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Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps on My PC Without Asking

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Re: Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps on My PC Without Asking

#141
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they are going all wrong at that. people dont buy apple because of the walled garden or spyware or iphoto bugs that expose your pictures. they buy apple despite all that. if microsoft can produce better and more innovative hardware, which they already did with the surface line, they could have kept windows xp model of online isolation and not only got the people that want the flashy hardware but also the people that…

FWIW, the new Microsoft games are actively maintained with new content and features on a regular basis, whereas the classic Minesweeper/Solitaire EXEs (which you can easily copy onto a Windows 10 PC) weren't modified beyond bugfixes for somewhere around a decade and a half. Microsoft Jigsaw is perhaps my grandma's favorite thing ever, and the $20 yearly cost for premium (ad-free) is well-worth it to her.

> FWIW, the new Microsoft games are actively maintained with new content and features on a regular basis, whereas the classic Minesweeper/Solitaire EXEs (which you can easily copy onto a Windows 10 PC) weren't modified beyond bugfixes for somewhere around a decade and a half.

it's not a good thing as they're using the opportunity to infest these programs with ads

Solitaire on Windows now has ads, and don't get me started on the new calculator

Re: Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps on My PC Without Asking

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people use monitors with 144hz refresh rates. And increased FPS means you can turn graphics up, or enable more sophisticated anti-aliasing solutions, without impacting absolute performance.

My point is that the difference isn't going to be enough to be meaningful. If your GPU can drive 144 FPS on your Windows install it can probably drive 144 FPS on your Linux install with the same graphics settings.

I'm just noting why it's not "just a pissing contest". You're right that performance will be similar for games which were built with cross-OS compatibility in mind. But the differences in performance do matter.

Re: Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps on My PC Without Asking

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> especially for professional users and gamers. Those whose applications are only available for Windows. I have gotten around this with a virtualized Windows installation for CAD applications. The Windows VM goes online for software activation only. With VFIO, a dedicated graphics card, and an nVME SSD I don't feel any performance degradation. The graphics card and nVME drive are passed directly to the VM. Some simpl…

What hypervisor are you using to do this?

works out of the box on debian stable with KVM these days, assuming your hardware supports it

Re: Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps on My PC Without Asking

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if a game performs better on PC, whose to say it isn't optimized? Some of Vavle's own games have performed better via the Linux build compared to Windows or Mac. It's also super sketchy to not be able to see what's fully happening in one's system.

How do you feel about the closed BIOS and Management Engine that underlie everything?

in my case, it makes me feel double-plus un-good. which is why I go to the trouble of killing the ME on any system I can, despite the at-best trivial impact of doing so.

Re: Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps on My PC Without Asking

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW there are some games on those systems i'd love to play (Last of Us being an example), but at least i know that they'll eventually be emulated so even if it takes 10, 15 or whatever years i'll play them at some point. But the two major differences between what you are talking about and what others are talking about are that a) we have the hardware, it is totally a software issue and b) we are mainly talking for s…

>we are mainly talking for software we already have paid for, not software we may or may not buy in the future. A solution for this is to set up dual boot or whatever and use it only for the Windows-only games, until you get bored of them. Then kill Windows and you're free.

This is the exact path I took ~15 years ago. Once I realized I didn't care much for the 'exclusively windows' games, I killed my windows partition and haven't looked back since. The exciting twist to this story is that many of those games are now playable on Linux because of Wine!

Re: Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps on My PC Without Asking

#146
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PS4 is also a closed ecosystem, far more so than PC gaming on Windows? Inevitably people end up with a requirement for some Windows program that trips up users or administrators in the workplace. Some workplaces (e.g. mine) are fully paid-up committed Microsoft shops where everyone has MSDN.

>PS4 is also a closed ecosystem, far more so than PC gaming on Windows? Baby steps. I don't own a PS4 anyway, but I'm so tired of discussing Windows with people who whine about losing their games that I feel the need to specify an out.

"Just use Linux."

"Well, maybe I would, but this program I use frequently is not available on Linux."

"So? You shouldn't want to use that anyway."

With a sales pitch like this I can't believe the Year of the Linux Desktop hasn't come to fruition yet.

Re: Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps on My PC Without Asking

#147
post #82
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More and more games are coming to Linux, for sure (I'm a huge fan of games on Linux!), but Linux still is missing the latest-and-greatest AAA titles... think the Call of Duty's, Battlefield's, Skyrim's, Fallout's, Wolfenstein's... and many many more.

I find that as I grow older I'm less and less interested in the design-by-commitee AAA crap. The really interesting stuff is mostly in the small fry scene, and those tend to be cross platform. I do have a Windows install specifically for gaming, but I haven't booted it in ages. Edit: my main entertainment IS games.

My experience is most of the indy games coming out I’m interested in are windows only. Also really good games this generation like Divinity 2 have no Linux support

Re: Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps on My PC Without Asking

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is OS X any different? I feel like Microsoft's largely playing catch-up in that regard.

Yes it doesn't install trash like Candy Crush and Farmville, or even Facebook. It does try to ram iCloud down your throat but that's just about acceptable given that it is an Apple product and doesn't spam you.

It sure spams me with password prompts all the god damn time though

Re: Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps on My PC Without Asking

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using their products, you can so easily taste how Microsoft is trying to become an "ecosystem", a "lifestyle brand", a "platform", and so on, and to use their OS as the relentless foot in the door for getting there. I think the irony of that statement is from Windows 3.1 and on Windows (25-ish years) was already THE defacto PC platform. I was a pretty big MS fanboy for a long time (and make my living with .NET and th…

Indented text in HN is monospace and respects newlines (no word wrapping). This makes it unreadable on mobile unless the lines are very short. The generally preferred way to quote on HN is to begin the line with a > and wrap the quote with * if desired. It's an issue that comes up too often that HN needs to fix, but here we are.

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Re: Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps on My PC Without Asking

#150
post #3

I set up my brother in-law's new HP laptop he got from Costco and I had to spend over 2 hours removing crap from it. The amount of crapware installed (and a lot of them are MS apps) is unreal.

most of it will come back when he gets a new major update

it's a feature!

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