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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

#171

Post by soared »

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.

Trivial for someone who could use linux. 99.9% of computer users don't even know dual booting is possible.

Also my laptop literally cannot have linux installed on it thanks to UEFI.

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

#172

Post by Karunamon »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #97
duncan_bayne wrote: post #89

Many (most?) people on Hacker News might be too young to remember the Halloween Documents. They were internal Microsoft documents describing their proposed strategy for dealing with competition from then-new Free Software alternatives: http://www.catb.org/esr/halloween/ If you want to understand why Microsoft is acting the way they are, read those documents. It's not that I think they are still executing the strategi…

Those memos are over 20 years old. You can't point to something 20 years old and say "see, they did it before therefore that's what's happening today". I'm not a fan of what they're doing with some of the Windows 10 defaults. But you gotta be crazy to not see the user improvements they've done in so many other areas. They are a very, very different company than they were back then. I'm not saying that excuses anythin…

In the same way, you also can't say "That's 20 years old and not relevant anymore". Appeal to novelty fallacy and all that.

Are they really that different of a company? Microsoft is huge, organizational memory is long, and decisions made long ago, whether rational or mere cargo culting, will affect how they run today.

I'd argue they're a bit more cunning, but not one whit less underhanded. The EU browser ballot thing was considerably more recent, for instance. The forced W10 upgrades with the trick X dialog. Dark patterns surrounding use of a Microsoft account. Non-disableable telemetry. Hawking Edge in a way that would even make Chrome blush [1].

I think they know that they can't be as overt anymore; a couple of antitrust suits will do that to you.

[1]: https://i.imgur.com/W56CuN6.jpg

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

#173

Post by gmueckl »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #132
falcolas wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An open source project for external customers (i.e. us) operated by a bunch of unpaid volunteers will never really be able to compete with an application with paid developers, invested users, and the supporting departments. I'm not saying that open source projects can't get better, that they can't be good, but they will never be as good. For a corollary: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/936629310785437696

> An open source project ... will never be able to compete with ... pays developers ... There are plenty of examples where they have done just that. Blender is probably the most obvious.

Blender is just the worst example that you could have picked. It is a tiny toy compared to the commercial packages in that field. It is like GIMP: just enough for those with simple needs.

KDE 3 would have been a much better example. But these days are gone, too.

What about R and Jenkins? Are there paid developers working on these?

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

#174

Post by sofaofthedamned »

EpicEng wrote: post #162
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.

How the loving fuck can you expect to change the terms of engagement with your OS after it's released and not expect to lose business?

I know for a fact the malware analysis software we used are now planning a Linux version. I've literally persuaded a multinational to not continue using .net and Windows servers because of my argument that it's not sustainable. They alone are tens of thousands of Windows licenses that may go to Red Hat or even Centos or Ubuntu.

Windows has already started to go - my son doesn't know how to use it, all he's used is Google Docs or an iPhone / iPad. There is no love for Windows, only halcyon remembrances from the likes of myself who remembered the golden days of MSDN subscriptions. There is literally not a startup on the planet who will decide 'fuck it, we'll use a windows domain and Office instead of o365 or Google Apps.

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

#175

Post by emodendroket »

EpicEng wrote: post #162
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.

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

Active Directory is really powerful in a way that, as far as I know, alternatives are not.

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

#176

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

emodendroket wrote: post #164
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 l…

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

The only one that comes to mind is that one Wii U emulator. Xenia doesn't support Linux but it's open source and the lack of support more a reflection of its relative immaturity than not being possible (I'm certain a Linux port will come eventually, I was even working on it myself for a while).

>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.

If the formatting of a docx looks wrong in LibreOffice that's not really a big deal if you can still read the content, which is usually the case. Writing new documents should use ODF, which MSWord supports fine (often transparently, non-technical users will probably see a file with the same MSWord icon and no file extension).

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

#177

Post by sofaofthedamned »

orf wrote: post #166
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?

Good point - didn't work because of clock skew, which I assume was related to activation. Also, we didn't want to cheat the licensing, by whichever measure.

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

#178

Post by Sir_Substance »

suby wrote: post #96
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…

Maybe I'm misreading this, but if I'm not, just posting to let you know that Stellaris definitely has a Linux port.

I know, I've been playing it tonnes. Looking forward very much to the new expansion, it's gonna be a great shakeup.

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

#179

Post by emodendroket »

badsectoracula wrote: post #167
swaggyBoatswain wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, sure, and DirectX applications could all be written as OpenGL applications instead. But who's going to do that work?

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

#180

Post by sofaofthedamned »

emodendroket wrote: post #175
EpicEng wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

> I don't disagree with anything else you said, admin'ing windows boxes is a terrible experience. Active Directory is really powerful in a way that, as far as I know, alternatives are not.

Agreed, it's awesome. I'm saying we didn't need it, and if you are a startup you probably don't need it either.
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