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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

#161

Post by emodendroket »

badsectoracula wrote: post #158
emodendroket wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, when it comes to categories like games, video game console emulators, office productivity applications, document publishing, etc., the open-source alternatives are generally way worse.

Open source video game console emulators are certainly not worse. If anything, the best by far emulator (Dolphin) is open source, but even beyond that almost every open source VGC emulator is also open source and those emulators tend to be the most long running ones (almost always because the developers of the closed source emulators lose interest). For some systems, you have only open source emulators.

There are several systems where your only option is Windows, unless the situation has changed drastically since I last looked into it. I remember Dreamcast, Saturn, DS, PSP, and PS2 being in this category, and also the options for N64/PSX not being very good, the last time I was interested. Of course, someone can respond to arguments about any program being missing with "well, I don't care about those," but you can't expect anyone to find that persuasive if they're not already converted.

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

#162

Post by EpicEng »

sofaofthedamned wrote: post #157

For the last 15 years or so i've earned my money doing Linux stuff. Before then I was doing VB/.NET/SQL Server etc. January 2016 I worked at a secure facility that wanted an entire system doing malware analysis. The bare servers were running Linux, but some of the software used Windows so there were Windows VMs there. Usual KVM stuff. Bear in mind this is a closed system and the Windows VMs were ephemeral, i.e. had t…

>Windows is done

Your use case is very niche compared to how MS makes most of its money on Windows licenses. Windows isn't going anywhere until it's no longer pre-loaded on every machine, enterprise customers stop buying it completely, and Linux is much more user friendly on the desktop.

I don't disagree with anything else you said, admin'ing windows boxes is a terrible experience.

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

#163

Post by Sir_Substance »

TomMarius wrote: post #72
Sir_Substance wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's never that simple, especially for professional users and gamers. Those whose applications are only available for Windows. I'm both, and you're definitely wrong. 155 of my 343 steam games have direct native ports. I've just stopped playing stellaris and started playing KSP. I've been a linux gamer for the last three years and it's been a better experience, not worse. I dominate on ballistic overkill because the…

What about AutoCAD, Inventor, Photoshop, AfterEffects, Lightroom, ...?

Autocad/inventor->OpenScad/FreeCad

Photoshop->Gimp or just run it with wine

Lightroom->Darktable

Here's a few other pretty awesome art tools you might want to know about BTW: Krita Blender Inkscape

If we're doing "what abouts" though, what about:

freely interchangable desktop layouts

native docker support

a user-friendly terminal

an os kernel that is designed to be malware resistant

Like seriously buddy, the GUI desktop is now ~40 years old and windows /still/ can't support uninstalling the default desktop and installing your own. Custom launchers are one of the most downloaded android app categories, don't try to tell me people don't want it. But hey, at least windows finally got multiple desktops by cribbing the idea from linux after two decades of unsuccessfully trying to tell their customers that it wasn't really that good a feature.

If the best you can say about your operating system is "adobe supports it", which is what it seems like you're saying, then oh dear. Like, I get it, photoshop is pretty darn good. But for realsies, we're in a thread where the title post is about microsoft installing random crap on your computer without permission. This is the same company that is showing ads on your lock screen and start bar[1], has been formally chastised by national governments for it's handling of telemetry[2], autoinstalled updates that bricked peoples laptops[3] and then autoinstalled other updates that put other peoples computers in reboot loops[4]. They're gonna keep doing this stuff. For goodness sake, they incentivised peoples "upgrades" from windows 7 by installing nagware with a deliberately malicious UI[5], and attempting to directly cause professional conflict for sysadmins with stability concerns[6].

You're part of an eternal beta of questionable QA control at the hands of a company that has a documented history of behaving unethically. Do they have to send someone round to your house to kill and eat your cat in front of you before you decide you could maybe dig deep and stoop to learning gimp?

[1]https://www.pcworld.com/article/3039827/windows/7-ways-windo...

[2]http://www.zdnet.com/article/french-authorities-serve-notice...

[3]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/08/25/windows-10-...

[4]http://news.softpedia.com/news/windows-10-fall-creators-upda...

[5]https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/229040-microsofts-latest...

[6]https://www.windowschimp.com/admins-angered-new-windows-10-u...

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

#164

Post by emodendroket »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #153
emodendroket wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, when it comes to categories like games, video game console emulators, office productivity applications, document publishing, etc., the open-source alternatives are generally way worse.

>games See pretty much every other reply in this thread for my take on this >video game console emulators Wrong, most emulators are open source, support Linux, and work great. >office productivity applications "way worse" is a bit harsh for describing LibreOffice. It works quite well in my experience. >document publishing I don't know what this is supposed to be. LaTeX is pretty good, though.

> Wrong, most emulators are open source, support Linux, and work great.

As I said to the other guy, for a number of systems there's no emulator except the one on Windows.

> "way worse" is a bit harsh for describing LibreOffice. It works quite well in my experience.

Yeah, because your experience doesn't involve using the advanced features that have no analogue and you aren't overly concerned that the formatting will look totally different if someone opens it in MSOffice.

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

#165

Post by m_fayer »

emodendroket wrote: post #115
m_fayer wrote: post #21

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. To me it's another nail in the coffin of general purpose computing. We've accepted that mobile devices/OSs are not for general purpose computing and expect that they come with a "lifestyle" to hawk, now o…

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

It doesn't force restarts to install new "features" you never asked for and can't decline all while creepily reminding you that "don't forget, Windows is a service!"

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

#166

Post by orf »

sofaofthedamned wrote: post #157

For the last 15 years or so i've earned my money doing Linux stuff. Before then I was doing VB/.NET/SQL Server etc. January 2016 I worked at a secure facility that wanted an entire system doing malware analysis. The bare servers were running Linux, but some of the software used Windows so there were Windows VMs there. Usual KVM stuff. Bear in mind this is a closed system and the Windows VMs were ephemeral, i.e. had t…

Why not just snapshot the vms in a clean, updated state and reset them from there when needed?

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

#167

Post by badsectoracula »

swaggyBoatswain wrote: post #54
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gamers who bend over for the sake of their hobby are a pathetic bunch. Linux has many, many great games, and if that's not enough supplement it with a PS4 or something and you'll never be bored. Most professionals would have no problem using Linux for their needs. What applications are you suggesting aren't up to snuff?

There's a huge range of applications that are only macOS or windows only that are a miles better in everyway. For instance, apple's sketch. You won't find anything like it even on Windows. For instance, windows PC. You have a ton of native autohotkey applications for writing macros, powerful 3rd party file explorers like directoryOpus, etc. You can't play video games on it, naturally gamedevelopment is a hassle as we…

> You have a ton of native autohotkey applications for writing macros

Note that you can do that with X11 too using tools like xbindkeys, xdotool, xnee, xrebind, wmctrl, etc.

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

#168

Post by emodendroket »

juliangoldsmith wrote: post #155
emodendroket wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trivial to install both but a real hassle to actually use both.

Not really. You reboot your computer, and press a key to pick which one you want.

That, in itself, can be kind of annoying (interrupt all your downloads or whatever you are doing), and it doesn't get at the other issues -- having to run updates for both, having two incompatible filesystems where it's annoying to fetch a document from one and use it on the other, doubling the amount of setup and configuration you have to do, and so on. Every time I've set up a dual-boot system I've ended up just never using one of the options.

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

#169

Post by ShabbosGoy »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #121
youseecomrade wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of people who could use Linux exclusively (only need a browser, don't need Office compatibility, nothing fancy) buy a "just works" Windows laptop or tablet and I bet 99% of them don't even know what Linux is. Even then you get some weird cases like banking software not working on Linux and they ask you to install Windows again. And kids wants to play what their friends are playing, it's hard to break the…

I'm getting sick of this dichotomy. It's trivial to install both. Keep windows 10 on a partition big enough for your games/Netflix/etc., and use Debian/Archlinux/NixOS/whatever for everything else.

Netflix works fine on Linux. You can even run it on a Raspberry Pi.

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

#170

Post by psyc »

juliangoldsmith wrote: post #155
emodendroket wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trivial to install both but a real hassle to actually use both.

Not really. You reboot your computer, and press a key to pick which one you want.

Now explain to a not-super-technical user how to configure GRUB to boot Windows by default, or how to remove GRUB when they give up on Linux.
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