7 ms·

The only way this get better is if the user gets to choose between an OS with ads, lock-in, telemetry etc. and then one with none of that. As it is now, buying

The only way this get better is if the user gets to choose between an OS with ads, lock-in, telemetry etc. and then one with none of that. As it is now, buying a laptop in a store is a "pick your poison" situation.

jacquesm 7mo ago
What bugged me for years is that I ended up paying the microsoft or apple tax that way. In the end I figured out a more efficient way around that than any of the rebates/refunds: just buy second hand hardware. Someone else paid for and used the windows license, I just need the box.
- raddan 7mo ago
  If you don’t need a laptop, you can also build a machine from parts. This is probably the best way to run a desktop computer.
  - jacquesm 7mo ago
    Anybody on HN that didn't know that you can build a machine from parts or isn't capable do doing so is probably on the wrong website ;)
    - tmtvl 7mo ago
      I have two left hands (and one of them is backwards) and components spontaneously disintegrate when I touch them. I know I'm not capable of building a computer so I bought mine from Tuxedo computers, who sell computers running GNU/Linux. I might be the GNU/Linux whisperer who manages to not have any major issues, but that doesn't correlate with the type of technical aptitude which would let me turn a heap of components into a working machine. I even managed to break a laptop by trying to replace the CMOS battery.
      - jacquesm 7mo ago
        Hah! You're like one of my family members. We keep her away from anything electronic because the failure rate in her presence can not be accounted for by accident alone. Oh, and laptops are nasty. They are put together in ways that can easily confound you when you have plenty of experience. Lots of it revolves around little pieces of plastic that are marginal when new and that just want to break by the time the device needs service. It's a conspiracy! Anyway, at least you know it can be done. The conditional still holds.
      - OkayPhysicist 7mo ago
        Making any hardware changes whatsoever to a laptop is dramatically more complicated than building a desktop. It very much is just a matter of 1) buying compatible parts (there are websites for this, or if you shop in person they'll be more than happy to help), then 2) matching plug labeled A to socket labeled A.
    - Krasnol 7mo ago
      Nah. They're all apple users.
- gosub100 7mo ago
  This is another way they rip off consumers. In a perfect world, the license would be resalable for someone else, just like you can sell a used Blu-ray. During piracy cases, they clamor about their "intellectual property". Ok so that means it's not physical, and once one person is done, they can sell it to someone else who needs it.
prox 7mo ago
This.. give me the - option - to not be an ad infested hellhole of an OS and sell me a product.
Ranxer 7mo ago
Better yet: don't pick any poison at all -- both System76 and Tuxedo Computers (as examples, sometimes you can buy a latop without an OS and save the money, same goes for PCs) offer laptops with Linux installed: no Microslop tax, and hardware that's guaranteed to work with OSS.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- alexb_ 7mo ago
  Most people want a computer that works with their software. No, "learn the FOSS version" is not a solution. Especially because nearly everyone has some niche thing they like, some 5% that isn't covered by the FOSS solutions, that only a niche Windows program can actually do correctly. And that doesn't even get into gaming.
  - randoadmin 7mo ago
    Well, considering that you can run almost anything (excluding games and specialized graphics software) with 99.99999% guaranteed result via WinApps, I don't see what the issue is for a hypothetical member of the majority population. It's not 2016 anymore, you don't have to switch to LibreOffice if you need an office suite of apps. That obviously would be preferable, but if you're an avid Microsoft ecosystem user, just use WinApps. It's simple enough to the point that a child could use it.
    - bonoboTP 7mo ago
      What percentage of MS Office user can, in your estimation, complete the steps as described in this readme? https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps
      - alexb_ 7mo ago
        Even skipping the first step (which requires a second readme) the next step involves opening a terminal. Instant fail. The entire point of an operating system is to make computers usable without knowing how they work, what a file is, what a command is, or having to look up anything. If something needs to be done, it needs a GUI. Linux is an important operating system, but anyone under the delusion that it is desktop ready right now needs to actually watch someone use it. I say this not because I hate linux, but because I love it. I want someone to make it usable for a desktop, and people claiming that it is usable right now are not helping that.
jorvi 7mo ago
I mean, this goes way beyond OSes. Look at the mobile YouTube client. The bottom navigation bar has the "+" create button stuffed right in the middle of it, larger than any other button. What % of users creates YouTube content? Probably <1%. What pp of those do it in the mobile YouTube client? Probably 0.1%. Yet the button is there, with no way to disable it. In general, why don't apps have a "creator" toggle, off-by-default, that optimized the entire UI for viewing / consuming? Just how apps like Uber have either an entire separate app for 'partners', or toggle. I know the reason this happens is because we aren't the real customers of an app. Nor are the creators / partners. The real customers are the shareholders. And YouTube has no competitor, so they can go buckwild with anything that synthetically increases KPIs. I think the only app in recent memory that I have seen right the ship is Spotify. The past year they have introduced a lot of toggles for things like the shuffle algorithm, the dumb looping album art videos, audio loudness normalization being split out into normalization and compression ('volume'), etc; About the only thing that's missing is a toggle to disable podcasts, just like YouTube needs a toggle to completely disable shorts. Any PMs reading this, be our hero. Fight the good fight.
- numpad0 7mo ago
  That's a terrible idea. The greatest thing about the Internet is that there's no segregation between creators and consumers. TV has it. Only TV program production companies can create shows. That literally undermine ... a lot of things. We don't need that.
  - mort96 7mo ago
    There seems to be a pretty wide gulf between "segregate consumers and content creators" and "please let me make it so that I can remove/disable the huge central button I never use that takes up a lot of space and is super easy to accidentally hit"
- mort96 7mo ago
  YouTube in general is such a good example. A while ago, they introduced the Home page with algorithmic recommendations; okay, it sucks that you can't choose whether Home or Subscriptions is the default, but at least you can choose between the algorithmic recommendations and the chronological subscriptions feed. Then they introduced Shorts. These are algorithmic ally recommended TikToks which you can't disable, they always litter both the Subscriptions page and the Home page. This sucks. Then, recently, they added algorithmic recommendations to Subscriptions. So if you're on Home you see only algorithmic recommendations, and if you're on Subscriptions, a lot of your screen is still taken up by algorithmically recommended videos from channels you subscribe to. Every one of these steps is in the direction of making sure you watch what YouTube wants you to watch instead of what you want to watch.
geophile 7mo ago
On the Linux subreddits recent, I have seen a great increase in two kinds of posts: 1) That’s it, I’ve had it, windows is dead to me, I have moved/will move to Linux. Help me pick a distro. 2) I’d love to get off window and move to Linux but I can’t because it doesn’t have an app that works identically to word/excel/photoshop/whatever.
njovin 7mo ago
I hate to sound like an apologist but it seems unfair to me to lump MS and Apple into the same bucket here. Yes, Apple has a 'walled garden' to an extent, but I've never once worried about MacOS serving me an ad from a third party, and their privacy controls are top notch and seem to get better as advertisers attack methods get more sophisticated. I can count on one hand the number of times I've had to jump through a few hoops to get an unsigned app installed, and each time it's been relatively painless.

jacquesm 7mo ago

What bugged me for years is that I ended up paying the microsoft or apple tax that way. In the end I figured out a more efficient way around that than any of the rebates/refunds: just buy second hand hardware. Someone else paid for and used the windows license, I just need the box.

raddan 7mo ago
If you don’t need a laptop, you can also build a machine from parts. This is probably the best way to run a desktop computer.
- jacquesm 7mo ago
  Anybody on HN that didn't know that you can build a machine from parts or isn't capable do doing so is probably on the wrong website ;)
  - tmtvl 7mo ago
    I have two left hands (and one of them is backwards) and components spontaneously disintegrate when I touch them. I know I'm not capable of building a computer so I bought mine from Tuxedo computers, who sell computers running GNU/Linux. I might be the GNU/Linux whisperer who manages to not have any major issues, but that doesn't correlate with the type of technical aptitude which would let me turn a heap of components into a working machine. I even managed to break a laptop by trying to replace the CMOS battery.
    - jacquesm 7mo ago
      Hah! You're like one of my family members. We keep her away from anything electronic because the failure rate in her presence can not be accounted for by accident alone. Oh, and laptops are nasty. They are put together in ways that can easily confound you when you have plenty of experience. Lots of it revolves around little pieces of plastic that are marginal when new and that just want to break by the time the device needs service. It's a conspiracy! Anyway, at least you know it can be done. The conditional still holds.
    - OkayPhysicist 7mo ago
      Making any hardware changes whatsoever to a laptop is dramatically more complicated than building a desktop. It very much is just a matter of 1) buying compatible parts (there are websites for this, or if you shop in person they'll be more than happy to help), then 2) matching plug labeled A to socket labeled A.
  - Krasnol 7mo ago
    Nah. They're all apple users.
gosub100 7mo ago
This is another way they rip off consumers. In a perfect world, the license would be resalable for someone else, just like you can sell a used Blu-ray. During piracy cases, they clamor about their "intellectual property". Ok so that means it's not physical, and once one person is done, they can sell it to someone else who needs it.

prox 7mo ago

This.. give me the - option - to not be an ad infested hellhole of an OS and sell me a product.

Ranxer 7mo ago

Better yet: don't pick any poison at all -- both System76 and Tuxedo Computers (as examples, sometimes you can buy a latop without an OS and save the money, same goes for PCs) offer laptops with Linux installed: no Microslop tax, and hardware that's guaranteed to work with OSS.

deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
alexb_ 7mo ago
Most people want a computer that works with their software. No, "learn the FOSS version" is not a solution. Especially because nearly everyone has some niche thing they like, some 5% that isn't covered by the FOSS solutions, that only a niche Windows program can actually do correctly. And that doesn't even get into gaming.
- randoadmin 7mo ago
  Well, considering that you can run almost anything (excluding games and specialized graphics software) with 99.99999% guaranteed result via WinApps, I don't see what the issue is for a hypothetical member of the majority population. It's not 2016 anymore, you don't have to switch to LibreOffice if you need an office suite of apps. That obviously would be preferable, but if you're an avid Microsoft ecosystem user, just use WinApps. It's simple enough to the point that a child could use it.
  - bonoboTP 7mo ago
    What percentage of MS Office user can, in your estimation, complete the steps as described in this readme? https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps
    - alexb_ 7mo ago
      Even skipping the first step (which requires a second readme) the next step involves opening a terminal. Instant fail. The entire point of an operating system is to make computers usable without knowing how they work, what a file is, what a command is, or having to look up anything. If something needs to be done, it needs a GUI. Linux is an important operating system, but anyone under the delusion that it is desktop ready right now needs to actually watch someone use it. I say this not because I hate linux, but because I love it. I want someone to make it usable for a desktop, and people claiming that it is usable right now are not helping that.

jorvi 7mo ago

I mean, this goes way beyond OSes. Look at the mobile YouTube client. The bottom navigation bar has the "+" create button stuffed right in the middle of it, larger than any other button. What % of users creates YouTube content? Probably <1%. What pp of those do it in the mobile YouTube client? Probably 0.1%. Yet the button is there, with no way to disable it. In general, why don't apps have a "creator" toggle, off-by-default, that optimized the entire UI for viewing / consuming? Just how apps like Uber have either an entire separate app for 'partners', or toggle. I know the reason this happens is because we aren't the real customers of an app. Nor are the creators / partners. The real customers are the shareholders. And YouTube has no competitor, so they can go buckwild with anything that synthetically increases KPIs. I think the only app in recent memory that I have seen right the ship is Spotify. The past year they have introduced a lot of toggles for things like the shuffle algorithm, the dumb looping album art videos, audio loudness normalization being split out into normalization and compression ('volume'), etc; About the only thing that's missing is a toggle to disable podcasts, just like YouTube needs a toggle to completely disable shorts. Any PMs reading this, be our hero. Fight the good fight.

numpad0 7mo ago
That's a terrible idea. The greatest thing about the Internet is that there's no segregation between creators and consumers. TV has it. Only TV program production companies can create shows. That literally undermine ... a lot of things. We don't need that.
- mort96 7mo ago
  There seems to be a pretty wide gulf between "segregate consumers and content creators" and "please let me make it so that I can remove/disable the huge central button I never use that takes up a lot of space and is super easy to accidentally hit"
mort96 7mo ago
YouTube in general is such a good example. A while ago, they introduced the Home page with algorithmic recommendations; okay, it sucks that you can't choose whether Home or Subscriptions is the default, but at least you can choose between the algorithmic recommendations and the chronological subscriptions feed. Then they introduced Shorts. These are algorithmic ally recommended TikToks which you can't disable, they always litter both the Subscriptions page and the Home page. This sucks. Then, recently, they added algorithmic recommendations to Subscriptions. So if you're on Home you see only algorithmic recommendations, and if you're on Subscriptions, a lot of your screen is still taken up by algorithmically recommended videos from channels you subscribe to. Every one of these steps is in the direction of making sure you watch what YouTube wants you to watch instead of what you want to watch.

geophile 7mo ago

On the Linux subreddits recent, I have seen a great increase in two kinds of posts: 1) That’s it, I’ve had it, windows is dead to me, I have moved/will move to Linux. Help me pick a distro. 2) I’d love to get off window and move to Linux but I can’t because it doesn’t have an app that works identically to word/excel/photoshop/whatever.

njovin 7mo ago

I hate to sound like an apologist but it seems unfair to me to lump MS and Apple into the same bucket here. Yes, Apple has a 'walled garden' to an extent, but I've never once worried about MacOS serving me an ad from a third party, and their privacy controls are top notch and seem to get better as advertisers attack methods get more sophisticated. I can count on one hand the number of times I've had to jump through a few hoops to get an unsigned app installed, and each time it's been relatively painless.