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If you must run Windows 10

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Re: If you must run Windows 10

#181
post #178
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

macOS does not harass you about being the default browser. All it does is show a separator in the dropdown menu [1], which I've always assumed to indicate that it's "built-in". Meanwhile, Windows will show "Recommended" next to Edge, show a pop-up asking you to try Edge before switching the default browser, and then continue to harass you every time you use Bing from a different browser on Windows. Chrome does the la…

That and for some reason it seems like Edge likes to try very hard to keep itself the default PDF reader. Very annoying.

Fortunately, it's not bad as a PDF viewer. That doesn't excuse it, it just makes it less annoying.

Re: If you must run Windows 10

#182
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'phones home' argument doesn't really add up—there's plenty of control over this at this point, and every OS is calling home, macOS included, to some degree. The advertisements thing happens out of the box, and is trivial to remove (if my memory is correct, Safari harasses you about being the default browser, too, if you try to change it). The updates to add features thing.... isn't an issue for me, but YMMV.

and every OS is calling home There's OSes beyond Windows and OSX.

Last I checked, my Linux and BSD systems don't phone home. I primarily use openSUSE, Arch, and FreeBSD, with some Debian thrown in, and I know none of those phone home by default (and I don't know if there's a way to ask them to phone home). There may be other OSes in those families that do (I've heard Ubuntu does), but that's completely fine since you have a choice (I can run any Linux or BSD app on another OS in the same family that doesn't phone home).

Re: If you must run Windows 10

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it more expensive. The last macOS I had to pay for was mountain lion. That was 10.8. I get that I have to buy a mac to get the os but once I have it, I get the most recent version of macOS for free from the AppStore. https://www.apple.com/shop/help/downloadable_software

The overpriced hardware (usually the same of other OEMs, like DELL) is including the price of the OS itself.

Yes, but if I buy a dell with Windows 10, and MS releases Windows 11 a month from now, I will (most likely, based on each previous release), have to buy a license of Windows 11. Apple used to do that until 10.8.

Re: If you must run Windows 10

#184
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, I've had about the opposite experience. Never have been able to get a graphics card to perform well under any version of desktop Linux I've used, the sleep feature generally hasn't worked, fan control is all over the map, and I hate using terminal to configure everything . Windows has almost always just worked fine for me, as it does for ~80% of anyone using a desktop OS.

I'm not going to sit here and defend Linux on the usability front (from the perspective of usability to a typical layperson at least). Laptop support is definitely hit-or-miss, though it's come a long way in the last few years. But once it works, it generally stays working.

That's not necessarily true. I used Ubuntu for a year or two, and each release seemed to break something different (WiFi or sound usually), and while the fix was usually pretty easy, it still required fixing. I got fed up and switched to Fedora and ran into the same problem with release upgrades (and release upgrades seemed to take longer). After a year or so of that, I switched to Arch and have had fewer problems (the only problems I've had were clearly mentioned in the front page, with a working fix) and have used that for several years (5?).

Maybe that's because I'm better at using Linux now, or maybe that's because I have better hardware now. My point, however, is that Linux has its share of problems, especially if you do release upgrades. There's a reason LTS versions exist, and I haven't had anything break when staying on an LTS branch.

That being said, I've had fewer people since switching to Linux. On Windows, if something breaks, it's a royal pain to find the fix most of the time. Sometimes it's a bad driver, other times software needs to be reinstalled, and still other times a system file got corrupted and I need to figure out how to replace it. I've never had those types of problems on Linux, just configuration issues for hardware that isn't well supported anyway (can be solved by being a little picky about hardware).

The difference is expectations. When I pay for Windows, I expect it to work since the hardware all claims to have Windows support. I don't have the same luxury with Linux, so I expect problems. Maybe Microsoft needs a grade for hardware to determine how well it should work, idk, but having issues with "supported" hardware is really frustrating.

Re: If you must run Windows 10

#185

I've been using Win 10 on my main desktop for the past four years or so. I almost feel embarassed for saying so. Microsoft definitely has a systemic "Software Quality Problem". It does get really embarassing at times. Or, at least I would hope someone there is embarassed. I'm not sure. Maybe Raymond Chen is the single one embarassed person and everyone else are new recruits happy to be there? Really, the only reason…

Isn't ChromeOS faster than Windows in accessing the web? That's literally all it does, and it does it pretty well.

Re: If you must run Windows 10

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Control? My OS does not phone home. It contacts package mirrors when I ask it to and only when I ask it to. It contacts NTP servers because I specifically enabled that. That's it. By contrast Windows is a black box of nonsense. The copy I have running in a VM has the marketing name "Cortana" process running even though I specifically chose "no" at install. I enabled a data limit the other day and played some games. T…

Obviously: we don’t care. Apple and Microsoft do roughly an equal amount of telemetry. Ubuntu has telemetry. Obviously most people are fine with telemetry. Apple charges WAY more for its OS than Microsoft does for Windows 10 Home Edition. Don’t want adds? Buy the Pro version. This “apples are better than oranges” indignation about Windows 10 is getting old. Don’t like it? Fine. Let other people enjoy things they like…

Well, yeah.

Personally this is probably the process by which I become a luddite. You can pry my free OS from my cold dead hands.

For now, the server market is enough to keep general purpose computing going. In twenty years, who knows?

My friends and family who are not power users don't know enough to even understand what malware is or means. They likely never will, just as they don't understand all of the ingredients in their food.

This doesn't make it OK.

Re: If you must run Windows 10

#187
post #163
post #71

Counter-anecdote: I'm the happiest I've ever been with Windows both as a development platform and for everyday use. The release of WSL has solved a lot of daily annoyances, and I'm hoping that the new Windows Terminal app will soon be usable so I can replace cmder which has been great, but a little clunky and slow in my experience. Other new features that I enjoy: Windows Sandbox, new Snip and Sketch, the current ite…

Spying on users through so-called telemetry and the silly games are a fact, not anecdotes. I'd suggest that Windows fans should raise their standards a bit, otherwise for Windows 11 they will get a nice progress bar at each boot "uploading data to MS for mindcrime verification" and you have to pay for Windows in IAP gems you collect by playing games and watching ads.

The bulk of the linked page talks about aspects of Windows 10 other than telemetry.

If Windows 11 boots up with a progress bar that says "uploading data to MS for mindcrime verification", and requires me to play games and watch ads to pay for it, I will reconsider my OS choice. For now, I'm enjoying the OS and have dialed down the telemetry to a level that I am comfortable with.

Re: If you must run Windows 10

#188
post #2

I see a lot of angry posts like this, but fail to understand how it's reflected in reality in 2019—I agree that Windows 10 was a little messy at launch, but it's come a long way from where many of these complaints seem to stem from. Yeah, Windows has a bad rap, but in the last 2-4 years has come leaps and bounds from where it was—implementing great, thoughtfully designed features on a regular basis, for free. With WS…

WSL2 is going to cement this episode of Embrace, extend and extinguish, in part as it requires Hyper-V and therefore prevents the use of VirtualBox, VMware Workstation/Player etc. The freedoms of Linux (such as not having a boot loader assume it's the only OS on the disk) will be forgotten as people take the easy path of running WSL2 on the OS their computer came with. Is this a sufficiently-modern criticsm for you?…

> this episode of Embrace, extend and extinguish

Hyper-V is over ten years old. If it hasn't killed VirtualBox in that time, Microsoft offering a convenient Ubuntu VM is not going to be the death knell, trapping people who don't want to use Hyper-V in a nightmare situation of "having a removable Linux VM".

> The freedoms of Linux (such as not having a boot loader assume it's the only OS on the disk) will be forgotten

I've never noticed this as a complaint about developers using macOS for its Unix underpinnings, that they and Apple are not giving sufficient weight to the importance of a Linux bootloader.

Re: If you must run Windows 10

#189
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're trying a too hard to excuse customer-hostile behavior and it's embarrassing. That was rude. I’m telling it like I see it. Did I offend your favorite OS or corporation or something like that? Why get personal with me?? 1. OS updates had not been done through settings for a long, long time. However updates to Apples preinstalled applications are done through the App Store... Anyway, if it was OK for Apple to d…

I did a brand new Windows install recently and it had all sorts of icons for apps in the Start Menu that aren't made by Microsoft. Candy Crush, some racing game, some other game, Spotify. In fact, some of these "pre-installed" apps weren't even installed (like crapware is) at all. They were icons that install the apps (or take you to the store) once you click them. You honestly don't think those are ads? It's Microso…

Wayneftw does think those are ads, and argued that they are ads when Apple installs not-requested software. Then blub argued that Apple is different because products aren't ads, so wayneftw said that if they're not ads when Apple does it, they're not ads when Microsoft does it.

You honestly don't think those are ads? It's Microsoft pushing "install this!" icons for third-party apps from the store in your face in a non-related UI place in the OS, that you have not chosen to install. There is no other proper name for that than an ad.

"Around 2014, over 93 million people were playing Candy Crush Saga[..] Five years after its release on mobile, the Candy Crush Saga series has received over 2.7 billion downloads, and the game has been one of the highest-grossing and most-played mobile apps in that time frame." - Wikipedia

Is there no way to explain this as "giving an easy way to find Candy Crush to the millions of paying customers who want that"? Isn't HN always on about "build things people want"?

Re: If you must run Windows 10

#190
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'phones home' argument doesn't really add up—there's plenty of control over this at this point, and every OS is calling home, macOS included, to some degree. The advertisements thing happens out of the box, and is trivial to remove (if my memory is correct, Safari harasses you about being the default browser, too, if you try to change it). The updates to add features thing.... isn't an issue for me, but YMMV.

You cannot disable or control the phoning home. It’s pervasive. MS is obsessed with using telemetry to track everything you do, and they don’t believe users should have a choice.

they don’t believe users should have a choice.

Microsoft adds more telemetry in PowerShell 3: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/powershell/new-telemetry-in-p...

And there is an opt out. Guess they do believe users should have a choice.

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