6 ms·

Not computer users, just the windows users. I never understood the install wizards for windows software, in 99% of the time you just click "next" until it stop

by givan 14y ago

Not computer users, just the windows users. I never understood the install wizards for windows software, in 99% of the time you just click "next" until it stops asking for more "next". And now they all sneak garbage adware with the check boxes enabled by default because most people just click "next" anyway. Also the whole download and install drivers/utilities etc after installation is very time consuming because the OS has almost nothing bundled and what is bundled is MS only like internet explorer, nothing you can choose in that "next" wizard. Windows is like a granny in the OS world, she needs to retire.

TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
>I never understood the install wizards for windows software, in 99% of the time you just click "next" until it stops asking for more "next". Well, if you use the Windows Store to get applications, you can finally get rid of them. >the OS has almost nothing bundled Really? Windows 8, for instance, comes with much of what you'd need. It's bundles a lot more than previous versions of windows >nothing you can choose in that "next" wizard. I'm not quite sure what this means.
- givan 14y ago
  >I'm not quite sure what this means. I was referring to the fact that Microsoft does not bundle multiple browsers to choose from and forces everyone to have IE installed and unfortunately most users don't understand what a browser is to fix this. And this is the reason web developers had nightmares with IE6 in the past and some still have with IE7.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
    Microsoft shouldn't bundle multiple browsers. Now, I can see your point that they don't exactly provide others (except in the EU)... but I'm not sure this is really such a bad thing.
  - gizmo686 14y ago
    What operating system does bundle multiple browsers?
  - randomchars 14y ago
    By that logic MS should also bundle multiple video and audio player, calculators, image editors, file explorers, email clients and who knows what else. And what's that if not bloatware?
eli 14y ago
This is nonsense fanboism. Modern versions of Windows are extremely similar to OS X from a usability perspective. OS X has plenty of counterintuitive warts. Computers of any flavor are pretty hard to use. > I never understood the install wizards for windows software... I never understood why half the time when I download Mac software and double click it, nothing seems to happen because it's a "disk image" (talk about an outdated concept), which means I have to know to navigate to the Finder, find the actual thing I want, and then remember to unmount the image when I'm done.
- givan 14y ago
  >This is nonsense fanboism I'm not a fanboy, I didn't mention apple or anything else, I used ubuntu for a long time and it doesn't have this kind of problems.
- notatoad 14y ago
  Modern versions of windows are extremely similar from a usability perspective, sure. But that's windows as defined by microsoft, and OSX as defined by apple. The problem occurs because third parties try to shoehorn all kinds of crap into windows applications and onto the windows desktop. There's nothing wrong with windows in theory, but in practice there sure are a lot of people trying to fuck up windows. It's much less of a problem on other operating systems.
  - smacktoward 14y ago
    there sure are a lot of people try to fuck up windows. It's much less of a problem on other operating systems. Possibly because Windows has many, many, many more users than other operating systems do. It's like the old urban legend about bank robber Willie Sutton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Sutton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Sutton) answering a reporter's query about why he robbed banks with "because that's where the money is." Crapware vendors focus on Windows because that's where the users are.
    - unimpressive 14y ago
      One of the major reasons genetic diversity is important is that it makes it harder for a population to be wiped out by infection. The windows monoculture is inevitably a victim of itself.
hoka 14y ago
yeah, I definitely prefer 'sudo apt get install this-thing && sudo pray-to-god-this-works'
- geon 14y ago
  Actually, there is a certain class of software that works amazingly well that well. Installing apache/php/mysql on linux with apt beats macports or plain windows so hard it's not even funny.
  - nivla 14y ago
    Installing part is easy, I agree but trying to uninstall either one of them leaves a mess behind. Configuration and other misc files are left behind so if your program does not start because the conf is corrupted, uninstalling and installing doesn't work. It seems though that Ubuntu never lets the program know that it is being uninstalled leaving behind a string of custom generated files.
    - Dylan16807 14y ago
      Well that's what purge rather than uninstall is for, does it not reliably wipe out configs?
      - nivla 14y ago
        I did on some occasions but it too din't do the job. It couldn't recognize the custom generated log and config files. I was stuck tracing those files and removing them manually. If I remember correctly this was for postfix/dovecot installations.
- ramgorur 14y ago
  well, the last time when I used windows was like sometime between 2006-2007, I never had to pray, everything seems to work just fine and smooth until now.
- spindritf 14y ago
pizza 14y ago
> And now they all sneak garbage adware with the check boxes enabled by default because most people just click "next" anyway. While I agree that OEM computers come installed with a lot of crap, that's not a Windows problem, that's an OEM problem. > Also the whole download and install drivers/utilities etc after installation is very time consuming because the OS has almost nothing bundle The OS part of Windows is about 2 gigabytes (tried looking for source, but couldn't find one. Although this explains how you can fit a bootable emergency windows suite on a flash drive). The many other gigabytes are drivers. Plus, it's pretty disingenuous to blame Microsoft for Windows not supporting 3rd party devices, even though Windows checks for driver updates automatically.
- CountSessine 14y ago
  While I agree that OEM computers come installed with a lot of crap, that's not a Windows problem, that's an OEM problem. Windows is as successful as it is because of Microsoft's cooperation with crappy OEMs who are only too happy to betray their customers for a quick buck. You can't have Windows without the OEMs - show me the Microsoft PC you plan to buy. Microsoft does the best they can, working within their constraints, but at the end of the day they're throwing their product over the fence and letting someone else package it. And you can't have good OEMs because Microsoft's PC strategy - with WHQL, PNP, UEFI, ACPI, and just about every other hardware initiative they've participated in, has been to make it difficult for hardware manufacturers to innovate in creative, non-standard ways without Microsoft's prior consent. Hence the race to the bottom among PC manufacturers. Cheap PCs, yes, but there's not much room for innovation that hasn't been green-lighted in some way by Microsoft and so the only PC manufacturers who do well are those who can survive on thin margins. So yes, it is a Windows problem.
  - internetf1fan 14y ago
    Erm no the DoJ anti trust ruling means that Ms can't dictate what the oems can or can't install on their machines.
    - CountSessine 14y ago
mendocino 14y ago
> Not computer users, just the windows users. Well, on a new Ubuntu installation the first thing I have to do now is: sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping But still way better than the crap windows users have to put up with.
legulere 14y ago
I think every OS has lots of crap burden. On linux you have complicated unnecesary things geeks will defend to death. On OS X I recently tried to install octave. How I did it: Step 1: Create an Apple Store account. Credit cards aren't so common here because bank transfers are basicly free and you automaticly get a debit card from your bank that is universally accepted. If you try to create an account directly you will fail if you don't have a credit card. You need to "purchase" a free App to be able to create an account without credit card information. Step 2: Download Xcode and skim the licence agreement for 10 minutes so you don't sell your organs to Apple Step 3: Find the Console Development Tools installation somewhere hidden in the options of xcode Step 4: Install macports Step 5: Install octave with macports, this encompasses half an gentoo installation. Things already present on the system like the llvm from xcode get rebuild. This takes hours.
- squidsoup 14y ago
  You'd have had a better experience had you: 1. Installed Command Line Tools for Xcode instead of Xcode (you don't need the IDE now for build tools, and yes this used to be painful) 2. use homebrew instead of macports which is more actively maintained and generally works better

by givan 14y ago

TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago

>I never understood the install wizards for windows software, in 99% of the time you just click "next" until it stops asking for more "next". Well, if you use the Windows Store to get applications, you can finally get rid of them. >the OS has almost nothing bundled Really? Windows 8, for instance, comes with much of what you'd need. It's bundles a lot more than previous versions of windows >nothing you can choose in that "next" wizard. I'm not quite sure what this means.

givan 14y ago
>I'm not quite sure what this means. I was referring to the fact that Microsoft does not bundle multiple browsers to choose from and forces everyone to have IE installed and unfortunately most users don't understand what a browser is to fix this. And this is the reason web developers had nightmares with IE6 in the past and some still have with IE7.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
  Microsoft shouldn't bundle multiple browsers. Now, I can see your point that they don't exactly provide others (except in the EU)... but I'm not sure this is really such a bad thing.
- gizmo686 14y ago
  What operating system does bundle multiple browsers?
- randomchars 14y ago
  By that logic MS should also bundle multiple video and audio player, calculators, image editors, file explorers, email clients and who knows what else. And what's that if not bloatware?

eli 14y ago

This is nonsense fanboism. Modern versions of Windows are extremely similar to OS X from a usability perspective. OS X has plenty of counterintuitive warts. Computers of any flavor are pretty hard to use. > I never understood the install wizards for windows software... I never understood why half the time when I download Mac software and double click it, nothing seems to happen because it's a "disk image" (talk about an outdated concept), which means I have to know to navigate to the Finder, find the actual thing I want, and then remember to unmount the image when I'm done.

givan 14y ago
>This is nonsense fanboism I'm not a fanboy, I didn't mention apple or anything else, I used ubuntu for a long time and it doesn't have this kind of problems.
notatoad 14y ago
Modern versions of windows are extremely similar from a usability perspective, sure. But that's windows as defined by microsoft, and OSX as defined by apple. The problem occurs because third parties try to shoehorn all kinds of crap into windows applications and onto the windows desktop. There's nothing wrong with windows in theory, but in practice there sure are a lot of people trying to fuck up windows. It's much less of a problem on other operating systems.
- smacktoward 14y ago
  there sure are a lot of people try to fuck up windows. It's much less of a problem on other operating systems. Possibly because Windows has many, many, many more users than other operating systems do. It's like the old urban legend about bank robber Willie Sutton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Sutton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Sutton) answering a reporter's query about why he robbed banks with "because that's where the money is." Crapware vendors focus on Windows because that's where the users are.
  - unimpressive 14y ago
    One of the major reasons genetic diversity is important is that it makes it harder for a population to be wiped out by infection. The windows monoculture is inevitably a victim of itself.

hoka 14y ago

yeah, I definitely prefer 'sudo apt get install this-thing && sudo pray-to-god-this-works'

geon 14y ago
Actually, there is a certain class of software that works amazingly well that well. Installing apache/php/mysql on linux with apt beats macports or plain windows so hard it's not even funny.
- nivla 14y ago
  Installing part is easy, I agree but trying to uninstall either one of them leaves a mess behind. Configuration and other misc files are left behind so if your program does not start because the conf is corrupted, uninstalling and installing doesn't work. It seems though that Ubuntu never lets the program know that it is being uninstalled leaving behind a string of custom generated files.
  - Dylan16807 14y ago
    Well that's what purge rather than uninstall is for, does it not reliably wipe out configs?
    - nivla 14y ago
      I did on some occasions but it too din't do the job. It couldn't recognize the custom generated log and config files. I was stuck tracing those files and removing them manually. If I remember correctly this was for postfix/dovecot installations.
ramgorur 14y ago
well, the last time when I used windows was like sometime between 2006-2007, I never had to pray, everything seems to work just fine and smooth until now.
spindritf 14y ago

pizza 14y ago

> And now they all sneak garbage adware with the check boxes enabled by default because most people just click "next" anyway. While I agree that OEM computers come installed with a lot of crap, that's not a Windows problem, that's an OEM problem. > Also the whole download and install drivers/utilities etc after installation is very time consuming because the OS has almost nothing bundle The OS part of Windows is about 2 gigabytes (tried looking for source, but couldn't find one. Although this explains how you can fit a bootable emergency windows suite on a flash drive). The many other gigabytes are drivers. Plus, it's pretty disingenuous to blame Microsoft for Windows not supporting 3rd party devices, even though Windows checks for driver updates automatically.

CountSessine 14y ago
While I agree that OEM computers come installed with a lot of crap, that's not a Windows problem, that's an OEM problem. Windows is as successful as it is because of Microsoft's cooperation with crappy OEMs who are only too happy to betray their customers for a quick buck. You can't have Windows without the OEMs - show me the Microsoft PC you plan to buy. Microsoft does the best they can, working within their constraints, but at the end of the day they're throwing their product over the fence and letting someone else package it. And you can't have good OEMs because Microsoft's PC strategy - with WHQL, PNP, UEFI, ACPI, and just about every other hardware initiative they've participated in, has been to make it difficult for hardware manufacturers to innovate in creative, non-standard ways without Microsoft's prior consent. Hence the race to the bottom among PC manufacturers. Cheap PCs, yes, but there's not much room for innovation that hasn't been green-lighted in some way by Microsoft and so the only PC manufacturers who do well are those who can survive on thin margins. So yes, it is a Windows problem.
- internetf1fan 14y ago
  Erm no the DoJ anti trust ruling means that Ms can't dictate what the oems can or can't install on their machines.
  - CountSessine 14y ago

mendocino 14y ago

> Not computer users, just the windows users. Well, on a new Ubuntu installation the first thing I have to do now is: sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping But still way better than the crap windows users have to put up with.

legulere 14y ago

I think every OS has lots of crap burden. On linux you have complicated unnecesary things geeks will defend to death. On OS X I recently tried to install octave. How I did it: Step 1: Create an Apple Store account. Credit cards aren't so common here because bank transfers are basicly free and you automaticly get a debit card from your bank that is universally accepted. If you try to create an account directly you will fail if you don't have a credit card. You need to "purchase" a free App to be able to create an account without credit card information. Step 2: Download Xcode and skim the licence agreement for 10 minutes so you don't sell your organs to Apple Step 3: Find the Console Development Tools installation somewhere hidden in the options of xcode Step 4: Install macports Step 5: Install octave with macports, this encompasses half an gentoo installation. Things already present on the system like the llvm from xcode get rebuild. This takes hours.

squidsoup 14y ago
You'd have had a better experience had you: 1. Installed Command Line Tools for Xcode instead of Xcode (you don't need the IDE now for build tools, and yes this used to be painful) 2. use homebrew instead of macports which is more actively maintained and generally works better