by boba7 on 7/3/21, 10:18 AM with 167 comments
by olivierestsage on 7/3/21, 10:56 AM
I know that this post is peak HackerNews hipsterism/"old man yells at cloud," so I want to try to make it constructive: what can be done, at this point? What is the strategic move, beyond something like going with Linux or BSD for personal use? Is it too late and we've entered "hope for the best" territory?
Edit: To clarify, I do already use Linux, which wasn't clear from my initial wording. It's just that I worry it isn't "enough."
by Zhyl on 7/3/21, 12:27 PM
You may not like it, you may go back to Windows and decide that the dark patterns are worth the cost of things 'just working' etc, but I implore you to at least give it a go. Burn a Live USB. Boot it up and have a look around. If you're coming from Windows 10, try Linux mint or anything with the 'Cinnamon' Desktop.
I say this mostly because the Hackernews crowd is generally pro-Linux as a concept, but sceptical of Linux as a daily driver. Those that do use it as a daily driver will (in my anecdotal experience) have been using it for 5-10 years or more and will have been used to making a good deal of compromises, or are tech savvy enough to have been able to fix things in the bad times.
But in the last few years desktops have gotten really good. You will likely find one that you like out of the latest versions of Cinnamon, KDE or Gnome. Or MATE/XFCE/LMQT if you want to go back for a lightning-quick old school feel.
Since 2018, thousands of games now work. It's now 'good enough' for pretty much all single player games. I ask people who haven't tried Linux since before then to have another try (or at the very least to look up the games they play on ProtonDB to see if they would work nowadays).
In short, a larger (albeit probably still small) number of people who would have jumped the Windows ship in 2015 instead of going to 10 will actually be able to do so now instead of upgrading to Windows 11.
by xg15 on 7/3/21, 12:29 PM
I think this sums up the issues I have with most of the discussions where "consumer choice" or "personal responsibility" are touted.
Yes, those are valid and important concepts - but if a company is emphasizing "choice" while at the same time having a vital interest that people "choose" against their own interests (or even manipulating people to that effect), the argument becomes obvious bullshit.
It's like food companies emphasizing "consumer choice" whenever stricter regulations are on the table, yet at the same time opposing anything that would actually allow consumers to make an informed choice (like easy to understand nutrition labels).
by Santosh83 on 7/3/21, 11:44 AM
by tpoacher on 7/3/21, 1:01 PM
by jlkuester7 on 7/3/21, 1:12 PM
The final nail in the coffin of Windows for me is Steam Play. So many of my Windows games just work, right out of the box on Linux. It feels like magic compared to the old days of trying to hack together a workable Wine config...
by nirui on 7/3/21, 1:51 PM
- https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10...
- https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10...
- https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10...
Or just search "Microsoft Account Problem".
by nly on 7/3/21, 11:00 AM
by sschueller on 7/3/21, 10:58 AM
I wish everything I needed ran in linux.
by siddhant09 on 7/4/21, 7:54 AM
You want to render a complete VR map of a nation? Maybe you require petabytes of ram and compute power of a today's server farm? Worry not, your phone weighing 140g can do it, all by leveraging cloud compute.
Even if this future doesn't materialize, incentives for MS are clear and this requirement shall open up more integration opportunities than before.
Also there is no competition.
Linux has the following problems which have largely remained unsolved, since the community fails to even recognize them as an issue.
1. No 1080p or 4K video playback on Netflix.
2. Not even 720p video playback on Amazon Prime Video.
3. Games take a performance hit.
4. Single click installations of .deb almost never works. .exe and .dmg are a much better user experience.
5. Ubuntu store is broken. It sometime loads, most times it doesn't.
6. Absence of Adobe.
7. An average user is expected to open up terminal when things go wrong and thing often do go wrong.
An OS company can divide their customers into Developers, Video/Audio Editors, Content Consumption, Office work and Gamers. Linux only and only caters to us Developers.
by kijin on 7/3/21, 11:03 AM
Is that meant to make you feel like you'd be missing out on something? Do people still fall for this kind of language, or is it just the marketing department patting themselves on the back?
Yeah, I'd love to cripple my own ability to get "recommended content" (we all know what that is) from anywhere at all.
by shrubble on 7/3/21, 12:49 PM
Such as the Teensy 4.1, which can run CPM in emulation among other things. With a large capacity SD card, you could store a great deal of info on a non-compromised device.
I believe that people will start using them as secure methods to store personal information away from the prying eyes of Microsoft et al.
by isodev on 7/3/21, 11:15 AM
Combine that with the fact that "essential telemetry" can't be disabled by normal means (and thus Windows will continue to send "diagnostic" data to Microsoft) and it seems one's PC is not unlike one's Android phone...
One of the most commented features of Windows 11 seems to be the ability to run Android apps. I was very excited about it... but then, if I want to use my Android apps on Windows 11, I am going to need not only my Google account, but also my Microsoft account and something called an Amazon account. That's a lot of accounts to just run an app. A lot of third parties to share my personal data with. A lot of Terms of Service to read and a lot of GDPR "consent" clicks for me to give away my privacy.
While I definitely appreciate "end to end" working ecosystems, it was always a bit of a relief to be able to go back to an "open" PC. I guess that choice is still available, as long as it's not powered by Windows.
by jftuga on 7/3/21, 1:55 PM
by e-clinton on 7/3/21, 11:40 AM
by sstephant on 7/3/21, 11:24 AM
by everyone on 7/3/21, 11:18 AM
(ps. I cant switch to Linux 100%, I need to use windows for work as I am a game dev.. It's probably possible to do my job entirely in linux with wine and whatnot, but in software development it is a pretty bad idea to make ones job unnecessarily more difficult and complicated, and throw up barriers to shipping)
by _Understated_ on 7/3/21, 2:08 PM
I've been on Windows forever. Since DOS 3 or 4 I think (giving away my age there!) and until recently (last few years) it has fulfilled every one of my requirements, that is, games, development, consumption.
I'm a .NET developer so the Windows ecosystem was a no-brainer: Visual Studio just works... sort of. As an end-user everything works: I don't need to install drivers, hit the command line or anything.
Windows has been great over the years.
However...
The last few years have been a downward spiral. Not just downward, but accelerating downwards.
It started (for me at least!) with the forced upgrade from Windows 7 (or 8, can't remember), then came the utterly shit Windows updates - The updates for Windows 10 are shite. Plain and simple. A couple of years ago I'd had enough so I disabled Windows updates so that I could install them well after their release date as I was sick of being their beta-tester. There are literally bugs with every update now. I know we are talking about a few years ago, but I absolutely did not have issues with updates on Windows 7. Ever! Windows 10 has at least one show-stopping bug every couple of months now (it seems like that anyway).
It's now getting to the point that not only do I have less control over my own paid-for installation of Windows, but each update reduces my control ever more... I've harped on about it before (not just in this post, but others too) but disabling updates is a lesson in frustration. It's possible to do it but if you update later, they are switched back on - happens every time!
Then there's the telemetry! I'm not going to labour this point as it has been done to death already over the years but the sheer fucking arrogance of a company that takes my money, reduces my control over my paid-for product, then says "oh, we're going to take data from your operating system whether you want us to or not" is beyond the pale! Yes, yes, I know Android spying is the stuff of legend but it has been like that from day one! It's how Google makes its money. Microsoft used to not be dicks about you having control over your OS. Those days are long gone.
Dark patterns! Let me say NO to things and then just fuck off please! Why does everything have to be infantilized? Why does the YES button say "Yes please! I want rainbows and unicorns" and the NO button say "I'm a climate-denying terrorist if I click this". Worse, is when the "no" button says "maybe later" or "not right now". I hate that crap. And why do you have to make the positive button (I say positive, but I mean the button that's more beneficial to Microsoft!) massive and outlined when the other one is tiny and just text? Microsoft aren't the only ones that do that... I need to point that out!
The need for the OS to constantly keep me informed, or tell me about X, or jump in my face with this thing, or show me the latest news tipped me over the edge.
I want my operating system to do the following:
1. Store and launch my software
2. Be secure
3. Stay out of my way!
That's it.
I've had a few goes at Ubuntu and found it lacking. Nothing major but a few annoying things related to hardware: sound popping, graphics glitching, FF crashing, printer stopping working. Stuff like that but I'm on Pop! OS now. Just installed 20.04 the other day after playing with 20.10 for a couple of weeks (not a fan of 21.04 and I like the LTS idea especially when my livelihood depends on said computer!).
I can still programme .NET stuff with Rider (getting the hang of it, it's quite nice and it is way more responsive than VS which has become a buggy nightmare over the years!). Docker allows me to run SQL server (still use that quite a lot) and, interestingly the Docker SQL image runs faster than SQL server when it was installed natively on my Windows box... weird! It's very noticeable too.
Anyway, I'm too old to fight with the OS any more, and POP! seems to be ticking all the right boxes for now. I have to keep a W10 VM around for a couple of things but it's off most of the day.
Edit: I had a go at the "leaked" version of Windows 11 and I wasn't enamored. As a friend of mine once said: "Same shite, different smell!"
by tim333 on 7/4/21, 11:38 AM
by fouric on 7/3/21, 1:02 PM
by c7DJTLrn on 7/3/21, 3:46 PM
by phendrenad2 on 7/3/21, 4:21 PM
by BiteCode_dev on 7/3/21, 12:50 PM
by 2Gkashmiri on 7/3/21, 11:34 AM
by anotheryou on 7/3/21, 11:20 AM
by lambada on 7/3/21, 10:48 AM
So a version that does let you install with just a local account right off the bat is a strict improvement from my point of view.
Maybe the article authors were unaware of that change to the Windows 10 install process - it certainly would explain the odd slanting.
Edit: interesting, from the replies it looks like you either have to not connect to the network or say you are going to join a domain (which was untrue in my case) that explains why i couldn’t find the option then!