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Windows needs a change in priorities

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Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#301

Post by Shared404 »

jart wrote: post #156
spaetzleesser wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want Linux to compete, you need spreadsheet software as good as Excel and a word processor that's 100% compatible with Word. I tried to use LibreOffice for a while but Calc ins't there yet and I had tons of formatting problems when I sent documents to Words users. After dealing with this for a while you just give up and start using Office again.

I don't want to pull back the curtain too much or tramp on everyone's hopes, but Linux can't compete with Microsoft because of UEFI. The PCs being sold today only allow Microsoft's software to run. In order to distribute a Linux distro, you have to ask Microsoft to give you a shim where they've signed your private key, so that you can share your own signed kernel builds with others. Therefore you can't publish a Linu…

I believe many UEFI implementations allow you to replace the secure boot keys with your own.

I've not done it personally as most of my machines I just disable Secure Boot, but it's an option if you know about it and buy carefully.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#302

Post by GekkePrutser »

smackeyacky wrote: post #160
khaledh wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think that's true anymore. Gnome with two tweaks (put the min/max buttons back on the window header and move the main menu to the bottom of the screen so it works like the old win 10 task bar) and it's streets ahead of Windows 11. It's a great blessing in disguise when Microsoft decide your old laptop won't support Windows 11.

Gnome has very excessive window borders though. They're so big they seem to be sized for touch, very wasteful when you don't have a touchscreen.

And it has even less configurability than Windows.. Add-ons don't count because they often break.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#303

Post by GekkePrutser »

civilized wrote: post #185
wildrhythms wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that Mac OS actually looks somewhat consistent and has kept much of its familiar paradigms (Spotlight, System Preferences, the menubar, context menus...) the same over the past decade. Microsoft seems to have lifted the aesthetics of Mac OS without any of the UX.

OS X has been great for the past decade. I won't say the same for MacBooks, where there have been some pretty horrible decisions (butterfly keyboard, touch bar), but OS X has kept humming along, very usable, very productive. A few issues with Spotlight and some easily removed nags to use crap like iCloud is the worst I can say.

Except the constant ui changes with no reason other than change, with no option to switch them back.

Or the ever more locked down environment, or the iOS style dumbed down apps they prefer now..

I think it was pretty much downhill after leopard :(

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#304

Post by smackeyacky »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #302
smackeyacky wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's true anymore. Gnome with two tweaks (put the min/max buttons back on the window header and move the main menu to the bottom of the screen so it works like the old win 10 task bar) and it's streets ahead of Windows 11. It's a great blessing in disguise when Microsoft decide your old laptop won't support Windows 11.

Gnome has very excessive window borders though. They're so big they seem to be sized for touch, very wasteful when you don't have a touchscreen. And it has even less configurability than Windows.. Add-ons don't count because they often break.

I don't mind the big borders, although most of the time I'm using dual 2k screens.

The borders don't seem that much bigger than the ones in Windows 10. As for the extensions, I've been enabling those via extensions.gnome.org and have no problems so far on Buster or Bullseye.

This is the one that makes Gnome useable for me:

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1160/dash-to-panel/

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#305

Post by jasonjayr »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #229
artificialLimbs wrote: post #190

I stopped playing Minecraft recently again. I first quit a few years ago, but wanted to show it to my young son. Trying to go back and EVEN JUST INSTALL it now is filled with Microsoft-ian circles of login catastrophe and "upgrade your account" nightmares. The installation process was so difficult, I will never play again.

Minetest scratches that itch pretty well, open source and no MS nonsense.

I've been playing the same Minetest SMP server for 5+ years now. Minetest is pretty good, the engine is C++ but the game world is defined via lua.

There are some quirks that will drive hard-code Minecraft players nuts, but it's not that bad overall, especially if you like the building aspect of MC.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#307

Post by GekkePrutser »

Shared404 wrote: post #296
GekkePrutser wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Mainly that I like the concept of FreeBSD. It's just one OS, has excellent documentation. Some good tech like jails, zfs on root etc.

Apparently it's not great at WiFi but I don't use that on my main driver (NUC).

On Linux I use docker a lot, and while FreeBSD has its excellent jails, it doesn't have the whole ecosystem around them. So that's why I use Linux on the server side more.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#308

Post by thekyle »

eek2121 wrote: post #63

Going to disagree. I will agree once Apple allows you to ungroup windows of the same application in the dock. Until then, I will use Windows + WSL2 as my core development system. Sure, Apple has a different workflow. Pro-Apple peeps insist I should 'learn it'. Why? I know the Apple workflow. In my eyes, it is inferior to the one offered by Windows, and KDE on Linux. Everyone has their opinions of course. I respect pe…

> allows you to ungroup windows of the same application in the dock

I believe that feature was also recently removed in Windows 11

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#309

Post by ghostly_s »

> What’s the point of these changes? My first impression is that someone used a macOS machine a bit too much and decided to rip off the macOS-style Dock without really porting over anything else from the Dock behavior and trying to shoehorn it into Windows without considering any of the past conventions that make Windows what it is.

Why does this story sound so familiar as a Linux desktop user...

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#310

Post by sjy »

3np wrote: post #96
Pasorrijer wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an officer worker, there are many many things I do that cannot be done in a web browser. File comparison tools, macros and complex excel queries, hard applications for both new and legacy critical programs... Can this be done on Linux? Frequently. Can it be done in a web browser? Rarely effectively and often not at all.

Isn't Excel feature-complete in the browser now, macros and all? https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365

VBA macros aren't supported. Last time I checked even conditional formatting wasn't supported, although I see now it was added in January 2022 [1]. Even so, as with many other features, the web UI is different and more limited. Links to documents stored locally or on an SMB share don't work. Scrolling through thousands of rows is laggy. Generally, Excel Online is useless for the complex spreadsheets used in large enterprises, which themselves are often workarounds for the limitations of the web apps the enterprise is supposed to run on.

[1]: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/excel-blog/new-condit...

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