12 ms·

Microsoft account bugs locked me out of Notepad – Are thin clients ruining PCs?

187 points by josephcsible 9mo ago

wlesieutre 9mo ago
> I'm still a Windows guy, and I always will be. And this is exactly why Microsoft can get away with a buggy mess of a user hostile operating system. They only have an incentive to make a good OS if people are willing to leave when it’s a bad one.
- lousken 9mo ago
  exactly, he's part of a problem
  - billy99k 9mo ago
    I could also say the Linux desktop creators are the problem as well. It's so buggy, it makes it impossible for me to switch.
    - prmoustache 9mo ago
      This doesn't make any sense as there is not a linux desktop but multiples and the major ones have been less buggy than windows for the most part of the last 20 years. Hardware support is where Linux used to struggle. Nowadays things aren't perfect but much better. Basically it means you need to figure out which hardware to buy based on available support, before making the purchase.
      - pluralmonad 9mo ago
        I am willing to concede this might be true, but I personally have never checked Linux support before through 3 generations of desktops. Intel/Nvidia twice and then AMD/AMD.
        hparadiz 9mo ago
        All of them will work. What "support". What is this nonsense. Seriously.
        happymellon 9mo ago
        Because support is generally great. Until you get some Windows apologist who points out that their proprietary touchscreen that has multiple layers of DRM doesn't have Linux drivers and therefore Linux doesn't have good hardware support. You have to be careful in the same way that you can't expect to wipe an M series Mac and stick Windows on it.
        direwolf20 9mo ago
        Apple devices have multiple layers of touchscreen DRM, but most other devices are just lacking drivers, because there are far too many devices for five unpaid interns to write drivers for all of them.
    - lousken 9mo ago
      What desktop and which distro? In the past, there have been times where a bug showed up for me over the years, especially before 2018. Currently tho, Debian 13 + KDE - zero issues.
    - xigoi 9mo ago
      Which “the” Linux desktop? GNOME? KDE? xfce? Cinnamon? COSMIC?
      - xeromal 9mo ago
        This question reinforces the point IMO
        amlib 9mo ago
        That linux has an awesome rich and diverse range of desktop experiences?
        subscribed 9mo ago
        I'd stupidly assume that having a choice and control over the experience is empowering, and watching a couple of YouTube videos titled "which Linux distribution is best for me" isn't too hard? Or is it in your opinion? If it is maybe they better stay on the "shut up and do how I say, puppet" OS.
    - bdavbdav 9mo ago
      Who are these “creators”? Can you point to them? Is there a legal entity?
    - Spooky23 9mo ago
      Honestly, that’s a 2016 argument. I flipped a few contact centers over to Linux desktops and had very few issues. If anything we probably spent 5x the resources getting Windows 11 certified internally. Microsoft knows it, but they don’t care about windows. When IBM started offering Macs to employees, they figured out that the support burden was very low, significantly lower than windows, even with users having years of windows experience. Intune was supposed to be the answer to that, making Windows management MDM like. But for their most entrenched enterprise customers, they can’t really switch without co-managing with Configuration Manager. Most of the people behind that product are laid off or otherwise attrited, as there’s no path to a subscription service.
    - hparadiz 9mo ago
      > I've tried nothing and I'm all out of ideas
      - dripdry45 9mo ago
        Yes, but what is the cost or perceived cost to the user to try? This “clever” response proves nothing, sadly
        hparadiz 9mo ago
        Well we know the actual cost of doing nothing.
    - nik282000 9mo ago
      Debian, Ubuntu, Suse, and Fedora have had a bug free desktop experience for years. If you stick to the default repositories and use last year's hardware everything just works.
- wrs 9mo ago
  "I'm still a _______ guy, and I always will be." No matter what trademark you put in the blank, this is not a healthy thing to say.
  - embedding-shape 9mo ago
    Yeah, not sure how people form almost "relationships" with their tools and refuse sometimes to even explore options. I'm always open to switching almost anything. I never end up doing, because things are usually not better, but maybe 1/100 times something is better, and then I switch. Initially did that around Ubuntu 9.10 before, and I'll switch away from Arch in a heartbeat if anything better comes around. Edit: I realize now that the article author, the person in the video and the quoted tweet are all the same person, and they seem to work/run windowscentral.com, so I guess that kind of explains the motivation.
    - expedition32 9mo ago
      Honestly as a deeply antisocial person the Linux cult has always rubbed me the wrong way. Same reason why I don't have an iPhone.
      - loloquwowndueo 9mo ago
        What do you use then?
        DetroitThrow 9mo ago
        The biggest non-Linux non-iOS phone operating system is HarmonyOS, so I would assume he means that.
        direwolf20 9mo ago
        There's also Android, which isn't Linux, but just repurposes the Linux kernel in a non–Linux OS.
        9mo ago
- BadBadJellyBean 9mo ago
  I think saying "I'm a _______ guy" with any brand or company filling that blank can be a big problem. Most companies are there to make money and loyalty is often a one way street. From my view it is more productive to find out what you like about something and always be open to maybe finding someone else who can deliver on that. And sometimes things that we thought were essential are not. You might even find something new to like.
  - arcologies1985 9mo ago
    What about "I'm a Linux guy?" I don't pay any company for my Linux OSes. My favorites are nonprofits and mostly interchangeable.
    - BLKNSLVR 9mo ago
      I'm a Linux guy, but I've always had a little bit of FreeBSD on the side. (I'm also forced to use Windows at work)
    - stavros 9mo ago
      No. It's not your identity, it's a piece of software. "I use ____ for as long as the benefits outweigh the drawbacks" is what you should be thinking.
      - arcologies1985 9mo ago
        Using Linux as a teenager led to a step change in my family's generational wealth, some incredible personal and professional relationships, and life-defining opportunities for work and travel. I think at this point it's solidly wrapped up in my identity.
        stavros 9mo ago
        That's fuzzy and all, but still not good. Being an uncritical fan of something, even when it's to your detriment, isn't something to be proud of.
- john01dav 9mo ago
  Apple has an even bigger loyalty problem. For them and Microsoft it's arguably good, but it's bad for users, even the loyal ones. It might even be bad for Apple and Microsoft long term.
  - Quothling 9mo ago
    I'm not saying Apple can't go the way of Microsoft, but if you've used macOS and Windows through the previous 5 years there isn't much of a comparison. Windows has gone from something I tolerated to something I absolutely dislike using. It's so bad that if it wasn't for WSL then I would consider finding a place to work where they didn't force me to use Windows. MacOS on the other hand hasn't really changed. The moment someone makes a non macbook air, that does the same as a macbook air in terms of being cold to touch, battery life and no-noise I'm leaving for Linux though.
    - cosmic_cheese 9mo ago
      > The moment someone makes a non macbook air, that does the same as a macbook air in terms of being cold to touch, battery life and no-noise I'm leaving for Linux though. I think a lot of people are waiting for a non-Apple Macbook, but we unfortunately might be waiting for a while. It seems to pain other manufacturers to not cut corners in some critical area or another…
      - switchbak 9mo ago
        I have a framework laptop, and when it works it’s just ok. It looks just enough like a Mac to have me feel frustrated when I use it. In theory we may be able to run Linux (reliably, not in the bleeding edge) on Apple hardware eventually. But you still pay the Apple tax, which is pretty bonkers these days. But dang those machines are nice.
        hparadiz 9mo ago
        https://asahilinux.org/fedora/#device-support https://asahilinux.org/fedora/#device-support
- dist-epoch 9mo ago
  Goes the other way around too: Linux will only have a good desktop environment when it's users will be willing to leave it.
  - xigoi 9mo ago
    I recently started using COSMIC and I would definitely call it good, even if it has a few rough edges due to just recently coming out of beta.
  - ErroneousBosh 9mo ago
    Linux has had several good desktop environments for well over 20 years. When is Windows going to get a good desktop environment?
  - bigstrat2003 9mo ago
    I mean, from my perspective Linux has multiple good desktop environments. I've used both Cinnamon and KDE for years and have found both perfectly pleasant to use.
  - Mordisquitos 9mo ago
    > Linux will only have a good desktop environment when it's users will be willing to leave it. Putting aside the debate as to the quality of desktop environments, I honestly hope you're being intentionally nonsensical as a joke. What you describe can only make sense under the grossly misinformed belief that "Linux" is a monolithic entity incentivised to stop its users from "leaving it", and that this mythical "Linux" would have the agency to decide it needed "a good desktop environment" in order to avoid that from happening.
  - wolvoleo 9mo ago
    Linux desktop environments are developed by its users wanting the best experience possible. Windows is designed by a committee that tries to do as little as possible and has ulterior motives higher on the priority scale than UX. Like marketing copilot and other Microsoft subscription services. Microsoft software is always aimed to be just good enough for the users to not choose something better. They love just coasting on their marketshare without doing much to improve. Like they did with internet explorer and now do with office.
- Aloha 9mo ago
  Who is better?
  - monooso 9mo ago
    I think you're missing the point. If a friend stated that they will stay with their partner regardless of how deceptive or abusive said partner's behaviour becomes, you would rightly question the wisdom of that choice. Stating that you will remain loyal to a company come what may is even worse. It's an entity with no interest in your wellbeing. It exists to extract as much money or information from you as possible. Quite apart from everything else, such a statement eliminates the prospect of ever finding something better.
    - navigate8310 9mo ago
      For folks that still like the win32 ecosystem, they should pirate the heck out of LTSC. just as Microsoft don't have interest in them, they shouldn't give a damn about it and enjoy a dramatically polished Windows experience.
      - Aloha 9mo ago
        and microsoft makes it so easy to pirate too, trivially easy.
    - Aloha 9mo ago
      Its not though - I dont want to write my own operating system, build an ecosystem of apps, write hardware drivers, etc. Win11 has massive downsides, so does macOS, so does desktop Linux, so do all the other options - I have to choose between one of those options to get things done, going my own isnt an option.
      - monooso 9mo ago
        At no point did I suggest that you build your own OS. To extend my tortured analogy, that would be like suggesting you grow your own spouse.
- bdavbdav 9mo ago
  Came here to post this, what an asinine thing to say.
- guidedlight 9mo ago
  I’m my experience, unwavering Windows folk are simply power users who find *nix shells burdensome.
  - wesammikhail 9mo ago
    I deploy all my code on linux and have been thinking about switching from windows to linux for my daily driver. But even I dread that. It´s as if linux has tried as hard as possible to make every single little thing as complicated as possible. imho, user experience is nowhere to be found in the linux landscape. There is very little focus on that. People will tell you try this or that distro. But once you run into a simple problem, it´s often a rabbit hole of a gazilling cli commands to fix it. In the mean time you´re praying to god to not brick something that used to work before.
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
    - conception 9mo ago
      Lucky now you can just ask an LLM to diagnose and offer ways to fix it. Takes 99% of the trouble away.
    - nixosbestos 9mo ago
      If I could wave a wand and ban a single class of comments on HN, it would be this. Rambling, non-specific handwaving useless text. > user experience is nowhere to be found in the linux landscape. It's ignorant, and its insulting, and it's stupid. You can read one or two KDE blog posts, look at the roadmap for Cosmic, look at the attention Valve has put into Linux and know that sentence is just rude. It's just so frustrating. > People will tell you try this or that distro. Dumbasses on reddit will. No one that has a single clue encourages distro-hopping.
      - bloqs 9mo ago
        and I would ban fanboying such as your username I agree with you, that it is irritating when people make sweeping statements that casually dismiss a lot of things as not existing when they do, but it's an endless arguement. Operating systems are not the problem, support is. Just making a good operating system isn't what drives adoption. reducing _pain_ does. Nerds arent good at empathy, so the response is normally "just read x and use y" and call people stupid if they still cant figure it how to use it
- pavel_lishin 9mo ago
  > I'm still a Windows guy, and I always will be. There's a semi-common saying that it takes seven attempts for someone to successfully leave an abusive partner. Give him time, I guess.
- layer8 9mo ago
  It likely just means they will always prefer certain classic aspects of Windows over how other desktop OSs do things. I’m largely in that boat as well. Of course Windows could get so bad in the future that another OS will be the lesser evil. Or another OS could adopt those preferred Windows things. But it won’t change the mentioned preferences, hence “always”.
- bsder 9mo ago
  Agreed. I had the version of Notepad++ that got popped and was being nagged by Fusion 360, so I decided to burn everything down, get a new SSD, and install a copy of Windows 11. Holy sh*t! I haven't had this bad a Windows install experience since Windows 95. The first big obstacle is getting all the Secure Boot/TPM 2.0 BIOS settings right. When you don't, you simply get "Can't install Windows". No debugging information. No clarification. No details. Shades of the day of having to blindly set the I/O interrupts and addresses on Windows. Tweak, Install, Waiiiiiiit, Fail. Tweak, Install, Waiiiiiit, Fail. etc. Then the second obstacle is getting a local account installed. The solution was obscure, but straightforward. Finding that solution on the glop that has become the Internet? Bleaaaaagh. Everything has to be a bloody video for something that's one stupid command. And all the AI systems aren't useful because their horizon is too old and Microslop keeps changing the command; presumably because too many people are using it (How dare they not make cloud number go up! Brrrrrrrrr!) After all was said and done, I got "lucky" because I actually bought a retail copy of Windows 11 from Best Buy--it has physical media and the image was "old" enough that the "old" way of doing the install still worked (Shift F10 to prompt -> OOBE\BYPASSNRO -> reboot for those who want to know) At last, after almost 90 minutes of farting around, Windows starts to install. And install. And install. And install ... FOR HOURS! WTF IS IT DOING! The target machine is a smoking AMD desktop with SSD and a gigantic amount of pre-shortage RAM on fibre. How in the name of all that is holy and unholy do you install that slowly on that powerful a machine? Finally, everything gets installed. And I reboot ... to no video. Oh, no, I bet it scrambled the drivers. Sure enough, I move the HDMI from my AMD card to the AMD integrated video ... yep, there it is. Sigh. Let's go get DDU and uninstall the dumbass driver that Windows Install dumped on there. Download, download, install, reboot to safe mode, clean, install proper driver, reboot. Back on my main card, now. Finally, let's dump a recovery image because I sure don't want to have to go through this gigantic PITA again if something goes wrong. Plug in the drive, can't find it ... ah, had a Linux image that needs to be wiped out, my fault ... need the Windows partition editor, so launch and erase ... wait, why can't I edit anything? ... oh, right, dumbass, you need to launch it as Administrator ... close ... open the menu, there's the app, right click menu ... WTF! There's no "Run as Administrator" so I can't edit the partitions! Right click a couple of other programs ... some of them have the "Run as Administrator" but some of them DON'T. And there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to which is which. Curse. Swear. FINE! Plug drive into my Linux laptop, kill the partitions there, and eject. Plug into Windows ... which now sees the drive and creates a recovery disk ... happy happy joy joy <rolls eyes>. 4+ hours! Not even exaggerating. <cries> And because I'm a glutton for punishment, I decided I'd put Linux on the old reformatted SSD. Since I used Windows for gaming about as much as Fusion 360, I figured I'd go for something Linux but gaming-optimized and snag Bazzite which I'd never used before. Download, install, login, connect to Steam, run game. Total time: no more than 20 minutes. No fighting about cloud login. No video card problem. Games are running fine. Anyone still using Windows as an individual nowadays is completely and utterly daft. (And, as a side note, this is having a knockon effect--I finally went looking for an alternative to Fusion 360 and signed up for OnShape just so I can dump Windows permanently)
- qq66 9mo ago
  I was a "Windows guy" from Windows 2.0 to Windows 10. Now I'm a "Mac guy." These operating systems aren't my family members -- I'll ditch them if I believe that switching is worth getting over the learning curve of a new environment.
  - ScoobleDoodle 9mo ago
    Right. My current computer has Windows OS at the moment.
    - therein 9mo ago
      I wonder when they'll rebrand it as Copilot Agentic OS. It seems no brand of theirs is sacred enough to not be replaced with Copilot.
      - direwolf20 9mo ago
        It's not like Microsoft to use extra words in brand names. I think they'll just call it Copilot.
        hghjnbhff 9mo ago
        [dead]
- meandmycode 9mo ago
  I will say, for anybody reading and finds it in any way uplifting, I have been a Windows user for 30 years, been a .net developer for 5 years at one point, groaned at how bad the 'Linux desktop' always was, but this year I finally switched to using Linux instead of Windows and I think it's because the inflexion point is starting to hit more of the masses.
  - int_19h 9mo ago
    AI is the best thing that happened to desktop Linux!
    - digiown 9mo ago
      This actually. AI is dramatically better at helping users deal with perennial issues that Linux gets, and using the command line to fix them, compared to Microsoft's fresh new bug introduced last Tuesday or navigating anti-user GUI.
      - wookmaster 9mo ago
        You’re absolutely correct what used to take me hours reading docs and googling now takes minutes to find an answer to. Just this week my new beelink I couldnt get hardware acceleration working for transcoding. A couple prompts lead me to the fact the gpu was new and I needed a newer Linux kernel. I probably would have spent hours and hours fiddling with device drivers and configs in the past.
      - therein 9mo ago
        That is true but I believe he meant it as Microsoft shoving AI down your throat in every part of Windows driving people away into Linux.
      - raincole 9mo ago
        That sounds... quite bad, to be honest. I never met one single Windows issue that can't be answered by simple google search for years. A desktop expecting the user to ask AI(!) for solutions that require command line(!!) is definitely not for average users.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- hyperman1 9mo ago
  Years ago, HN had an article 'Hacking my vagina'. It contains a line 'I was in the market for a $GADGET’. With that one line, the author managed to put my view of buying things upside down. Not a passive consumer. Not: I bought a $GADGET. She had an active relation with a bunch of sellers, and she was boss. You saw the megacorps begging and pleading to her, from that one line. That's how you deal with them. I am $GADGET guy? Shudder.
- inquirerGeneral 9mo ago
  [dead]
- inquirerGeneral 9mo ago
  [dead]
- assaddayinh 9mo ago
  So why does open source support microsofts strategy by insisting the users throw away years of hard learned user knowledge (shortcuts, program quirks)? If you do it different from the defacto standards, you put a tax in time on users switching.
- newdee 9mo ago
  True, but someone writing for a site called windowscentral.com has a business interest in being a windows guy. Although I find it funny to imagine them furtively using Linux.
chrisjj 9mo ago
> I couldn't open Notepad ... an error (0x803f8001) with Microsoft Store's licensing service stopped me I wonder if it works at all with no online connection to that store.
- fsflover 9mo ago
  Reminds me of this MacOS problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959
chrisjj 9mo ago
> I couldn't open Notepad ... an error (0x803f8001) with Microsoft Store's licensing service stopped me I wonder if it works at all when no online connection to that store.
- mysterydip 9mo ago
  “But what if people used notepad without our permission?!” -dev/boss somewhere
  - chrisjj 9mo ago
    "But I bought it!" - naïve customer somewhere
vhalan 9mo ago
I only use my windows machine because I can swap out parts stuff and is more hackable but macos is so much more beautifully designed. Sometimes I prefer one machine over the other I rarely wish for anything other than sometimes being unable to transfer data between the two systems.
- josephcsible 9mo ago
  > I only use my windows machine because I can swap out parts stuff and is more hackable but macos is so much more beautifully designed. That's definitely a good reason to use a PC instead of a Mac, but why not run Linux on it? Then you'd get the best of both worlds.
  - mh- 9mo ago
    I would not describe the Linux desktop experience as the best of both Mac and Windows. Let's go with different, a different world.
sandworm101 9mo ago
Every horrible windows story is yet another glorious day for linux. Fyi, in Mint if you search application for "notepad", "Text Editor" is the first result. That is curated search done right. Search for notepad on windows and you probably get an ad for a travel website.
- plagiarist 9mo ago
  It just makes sense to show travel deals. Why would an OS show text editors when searching for text editors? Obviously it can show something far more lucrative by matching what it knows from spyware AI taking screenshots of your every action.
- AviationAtom 9mo ago
  Cinnamon is cool and all but I prefer KDE Plasma. It seems to eliminate all the pain points Linux desktop environments typically have and everything just works. Pair it with Debian and you got a solid system.
  - avtar 9mo ago
    > Pair it with Debian A KDE dev mentioned on a podcast that issues related to Debian Stable get closed automatically on their bug tracker because fixes don't get backported :/ https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1pneqp4/kde_dev_do_not_recommend_plasma_on_debian/ https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1pneqp4/kde_dev_do_n... My wife was complaining about Windows issues so I ended up installing Fedora with KDE on her laptop. I would have preferred Debian but using Testing (as suggested by the dev) doesn't some ideal.
    - aruggirello 9mo ago
      Debian Testing isn't really unstable - the dev wasn't exaggerating. But I'd also suggest Kubuntu (you can remove snap and all of its packages, and install Firefox and Thunderbird .deb's from the Mozilla repo)
      - 9mo ago
plagiarist 9mo ago
The subscription to his own machine had bugs that prevented him from using a basic windowed text editor and that isn't the last straw?
userbinator 9mo ago
To be clear, this is the horrible "new" Notepad "app" that I absolutely hated and instantly removed when it was forced upon everyone. I doubt the old "edit field in a wrapper" one which has been nearly the same since Win95 has this problem. (My newest machine is now running Linux.)
- AviationAtom 9mo ago
  Markdown support and the like are useful but their need to cram AI and account sign-in into it definitely seemed over the top. When they got rid of Wordpad I kind of anticipated them trying to pivot Notepad more in that direction.
- ale42 9mo ago
  For what it matters, Windows Server 2025 still has the edit field in a wrapper.
  - userbinator 9mo ago
    They all still do, just like the old Explorer context menu. It's what you get when you remove the new abomination.
    - ale42 8mo ago
      You mean... I can just uninstall the Appx package and notepad.exe will revert to the old edit box? That would be great
  - accrual 9mo ago
    Yes, I was pleased to see our new Windows Server boxes still have regular Notepad and Explorer.
- chrisjj 9mo ago
  Is that old still provided?
  - 9mo ago
James_K 9mo ago
The renaming of “my computer” to “this PC” was quite telling.
lousken 9mo ago
Switch to linux, don't look back
- trinix912 9mo ago
  Unless you work a job where you're not in control of the OS you're using, which just happens to be most of the non-dev office jobs out there. Dismissing Windows problems with "just switch to Linux bro" doesn't really help.
  - hagbard_c 9mo ago
    If you're in a Windows-only job and you've got proof that Windows is getting in the way of doing your job you might just be able to convince those who decided to make it a Windows-only workplace to change their stance.
  - compass_copium 9mo ago
    I have to use Windows at work and I will never have weird cloud authentication issues because I'm required to use a work-provided MS account on the computer. The author says he's a Windows guy, and always will be. This article, and these types of complaints, are really only relevant if you're using it on your personal PC.
  - lousken 9mo ago
    I did think about personal devices, but it is a valid point, though many companies I know do support at least windows+mac if not linux. Supporting Linux desktop for a company is more difficult due to lack of anything resembling GPOs (and no ansible-pull isn't that). It is definitely a thing systemd should implement.
  - xigoi 9mo ago
    If you’re not in control of the OS, then you’re not responsible for problems caused by the choice of OS. Tell your boss that Windows is not allowing you to use basic features and let them choke on it.
    - 9mo ago
Aloha 9mo ago
I believe this is related to known issues with KB5074109 It hit Both Win11 24H2 and 25H2.
Barrin92 9mo ago
>I don't want people to switch away from Windows; I want Microsoft to treat its premier operating system like it used to.[...] and Windows 12 is ultimately an agentic AI OS, I wouldn't be surprised if more people stick with a debloated Windows 11, just as others did with Windows 10 Is there any justification for the first part other than that the authors job at windowscentral.com depends on it? Because I'm not seeing it in the article which amounts to the digital version of Stockholm syndrome. If even the author is predicting that this is what the next windows will look like, why aren't you running for the hills
- AlienRobot 9mo ago
  If Microsoft wanted, it could make Windows good. On the other hand, no matter how much time or money the Linux community gets, the desktop experience will never be good. This means that our only hope at having a good desktop OS is Microsoft changing course.
  - somat 9mo ago
    What are you talking about? The desktop experience on linux is far superior to that brain dead lowest common denominator junk as found on windows or macos. linux has(by personal preference order) middle click paste, tiling window managers, point to focus, focus on lower windows, the compose key. The linux desktop is a productivity goldmine compared to windows. and I want to say mean things about the macos ui, but I don't really use it (the last time I tried it could not do full screen windows, But I have been told that is not true any more)
havaloc 9mo ago
I work in academia and I've gotten most of my people to switch to Macs and no, Linux is not an option here. I have about eight Windows PCs against about sixty MacBook Airs and guess which platform causes me the most work? 1:20 issue ratio. Even simple things like SMB in Windows 11 are hopelessly broken.
- leoedin 9mo ago
  What makes Linux not an option? Is there specific apps you need to use? Or IT policies? Or something else? The company I work for got bought by a big conglomerate, and I managed to stubbornly hold out using Linux for a really long time. It turns out if your workplace has adopted “Bring your own device” type policies, that often means you can auth with enough services that working on Linux is feasible.
  - trinix912 9mo ago
    It's much harder for non-dev jobs where the management won't let you BYOD for whatever reasons, which could range from IT being too stubborn to allow you to keep company data on your own laptop that's not centrally managed, to everything including licenses for random 3rd party software the company is using being tied to the ActiveDirectory fleet of computers with centralized storage. This is the reality of IT equipment in big parts of the non-dev world, and you'll have a hard time convincing the IT dept to take on extra hassle just for you to use Linux out of all hundreds of employees who're just fine with Windows.
  - Spooky23 9mo ago
    The issue isn’t the technology, it’s that there’s more than one way to do everything and people tend to scratch their itches. If you started a company today, you can immediately and cheaply hire people or an MSP to manage Windows PCs. I hire entry Windows techs for $70k. M365 E-whatever is $30-60/mo. Apple fully aligned their products, so the guys running the iPhone fleet can run the Macs. They may need some higher level assistance to setup the configurations. Unless you have a lot of compliance work, enroll in MDM, done. With Linux, other than Chrome, there’s no standard. You’re gonna need a smart/expensive person to setup things and you’re going to need smart/expensive people to operate. If you have compliance requirements appear, you’ll need to buy RHEL or something and rework stuff, which is more expensive than windows.
wishfish 9mo ago
Author implies he was using a local account at the time of the error. Which answers an important question. I'd heard of people with Microsoft accounts getting locked out of their own computers, but that's a first I've heard of basic apps failing with a local account.
Animats 9mo ago
How can Microsoft legally do that? Notepad++ is GPL-licensed open source. It's on Github.[1] [1] https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus
- neRok 9mo ago
  Notepad++ isn't [Windows Notepad](https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9msmlrh6lzf3 https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9msmlrh6lzf3)
  - cheschire 9mo ago
    Hilariously related, the title of this topic now looks to me like "Notepad--"
    - Animats 9mo ago
      Oops, sorry. HN condensed the title to " Microsoft account bugs locked me out of Notepad – ...", and I misread that.
    - keyringlight 9mo ago
      And a minus-minus version is also available, which seems to be aimed at Chinese needs.
      - zamalek 9mo ago
        It's also seemingly automatically installed with Windows.
thot_experiment 9mo ago
I cannot see myself installing Windows 11, it's sad, I've been primarily a windows guy for my home computer since W95 and I'll miss it. Windows 10 (LTSC) has been the best operating system experience of my life, once I disabled updates and all the nag screens it's been rock solid for me for many years. It's so important to be able to trust that your computer works the same way tomorrow as it does today. I hope that there's enough people like me that the combined community will keep it alive for a few years longer, but I know eventually something will force me to upgrade to Linux.
- baal80spam 9mo ago
  Are you me? Well, technically from 3.1 but everything else checks out.
- duxup 9mo ago
  I was a windows guy for a long time. I went to macOS. Despite the complaints I've seen on the internet I've been very happy in macOS land. Someone mentioned that while macOS has "never been worse" the difference between windows and macOS "has never been greater". Granted things like gaming might influence someone to not make that move.
  - thot_experiment 9mo ago
    macOS seems cool in theory, but in practice it's not a "you own your computer" operating system so it's just a no go off the bat for me, i get it for people that just kinda stay in the center of the bell curve when it comes to computer use, but there's a 100% chance i'd end up in some situation where i'm fighting against apple's locked-down ness in approx 20minutes of owning a mac. i'm fundamentally never going to accept a UX where i'm not absolute god of my computer, if i want to delete files crucial to my system's ability to function or run something with kernel level access to all my memory that's MY prerogative, i cannot imagine using a computer that doesn't listen to me
    - abawany 9mo ago
      macos has gotten worse about this in recent releases - I was astounded when I learnt that apple news, apple books, and apple music are uninstallable; these are still removable on ios but not on macos for some reason.
throw_a_grenade 9mo ago
If I had such a problem with my OS, I would have changed the distribution.
nipperkinfeet 9mo ago
Most of all, first-party apps from Microsoft have been ruined by them. Use alternatives when possible.
jasoneckert 9mo ago
Imagine if Fedora locked you out of vi because your Red Hat account had an issue. The unsettling part of stories like this isn’t “Microsoft bad,” it’s the growing assumption that local tools should be downstream of remote identity systems. A text editor is about as offline and fundamental as software gets, yet it’s now possible for account state, sync bugs, or policy enforcement to make it inaccessible on your own machine. This is where non-macOS UNIX and Linux systems draw the line - if it’s installed locally and you have permission, it runs. Cloud services can enhance that experience (backups, sync, collaboration) but they don’t get veto power over whether vi opens. When that boundary erodes, we start to see our systems as thin clients, instead of full local OSes, as the author mentions.
- p_ing 9mo ago
  > if it’s installed locally and you have permission, it runs On macOS, only after you've run xattr -c to remove the Gatekeeper block on non-Apple approved apps.
  - RockRobotRock 9mo ago
    Didn't macOS apps get locked/took a ridiculous amount of time to open because Gatekeeper servers went down a few years ago? https://www.engadget.com/macos-slow-apps-launching-221445977.html https://www.engadget.com/macos-slow-apps-launching-221445977... Not as bad as the bug described in OP, but still pretty bad.
    - p_ing 9mo ago
      Yes, there is still the occasional delay in launching apps due to Intertube check.
- direwolf20 9mo ago
  Business users want everything online, so anything can be accessed from anywhere. They want central identity, so when someone is hired or fired they only need to look in one place.
jakub_g 9mo ago
With Macbooks Air M4 starting at $1k/€1.1k, and apparently soon some even cheaper Macbooks coming up, it's really difficult to justify buying a Windows laptop those days and having to deal with all Microsoft bs, unless you have specific needs and being locked in. The difference of "value for money" in terms of build quality, battery life, screen, touchpad, OS stability, OS upgrades experience, and overall polish and level of user (non-)hostility is immense. A Windows guy for two decades, got an MBP for work, and while I miss some Windows software and I don't like some Mac things (e.g. no real write-to-disk hibernation; pricey upgrades from base models etc.), but there's no way I'm going back.
- locusofself 9mo ago
  ya, starting with M1, Apple really broke away hard. Windows laptops, especially of the thin-and-light variety, are so bad by comparison.
smackeyacky 9mo ago
There are two technologies propped up by having to earn a living: windows and the iPhone. No matter the android phone, trying to get your MFA experience working with the umpteen stupid MFA apps is painful because all the dev work went into the iPhone versions. I hate it but yep I ended up buying an iPhone although I never buy them new. Windows is the other one and again it’s security related. More and more places simply rely on Active Directory/Entra and try telling the bank you’re working for that you have to have a Linux notebook. You’ll get laughed right out of a job. I’d agree for a home computer Linux or macOS are the only sane choices now. But whatever is installed on my work provided computer is what I’m using and that’s windows.
- bdavbdav 9mo ago
  I use an iPhone (out of choice) but what MFA doesn’t work on android?
  - supriyo-biswas 9mo ago
    I suspect this is about work related MFA apps; for example, one of the reasons I switched to an iPhone many years ago is the MFA app used at work would not run if the latest Android version with security bugfixes were installed, and the manufacturer had stopped providing updates for quite some time. At that point I was looking at a costly upgrade to one of the Android flagships, or an iPhone, of which I chose the latter.
    - Suppafly 9mo ago
      >At that point I was looking at a costly upgrade to one of the Android flagships, or an iPhone, of which I chose the latter. That's your personal decision though, you don't need a flagship android phone to have the latest versions of android. I pretty much never spend more than $100-150 for android phones and they always support all the normal MFA apps.
      - supriyo-biswas 9mo ago
cadamsdotcom 9mo ago
Microsoft is really shooting themselves in your foot. It might be time to look at other options.
kgwxd 9mo ago
In just about every aspect of life, the race to the bottom seems to be on the last lap, and all the players have that almost-there energy.
- BLKNSLVR 9mo ago
  It certainly feels that Microsoft is accelerating in this race. There have been almost weekly 'a new reason' that Windows 11 sucks and is user hostile. Previously it would be only once a month.
lconnell962 9mo ago
Comment threads on the Closed Source OS topics like this regularly remind me about the large disconnect between skilled technical users and the "average" user. That average probably isn't your (great) grandparent who never learned how to type suddenly needing to learn the rapidly evolving early-days internet, but it's still just as dangerous to suggest "Use Linux" as the solution for everyone when plenty of "Average" users still don't know enough to be doing things safely in the console. The "sudo rm -rf" and equivilant horror stories get told all too often as mistakes even made by "skilled users" who were in a hurry, and while that particular problem is becoming less common there is still a minefield out there. Wider use case where we need IT support is worse since there are plenty of Microsoft and Mac favoring restrictions and lockdowns required in the name of corporate level security requirements and certifications add to the mess and "security concerns" you can't get corporate to move away from. I'm a daily Linux user who has had to put years of a software developer career's time into learning the easier system administration aspects and working with those who handle the harder issues, but doing this in my career I have had to step back every time someone comes to me with a problem. Once I understand the problem then go on to ask "at a guess, how much time will diagnosing this even take?" with the estimates varying based on how standard the OS install or deployment is. Time and a relatively small amount of training is the problem with switching users from Windows to Mac or the reverse. Switching to Linux is training and introducing a technical mindset into a person. Idiot-proofing the system is a major issue Linux hasn't solved yet. VDI systems and the like might be a step in the right direction, but as soon as your use case for Linux requires a "average user" to open a terminal the problems will pile up and the minefield is exposed. Years removed from using a Mac I still think of it as the most "child-proofed" OS. Windows being less restrictive but still doing a good-enough job of locking up the more dangerous things while also not drawing attention to them on a regular basis. Linux is like seeing the dangers left out in the open with few useful warning signs beyond some generic unspecified danger signs around the worksite.
- flomo 9mo ago
  imo, the 'grandparent' type user should really be on an ipad or chromebook etc. (unless they have some specific software needs). Too easy to get unwanted stuff running on windows and it needs admin.
idatum 9mo ago
I didn't even notice the Copilot button in Notepad until it was mentioned, "Even Notepad has a Copilot button."
trvz 9mo ago
Masochism is a choice when it comes to software.
dgxyz 9mo ago
My one remaining windows machine is on 2021 LTSC and has no route to the internet. I am slowly working my way off it. This was onto macOS but that has gone down the shitter too. So it’s Debian. Hopefully be end of Q1 this year. I honestly can’t believe what these vendors are doing. I don’t know anyone who approves of any of this.
charcircuit 9mo ago
>After all, Notepad is supposed to be the absolute barebones, most ultra-basic app in the entire OS. When was that ever the case? It's not even the most basic editor on Windows, which would be Edit. https://github.com/microsoft/edit https://github.com/microsoft/edit
- da_chicken 9mo ago
  Edit has not shipped with Windows since Win9x -- which is to say, it hasn't shipped since Windows required DOS -- and what you linked is an homage project, not the same program. And you know what else was included in versions of MS-DOS that shipped with Win9x? Edlin. The editor so basic most people can't figure out how to use it.
  - charcircuit 9mo ago
    Edit, what I linked, is shipping with Windows right now. This HN thread is about the current version of Windows. We are not talking about Windows XP.
journal 9mo ago
thin clients are not personal computing.
YesBox 9mo ago
Reading the comments made me want to check the Steam Hardware Survey [0]. Some quick facts (Dec 2025 -> Jan 2026): - Windows 10 gained more users than Windows 11 :D - Linux lost users :( [0] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
- pluralmonad 9mo ago
  Those are survey results. Can't draw many conclusions from self selected survey responses. The survey lost Linux responders.
  - Suppafly 9mo ago
    It's self selected so much as you clicking "yes" when it asks if you are ok with the client submitting your data, it's not a survey in the sense that you have to take time out of your day to answer it. If anything linux is probably over represented, so seeing the number go down is concerning for anyone that hopes for linux to be a viable alternative for mainstream users.
- tmtvl 9mo ago
  I'm fairly certain that the GNU/Linux percentage dropping has more to do with the Simplified Chinese and Russian language percentage rising. I.O.W. more Windows than GNU/Linux users joined.
nurettin 9mo ago
> I'm still a Windows guy, and I always will be As a 7 year old, I was a fan of a certain sports team. At 11 I stopped watching, collecting items and took off their posters. When family members and friends asked me why, I told them that the original team had changed, all that remained was the club which I didn't care for.
grougnax 9mo ago
Windows 11 is the shittiest OS I’ve ever used. Nothing works, basically.
yukIttEft 9mo ago
Tried switching to Linux years ago, what brought me be back were issues with Suspend-to-disk, CPU Core parking, GPU powerefficient idle mode Since my PC is idle most of the time, I care about idle-powerefficiency a lot. Does stuff like this these days just work? (AMD CPU + Nvidia GPU)
Gud 9mo ago
Windows started sucking with XP. I know I know, a lot of people think XP rocked, but it was really just 2000 with a fugly skin and more crap. Windows 2000 was peak desktop OS, and no one can convince me otherwise. Arch Linux + XFCE, a distant second.
- stonogo 9mo ago
  XP brought real bluetooth support, WPA wifi, and built-in unzip and image viewing support. The default interface theme was terrible, but it's the oldest Windows that could be considered "modern."
  - Gud 9mo ago
    I mean, these were new technologies at the time and should have been a service pack.. When XP came out I migrated to *nix and I’m forever happy I did.
eviks 9mo ago
> I don't want people to switch away from Windows; I want Microsoft to treat its premier operating system like it used to If you don't live in a mythical past, there was nothing "premier", so no categorical change in treatment, so Notepad has always been a bad primitive app you should've replaced years ago and also avoid any along l account bugs in the present (though it's also possible to use the old "premier" notepad instead of upgrading to the account linked one)
greatgib 9mo ago
I don't want people to switch away from Windows; I want Microsoft to treat its premier operating system like it used to. Total Stockholm syndrome. The user is mistreated by a company but they continue accepting whatever offense is done to them. A big I'll advised fidelity. So, obviously the provider has no reason to change anything regarding the fact that consumers are happy to be victims. The funniest is the user having the feeling that the OS was better to them previously when it was like this since forever, even if it was just broken for the user in other aspects than breaking notepad for cloud licensing.
gverrilla 9mo ago
> I'm still a Windows guy, and I always will be. This belongs in a BDSM website, not HN.

187 points by josephcsible 9mo ago

> I'm still a Windows guy, and I always will be. And this is exactly why Microsoft can get away with a buggy mess of a user hostile operating system. They only have an incentive to make a good OS if people are willing to leave when it’s a bad one.

lousken 9mo ago
exactly, he's part of a problem
- billy99k 9mo ago
  I could also say the Linux desktop creators are the problem as well. It's so buggy, it makes it impossible for me to switch.
  - prmoustache 9mo ago
    This doesn't make any sense as there is not a linux desktop but multiples and the major ones have been less buggy than windows for the most part of the last 20 years. Hardware support is where Linux used to struggle. Nowadays things aren't perfect but much better. Basically it means you need to figure out which hardware to buy based on available support, before making the purchase.
    - pluralmonad 9mo ago
      I am willing to concede this might be true, but I personally have never checked Linux support before through 3 generations of desktops. Intel/Nvidia twice and then AMD/AMD.
      - hparadiz 9mo ago
        All of them will work. What "support". What is this nonsense. Seriously.
      - happymellon 9mo ago
        Because support is generally great. Until you get some Windows apologist who points out that their proprietary touchscreen that has multiple layers of DRM doesn't have Linux drivers and therefore Linux doesn't have good hardware support. You have to be careful in the same way that you can't expect to wipe an M series Mac and stick Windows on it.
        direwolf20 9mo ago
        Apple devices have multiple layers of touchscreen DRM, but most other devices are just lacking drivers, because there are far too many devices for five unpaid interns to write drivers for all of them.
  - lousken 9mo ago
    What desktop and which distro? In the past, there have been times where a bug showed up for me over the years, especially before 2018. Currently tho, Debian 13 + KDE - zero issues.
  - xigoi 9mo ago
    Which “the” Linux desktop? GNOME? KDE? xfce? Cinnamon? COSMIC?
    - xeromal 9mo ago
      This question reinforces the point IMO
      - amlib 9mo ago
        That linux has an awesome rich and diverse range of desktop experiences?
      - subscribed 9mo ago
        I'd stupidly assume that having a choice and control over the experience is empowering, and watching a couple of YouTube videos titled "which Linux distribution is best for me" isn't too hard? Or is it in your opinion? If it is maybe they better stay on the "shut up and do how I say, puppet" OS.
  - bdavbdav 9mo ago
    Who are these “creators”? Can you point to them? Is there a legal entity?
  - Spooky23 9mo ago
    Honestly, that’s a 2016 argument. I flipped a few contact centers over to Linux desktops and had very few issues. If anything we probably spent 5x the resources getting Windows 11 certified internally. Microsoft knows it, but they don’t care about windows. When IBM started offering Macs to employees, they figured out that the support burden was very low, significantly lower than windows, even with users having years of windows experience. Intune was supposed to be the answer to that, making Windows management MDM like. But for their most entrenched enterprise customers, they can’t really switch without co-managing with Configuration Manager. Most of the people behind that product are laid off or otherwise attrited, as there’s no path to a subscription service.
  - hparadiz 9mo ago
    > I've tried nothing and I'm all out of ideas
    - dripdry45 9mo ago
      Yes, but what is the cost or perceived cost to the user to try? This “clever” response proves nothing, sadly
      - hparadiz 9mo ago
        Well we know the actual cost of doing nothing.
  - nik282000 9mo ago
    Debian, Ubuntu, Suse, and Fedora have had a bug free desktop experience for years. If you stick to the default repositories and use last year's hardware everything just works.
wrs 9mo ago
"I'm still a _______ guy, and I always will be." No matter what trademark you put in the blank, this is not a healthy thing to say.
- embedding-shape 9mo ago
  Yeah, not sure how people form almost "relationships" with their tools and refuse sometimes to even explore options. I'm always open to switching almost anything. I never end up doing, because things are usually not better, but maybe 1/100 times something is better, and then I switch. Initially did that around Ubuntu 9.10 before, and I'll switch away from Arch in a heartbeat if anything better comes around. Edit: I realize now that the article author, the person in the video and the quoted tweet are all the same person, and they seem to work/run windowscentral.com, so I guess that kind of explains the motivation.
  - expedition32 9mo ago
    Honestly as a deeply antisocial person the Linux cult has always rubbed me the wrong way. Same reason why I don't have an iPhone.
    - loloquwowndueo 9mo ago
      What do you use then?
      - DetroitThrow 9mo ago
        The biggest non-Linux non-iOS phone operating system is HarmonyOS, so I would assume he means that.
        direwolf20 9mo ago
        There's also Android, which isn't Linux, but just repurposes the Linux kernel in a non–Linux OS.
        9mo ago
BadBadJellyBean 9mo ago
I think saying "I'm a _______ guy" with any brand or company filling that blank can be a big problem. Most companies are there to make money and loyalty is often a one way street. From my view it is more productive to find out what you like about something and always be open to maybe finding someone else who can deliver on that. And sometimes things that we thought were essential are not. You might even find something new to like.
- arcologies1985 9mo ago
  What about "I'm a Linux guy?" I don't pay any company for my Linux OSes. My favorites are nonprofits and mostly interchangeable.
  - BLKNSLVR 9mo ago
    I'm a Linux guy, but I've always had a little bit of FreeBSD on the side. (I'm also forced to use Windows at work)
  - stavros 9mo ago
    No. It's not your identity, it's a piece of software. "I use ____ for as long as the benefits outweigh the drawbacks" is what you should be thinking.
    - arcologies1985 9mo ago
      Using Linux as a teenager led to a step change in my family's generational wealth, some incredible personal and professional relationships, and life-defining opportunities for work and travel. I think at this point it's solidly wrapped up in my identity.
      - stavros 9mo ago
        That's fuzzy and all, but still not good. Being an uncritical fan of something, even when it's to your detriment, isn't something to be proud of.
john01dav 9mo ago
Apple has an even bigger loyalty problem. For them and Microsoft it's arguably good, but it's bad for users, even the loyal ones. It might even be bad for Apple and Microsoft long term.
- Quothling 9mo ago
  I'm not saying Apple can't go the way of Microsoft, but if you've used macOS and Windows through the previous 5 years there isn't much of a comparison. Windows has gone from something I tolerated to something I absolutely dislike using. It's so bad that if it wasn't for WSL then I would consider finding a place to work where they didn't force me to use Windows. MacOS on the other hand hasn't really changed. The moment someone makes a non macbook air, that does the same as a macbook air in terms of being cold to touch, battery life and no-noise I'm leaving for Linux though.
  - cosmic_cheese 9mo ago
    > The moment someone makes a non macbook air, that does the same as a macbook air in terms of being cold to touch, battery life and no-noise I'm leaving for Linux though. I think a lot of people are waiting for a non-Apple Macbook, but we unfortunately might be waiting for a while. It seems to pain other manufacturers to not cut corners in some critical area or another…
    - switchbak 9mo ago
      I have a framework laptop, and when it works it’s just ok. It looks just enough like a Mac to have me feel frustrated when I use it. In theory we may be able to run Linux (reliably, not in the bleeding edge) on Apple hardware eventually. But you still pay the Apple tax, which is pretty bonkers these days. But dang those machines are nice.
      - hparadiz 9mo ago
        https://asahilinux.org/fedora/#device-support https://asahilinux.org/fedora/#device-support
dist-epoch 9mo ago
Goes the other way around too: Linux will only have a good desktop environment when it's users will be willing to leave it.
- xigoi 9mo ago
  I recently started using COSMIC and I would definitely call it good, even if it has a few rough edges due to just recently coming out of beta.
- ErroneousBosh 9mo ago
  Linux has had several good desktop environments for well over 20 years. When is Windows going to get a good desktop environment?
- bigstrat2003 9mo ago
  I mean, from my perspective Linux has multiple good desktop environments. I've used both Cinnamon and KDE for years and have found both perfectly pleasant to use.
- Mordisquitos 9mo ago
  > Linux will only have a good desktop environment when it's users will be willing to leave it. Putting aside the debate as to the quality of desktop environments, I honestly hope you're being intentionally nonsensical as a joke. What you describe can only make sense under the grossly misinformed belief that "Linux" is a monolithic entity incentivised to stop its users from "leaving it", and that this mythical "Linux" would have the agency to decide it needed "a good desktop environment" in order to avoid that from happening.
- wolvoleo 9mo ago
  Linux desktop environments are developed by its users wanting the best experience possible. Windows is designed by a committee that tries to do as little as possible and has ulterior motives higher on the priority scale than UX. Like marketing copilot and other Microsoft subscription services. Microsoft software is always aimed to be just good enough for the users to not choose something better. They love just coasting on their marketshare without doing much to improve. Like they did with internet explorer and now do with office.
Aloha 9mo ago
Who is better?
- monooso 9mo ago
  I think you're missing the point. If a friend stated that they will stay with their partner regardless of how deceptive or abusive said partner's behaviour becomes, you would rightly question the wisdom of that choice. Stating that you will remain loyal to a company come what may is even worse. It's an entity with no interest in your wellbeing. It exists to extract as much money or information from you as possible. Quite apart from everything else, such a statement eliminates the prospect of ever finding something better.
  - navigate8310 9mo ago
    For folks that still like the win32 ecosystem, they should pirate the heck out of LTSC. just as Microsoft don't have interest in them, they shouldn't give a damn about it and enjoy a dramatically polished Windows experience.
    - Aloha 9mo ago
      and microsoft makes it so easy to pirate too, trivially easy.
  - Aloha 9mo ago
    Its not though - I dont want to write my own operating system, build an ecosystem of apps, write hardware drivers, etc. Win11 has massive downsides, so does macOS, so does desktop Linux, so do all the other options - I have to choose between one of those options to get things done, going my own isnt an option.
    - monooso 9mo ago
      At no point did I suggest that you build your own OS. To extend my tortured analogy, that would be like suggesting you grow your own spouse.
bdavbdav 9mo ago
Came here to post this, what an asinine thing to say.
guidedlight 9mo ago
I’m my experience, unwavering Windows folk are simply power users who find *nix shells burdensome.
- wesammikhail 9mo ago
  I deploy all my code on linux and have been thinking about switching from windows to linux for my daily driver. But even I dread that. It´s as if linux has tried as hard as possible to make every single little thing as complicated as possible. imho, user experience is nowhere to be found in the linux landscape. There is very little focus on that. People will tell you try this or that distro. But once you run into a simple problem, it´s often a rabbit hole of a gazilling cli commands to fix it. In the mean time you´re praying to god to not brick something that used to work before.
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - conception 9mo ago
    Lucky now you can just ask an LLM to diagnose and offer ways to fix it. Takes 99% of the trouble away.
  - nixosbestos 9mo ago
    If I could wave a wand and ban a single class of comments on HN, it would be this. Rambling, non-specific handwaving useless text. > user experience is nowhere to be found in the linux landscape. It's ignorant, and its insulting, and it's stupid. You can read one or two KDE blog posts, look at the roadmap for Cosmic, look at the attention Valve has put into Linux and know that sentence is just rude. It's just so frustrating. > People will tell you try this or that distro. Dumbasses on reddit will. No one that has a single clue encourages distro-hopping.
    - bloqs 9mo ago
      and I would ban fanboying such as your username I agree with you, that it is irritating when people make sweeping statements that casually dismiss a lot of things as not existing when they do, but it's an endless arguement. Operating systems are not the problem, support is. Just making a good operating system isn't what drives adoption. reducing _pain_ does. Nerds arent good at empathy, so the response is normally "just read x and use y" and call people stupid if they still cant figure it how to use it
pavel_lishin 9mo ago
> I'm still a Windows guy, and I always will be. There's a semi-common saying that it takes seven attempts for someone to successfully leave an abusive partner. Give him time, I guess.
layer8 9mo ago
It likely just means they will always prefer certain classic aspects of Windows over how other desktop OSs do things. I’m largely in that boat as well. Of course Windows could get so bad in the future that another OS will be the lesser evil. Or another OS could adopt those preferred Windows things. But it won’t change the mentioned preferences, hence “always”.
bsder 9mo ago
Agreed. I had the version of Notepad++ that got popped and was being nagged by Fusion 360, so I decided to burn everything down, get a new SSD, and install a copy of Windows 11. Holy sh*t! I haven't had this bad a Windows install experience since Windows 95. The first big obstacle is getting all the Secure Boot/TPM 2.0 BIOS settings right. When you don't, you simply get "Can't install Windows". No debugging information. No clarification. No details. Shades of the day of having to blindly set the I/O interrupts and addresses on Windows. Tweak, Install, Waiiiiiiit, Fail. Tweak, Install, Waiiiiiit, Fail. etc. Then the second obstacle is getting a local account installed. The solution was obscure, but straightforward. Finding that solution on the glop that has become the Internet? Bleaaaaagh. Everything has to be a bloody video for something that's one stupid command. And all the AI systems aren't useful because their horizon is too old and Microslop keeps changing the command; presumably because too many people are using it (How dare they not make cloud number go up! Brrrrrrrrr!) After all was said and done, I got "lucky" because I actually bought a retail copy of Windows 11 from Best Buy--it has physical media and the image was "old" enough that the "old" way of doing the install still worked (Shift F10 to prompt -> OOBE\BYPASSNRO -> reboot for those who want to know) At last, after almost 90 minutes of farting around, Windows starts to install. And install. And install. And install ... FOR HOURS! WTF IS IT DOING! The target machine is a smoking AMD desktop with SSD and a gigantic amount of pre-shortage RAM on fibre. How in the name of all that is holy and unholy do you install that slowly on that powerful a machine? Finally, everything gets installed. And I reboot ... to no video. Oh, no, I bet it scrambled the drivers. Sure enough, I move the HDMI from my AMD card to the AMD integrated video ... yep, there it is. Sigh. Let's go get DDU and uninstall the dumbass driver that Windows Install dumped on there. Download, download, install, reboot to safe mode, clean, install proper driver, reboot. Back on my main card, now. Finally, let's dump a recovery image because I sure don't want to have to go through this gigantic PITA again if something goes wrong. Plug in the drive, can't find it ... ah, had a Linux image that needs to be wiped out, my fault ... need the Windows partition editor, so launch and erase ... wait, why can't I edit anything? ... oh, right, dumbass, you need to launch it as Administrator ... close ... open the menu, there's the app, right click menu ... WTF! There's no "Run as Administrator" so I can't edit the partitions! Right click a couple of other programs ... some of them have the "Run as Administrator" but some of them DON'T. And there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to which is which. Curse. Swear. FINE! Plug drive into my Linux laptop, kill the partitions there, and eject. Plug into Windows ... which now sees the drive and creates a recovery disk ... happy happy joy joy <rolls eyes>. 4+ hours! Not even exaggerating. <cries> And because I'm a glutton for punishment, I decided I'd put Linux on the old reformatted SSD. Since I used Windows for gaming about as much as Fusion 360, I figured I'd go for something Linux but gaming-optimized and snag Bazzite which I'd never used before. Download, install, login, connect to Steam, run game. Total time: no more than 20 minutes. No fighting about cloud login. No video card problem. Games are running fine. Anyone still using Windows as an individual nowadays is completely and utterly daft. (And, as a side note, this is having a knockon effect--I finally went looking for an alternative to Fusion 360 and signed up for OnShape just so I can dump Windows permanently)
qq66 9mo ago
I was a "Windows guy" from Windows 2.0 to Windows 10. Now I'm a "Mac guy." These operating systems aren't my family members -- I'll ditch them if I believe that switching is worth getting over the learning curve of a new environment.
- ScoobleDoodle 9mo ago
  Right. My current computer has Windows OS at the moment.
  - therein 9mo ago
    I wonder when they'll rebrand it as Copilot Agentic OS. It seems no brand of theirs is sacred enough to not be replaced with Copilot.
    - direwolf20 9mo ago
      It's not like Microsoft to use extra words in brand names. I think they'll just call it Copilot.
      - hghjnbhff 9mo ago
        [dead]
meandmycode 9mo ago
I will say, for anybody reading and finds it in any way uplifting, I have been a Windows user for 30 years, been a .net developer for 5 years at one point, groaned at how bad the 'Linux desktop' always was, but this year I finally switched to using Linux instead of Windows and I think it's because the inflexion point is starting to hit more of the masses.
- int_19h 9mo ago
  AI is the best thing that happened to desktop Linux!
  - digiown 9mo ago
    This actually. AI is dramatically better at helping users deal with perennial issues that Linux gets, and using the command line to fix them, compared to Microsoft's fresh new bug introduced last Tuesday or navigating anti-user GUI.
    - wookmaster 9mo ago
      You’re absolutely correct what used to take me hours reading docs and googling now takes minutes to find an answer to. Just this week my new beelink I couldnt get hardware acceleration working for transcoding. A couple prompts lead me to the fact the gpu was new and I needed a newer Linux kernel. I probably would have spent hours and hours fiddling with device drivers and configs in the past.
    - therein 9mo ago
      That is true but I believe he meant it as Microsoft shoving AI down your throat in every part of Windows driving people away into Linux.
    - raincole 9mo ago
      That sounds... quite bad, to be honest. I never met one single Windows issue that can't be answered by simple google search for years. A desktop expecting the user to ask AI(!) for solutions that require command line(!!) is definitely not for average users.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
hyperman1 9mo ago
Years ago, HN had an article 'Hacking my vagina'. It contains a line 'I was in the market for a $GADGET’. With that one line, the author managed to put my view of buying things upside down. Not a passive consumer. Not: I bought a $GADGET. She had an active relation with a bunch of sellers, and she was boss. You saw the megacorps begging and pleading to her, from that one line. That's how you deal with them. I am $GADGET guy? Shudder.
inquirerGeneral 9mo ago
[dead]
inquirerGeneral 9mo ago
[dead]
assaddayinh 9mo ago
So why does open source support microsofts strategy by insisting the users throw away years of hard learned user knowledge (shortcuts, program quirks)? If you do it different from the defacto standards, you put a tax in time on users switching.
newdee 9mo ago
True, but someone writing for a site called windowscentral.com has a business interest in being a windows guy. Although I find it funny to imagine them furtively using Linux.

chrisjj 9mo ago

> I couldn't open Notepad ... an error (0x803f8001) with Microsoft Store's licensing service stopped me I wonder if it works at all with no online connection to that store.

fsflover 9mo ago
Reminds me of this MacOS problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959

chrisjj 9mo ago

> I couldn't open Notepad ... an error (0x803f8001) with Microsoft Store's licensing service stopped me I wonder if it works at all when no online connection to that store.

mysterydip 9mo ago
“But what if people used notepad without our permission?!” -dev/boss somewhere
- chrisjj 9mo ago
  "But I bought it!" - naïve customer somewhere

vhalan 9mo ago

I only use my windows machine because I can swap out parts stuff and is more hackable but macos is so much more beautifully designed. Sometimes I prefer one machine over the other I rarely wish for anything other than sometimes being unable to transfer data between the two systems.

josephcsible 9mo ago
> I only use my windows machine because I can swap out parts stuff and is more hackable but macos is so much more beautifully designed. That's definitely a good reason to use a PC instead of a Mac, but why not run Linux on it? Then you'd get the best of both worlds.
- mh- 9mo ago
  I would not describe the Linux desktop experience as the best of both Mac and Windows. Let's go with different, a different world.

sandworm101 9mo ago

Every horrible windows story is yet another glorious day for linux. Fyi, in Mint if you search application for "notepad", "Text Editor" is the first result. That is curated search done right. Search for notepad on windows and you probably get an ad for a travel website.

plagiarist 9mo ago
It just makes sense to show travel deals. Why would an OS show text editors when searching for text editors? Obviously it can show something far more lucrative by matching what it knows from spyware AI taking screenshots of your every action.
AviationAtom 9mo ago
Cinnamon is cool and all but I prefer KDE Plasma. It seems to eliminate all the pain points Linux desktop environments typically have and everything just works. Pair it with Debian and you got a solid system.
- avtar 9mo ago
  > Pair it with Debian A KDE dev mentioned on a podcast that issues related to Debian Stable get closed automatically on their bug tracker because fixes don't get backported :/ https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1pneqp4/kde_dev_do_not_recommend_plasma_on_debian/ https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1pneqp4/kde_dev_do_n... My wife was complaining about Windows issues so I ended up installing Fedora with KDE on her laptop. I would have preferred Debian but using Testing (as suggested by the dev) doesn't some ideal.
  - aruggirello 9mo ago
    Debian Testing isn't really unstable - the dev wasn't exaggerating. But I'd also suggest Kubuntu (you can remove snap and all of its packages, and install Firefox and Thunderbird .deb's from the Mozilla repo)
    - 9mo ago

plagiarist 9mo ago

The subscription to his own machine had bugs that prevented him from using a basic windowed text editor and that isn't the last straw?

userbinator 9mo ago

To be clear, this is the horrible "new" Notepad "app" that I absolutely hated and instantly removed when it was forced upon everyone. I doubt the old "edit field in a wrapper" one which has been nearly the same since Win95 has this problem. (My newest machine is now running Linux.)

AviationAtom 9mo ago
Markdown support and the like are useful but their need to cram AI and account sign-in into it definitely seemed over the top. When they got rid of Wordpad I kind of anticipated them trying to pivot Notepad more in that direction.
ale42 9mo ago
For what it matters, Windows Server 2025 still has the edit field in a wrapper.
- userbinator 9mo ago
  They all still do, just like the old Explorer context menu. It's what you get when you remove the new abomination.
  - ale42 8mo ago
    You mean... I can just uninstall the Appx package and notepad.exe will revert to the old edit box? That would be great
- accrual 9mo ago
  Yes, I was pleased to see our new Windows Server boxes still have regular Notepad and Explorer.
chrisjj 9mo ago
Is that old still provided?
- 9mo ago

James_K 9mo ago

The renaming of “my computer” to “this PC” was quite telling.

lousken 9mo ago

Switch to linux, don't look back

trinix912 9mo ago
Unless you work a job where you're not in control of the OS you're using, which just happens to be most of the non-dev office jobs out there. Dismissing Windows problems with "just switch to Linux bro" doesn't really help.
- hagbard_c 9mo ago
  If you're in a Windows-only job and you've got proof that Windows is getting in the way of doing your job you might just be able to convince those who decided to make it a Windows-only workplace to change their stance.
- compass_copium 9mo ago
  I have to use Windows at work and I will never have weird cloud authentication issues because I'm required to use a work-provided MS account on the computer. The author says he's a Windows guy, and always will be. This article, and these types of complaints, are really only relevant if you're using it on your personal PC.
- lousken 9mo ago
  I did think about personal devices, but it is a valid point, though many companies I know do support at least windows+mac if not linux. Supporting Linux desktop for a company is more difficult due to lack of anything resembling GPOs (and no ansible-pull isn't that). It is definitely a thing systemd should implement.
- xigoi 9mo ago
  If you’re not in control of the OS, then you’re not responsible for problems caused by the choice of OS. Tell your boss that Windows is not allowing you to use basic features and let them choke on it.
  - 9mo ago

Aloha 9mo ago

I believe this is related to known issues with KB5074109 It hit Both Win11 24H2 and 25H2.

Barrin92 9mo ago

>I don't want people to switch away from Windows; I want Microsoft to treat its premier operating system like it used to.[...] and Windows 12 is ultimately an agentic AI OS, I wouldn't be surprised if more people stick with a debloated Windows 11, just as others did with Windows 10 Is there any justification for the first part other than that the authors job at windowscentral.com depends on it? Because I'm not seeing it in the article which amounts to the digital version of Stockholm syndrome. If even the author is predicting that this is what the next windows will look like, why aren't you running for the hills

AlienRobot 9mo ago
If Microsoft wanted, it could make Windows good. On the other hand, no matter how much time or money the Linux community gets, the desktop experience will never be good. This means that our only hope at having a good desktop OS is Microsoft changing course.
- somat 9mo ago
  What are you talking about? The desktop experience on linux is far superior to that brain dead lowest common denominator junk as found on windows or macos. linux has(by personal preference order) middle click paste, tiling window managers, point to focus, focus on lower windows, the compose key. The linux desktop is a productivity goldmine compared to windows. and I want to say mean things about the macos ui, but I don't really use it (the last time I tried it could not do full screen windows, But I have been told that is not true any more)

havaloc 9mo ago

I work in academia and I've gotten most of my people to switch to Macs and no, Linux is not an option here. I have about eight Windows PCs against about sixty MacBook Airs and guess which platform causes me the most work? 1:20 issue ratio. Even simple things like SMB in Windows 11 are hopelessly broken.

leoedin 9mo ago
What makes Linux not an option? Is there specific apps you need to use? Or IT policies? Or something else? The company I work for got bought by a big conglomerate, and I managed to stubbornly hold out using Linux for a really long time. It turns out if your workplace has adopted “Bring your own device” type policies, that often means you can auth with enough services that working on Linux is feasible.
- trinix912 9mo ago
  It's much harder for non-dev jobs where the management won't let you BYOD for whatever reasons, which could range from IT being too stubborn to allow you to keep company data on your own laptop that's not centrally managed, to everything including licenses for random 3rd party software the company is using being tied to the ActiveDirectory fleet of computers with centralized storage. This is the reality of IT equipment in big parts of the non-dev world, and you'll have a hard time convincing the IT dept to take on extra hassle just for you to use Linux out of all hundreds of employees who're just fine with Windows.
- Spooky23 9mo ago
  The issue isn’t the technology, it’s that there’s more than one way to do everything and people tend to scratch their itches. If you started a company today, you can immediately and cheaply hire people or an MSP to manage Windows PCs. I hire entry Windows techs for $70k. M365 E-whatever is $30-60/mo. Apple fully aligned their products, so the guys running the iPhone fleet can run the Macs. They may need some higher level assistance to setup the configurations. Unless you have a lot of compliance work, enroll in MDM, done. With Linux, other than Chrome, there’s no standard. You’re gonna need a smart/expensive person to setup things and you’re going to need smart/expensive people to operate. If you have compliance requirements appear, you’ll need to buy RHEL or something and rework stuff, which is more expensive than windows.

wishfish 9mo ago

Author implies he was using a local account at the time of the error. Which answers an important question. I'd heard of people with Microsoft accounts getting locked out of their own computers, but that's a first I've heard of basic apps failing with a local account.

Animats 9mo ago

How can Microsoft legally do that? Notepad++ is GPL-licensed open source. It's on Github.[1] [1] https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus

neRok 9mo ago
Notepad++ isn't [Windows Notepad](https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9msmlrh6lzf3 https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9msmlrh6lzf3)
- cheschire 9mo ago
  Hilariously related, the title of this topic now looks to me like "Notepad--"
  - Animats 9mo ago
    Oops, sorry. HN condensed the title to " Microsoft account bugs locked me out of Notepad – ...", and I misread that.
  - keyringlight 9mo ago
    And a minus-minus version is also available, which seems to be aimed at Chinese needs.
    - zamalek 9mo ago
      It's also seemingly automatically installed with Windows.

thot_experiment 9mo ago

I cannot see myself installing Windows 11, it's sad, I've been primarily a windows guy for my home computer since W95 and I'll miss it. Windows 10 (LTSC) has been the best operating system experience of my life, once I disabled updates and all the nag screens it's been rock solid for me for many years. It's so important to be able to trust that your computer works the same way tomorrow as it does today. I hope that there's enough people like me that the combined community will keep it alive for a few years longer, but I know eventually something will force me to upgrade to Linux.

baal80spam 9mo ago
Are you me? Well, technically from 3.1 but everything else checks out.
duxup 9mo ago
I was a windows guy for a long time. I went to macOS. Despite the complaints I've seen on the internet I've been very happy in macOS land. Someone mentioned that while macOS has "never been worse" the difference between windows and macOS "has never been greater". Granted things like gaming might influence someone to not make that move.
- thot_experiment 9mo ago
  macOS seems cool in theory, but in practice it's not a "you own your computer" operating system so it's just a no go off the bat for me, i get it for people that just kinda stay in the center of the bell curve when it comes to computer use, but there's a 100% chance i'd end up in some situation where i'm fighting against apple's locked-down ness in approx 20minutes of owning a mac. i'm fundamentally never going to accept a UX where i'm not absolute god of my computer, if i want to delete files crucial to my system's ability to function or run something with kernel level access to all my memory that's MY prerogative, i cannot imagine using a computer that doesn't listen to me
  - abawany 9mo ago
    macos has gotten worse about this in recent releases - I was astounded when I learnt that apple news, apple books, and apple music are uninstallable; these are still removable on ios but not on macos for some reason.

throw_a_grenade 9mo ago

If I had such a problem with my OS, I would have changed the distribution.

nipperkinfeet 9mo ago

Most of all, first-party apps from Microsoft have been ruined by them. Use alternatives when possible.

jasoneckert 9mo ago

Imagine if Fedora locked you out of vi because your Red Hat account had an issue. The unsettling part of stories like this isn’t “Microsoft bad,” it’s the growing assumption that local tools should be downstream of remote identity systems. A text editor is about as offline and fundamental as software gets, yet it’s now possible for account state, sync bugs, or policy enforcement to make it inaccessible on your own machine. This is where non-macOS UNIX and Linux systems draw the line - if it’s installed locally and you have permission, it runs. Cloud services can enhance that experience (backups, sync, collaboration) but they don’t get veto power over whether vi opens. When that boundary erodes, we start to see our systems as thin clients, instead of full local OSes, as the author mentions.

p_ing 9mo ago
> if it’s installed locally and you have permission, it runs On macOS, only after you've run xattr -c to remove the Gatekeeper block on non-Apple approved apps.
- RockRobotRock 9mo ago
  Didn't macOS apps get locked/took a ridiculous amount of time to open because Gatekeeper servers went down a few years ago? https://www.engadget.com/macos-slow-apps-launching-221445977.html https://www.engadget.com/macos-slow-apps-launching-221445977... Not as bad as the bug described in OP, but still pretty bad.
  - p_ing 9mo ago
    Yes, there is still the occasional delay in launching apps due to Intertube check.
direwolf20 9mo ago
Business users want everything online, so anything can be accessed from anywhere. They want central identity, so when someone is hired or fired they only need to look in one place.

jakub_g 9mo ago

With Macbooks Air M4 starting at $1k/€1.1k, and apparently soon some even cheaper Macbooks coming up, it's really difficult to justify buying a Windows laptop those days and having to deal with all Microsoft bs, unless you have specific needs and being locked in. The difference of "value for money" in terms of build quality, battery life, screen, touchpad, OS stability, OS upgrades experience, and overall polish and level of user (non-)hostility is immense. A Windows guy for two decades, got an MBP for work, and while I miss some Windows software and I don't like some Mac things (e.g. no real write-to-disk hibernation; pricey upgrades from base models etc.), but there's no way I'm going back.

locusofself 9mo ago
ya, starting with M1, Apple really broke away hard. Windows laptops, especially of the thin-and-light variety, are so bad by comparison.

smackeyacky 9mo ago

There are two technologies propped up by having to earn a living: windows and the iPhone. No matter the android phone, trying to get your MFA experience working with the umpteen stupid MFA apps is painful because all the dev work went into the iPhone versions. I hate it but yep I ended up buying an iPhone although I never buy them new. Windows is the other one and again it’s security related. More and more places simply rely on Active Directory/Entra and try telling the bank you’re working for that you have to have a Linux notebook. You’ll get laughed right out of a job. I’d agree for a home computer Linux or macOS are the only sane choices now. But whatever is installed on my work provided computer is what I’m using and that’s windows.

bdavbdav 9mo ago
I use an iPhone (out of choice) but what MFA doesn’t work on android?
- supriyo-biswas 9mo ago
  I suspect this is about work related MFA apps; for example, one of the reasons I switched to an iPhone many years ago is the MFA app used at work would not run if the latest Android version with security bugfixes were installed, and the manufacturer had stopped providing updates for quite some time. At that point I was looking at a costly upgrade to one of the Android flagships, or an iPhone, of which I chose the latter.
  - Suppafly 9mo ago
    >At that point I was looking at a costly upgrade to one of the Android flagships, or an iPhone, of which I chose the latter. That's your personal decision though, you don't need a flagship android phone to have the latest versions of android. I pretty much never spend more than $100-150 for android phones and they always support all the normal MFA apps.
    - supriyo-biswas 9mo ago

cadamsdotcom 9mo ago

Microsoft is really shooting themselves in your foot. It might be time to look at other options.

kgwxd 9mo ago

In just about every aspect of life, the race to the bottom seems to be on the last lap, and all the players have that almost-there energy.

BLKNSLVR 9mo ago
It certainly feels that Microsoft is accelerating in this race. There have been almost weekly 'a new reason' that Windows 11 sucks and is user hostile. Previously it would be only once a month.

lconnell962 9mo ago

Comment threads on the Closed Source OS topics like this regularly remind me about the large disconnect between skilled technical users and the "average" user. That average probably isn't your (great) grandparent who never learned how to type suddenly needing to learn the rapidly evolving early-days internet, but it's still just as dangerous to suggest "Use Linux" as the solution for everyone when plenty of "Average" users still don't know enough to be doing things safely in the console. The "sudo rm -rf" and equivilant horror stories get told all too often as mistakes even made by "skilled users" who were in a hurry, and while that particular problem is becoming less common there is still a minefield out there. Wider use case where we need IT support is worse since there are plenty of Microsoft and Mac favoring restrictions and lockdowns required in the name of corporate level security requirements and certifications add to the mess and "security concerns" you can't get corporate to move away from. I'm a daily Linux user who has had to put years of a software developer career's time into learning the easier system administration aspects and working with those who handle the harder issues, but doing this in my career I have had to step back every time someone comes to me with a problem. Once I understand the problem then go on to ask "at a guess, how much time will diagnosing this even take?" with the estimates varying based on how standard the OS install or deployment is. Time and a relatively small amount of training is the problem with switching users from Windows to Mac or the reverse. Switching to Linux is training and introducing a technical mindset into a person. Idiot-proofing the system is a major issue Linux hasn't solved yet. VDI systems and the like might be a step in the right direction, but as soon as your use case for Linux requires a "average user" to open a terminal the problems will pile up and the minefield is exposed. Years removed from using a Mac I still think of it as the most "child-proofed" OS. Windows being less restrictive but still doing a good-enough job of locking up the more dangerous things while also not drawing attention to them on a regular basis. Linux is like seeing the dangers left out in the open with few useful warning signs beyond some generic unspecified danger signs around the worksite.

flomo 9mo ago
imo, the 'grandparent' type user should really be on an ipad or chromebook etc. (unless they have some specific software needs). Too easy to get unwanted stuff running on windows and it needs admin.

idatum 9mo ago

I didn't even notice the Copilot button in Notepad until it was mentioned, "Even Notepad has a Copilot button."

trvz 9mo ago

Masochism is a choice when it comes to software.

dgxyz 9mo ago

My one remaining windows machine is on 2021 LTSC and has no route to the internet. I am slowly working my way off it. This was onto macOS but that has gone down the shitter too. So it’s Debian. Hopefully be end of Q1 this year. I honestly can’t believe what these vendors are doing. I don’t know anyone who approves of any of this.

charcircuit 9mo ago

>After all, Notepad is supposed to be the absolute barebones, most ultra-basic app in the entire OS. When was that ever the case? It's not even the most basic editor on Windows, which would be Edit. https://github.com/microsoft/edit https://github.com/microsoft/edit

da_chicken 9mo ago
Edit has not shipped with Windows since Win9x -- which is to say, it hasn't shipped since Windows required DOS -- and what you linked is an homage project, not the same program. And you know what else was included in versions of MS-DOS that shipped with Win9x? Edlin. The editor so basic most people can't figure out how to use it.
- charcircuit 9mo ago
  Edit, what I linked, is shipping with Windows right now. This HN thread is about the current version of Windows. We are not talking about Windows XP.

journal 9mo ago

thin clients are not personal computing.

YesBox 9mo ago

Reading the comments made me want to check the Steam Hardware Survey [0]. Some quick facts (Dec 2025 -> Jan 2026): - Windows 10 gained more users than Windows 11 :D - Linux lost users :( [0] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

pluralmonad 9mo ago
Those are survey results. Can't draw many conclusions from self selected survey responses. The survey lost Linux responders.
- Suppafly 9mo ago
  It's self selected so much as you clicking "yes" when it asks if you are ok with the client submitting your data, it's not a survey in the sense that you have to take time out of your day to answer it. If anything linux is probably over represented, so seeing the number go down is concerning for anyone that hopes for linux to be a viable alternative for mainstream users.
tmtvl 9mo ago
I'm fairly certain that the GNU/Linux percentage dropping has more to do with the Simplified Chinese and Russian language percentage rising. I.O.W. more Windows than GNU/Linux users joined.

nurettin 9mo ago

> I'm still a Windows guy, and I always will be As a 7 year old, I was a fan of a certain sports team. At 11 I stopped watching, collecting items and took off their posters. When family members and friends asked me why, I told them that the original team had changed, all that remained was the club which I didn't care for.

grougnax 9mo ago

Windows 11 is the shittiest OS I’ve ever used. Nothing works, basically.

yukIttEft 9mo ago

Tried switching to Linux years ago, what brought me be back were issues with Suspend-to-disk, CPU Core parking, GPU powerefficient idle mode Since my PC is idle most of the time, I care about idle-powerefficiency a lot. Does stuff like this these days just work? (AMD CPU + Nvidia GPU)

Gud 9mo ago

Windows started sucking with XP. I know I know, a lot of people think XP rocked, but it was really just 2000 with a fugly skin and more crap. Windows 2000 was peak desktop OS, and no one can convince me otherwise. Arch Linux + XFCE, a distant second.

stonogo 9mo ago
XP brought real bluetooth support, WPA wifi, and built-in unzip and image viewing support. The default interface theme was terrible, but it's the oldest Windows that could be considered "modern."
- Gud 9mo ago
  I mean, these were new technologies at the time and should have been a service pack.. When XP came out I migrated to *nix and I’m forever happy I did.

eviks 9mo ago

> I don't want people to switch away from Windows; I want Microsoft to treat its premier operating system like it used to If you don't live in a mythical past, there was nothing "premier", so no categorical change in treatment, so Notepad has always been a bad primitive app you should've replaced years ago and also avoid any along l account bugs in the present (though it's also possible to use the old "premier" notepad instead of upgrading to the account linked one)

greatgib 9mo ago

I don't want people to switch away from Windows; I want Microsoft to treat its premier operating system like it used to. Total Stockholm syndrome. The user is mistreated by a company but they continue accepting whatever offense is done to them. A big I'll advised fidelity. So, obviously the provider has no reason to change anything regarding the fact that consumers are happy to be victims. The funniest is the user having the feeling that the OS was better to them previously when it was like this since forever, even if it was just broken for the user in other aspects than breaking notepad for cloud licensing.

gverrilla 9mo ago

> I'm still a Windows guy, and I always will be. This belongs in a BDSM website, not HN.