7 ms·

There are two Microsofts, as I see it. The one with DevDiv and stuff, which has amazing and mostly free development tools like VS Code, VS 2022, Windows Termin

There are two Microsofts, as I see it. The one with DevDiv and stuff, which has amazing and mostly free development tools like VS Code, VS 2022, Windows Terminal, WSL, Azure, the .NET ecosystem, the MSVC C++ STL, PowerShell, TypeScript, and so on. And then there's the bean-counting, irritating part of Microsoft that has stuck around since the 90s and doesn't seem to go away. This part justifies adding advertisements and crapware to Windows, pushing for SaaS (while still charging a LOT), changing the UX of Office programs every version, not being able to implement and release a proper UI library after a decade or so, and pushing laggy Electron apps like Teams instead of developing fast, native ones. Like many others here, Windows is a daily driver for me. I actually like using it, because a lot of hardware and configurations that need painful finagling on Linux (just try using a multi-monitor high-DPI, mixed-DPI setup on Linux, or any game that has anti-cheat, or touch fingerprint sensors, or HDR and wide colour gamut displays) just work on Windows. It has a massive repository of programs that I use frequently. But some changes are just... irritating.

matrix_overload 4y ago
Well, guess which part pays the bills for the other one.
- darzu 4y ago
  Azure
  - cachvico 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - nneonneo 4y ago
      Except those numbers are…wrong? I mean, they’re not far off, but they’re not actually right either. You should probably never trust ChatGPT outright with facts. From the horse’s mouth, https://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar21/index.html https://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar21/index.html: Productivity and Business Processes: 53.9B (not 53.7) Intelligent Cloud: 60.1B (not 58.4) More Personal Computing: 54.1B (not 53.6)
      - cachvico 4y ago
        Thanks. It's so weird that it spits almost-but-not-quite correct numbers.
quyleanh 4y ago
Agree with you except the prefer reason. I like to using Window because of its advantages about UX, which I cannot find in Linux or macOS. For example: the consistent keyboard shortcuts, the explorer's UX and UI when accessing by mouse and keyboard, the window management including tiling flow, the muti-monitor management... I feel that there is power at Microsoft forcing Windows including terrible adware as now, just for profit (look at Bing AI). It can be good for short term but I don't think it's good for long term.
- jamesfinlayson 4y ago
  > the consistent keyboard shortcuts Funny, I remember working at a Linux shop a few years ago - two higher-ups in tech there were fairly against paying for any software, but both used Windows for this exact reason.
  - lozf 4y ago
    These days you get the same in Gnome, KDE, and even i3 or sway with minimal effort.
- mastercheif 4y ago
  How are Windows keyboard shortcuts more consistent than macOS? My experience is that the opposite is true. What’s the standard Windows shortcut for opening an applications preferences (cmd + ,”? What about switching tabs (cmd + shift + [ or ]).
  - MiddleEndian 4y ago
    Windows has (for programs that follow it of course) good tab management shortcuts. Ctrl pgup/pgdown to go left/right (equivalent to MacOS's shortcut mentioned above), and ctrl+tab to cycle through historical tab order (which many Mac programs have as well IIRC). But for me the nicest shortcuts in windows are Win+# for applications. Win 1, 2, 3, etc. to select a program in that slot on your taskbar regardless of whether it's already open, and holding Windows and cycling through that number's windows, along with your standard alt tab for all windows in historical order. That, combined with the non-centered taskbar icons means you get great muscle memory on both keyboard and mouse, better than Mac OS's dock IMO. Of course, MS is doing its best to kill this for some reason by insisting on limiting how you position the taskbar, trying to center everything, and randomly sticking "Search" into the taskbar periodically. Also for whatever reason sometimes the keyboard shortcuts are not reliable in Windows 11 lol. I can't say I like all of Microsoft's plans, but the fundamentals are there, and they were solidly designed at some point.
draw_down 4y ago
[dead]
emodendroket 4y ago
I mean, ignoring our personal preferences, which of those two halves of the business sounds like it's sustaining the other? I see a bunch of (cool) tools in one column, some of which admittedly might encourage people to use Windows or other paid MS products, albeit less so than in the past; in the other I see a lot of solid recurring revenue streams.
- delta_p_delta_x 4y ago
  Azure is Microsoft's biggest money-maker, not the inclusion of ads in Windows. Windows itself drives 12% of Microsoft sales[1]. [1]: https://www.kamilfranek.com/microsoft-revenue-breakdown/ https://www.kamilfranek.com/microsoft-revenue-breakdown/
  - emodendroket 4y ago
    I think Azure is a bit of an awkward fit in the group, but just sticking with it, it's still eclipsed if we combine Windows, search advertising, "enterprise services," and Office, which would all seem to fit in the originally-provided "bad" group.
  - TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
    I long for the day when someone will dissect the numbers, and show how much of Windows' vaunted desktop share is due to corporate licenses. I think it would show that -- when people are buying with their own money -- they're preferring Macs 2-to-1 over PC's now.
    - dagw 4y ago
      when people are buying with their own money -- they're preferring Macs 2-to-1 over PC's now. I suspect that most people actually spending their own money are spending less than $1000, which more or less puts Apple out of the running.
      - TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
dustedcodes 4y ago
They are not that different. Look at Azure and tell me with a straight face that it’s not the biggest clusterfuck of all time. Look at it. Azure is the single biggest reason why .NET developers have high blood pressure around the world. Azure is so bad people actively filter out jobs where the company uses Azure. The only other software which triggers this much aversion in people is MS Teams.
- MiddleEndian 4y ago
  Let's be fair, I would also avoid any company that uses Microsoft Sharepoint!
  - Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
    Sharepoint is the worst piece of software I've ever used. I think its central problem is that it doesn't know what it's supposed to be, so it tries to be everything, and feature creep has turned it into a slow, bloated mess.
    - nobody9999 4y ago
      >Sharepoint is the worst piece of software I've ever used. >I think its central problem is that it doesn't know what it's supposed to be, so it tries to be everything, and feature creep has turned it into a slow, bloated mess. I think Sharepoint is exactly what MS envisioned it to be. A development platform to integrate other MS tools/platforms for presentation to internal end users. If you want something you can just install, tweak and run with, Sharepoint isn't (and never was) an appropriate solution. But if you want something that (with significant effort) can bring all your MS tools together (encouraging the purchase of even more MS software), Sharepoint and development effort can create something useful. N.B.: I hate Sharepoint. It's needlessly complicated and overly dependent on other MS products. As such, please don't take this comment as an endorsement of it.
    - esafak 4y ago
      Every Microsoft product is like that; they think that because every customer uses a different set of features that they need to support them all. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/03/23/strategy-letter-iv-bloatware-and-the-8020-myth/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/03/23/strategy-letter-iv...
pjmlp 4y ago
C++, Windows and stuff belong to WinDev, not DevDiv. Additionally, DevDiv is now under Azure, hence all the cool toys and openess.
sgt 4y ago
Linux still can't do high/mixed DPI out of the box?
- iuafhiuah 4y ago
  It does on Wayland. X11 isn't likely to get it because it's EoL. Currently using it right now on Sway: https://man.archlinux.org/man/sway-output.5.en https://man.archlinux.org/man/sway-output.5.en
  - sgt 4y ago
    And Wayland is compatible with everything one would expect?
    - iuafhiuah 4y ago
      The question isn't possible to answer, what one person expects to work another person might not consider it important. Likewise, what does "compatible" mean? I have used Wayland exclusively for over a year and not found any software I could not run. For example, JAVA doesn't have native Wayland support, so if you launched GUI JAVA software Wayland will run it in a sandboxed X11 server (XWayland) that behaves mostly like Wayland in the context of the rest of your system but is just X11 under the hood. However, because that JAVA software is technically running in X11 and X11 doesn't have the level of support as Wayland does for HiDPI then that specific GUI program can't inherit your pixel config. This will probably just mean the default layout for that program will be too small or blurry. This is a good example because it's not unreasonable that in 2023 you may not be running any GUI JAVA software and you may never even realise this was an thing. Equally, GUI JAVA software may be the only software you run in which case this may be unacceptable. There are other things Wayland does differently to X11 (because it's different software). For example, Wayland doesn't have a method for a program to register a global hotkey - if you want a global hotkey you have to register it in your WM or DE. This is because the tighter security model stops one program from capturing inputs to another AND because the developers can't come to a consensus on the API to enable this. You may consider Wayland not supporting arbitrary global hotkeys to be incompatible with what you expect. I don't because I have no issue with the centralised global hotkeys in my WM.
anagram666 4y ago
I am able to do a perfect multi-monitor high-DPI/mixed-DPI on Linux using wayland+gnome. The support for wayland on KDE is getting better and would probably work with KDE as well. This was a huge annoyance, but is fixed. I don`t even remember I am using wayland. Everything works. With Steam progress on proton, most games run on Linux without problems and with the same performance. Another huge pain in Linux was installing commercial programs. Now with flatpak, you can be sure it will work no matter what. It is getting better, trust me.

matrix_overload 4y ago

Well, guess which part pays the bills for the other one.

darzu 4y ago
Azure
- cachvico 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - nneonneo 4y ago
    Except those numbers are…wrong? I mean, they’re not far off, but they’re not actually right either. You should probably never trust ChatGPT outright with facts. From the horse’s mouth, https://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar21/index.html https://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar21/index.html: Productivity and Business Processes: 53.9B (not 53.7) Intelligent Cloud: 60.1B (not 58.4) More Personal Computing: 54.1B (not 53.6)
    - cachvico 4y ago
      Thanks. It's so weird that it spits almost-but-not-quite correct numbers.

quyleanh 4y ago

Agree with you except the prefer reason. I like to using Window because of its advantages about UX, which I cannot find in Linux or macOS. For example: the consistent keyboard shortcuts, the explorer's UX and UI when accessing by mouse and keyboard, the window management including tiling flow, the muti-monitor management... I feel that there is power at Microsoft forcing Windows including terrible adware as now, just for profit (look at Bing AI). It can be good for short term but I don't think it's good for long term.

jamesfinlayson 4y ago
> the consistent keyboard shortcuts Funny, I remember working at a Linux shop a few years ago - two higher-ups in tech there were fairly against paying for any software, but both used Windows for this exact reason.
- lozf 4y ago
  These days you get the same in Gnome, KDE, and even i3 or sway with minimal effort.
mastercheif 4y ago
How are Windows keyboard shortcuts more consistent than macOS? My experience is that the opposite is true. What’s the standard Windows shortcut for opening an applications preferences (cmd + ,”? What about switching tabs (cmd + shift + [ or ]).
- MiddleEndian 4y ago
  Windows has (for programs that follow it of course) good tab management shortcuts. Ctrl pgup/pgdown to go left/right (equivalent to MacOS's shortcut mentioned above), and ctrl+tab to cycle through historical tab order (which many Mac programs have as well IIRC). But for me the nicest shortcuts in windows are Win+# for applications. Win 1, 2, 3, etc. to select a program in that slot on your taskbar regardless of whether it's already open, and holding Windows and cycling through that number's windows, along with your standard alt tab for all windows in historical order. That, combined with the non-centered taskbar icons means you get great muscle memory on both keyboard and mouse, better than Mac OS's dock IMO. Of course, MS is doing its best to kill this for some reason by insisting on limiting how you position the taskbar, trying to center everything, and randomly sticking "Search" into the taskbar periodically. Also for whatever reason sometimes the keyboard shortcuts are not reliable in Windows 11 lol. I can't say I like all of Microsoft's plans, but the fundamentals are there, and they were solidly designed at some point.

draw_down 4y ago

[dead]

emodendroket 4y ago

I mean, ignoring our personal preferences, which of those two halves of the business sounds like it's sustaining the other? I see a bunch of (cool) tools in one column, some of which admittedly might encourage people to use Windows or other paid MS products, albeit less so than in the past; in the other I see a lot of solid recurring revenue streams.

delta_p_delta_x 4y ago
Azure is Microsoft's biggest money-maker, not the inclusion of ads in Windows. Windows itself drives 12% of Microsoft sales[1]. [1]: https://www.kamilfranek.com/microsoft-revenue-breakdown/ https://www.kamilfranek.com/microsoft-revenue-breakdown/
- emodendroket 4y ago
  I think Azure is a bit of an awkward fit in the group, but just sticking with it, it's still eclipsed if we combine Windows, search advertising, "enterprise services," and Office, which would all seem to fit in the originally-provided "bad" group.
- TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
  I long for the day when someone will dissect the numbers, and show how much of Windows' vaunted desktop share is due to corporate licenses. I think it would show that -- when people are buying with their own money -- they're preferring Macs 2-to-1 over PC's now.
  - dagw 4y ago
    when people are buying with their own money -- they're preferring Macs 2-to-1 over PC's now. I suspect that most people actually spending their own money are spending less than $1000, which more or less puts Apple out of the running.
    - TheRealDunkirk 4y ago

dustedcodes 4y ago

They are not that different. Look at Azure and tell me with a straight face that it’s not the biggest clusterfuck of all time. Look at it. Azure is the single biggest reason why .NET developers have high blood pressure around the world. Azure is so bad people actively filter out jobs where the company uses Azure. The only other software which triggers this much aversion in people is MS Teams.

MiddleEndian 4y ago
Let's be fair, I would also avoid any company that uses Microsoft Sharepoint!
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
  Sharepoint is the worst piece of software I've ever used. I think its central problem is that it doesn't know what it's supposed to be, so it tries to be everything, and feature creep has turned it into a slow, bloated mess.
  - nobody9999 4y ago
    >Sharepoint is the worst piece of software I've ever used. >I think its central problem is that it doesn't know what it's supposed to be, so it tries to be everything, and feature creep has turned it into a slow, bloated mess. I think Sharepoint is exactly what MS envisioned it to be. A development platform to integrate other MS tools/platforms for presentation to internal end users. If you want something you can just install, tweak and run with, Sharepoint isn't (and never was) an appropriate solution. But if you want something that (with significant effort) can bring all your MS tools together (encouraging the purchase of even more MS software), Sharepoint and development effort can create something useful. N.B.: I hate Sharepoint. It's needlessly complicated and overly dependent on other MS products. As such, please don't take this comment as an endorsement of it.
  - esafak 4y ago
    Every Microsoft product is like that; they think that because every customer uses a different set of features that they need to support them all. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/03/23/strategy-letter-iv-bloatware-and-the-8020-myth/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/03/23/strategy-letter-iv...

pjmlp 4y ago

C++, Windows and stuff belong to WinDev, not DevDiv. Additionally, DevDiv is now under Azure, hence all the cool toys and openess.

sgt 4y ago

Linux still can't do high/mixed DPI out of the box?

iuafhiuah 4y ago
It does on Wayland. X11 isn't likely to get it because it's EoL. Currently using it right now on Sway: https://man.archlinux.org/man/sway-output.5.en https://man.archlinux.org/man/sway-output.5.en
- sgt 4y ago
  And Wayland is compatible with everything one would expect?
  - iuafhiuah 4y ago
    The question isn't possible to answer, what one person expects to work another person might not consider it important. Likewise, what does "compatible" mean? I have used Wayland exclusively for over a year and not found any software I could not run. For example, JAVA doesn't have native Wayland support, so if you launched GUI JAVA software Wayland will run it in a sandboxed X11 server (XWayland) that behaves mostly like Wayland in the context of the rest of your system but is just X11 under the hood. However, because that JAVA software is technically running in X11 and X11 doesn't have the level of support as Wayland does for HiDPI then that specific GUI program can't inherit your pixel config. This will probably just mean the default layout for that program will be too small or blurry. This is a good example because it's not unreasonable that in 2023 you may not be running any GUI JAVA software and you may never even realise this was an thing. Equally, GUI JAVA software may be the only software you run in which case this may be unacceptable. There are other things Wayland does differently to X11 (because it's different software). For example, Wayland doesn't have a method for a program to register a global hotkey - if you want a global hotkey you have to register it in your WM or DE. This is because the tighter security model stops one program from capturing inputs to another AND because the developers can't come to a consensus on the API to enable this. You may consider Wayland not supporting arbitrary global hotkeys to be incompatible with what you expect. I don't because I have no issue with the centralised global hotkeys in my WM.

anagram666 4y ago

I am able to do a perfect multi-monitor high-DPI/mixed-DPI on Linux using wayland+gnome. The support for wayland on KDE is getting better and would probably work with KDE as well. This was a huge annoyance, but is fixed. I don`t even remember I am using wayland. Everything works. With Steam progress on proton, most games run on Linux without problems and with the same performance. Another huge pain in Linux was installing commercial programs. Now with flatpak, you can be sure it will work no matter what. It is getting better, trust me.