6 ms·

Windows just keeps getting weirder. There's this regrettable dichotomy between (1) a rock solid OS core with great features like Hyper-V, PowerShell and excepti

by YPPH 3y ago

Windows just keeps getting weirder. There's this regrettable dichotomy between (1) a rock solid OS core with great features like Hyper-V, PowerShell and exceptional back-compat, and (2) a crap, sluggish, inconsistent UI slapped on top, laden with ads, "Rewards" Points and tracking.

urbandw311er 3y ago
Many years ago, they used to charge a not inconsiderable amount for Windows. Given the trend towards making an OS cheap/free, I wonder is this some corporate response driven by a department somewhere that is charged with balancing the books.
- jonathantf2 3y ago
  That's the worst part (and I know that most people will never buy a license because they get it through their OEM or just crack it) but Microsoft are still happy to charge you £220 for a Windows 11 Pro licence [0] and shove ads in your face. [0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/d/windows-11-pro/dg7gmgf0d8h4 https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/d/windows-11-pro/dg7gmgf0d8h...
  - Izmaki 3y ago
    The second all my games are fully compatible with Linux natively, I'm ditching that horrible "does it all, but poorly" corporation.
    - jeffparsons 3y ago
      How recently have you tried. Obviously YMMV, but all mine already are. Proton is a thing of beauty.
      - LtWorf 3y ago
        Microsoft kicks me from online play if I use proton… Coincidence?
    - lelanthran 3y ago
      > The second all my games are fully compatible with Linux natively, I'm ditching I've been seeing this sentiment since 2001 at least. No one ever follows through; if they did we would have seen this already in the desktop stats. You will, whether you consciously realise it or not, switch to playing windows exclusive games the minute all your games run on Linux, hence you will never switch.
      - _dain_ 3y ago
        >I've been seeing this sentiment since 2001 at least. No one ever follows through; if they did we would have seen this already in the desktop stats. There has been an inflection point crossed lately, because of Proton and the Steam Deck. Linux is at 1.95% market share on Steam today. A year ago it was 1.3%.
        lelanthran 3y ago
        As I pointed out to another reply, this fact is not relevant to the point I made. You may as well say "but the sky is blue", which is also true and just as irrelevant
      - weberer 3y ago
        >if they did we would have seen this already in the desktop stats Well you can see it. Linux is used by 4.25% of all English speaking Steam users. And its trending upward. https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/ https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/
        lelanthran 3y ago
        That's a statistic that is irrelevant to my point. It is not a statistic of Linux desktop share, it's a statistic of existing Linux users, not windows migrations.
        weberer 3y ago
        >It is not a statistic of Linux desktop share Yes it is. The Y axis is "Percentage of Steam users". The fact that the Linux percentage is increasing means that the the percentage of Windows users are decreasing. The graph shows a trend of migrating from Windows to Linux.
    - tremon 3y ago
      Then stop buying games that are not?
  - steve_rambo 3y ago
    OEM licenses are not exactly free or cheap. I was perusing the local shops a couple of weeks ago and the same exact laptop without a Windows Home license is always $100 cheaper, no exceptions. More than that for Pro or whatever the fuck it's called. So most people will buy a license, they'll simply not be aware of it. How convenient for MS.
    - 7734128 3y ago
      "OEM" licenses sold by retail is not at all representative of what actual PC makers pay, which is of course going to massively vary. I wouldn't be surprised if some manufacturers, especially those who have been flirting with Linux, have instead been paid to install Windows.
  - narag 3y ago
    Microsoft are still happy to charge you £220 for a Windows 11 Pro licence... You can buy Windows 10 Pro OEM licenses for less than 20€ online. I did just that for a familiar three months ago. The installation was validated and associated with the Microsoft account no problem. Then you can "upgrade" to Windows 11 free of charge, if that's your thing.
noduerme 3y ago
When I was a kid it was just a crappy, sluggish, inconsistent UI built on top of DOS.
- steve1977 3y ago
  That was the “Windows 95” lineage. NT was solid from the start (which is why MS then also made it the basis for XP).
  - noduerme 3y ago
    I should have added /s. It was Windows 3, actually. But I was just riffing on the parent to point out that we've come full circle.
  - orbital-decay 3y ago
    NT was far more resource-demanding (i.e. "sluggish") than 9x due to all the abstractions - it's just the hardware that progressed so fast in a few years that it was kind of irrelevant.
    - noduerme 3y ago
      I feel like almost all software since roughly the advent of the CD-ROM, when distro size stopped being a major limit, has been in a race to outbloat Moore's Law.
      - Lazonedo 3y ago
        The difference between NT and modern bloat (like electron) is that it was very much necessary bloat, the sort that makes computing safer and more reliable (running more things in user mode rather than with kernel authority, true multitasking), as opposed to abstractions that exist solely to boost productivity and make developers happy assembling their library lego blocks. But that 'bloat' made it too expensive in hardware requirements for the home user which is why the NT line had to exist separately from the 9x series until XP. And if anything, unfortunately, Microsoft kept making more compromises with NT that I wish they never did. NT 3.5 ran the graphic stack in user mode. They put it in the kernel for NT4 and only started backtracking on that sort of monolithic design with Vista. (Vista was a controversial OS but most of the architectural decisions they've made with it were the right ones and those decisions still live on in Windows 7, 8, 10 and 11).
skrebbel 3y ago
It’s weird right? 1. keeps me firmly on the platform, I find it a delight how often things “just work”. Run a linux app? Just works. Hook up some niche 15yo printer? Just works. Run a game/demo made 20 years ago? Just works. Even MS Paint very much still just works. It all just works and then the perfectly good Mail app is forcing my mom to switch to the new Outlook, which is Mail, but messier, with ads. What? I wish Satya Nadella would pull a Steve and yell at some people for this shit. It’s eroding trust in the company that they maintained for so many decades, that can’t be a good long term game can it?
- falcor84 3y ago
  > I wish Satya Nadella would pull a Steve and yell at some people for this shit. Just to check, are you suggesting a Steve Ballmer yell or a Steve Jobs yell?
  - skrebbel 3y ago
    Hahaha o yea forgot :-) I mean a Steve Jobs yell, not sure that a Ballmer yell would’ve worked equally well on the product people.
  - speed_spread 3y ago
    No confusion there for me, Ballmer's signature move is throwing chairs. Soo many chairs are waiting in the Windows department...
    - jeroenhd 3y ago
      Is that why Bill's party trick was jumping over chairs? Finally, the pieces are starting to come together?
- LtWorf 3y ago
  Game made 30 years ago needs dosbox, an open source project, to just work. Game made with directx6 20 years ago will render in CPU and just work but be so slow to be unplayable. Then you need to replace the .dll and make it link with an open source library that reimplements dx and converts the calls to the new API, so that it can actually render in hardware. Yes, solitaire.exe still works. 3d games less so. I'm full of games like star wars jedi outcast or so that no longer work on windows.
epolanski 3y ago
WSL2, power toys and hands down the best window management of any OS, I hate working on my MBP just due to the difficulty of managing different windows and aligning them on the same desktop.
- AB1908 3y ago
  Out of curiosity, how many window managers have you used on Linux? I found some superior choices there but I do agree that Windows is generally ok with Mac being dead last.
- cladopa 3y ago
  I have a question for you: If you make a Pie Chart with the time you send on each OS: Linux, Windows and Mac, what will be the percentages? Specially while you were young. Of all the languages I speak, German is the more chaotic language by far. But most native Germans consider it the best/easiest. For me the Windows management of Windows is horrible, but I spent like 90% of my time in Linux were I was young, even using things like "screen" that uses the command line and shortcuts to be the most efficient thing I have ever used (while requiring learning the shortcuts before becoming productive). Today I use Mac like 95% of my time, control Linux machines with it and use Windows when the force of circumstance obliges me the 5%.
  - fauigerzigerk 3y ago
    When I was young I was mostly using Windows. For the last 15 years or so it has been macOS. I made a number of attempts (sometimes lasting months) to use Linux but it never stuck. My conclusion is that usability is mostly about getting used to how things work and a tiny bit of customisation. There are no significant usability differences between operating systems. The _only_ thing that I have never gotten used to and that keeps slowing me down is that app switching (Cmd+Tab) in macOS is MRU while switching windows (Cmd+`, Cmd+Shift+`) within apps is circular. I'm finding it impossible to remember whether I have to go forward or backward to get back to the window I'm looking for within an app.
  - XCSme 3y ago
    > Of all the languages I speak, German is the more chaotic language by far. But most native Germans consider it the best/easiest. I consider my native language to be chaotic and hard to learn. Not all things are subjective, some things can be objectively compared.
steve1977 3y ago
Some much this. I wish there was an option with the current core but something like a lightweight Windows 2000 UI.
- userbinator 3y ago
  WinPE and other stripped-down unofficial "distros" of Windows do exist. Someone will try to run the Win2k shell on a Win11 kernel, if it hasn't already been done. Based on what MS has done with backwards-compatibility, I wouldn't be surprised if it almost "just works". Win10's UI on Win11: https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/o6ysyb/so_i_replaced_the_windows_11s_explorerexe_with/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/o6ysyb/so_i_repl...
  - steve1977 3y ago
    I actually once saw the Win 7 UI appear behind the Win 11 UI in Acrobat Reader. Not sure if this was some Acrobat specific stuff or if it’s still “there” in general.
    - jeroenhd 3y ago
      For compatibility mode, there's a bunch of old theming stuff. If you manage to crash a program in the right way, you can even get a Win2k-style grey-and-blue window to appear in some places, though it's hidden well. This is the company that put the entire Windows 95 memory manager into later versions of Windows to keep compatibility, there are tons of old code paths still lying in wait for old software to reuse. You can't use this stuff as your main UI well, it's no longer tested or optimised for that use case.
p0nce 3y ago
I don't know, Windows 11 came with many things I've wanted for years: - notepad with tabs - shell UI with tabs, VT-100 support and ability to replace the shell - Paint.net with AI - even Windbg has massively improved
- squigz 3y ago
  Ahhh, tabs... it only took 40 years!
  - explorigin 3y ago
    Meanwhile Notepad++ has been free for 20 of those.
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    I sometimes think I’m the only person in the universe who doesn’t prefer tabs. I already have a way to manage multiple windows worth of content: my OS’s Window Manager. Why would I want every application I run to also implement its own custom window management—visually and functionally inconsistent from every other application’s custom window management? I feel applications that do tabs are just like applications that do their own custom quirky File-Open dialog even though my OS provides a standard one.
    - squigz 3y ago
      They manage 2 entirely different contexts. When I want to check my mail, I know I just have to go to Firefox and hit the first tab; not cycle through 200 unorganized windows
      - Jenda_ 3y ago
        Some window managers, such as Fluxbox, support "tabbed windows". You can group windows into one "superwindow" and then switch these in a titlebar. Maybe this is what the GP meant? Screenshot: https://www.reddit.com/r/UsabilityPorn/comments/bqg9tw/fluxbox_here_is_my_mateesque_fluxbox_setup_tabbed/ https://www.reddit.com/r/UsabilityPorn/comments/bqg9tw/fluxb...
spacecadet 3y ago
This is a great summary. Terminal and WSL2 were really nice additions to all of that other cool shit like hyper-v, sandbox, etc. But, I still rather just use Proxmox/Linux...
halfcat 3y ago
> laden with ads, "Rewards" Points Serious question: Where do you see ads? I’ve used Windows 11 since it came out, and have never experienced a single advertisement.
- neogodless 3y ago
  Did you install it? They advertise cloud storage, office software, and gaming in the setup process.
  - halfcat 3y ago
    Maybe that’s it. I untick all of the boxes during install and use a local account instead of a Microsoft account.
    - gertop 3y ago
      You had to fight the install process to get that local account, though.
      - pests 3y ago
        It was like three clicks
    - OkGoDoIt 3y ago
      The hoops you have to jump through to use a local account are a prime example of user hostility. Sure it’s technically possible, but only if you are power user that searches online and figures out how. That’s the general feeling I have with Windows these days, it is technically possible to get it to work the way I want, but it generally feels like I’m fighting an adversary. Sure it’s currently possible to win, but it’s definitely not a good feeling, and not moving in the right direction.
    - jeroenhd 3y ago
      Note if you installed with a local account and expect Bitlocker to work: make sure to actually enable it. With a local account. Bitlocker may state that it's on, but by default, it doesn't encrypt the drive unless you log in to a Microsoft account or manually add a key protector. This is documented on a Microsoft site somewhere, but it's shit like this that make me wary of the "bypass Microsoft's shit" approach; the bypass methods often lead to behaviour that Microsoft never bothered to test and has side effects they don't bother to warn you about.
lofaszvanitt 3y ago
It's getting more and more non human like. Like it was not made by humans. Interesting.
ametrau 3y ago
Powershit is a good thing? Here’s a genus idea, put an object oriented language in the terminal.
- pests 3y ago
  That's powershell?
- lostmsu 3y ago
  Yes, 100%. Old text-based shell scripting promotes security holes the size of Pacific ocean as numerous as stars in the Milky Way.
- themoonisachees 3y ago
  PowerShell isn't bad. It's a paradigm shift, but the concept and execution are god (not great, but good). I recommend you seriously give it a chance, it's probably one of the only Microsoft things I miss on Linux (other commenters, i'm aware I can use PS as a Linux shell, but that requires trusting Microsoft to keep it good.)
- okanat 3y ago
  Yes an object oriented language that has meaningful command names that make sense and not require you to be born in 1950s to understand its trivia. An object oriented language that doesn't have weird-ass pitfalls: https://web.archive.org/web/20240112161109/http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashPitfalls https://web.archive.org/web/20240112161109/http://mywiki.woo... An object oriented language that takes the piping concept and improves it so one can actually form pipelines that make sense and not waste limited resources in just parsing text. However at the same time add more powerful and efficient text parsing tools. So one can actually script on the go with ease. An object oriented language that is not C which is the language which most stubborn Unix developers usually reach for when their shell is too inefficient or too unwieldy for certain tasks and create even more security holes.
RGamma 3y ago
The white flashing in dark mode is killing me...

by YPPH 3y ago

urbandw311er 3y ago

Many years ago, they used to charge a not inconsiderable amount for Windows. Given the trend towards making an OS cheap/free, I wonder is this some corporate response driven by a department somewhere that is charged with balancing the books.

jonathantf2 3y ago
That's the worst part (and I know that most people will never buy a license because they get it through their OEM or just crack it) but Microsoft are still happy to charge you £220 for a Windows 11 Pro licence [0] and shove ads in your face. [0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/d/windows-11-pro/dg7gmgf0d8h4 https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/d/windows-11-pro/dg7gmgf0d8h...
- Izmaki 3y ago
  The second all my games are fully compatible with Linux natively, I'm ditching that horrible "does it all, but poorly" corporation.
  - jeffparsons 3y ago
    How recently have you tried. Obviously YMMV, but all mine already are. Proton is a thing of beauty.
    - LtWorf 3y ago
      Microsoft kicks me from online play if I use proton… Coincidence?
  - lelanthran 3y ago
    > The second all my games are fully compatible with Linux natively, I'm ditching I've been seeing this sentiment since 2001 at least. No one ever follows through; if they did we would have seen this already in the desktop stats. You will, whether you consciously realise it or not, switch to playing windows exclusive games the minute all your games run on Linux, hence you will never switch.
    - _dain_ 3y ago
      >I've been seeing this sentiment since 2001 at least. No one ever follows through; if they did we would have seen this already in the desktop stats. There has been an inflection point crossed lately, because of Proton and the Steam Deck. Linux is at 1.95% market share on Steam today. A year ago it was 1.3%.
      - lelanthran 3y ago
        As I pointed out to another reply, this fact is not relevant to the point I made. You may as well say "but the sky is blue", which is also true and just as irrelevant
    - weberer 3y ago
      >if they did we would have seen this already in the desktop stats Well you can see it. Linux is used by 4.25% of all English speaking Steam users. And its trending upward. https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/ https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/
      - lelanthran 3y ago
        That's a statistic that is irrelevant to my point. It is not a statistic of Linux desktop share, it's a statistic of existing Linux users, not windows migrations.
        weberer 3y ago
        >It is not a statistic of Linux desktop share Yes it is. The Y axis is "Percentage of Steam users". The fact that the Linux percentage is increasing means that the the percentage of Windows users are decreasing. The graph shows a trend of migrating from Windows to Linux.
  - tremon 3y ago
    Then stop buying games that are not?
- steve_rambo 3y ago
  OEM licenses are not exactly free or cheap. I was perusing the local shops a couple of weeks ago and the same exact laptop without a Windows Home license is always $100 cheaper, no exceptions. More than that for Pro or whatever the fuck it's called. So most people will buy a license, they'll simply not be aware of it. How convenient for MS.
  - 7734128 3y ago
    "OEM" licenses sold by retail is not at all representative of what actual PC makers pay, which is of course going to massively vary. I wouldn't be surprised if some manufacturers, especially those who have been flirting with Linux, have instead been paid to install Windows.
- narag 3y ago
  Microsoft are still happy to charge you £220 for a Windows 11 Pro licence... You can buy Windows 10 Pro OEM licenses for less than 20€ online. I did just that for a familiar three months ago. The installation was validated and associated with the Microsoft account no problem. Then you can "upgrade" to Windows 11 free of charge, if that's your thing.

noduerme 3y ago

When I was a kid it was just a crappy, sluggish, inconsistent UI built on top of DOS.

steve1977 3y ago
That was the “Windows 95” lineage. NT was solid from the start (which is why MS then also made it the basis for XP).
- noduerme 3y ago
  I should have added /s. It was Windows 3, actually. But I was just riffing on the parent to point out that we've come full circle.
- orbital-decay 3y ago
  NT was far more resource-demanding (i.e. "sluggish") than 9x due to all the abstractions - it's just the hardware that progressed so fast in a few years that it was kind of irrelevant.
  - noduerme 3y ago
    I feel like almost all software since roughly the advent of the CD-ROM, when distro size stopped being a major limit, has been in a race to outbloat Moore's Law.
    - Lazonedo 3y ago
      The difference between NT and modern bloat (like electron) is that it was very much necessary bloat, the sort that makes computing safer and more reliable (running more things in user mode rather than with kernel authority, true multitasking), as opposed to abstractions that exist solely to boost productivity and make developers happy assembling their library lego blocks. But that 'bloat' made it too expensive in hardware requirements for the home user which is why the NT line had to exist separately from the 9x series until XP. And if anything, unfortunately, Microsoft kept making more compromises with NT that I wish they never did. NT 3.5 ran the graphic stack in user mode. They put it in the kernel for NT4 and only started backtracking on that sort of monolithic design with Vista. (Vista was a controversial OS but most of the architectural decisions they've made with it were the right ones and those decisions still live on in Windows 7, 8, 10 and 11).

skrebbel 3y ago

It’s weird right? 1. keeps me firmly on the platform, I find it a delight how often things “just work”. Run a linux app? Just works. Hook up some niche 15yo printer? Just works. Run a game/demo made 20 years ago? Just works. Even MS Paint very much still just works. It all just works and then the perfectly good Mail app is forcing my mom to switch to the new Outlook, which is Mail, but messier, with ads. What? I wish Satya Nadella would pull a Steve and yell at some people for this shit. It’s eroding trust in the company that they maintained for so many decades, that can’t be a good long term game can it?

falcor84 3y ago
> I wish Satya Nadella would pull a Steve and yell at some people for this shit. Just to check, are you suggesting a Steve Ballmer yell or a Steve Jobs yell?
- skrebbel 3y ago
  Hahaha o yea forgot :-) I mean a Steve Jobs yell, not sure that a Ballmer yell would’ve worked equally well on the product people.
- speed_spread 3y ago
  No confusion there for me, Ballmer's signature move is throwing chairs. Soo many chairs are waiting in the Windows department...
  - jeroenhd 3y ago
    Is that why Bill's party trick was jumping over chairs? Finally, the pieces are starting to come together?
LtWorf 3y ago
Game made 30 years ago needs dosbox, an open source project, to just work. Game made with directx6 20 years ago will render in CPU and just work but be so slow to be unplayable. Then you need to replace the .dll and make it link with an open source library that reimplements dx and converts the calls to the new API, so that it can actually render in hardware. Yes, solitaire.exe still works. 3d games less so. I'm full of games like star wars jedi outcast or so that no longer work on windows.

epolanski 3y ago

WSL2, power toys and hands down the best window management of any OS, I hate working on my MBP just due to the difficulty of managing different windows and aligning them on the same desktop.

AB1908 3y ago
Out of curiosity, how many window managers have you used on Linux? I found some superior choices there but I do agree that Windows is generally ok with Mac being dead last.
cladopa 3y ago
I have a question for you: If you make a Pie Chart with the time you send on each OS: Linux, Windows and Mac, what will be the percentages? Specially while you were young. Of all the languages I speak, German is the more chaotic language by far. But most native Germans consider it the best/easiest. For me the Windows management of Windows is horrible, but I spent like 90% of my time in Linux were I was young, even using things like "screen" that uses the command line and shortcuts to be the most efficient thing I have ever used (while requiring learning the shortcuts before becoming productive). Today I use Mac like 95% of my time, control Linux machines with it and use Windows when the force of circumstance obliges me the 5%.
- fauigerzigerk 3y ago
  When I was young I was mostly using Windows. For the last 15 years or so it has been macOS. I made a number of attempts (sometimes lasting months) to use Linux but it never stuck. My conclusion is that usability is mostly about getting used to how things work and a tiny bit of customisation. There are no significant usability differences between operating systems. The _only_ thing that I have never gotten used to and that keeps slowing me down is that app switching (Cmd+Tab) in macOS is MRU while switching windows (Cmd+`, Cmd+Shift+`) within apps is circular. I'm finding it impossible to remember whether I have to go forward or backward to get back to the window I'm looking for within an app.
- XCSme 3y ago
  > Of all the languages I speak, German is the more chaotic language by far. But most native Germans consider it the best/easiest. I consider my native language to be chaotic and hard to learn. Not all things are subjective, some things can be objectively compared.

steve1977 3y ago

Some much this. I wish there was an option with the current core but something like a lightweight Windows 2000 UI.

userbinator 3y ago
WinPE and other stripped-down unofficial "distros" of Windows do exist. Someone will try to run the Win2k shell on a Win11 kernel, if it hasn't already been done. Based on what MS has done with backwards-compatibility, I wouldn't be surprised if it almost "just works". Win10's UI on Win11: https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/o6ysyb/so_i_replaced_the_windows_11s_explorerexe_with/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/o6ysyb/so_i_repl...
- steve1977 3y ago
  I actually once saw the Win 7 UI appear behind the Win 11 UI in Acrobat Reader. Not sure if this was some Acrobat specific stuff or if it’s still “there” in general.
  - jeroenhd 3y ago
    For compatibility mode, there's a bunch of old theming stuff. If you manage to crash a program in the right way, you can even get a Win2k-style grey-and-blue window to appear in some places, though it's hidden well. This is the company that put the entire Windows 95 memory manager into later versions of Windows to keep compatibility, there are tons of old code paths still lying in wait for old software to reuse. You can't use this stuff as your main UI well, it's no longer tested or optimised for that use case.

p0nce 3y ago

I don't know, Windows 11 came with many things I've wanted for years: - notepad with tabs - shell UI with tabs, VT-100 support and ability to replace the shell - Paint.net with AI - even Windbg has massively improved

squigz 3y ago
Ahhh, tabs... it only took 40 years!
- explorigin 3y ago
  Meanwhile Notepad++ has been free for 20 of those.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  I sometimes think I’m the only person in the universe who doesn’t prefer tabs. I already have a way to manage multiple windows worth of content: my OS’s Window Manager. Why would I want every application I run to also implement its own custom window management—visually and functionally inconsistent from every other application’s custom window management? I feel applications that do tabs are just like applications that do their own custom quirky File-Open dialog even though my OS provides a standard one.
  - squigz 3y ago
    They manage 2 entirely different contexts. When I want to check my mail, I know I just have to go to Firefox and hit the first tab; not cycle through 200 unorganized windows
    - Jenda_ 3y ago
      Some window managers, such as Fluxbox, support "tabbed windows". You can group windows into one "superwindow" and then switch these in a titlebar. Maybe this is what the GP meant? Screenshot: https://www.reddit.com/r/UsabilityPorn/comments/bqg9tw/fluxbox_here_is_my_mateesque_fluxbox_setup_tabbed/ https://www.reddit.com/r/UsabilityPorn/comments/bqg9tw/fluxb...

spacecadet 3y ago

This is a great summary. Terminal and WSL2 were really nice additions to all of that other cool shit like hyper-v, sandbox, etc. But, I still rather just use Proxmox/Linux...

halfcat 3y ago

> laden with ads, "Rewards" Points Serious question: Where do you see ads? I’ve used Windows 11 since it came out, and have never experienced a single advertisement.

neogodless 3y ago
Did you install it? They advertise cloud storage, office software, and gaming in the setup process.
- halfcat 3y ago
  Maybe that’s it. I untick all of the boxes during install and use a local account instead of a Microsoft account.
  - gertop 3y ago
    You had to fight the install process to get that local account, though.
    - pests 3y ago
      It was like three clicks
  - OkGoDoIt 3y ago
    The hoops you have to jump through to use a local account are a prime example of user hostility. Sure it’s technically possible, but only if you are power user that searches online and figures out how. That’s the general feeling I have with Windows these days, it is technically possible to get it to work the way I want, but it generally feels like I’m fighting an adversary. Sure it’s currently possible to win, but it’s definitely not a good feeling, and not moving in the right direction.
  - jeroenhd 3y ago
    Note if you installed with a local account and expect Bitlocker to work: make sure to actually enable it. With a local account. Bitlocker may state that it's on, but by default, it doesn't encrypt the drive unless you log in to a Microsoft account or manually add a key protector. This is documented on a Microsoft site somewhere, but it's shit like this that make me wary of the "bypass Microsoft's shit" approach; the bypass methods often lead to behaviour that Microsoft never bothered to test and has side effects they don't bother to warn you about.

lofaszvanitt 3y ago

It's getting more and more non human like. Like it was not made by humans. Interesting.

ametrau 3y ago

Powershit is a good thing? Here’s a genus idea, put an object oriented language in the terminal.

pests 3y ago
That's powershell?
lostmsu 3y ago
Yes, 100%. Old text-based shell scripting promotes security holes the size of Pacific ocean as numerous as stars in the Milky Way.
themoonisachees 3y ago
PowerShell isn't bad. It's a paradigm shift, but the concept and execution are god (not great, but good). I recommend you seriously give it a chance, it's probably one of the only Microsoft things I miss on Linux (other commenters, i'm aware I can use PS as a Linux shell, but that requires trusting Microsoft to keep it good.)
okanat 3y ago
Yes an object oriented language that has meaningful command names that make sense and not require you to be born in 1950s to understand its trivia. An object oriented language that doesn't have weird-ass pitfalls: https://web.archive.org/web/20240112161109/http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashPitfalls https://web.archive.org/web/20240112161109/http://mywiki.woo... An object oriented language that takes the piping concept and improves it so one can actually form pipelines that make sense and not waste limited resources in just parsing text. However at the same time add more powerful and efficient text parsing tools. So one can actually script on the go with ease. An object oriented language that is not C which is the language which most stubborn Unix developers usually reach for when their shell is too inefficient or too unwieldy for certain tasks and create even more security holes.

RGamma 3y ago

The white flashing in dark mode is killing me...