3 ms·

> The only thing of note they have added to Windows in the last five years is Copilot That's a quite unfair take, especially when it fails to compare it with w

by sedatk 11mo ago

> The only thing of note they have added to Windows in the last five years is Copilot That's a quite unfair take, especially when it fails to compare it with what things of note Linux distros have added over the last five years. Valve made Windows emulation better, yes. That's it. What else? Actually, I wouldn't even call Copilot a thing of note. It's just ChatGPT-in-a-popup at the moment. A real thing of note is WSL2. It's a total game changer. Windows has got many quality of life improvements over the recent years such as an extremely polished web browser, clipboard history, Windows Sandbox, screen recording, OCR, automatic private info redaction, Markdown support in Notepad and many more. None of those exists on most distros. Most distros lack the features below, out of the box, which Windows has supported for years: - "reset this PC" functionality - a built-in anti-malware - Touch/Face login - Ability to enable FDE post-installation - Hybrid-sleep - Fast fractional HiDPI scaling - Running x86 apps on AArch64 performantly I agree that Microsoft needs to stop letting product groups get their way with screwing up user comfort on Windows for the sake of their arbitrary goals (like shoving Microsoft accounts, Teams, and anything Electron-based down our throats) and keep it as a solid, bloat-free system that everyone can safely rely on. But, dismissing the existing pros of Windows is just unfair. Despite all the cons, it's still a very good OS. Disclaimer: I had to switch to Fedora on my old machines because Windows 11 weren't supported on them. That's an exceptionally rare incident where Microsoft dropped the ball on backwards compatibility. But that doesn't mean Windows itself is bad.

butterknife 11mo ago
Clipboard history? Screen recording? Polished web browser? And none of these are available on most distros? I think you ought to try "most distros" before making such claims.
d3Xt3r 11mo ago
> Despite all the cons, it's still a very good OS. I disagree, "a very good OS" wouldn't leave major issues unfixed for 5+ months and counting: https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-finally-admits-almost-all-major-windows-11-core-features-are-broken/ https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-finally-admits-almost-... If Windows was "a very good OS", us Windows sysadmins would've been out of a job a long time ago! A good portion of our job involves trying to fix or workaround things that Microsoft breaks every Patch Tuesday, logging tickets with Microsoft, dealing with the asinine Microsoft Support (who don't even know how to extract .cab files from the logs generated by the Microsoft Support Tool!), and implementing fixes and workarounds for unwanted "features" they manage to sneak into the latest update. Actually, I concede that it is "a very good OS" - it is very good for keeping me employed!
charcircuit 11mo ago
Another useful W11 feature (that later got backported to W10) is seamless integration with graphical Linux apps. You can just double click an icon on your desktop and it opens up in a window like any other app. Passkey support was added which made securely signing into site easier. Dev drive was added that makes it so building on windows is faster. Support for low latency Bluetooth was added.
- dmitrygr 11mo ago
  > seamless integration with graphical Linux apps. You can just double click an icon on your desktop and it opens up in a window like any other app You just described what Wine was able to do in Ubuntu since at least 2010
maximus-decimus 11mo ago
I like WSL, but their search bars have gotten worse which really kills any good will I have towards them. On my work computer, the search bar can't even find Intellij which is installed in a totally normal way. It's even in the same folder as clion in the program files and it can find that one. I also had a problem where the file explorer couldn't find a file by name and it made me look like an idiot. You know what feature my menu bar has though? I tells me when the s&p 500 goes down in value to try to make me panic sell. That's a feature I really want in my work computer's os menu /s. Also when I clicked on the time, it used to show me a calendar, but now it shows me a pomodoro app? I don't want more features in notepad, what I want is the os to do basic stuff, like finding my programs and files or show me the time, right.
AnthonyMouse 11mo ago
> Hybrid-sleep Linux supports hybrid sleep. It might not be enabled by default because if you have a lot of RAM it has a tendency to burn out consumer SSDs. Consider what happens if you have 64GB of RAM, a 512GB consumer SSD that supports 100 full drive writes in total and you enter into hybrid sleep twice a day for three years. > Ability to enable FDE post-installation Copy entire filesystem to backup. This isn't even a step because you were already doing it, right? Enable FDE and copy it back. These ones are just Windows defect workarounds: > "reset this PC" functionality > a built-in anti-malware > Running x86 apps on AArch64 performantly Windows messes itself up on a regular basis, requiring you to reset it; this is rare on stable Linux distributions and even then "reset this PC" is really just copying the user's documents and reinstalling the OS, which nobody cares about having a one-press button to do when they're not having to do it all the time. Linux has functional package managers that people actually use, which makes the default way to install software be the one that isn't likely to introduce you to malware. And the package managers recompile the software for whatever architecture you're using so you don't need to emulate a different one. > Touch/Face login I think people have tried to add this and the users went out of their way to remove it again. "Have the machine record your biometric data" is creepy and the security is bad because people leave their fingerprints on everything and post pictures of their face on the internet. > Fast fractional HiDPI scaling X has legacy issues with this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27009035 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27009035 Wayland supports it.
- 1718627440 11mo ago
  > X has legacy issues with this: I don't get these complaints. Can you explain to me what the problem with `xrandr --output HDMI1 --scale 0.8x0.8` is?
dspillett 11mo ago
> an extremely polished web browser, clipboard history, Windows Sandbox, screen recording, OCR, automatic private info redaction, Markdown support in Notepad and many more. None of those exists on most distros. That is simply wrong. Some of them might be a package install away rather than there by default, but they are hardly features that Windows pioneered… > automatic private info redaction With regard to that, I wasn't aware of a direct end user feature for that in Windows. There are tools for it in Office, and from a programmers PoV in .Net, but these are things that will continue even if Windows gets canned because it is a tech debt problem: Office is still a cash cow and .Net is via VS/VSCode and funnelling people into Azure. > - "reset this PC" functionality Maybe not as a one-click, but just re-follow the installation instructions… > - a built-in anti-malware Good point, though it is less needed due to most users installing via OS package repos which offers some friction to malware installation. Individual services that particularly need it have support for it though (mail servers and such). This might become a bigger issue if the use of “curl -> bash” as an installation or quick-run method keeps gaining traction. > - Touch/Face login I'm a refusenik there so I don't care about that one - biometric are bad for authentication/authorisation as they can't be easily revoked! And I'm sure I've seen it done so it is at least available. > - Ability to enable FDE post-installation Valid, ish, but where FDE is required commercially it is going to be done on first install anyway, the same for most home users that care enough. And conversion is possible after-the-fact, just not in as automated a manner as with Windows. > - Hybrid-sleep Though while we are talking about that, proper hibernate has been broken on Windows on many laptops for some time. > - Fast fractional HiDPI scaling I can't comment on that, it isn't something I would need. Though it is worth pointing out that a great many applications on Windows don't handle HiDPI well anyway, especially when you have different scaling factors on different screens. This is the same on any OS I think. > - Running x86 apps on AArch64 performantly Again completely out of my wheelhouse so I can't really comment. Again, this feels like a niche issue for consumer use cases ATM - the situation may change quickly as demand increases. > (like shoving Microsoft accounts, Teams, and anything Electron-based down our throats) And bloody “AI”. They've put it in notepad… Thankyou the Sirius Cybernetics Marketing Division!
- BLKNSLVR 11mo ago
  Notepad had been perfect for two (three?) decades. I think it was noticing that Notepad (and Calculator) in Windows 10 took a countable number of seconds to open, that's what pushed me over the edge into permanent Linux desktop land.
Neikius 11mo ago
Something similar to reset PC would be snapshots and immutable systems. Touch is notorious for there are very few touch sensors that actually have drivers for linux and vendors keep using unsupported ones. Hybrid sleep... is actually a big problem as it replaced the regular sleep and now we are all in some deep deep muck. And fractional scaling works fine on wayland, it is a recent feature of the last 1-2 years but seems to have stabilized.
- 1718627440 11mo ago
  Fractional scaling also works fine for decades in Xorg.
BLKNSLVR 11mo ago
> Windows has got many quality of life improvements over the recent years Yeah, but they are far outweighed by the quality of life regressions that pushed me to desktop Linux a number of years ago. I only use Windows, begrudgingly, on my work laptop these days, and it just seems to get more bothersome as the years pass. Linux used to require more install and post-install-setup effort to get me to my happy workflow place, but Windows overtook it a while back and has only been increasing its lead ever since as a result of a growing stack of defaults and unnecessary inclusions being, quite specifically, quality of life regressions (transgressions).

by sedatk 11mo ago

butterknife 11mo ago

Clipboard history? Screen recording? Polished web browser? And none of these are available on most distros? I think you ought to try "most distros" before making such claims.

d3Xt3r 11mo ago

> Despite all the cons, it's still a very good OS. I disagree, "a very good OS" wouldn't leave major issues unfixed for 5+ months and counting: https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-finally-admits-almost-all-major-windows-11-core-features-are-broken/ https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-finally-admits-almost-... If Windows was "a very good OS", us Windows sysadmins would've been out of a job a long time ago! A good portion of our job involves trying to fix or workaround things that Microsoft breaks every Patch Tuesday, logging tickets with Microsoft, dealing with the asinine Microsoft Support (who don't even know how to extract .cab files from the logs generated by the Microsoft Support Tool!), and implementing fixes and workarounds for unwanted "features" they manage to sneak into the latest update. Actually, I concede that it is "a very good OS" - it is very good for keeping me employed!

charcircuit 11mo ago

Another useful W11 feature (that later got backported to W10) is seamless integration with graphical Linux apps. You can just double click an icon on your desktop and it opens up in a window like any other app. Passkey support was added which made securely signing into site easier. Dev drive was added that makes it so building on windows is faster. Support for low latency Bluetooth was added.

dmitrygr 11mo ago
> seamless integration with graphical Linux apps. You can just double click an icon on your desktop and it opens up in a window like any other app You just described what Wine was able to do in Ubuntu since at least 2010

maximus-decimus 11mo ago

I like WSL, but their search bars have gotten worse which really kills any good will I have towards them. On my work computer, the search bar can't even find Intellij which is installed in a totally normal way. It's even in the same folder as clion in the program files and it can find that one. I also had a problem where the file explorer couldn't find a file by name and it made me look like an idiot. You know what feature my menu bar has though? I tells me when the s&p 500 goes down in value to try to make me panic sell. That's a feature I really want in my work computer's os menu /s. Also when I clicked on the time, it used to show me a calendar, but now it shows me a pomodoro app? I don't want more features in notepad, what I want is the os to do basic stuff, like finding my programs and files or show me the time, right.

AnthonyMouse 11mo ago

> Hybrid-sleep Linux supports hybrid sleep. It might not be enabled by default because if you have a lot of RAM it has a tendency to burn out consumer SSDs. Consider what happens if you have 64GB of RAM, a 512GB consumer SSD that supports 100 full drive writes in total and you enter into hybrid sleep twice a day for three years. > Ability to enable FDE post-installation Copy entire filesystem to backup. This isn't even a step because you were already doing it, right? Enable FDE and copy it back. These ones are just Windows defect workarounds: > "reset this PC" functionality > a built-in anti-malware > Running x86 apps on AArch64 performantly Windows messes itself up on a regular basis, requiring you to reset it; this is rare on stable Linux distributions and even then "reset this PC" is really just copying the user's documents and reinstalling the OS, which nobody cares about having a one-press button to do when they're not having to do it all the time. Linux has functional package managers that people actually use, which makes the default way to install software be the one that isn't likely to introduce you to malware. And the package managers recompile the software for whatever architecture you're using so you don't need to emulate a different one. > Touch/Face login I think people have tried to add this and the users went out of their way to remove it again. "Have the machine record your biometric data" is creepy and the security is bad because people leave their fingerprints on everything and post pictures of their face on the internet. > Fast fractional HiDPI scaling X has legacy issues with this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27009035 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27009035 Wayland supports it.

1718627440 11mo ago
> X has legacy issues with this: I don't get these complaints. Can you explain to me what the problem with `xrandr --output HDMI1 --scale 0.8x0.8` is?

dspillett 11mo ago

> an extremely polished web browser, clipboard history, Windows Sandbox, screen recording, OCR, automatic private info redaction, Markdown support in Notepad and many more. None of those exists on most distros. That is simply wrong. Some of them might be a package install away rather than there by default, but they are hardly features that Windows pioneered… > automatic private info redaction With regard to that, I wasn't aware of a direct end user feature for that in Windows. There are tools for it in Office, and from a programmers PoV in .Net, but these are things that will continue even if Windows gets canned because it is a tech debt problem: Office is still a cash cow and .Net is via VS/VSCode and funnelling people into Azure. > - "reset this PC" functionality Maybe not as a one-click, but just re-follow the installation instructions… > - a built-in anti-malware Good point, though it is less needed due to most users installing via OS package repos which offers some friction to malware installation. Individual services that particularly need it have support for it though (mail servers and such). This might become a bigger issue if the use of “curl -> bash” as an installation or quick-run method keeps gaining traction. > - Touch/Face login I'm a refusenik there so I don't care about that one - biometric are bad for authentication/authorisation as they can't be easily revoked! And I'm sure I've seen it done so it is at least available. > - Ability to enable FDE post-installation Valid, ish, but where FDE is required commercially it is going to be done on first install anyway, the same for most home users that care enough. And conversion is possible after-the-fact, just not in as automated a manner as with Windows. > - Hybrid-sleep Though while we are talking about that, proper hibernate has been broken on Windows on many laptops for some time. > - Fast fractional HiDPI scaling I can't comment on that, it isn't something I would need. Though it is worth pointing out that a great many applications on Windows don't handle HiDPI well anyway, especially when you have different scaling factors on different screens. This is the same on any OS I think. > - Running x86 apps on AArch64 performantly Again completely out of my wheelhouse so I can't really comment. Again, this feels like a niche issue for consumer use cases ATM - the situation may change quickly as demand increases. > (like shoving Microsoft accounts, Teams, and anything Electron-based down our throats) And bloody “AI”. They've put it in notepad… Thankyou the Sirius Cybernetics Marketing Division!

BLKNSLVR 11mo ago
Notepad had been perfect for two (three?) decades. I think it was noticing that Notepad (and Calculator) in Windows 10 took a countable number of seconds to open, that's what pushed me over the edge into permanent Linux desktop land.

Neikius 11mo ago

Something similar to reset PC would be snapshots and immutable systems. Touch is notorious for there are very few touch sensors that actually have drivers for linux and vendors keep using unsupported ones. Hybrid sleep... is actually a big problem as it replaced the regular sleep and now we are all in some deep deep muck. And fractional scaling works fine on wayland, it is a recent feature of the last 1-2 years but seems to have stabilized.

1718627440 11mo ago
Fractional scaling also works fine for decades in Xorg.

BLKNSLVR 11mo ago

> Windows has got many quality of life improvements over the recent years Yeah, but they are far outweighed by the quality of life regressions that pushed me to desktop Linux a number of years ago. I only use Windows, begrudgingly, on my work laptop these days, and it just seems to get more bothersome as the years pass. Linux used to require more install and post-install-setup effort to get me to my happy workflow place, but Windows overtook it a while back and has only been increasing its lead ever since as a result of a growing stack of defaults and unnecessary inclusions being, quite specifically, quality of life regressions (transgressions).