Why Windows 10 Sucks or Everything Wrong with Microsoft Windows • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Windows 10 Sucks or Everything Wrong with Microsoft Windows

#131

Post by TwoNineFive » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 8:28 PM UTC

It's not your computer.

    An OS by Microsoft for the benefit of Microsoft

    Forced Updates

    Forcible information disclosure

    Changes without consent

    Dark patterns

    Your privacy, their profit

    Advertisments

Microsoft may be collecting more data than initially thought http://www.ghacks.net/2016/01/05/microsoft-may-be-collecting...

Windows 10: data collecting all for the greater good http://www.ghacks.net/2015/09/29/windows-10-data-collecting-... "data collection cannot be turned off fully on all but Enterprise editions of Windows 10"

What Windows 10 is actually monitoring (regardless of privacy settings) (self.Windows10) https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/3gm1e3/what_wind...

[GUIDE] How to disable data logging in W10. (self.Windows10) https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/3f38ed/guide_how...

Can I completely disable Cortana on Windows 10? https://superuser.com/questions/949569/can-i-completely-disa...

"passive-aggressive authoritarianism" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16383577

So, my home server was hijacked... (self.Windows10) https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/3zu8au/so_my_hom...

Windows 10 Personality is kind of like a manager that pretends to be your friend, but always comes across snarky, and still uses their position to force you to do things you otherwise wouldn't do. (self.Windows10) https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/41pr62/windows_1...

Tablet view is showing saved porn images (self.Windows10) https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/3f5won/tablet_vi...

Windows: "We have some new features we are excited about" - proceeds to not tell me what these features are.. How do you keep up with updates? (self.Windows10) https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/3yyx78/windows_w...

My frustration with Windows 10 is reaching a boiling point (self.Windows10) https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/3ynyvf/my_frustr...

Gotta love how Edge switched to my PDF viewer without any action on my behalf (t.gyazo.com) https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/42l2k5/gotta_lov...

Calculator now freezes and nags for reviews? (i.imgur.com) https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/4195rl/calculato...

Warning: Windows 7 computers are being reported as automatically starting the Windows 10 upgrade without permission. (self.technology) https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4a0asv/warning_...

Microsoft hits a new low -- sneaks Windows 10 advertising into an Internet Explorer security patch http://betanews.com/2016/03/09/windows-10-advertising-in-ie-... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11262037 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11276322

Microsoft is using an Internet Explorer security patch to shove more 'Upgrade to Windows 10' nagware at Windows users http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-embeds-nagware-into...

Microsoft is using 'malware tactics' to trick people into upgrading to Windows 10 http://www.businessinsider.com/windows-10-pop-ups-tricking-u...

One wrong click could get you Windows 10 — whether you want it or not http://www.businessinsider.com/windows-10-upgrade-popup-2016...

Microsoft re-releases KB 3035583 Get Windows 10 installer -- again http://www.infoworld.com/article/3048152/microsoft-windows/m...

PSA: Windows 7 computers are being reported as automatically starting the Windows 10 upgrade without permission. https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/4a5edx/psa_window...

Windows 10: Microsoft launches intrusive full-screen upgrade reminder https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/04/microsoft... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12030257 https://techreport.com/news/30351/microsoft-final-windows-10...

Sick of this shit (Windows 10) (self.sysadmin) https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/7d68rg/sick_of_th...

Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps On My PC Without Asking https://www.howtogeek.com/342871/hey-microsoft-stop-installi... https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/02/15/1720243/hey-microso...

Microsoft again forced upgrades on Win10 machines specifically set to block updates https://www.computerworld.com/article/3261969/microsoft-wind... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16582231

Windows Update shutdown is threatening to eliminate a many hours-long project by shutting down https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/8am914/windows_u...

Windows 10 automatically re-creates pre-installed bloatware game shortcuts on start menu. https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/8g6v0j/god_damn_...

Why does the Windows 10 Update screen only show uninformative messages, they're a little creepy IMHO https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/8mbzi4/why_does_...

More forced updates, even when the system is configured to NOT update https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/8num0w/good_grie...

Search is crap https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/8psaq9/we_have_r... https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/8qucfq/what_is_t...

Hey, Microsoft, stop installing third-party apps on clean Windows 10 installs! (windowscentral.com) https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/9ibj5i/hey_micr...

Need to disable as much windows 10 spying as possible without breaking windows update. Where do i start? https://old.reddit.com/r/privacytoolsIO/comments/8bg75f/need...

Microsoft Broke Windows 10’s File Associations With a Botched Update https://www.howtogeek.com/fyi/microsoft-broke-windows-10s-fi...

Is Windows 10 still telling Microsoft what you're doing even if you don't want it to? https://www.zdnet.com/article/is-windows-10-still-telling-mi... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18673482

Does anyone have an exhaustive list of IP ranges for MS Telemetry? https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/3j8909/does_anyo...

534 Ways that Windows 10 Tracks You – From German Cyber Intelligence https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2018/11/534-ways-...

Microsoft store installing apps without my permission and can't be disabledDark Pattern (i.redd.it) https://old.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/cjnpgq/micro...

What the hell is this shit getting installed without my permission? https://old.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/d6aspy/what_the_...

MS has removed the "use offline account" option when installing https://old.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/daim1y/ms_has_re... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21103683

Microsoft Starts Showing Non-Removable Ads In Windows 10 Mail, Calendar Apps https://mspoweruser.com/ads-in-windows-10-mail-and-calendar-... https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/12/17/2249238/microsoft-s...

Re: Why Windows 10 Sucks or Everything Wrong with Microsoft Windows

#132

Post by gotoeleven » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 8:29 PM UTC

LinuxBender wrote: post #16

JohnFen wrote: post #2

Wow, that's a very comprehensive list! I think it covers pretty much every item that makes Windows 10 unacceptable for my personal use (unfortunately, I'm required to use Win 10 in my workplace.)

My workplace is the same. Windows or Mac. I was on mac, but enterprise support for mac is awful and was limited to 16GB ram. I moved to Windows and installed Hyper-V so that I could have Linux VM's and have 64GB ram. That is where I do all my work. Hyper-V still needs a lot of refinement, but it works.

How do you keep windows from rebooting when it feels like it to install 'critical' updates? Id like to use windows as a linux VM host but every couple weeks my linux server is taken down because automatic reboots can't be disabled. Microsoft seems to actively prevent every workaround people find to disable this rebooting, no matter how difficult and arcane.

Re: Why Windows 10 Sucks or Everything Wrong with Microsoft Windows

#133

Post by ebg13 » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 8:30 PM UTC

itvision wrote: post #119

brianpgordon wrote: post #84

I'm no Windows fanboy but there's a lot of misinformation here. In the spirit of bullying the reader with a big list of points, here are some examples of incorrect claims in TFA: 1. It's not hard to disable Cortana and internet-assisted start menu search completion. I assume that's what they mean by "keyboard scanning and voice recording" because I don't think there's anything else like that in the OS. It is possible…

I'm not a fanboy of any OS in existence but 1. Most tech-illiterate people are afraid of using regedit and/or GPO to disable Cortana so the point is valid. 2. Disk fragmentation has become an even bigger issue since Windows 10 doesn't defragment SSD disks. 3. It's not an argument. 4. The article talks about laptops specifically and the issue is still there and it's huge even for Windows 10 which often installs Micros…

> Disk fragmentation has become an even bigger issue since Windows 10 doesn't defragment SSD disks

Defrag on SSDs in Windows 10 runs Trim. And it does do that automatically on a schedule if you don't change anything. Actual defragmentation on an SSD is way less useful because SSDs don't have killer seek latencies like spinning rust plates did, and it would be small-scale harmful because of write wear. And your SSD's onboard controller would likely thwart your efforts anyway, because of wear leveling.

Re: Why Windows 10 Sucks or Everything Wrong with Microsoft Windows

#134

Post by LinuxBender » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 8:32 PM UTC

gotoeleven wrote: post #132

LinuxBender wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My workplace is the same. Windows or Mac. I was on mac, but enterprise support for mac is awful and was limited to 16GB ram. I moved to Windows and installed Hyper-V so that I could have Linux VM's and have 64GB ram. That is where I do all my work. Hyper-V still needs a lot of refinement, but it works.

How do you keep windows from rebooting when it feels like it to install 'critical' updates? Id like to use windows as a linux VM host but every couple weeks my linux server is taken down because automatic reboots can't be disabled. Microsoft seems to actively prevent every workaround people find to disable this rebooting, no matter how difficult and arcane.

At work we are on Windows 10 Enterprise. Updates are installed by the business. I've only ever been prompted for a reboot once and it was for a 0-day mitigation that was deployed as an emergency change.

Re: Why Windows 10 Sucks or Everything Wrong with Microsoft Windows

#135

Post by zamadatix » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 8:35 PM UTC

foe5424 wrote: post #129

zamadatix wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 7 goes end of life in 2 weeks. Unless you're using an old computer your hardware (e.g. CPU) is probably not supported, even if it does run it won't run properly. With EoL approaching Nvidia/AMD will stop publishing driver updates and new GPUs won't be hardware accelerated. The security model in Windows 10 is as big a jump as XP -> 7 was. It often takes manually loading additional drivers to even get the insta…

> Windows 7 goes end of life in 2 weeks. No it doesn't, for two reasons. Chromium Edge will support windows 7, ironically the release date it's just one day after Win7 supposedly goes eol. and of course Windows 7 ESU support will end in 2023.

And they released a patch for CVE-2019-0708 on Windows 2000, that doesn't mean Windows 2000 isn't EoL as of 2019 it means a one off decision was made.

ESU is for businesses not end users and requires professional or higher.

Re: Why Windows 10 Sucks or Everything Wrong with Microsoft Windows

#136

Post by spijdar » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 8:39 PM UTC

nvarsj wrote: post #29

ravenstine wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree to an extent, but exactly how far back should we go in terms of backward compatibility? Should we expect modern software or hardware to support 16-bit?

For businesses, as far back as they need. Consumers don't care, and for consumer grade OS it's fine. Let's say I invest 1 million in machines that use 32-bit software for my professional studio, and it's working perfectly fine. Then Apple decides one day to remove 32-bit support. The vendor is small and can't easily afford to port their software over to 64-bit. And for what reason? It was working fine from the start.…

The assumption here is that you have to upgrade to the newest OS (on your old hardware). I'd challenge that assumption. If your software is ancient and unsupported and you're willing to accept that security risk, using an unsupported operating system isn't going to increase your attack surface that much more than running out of date software was. OS level attacks are less common than serialization bugs in your client software leading to RCE leading to ransomware et al.

And if you're not updating your OS for security reasons, is it for feature updates? If your OS and machines are there any to run specific software, this shouldn't be a problem. If it's working fine, leave it be. Mitigate your attack surface through a number of schemes like physically isolating vulnerable workstations and disabling all unnecessary services.

I'm not advocating running unpatched OSes, but given how in my experience doing penetration testing most exploitable vulnerabilities are in some 3rd party client software (excluding OS misconfigurations), if your software is unmaintained, running the last working OS release doesn't seem like that much worse of a leap.

In Apple's case, if you're maintaining your software, making the 32->64 bit transition should be pretty painless in this day and age, unless you're using the Carbon API created as a way to port legacy Mac programs to the new NeXT based Mac OS X. It never received a 64 bit version since Mac went 64 bit in 2007 and has been officially deprecated since 2012.

Software platforms can't stay frozen in time and can't hang back forever. Microsoft struggles tremendously to maintain its tired backwards compatibility while juggling security and feature updates; see Google's project zero report on the CTF subsystem and how a fundamental design flaw in the Text Services Framework allows easy bypass of user sessions and sandboxes. Fixing the bug will invariably break correctly implemented old software.

Well, that's enough rambling for now...

Re: Why Windows 10 Sucks or Everything Wrong with Microsoft Windows

#137

Post by alphachloride » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 8:41 PM UTC

Windows 10 is can be infuriating. But I can't find any other OS that is a good alternative. It's the worst OS, except for all the other OSes out there.

1. Best in gaming.

2. Engineering applications (CAD/Matlab/LabView) are usually windows-first

3. Good software development ecosystem. Now with Windows Subsystem for Linux, the need for having another OS is diminishing.

4. User interface is great. A lot of customization options (official and third party). It is not bare-bones like Linux but also not user-proofed like macOS.

Re: Why Windows 10 Sucks or Everything Wrong with Microsoft Windows

#138

Post by TwoNineFive » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 8:45 PM UTC

brianpgordon wrote: post #84

I'm no Windows fanboy but there's a lot of misinformation here. In the spirit of bullying the reader with a big list of points, here are some examples of incorrect claims in TFA: 1. It's not hard to disable Cortana and internet-assisted start menu search completion. I assume that's what they mean by "keyboard scanning and voice recording" because I don't think there's anything else like that in the OS. It is possible…

> It's not hard to disable Cortana

Wrong. For people who disabled Cortana, it kept re-enabling itself automatically after updates. I think that problem is mostly gone now, but it was definitely an issue all the way up till earlier this year.

> Disk fragmentation hasn't been an issue

The article has one tiny line-item about fragmentation and it was about architecture. I agree that it's not an issue for most people, but OP is making a comment about a design problem. You are mis-representing the argument by talking past it.

> I like UAC

That's a personal preference, and that's fine. I have mixed feelings about UAC.

> Windows (10) has arguably the best plug-and-play driver support

Again you might be talking past the issue. When Windows 10 first came out there were a TON of devices, including very popular printers and scanners, which had no support. It was a huge problem as the large number of news articles on the subject would indicate. It's mostly a non-issue now, but there are some devices that are still not supported. I consult for a cancer treatment facility and they have some not-terribly-obscure equipment that still doesn't have Windows 10 support. I agree that things have changed, but when the author wrote this, it was true. He should probably update the site.

> The article claims that it's difficult to figure out why your startup is so slow

The tool you mention is typical Microsoft. It blames the 3rd party and doesn't provide any info on Microsoft-internals stuff, which is where the problem is most of the time.

> The article claims that you can't disable Windows Store apps, Windows tips, and ads in the start menu. That's untrue

To the best of my knowledge, it's impossible to get a start menu without all the tips and ads without using a 3rd party Windows-10-decrapifyer/debloater kind of thing. And if that wasn't bad enough: https://mspoweruser.com/ads-in-windows-10-mail-and-calendar-... https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/12/17/2249238/microsoft-s...

Re: Why Windows 10 Sucks or Everything Wrong with Microsoft Windows

#139

Post by ClumsyPilot » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 8:47 PM UTC

Silhouette wrote: post #128

itvision wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MacOS doesn't have 95% of the listed issues. And we don't have any other desktop OSes which are ready for prime time.

And we don't have any other desktop OSes which are ready for prime time. People keep saying that, but how often is it really true these days? As a professional software developer, the tools available on UNIXy platforms are already much better in many cases than the Windows ports. For a typical home user who is mostly interested in things like email and social networking, and maybe needs to write up some notes or do a…

There is loads of must-have proffeshional software that doesnt work on linux.

Photoshop, illustrator, autocad, solidworks, etc.

Re: Why Windows 10 Sucks or Everything Wrong with Microsoft Windows

#140

Post by Godel_unicode » Tue, Dec 31, 2019, 8:49 PM UTC

gnomewascool wrote: post #82

Godel_unicode wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is this comment supposed to mean? How are you comparing the performance of updates across OSs?

The relatively common (?) experience that: 1. Running `sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade` is much, much faster than explicitly going to the windows update screen, checking for updates and then updating. 2. Linux OSs are usually stuck "updating" while shutting down and restarting, far less frequently and for a far shorter time (if at all), than Windows. Obviously the comparison isn't entirely fair (though in some wa…

Do you have any numbers for this? It doesn't match my experiences at all.

Edit: it's been my experience that most people who think Windows sucks think this because they use it exclusively at work where their IT department has gone mad with power and turned off all the good stuff, and the network is slow.