411–420 of 437 posts
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I never got friendly with the Gnome Desktop. I used KDE for many year but it is a resource hog. Switched this year to Bodhi Linux, wont look back. It is based on Ubuntu. https://www.bodhilinux.com/
> I used KDE for many year but it is a resource ho Not really. It uses barely more memory than Xfce.
In other news, I still cannot disable Windows update on the home edition. I've spent hours and hours and virtually every solution I can find other than giving MS more money to upgrade. Updates keep failing on my machine, which means it just tried again the next day and forces a restart, closing everything I have. Fails day after day after day. I'm not sure why, I frankly don't care. Just ridiculous how impossible it…
> Updates keep failing on my machine By any chance did you run some script or random "de-bloat" tool someone linked? Half of those break Windows Update and cause it to keep failing (either via setting permissions, host file changes, or registry alterations).
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In Win7 several of the mouse behaviours like this can be disabled in Control Panel -> Ease of Access Center -> Make the mouse easier to use. (Seems to be targeted for people with disabilities, but heck... if that's what it takes to disable this crap.) Win 10 will likely have something equivalent.
There is a setting, but it's not very fine grained and turning it off also turns off other useful settings. I can't remember which exactly, I just know I reverted fairly quickly since it was even more annoying.
That one seems to be pretty specific, and for me is very useful.
KDE has a similar thing, which can also be disabled. Only thing I haven't figured out with KDE (yet) is how to disable automatically maximising a window after dragging it from the non-primary display to the primary one. That's pretty annoying too. :/
I honestly think that the new tab/news/spam page in IE/Edge is (and has been, forever) the single biggest factor driving people to Chrome and Firefox. Every time you open it you’re greeted with all this complete junk, making the whole experience stuttering and slowing down your flow. I dread having to open IE on systems with no alternative just because it’s always so bad. Edge might actually be pretty good, but I wil…
That, and the in-app "make Chrome/FF the default browser" popup redirecting to a Windows settings page where when you choose anything else than Edge, you get yet another popup asking you to confirm that you really don't want to use the awesome browser that Edge is.
They changed how default programs are set in Windows 10 so that malware can't change default file associations by itself anymore. That required moving away from using the Win32 API for that, and that is kind of the whole purpose of UWP-style apps and The New Settings pages within Windows 10.
MOST of Windows 10 has been thought out.
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That, and the in-app "make Chrome/FF the default browser" popup redirecting to a Windows settings page where when you choose anything else than Edge, you get yet another popup asking you to confirm that you really don't want to use the awesome browser that Edge is.
All this junk they've been doing to Windows lately is making me feel like a restricted guest in my own computer. I'll definitely be exploring alternatives next go around
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Firefox also has a huge pile of spam on the new tab page by default. I wish they would just kill it already...
The Firefox page doesn’t cause the browser to freeze up for 30 seconds while it loads all the crap. That’s my point with IE/Edge, not that the page exists to begin with.
1 second is still too much time, and 30 seconds is indicative of either an exaggeration or a somewhat severe problem.
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Nope, they just set an annual record and beat analysts expectations last quarter[1]. Azure is helping them a great deal and just overtook their PC division (which includes everything from Windows to the Surface laptop). [1]: https://www.geekwire.com/2019/microsoft-trumpets-record-year...
Odd, so why the huckster impression?
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Manjaro comes OOTB with MS Office 365, and it's super easy to install, easier than Ubuntu if you're doing Nvidia drivers. I personally can't comment on how well their Office works as I avoid anything Microsoft makes, but it's an option.
The nVidia Optimus drivers are still unusable on Linux. This makes the nVidia card in the laptop a dead weight.
[0] https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-t-ser...
It has been about a decade since I used Windows (XP) as a daily driver, and I am shocked , and seriously disgusted, when I see my friends or co-workers using it. Can I ask why anyone is paying for this pile of crap? There are literally no improvements from Windows 7 vs. Windows 10, that could convince me this level of built-in telemetry, and, God forbid, built-in advertising is worth an 'upgrade'. For God's sake, the…
>>Can I ask why anyone is paying for this pile of crap? Because for certain areas of programming, Visual Studio is still king and if you want to develop for Playstation/Xbox then Windows is the only choice. And of course playing video games in general requires Windows - it's less true than it was few years ago, but there's still plenty of games which give you very poor experience on anything but Windows.
Even as a game developer, for home brew like the Sega Saturn, as well as various Unity projects, I use a Windows XP VM maybe once a month for some obscure utility.
I never play games on PC's. I buy a console, it's good for ten or more years. I still play my Saturn and Dreamcast, whose emulation leaves much still to be desired.
If I want to purchase a game, I don't have to worry about if my video card is compatible, or if I have enough RAM, or, even if my OS will run it! I just play it.
You are part of a niche developer system, that, granted, you require Windows 10 for your very, very specific case.
Similarly, I am required to use a 2017 MacBook Pro with a touch bar at work, as I am an iOS developer. I would never, on principle alone, purchase such a unit. I use a Mac at home, but I use a 2012 model I have chosen to stick with for a number of reasons. I'm running the newest MacOS because it's actually offered me reasons to upgrade.
This has nothing to do with my personal preferences, or my point.
I'm not talking about the use of Windows itself, when I say 'why would anyone pay for this crap' - I'm talking about the "upgrade".
Windows 7 still more than meets my needs and the needs of most consumers.
Windows XP still more than meets my needs and the needs of most consumers, though it has security issues that make Windows 7 a better general option.
Windows 10 has added nothing, as far as I can see, beyond leaving behind some of the UI/UX disaster of Windows 8, the result being a slightly less usable Windows 7 (especially to the average Jane or Joe) - with baked in advertising and tracking that they know Jane or Joe, who got the OS pre-installed on the Asus they bought from Best Buy, is not going to disable.
In fact, they're counting on that.
When we pay for services, we expect no advertising, especially on services that did not contain it before. Cable television is an exception to this - what we pay for in that instance is more selection.
But can you imagine if Apple Music just suddenly started shoving ads in their stream? They'd lose two million subscribers overnight.
It baffles me that people have Stockholm Syndrome enough with Windows to stick with it through such obvious distaste for the users themselves.
Since 98SE, we've got a pattern of every other Windows release simply being an unmitigated disaster -
98SE - good / ME - awful / XP - good / Vista - awful / 7 - great / 8 - awful / 10 - at least not as shit as 8
What this shows me, is that Microsoft seems to not learn from mistakes until an entire version number later.
There have only been a handful of releases in MacOS/OS X's brilliant history since OSX came about in 2001 that have been shit. Since Tiger, we've praised virtually every release - and they are still adding meaningful and impactful features like dark mode. Now it's their laughable hardware options that is the issue.