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Why Windows 10 Sucks or Everything Wrong with Microsoft Windows

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171–180 of 326 posts

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

#171

At this point I'm not sure that a desktop OS with this wide hardware compatibility and backwards compatibility can be written any better than Windows 10. The thing is, if you are an experienced user with willingness to search for solutions, you can fix most of the problems. Disable updates completely, disable cortana, stop 99% of the telemetry, use alternative utilities instead of the built-in ones, fix security issu…

The fixes you've listed get overturned by Microsoft. Just because you can hack around windows to make it temporarily do the things you want, doesn't mean it's a resolved problem. Microsoft only does this because they've been able to reduce consumer expectations. Being a part of that means the next version will be worse.

But this doesn't really matter as you can disable updates (group policies through WinPro). By the time someone is pressed to update for compatibility, there is already a solution to fix what the update broke. For the sake of enterprises, Windows will always have a switch to disable updates. And since it is hugely complex, and it needs to keep large portions compatible, there will probably be always ways to hack around.

Of course this state of things is far from ideal, and it's not easily available for everyday users. But I think an open source desktop OS could have never achieved the things that Windows is respected for.

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

#172
post #10

One positive point as the article points out is compatibility. This is the single reason Windows remains the staple of industry software, across almost all industries. It's particularly relevant in light of recent Mac OS X dropping 32-bit support. There are a lot of professionals whose livelihood depends on these older apps that either will never be updated or will take a very long time to do so.

Windows isn't perfect on this, I've had to update software for the transitions from NT to 2000, 2000 to XP, XP to Vista and 8 to 8.1 and also for 64 bit support. Mostly because my app has driver level code.

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

#173
post #29

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.…

I don't think getting updates for professional software has been a problem, it's mostly utilities and games.

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

#174

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…

> As a professional software developer, the tools available on UNIXy platforms are already much better in many cases than the Windows ports.

This is because everyone keeps trying to make windows unix/gnu. Embrace powershell it has everything GNU binutils does, but built in. As a professional software developer I NEVER have problems developing except when unixy devs don't test for windows or don't use cross platform tools.

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

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm a systems administrator for a small MSP. I've used Linux as my primary OS for 9 years, despise using Windows, and I can tell you with 100% confidence that nothing but Windows is ready for prime time, and for one major reason: _ease of administration_. Think of the growth cycle of the vast majority of businesses. Almost all businesses are started and run by non-IT people. They buy Windows machines because they're…

FWIW, I mostly operate in the world of small businesses, and in tech and creative sectors.

Anecdotally, the majority of the small businesses I deal with don't fit your characterisation there. For example, MS Office is far from universal in this market now. Online collaboration and document editing tools are displacing applications like Word and Project. We're being forced to switch to online management and accounting systems because of issues with interoperability and government regulation, which makes Excel much less useful. Outlook/Exchange is giving way to Google Mail and similar services. I'm not saying any of these is necessarily an improvement or has no downsides, but it's clearly the way the industry has been moving. The specialists doing things like CAD or DCC still need the 800lb gorilla software in many cases, but those are niche markets.

The biggest problem with Linux on the desktop today is no longer application support, IMHO, but rather the lack of off-the-shelf PCs you can buy that way, with proper tech support and so on. We tried buying one of the Dell laptops that was sold with Ubuntu preinstalled, and it was one of the most disappointing and troublesome purchases we've ever made, largely due to the abysmal support when basic hardware failures occurred. (Also, the hardware itself appears to be pretty poor quality.)

If you could buy decent laptops with Linux preinstalled from the usual big name brands or off the shelf at your local bricks-and-mortar store, I suspect a lot of people would barely notice the difference any more, because so many of their software needs are either very basic or using online systems now.

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

#176

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…

I'm completely tech literate and I STILL am afraid to use regedit. There are so many gotchyas, so little documentation, and many many side effects.

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

#177
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Want to be constantly fiddling with your system just to keep it running? Use Linux. This may have been true 10+ years ago; the amount of fiddling required is pretty low these days.

Until you want the latest version of some package like PostgreSQL that isn’t in the yum/apt repos, and then some time after that you have to upgrade the base os to plug new security holes.

Run postgres in a container

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

#179
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, bu…

> 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. I wonder how I did that. I never install regcleaners or similar tools. I disabled some setting and manually right-clicked and deleted a handful of tiles in the start menu. That was many Windows 10 updates ago. I have never seen anything in my Start m…

The problem is they could come back (depending on your region) and advertising settings are spread out so you may have to go through the settings disabling them all. Basically any option that's labelled as a "tip" or "suggestion" might be a license to advertise. The start menu one is:

Settings -> Personalisation -> Start -> "Show suggestions occasionally in Start".

There was also an issue with a feature update that reset some settings. Feature updates basically do a reinstall of the OS and then copy your settings back over so sometimes things get missed (accidentally or on purpose, whichever explanation you prefer). The solution is to delay feature updates for at least a week or two. By that time these issues should have been fixed. Personally I delay feature updates for 30 days.

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

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm a systems administrator for a small MSP. I've used Linux as my primary OS for 9 years, despise using Windows, and I can tell you with 100% confidence that nothing but Windows is ready for prime time, and for one major reason: _ease of administration_. Think of the growth cycle of the vast majority of businesses. Almost all businesses are started and run by non-IT people. They buy Windows machines because they're…

Why do your employee's systems need to be "Administrated" in the first place?

Why do you need Active Directory or LDAP? Why do you need group policy or anything else? Why are your endpoints not as close to vanilla simple desktop/laptops as possible? Is it that employees can't handle using a computer?

I've worked in one of the largest businesses in the world for many years now, and I don't think we even have an IT department that manages desktop installations. I've certainly never interacted with them. You either figure out how to use the computer they give you, or you don't, in which case why should they employ you? Computers are a basic skill.

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