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I'm one of those weird people that has been on Linux so long (wow, like over 2 decades now) I quite literally don't remember how to use Windows - even though I

I'm one of those weird people that has been on Linux so long (wow, like over 2 decades now) I quite literally don't remember how to use Windows - even though I cut my teeth on it in the 90's. I dabble on the Mac to a moderate degree, but I'm just mostly comfortable on Linux, despite more BS than one would prefer. The benefits certainly outweigh the downsides (for most purposes), especially if you're technical enough to be self-sufficient. When I see the adware monstrosity that Windows appears to have turned into, I'm actually quite shocked to see sharp folks using it. I must be missing something, like do they have cheat codes to make it usable? If I wasn't super tech savvy, I can see why people would pay the absurd Mac tax - just throw money at the problem enough to make it go away.

Jigsy 11mo ago
> When I see the adware monstrosity that Windows appears to have turned into, I'm actually quite shocked to see sharp folks using it. I must be missing something, like do they have cheat codes to make it usable? I think the sad reality is a lot of people simply don't care. I specifically avoided Windows 10 because of the telemetry and the whole forced reboots for updates seem pretty annoying, and I didn't see it getting any better which is why I decided to try and move to Linux. The only thing that held be back at the time was I was too ensconsed in my eight-year-old setup, so I needed to be able to do the same things on Linux; and I needed gaming to be viable. Which it thankfully is now to Proton. And it's even more disgusting how Windows 11 has become considering it has the "we'll take screenshots of what you're doing every five seconds" stuff now. Sure, Microsoft claim they'll never see what people are doing, but what's stopping them from doing that in a future update? At least people are slowly wising up to this; though a believe a good majority of new Linux users are because they don't want to create e-wase and replace a perfectly good computer just because Microsoft says "No." Personally, I wish I'd swapped sooner.
wonger_ 11mo ago
> When I see the adware monstrosity that Windows appears to have turned into, I'm actually quite shocked to see sharp folks using it. I must be missing something, like do they have cheat codes to make it usable? There's at least a few factors: - like boiling frogs, where things worsen gradually and you don't notice / hurt enough until it's too late - accumulated bandaids over time to keep it bearable. e.g. knowing what settings to disable, perhaps having powershell scripts to debloat new machines, etc - inertia. Hard to make big changes in general, even if they would help, because change is hard and usually costly - forced to use Windows at work
- tombert 11mo ago
  I think MS Office is also singularly keeping people on Windows. That’s the only argument I don’t have a response to for getting my parents to switch. I am confident that the lovely folks working on Wine are working as hard as possible to get maximal compatibility, and Wine (and Proton) is really a marvel of engineering at this point, but man I wish they would figure out how to get MS Office 2024 working. To be clear, this is not a dig at the Wine people; I suspect MS Office is made purposefully difficult to get working on Wine, but man if they could get that working then there could be a huge exodus.
  - ashirviskas 11mo ago
    Genuinely interested - why particularly MS Office 2024, and not any older version?
    - tombert 11mo ago
      It would have to just be a recent-ish version. I tried getting 2016 working as well and was unsuccessful.
  - Jigsy 11mo ago
    Do people hate LibreOffice that much?
    - tombert 11mo ago
      My dad makes extremely liberal use of the VBA in Excel. LibreOffice does have an equivalent, but it's different enough to where he would be forced to port over large amounts of his code. I think he could get over the different interface but I don't completely blame him for not wanting to redo all his work.
    - jackvalentine 11mo ago
      I use linux full time on my home PCs, and I want Libre Office to work for me. I _can’t_ get equivalent functionality of Excel’s tables (named range, but it dynamically expands and applies formulas as you add more data). If you’ve got excel handy, open it up select a range and press control-L to see it. There are endless forum threads of Libre Office boosters misunderstanding what the feature does and offering the halfway there equivalent. I want this to work, but everyone uses excel’s feature set slightly differently and something will be missing for everyone. It’s incredibly annoying.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
makeitdouble 11mo ago
> I must be missing something, like do they have cheat codes to make it usable? Some of us are in the weird spots where no OS "just works" and will require inordinate amount of setup and adjustments anyway. I recently did an arch and Ubuntu install for two machines, and spend half a day each to get something mildly viable, and still tweak things from time to time two weeks after. Sheer hardware support was only a third of the pain. Back in the days macos also took me about the same time to setup the local system , configure input and disable/workaround the silly stuff. Windows is on par IMHO (stuff are sillier, but disabling them takes about the same effort). For any of those I end with a fully working *nix system/subsystem, so the end setup makes very little difference to me. The huge difference is windows having exotic[0] form factor support turned to 11, where linux will be rougher. [0] I only care about tablets, I wonder if Bazzite could help, I'll be giving it a try in. few months I think.
TulliusCicero 11mo ago
Each time I've tried throwing Linux onto a new machine it's been a pain with drivers and compatibility. Things have slowly gotten better, but the last time I tried (using Mint) it still sucked big time. I've used Linux for work (and school before that) for a long time, so I'm not intimidated by it, but it just feels like more effort than it's worth each time at home. I won't deny that Windows keeps getting more annoying though, so I'll probably give Linux an N-th try soon. Edit: also, I'm a PC gamer, and I like having the option to play games like Fortnite or Valorant, even if I don't do so very often. But of course, I can solve that with dual booting if I really want to.
ewzimm 11mo ago
I'm also a long-time Linux user, but there are some things that still need Windows, so here are my cheat codes to make it usable: O&O Shutup: https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 All the missing privacy switches you'd want. Run it after any updates. PowerToys: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/ https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/ The real utilities you'll want to control your UI as a power user. Just autohide the taskbar and disable showing badges and flashing. It's a lost cause, and you can mostly just forget it exists. Use alt+space to launch things and keyboard or mouse shortcuts for window management. It's actually pretty good at mixing floating and tiling. WSL: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install I'm sure you know about it, but it works well even for most GUI apps these days, although it still doesn't support fractional scaling.

Jigsy 11mo ago

> When I see the adware monstrosity that Windows appears to have turned into, I'm actually quite shocked to see sharp folks using it. I must be missing something, like do they have cheat codes to make it usable? I think the sad reality is a lot of people simply don't care. I specifically avoided Windows 10 because of the telemetry and the whole forced reboots for updates seem pretty annoying, and I didn't see it getting any better which is why I decided to try and move to Linux. The only thing that held be back at the time was I was too ensconsed in my eight-year-old setup, so I needed to be able to do the same things on Linux; and I needed gaming to be viable. Which it thankfully is now to Proton. And it's even more disgusting how Windows 11 has become considering it has the "we'll take screenshots of what you're doing every five seconds" stuff now. Sure, Microsoft claim they'll never see what people are doing, but what's stopping them from doing that in a future update? At least people are slowly wising up to this; though a believe a good majority of new Linux users are because they don't want to create e-wase and replace a perfectly good computer just because Microsoft says "No." Personally, I wish I'd swapped sooner.

wonger_ 11mo ago

> When I see the adware monstrosity that Windows appears to have turned into, I'm actually quite shocked to see sharp folks using it. I must be missing something, like do they have cheat codes to make it usable? There's at least a few factors: - like boiling frogs, where things worsen gradually and you don't notice / hurt enough until it's too late - accumulated bandaids over time to keep it bearable. e.g. knowing what settings to disable, perhaps having powershell scripts to debloat new machines, etc - inertia. Hard to make big changes in general, even if they would help, because change is hard and usually costly - forced to use Windows at work

tombert 11mo ago
I think MS Office is also singularly keeping people on Windows. That’s the only argument I don’t have a response to for getting my parents to switch. I am confident that the lovely folks working on Wine are working as hard as possible to get maximal compatibility, and Wine (and Proton) is really a marvel of engineering at this point, but man I wish they would figure out how to get MS Office 2024 working. To be clear, this is not a dig at the Wine people; I suspect MS Office is made purposefully difficult to get working on Wine, but man if they could get that working then there could be a huge exodus.
- ashirviskas 11mo ago
  Genuinely interested - why particularly MS Office 2024, and not any older version?
  - tombert 11mo ago
    It would have to just be a recent-ish version. I tried getting 2016 working as well and was unsuccessful.
- Jigsy 11mo ago
  Do people hate LibreOffice that much?
  - tombert 11mo ago
    My dad makes extremely liberal use of the VBA in Excel. LibreOffice does have an equivalent, but it's different enough to where he would be forced to port over large amounts of his code. I think he could get over the different interface but I don't completely blame him for not wanting to redo all his work.
  - jackvalentine 11mo ago
    I use linux full time on my home PCs, and I want Libre Office to work for me. I _can’t_ get equivalent functionality of Excel’s tables (named range, but it dynamically expands and applies formulas as you add more data). If you’ve got excel handy, open it up select a range and press control-L to see it. There are endless forum threads of Libre Office boosters misunderstanding what the feature does and offering the halfway there equivalent. I want this to work, but everyone uses excel’s feature set slightly differently and something will be missing for everyone. It’s incredibly annoying.

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

makeitdouble 11mo ago

> I must be missing something, like do they have cheat codes to make it usable? Some of us are in the weird spots where no OS "just works" and will require inordinate amount of setup and adjustments anyway. I recently did an arch and Ubuntu install for two machines, and spend half a day each to get something mildly viable, and still tweak things from time to time two weeks after. Sheer hardware support was only a third of the pain. Back in the days macos also took me about the same time to setup the local system , configure input and disable/workaround the silly stuff. Windows is on par IMHO (stuff are sillier, but disabling them takes about the same effort). For any of those I end with a fully working *nix system/subsystem, so the end setup makes very little difference to me. The huge difference is windows having exotic[0] form factor support turned to 11, where linux will be rougher. [0] I only care about tablets, I wonder if Bazzite could help, I'll be giving it a try in. few months I think.

TulliusCicero 11mo ago

Each time I've tried throwing Linux onto a new machine it's been a pain with drivers and compatibility. Things have slowly gotten better, but the last time I tried (using Mint) it still sucked big time. I've used Linux for work (and school before that) for a long time, so I'm not intimidated by it, but it just feels like more effort than it's worth each time at home. I won't deny that Windows keeps getting more annoying though, so I'll probably give Linux an N-th try soon. Edit: also, I'm a PC gamer, and I like having the option to play games like Fortnite or Valorant, even if I don't do so very often. But of course, I can solve that with dual booting if I really want to.

ewzimm 11mo ago

I'm also a long-time Linux user, but there are some things that still need Windows, so here are my cheat codes to make it usable: O&O Shutup: https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 All the missing privacy switches you'd want. Run it after any updates. PowerToys: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/ https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/ The real utilities you'll want to control your UI as a power user. Just autohide the taskbar and disable showing badges and flashing. It's a lost cause, and you can mostly just forget it exists. Use alt+space to launch things and keyboard or mouse shortcuts for window management. It's actually pretty good at mixing floating and tiling. WSL: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install I'm sure you know about it, but it works well even for most GUI apps these days, although it still doesn't support fractional scaling.