13 ms·

I miss the days when personal computers were simply tools, akin to pencils and handheld calculators. I remember the days of Macintosh System 7 and Windows 95.

by linguae 10mo ago

I miss the days when personal computers were simply tools, akin to pencils and handheld calculators. I remember the days of Macintosh System 7 and Windows 95. No upselling services. No automatic updates. No nagging. You turned your computer on, executed programs, and that was it. On the Windows side, things started going downhill starting with the Windows XP era, and on the Mac the annoyances began sometime in the mid-2010s. It seems Microsoft, Apple, and other companies realized that they’re leaving money on the table by not exploiting their platforms. Thus, they’re no longer selling simple tools, but rather they are selling us services. Yes, there are good Linux distributions that don’t annoy me, and the BSDs never nag me, but the problem with switching to these platforms is that I still need Microsoft Office and other proprietary software tools that are not available outside “Big Tech.” There are other matters that make switching away from Windows and macOS challenging, such as hardware support and laptop battery life.

jazzyjackson 10mo ago
What kills me is there seems to be no option for accounting that is acceptable to CPAs besides being held captive paying whatever QuickBooks cloud demands. It's not like dual entry accounting has changed much in 500 years. There are bank integrations and service contracts (notably Apple Card wasn't willing to pay licensing fees for the quickbooks file format, so you simply couldn't syncronize your accounts with your spending, instead falling back to manual import), but they would not make investors happy by merely offering bank connection services (God forbid banks be required by law to offer a web connector that allows you to request your own data. A workaround I've tried is to have my bank send me an email alert on every transaction over a penny, so at least I have a record, but never got around to setting up an auto import from my inbox)
- abe_m 10mo ago
  I've heard that many times, but the 3 accounting firms I've worked with for my business didn't care what accounting software I used. They were all happy to work with Gnucash so long as I could provide the needed reports, all of which were pre-configured in Gnucash. Two were small firms, but one was part of a major national accounting firm/franchise.
- wombatpm 10mo ago
  If you a small business with retail and payroll, tax tables being up to date are worth the price.
stouset 10mo ago
I too remember the days when every unpatched Windows PC was a member of a botnet. Perhaps less fondly than you. And thankfully this was before a time when everyone’s computers and phones had access to their bank accounts, credit cards, and before email was the gateway to virtually your entire life.
- jagoff 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  - skywhopper 10mo ago
    [flagged]
    - jagoff 10mo ago
      [flagged]
      - anthk 10mo ago
        I was there. Windows XP on cable-modem = "free shutdown message".
  - solarengineer 10mo ago
    FYI, malware researchers deliberately infect a VM and then analyze the malware. Here are some present-day examples of such investigations using the open source Garuda framework: https://cysinfo.com/introduction-to-threat-hunting-using-garuda-framework/ https://cysinfo.com/introduction-to-threat-hunting-using-gar...
  - anthk 10mo ago
    FUD? Blaster said otherwise.
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  - 10mo ago
makeitdouble 10mo ago
> I miss the days when personal computers were simply tools, akin to pencils and handheld calculators. > System 7 and Windows 95 If Windows 95 was the complexity level of a pencil to you, Win 10/11 is merely a color pencil. You should be fine getting rid of the nagging and adapting it to your needs, it hasn't become 10x or 100x more complex, merely incrementally more. > Microsoft [...] not exploiting their platforms. That's a phrase I didn't expect. What part of Microsoft do you feel was leaving money on the table, as they were sued by basically the whole globefor their business practices ?
- whoknowsidont 10mo ago
  Every decade MS never finds a shortage of acolytes.
isolatedsystem 10mo ago
Easy answer to your last point: Work machine and Non-work machine. If I'm working for a company and the company needs MS Office, they will give me a machine with MS Office. I will treat that machine like a radioactive zone. Full Hazmat suit. Not a shred of personal interaction with that machine. It exists only to do work on and that's that. The company can take care of keeping it up to date, and the company's IT department can do the bending over the table on my behest as MS approaches with dildos marked "Copilot" or "Recall" or "Cortana" or "React Native Start Menu" or "OneDrive" or whatever. Meanwhile, my personal machine continues to be Linux. This is what I'm doing at my work now. I'm lucky enough to have two computers, a desktop PC that runs Linux, and a laptop with Windows 11. I do not use that laptop unless I have to deal with xlsx, pptx or docx files. Life is so much better.
- neilv 10mo ago
  Apt username, for a pragmatic strategy. A variation I've done occasionally is to run the Microsoft Windows software in a VM on my Linux laptop. When I last had the MS office suite inflicted upon me, a couple years ago, I was able to run it in a Web browser on Linux. It's important to remember, though, that these measures probably won't work long-term. Historically, MS will tend to shamelessly do whatever underhanded things they can get away with at that point in time. The only exception being when they are playing a long con, in which case they will pretend to play nice, until some threshold of lock-in (or re-lock-in) is achieved, and only then mask-off, with no sense of shame. (It's usually not originating bottom-up from the ICs, and I know some nice people from there, but upper corporate is totally like that, demonstrating it again and again, for decades.) Also, a company requiring to run Microsoft software is probably also a bad place to work in other regards.
  - vee-kay 10mo ago
    > Historically, MS will tend to shamelessly do whatever underhanded things they can get away with at that point in time. The only exception being when they are playing a long con, in which case they will pretend to play nice, until some threshold of lock-in (or re-lock-in) is achieved, and only then mask-off, with no sense of shame. The Windows 10 bait n switch to Windows 11. Hundreds of millions of PC users worldwide on old hardware using old Windows OSes were offered Win10 as free upgrade, with the promise that Win10 is the final Windows edition. Later though, M$ announced Win11 and it would work only on new hardware (BIOS TPM 2.0 constraint), and Win10 is no longer being supported for personal use (except via some complicated ways to get an extension for the Win10 updates). And not only is Win11 buggy and full of ads, its performance is also bad. Well, the good thing is that such shenanigans are pushing PC users to migrate to Linux.
mschuster91 10mo ago
> I remember the days of Macintosh System 7 and Windows 95. No upselling services. No automatic updates. No nagging. You turned your computer on, executed programs, and that was it. I 'member the days of Win 98, Win ME and Win XP... made good money cleaning up malware - browser toolbars, dialers, god knows what - from computers. Some came from the hellholes that were Java, ActiveX or Flash, some came from browser drive-by exploits served from advertising networks, but others just came from computers that were attached directly to the Internet from their modems. And I also 'member Windows being prone to crashes, particularly graphics drivers, until Windows 7 revamped the entire driver model. Oh, and (unrelated) I also 'member websites you could use to root a fair amount of Android and Apple phones. All of that is gone now, it has gotten so, so much better thanks to a variety of protection mechanisms.
- linguae 10mo ago
  Security and upselling are orthogonal; I can make a secure operating system that doesn’t notify the user of OneDrive, iCloud, and other services. Things get more nuanced when we talk about other types of notifications and about whether updates should be automatic or always require a user’s explicit consent. I personally believe that a key tenet of personal computing is that the owner of the computer, not the hardware or software vendor, should have full control over the hardware and software on the computer. This control is undermined when systems are designed in ways to give users less control. There may be legitimate security benefits to mandatory automatic updates, for example, but there are risks, such as buggy updates leading to broken installations or even lost data, and there’s also having to deal with unwanted UI/UX changes. As a power user, developer, and researcher, I want control over my computing environment. Unfortunately Windows and macOS have been trending toward more paternalism, more nagging, and more upselling. Thankfully Linux exists, but at the cost of needing to switch away from convenient proprietary software tools like Microsoft Office. I can do without Word or Excel, but PowerPoint is what keeps me on Office (I’ve tried LibreOffice and the Beamer LaTeX template). I’m also concerned about hardware getting increasingly locked down, which will hurt Linux.
  - pjjpo 10mo ago
    I had the same reading, it sounded like Windows is worse now than Windows 95, which would be a hot take indeed. But it seems the intent was purely on these nagging aspects which have definitely gotten worse. It might be easier to swallow the message focusing on Windows 8+ when it really jumped the shark. Windows 7 was a pretty good OS holistically I think even if there are aspects lost compared to the pure simplicity of those really old ones.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
phendrenad2 10mo ago
Windows XP sold for $200 in 2001. In 2025, that's $364[1]. If we can find enough people willing to pay $364 for an OS that values privacy and doesn't push needless upgrades, that'll be a start. But XP itself was probably priced based on the belief that people would be upgrading in a few years to Windows Vista. So we might need more than that. [1] - According to minneapolisfed.org, which uses the official economist-approved inflation rates. Not that I'm implying that there's anything wrong with that. I have all of the orthodox beliefs about inflation that a good citizen should have.
- llbbdd 10mo ago
  $364 when?
- eigen 10mo ago
  > Windows XP sold for $200 in 2001. In 2025, that's $364 I assume you used the overall CPI rate rather than the software rate. but using the Software CPI its more like $58. and that seems like an easier sell (for the user, maybe not the developer). http://data.bls.gov/dataViewer/view/timeseries/CUUR0000SEEE02 http://data.bls.gov/dataViewer/view/timeseries/CUUR0000SEEE0... Software CPI-U 2001 Oct 77.0 2025 Nov 22.182
- tonyedgecombe 10mo ago
  Windows 11 Pro is still $200 [1]. Of course most people don't pay anything directly as it's bundled with their PC and they won't think to question why that is. [1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/d/windows-11-pro/dg7gmgf0d8h4 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/d/windows-11-pro/dg7gmgf0d8h...
  - autoexec 10mo ago
    The cost of Windows 11 Pro is $200, plus your privacy, ownership of your computer, and your dignity. It's way too expensive.
crazygringo 10mo ago
> Windows 95. No upselling services. No automatic updates Even Windows 95 came bundled with MSN on the desktop which had a paid monthly fee to access. And its lack of automatic updates was a real problem, as you had to manually find the service packs and security patches. The automatic updates in Windows XP were vastly more convenient. Automatic updates are needed for security. The only era when you didn't need them was pre-Internet. They're not something we want to get rid of.
- chasing0entropy 10mo ago
  I know you won't believe me, and my precious karma score may suffer by stating reality: you don't NEED security updates. A properly hardened server with no patches will outlive cobbled together trash library patch over garbage code pasted from ai vibing script kiddies. Would you shake your head in disbelief if I told you 'security patches' are the fix delivered by a dealer to quell your shivers? Give me functionality updates, cumulative service packs, and the just after BBS days when an exploit discovered in your software meant it was used by no one, anywhere, because we no longer trust your coding or your 'fix'
  - crazygringo 10mo ago
    Nobody's talking about "properly hardened servers" here. We're talking about the OS used on desktops and laptops by everyday consumers, connecting to the Internet across a wide variety of Wi-Fi access points. Do you not see the constant stream of zero-day exploits coming out for consumer operating systems? Do you think those don't need to be fixed? I'm genuinely curious -- I've never come across anyone with your perspective before, so I'm struggling to understand where it's coming from.
    - chasing0entropy 10mo ago
      Usually i post and forget but your reasonable reply prompted some effort on my part. I live life so that at any moment, if modern services of society (food, internet, power, shelter, entertsinment, transport, personal defense) ended, and I was forced to use what I had access to, that my quality of life would persist. Besides physical considerations (hydroponics, solar, guns, hardened vehicles), I maintain nonvolitile backups of the same software I use daily - vanilla(unpatched) OSs from xp to 11), current and older browsers, non-ssl based content and servers, games, music, movies, hoards of older hardware in a cage that may may an emp.. never tested it. Anything computer related I have works from a bare metal install with no internet connection period. I use the same retail desktop, laptop, wifi, cellular, and wan hardware used by most consumers but only if I can reset and inialize it offline, and can use the built in firewall to restrict outgoing connections to a single executable single port whitelist including my phone. Which means no nags, no updates, no new features, no removed features, no app stores, no federated os logins, no new terms of service, and no telemetry unless I choose to connect that program to the internet and the program is flexible enough to use a single port. Zero day exploits won't work on my android 11 s9 with no play services, deny all firewall, and non standard chrome build. In app browser updates don't work until I manually install the binary, most AI features are broken by default even on my win11 laptop. It's not an easy life. But if you insist that software and hardware do what you wish, your actions should back that. My actions probably more than most. I pass on a decent amount of IT gigs because they require app tracking or that I use their monitoring software, or vpn... but everything I have I KNOW I control now and until it stops working and I buy two more identical and grossly obsolete replacements.
aspbee555 10mo ago
I stopped using Windows over 15 years ago and moved to Ubuntu that was running all the servers. Unfortunately Ubuntu decided to do the same garbage trying to shove their pro crap down my throat, made it impossible to remove (by making a desktop requirement) and resorted to the game of trying to re-enable it during updates I finally moved everything to just Debian itself that never nags me and just works with everything I need, including games (thanks to steam) Only time I boot a Win10 VM is to compile apps for for windows, otherwise it has zero use or need anymore
- autoexec 10mo ago
  I supported Ubuntu when they started but gave up on them after they sent people's local file searches to third parties so they could push amazon ads. They're totally corrupted as far as I can tell.
tzs 10mo ago
The internet was a big part of it. Most home users did not have internet access in the System 7 days. When it came out in 1991 no country had more than 1% of its population with internet access. By the time Windows 95 came out around 10% of US users had internet access. It wasn't until 2001 that the US reached 50% of users having internet access. Without internet there wasn't really a good way to distribute updates to most users. As a developer in that era working at a company that made software for PCs and Macs it was great. It meant that the way most users would get our software was buying it on floppy disk (or later CD) from a retail software store like CompUSA or Egghead. We'd only make more money from someone who bought our software if that software made a good enough impression that they bought more of our software. We'd lose money if any software went out with enough bugs or a confusing enough interface or a poorly enough written manual that a lot of people made a lot of calls to our toll free tech support. This was great because it largely aligned what developers wanted to do (write a feature complete program with a great UI and no bugs) and what management wanted (happy users who do not call tech support). With internet giving us the ability to push updates at almost zero cost and as often as we want people who release incomplete programs early and add the missing parts in updates are going to outcompete people who don't release until the program is complete and nearly bug free. Once you get there it is not much of a leap to decide that what you are really selling is not software to do X but rather the service of providing software to do X. Customers subscribe to that service and you continuously improve its ability to do X.
- thewebguyd 10mo ago
  > It meant that the way most users would get our software was buying it on floppy disk (or later CD) from a retail software store like CompUSA or Egghead. On the topic of Windows, this is why Microsoft's commitment to backwards compatibility was and is such a huge deal. It wasn't so easy to just update your software if Windows ever made breaking changes, and your users would, rightly, be pretty ticked off if suddenly what they bought no longer works because they upgraded from Win 95 to 98, or 98 to XP. You had confidence that you could buy a program once, and it'll just happily continue to run for the foreseeable future. This also made businesses happy. If you liked a particular version of a software product, you bought it, ran it on Windows, and could rest easy knowing it'll just continue to work through version upgrades of the OS.
melchebo 10mo ago
Do not connect it to the internet. Problem solved. Basically anything in a social network needs to learn to defend itself against threats. Make computer a hermit, and it can go without updates for a long time. (Oh, but you don't like that? Well, Microsoft doesn't like getting in the news for some worldwide botnet of all Windows 10 machines. I bet they'll figure this out sooner or later.)
chaostheory 10mo ago
> but the problem with switching to these platforms is that I still need Microsoft Office Microsoft Office Online works fine on Linux. In fact, it’s superior to native MS Office in terms of stability.
- AlexeyBrin 10mo ago
  > Microsoft Office Online works fine on Linux. In fact, it’s superior to native MS Office in terms of stability. It may work for your case - good. Many companies have custom VBA macros that runs on their Excel sheets to get data or validate it. Try to use a document like this on your online Office and you will understand why most Office users can't easily migrate.
  - chaostheory 10mo ago
    I think Excel Online can run JavaScript and python. It also sounded like it was his personal laptop
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
vbezhenar 10mo ago
Microsoft Office somewhat works in the browser. Certainly good enough for me, although 99% of my actions is upload document to onedirve, open it in web MS Office version, export to pdf and then read with standard tools.
thayne 10mo ago
Hardware support isn't all that bad anymore. Certainly better than it was when I started using Linux. It isn't perfect. You'll probably have a better experience with AMD than Nvidia GPUs, most fingerprint readers probably won't work, and newly released hardware might not have drivers for a few months, but most stuff just works.
edg5000 10mo ago
Can you provide some details on the reasons for needing MS Offfice? I'm genuinely curious. What does LibreOffice do differently that makes it a problem for you to use? Personally my only complaint is the performance of LO, which could be better.
- sokoloff 10mo ago
  For me, some complex Excel usage was not replicable in either Sheets or LibreOffice.
  - thewebguyd 10mo ago
    Excel I'd argue is the primary reason for most in the business world. What LibreOffice misses, and sheets to a lesser extent, is that Excel isn't just a spreadsheet app. It's a general-purpose programming environment for non-devs (although, at a certain point, you could argue they are effectively programming even if they don't see it that way). Yeah, there are better solutions. At a certain level of complexity, you probably shouldn't be using Excel and should switch to Python+some SQL database, but there's something to be said about the visual environment Excel provides. Excel is Microsoft's killer app
    - sokoloff 10mo ago
      It’s the world’s most popular low-code platform.
    - fragmede 10mo ago
      > It's a general-purpose programming environment for non-devs Google sheets's programmability is way better (than the last time I used) Excel, with direct support for python, which Gemini can write just fine. It's a bit fiddly in places, I'll admit, but Google sheets is definitely a programming environment.
- OJFord 10mo ago
  I'm not GP but I do know it's rare to open an existing .docx in LibreOffice and have it look right; who knows what it looks like in Word after I've edited and saved it. It's fine creating new documents, and Excel/Calc is better than Word (inherent in being more structured I suppose), but it's not a drop-in replacement. I've used web Office365 when necessary though, not Windows.
Terr_ 10mo ago
I miss when I felt that personal computers were a new wave of democratized capital, a kind of affordable factory for individual owners to use pursuing their own autonomy and power... and not just for programmers. I underestimated the economic forces trying to turn them into devices for enforcing the interests of a large company onto the owner and turning the owner into a renter.
mindcrash 10mo ago
I am old enough to remember that when Windows 95 was released Microsoft tried to take over the Internet with Microsoft Network (MSN, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_Dial-Up_Internet_Access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_Dial-Up_Internet_Access). They never changed.

by linguae 10mo ago

jazzyjackson 10mo ago

What kills me is there seems to be no option for accounting that is acceptable to CPAs besides being held captive paying whatever QuickBooks cloud demands. It's not like dual entry accounting has changed much in 500 years. There are bank integrations and service contracts (notably Apple Card wasn't willing to pay licensing fees for the quickbooks file format, so you simply couldn't syncronize your accounts with your spending, instead falling back to manual import), but they would not make investors happy by merely offering bank connection services (God forbid banks be required by law to offer a web connector that allows you to request your own data. A workaround I've tried is to have my bank send me an email alert on every transaction over a penny, so at least I have a record, but never got around to setting up an auto import from my inbox)

abe_m 10mo ago
I've heard that many times, but the 3 accounting firms I've worked with for my business didn't care what accounting software I used. They were all happy to work with Gnucash so long as I could provide the needed reports, all of which were pre-configured in Gnucash. Two were small firms, but one was part of a major national accounting firm/franchise.
wombatpm 10mo ago
If you a small business with retail and payroll, tax tables being up to date are worth the price.

stouset 10mo ago

I too remember the days when every unpatched Windows PC was a member of a botnet. Perhaps less fondly than you. And thankfully this was before a time when everyone’s computers and phones had access to their bank accounts, credit cards, and before email was the gateway to virtually your entire life.

jagoff 10mo ago
[flagged]
- skywhopper 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  - jagoff 10mo ago
    [flagged]
    - anthk 10mo ago
      I was there. Windows XP on cable-modem = "free shutdown message".
- solarengineer 10mo ago
  FYI, malware researchers deliberately infect a VM and then analyze the malware. Here are some present-day examples of such investigations using the open source Garuda framework: https://cysinfo.com/introduction-to-threat-hunting-using-garuda-framework/ https://cysinfo.com/introduction-to-threat-hunting-using-gar...
- anthk 10mo ago
  FUD? Blaster said otherwise.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- 10mo ago

makeitdouble 10mo ago

> I miss the days when personal computers were simply tools, akin to pencils and handheld calculators. > System 7 and Windows 95 If Windows 95 was the complexity level of a pencil to you, Win 10/11 is merely a color pencil. You should be fine getting rid of the nagging and adapting it to your needs, it hasn't become 10x or 100x more complex, merely incrementally more. > Microsoft [...] not exploiting their platforms. That's a phrase I didn't expect. What part of Microsoft do you feel was leaving money on the table, as they were sued by basically the whole globefor their business practices ?

whoknowsidont 10mo ago
Every decade MS never finds a shortage of acolytes.

isolatedsystem 10mo ago

Easy answer to your last point: Work machine and Non-work machine. If I'm working for a company and the company needs MS Office, they will give me a machine with MS Office. I will treat that machine like a radioactive zone. Full Hazmat suit. Not a shred of personal interaction with that machine. It exists only to do work on and that's that. The company can take care of keeping it up to date, and the company's IT department can do the bending over the table on my behest as MS approaches with dildos marked "Copilot" or "Recall" or "Cortana" or "React Native Start Menu" or "OneDrive" or whatever. Meanwhile, my personal machine continues to be Linux. This is what I'm doing at my work now. I'm lucky enough to have two computers, a desktop PC that runs Linux, and a laptop with Windows 11. I do not use that laptop unless I have to deal with xlsx, pptx or docx files. Life is so much better.

neilv 10mo ago
Apt username, for a pragmatic strategy. A variation I've done occasionally is to run the Microsoft Windows software in a VM on my Linux laptop. When I last had the MS office suite inflicted upon me, a couple years ago, I was able to run it in a Web browser on Linux. It's important to remember, though, that these measures probably won't work long-term. Historically, MS will tend to shamelessly do whatever underhanded things they can get away with at that point in time. The only exception being when they are playing a long con, in which case they will pretend to play nice, until some threshold of lock-in (or re-lock-in) is achieved, and only then mask-off, with no sense of shame. (It's usually not originating bottom-up from the ICs, and I know some nice people from there, but upper corporate is totally like that, demonstrating it again and again, for decades.) Also, a company requiring to run Microsoft software is probably also a bad place to work in other regards.
- vee-kay 10mo ago
  > Historically, MS will tend to shamelessly do whatever underhanded things they can get away with at that point in time. The only exception being when they are playing a long con, in which case they will pretend to play nice, until some threshold of lock-in (or re-lock-in) is achieved, and only then mask-off, with no sense of shame. The Windows 10 bait n switch to Windows 11. Hundreds of millions of PC users worldwide on old hardware using old Windows OSes were offered Win10 as free upgrade, with the promise that Win10 is the final Windows edition. Later though, M$ announced Win11 and it would work only on new hardware (BIOS TPM 2.0 constraint), and Win10 is no longer being supported for personal use (except via some complicated ways to get an extension for the Win10 updates). And not only is Win11 buggy and full of ads, its performance is also bad. Well, the good thing is that such shenanigans are pushing PC users to migrate to Linux.

mschuster91 10mo ago

> I remember the days of Macintosh System 7 and Windows 95. No upselling services. No automatic updates. No nagging. You turned your computer on, executed programs, and that was it. I 'member the days of Win 98, Win ME and Win XP... made good money cleaning up malware - browser toolbars, dialers, god knows what - from computers. Some came from the hellholes that were Java, ActiveX or Flash, some came from browser drive-by exploits served from advertising networks, but others just came from computers that were attached directly to the Internet from their modems. And I also 'member Windows being prone to crashes, particularly graphics drivers, until Windows 7 revamped the entire driver model. Oh, and (unrelated) I also 'member websites you could use to root a fair amount of Android and Apple phones. All of that is gone now, it has gotten so, so much better thanks to a variety of protection mechanisms.

linguae 10mo ago
Security and upselling are orthogonal; I can make a secure operating system that doesn’t notify the user of OneDrive, iCloud, and other services. Things get more nuanced when we talk about other types of notifications and about whether updates should be automatic or always require a user’s explicit consent. I personally believe that a key tenet of personal computing is that the owner of the computer, not the hardware or software vendor, should have full control over the hardware and software on the computer. This control is undermined when systems are designed in ways to give users less control. There may be legitimate security benefits to mandatory automatic updates, for example, but there are risks, such as buggy updates leading to broken installations or even lost data, and there’s also having to deal with unwanted UI/UX changes. As a power user, developer, and researcher, I want control over my computing environment. Unfortunately Windows and macOS have been trending toward more paternalism, more nagging, and more upselling. Thankfully Linux exists, but at the cost of needing to switch away from convenient proprietary software tools like Microsoft Office. I can do without Word or Excel, but PowerPoint is what keeps me on Office (I’ve tried LibreOffice and the Beamer LaTeX template). I’m also concerned about hardware getting increasingly locked down, which will hurt Linux.
- pjjpo 10mo ago
  I had the same reading, it sounded like Windows is worse now than Windows 95, which would be a hot take indeed. But it seems the intent was purely on these nagging aspects which have definitely gotten worse. It might be easier to swallow the message focusing on Windows 8+ when it really jumped the shark. Windows 7 was a pretty good OS holistically I think even if there are aspects lost compared to the pure simplicity of those really old ones.

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

phendrenad2 10mo ago

Windows XP sold for $200 in 2001. In 2025, that's $364[1]. If we can find enough people willing to pay $364 for an OS that values privacy and doesn't push needless upgrades, that'll be a start. But XP itself was probably priced based on the belief that people would be upgrading in a few years to Windows Vista. So we might need more than that. [1] - According to minneapolisfed.org, which uses the official economist-approved inflation rates. Not that I'm implying that there's anything wrong with that. I have all of the orthodox beliefs about inflation that a good citizen should have.

llbbdd 10mo ago
$364 when?
eigen 10mo ago
> Windows XP sold for $200 in 2001. In 2025, that's $364 I assume you used the overall CPI rate rather than the software rate. but using the Software CPI its more like $58. and that seems like an easier sell (for the user, maybe not the developer). http://data.bls.gov/dataViewer/view/timeseries/CUUR0000SEEE02 http://data.bls.gov/dataViewer/view/timeseries/CUUR0000SEEE0... Software CPI-U 2001 Oct 77.0 2025 Nov 22.182
tonyedgecombe 10mo ago
Windows 11 Pro is still $200 [1]. Of course most people don't pay anything directly as it's bundled with their PC and they won't think to question why that is. [1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/d/windows-11-pro/dg7gmgf0d8h4 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/d/windows-11-pro/dg7gmgf0d8h...
- autoexec 10mo ago
  The cost of Windows 11 Pro is $200, plus your privacy, ownership of your computer, and your dignity. It's way too expensive.

crazygringo 10mo ago

> Windows 95. No upselling services. No automatic updates Even Windows 95 came bundled with MSN on the desktop which had a paid monthly fee to access. And its lack of automatic updates was a real problem, as you had to manually find the service packs and security patches. The automatic updates in Windows XP were vastly more convenient. Automatic updates are needed for security. The only era when you didn't need them was pre-Internet. They're not something we want to get rid of.

chasing0entropy 10mo ago
I know you won't believe me, and my precious karma score may suffer by stating reality: you don't NEED security updates. A properly hardened server with no patches will outlive cobbled together trash library patch over garbage code pasted from ai vibing script kiddies. Would you shake your head in disbelief if I told you 'security patches' are the fix delivered by a dealer to quell your shivers? Give me functionality updates, cumulative service packs, and the just after BBS days when an exploit discovered in your software meant it was used by no one, anywhere, because we no longer trust your coding or your 'fix'
- crazygringo 10mo ago
  Nobody's talking about "properly hardened servers" here. We're talking about the OS used on desktops and laptops by everyday consumers, connecting to the Internet across a wide variety of Wi-Fi access points. Do you not see the constant stream of zero-day exploits coming out for consumer operating systems? Do you think those don't need to be fixed? I'm genuinely curious -- I've never come across anyone with your perspective before, so I'm struggling to understand where it's coming from.
  - chasing0entropy 10mo ago
    Usually i post and forget but your reasonable reply prompted some effort on my part. I live life so that at any moment, if modern services of society (food, internet, power, shelter, entertsinment, transport, personal defense) ended, and I was forced to use what I had access to, that my quality of life would persist. Besides physical considerations (hydroponics, solar, guns, hardened vehicles), I maintain nonvolitile backups of the same software I use daily - vanilla(unpatched) OSs from xp to 11), current and older browsers, non-ssl based content and servers, games, music, movies, hoards of older hardware in a cage that may may an emp.. never tested it. Anything computer related I have works from a bare metal install with no internet connection period. I use the same retail desktop, laptop, wifi, cellular, and wan hardware used by most consumers but only if I can reset and inialize it offline, and can use the built in firewall to restrict outgoing connections to a single executable single port whitelist including my phone. Which means no nags, no updates, no new features, no removed features, no app stores, no federated os logins, no new terms of service, and no telemetry unless I choose to connect that program to the internet and the program is flexible enough to use a single port. Zero day exploits won't work on my android 11 s9 with no play services, deny all firewall, and non standard chrome build. In app browser updates don't work until I manually install the binary, most AI features are broken by default even on my win11 laptop. It's not an easy life. But if you insist that software and hardware do what you wish, your actions should back that. My actions probably more than most. I pass on a decent amount of IT gigs because they require app tracking or that I use their monitoring software, or vpn... but everything I have I KNOW I control now and until it stops working and I buy two more identical and grossly obsolete replacements.

aspbee555 10mo ago

I stopped using Windows over 15 years ago and moved to Ubuntu that was running all the servers. Unfortunately Ubuntu decided to do the same garbage trying to shove their pro crap down my throat, made it impossible to remove (by making a desktop requirement) and resorted to the game of trying to re-enable it during updates I finally moved everything to just Debian itself that never nags me and just works with everything I need, including games (thanks to steam) Only time I boot a Win10 VM is to compile apps for for windows, otherwise it has zero use or need anymore

autoexec 10mo ago
I supported Ubuntu when they started but gave up on them after they sent people's local file searches to third parties so they could push amazon ads. They're totally corrupted as far as I can tell.

tzs 10mo ago

The internet was a big part of it. Most home users did not have internet access in the System 7 days. When it came out in 1991 no country had more than 1% of its population with internet access. By the time Windows 95 came out around 10% of US users had internet access. It wasn't until 2001 that the US reached 50% of users having internet access. Without internet there wasn't really a good way to distribute updates to most users. As a developer in that era working at a company that made software for PCs and Macs it was great. It meant that the way most users would get our software was buying it on floppy disk (or later CD) from a retail software store like CompUSA or Egghead. We'd only make more money from someone who bought our software if that software made a good enough impression that they bought more of our software. We'd lose money if any software went out with enough bugs or a confusing enough interface or a poorly enough written manual that a lot of people made a lot of calls to our toll free tech support. This was great because it largely aligned what developers wanted to do (write a feature complete program with a great UI and no bugs) and what management wanted (happy users who do not call tech support). With internet giving us the ability to push updates at almost zero cost and as often as we want people who release incomplete programs early and add the missing parts in updates are going to outcompete people who don't release until the program is complete and nearly bug free. Once you get there it is not much of a leap to decide that what you are really selling is not software to do X but rather the service of providing software to do X. Customers subscribe to that service and you continuously improve its ability to do X.

thewebguyd 10mo ago
> It meant that the way most users would get our software was buying it on floppy disk (or later CD) from a retail software store like CompUSA or Egghead. On the topic of Windows, this is why Microsoft's commitment to backwards compatibility was and is such a huge deal. It wasn't so easy to just update your software if Windows ever made breaking changes, and your users would, rightly, be pretty ticked off if suddenly what they bought no longer works because they upgraded from Win 95 to 98, or 98 to XP. You had confidence that you could buy a program once, and it'll just happily continue to run for the foreseeable future. This also made businesses happy. If you liked a particular version of a software product, you bought it, ran it on Windows, and could rest easy knowing it'll just continue to work through version upgrades of the OS.

melchebo 10mo ago

Do not connect it to the internet. Problem solved. Basically anything in a social network needs to learn to defend itself against threats. Make computer a hermit, and it can go without updates for a long time. (Oh, but you don't like that? Well, Microsoft doesn't like getting in the news for some worldwide botnet of all Windows 10 machines. I bet they'll figure this out sooner or later.)

chaostheory 10mo ago

> but the problem with switching to these platforms is that I still need Microsoft Office Microsoft Office Online works fine on Linux. In fact, it’s superior to native MS Office in terms of stability.

AlexeyBrin 10mo ago
> Microsoft Office Online works fine on Linux. In fact, it’s superior to native MS Office in terms of stability. It may work for your case - good. Many companies have custom VBA macros that runs on their Excel sheets to get data or validate it. Try to use a document like this on your online Office and you will understand why most Office users can't easily migrate.
- chaostheory 10mo ago
  I think Excel Online can run JavaScript and python. It also sounded like it was his personal laptop

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

vbezhenar 10mo ago

Microsoft Office somewhat works in the browser. Certainly good enough for me, although 99% of my actions is upload document to onedirve, open it in web MS Office version, export to pdf and then read with standard tools.

thayne 10mo ago

Hardware support isn't all that bad anymore. Certainly better than it was when I started using Linux. It isn't perfect. You'll probably have a better experience with AMD than Nvidia GPUs, most fingerprint readers probably won't work, and newly released hardware might not have drivers for a few months, but most stuff just works.

edg5000 10mo ago

Can you provide some details on the reasons for needing MS Offfice? I'm genuinely curious. What does LibreOffice do differently that makes it a problem for you to use? Personally my only complaint is the performance of LO, which could be better.

sokoloff 10mo ago
For me, some complex Excel usage was not replicable in either Sheets or LibreOffice.
- thewebguyd 10mo ago
  Excel I'd argue is the primary reason for most in the business world. What LibreOffice misses, and sheets to a lesser extent, is that Excel isn't just a spreadsheet app. It's a general-purpose programming environment for non-devs (although, at a certain point, you could argue they are effectively programming even if they don't see it that way). Yeah, there are better solutions. At a certain level of complexity, you probably shouldn't be using Excel and should switch to Python+some SQL database, but there's something to be said about the visual environment Excel provides. Excel is Microsoft's killer app
  - sokoloff 10mo ago
    It’s the world’s most popular low-code platform.
  - fragmede 10mo ago
    > It's a general-purpose programming environment for non-devs Google sheets's programmability is way better (than the last time I used) Excel, with direct support for python, which Gemini can write just fine. It's a bit fiddly in places, I'll admit, but Google sheets is definitely a programming environment.
OJFord 10mo ago
I'm not GP but I do know it's rare to open an existing .docx in LibreOffice and have it look right; who knows what it looks like in Word after I've edited and saved it. It's fine creating new documents, and Excel/Calc is better than Word (inherent in being more structured I suppose), but it's not a drop-in replacement. I've used web Office365 when necessary though, not Windows.

Terr_ 10mo ago

I miss when I felt that personal computers were a new wave of democratized capital, a kind of affordable factory for individual owners to use pursuing their own autonomy and power... and not just for programmers. I underestimated the economic forces trying to turn them into devices for enforcing the interests of a large company onto the owner and turning the owner into a renter.

mindcrash 10mo ago

I am old enough to remember that when Windows 95 was released Microsoft tried to take over the Internet with Microsoft Network (MSN, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_Dial-Up_Internet_Access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_Dial-Up_Internet_Access). They never changed.