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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

#331

Post by orionblastar »

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.

Yes the DOJ was supposed to get rid of the Windows tax on every OEM PC sale, but did not.

Reactos, Haiku, AROS, OSFree, etc should all be considered as well and money invested in making them better and easier development tools for them to compete with Windows when Linux doesn't always work and a MacOS machine costs too much.

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

#332

Post by thomastjeffery »

emodendroket wrote: post #314
thomastjeffery wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When is the last time you used a major Linux distro? From my experience, installing and using Linux has been the most straightforward, especially compared to windows. And that's the point: we all have different experiences, so I think it's a bad idea to tell someone they are going to have your bad experiences of they try something new, because better software ends up getting a bad rap.

You don't seem to have any qualms about sharing negative Windows experiences. Is the claim here that I should never share my opinion of software I have used?

Negative experiences with windows are shared, because windows is proprietary, and therefore consistent. This entire thread is about one of them.

I haven't had any negative experience with CUPS, and if I had, that wouldn't define my experience with GNU/Linux.

I don't have an issue with you sharing experiences. I do get frustrated when those experiences are used to define GNU/Linux to those who haven't experienced it at all.

There are too many people who hear that GNU/Linux is not for them, when it is really a fantastic alternative to windows. There's an attitude that free software will always fail people (which is not true), and I find that attitude not simply unfortunate, but malicious.

The way that things improve is for manufacturers to see demand; and that won't happen if people don't see free software as the viable alternative that it is.

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

#333

Post by thomastjeffery »

coryfklein wrote: post #323
thomastjeffery wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Many computers these days have an SSD and an HDD. Is it trivial to dual boot in that case? Do you partition both? One? Which one? After partitioning, which partition do you install your OS on?

It's trivial.

You have your disks listed, each with its free/used space. You click the one you want to install to, and drag a slider to decide how much space to use.

That's how easy it was to install Ubuntu over a decade ago.

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

#334

Post by GordonS »

mcbits wrote: post #277
rjbwork wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that a bit expensive?

Not sure about this, but you may be able to run the 180-day trial as much as you want, as long as you're willing to reinstall every 180 days. I installed the 2008 and 2012 trials several times over the years and got the full trial each time, but I haven't tried it back-to-back after expiration.

I think you'd be on shaky legal ground there. In any case, it's a major hassle to reinstall your OS

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

#335

Post by GordonS »

hokkos wrote: post #91

Windows has a new feature called "Controlled Folder Access", it is a security mecanism that protect from ransomware. It is a great idea, but the implementation is annoying. It block write access to selected directories, so lot of software fail to add a link to the desktop, or add files in the Documents folder. It should have protect agains delete not new file creation. Also the default Defender antivirus is so slow,…

> Also the default Defender antivirus is so slow

Hah! You must not have used Mcafee Enterprise. I recently moved to Defender and the difference is startling - my laptop fans literally never stopped whining with Mcafee, as it was constantly gobbling CPU. With Defender, it remains silent, and CPU usage is low. I've used other AV systems too (e.g. Avira), and for sure they're better than Mcafee, but I'm impressed with Defender. Don't see any reason for me to use anything else.

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

#336

Post by Qerub »

x3sphere wrote: post #280

I only run Windows inside a VM now. The main reason I didn't switch to Linux sooner was because of games, but GPU passthrough works well enough now that I can dedicate my main GPU to a VM and get close to native performance (within 3-5%). Currently I have a Vega 64 configured for passthrough on a Threadripper 1950X system and it runs great. It's much more convenient than dual booting.

I find this solution interesting. What virtualization software do you use? In what way to do you expose input devices to the VM?

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

#337

Post by Toizi »

Sylos wrote: post #306
vbezhenar wrote: post #211

Those articles are funny because for me all previous Windows versions were unusable, but I've found Windows 10 just the best OS. I don't have Facebook preinstalled and even if it was, I couldn't care less about it. There are bazillions of DLLs and other stuff preinstalled, what's the deal with one HTML page that I don't even run. I value other things, real usability improvements (for example virtual desktops are much…

I'm not sure how you would create a worse implementation of virtual desktops than Windows 10 has them: - No indication of other workspaces existing. - No indication of what applications are in those other workspaces. - The keyboard shortcut for walking through desktops requires two hands (and in typical Windows fashion cannot be rebound). I'm not familiar with macOS' implementation, so if you actually think that it's…

I agree that the implementation is pretty hard to use by default. https://github.com/sdias/win-10-virtual-desktop-enhancer makes windows' virtual desktops usable though

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

#338

Post by vbezhenar »

Sylos wrote: post #306
vbezhenar wrote: post #211

Those articles are funny because for me all previous Windows versions were unusable, but I've found Windows 10 just the best OS. I don't have Facebook preinstalled and even if it was, I couldn't care less about it. There are bazillions of DLLs and other stuff preinstalled, what's the deal with one HTML page that I don't even run. I value other things, real usability improvements (for example virtual desktops are much…

I'm not sure how you would create a worse implementation of virtual desktops than Windows 10 has them: - No indication of other workspaces existing. - No indication of what applications are in those other workspaces. - The keyboard shortcut for walking through desktops requires two hands (and in typical Windows fashion cannot be rebound). I'm not familiar with macOS' implementation, so if you actually think that it's…

I guess I'm using it differently, because I don't find those issues so important for me. I'm using desktops as a different computers for different states of mind. One desktop has some relaxing read (hacker news, for example, or reddit), some explorers, notepads with not so important stuff. 1-2 desktops for work projects, usually it's exactly one desktop. One desktop for gaming and related websites, discord, etc. I'm switching between them may be one or two times a day. I can see that if you're using multiple desktops for a single project, something like multiple displays and often switching between them, they might be not that usable.

macOS implementation was bad, because I accidentally switched between desktops all the time. It shows all launched apps in the dock from all desktops. If I'm working on my project, I don't want to see that I have Battle.net client launched and 10 unread notifications in Discord guild channel. If I'm clicking on Safari icon, I want to launch new window on current desktop, I don't want to switch to another desktop with some random website.

Anyway the main point of virtual desktops is that they are implemented at OS level. Actual interface is not very important, because if API exists, 3-rd party programs can embrace it. For example Windows 7 had virtual desktops implemented on system level (there wasn't UI to manage them), but API was very limited, for example it wasn't possible to move windows between desktops. Also applications usually weren't aware about those desktops and sometimes were outright buggy (for example you couldn't launch second Firefox window on another desktop).

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

#339

Post by vbezhenar »

reaperducer wrote: post #233
vbezhenar wrote: post #211

Those articles are funny because for me all previous Windows versions were unusable, but I've found Windows 10 just the best OS. I don't have Facebook preinstalled and even if it was, I couldn't care less about it. There are bazillions of DLLs and other stuff preinstalled, what's the deal with one HTML page that I don't even run. I value other things, real usability improvements (for example virtual desktops are much…

>what's the deal with one HTML page that I don't even run You sound like I spammer I once knew. He would always say things like "What's the big deal with one e-mail that you're not going to read anyway. Just delete it." The mail icon in his Mac's dock showed over 29,000 unread messages. Spam just didn't bother him the way Windows popping up ads for Facebook doesn't bother you.

One might say "what's the big deal to buy new Mac if you want more RAM, paying premium for bad hardware". Another might say "What's the big deal not to play OverWatch with your friends and having unusable hibernate". I might say "what's the deal with those ads I can remove within a minute", yes. It's all about compromises. I'd like to have a perfect OS, but I have to choose between available alternatives.

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

#340

Post by paulryanrogers »

urda wrote: post #328
paulryanrogers wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Updates re-enable Bluetooth regardless of the user's preference [0]. (Or did until newer versions, I haven't updated one in a while.) [0] http://finance.yahoo.com/news/this-is-why-apple-enables-blue...

Enabling a a core wireless radio feature != installing unwanted software.

True, but I'd classify both as overriding explicit user preferences.
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