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Windows needs a change in priorities

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Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#201

Post by 29athrowaway »

jiggawatts wrote: post #198
segphault wrote: post #22

Like every Windows user, I have had a lot of frustrating experiences with the abusive behavior and dark patterns that have taken over the platform. Like when they started having Skype silently run in the background logged in with the user's Microsoft account without any notice or human intervention, and removed the setting to disable it from launching at startup so that it couldn't be prevented. I had to completely u…

There's also that they "decided" that none of their core customer bases actually matter. They no longer cater to the needs of anyone . Some random examples: Enterprise -- It's cloud or the highway. You're either migrating to Azure and Microsoft 365, or stuck in dead-ends with virtually no maintenance/attention. Core products have just been left twisting in the wind. Active Directory for example has had no major featu…

The cash cow will always be Microsoft Office. That's what governments use and because of that companies use it, and because of that everyone uses it.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#203

Post by rektide »

skoskie wrote: post #165
rektide wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's such an interesting contrast, for both ends of Microsoft to have reversed so heavily. The core consumer product once fought for betterment and improvement. "Where do you want to go today" was the slogan, suggesting users the helm, piloting their Personal Computer wherever they may. Oh, and it was a complete vision, totalizing. Microsoft did not care at all about open source, webdev, Linux, or broader ecosystem o…

> But in terms of open source, Linux, webdev, the broader world of development & making things happen, Microsoft has completely reversed course, embracing Embracing is the first step in dominating. Don’t fall for it.

I think there is a danger, but hubris has gotten them way up shits creek & their relevance was rapidly moving to 0. Desktop platform is dying, mobile barely matters and they have no presence there... Microsoft started playing with others because pretending they were the unilateral giant that could dictate terms to the world landed them on a small shrinking pathetic island. So help them gods if they try that shit again.

That said, I 100% absolutely endorse caution. The past couple years of behaviors are no indicator Microsoft will stay a societally-positive technological force. The corruption & darkness & manipulation could play back in at any moment. Already, Microsoft creating very special terms of service for things like VSCode Remote Development Plugin, having extremely fantastically proprietary implementations for the incredibly useful/popular/fantastic LiveShare are harbingers of the old ways, indicators that Microsoft just wants to force the door open, not really engage & participate.

For now though, I still overall think they are doing good work, pariticpating/not domineering (with some caveats). They learned very very very personally what happens when you violate the core rule of software, the most important maxim, not couched as such but absolutely of key vitality to computing: "Create more value than you capture." -Tim O'Reilly. Of course, all organizations forget the/their past. And I quake thinking of how many people pretend they are using/learning Linux while never seeing systemd, freedesktop, the greater Linux project: WSL is amazing but a dark & tragic small death for the real open source, & it's cheered on & fanboyed endlessly for enabling the blessed ignorant. You are right. Adopter beware.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#204

Post by GekkePrutser »

ziml77 wrote: post #169
skoskie wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it’s linux, so one obscure setting in a config file or slightly different hardware can make all the difference. I say this as a linux user since WinXP. The whole OS market is pretty rough right now.

> The whole OS market is pretty rough right now. This is my feeling over the past few years. No OS is in a great spot. But I have hopes for Linux being better supported with Valve using it on the Steam Deck. (Not the highest hopes, but more hope than I used to have)

I don't agree. KDE in particular feels more well rounded than ever before. I use it on FreeBSD but I use Linux on servers and I'm also very happy with that.

Windows 10 is stable for me too though I was hit with the eTPM stutter bug (I use my Windows box exclusively for gaming, in particular VR which I didn't feel like figuring out in proton). But the windows dark patterns are surely there and I hate them. But as it's only my gaming machine I can deal with it.

And Mac... Well I moved away from it because Apple is locking down too much and I've come to hate opinionated software. Still they seem to be doing nice things with M1..

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#205

Post by user_7832 »

You know, for an operating system that's meant for an average user and not a tech-savy person (that most of us likely are), Windows 11 is fine if you strictly use the basic features. But if the average person of my dad's generation had a start tile, and clicked on windows on the left... they'd have no idea what's going on.

A lot of this appears to be changed just for the sake of it. What I don't understand is - it takes effort to change something. Why not keep the basics the way they are? Start tiles got a reskin I think 2 years ago, and while it changed the visual look (positively) it kept it functionally identical. The current changes... are not. Despite windows being the OS I'm most familiar with, I'm quite certain I'm going to go Linux with wine/proton after Win10 EOL (2025 iirc) - almost every Win11 article gives more reason to hate it, despite me wanting to love it. I'm setting up a server and I think I'll start dabbling with Linux from now itself so the transition is smooth.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#206

Post by slaymaker1907 »

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I really don't care that much about UI visual consistency so long as it doesn't make the application confusing (i.e. not underlining hyperlinks or something). However, stuff like tasks on startup should be managed in one location that is easy to find.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#207

Post by GekkePrutser »

banana_giraffe wrote: post #44
segphault wrote: post #22

Like every Windows user, I have had a lot of frustrating experiences with the abusive behavior and dark patterns that have taken over the platform. Like when they started having Skype silently run in the background logged in with the user's Microsoft account without any notice or human intervention, and removed the setting to disable it from launching at startup so that it couldn't be prevented. I had to completely u…

Even stuff like WSL is loosing it's shine now for me. I've personally hit a bug on multiple computers that I can reliably repo a blue screen if I attempt to update a specific package. The github bug for this issue last had activity from MS 4 months ago. Kinda makes it hard to take it seriously if such a major blocker is treated with such low priority.

My system bluescreens when I so much as install WSL2 on my second work laptop with Windows 11. Tried to track it down and it seems to be some stupid Lenovo driver but it's almost impossible to fix :(

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#208

Post by GekkePrutser »

banana_giraffe wrote: post #148
gruez wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK WSL 1 isn't actively being worked on anymore, now that there's WSL 2. As for your issue with WSL 2, it runs off hyper-v, so my guess is that there's something with your BIOS/UEFI/firmware settings that's breaking it (eg. secureboot/CSM, TPM, virtualization).

You might be right about WSL 1 being dead, which is just annoying since it's useful for me. Ironically with your comment about Hyper-V: I moved to using Linux in a Hyper-V VM for now for this workflow. It's in that category of category of "ugh, not worth the time to figure out" for now, which probably means I won't bother for quite a while. Honestly, when things slow down again, I'll probably just flatten this machin…

Agreed. The concept of WSL1 was much more interesting. Interfacing with Windows through a Linux userland. Actually do stuff on the windows system with a familiar interface.

WSL2 is just Linux in a VM which has been around like forever.

By the way it also put my system in a boot loop (blue screen on boot). I tracked it down to a buggy Lenovo driver but when I removed that it crashed on something else and I got sick of it and gave up.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#209

Post by the_snooze »

29athrowaway wrote: post #201
jiggawatts wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also that they "decided" that none of their core customer bases actually matter. They no longer cater to the needs of anyone . Some random examples: Enterprise -- It's cloud or the highway. You're either migrating to Azure and Microsoft 365, or stuck in dead-ends with virtually no maintenance/attention. Core products have just been left twisting in the wind. Active Directory for example has had no major featu…

The cash cow will always be Microsoft Office. That's what governments use and because of that companies use it, and because of that everyone uses it.

Bingo. All these posts that say "oh just use Linux, it's compatible!" must be from naive junior devs who never have had to to deal with external organizations (especially governments) that require you to use their Word templates and share PowerPoint slides on their Teams calls.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#210

Post by sgjohnson »

khaledh wrote: post #98
interstice wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a theory that the people who used the bar on the side and the people who turned the user metrics off are the same people (myself included). But I’m not sure how I feel about the results. In any case I hope shells like litestep make a comeback as a result of ever more hostile ui decisions, either that or everyone jumps ship entirely to put energy into making something else great.

The problem is that Windows with all its warts now is still far ahead of the competition in that department (desktop GUI). Whether that's due to monopoly or being actually better, it doesn't matter. The fact is competition is almost non-existent.

In what ways is Windows desktop GUI better than macOS?

The only thing Windows has going for itself is backwards compatability.

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