example, my firefox profile was silently copied to another folder with zero notification, causing issues with my tooling. - they're only now adding the ability to pause updates (an experimental feature!), after aggressively pushing snapd for years. Work arounds included telling the OS the Internet connection is metered, which sounds familiar. https://snapcraft.io/docs/keeping-snaps-up-to-date#heading--hold https://snapcraft.io/docs/keeping-snaps-up-to-date#heading--... I feel disrespected when a tool imposes its own schedule on me and fights to enforce it. I appreciate that they added the Hold feature, but I feel the way we got it was due to continual, years long community push back. Reasonable defaults are fine. Let me edit them without fighting me. - proprietary server implementation, only canonical gets to run one or modify behavior. Distros can't run their own. I get that this might reduce fragmentation. To me the disrespect comes from not giving me a choice. To me it's fine to aggressively push a tech. What I take issue with is the apparent intent to reduce end user control. If my impression is wrong, I'll recant. At least snapd seems to have slowly improved, my nfs mounts actually work in most snap apps now...
• cokeandpepsi 4y ago
  I stopped when they forced the microsoft account onto everyone, fun fact I changed the only email I use to auth with my msft account a few years ago... I can only login with the new it sends 2FA to my old one the old one isn't listened in my account as additional emails or anything
• nicbou 4y ago
  Windows was fine 10 years ago when I switched to Mac, but it seems like every time I look back, the OS is more hostile. They basically took every reason to use an ad blocker, and baked those into the OS.
• redrobein 4y ago
  For the love of god, if anyone from the windows design team is looking at this, give us taskbar on the side with ungrouped icons and titles, and fix the autohide. It is painful to use windows on laptops without it. That's been my windows setup for over a decade and it was straight up removed from win11 whilst calling it an "upgrade".
• anonymous360446 4y ago
  I am a happy Windows "user". Specifically, I use it for its superior battery/power management on laptops, and mainly as a VNC client to connect to Linux desktops. As long as I'm in control of the firewall, it's also free from ads.
  • avsteele 4y ago
    Any tips on setting up the firewall to block the MS-generated adds?
    • anonymous360446 4y ago
      Personally I just block everything and create whitelist rules for what I need to connect to.
• h1fra 4y ago
  I don't understand how microsoft can be bring so much in the Open Source world and this kind of things in the OS world. Seems completely out of touch.
  • hgsgm 4y ago
    MS open source is a recent marketing PR effort, not a business model.
  • layer8 4y ago
    Microsoft is not a singular coherent entity, it’s a pile of separate teams.
• dangus 4y ago
  Well, how much are you willing to pay for Windows? Consumers already spoke with their wallets: they don't want to buy OSes. They're expected to be free. The only reason macOS isn't this aggressive about advertising is because it's locked down to profitable hardware and linked together with a proprietary ecosystem of even-more-profitable hardware. Diving into these, I still think this article is a bit dramatic. 1. Recommended Websites: Do you even look at your start menu? I don't. I hit the Windows key and type in the first few letters of the app I'm trying to open. The Start Menu could be completely blank and I wouldn't care. 2. Search Highlights: You don't even need to have a search bar in your taskbar at all 3. Suggested Actions: Can be turned off entirely 4. Warnings in the wrong places: Easily ignorable text in another piece of UI I never look at. 5. Please use our search filled with ads: Again, remove the search icon from your taskbar. It doesn't have to be there at all. Don't want any of this? Install Linux.
• whateveracct 4y ago
  Windows update frequently break my laptop. For instance, one time the speakers just stopped working. That eventually got fixed. And recently (and still broken) .local mDNS lookups I use to ssh into my Linux desktop to code no longer work. I dread what my laptop will be like when I hear it whir awake when closed.
• bsnnkv 4y ago
  I maintain a tiling window manager for Windows[1]. It's the only thing still keeping me on Windows right now. I run NixOS on WSL, and I have a separate NixOS desktop partition that I iterate on from time to time. Once I can make my tiling window manager X11-compatible, I think that will be it for me and Windows. The last update totally screwed me to the extent that I had to go into the registry and manually set my user profile path to get all my settings back, all because the update couldn't handle a symlink in the C:\Users dir, which I had to use because there is no sane way to do something as simple as changing the user directory name. [1]: https://github.com/LGUG2Z/komorebi https://github.com/LGUG2Z/komorebi
  • account-5 4y ago
    Genuine question, but what's wrong with the tiling window managers already available for Linux?
    • bsnnkv 4y ago
      They are all beautiful works of software, but nothing can really compare to the seamless experience of using a tool that you have designed to meet all of your needs from the ground-up. This is the downside of building your own tools (well)- once you have experienced how good life can be with those tools, it's very hard to go back to working with tools that are not designed with all of the same intricacies in mind.
  • saratogacx 4y ago
    While I don't use the tool (I use Windows Power Toys for my tiled window management) I have to give a shout out on the amazing github readme. That is lovingly complete and I wasn't left wondering how any of it worked.
    • bsnnkv 4y ago
      Thank you! Usually the only feedback that I get on the README is that it is "too long", so I really appreciate this comment. :)
• psychphysic 4y ago
  My personal most hated features of W11. Removing most right click options with clicking show more or some obscure icon. Constant notifications making the bottom right of the screen unusable. So many ways to pin a window moving it to just drop it feels like threading a needle.
• neilv 4y ago
  These are the least of the abuse that history shows us you should expect. But, this Sunday afternoon, you can burn this Debian installer to a USB stick, use it, and be mostly done with MS forever: https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/11.5.0+nonfree/amd64/iso-dvd/firmware-11.5.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-in... (I did that a couple decades ago, and still haven't regretted it. I regret many tech choices over that time, but I don't regret moving from MS to an honest Linux distro.)
• flipbrad 4y ago
  The EU Digital Services Act (article 25) bans dark patterns for online platforms: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:OJ.L_.2022.277.01.0001.01.ENG#d1e3169-1-1 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:... What a shame it doesn't straightforwardly apply to operating systems
• ziml77 4y ago
  I have hope for Linux running on more desktops now that I've seen Proton in action. But there's still things here and there that stop me from switching, even if every game I want to play runs flawlessly. One of the biggest issues is peripherals. None of the manufacturers write their software to work on Linux and they don't make their protocols open so others can easily do the work instead. Reverse engineering works to an extent, but that requires significant effort. I'm not going to be okay with losing functionality of my hardware. Last time I checked, the HRTF options were also lacking on Linux. Meanwhile there's multiple choices on Windows (I'm currently enjoying SteelSeries Sonar) including built-in support for object-based 3D audio with multiple renderer options. And the latest killer for me is lack of HDR support. I have an HDR monitor and I'm not going to settle for running it in SDR mode. I'm not even sure I'd want to switch if Linux supported HDR but didn't have an equivalent of Auto HDR (which I think does a decent job at scaling the luma of SDR games outside of the SDR range)
• theknocker 4y ago
• extr0pian 4y ago
  Windows is adware. A couple weeks ago I recently wrote a rant about the reasons I no longer use Windows on any of my machines [1], but I recently installed Windows 10 on bare metal because I have a work project coming up that likely requires me to use Windows. One of the first new obnoxious things I noticed was that search box in the taskbar had a bright and colorful gift icon inside it. Clicking on that icon brings up links to holiday-themed advertisements like "Top 10 Tech Gifts This Holiday Season". Mind you, I provided zero information to Microsoft and had yet to even open a web browser. I also made certain my internet was disconnected prior to the installation setup to avoid being strong armed into creating a Microsoft account, and disabled as much telemetry as they allow beforehand. This was not a dev or beta release, this was the latest version of the Windows 10 ISO from Microsoft's website. It's not just sad, but it gives me a gross feeling. [1] https://chuck.is/windows https://chuck.is/windows
• jmugan 4y ago
  Speaking of all this, on my windows 11 machine I get McAfee popups, and for the life of me, I can't track down where they come from or how to turn them off. My son has a windows 10 machine and has the same problem. Why does Microsoft put up with this? I only use windows when I have to because of crap like this.
• haolez 4y ago
  I've used Linux and Windows for more than a decade each. I know about desktop Linux' shortcomings and I was using Windows 10 in the last few years because it worked better than Linux for me. There is just too much stuff going on and performance suffers (especially when dealing with Docker for Windows). It also feels that I'm a guinea pig for PMs at Microsoft to experiment on new revenue generating features, but my operating system is not a place where I would want them. It hurts my focus. Windows 11 finally sent me back to Linux. Despite a few bugs and annoyances here and there, I'm doing my work on Linux more productively than I was on Windows 11. Time to move on for me. In the end, it feels like I'm not an important customer to Microsoft anymore (as a "power user"). It feels that their target audience are clueless grandmas that can be easily scammed into their products. I don't want this to sound aggressive. It really does feel that way.
  • crabmusket 4y ago
    What confuses me is the UI changes every version. If Microsoft's bread and butter are "casual" or "clueless" users, aren't they vulnerable to changes much more than power users? Maybe M$ PMs don't care about confusing your average grandma who can't find the start menu because it moved to the middle of the taskbar. It's not like granny is going to up and switch to a Mac, is it?
• LooseMarmoset 4y ago
  Why would you pay for this? Why would you even associate with a company who will not even sell you, a private individual, an option that does not include this? What about using Linux on the desktop is "difficult" enough to justify paying money to Microsoft for voluntary software servitude? * They will not tell you what data they collect about you * They will not allow you to disable data collection * They will not permit you to define the default browser you use * They will not permit you to avoid advertisements disguised as valid system alerts * They will delete your privacy settings without notification * They will lock down your hardware so you physically can't install or modify the software
  • ketzu 4y ago
    > Why would you pay for this? Most people don't. They are reusing their windows 7 license from that one computer they got in 2010 or their windows 8 license they got for free in college. Or they do not consider it "buying" it, as it was "free" with their computer. > They will not permit you to define the default browser you use They might reset it on updates once a year or something (it hasn't happened to me, but I heard others were not as fortunate) but you definitely can set it, right?
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• hbarka 4y ago
  I still haven’t recovered from when Microsoft changed Classic to Tiles. It was a shock to years of muscle memory. There were plenty of hacks to get the Classic UI emulated. Start > Programs you are dear to heart.
• mensetmanusman 4y ago
  I see ‘secure’ laptops at F500 companies now that have search ads in the start menu. How did IT not push back against MS here? Huge security issue.
  • SamuelAdams 4y ago
    Windows enterprise is a different product. SysAdmins can likely push a GPO update to disable internet searches and other queries to Microsoft. If you see “secure” laptops with ads and searching bing enabled by default, it’s likely their sysadmins are either lazy or have a different threat model.
• PostOnce 4y ago
  Microsoft did a tremendous amount of hard work to convince me to make the effort to migrate away from Windows at home and at work. They want to lease me a word processor. They want to put ads in my digital filing cabinet. They want to take 30% of my software revenue, and when they realized they couldn't have it, they said they'd settle for 12%. No dice. There are zero Windows machines in my home or in my business right now. In fact, there are no Microsoft products. I migrate clients away from Windows when possible, and refuse to work with those who are tightly integrated with MS products. I do occasionally work a job where something has to work on Windows or with MS SQL, but I only accept if that can be done in a platform agnostic way. I previously held onto Windows at home because despite my age I still love games. At least, I love the idea of them, if I ever get time to play. Now, recently I had a startling realization: it's actually easier now to get many of the games I love running on Wine (with or without steam) than it is on Windows. The performance is great. (edit: I love you, Lutris, you make gaming easy.) Even for tools where Windows is essentially mandatory (music production), the situation is such that I now would rather run old software on an old version of Windows as a dedicated DAW machine than to subject myself to new Windows. Anyway, great job Microsoft, you converted a customer into someone who will take time out of their day to bad-mouth you on the internet. All that could have been avoided by just not behaving like an asshole.
  • fortyseven 4y ago
    Windows-free Ubuntu guy here, for over a year now. I even kept my old Windows box hooked up to a KVM "just in case". So far it only gets turned on if I accidentally bump my foot on the power switch.
    • dano 4y ago
      I encapsulated my old windows machine into a VM - it gets fired up to run Quicken and another accounting program for which there are no reasonable client based substitutes. The VM boots fast, I have a "safe" copy of the VM image incase of a viral compromise, and it's out of the way of my normal workflow. Windows machine free for about a decade.
      • 4y ago
• DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  Windows is in the business of selling software to business clients (And slowly migrating to being a cloud provider business). The only reason Windows happens to have 'home' editions and pervasive software in schools is to perpetuate the 'familiarity' argument when Businesses are doing procurement.
• lallysingh 4y ago
  It's 2022. Who runs Windows? Consumers moved to iOS and devs moved to Linux/macOS. The only thing I have that needs Windows is a service DVD for a motorcycle and autocad fusion. Both work great in VMs for my occasional use. The VMs contain all the user toxicity from spreading to the rest of my environment.
  • coredog64 4y ago
    There's still gaming. I've got a bunch of games on GoG that don't have a Linux install and are 32-bit only for Mac.
• sampa 4y ago
  For all those who stay on Windows only for games, google for vfio it's a virtual machine with Windows for games Uses a dedicated graphics card, has like 3% cost. Bonus is you don't have to care about updates and viruses/trojans. Disk C with OS is just a raw file, that you can copy at will.
  • GuB-42 4y ago
    What is the cost when it comes to disk I/O? I found the overhead to be significant in VMs. Personal impression, no metrics. I am also talking about standard OS-based VMs where the image is a file, not hypervisors. It is becoming more and more relevant now that we have ridiculously fast SSDs and games take advantage of them. It was, after all, a big selling point of the PS5.
    • sampa 4y ago
      you can pass-through a whole additional nvme ssd if you find a normal "raw file as partition" on your ssd isn't enough for you. PS use virtio driver for a "raw file disk" for best speed. PPS Basically qemu-kvm/libvirt on Linux is a go-to solution for games.
• Nition 4y ago
  If you've noticed that when you search in Windows 11, there's a big delay in the results coming up (or worse, they come up for a split second, then disappear for a while before coming back again), it's the web search that's the problem. You can turn it off to get fast search back: Regedit: Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows Sub-key (folder) "Explorer" - create if it's not there. New > DWORD (32-bit) -> DisableSearchBoxSuggestions Set value to true
• civopsec 4y ago
  Lots of people have told me (not to me specifically of course) that paying for software was the magic thing that would rid software of ads. But isn’t Windows a payed-for product? It seems more likely that such organizations will do whatever they can get away with. Another example is Spotify with their podcasts suggestions (that you can’t get rid of). Why would I, who is not from America, want to listen to the wife of a former American president?
  • phendrenad2 4y ago
    "Paid" is a spectrum. Hulu has paid (with ads) and paid (pay more to remove ads). Windows is probably being sold at a loss, and ads make up the difference. So no, it isn't enough to stuff a dollar in Microsoft's shirt pocket and expect to not see ads.
• shreddit 4y ago
  It’s quite ironic reading about the complain of the “recommend webpage section in the start menu” while getting 20% of my screen (iPad) stolen by a “destiny 2” ad…
• avsteele 4y ago
  We use windows at work because people need MS Office, CAD, and because it is the easiest platform for me to develop desktop apps for our scientific equipment. Win 10 issues in this vein were a bit annoying but no too terrible I've been dreading having to move to 11 someday. All the bad parts of 10 get cranked up. We can't even create local accounts (as is appropriate for a single-user / shared machine.) I have been liking other Microsoft software the last few years. But why are they ruining Windows for any professional use?
• dzink 4y ago
  Another ad we got unsolicited from Microsoftadvertising.com to our support email. Microsoft Advertising 719 MILLION DESKTOP SEARCHERS Get ready to meet them. When you know your audience, you can learn how to reach them. Let's take a closer look at the Microsoft Search Network audience. Start reaching them today > They’re getting established 60% are ages 25-44 53% are married 53% graduated college or above They’re making big decisions 2.6M are planning last-minute travel 3.1M are researching a car purchase 2.2M are looking at a home loan They’re spenders 32% spend more online than the average internet searcher 48% are in the top 25% of household incomes
• prima-facie 4y ago
  I feel like Win 11 is a solid product from an engineering and even an UI/UX perspective, ruined by awful marketing decisions.
• withinboredom 4y ago
  At my last employer, I built a thing that let us target warnings on various pages of the admin about the user’s configuration. Things like “hey you don’t have backups turned on and this is the fifth post you’ve made.” It was incredibly fine-grained. Then the marketers got a hold of it, which is fine because surely they’d understand targeted ads. Nah. 75% of people just slapped a message on the user’s homepage, whether they could use the feature or not. Seeing basically the same thing being built for windows settings makes me sigh. Mostly because people don’t have the ability or disciple to use it correctly.
• userbinator 4y ago
  "Not-so-great"? How about "absolutely fucking horrible"? What's with this "softening" of language these days? Is "doubleplusungood" next? I've been noticing it more and more lately on technical articles and it really pisses me off because it's trying to downplay the insanity of the situation and if anything only encourages MS to continue down this terrible path ("they just think it's not-so-great, no worries...") To get them to listen and change course, beyond mass migrations away from Windows, I don't think muted complaints will work; we need to complain more, louder, harder. With the same amount of energy they're shoving this shit down our throats. To paraphrase Linus Torvalds: Microsoft, fuck you!
• jug 4y ago
  This convinces me that leaving for Fedora 100% at home was the right move. It surprised me how it’s so far a _better_ desktop OS than Windows for me. Really. There are stuff all over the place working more smoothly, even things like hardware video decoding and interacting with windows. It’s so solid too. I have an Xbox for games and miss nothing.
• godzillabrennus 4y ago
  Reminds me of how Chrome is forcing manifest v3 on its users. I’m busy switching our company over to Brave as a result.
• Forge36 4y ago
  The browser protection extension was recently retired, adding a message that users should switch to edge. [1] The pop-up is occurring every time I launch the development environment at work. https://www.reddit.com/r/DefenderATP/comments/z7xmtq/eol_for_chrome_microsoft_defender_browser/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DefenderATP/comments/z7xmtq/eol_for...
• GekkePrutser 4y ago
  KDE also does #1, showing web search results when typing in the launcher. Probably just trying to be helpful rather than trying to push bing or edge or data mine my searches. But still it doesn't belong there IMO. However I'm sure I'll find a setting to turn it off if it annoys me too much. That's what I love about KDE. I don't normally use the launcher much anyway so I haven't really bothered looking for the setting.
• PebblesHD 4y ago
  For these and many other ongoing support reasons, I’ve been giving various Macs to my extended family since about Vista. For my grandfather, my mother in law, her daughter, and the various nephews, I can generally trust that a slightly locked down Mac with auto-update enabled will pretty much work as advertised. What I find more encouraging trend wise is that I’m now seeing more alternative devices in the offices I work in. Even 5 years ago the standard device in the various banks and insurance shops I consult with has been a dell latitude or an hp elitebook, whereas now solid bet most of the devs have a macbook, and even a few linux boxes for the more adventurous orgs. I’m not saying the macs are in any way perfect, and I’m sure they’ll eventually try many of the same things, but for the moment they have a user experience in a different league and i can’t see myself moving on from them for quite a while.
• Exendroinient00 4y ago
  Switch to linux. Gaming on it isn't that big of a problem now.
• Alifatisk 4y ago
  How can a company like Microsoft actively try to push away users from their products and gain from it? I am minutes away from switiching over to Fedora at this point.
• r0rshrk 4y ago
  https://archive.vn/XoqA4 https://archive.vn/XoqA4
• blippage 4y ago
  Debian Stable user here. I had Windows 7, and it was a toss-up between using it and sticking with Win 7. There was always this feeling that using Linux was just a bunch of faffing around. I can't quite remember why I finally decided to go for it. I think I said I'd try it as an experiment for 6 months to see how I would get on. I should point out that I'm no Unix/Linux newbie and had installed Slackware on a machine back in the early 90's. I've been through a whole bunch of distros. I'd generally recommend Ubuntu, but I grew increasingly frustrated with it. Debian Stable works for me. It has a vast repo, all nicely integrated into a coherent whole. Unix(ish) is unsurpassed as a development platform. The reason I say this is, as long as Zoom and maybe Skype work on my computer, which is over a decade old, it has enough for what I want. VS Code is also OK, unlike the abomination that is Eclipse. I can never stick to VS Code, but think it's a sensible choice if it works for you. Windows 10 sounds like a nightmare from what I've heard. The constant updating, all at inconvenient times. I heard that Win 10 is allowed access to your data. Quite why folks didn't kick up a much bigger stink about this I don't know. Corporations are OK with MS sniffing through their documents? For real? Win 10 seemed like a social experiment to see how hard they could kick consumers in the nuts and still get away with it. Win 11 seems to turn the insanity up to 11. If anyone thinks Windows is any good, then all I can see is that they're suffering from some kind of Stockholm Syndrome. Non-commercial Linux distros are a breathe of fresh air.
• aestetix 4y ago
  Reading these comments is kind of funny to me. Why does this surprise anyone? Microsoft has been doing things like this for decades. Remember in the 90s, when they blocked out non-IE web browsers and had a major lawsuit against them for it? And remember they introduced product activation, aka asking permission to run software you legally purchased. This is just another entry on a long list of reasons I personally do not use Microsoft unless I have to.
• afarviral 4y ago
  I'm just not having any of the problems people are experiencing and I'm on the latest Win 11 (22H2). It hasn't changed my file associations or popped up, or stolen focus, or advertised anything to me and it gives me valuable information about how long my computer will be inaccessible if I update it, and lets me choose when. I replace the task bar (explorer patcher) and start menu (open-shell) and I have "do not disturb" on constantly, if that helps anyone. Windown and I just leave each other alone. I'm not trying to call anyone out. I'm sure the negative experiences are genuine. However, it's worth pointing out Microsoft made some progress in improving things for some users, despite shockingly poor choices (task bar, I'm looking at you), and dark patterns for some users. It's still the closest thing to the "best" OS for a personal computer, depending on what things are important to you in the moment. I want that to be GNU/Linux/BSD but for me the FOSS OS' are just too distracting (always some sort of config chore needing to be done to address screen tearing, or why the touchpad won't work, or how to get the bluetooth stack working, or how to keep the configs in sync between machines, or how to reliably store and back up my files). It's an unfair playing field. I used a GNU/Linux flavor (debian -> Ubuntu -> OpenSuse -> Arch) as my primary OS for around 5 years, before the build up of cortisol became too much.
• sdrinf 4y ago
  Due to a range of software compatibility, and the new scheduler, I'm going to have to upgrade to windows 11 soon. For those who upgraded: is there an edition (like win10 LTSC), which disables all these nonsense, and creates a livable computing environment? If not, is there something like w10privacy for windows 11? if neither, what's the current-best guide of setting up, and locking in a livable environment?
• DeadMouseFive 4y ago
  I use CAD software for work. Starting in my current role I was given a laptop with Windows 11 preinstalled. I discovered my CAD software wasn't compatible with Win11 and had to downgrade to Win 10. Without fail, once a month, when I restart my computer, Windows prompts me to "upgrade" from Win 10->11 for free. There is no way to shut this feature off that I know of and frankly I just click NO three times and move on. Windows hasn't been this bad since Vista. I miss Win7.
• raindropm 4y ago
  I give Bing a try a couple of days ago. Shocked by how *extremely* cluttered it is(give it a try) Like every 'Don't' list of UX101 comes to live. It's disgusting and at the same time, disappointing, consider their attempt to make user experience more cleaner in their other product.