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Windows needs a change in priorities

den.dev

291–300 of 884 posts

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#292

Well, what are you going to do. Not use Windows? Linux still barely works in 2022 (and if one distro will become really popular, with a big investment of money like Ubuntu did once, they will ad ads, like Ubuntu added Amazon), and MacOS works just on Apple HW (and has ads for Apple services baked-in too, just less obnoxious). You can use ChromeOS! Which is literally ad tech. Pick your poison.

Well, around 2% of PC users use Linux. It might be a small percentage but in absolute terms it's still a big number of users. And about 25% of developers use Linux.

And about 90% of phone users use Android, which is (distantly) based on Linux. That's a lot of users!

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#294

I’m curious to see if Microsoft will lose market share to Linux and MacOS over it’s user hostile practices

That can only happen when those other OSs match the level of functionality, reliability, and support that windows enjoys. I would love to switch my main OS to a Linux distro but it is still unstable enough and not supported enough that I can't reasonably switch.

As far as I can tell, our best hope is for Linux to improve at the same rate or faster as it has over the last 5 years for at least the next 5. Only then will Microsoft start to face any meaningful competition in operating systems.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#295
post #250

Well, what are you going to do. Not use Windows? Linux still barely works in 2022 (and if one distro will become really popular, with a big investment of money like Ubuntu did once, they will ad ads, like Ubuntu added Amazon), and MacOS works just on Apple HW (and has ads for Apple services baked-in too, just less obnoxious). You can use ChromeOS! Which is literally ad tech. Pick your poison.

>Linux still barely works in 2022 I have had zero problem running linux as my daily driver for the last 10 years, care to explain your comment? The only problem that I have is that video games don't always work because the developers don't care.

Last time I tried Ubuntu it exclaimed I'm not "the owner" of my external hard drive and wouldn't let me access my files. Very fundamental basics completely broken somehow.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#296
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

KDE on FreeBSD and Linux on servers seems an interesting choice, what was it that brought you to FreeBSD on desktop if you were using Linux on server?

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#297
There's been a big shift in the whole software industry from "enable what the user wants to do" over to "we want the user to do this". Back in the '90s, we would go out, talk to customers, find out their needs, gather requirements, and write software that enables them to do what they want to do. Now, in a lot of software companies, it's the opposite. Product leadership starts with "What do we want users to do?" and then every software decision is in service of encouraging / forcing / channeling users' behavior into these paths. I've sat in product meetings where people would just say "No, the user should not be allowed to do ABC, we (Company) need them to do XYZ!" It's arrogance, it's hubris and it's everywhere.

The slogan "Where do you want to go today?" is dead. It's now all "This is where we will let you go today!"

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#298

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.

I use macOS + Windows + Pop!_OS (Ubuntu-based) on a daily basis and they're all better or worse depending on the task at hand. They're all useable but imperfect. For me, Windows is for gaming and some music production stuff, macOS is my work laptop and dev environment, and Ubuntu is for most other things like personal use, but also my desktop dev environment. Testing Windows stuff on an M1 Mac with Parallels doesn't…

OS X virtualization is well supported by Parallels if you're on a Mac and are willing to pay for software (it's a just a few clicks via the GUI to set up and they offer a trial). I haven't tried it under windows, but it's still eminently possible.

Eg https://kb.parallels.com/en/125105 and https://osxdaily.com/2021/07/15/how-install-macos-virtualbox...

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#299
post #250

Well, what are you going to do. Not use Windows? Linux still barely works in 2022 (and if one distro will become really popular, with a big investment of money like Ubuntu did once, they will ad ads, like Ubuntu added Amazon), and MacOS works just on Apple HW (and has ads for Apple services baked-in too, just less obnoxious). You can use ChromeOS! Which is literally ad tech. Pick your poison.

>Linux still barely works in 2022 I have had zero problem running linux as my daily driver for the last 10 years, care to explain your comment? The only problem that I have is that video games don't always work because the developers don't care.

I see this argument in every thread about Linux. There's always this one magical user where everything "just works", has had 0 issues and everything's just dandy.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#300
post #41

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…

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…

Another thing that really bothers me about Microsoft is all the logging they do. They don't care about privacy at all.

They send me emails about how I haven't done an @mention to enough colleagues on teams this week or that I should spend less time in meetings. Besides this being total nonsense due to not taking into account the type of job I have (of course different jobs have different balances of meetings etc), I also don't want them looking over my shoulder.

I can turn off the emails but not the logging itself. They proclaim that admins can't see what I do but as I was an admin I was actually able to see a lot more than they let on :( Sure some of it was anonimised (not all) but it's easy to filter by criteria narrow enough that that doesn't matter.

They seem convinced that they are helping us manage by data etc but they totally ignore the fact that many people frown on this practice. In fact some of it is illegal in the EU especially countries like Germany. Microsoft is clearly in the church of "Data driven everything" but they should not impose this on customers IMO.

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