11 ms·

I left Windows in a hail of Vista bugs, over a decade ago. I've seen it get worse and worse in that time, both in UX rot and anti-consumer "features". I'm almo

I left Windows in a hail of Vista bugs, over a decade ago. I've seen it get worse and worse in that time, both in UX rot and anti-consumer "features". I'm almost impressed with what people willingly put up with. Not here to eulogize over what I moved to, but I think it's important people consider why they're still using Windows. It's not your friend.

PaulHoule 4y ago
The Linux desktop left me. Somehow the community just doesn’t get that it is possible for text labels to fit in the space that is allocated to them. Contrast that to the refinement of the command line interface experienced through ssh. It’s taken Linux what, 15 years, to not make the same transition that Microsoft did with WDDM in Vista? I’m annoyed by the “thoroughly pizzled” features in Windows such as the OneDrive file shredding system, attempts to stuff ads up your nose, etc. The thing is I can turn that crap off with a finite amount of effort, whereas Linux desktop enthusiasts can spend forever tweaking their desktop and it “just doesn’t work” no matter what you do. My satisfaction with a new Windows 11 machine I just built is about as high as my satisfaction with my Ubuntu server, the difference is that the Win11 machine has a GUI and the Ubuntu server doesn’t.
nunodonato 4y ago
That's precisely the question I keep asking: how much more anti-consumer features people need, in order to switch? At this point it's hard to understand why there is so much resistance in leaving windows, I can't imagine having to deal with this kind of things on a daily-basis while trying to actually get stuff done.
- jsmith99 4y ago
  What kind of thing? That it comes with a News app that has a pre installed widget that can be removed with a single right click?
  - herbst 4y ago
    Common anti virus, weird update windows, weird scary Dialogs you learn to blindly confirm to install things. Blinking and animations in the taskbar, ... Not even a common design pattern for the annoyances. As someone who hasn't used Windows in more than 10 years the whole desktop is full of distractions popping up unasked. IMO it's horrible for a productive environment because it doesn't allow to focus properly
    - gcr 4y ago
      Every week or so, my Windows 10 desktop pops up a dialog telling me to upgrade to Windows 11. I spend about a minute looking for the one tiny link to dismiss the dialog without upgrading. I swear it changes locations each time... Lately I've also had it sprout similar dialogs about converting my local account to a Microsoft account. Those are even harder to thwart, requiring multiple clicks through "Are you sure?" dialogs and dark patterns. It's easier to bear this little weekly hide-and-seek ritual when you think about it like a small child making bids for attention. "Mommy, Mommy, I hid your glasses! Play with me before you start your workday!" Kind of endearing in its own way.
      - jdsully 4y ago
        Usually in your BIOS you can disable your TPM chip. That will make it stop asking as you'll fail the min requirements check.
        IIsi50MHz 4y ago
        Although it did seem to randomly announce to me just a few times that mine is not compatible with Win11. Which isn't even true, since the TPM chip thing is a completely arbitrary requirement.
        gcr 4y ago
        Doesn't Windows 10 use TPM for FileVault? I might need it enabled.
- _trampeltier 4y ago
  Since mid-90s I allways had Linux and Windows. But when I updated a Testnotebook from Win7 to Win10 and saw CandyCrash and XBox all over the place, it was clear form me, I don't have professional licenses to let me spam from Microsoft with such BS. Since then, I'm Linux only.
- zokier 4y ago
  You have to remember that these issues do not apply to all users equally. Between different editions, regions, accounts, a/b testing, usage patterns etc different folks can have very different experiences.
- Yizahi 4y ago
  The problem is that Mac is equally anti-consumer, just differently (I haven't tried it, because of the vendor lock). Linux on the other hand is great, but has abysmal quality check due to wide variety of everything. Windows is just works (until Win11, which was a marketing pushed bullshit, without half of the featured from the Win10 branch).
  - zuhsetaqi 4y ago
    > The problem is that Mac is equally anti-consumer, just differently I would argue against that. Just the fact alone that you can’t use Windows 11 Home without your machine being connected to a Microsoft account is proof enough that Windows is more anti consumer than macOS.
    - Gasp0de 4y ago
      Isn't there some kind of physics law that says every 2nd Windows version sucks? I think it fits quite well, XP was good, Vista sucked, Win 7 was good, 8 sucked, 10 was good, 11 sucks. Windows 12 is going to be the next version to try I guess.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
    Apple provides a clear and beneficial point of difference. They are vertically integrated and now with Apple silicon, have arguably the best productivity laptops on the market. My M2 Air, lets me do all the personal dev and admin work my XPS 17 does, but I can easily go several days without a charge. My work provided MBP will easily go all day on a single charge and have plenty of charge left. Linux provides easily the best dev environment, is free, gives you all the control you could possible want, runs on lots of hardware and is speedy even on old hardware. Most of the internet is probably hosted on some flavour of linux, and open source frameworks so it's easy for you to do the same. Windows is good for games and if you need to use Excel? It also has the best drivers for my printer. Am I being unfair here?
    - ryandrake 4y ago
      As a ~95% Mac user, the only thing that I keep a Windows partition around for is games. If Apple could just give up that Steve Jobs-era bias against games and make their platform great for gaming, I could get rid of Windows altogether. Also, game companies share the blame. Even now in 2023, they're still not writing their games portably enough so that the macOS version is a recompile.
- jackstraw14 4y ago
  > I can't imagine having to deal with this kind of things on a daily-basis while trying to actually get stuff done. I switched from Windows to Arch Linux on Thinkpads for about 15 years and had a great time and learned a lot, but dealing with things on a daily basis was why I switched back to Windows 10 a few years ago, along with a new gaming habit during the pandemic. Gaming on Linux with Steam is wonderful these days, but the daily overhead of random stuff to deal with was too much when sometimes I just want to play games.
  - Lewton 4y ago
    You specifically chose a high maintenance distro? I'm running linux mint and I haven't had to fiddle with anything for years
    - jackstraw14 4y ago
      > You specifically chose a high maintenance distro? I guess so? Overall Arch was pretty easy to maintain, I just got tired of bailing on friends because I needed to spend hours figuring out some random issue.
      - nunodonato 4y ago
        yeah... bad choice :) if you wanted the Arch ecossystem without all the manual work you could have picked Manjaro or other arch-based distro
        jackstraw14 4y ago
        I did try Manjaro, it was definitely more user-friendly. Still not what I was looking for, unfortunately.
fxtentacle 4y ago
Thanks to Valve and the Steam Deck, all games that I care about now run on Linux. I sadly still need to use Excel in a VM sometimes, because the text import crashes in Wine. But apart from that, this year has finally been the year of the Linux Desktop for me. And 3 months later, I can say that it's been a bliss :) PopOS feels exceptionally responsive. Looking back, it's hard to justify why Windows was feeling so sluggish on a PCI5 NVME with 64GB RAM and high-end GPU...
- miyuru 4y ago
  > I sadly still need to use Excel in a VM sometimes Any reason for not using Google sheets or similar?
  - samtho 4y ago
    Sometimes it’s not up to the user if the company they work/contract for requires it.
  - dzink 4y ago
    It is woefully behind if you have real number crunching to do.
    - YurgenJurgensen 4y ago
      If you need to be doing 'real number crunching', you probably shouldn't be using any spreadsheet. Excel is not MySQL or Jupyter.
      - michaelt 4y ago
        I think the Google Sheets devs would agree with you that spreadsheets shouldn't be used for anything serious. That's why it's missing such basic features as an X/Y scatter plot with a line - which is trivial in any other spreadsheet program. Personally when I have a few dozen data points and I want an X/Y plot with a line, I find a spreadsheet is a better tool than MySQL.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
It took me 10 minutes to run w10privacy to remove all the telemetry and spyware from Windows. It took me hours fiddling with adb to partially remove some of evilness from my android phone. Dont know much about iOS, but I've heard they dont even have an adb equivalent.
- oliwarner 4y ago
  I'm not sure you can compare fresh installs of Windows to OEM installs of Android. A relative once got a low end Asus laptop that was so entirely bogged down with bundled crap it couldn't get past the firstrun setup. I had to do a fresh install. Android OEMs do the same. Some are worse (looking at you, Samsung) and do horrible things to stock images in the interest of service integration and capturing long tail software sales. You could argue Google does the same over a AOSP-level base image with Google Search/Play. Things like LineageOS give a clean android experience, but it's hardware dependant. And call me old fashioned, but scrombling onto Google to find w10privacy, download it, unzip and run it as an admin kinda sounds like the hell the Windows XP era community got into with adware removers just installing more adware. You can buy the first spot on Google. Much rather see a Github page, source, releases, etc.
- BLKNSLVR 4y ago
  I've unrecoverably bricked a couple of android phones through not having the precisely correct model variant for the instructions I was following, or for the specific ROM I was installing. Sucks, but I generally don't faff with a device that's worth more than throw-away. The risk is worth it for the life that LineageOS really breathes into an older device.
  - Gasp0de 4y ago
    GrapheneOS is extremely easy to install, the installer is literally a website where you click "Install now" while the phone is connected via USB. It is also one of the most usable custom OSes I've used and it is not only more privacy oriented but also more secure!
    - 4y ago
0x2c8 4y ago
I share the same sentiment. The other day I was frustrated with several Linux quirks my laptop was experiencing and decided to give Windows 11 + WSL2 a try. The sheer amount of bloat, sneaky privacy settings, ads, clunky UI etc. literally make Windows unusable. I was willing to put up with the switch (leveraging WSL2), but the entire operating system feels like a browser with toolbars from the 2000s.
- ornornor 4y ago
  Except that you pay for windows. It’s madness.
  - squarefoot 4y ago
    It's even worse: you become a product (spyware, telemetry, etc) but don't get a free product in return.
- heresie-dabord 4y ago
  WSL is an "embrace-extend-extinguish" feature.[1] It isn't good enough to be Linux, but it's good enough to draw people to make the change that you did. An operating system should boot my computer and give me access to my hardware on my terms. Full stop. Any exfiltration of telemetry about my use of the OS without my uncoerced consent is a much worse quirk than any bug I have ever encountered in Linux. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
  - tracker1 4y ago
    I see it as the opposite in practice... I've now worked at 3 different companies (Windows/.Net shops) since WSL has been available where most dev work is actually in WSL, and deployed to Linux servers. And even grumblings about wanting to switch full dev to Linux and abandoning Windows altogether for at least dev work. Current job, the IT security guys are already dogfooding Linux... It's an exfiltration path in practice, from what I've seen far more than an ingratiation path, despite what MS's intentions may have been. Once you get devs able to spin up a DB via Docker in under a minute vs. the desktop installs, refresh/update, etc... it's a path away from MS.
zokier 4y ago
None of the operating systems are your friends. They are all very imperfect tools with different problems and tradeoffs. In many cases the devil you know can still be reasonable choice
- cies 4y ago
  If you consider OSs potential friends, you may like the movie "Her". OSs are offers organizations, some may be friendlier than others. MS has shown not to care for your privacy the least bit. Apple at least tries to uphold the facade of respecting your privacy: so they probably will go to greater lengths. Linux (+ desktop packages) otoh are closest to what I consider a does-not-skrew-me-over OS-friend. Al east they do not have a public history of sneaky deals with 3-letter agencies and/or a business model that involves me being the product.
- flohofwoe 4y ago
  It's not about technology but the people who create the technology. There seems to be a complete breakdown of ethics and responsibility at Microsoft (and also other large tech companies) for the sake of 'shareholder value' (or whatever the Golden Calf is they're dancing around at the moment).
BLKNSLVR 4y ago
I only boot Windows these days in order to flash things onto mobiles to get rid of Google :) I was later to the Linux Desktop party, and it was the default ads, bloat, and telemetry included in a base Windows install that was the final nail in its coffin. I still use Windows for work, but that's outside of my control. Another vote for PopOS here as acknowledging nod to fxtentacle.
- globular-toast 4y ago
  > I still use Windows for work, but that's outside of my control. I quit my job to avoid using it and I would do it again.
okasaki 4y ago
People don't choose Windows, their company or OEM does.
- toastal 4y ago
  This part sucks. I would rather save my $100 and not give a dime of that money to Microsoft, but in this country I was not allowed to order a laptop without it despite wasting more than $100 in folks’ time trying to reach someone who would let my protest.
psd1 4y ago
Windows 7 was genuinely good. It was stable, it just worked, it shipped with Powershell, and I could launch anything with very few keystrokes. The downsides I will acknowledge are the modal dialogues (which are worse on macos) and the fact that many system tasks require diving into the win32 api, although I've at least always found that to be well documented. At the time of 7, Linux desktop options were not great Windows went downhill from 7. Although I still prefer it over macos. I have high hopes for Asahi, which I'm hoping will save my despicable work macbook
- zokier 4y ago
  It's funny that even thinking for a sec, I don't know if there are any things that I'd miss from Windows 10 if I hypothetically were to jump back to Windows 7.
  - nickcox 4y ago
    Windows Terminal?
  - jcparkyn 4y ago
    Multiple desktops is a big one for me.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    I like drag-to-side-to-go-halfscreen for window management (though less than I like Spectacle on Mac) and search-to-launch. Both of which could probably be provided by add-ons. I can't think of any other user-facing features I'd miss if the UI otherwise reverted to Win98. Several things, I'd like better in their Win98 versions. Under the hood, it's nice that it doesn't crash nearly as often, and the driver situation is better. NTFS support is nice (consumer Windowses didn't used to have that) when the alternative is FAT32. Beyond that, not much I care about.
    - ryandrake 4y ago
      > I like drag-to-side-to-go-halfscreen for window management Ughhh: good idea, terribly implemented. Last time I used Windows 10, it seemed like every time I tried to drag my window around, Windows would guess that I wanted to also full-screen it, or pin it to one side, or close all other windows, or anything else besides just repositioning it. I feel I need to have a surgeon's precision in order to just drag a window around my desktop now.
sumo89 4y ago
I use my PC infrequently, just for video games when I get time. It feels like every time I turn it one, maybe once a month, it's done an update to somehow look worse and worse. One of the latest changes is the search bar in the menu bar now has scroll icons and is double height despite being empty. It's like they don't do visual QA.
- vladvasiliu 4y ago
  I live in France, but usually use an English UI. So when I updated my gaming PC, I just saw a "search" or something, figured "wth?! start menu already does that", and kicked it off the taskbar. Then a few days later, a colleague shared his screen, with the French UI. The text was cut off mid-sentence. Something like "type here to". The remainder would have actually fit if not for the random icon displayed at the right of the search field.
pizza234 4y ago
> I'm almost impressed with what people willingly put up with. I had, in a sense, the opposite experience. I was discussing in a social circle of mine the reasons why one should avoid as much as possible the upgrade to Windows 11... and I completely failed to persuade anybody. Non-power users use a very limited subset of O/S functionalities (I'd say that as long as device and applicative support is sufficient, the O/S is essentially transparent to them), so, from their perspective, all those ideological and "weakly concrete" motivations are essentially pointless. I definitely bothers me ideologically because this is a large scale covert assault (and it will have long term effects), but sadly, to non-power users, it's completely irrelevant.
- wellanyway 4y ago
  Non-power users operate entirely in browser these days. You can switch them over to arch and they wouldn't be able to tell the difference. The problem is switchover of the OS is a complicated, techie thing to do. Try convincing someone to switch to Win 10/12/whatever isn't current one and requires more than ticking "yes I agree to automagical update on next reboot". It's not an aversion to Linux, it's laziness. What we need is Linux laptops being sold in supermarkets. 99% of people won't even notice they aren't running Windows anymore.
  - wfh 4y ago
    I think you're talking about Chromebooks.
    - wazoox 4y ago
      Unfortunately they are also proprietary, spyware-laden devices, that cease to be updated for no good reason after 5 years.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  As a power user, upgrading to Windows 11 is great if your hardware meets sysreqs. Why? Because of all the numerous and significant backend improvements, a relatively less schizophrenic UI, and more. Certain things that affect power users and common users alike, such as proper Intel 12th+ Gen CPU support and variable refresh rates, are Windows 11 exclusive, not being backported to Windows 10 (let alone 7). To be clear, I have my fair share of gripes with Windows 11 that I've worked around. But overall it's an easy upgrade over Windows 10.
Gordonjcp 4y ago
"Eulogise" has connotations of praising someone or something after its death. If you mean "trying to talk others round to it", you might mean "evangelise" :-)
flohofwoe 4y ago
Unfortunately, for PC gaming Windows still has sort of a monopoly, it's not as bad as in the past thanks to Proton though. Also under the hood Windows is pretty good technology for the most part, letting this solid technology base being vandalized by anti-social middle management assholes is almost a criminal offense by whoever oversees this stuff (but I guess the fish rots from the head).
thunfischtoast 4y ago
What's the alternative though? I don't want to buy the overpriced hardware that comes with Apple. For Linux, I'd like something that provides some kind of stability without me having to search for obscure shell commands for fixing new issues every 2 weeks, which unfortunately has been my experience with using it on my laptop in the past. Maybe it has gotten better, I'm open for recommendations.
- oliwarner 4y ago
  I said I wasn't here to eulogise but most of the problems I've had with Linux have been temporary and I have gained transferable skills in fixing them. I have earned a fair chunk of money with those skills. It's absolutely not perfect, and part of that is there's too much choice, but if you're willing and able, you can make it work for you and yours most of the time. And yes, I do think it's much better than it was.
- Gasp0de 4y ago
  I've been using Arch Linux for the past 6 years and I have rarely had anything break. In between I had to use Ubuntu for 6 months due to some software that would only run on Ubuntu, which I found horrible. Arch Linux might be difficult to set up for someone new to Linux but once it's installed I found it a breeze to use. There are distributions based on Arch that are easier to install, e.g. Manjaro.
  - Last5Digits 4y ago
    This has been my experience as well. The simpler you keep your Linux install, the less likely it'll be that something breaks - and if something does break, then you'll have a much easier time finding the culprit.
- globular-toast 4y ago
  For laptops you need to do a bit of research to make sure they have good Linux support. There are websites to help with this. You'll also gain an intuition for which manufacturers to avoid. For the software side, you need to learn it, just like anything else. You've spent years, perhaps the majority of your life, learning Windows. Of course there are going to be things you'll have to learn again. But you'll be better for it. I'd rather learn to use a system that respects me than one that treats me like a commodity.
mihaaly 4y ago
> I'm almost impressed with what people willingly put up with. So true! We are pushed around for the sake of pretetious crap.
globular-toast 4y ago
Last Windoze I used was XP. Back then most geeks reinstalled the OS from scratch every few months or so. This was necessary to combat the inevitable rot that happened to every installation. There was always a number of things that were necessary to install to make the system usable every time. We worked out how to streamline some things by building custom installation discs. But there was still a load of effort and accumulated knowledge applied to just using the damn thing. I'd been playing with Linux for a while but hadn't got beyond the dual-booting phase. Then at some point I realised that if I put as much effort into Linux to learn how things worked etc. it would probably be just as good in practice. Why did I continue to put up with Windows? Turns out I was right. I haven't had Windoze in my house for well over a decade at this point. I never had to use Vista. One of the best choices I ever made.
- Acutulus 4y ago
  We come from similar eras. I never made the transition to 7, permanently moving to ubuntu 5.10 thanks to the CDs they sent out in the mail. Ubuntu for over a decade until late 2020, then arch and arch-likes since Just a couple weeks ago I was backing up some scripts and adding some arcane linux lore to my obsidian database when it occurred to me that I haven't re-installed my OS in 2.5 years. That felt pretty wild to think about, especially when I consider all the scripts, packages and late night pamac hammering I occasionally do when I find a curious piece of software. While I tinkere with my linux installs far more than windows, they seem to have held up over time far better. Whether this is a consequence of the software itself, my behavior changing, or whatever, I cannot say for sure. But it's been a far more pleasurable experience using and maintaining my linux systems than windows installs. I think there is a distinct difference between people who compute for the sake of computing versus people who compute as the means to an end. One is a person who uses tools at least partially for the joy of tool usage itself, while the other a person who uses tools to complete tasks, the other . I cannot fault the latter for just using whatever works, if they are happy in doing so. But I think those of us who fit into the former category are far more likely to engage with linux and its brethren. My computer is a machine which, largely, I demand does what I instruct it to do. I prefer an OS that will do so and then get out of my way and I will accept idiosyncracies in exchange for this. So long as a laundry list of dependencies doesn't explode overnight from a goofball update or my nvidia drivers don't just disappear because they feel like it, linux meets those needs very well.
devn0ll 4y ago
This is the correct way to make people think.. Not: YOU NEED TO GO TO [OS.NAME], but asking them: "why are you putting up with this?" "Have you looked at _any_ other alternative?"
clnq 4y ago
Windows innovation seems to have stalled, lacking notable improvements in productivity, accessibility, or utility in recent years. Despite its generally good quality (particularly regarding software and hardware compatibility, which is important for an OS), Microsoft's potential to innovate and monetize Windows further appears limited. This plateau is common among operating systems, with hardware breakthroughs in the 90s and 00s sparking innovation in PCs and later in mobile devices. The same could be said about business computing OS innovations in the 80s and 90s. But now the OSes for all this hardware and purposes roughly meet customer and consumer requirements. So what more innovation could there be? In response to this stagnation, Microsoft has to resort to adware and spyware to profit from the Windows franchise to extract further financial growth from the platform. They could probably earn a stable income from Windows for many years by just maintaining the OS in an ethical way, but "stable income" is not what tech companies are looking for, they are looking for infinite growth.
Last5Digits 4y ago
The average HN user seems to be a fervent Linux fan, so maybe I can give some perspective as someone who isn't. I used Linux for around 5 years, with Arch as my distro of choice, after which I switched to Windows 11. Most of the time, I didn't face any problems - but the problems I did face sometimes took me hours and hours to solve. And there were always issues that were basically unfixable: hibernate, battery life, security, CPU drivers, hardware acceleration etc. I say basically here, because I could have spend hundreds of hours to address some of these things, but I'd still end up with something very brittle and maintenance intensive. Some people will immediately point out that I should have been using a more "User friendly" distro like Ubuntu, but Arch has been the most stable and easiest to maintain distro of any that I tried. With Ubuntu and its ilk, the inevitable issue would take me ages to track down, because I had to first fight my way through a dozen layers of abstraction and figure out which of the hundreds of packages was the culprit. No, a simple and minimal install has always served me best with Linux. And yes, I tried other distros - every single major one - and I faced the same (or similar) issues in all of them. And outside of the OS, the entire Linux philosophy seems to be as user-unfriendly as possible. Packages, because they're maintained by someone in their free time, are very barebones and need extensive configuration to function. Which is especially annoying because I constantly needed to edit config files, each one with it's own unique syntax that required multiple Google searches to discover (and rediscover if some time had passed). With Windows, the only true issue I faced was with the telemetry. I bought an enterprise license, disabled it all, validated it with some external tools - and the problem was solved. I never saw ads, slowness or any UI/UX problems. And the benefits were numerous, I now had access to high-quality, powerful software for free. And these programs were easily configurable and usable - no googling necessary! On Linux, I sometimes wondered how so many people could quickly create graphics and audio, because that was always an incredible chore on Linux. Now it feels like a breeze, almost as if I've been catapulted a century forward. In fact, the reason why I switched was because there was a very insidious hardware problem that I couldn't track down on Linux, even after spending months on it. When I installed Windows on my secondary drive (to update my BIOS), I found the problem in one minute using ThrottleStop. And security wise, Windows is also far superior. Aside from the obvious Linux vulnerabilities, Windows allowed me to spin up lightweight sandboxes with system integration to isolate browser tabs or files I downloaded. As someone that used QubesOS for some time, this really impressed me. All in all I see no reason to go back, the only thing I miss is i3, and how it made using a single screen feel just as productive as using three.
qsdf38100 4y ago
Unfortunately people are still free to use what they see fit. You’ll have to live with it. Some people prefer Windows, no matter how wrong you think they are, how horrible you think the experience is, or how evil you think Microsoft is. I guess you don’t use it anyway. Just continue. You don’t have to be condescending. What kind of validation does hating on Windows bring to software devs?
tomjen3 4y ago
Vista was shit, but Win 7 was generally accepted as a very good version of Windows, with 8 being bad, and then 10 being eh. But 10 can be made pretty acceptable if you bring out the group policy editor.
TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
Unfortunately, I fear what Apple is doing and will do to macOS. The trend seems to be that they are making it into another walled garden, ala iOS. I can still run Linux, but I hate that Apple's main competitor on the desktop is lowering the bar so, so low, and exerting so little effort to keep them on their toes to make something that people continue to want.
SergeAx 4y ago
There's a rule for Windows versions: you should skip every second one. So the right sequence is: install Windows 95 skip Windows 98 install Windows 2000 skip Windows ME install Windows XP skip Windows Vista install Windows 7 skip Windows 8 install Windows 10 skip Windows 11 This is so consistent that I beleive there are two teams inside MS alternately developing next version. They say, though, that Windows 11 is the last version and there will be only updates since. I really hope this is not the case.
- dagw 4y ago
  They say, though, that Windows 11 is the last version and there will be only updates since. I really hope this is not the case. It was actually Windows 10 they said that about, so...
  - genewitch 4y ago
    right, because apple said Mac OS X (1998 or so) was the last version they were going to release. from new era Macs it went 7, 8, 9, X. Then intel macs, still macos X. I do know they're up to version 16 or something of whatever the OS is called these days. probably just MacOS. I didn't believe either of them!
- warner25 4y ago
  The ads are baked into Windows 10 too, although might be worse in 11.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Win95 was widely regarded as being shit prior to the C version IIRC (I had A, though, and always really liked it...) Win98se was considered damn good, compared to what had come before. Disruption for little benefit, at launch, though. 2K was only for businesses, bad driver support and lacking in some software support on account of using the NT kernel before hardware & software vendors were expecting home users to have it. ME was a pointless refresh of 98. Buggier and with system menus subtly messed-with to no purpose. The first miss-step of the Vista/8 variety. XP was good by SP3. Not so much at launch. Vista, yeah, slow as hell while adding nothing. 7 was still slow as hell, but wasn't as ugly and our hardware had gotten better so it was less-noticeable. Not much to recommend it aside from "XP's going out of support, and it's less-ugly than Vista". 8 was pointless and ugly, like Vista. 10 was another 7: de-uglified 8, but not much else going for it. Adware and shitware and spyware galore. This leaves 7 as the last "good" Windows. 11's 10 on steroids, so, two scoops of shit instead of one.
jacooper 4y ago
What's the alternative? The joke that is macOS? I use Linux daily, but its not ready for everyone, creative apps for example are nonexistent, And games aren't exactly plug and play. In addition to not having a distro that combines gnome + zero hassle driver installs + friendly defaults, it was Ubuntu till they ruined it with snap, and now there is still nothing like it. I just hope canonical gives up on snap.
Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
I'm still on Windows because I'm a gamer, and while the gaming on Linux situation is improving, it's still not there yet. Games on Windows just work. I never have to do any fiddling. Download, install, play. And maybe it's because I opt for the Pro version of Windows, but I don't have the advertisements people complain about. No Candy Crush, no news/tabloids, just my list of apps and a few shortcuts to things I've used.

PaulHoule 4y ago

The Linux desktop left me. Somehow the community just doesn’t get that it is possible for text labels to fit in the space that is allocated to them. Contrast that to the refinement of the command line interface experienced through ssh. It’s taken Linux what, 15 years, to not make the same transition that Microsoft did with WDDM in Vista? I’m annoyed by the “thoroughly pizzled” features in Windows such as the OneDrive file shredding system, attempts to stuff ads up your nose, etc. The thing is I can turn that crap off with a finite amount of effort, whereas Linux desktop enthusiasts can spend forever tweaking their desktop and it “just doesn’t work” no matter what you do. My satisfaction with a new Windows 11 machine I just built is about as high as my satisfaction with my Ubuntu server, the difference is that the Win11 machine has a GUI and the Ubuntu server doesn’t.

nunodonato 4y ago

That's precisely the question I keep asking: how much more anti-consumer features people need, in order to switch? At this point it's hard to understand why there is so much resistance in leaving windows, I can't imagine having to deal with this kind of things on a daily-basis while trying to actually get stuff done.

jsmith99 4y ago
What kind of thing? That it comes with a News app that has a pre installed widget that can be removed with a single right click?
- herbst 4y ago
  Common anti virus, weird update windows, weird scary Dialogs you learn to blindly confirm to install things. Blinking and animations in the taskbar, ... Not even a common design pattern for the annoyances. As someone who hasn't used Windows in more than 10 years the whole desktop is full of distractions popping up unasked. IMO it's horrible for a productive environment because it doesn't allow to focus properly
  - gcr 4y ago
    Every week or so, my Windows 10 desktop pops up a dialog telling me to upgrade to Windows 11. I spend about a minute looking for the one tiny link to dismiss the dialog without upgrading. I swear it changes locations each time... Lately I've also had it sprout similar dialogs about converting my local account to a Microsoft account. Those are even harder to thwart, requiring multiple clicks through "Are you sure?" dialogs and dark patterns. It's easier to bear this little weekly hide-and-seek ritual when you think about it like a small child making bids for attention. "Mommy, Mommy, I hid your glasses! Play with me before you start your workday!" Kind of endearing in its own way.
    - jdsully 4y ago
      Usually in your BIOS you can disable your TPM chip. That will make it stop asking as you'll fail the min requirements check.
      - IIsi50MHz 4y ago
        Although it did seem to randomly announce to me just a few times that mine is not compatible with Win11. Which isn't even true, since the TPM chip thing is a completely arbitrary requirement.
        gcr 4y ago
        Doesn't Windows 10 use TPM for FileVault? I might need it enabled.
_trampeltier 4y ago
Since mid-90s I allways had Linux and Windows. But when I updated a Testnotebook from Win7 to Win10 and saw CandyCrash and XBox all over the place, it was clear form me, I don't have professional licenses to let me spam from Microsoft with such BS. Since then, I'm Linux only.
zokier 4y ago
You have to remember that these issues do not apply to all users equally. Between different editions, regions, accounts, a/b testing, usage patterns etc different folks can have very different experiences.
Yizahi 4y ago
The problem is that Mac is equally anti-consumer, just differently (I haven't tried it, because of the vendor lock). Linux on the other hand is great, but has abysmal quality check due to wide variety of everything. Windows is just works (until Win11, which was a marketing pushed bullshit, without half of the featured from the Win10 branch).
- zuhsetaqi 4y ago
  > The problem is that Mac is equally anti-consumer, just differently I would argue against that. Just the fact alone that you can’t use Windows 11 Home without your machine being connected to a Microsoft account is proof enough that Windows is more anti consumer than macOS.
  - Gasp0de 4y ago
    Isn't there some kind of physics law that says every 2nd Windows version sucks? I think it fits quite well, XP was good, Vista sucked, Win 7 was good, 8 sucked, 10 was good, 11 sucks. Windows 12 is going to be the next version to try I guess.
- 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
  Apple provides a clear and beneficial point of difference. They are vertically integrated and now with Apple silicon, have arguably the best productivity laptops on the market. My M2 Air, lets me do all the personal dev and admin work my XPS 17 does, but I can easily go several days without a charge. My work provided MBP will easily go all day on a single charge and have plenty of charge left. Linux provides easily the best dev environment, is free, gives you all the control you could possible want, runs on lots of hardware and is speedy even on old hardware. Most of the internet is probably hosted on some flavour of linux, and open source frameworks so it's easy for you to do the same. Windows is good for games and if you need to use Excel? It also has the best drivers for my printer. Am I being unfair here?
  - ryandrake 4y ago
    As a ~95% Mac user, the only thing that I keep a Windows partition around for is games. If Apple could just give up that Steve Jobs-era bias against games and make their platform great for gaming, I could get rid of Windows altogether. Also, game companies share the blame. Even now in 2023, they're still not writing their games portably enough so that the macOS version is a recompile.
jackstraw14 4y ago
> I can't imagine having to deal with this kind of things on a daily-basis while trying to actually get stuff done. I switched from Windows to Arch Linux on Thinkpads for about 15 years and had a great time and learned a lot, but dealing with things on a daily basis was why I switched back to Windows 10 a few years ago, along with a new gaming habit during the pandemic. Gaming on Linux with Steam is wonderful these days, but the daily overhead of random stuff to deal with was too much when sometimes I just want to play games.
- Lewton 4y ago
  You specifically chose a high maintenance distro? I'm running linux mint and I haven't had to fiddle with anything for years
  - jackstraw14 4y ago
    > You specifically chose a high maintenance distro? I guess so? Overall Arch was pretty easy to maintain, I just got tired of bailing on friends because I needed to spend hours figuring out some random issue.
    - nunodonato 4y ago
      yeah... bad choice :) if you wanted the Arch ecossystem without all the manual work you could have picked Manjaro or other arch-based distro
      - jackstraw14 4y ago
        I did try Manjaro, it was definitely more user-friendly. Still not what I was looking for, unfortunately.

fxtentacle 4y ago

Thanks to Valve and the Steam Deck, all games that I care about now run on Linux. I sadly still need to use Excel in a VM sometimes, because the text import crashes in Wine. But apart from that, this year has finally been the year of the Linux Desktop for me. And 3 months later, I can say that it's been a bliss :) PopOS feels exceptionally responsive. Looking back, it's hard to justify why Windows was feeling so sluggish on a PCI5 NVME with 64GB RAM and high-end GPU...

miyuru 4y ago
> I sadly still need to use Excel in a VM sometimes Any reason for not using Google sheets or similar?
- samtho 4y ago
  Sometimes it’s not up to the user if the company they work/contract for requires it.
- dzink 4y ago
  It is woefully behind if you have real number crunching to do.
  - YurgenJurgensen 4y ago
    If you need to be doing 'real number crunching', you probably shouldn't be using any spreadsheet. Excel is not MySQL or Jupyter.
    - michaelt 4y ago
      I think the Google Sheets devs would agree with you that spreadsheets shouldn't be used for anything serious. That's why it's missing such basic features as an X/Y scatter plot with a line - which is trivial in any other spreadsheet program. Personally when I have a few dozen data points and I want an X/Y plot with a line, I find a spreadsheet is a better tool than MySQL.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago

It took me 10 minutes to run w10privacy to remove all the telemetry and spyware from Windows. It took me hours fiddling with adb to partially remove some of evilness from my android phone. Dont know much about iOS, but I've heard they dont even have an adb equivalent.

oliwarner 4y ago
I'm not sure you can compare fresh installs of Windows to OEM installs of Android. A relative once got a low end Asus laptop that was so entirely bogged down with bundled crap it couldn't get past the firstrun setup. I had to do a fresh install. Android OEMs do the same. Some are worse (looking at you, Samsung) and do horrible things to stock images in the interest of service integration and capturing long tail software sales. You could argue Google does the same over a AOSP-level base image with Google Search/Play. Things like LineageOS give a clean android experience, but it's hardware dependant. And call me old fashioned, but scrombling onto Google to find w10privacy, download it, unzip and run it as an admin kinda sounds like the hell the Windows XP era community got into with adware removers just installing more adware. You can buy the first spot on Google. Much rather see a Github page, source, releases, etc.
BLKNSLVR 4y ago
I've unrecoverably bricked a couple of android phones through not having the precisely correct model variant for the instructions I was following, or for the specific ROM I was installing. Sucks, but I generally don't faff with a device that's worth more than throw-away. The risk is worth it for the life that LineageOS really breathes into an older device.
- Gasp0de 4y ago
  GrapheneOS is extremely easy to install, the installer is literally a website where you click "Install now" while the phone is connected via USB. It is also one of the most usable custom OSes I've used and it is not only more privacy oriented but also more secure!
  - 4y ago

0x2c8 4y ago

I share the same sentiment. The other day I was frustrated with several Linux quirks my laptop was experiencing and decided to give Windows 11 + WSL2 a try. The sheer amount of bloat, sneaky privacy settings, ads, clunky UI etc. literally make Windows unusable. I was willing to put up with the switch (leveraging WSL2), but the entire operating system feels like a browser with toolbars from the 2000s.

ornornor 4y ago
Except that you pay for windows. It’s madness.
- squarefoot 4y ago
  It's even worse: you become a product (spyware, telemetry, etc) but don't get a free product in return.
heresie-dabord 4y ago
WSL is an "embrace-extend-extinguish" feature.[1] It isn't good enough to be Linux, but it's good enough to draw people to make the change that you did. An operating system should boot my computer and give me access to my hardware on my terms. Full stop. Any exfiltration of telemetry about my use of the OS without my uncoerced consent is a much worse quirk than any bug I have ever encountered in Linux. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
- tracker1 4y ago
  I see it as the opposite in practice... I've now worked at 3 different companies (Windows/.Net shops) since WSL has been available where most dev work is actually in WSL, and deployed to Linux servers. And even grumblings about wanting to switch full dev to Linux and abandoning Windows altogether for at least dev work. Current job, the IT security guys are already dogfooding Linux... It's an exfiltration path in practice, from what I've seen far more than an ingratiation path, despite what MS's intentions may have been. Once you get devs able to spin up a DB via Docker in under a minute vs. the desktop installs, refresh/update, etc... it's a path away from MS.

zokier 4y ago

None of the operating systems are your friends. They are all very imperfect tools with different problems and tradeoffs. In many cases the devil you know can still be reasonable choice

cies 4y ago
If you consider OSs potential friends, you may like the movie "Her". OSs are offers organizations, some may be friendlier than others. MS has shown not to care for your privacy the least bit. Apple at least tries to uphold the facade of respecting your privacy: so they probably will go to greater lengths. Linux (+ desktop packages) otoh are closest to what I consider a does-not-skrew-me-over OS-friend. Al east they do not have a public history of sneaky deals with 3-letter agencies and/or a business model that involves me being the product.
flohofwoe 4y ago
It's not about technology but the people who create the technology. There seems to be a complete breakdown of ethics and responsibility at Microsoft (and also other large tech companies) for the sake of 'shareholder value' (or whatever the Golden Calf is they're dancing around at the moment).

BLKNSLVR 4y ago

I only boot Windows these days in order to flash things onto mobiles to get rid of Google :) I was later to the Linux Desktop party, and it was the default ads, bloat, and telemetry included in a base Windows install that was the final nail in its coffin. I still use Windows for work, but that's outside of my control. Another vote for PopOS here as acknowledging nod to fxtentacle.

globular-toast 4y ago
> I still use Windows for work, but that's outside of my control. I quit my job to avoid using it and I would do it again.

okasaki 4y ago

People don't choose Windows, their company or OEM does.

toastal 4y ago
This part sucks. I would rather save my $100 and not give a dime of that money to Microsoft, but in this country I was not allowed to order a laptop without it despite wasting more than $100 in folks’ time trying to reach someone who would let my protest.

psd1 4y ago

Windows 7 was genuinely good. It was stable, it just worked, it shipped with Powershell, and I could launch anything with very few keystrokes. The downsides I will acknowledge are the modal dialogues (which are worse on macos) and the fact that many system tasks require diving into the win32 api, although I've at least always found that to be well documented. At the time of 7, Linux desktop options were not great Windows went downhill from 7. Although I still prefer it over macos. I have high hopes for Asahi, which I'm hoping will save my despicable work macbook

zokier 4y ago
It's funny that even thinking for a sec, I don't know if there are any things that I'd miss from Windows 10 if I hypothetically were to jump back to Windows 7.
- nickcox 4y ago
  Windows Terminal?
- jcparkyn 4y ago
  Multiple desktops is a big one for me.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  I like drag-to-side-to-go-halfscreen for window management (though less than I like Spectacle on Mac) and search-to-launch. Both of which could probably be provided by add-ons. I can't think of any other user-facing features I'd miss if the UI otherwise reverted to Win98. Several things, I'd like better in their Win98 versions. Under the hood, it's nice that it doesn't crash nearly as often, and the driver situation is better. NTFS support is nice (consumer Windowses didn't used to have that) when the alternative is FAT32. Beyond that, not much I care about.
  - ryandrake 4y ago
    > I like drag-to-side-to-go-halfscreen for window management Ughhh: good idea, terribly implemented. Last time I used Windows 10, it seemed like every time I tried to drag my window around, Windows would guess that I wanted to also full-screen it, or pin it to one side, or close all other windows, or anything else besides just repositioning it. I feel I need to have a surgeon's precision in order to just drag a window around my desktop now.

sumo89 4y ago

I use my PC infrequently, just for video games when I get time. It feels like every time I turn it one, maybe once a month, it's done an update to somehow look worse and worse. One of the latest changes is the search bar in the menu bar now has scroll icons and is double height despite being empty. It's like they don't do visual QA.

vladvasiliu 4y ago
I live in France, but usually use an English UI. So when I updated my gaming PC, I just saw a "search" or something, figured "wth?! start menu already does that", and kicked it off the taskbar. Then a few days later, a colleague shared his screen, with the French UI. The text was cut off mid-sentence. Something like "type here to". The remainder would have actually fit if not for the random icon displayed at the right of the search field.

pizza234 4y ago

> I'm almost impressed with what people willingly put up with. I had, in a sense, the opposite experience. I was discussing in a social circle of mine the reasons why one should avoid as much as possible the upgrade to Windows 11... and I completely failed to persuade anybody. Non-power users use a very limited subset of O/S functionalities (I'd say that as long as device and applicative support is sufficient, the O/S is essentially transparent to them), so, from their perspective, all those ideological and "weakly concrete" motivations are essentially pointless. I definitely bothers me ideologically because this is a large scale covert assault (and it will have long term effects), but sadly, to non-power users, it's completely irrelevant.

wellanyway 4y ago
Non-power users operate entirely in browser these days. You can switch them over to arch and they wouldn't be able to tell the difference. The problem is switchover of the OS is a complicated, techie thing to do. Try convincing someone to switch to Win 10/12/whatever isn't current one and requires more than ticking "yes I agree to automagical update on next reboot". It's not an aversion to Linux, it's laziness. What we need is Linux laptops being sold in supermarkets. 99% of people won't even notice they aren't running Windows anymore.
- wfh 4y ago
  I think you're talking about Chromebooks.
  - wazoox 4y ago
    Unfortunately they are also proprietary, spyware-laden devices, that cease to be updated for no good reason after 5 years.
Dalewyn 4y ago
As a power user, upgrading to Windows 11 is great if your hardware meets sysreqs. Why? Because of all the numerous and significant backend improvements, a relatively less schizophrenic UI, and more. Certain things that affect power users and common users alike, such as proper Intel 12th+ Gen CPU support and variable refresh rates, are Windows 11 exclusive, not being backported to Windows 10 (let alone 7). To be clear, I have my fair share of gripes with Windows 11 that I've worked around. But overall it's an easy upgrade over Windows 10.

Gordonjcp 4y ago

"Eulogise" has connotations of praising someone or something after its death. If you mean "trying to talk others round to it", you might mean "evangelise" :-)

flohofwoe 4y ago

Unfortunately, for PC gaming Windows still has sort of a monopoly, it's not as bad as in the past thanks to Proton though. Also under the hood Windows is pretty good technology for the most part, letting this solid technology base being vandalized by anti-social middle management assholes is almost a criminal offense by whoever oversees this stuff (but I guess the fish rots from the head).

thunfischtoast 4y ago

What's the alternative though? I don't want to buy the overpriced hardware that comes with Apple. For Linux, I'd like something that provides some kind of stability without me having to search for obscure shell commands for fixing new issues every 2 weeks, which unfortunately has been my experience with using it on my laptop in the past. Maybe it has gotten better, I'm open for recommendations.

oliwarner 4y ago
I said I wasn't here to eulogise but most of the problems I've had with Linux have been temporary and I have gained transferable skills in fixing them. I have earned a fair chunk of money with those skills. It's absolutely not perfect, and part of that is there's too much choice, but if you're willing and able, you can make it work for you and yours most of the time. And yes, I do think it's much better than it was.
Gasp0de 4y ago
I've been using Arch Linux for the past 6 years and I have rarely had anything break. In between I had to use Ubuntu for 6 months due to some software that would only run on Ubuntu, which I found horrible. Arch Linux might be difficult to set up for someone new to Linux but once it's installed I found it a breeze to use. There are distributions based on Arch that are easier to install, e.g. Manjaro.
- Last5Digits 4y ago
  This has been my experience as well. The simpler you keep your Linux install, the less likely it'll be that something breaks - and if something does break, then you'll have a much easier time finding the culprit.
globular-toast 4y ago
For laptops you need to do a bit of research to make sure they have good Linux support. There are websites to help with this. You'll also gain an intuition for which manufacturers to avoid. For the software side, you need to learn it, just like anything else. You've spent years, perhaps the majority of your life, learning Windows. Of course there are going to be things you'll have to learn again. But you'll be better for it. I'd rather learn to use a system that respects me than one that treats me like a commodity.

mihaaly 4y ago

> I'm almost impressed with what people willingly put up with. So true! We are pushed around for the sake of pretetious crap.

globular-toast 4y ago

Last Windoze I used was XP. Back then most geeks reinstalled the OS from scratch every few months or so. This was necessary to combat the inevitable rot that happened to every installation. There was always a number of things that were necessary to install to make the system usable every time. We worked out how to streamline some things by building custom installation discs. But there was still a load of effort and accumulated knowledge applied to just using the damn thing. I'd been playing with Linux for a while but hadn't got beyond the dual-booting phase. Then at some point I realised that if I put as much effort into Linux to learn how things worked etc. it would probably be just as good in practice. Why did I continue to put up with Windows? Turns out I was right. I haven't had Windoze in my house for well over a decade at this point. I never had to use Vista. One of the best choices I ever made.

Acutulus 4y ago
We come from similar eras. I never made the transition to 7, permanently moving to ubuntu 5.10 thanks to the CDs they sent out in the mail. Ubuntu for over a decade until late 2020, then arch and arch-likes since Just a couple weeks ago I was backing up some scripts and adding some arcane linux lore to my obsidian database when it occurred to me that I haven't re-installed my OS in 2.5 years. That felt pretty wild to think about, especially when I consider all the scripts, packages and late night pamac hammering I occasionally do when I find a curious piece of software. While I tinkere with my linux installs far more than windows, they seem to have held up over time far better. Whether this is a consequence of the software itself, my behavior changing, or whatever, I cannot say for sure. But it's been a far more pleasurable experience using and maintaining my linux systems than windows installs. I think there is a distinct difference between people who compute for the sake of computing versus people who compute as the means to an end. One is a person who uses tools at least partially for the joy of tool usage itself, while the other a person who uses tools to complete tasks, the other . I cannot fault the latter for just using whatever works, if they are happy in doing so. But I think those of us who fit into the former category are far more likely to engage with linux and its brethren. My computer is a machine which, largely, I demand does what I instruct it to do. I prefer an OS that will do so and then get out of my way and I will accept idiosyncracies in exchange for this. So long as a laundry list of dependencies doesn't explode overnight from a goofball update or my nvidia drivers don't just disappear because they feel like it, linux meets those needs very well.

devn0ll 4y ago

This is the correct way to make people think.. Not: YOU NEED TO GO TO [OS.NAME], but asking them: "why are you putting up with this?" "Have you looked at _any_ other alternative?"

clnq 4y ago

Windows innovation seems to have stalled, lacking notable improvements in productivity, accessibility, or utility in recent years. Despite its generally good quality (particularly regarding software and hardware compatibility, which is important for an OS), Microsoft's potential to innovate and monetize Windows further appears limited. This plateau is common among operating systems, with hardware breakthroughs in the 90s and 00s sparking innovation in PCs and later in mobile devices. The same could be said about business computing OS innovations in the 80s and 90s. But now the OSes for all this hardware and purposes roughly meet customer and consumer requirements. So what more innovation could there be? In response to this stagnation, Microsoft has to resort to adware and spyware to profit from the Windows franchise to extract further financial growth from the platform. They could probably earn a stable income from Windows for many years by just maintaining the OS in an ethical way, but "stable income" is not what tech companies are looking for, they are looking for infinite growth.

Last5Digits 4y ago

The average HN user seems to be a fervent Linux fan, so maybe I can give some perspective as someone who isn't. I used Linux for around 5 years, with Arch as my distro of choice, after which I switched to Windows 11. Most of the time, I didn't face any problems - but the problems I did face sometimes took me hours and hours to solve. And there were always issues that were basically unfixable: hibernate, battery life, security, CPU drivers, hardware acceleration etc. I say basically here, because I could have spend hundreds of hours to address some of these things, but I'd still end up with something very brittle and maintenance intensive. Some people will immediately point out that I should have been using a more "User friendly" distro like Ubuntu, but Arch has been the most stable and easiest to maintain distro of any that I tried. With Ubuntu and its ilk, the inevitable issue would take me ages to track down, because I had to first fight my way through a dozen layers of abstraction and figure out which of the hundreds of packages was the culprit. No, a simple and minimal install has always served me best with Linux. And yes, I tried other distros - every single major one - and I faced the same (or similar) issues in all of them. And outside of the OS, the entire Linux philosophy seems to be as user-unfriendly as possible. Packages, because they're maintained by someone in their free time, are very barebones and need extensive configuration to function. Which is especially annoying because I constantly needed to edit config files, each one with it's own unique syntax that required multiple Google searches to discover (and rediscover if some time had passed). With Windows, the only true issue I faced was with the telemetry. I bought an enterprise license, disabled it all, validated it with some external tools - and the problem was solved. I never saw ads, slowness or any UI/UX problems. And the benefits were numerous, I now had access to high-quality, powerful software for free. And these programs were easily configurable and usable - no googling necessary! On Linux, I sometimes wondered how so many people could quickly create graphics and audio, because that was always an incredible chore on Linux. Now it feels like a breeze, almost as if I've been catapulted a century forward. In fact, the reason why I switched was because there was a very insidious hardware problem that I couldn't track down on Linux, even after spending months on it. When I installed Windows on my secondary drive (to update my BIOS), I found the problem in one minute using ThrottleStop. And security wise, Windows is also far superior. Aside from the obvious Linux vulnerabilities, Windows allowed me to spin up lightweight sandboxes with system integration to isolate browser tabs or files I downloaded. As someone that used QubesOS for some time, this really impressed me. All in all I see no reason to go back, the only thing I miss is i3, and how it made using a single screen feel just as productive as using three.

qsdf38100 4y ago

Unfortunately people are still free to use what they see fit. You’ll have to live with it. Some people prefer Windows, no matter how wrong you think they are, how horrible you think the experience is, or how evil you think Microsoft is. I guess you don’t use it anyway. Just continue. You don’t have to be condescending. What kind of validation does hating on Windows bring to software devs?

tomjen3 4y ago

Vista was shit, but Win 7 was generally accepted as a very good version of Windows, with 8 being bad, and then 10 being eh. But 10 can be made pretty acceptable if you bring out the group policy editor.

TheRealDunkirk 4y ago

Unfortunately, I fear what Apple is doing and will do to macOS. The trend seems to be that they are making it into another walled garden, ala iOS. I can still run Linux, but I hate that Apple's main competitor on the desktop is lowering the bar so, so low, and exerting so little effort to keep them on their toes to make something that people continue to want.

SergeAx 4y ago

There's a rule for Windows versions: you should skip every second one. So the right sequence is: install Windows 95 skip Windows 98 install Windows 2000 skip Windows ME install Windows XP skip Windows Vista install Windows 7 skip Windows 8 install Windows 10 skip Windows 11 This is so consistent that I beleive there are two teams inside MS alternately developing next version. They say, though, that Windows 11 is the last version and there will be only updates since. I really hope this is not the case.

dagw 4y ago
They say, though, that Windows 11 is the last version and there will be only updates since. I really hope this is not the case. It was actually Windows 10 they said that about, so...
- genewitch 4y ago
  right, because apple said Mac OS X (1998 or so) was the last version they were going to release. from new era Macs it went 7, 8, 9, X. Then intel macs, still macos X. I do know they're up to version 16 or something of whatever the OS is called these days. probably just MacOS. I didn't believe either of them!
warner25 4y ago
The ads are baked into Windows 10 too, although might be worse in 11.
yamtaddle 4y ago
Win95 was widely regarded as being shit prior to the C version IIRC (I had A, though, and always really liked it...) Win98se was considered damn good, compared to what had come before. Disruption for little benefit, at launch, though. 2K was only for businesses, bad driver support and lacking in some software support on account of using the NT kernel before hardware & software vendors were expecting home users to have it. ME was a pointless refresh of 98. Buggier and with system menus subtly messed-with to no purpose. The first miss-step of the Vista/8 variety. XP was good by SP3. Not so much at launch. Vista, yeah, slow as hell while adding nothing. 7 was still slow as hell, but wasn't as ugly and our hardware had gotten better so it was less-noticeable. Not much to recommend it aside from "XP's going out of support, and it's less-ugly than Vista". 8 was pointless and ugly, like Vista. 10 was another 7: de-uglified 8, but not much else going for it. Adware and shitware and spyware galore. This leaves 7 as the last "good" Windows. 11's 10 on steroids, so, two scoops of shit instead of one.

jacooper 4y ago

What's the alternative? The joke that is macOS? I use Linux daily, but its not ready for everyone, creative apps for example are nonexistent, And games aren't exactly plug and play. In addition to not having a distro that combines gnome + zero hassle driver installs + friendly defaults, it was Ubuntu till they ruined it with snap, and now there is still nothing like it. I just hope canonical gives up on snap.

Sohcahtoa82 4y ago

I'm still on Windows because I'm a gamer, and while the gaming on Linux situation is improving, it's still not there yet. Games on Windows just work. I never have to do any fiddling. Download, install, play. And maybe it's because I opt for the Pro version of Windows, but I don't have the advertisements people complain about. No Candy Crush, no news/tabloids, just my list of apps and a few shortcuts to things I've used.