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Windows needs a change in priorities

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Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#481

Post by SturgeonsLaw »

donmcronald wrote: post #369
vxNsr wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the most embarrassing thing I've ever read. That thread goes on to extoll the virtues of dogfooding, and its absolutely true. I personally believe the reason that chrome/edge/firefox and apps in general have become so resource hungry is because all the devs have been given beefy machines to allow them to compile on-device and this has lead to the devs basically ignoring the app's resource budget. The ultimate…

> windows OS and browser devs should be given i3s w/4gb of ram And slow HDDs. The gains of going from an HDD to an SSD have been squandered. The time it takes my computer to boot to a usable desktop feels the same as the bad old days with spinning HDDs. I remember when SSDs where new and YouTubers were making videos of booting into Win7 with Office, etc. open in seconds. WTF happened?

You know the saying "work expands to fill the time available for its completion"? There's a similar thing at play here with regards to resource usage.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#482

Post by lpcvoid »

zo1 wrote: post #452
rthomas6 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is wrong with Linux nowadays? I've used it as my main driver for long enough that I can't see the big problems that are preventing everyone from switching. Like, it seems easier than even WSL to me. Beginner friendly distos seem to have solved the package management problem, and there are adequate desktop environments, office suites, browsers, gaming, and everything else. If a person has good hardware compatibil…

Installation is utterly broken and hopeless on Linux. Let's not pretend like it's in any way ready for the general consumer. Including Ubuntu, the "flagship" poster boy for widescale adoption of Linux. We're more likely to see people going back to dumb-terminals with GUIs being streamed to their ChromeOS from a server running linux than we are to see people using Linux.

What part of installation is broken? It's literally a GUI that you can click "continue" on until you get to the pretty looking progress bar.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#483

Post by mizaru »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #251

I don't see any mention of Cortana or how hard that is to rip out of the OS, but I think it's worth mentioning. The tool called "Everything" by https://www.voidtools.com/ is so insanely better than Cortana and blazingly fast that I'm not sure why they're still trying to push Cortana. https://www.getblackbird.net/ helps a lot and it's one of the first things I do to Windows installs when I need to use them, but it can…

Blackbird gets blocked by Defender immediately. Not sure why I'm surprised.

edit: Then again, that tool does seem to make it quite easy to damage your Windows installation.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#484

Post by ksec »

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.

That is why I think Microsoft should someday consider Open Source Windows, or at least the kernel. Leave the UI and Library on top closed source as a moat on user for compatibility.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#485

Post by krageon »

Silhouette wrote: post #241
userbinator wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure it was specified somewhere in the EULA that you were forced to agree to long ago while installing the OS. It's been a while since I've looked at it too, but I believe there's a clause in there that also permits them to change it at any time without telling you.

One of the few really good things about some modern privacy laws is that this kind of defence carries almost zero weight. You don't get to do scummy things and then claim that the user "consented" because of some small print on page 50 of some document no-one ever reads before clicking the button they have to click in order to use the software they just paid for.

> You don't get to do [...]

The response to every legal argument is "yes, you do" as long as you have enough money. Lo and behold, Microsoft is swimming in it.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#486

Post by GekkePrutser »

at_a_remove wrote: post #352
GekkePrutser wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latest LTSC actually doesn't have as much stripped out anymore. Telemetry choices are the same now and also MS accounts are there. I was really disappointed when I tried it.

Hold up. Windows 11 LTSC forces you to use Microsoft accounts, you can't go local at all? Not doubting, just need clarification.

No it doesn't force you, just like regular Win 10 Pro. But it does have the option and also the telemetry choice is now 'basic' or 'everything'.

LTSC is often hailed as the solution for privacy but when I last tried it it was just regular Win10 with a bit less bloatware (and the long term support of course). Didn't seem very different from Win10 on the privacy side at all.

One thing I forgot to check is if you can choose to delay updates to whenever you want. Obviously this is a big miss in Win10 and as LTSC is meant for mission critical systems I assume this is possible.

I don't recall which version it was exactly, but it was the latest I could get about a year ago when I tried. One of our colleagues in industrial automation got me a VM in their lab to try it out.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#487

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

lucasyvas wrote: post #43
lordnacho wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish this was true, but there are a heck of a lot of office workers who have grown up with Windows and can never be trained to use anything else. You'll get a lot of resistance and rationalisation about why they don't think Linux or BSD or whatever isn't as good, and that the training time is better used to just work.

You're not wrong, but office users should be locked to a browser in 2022 anyway. What do they need Windows for? They can all use a web browser. Microsoft has done an amazing job convincing the office world they need Windows, when they don't need a single feature that it provides in 99% of cases.

Not sure if with "should" you are talking about some kind of ideal world. But in 2022 in the real world, this cannot be done. Online Word is a joke. I would like to use it (because I hate MS Office, so if I could go without having it installed and taking room in my HD and start menu, it would be great) but it's unusable even for my quite basic needs. A sister comment talks about advanced stuff like Excel macros, etc.; but even very basic functionality is not available.

For example: right now, it's impossible to edit a document online with Track Changes without showing all the changes (which makes documents practically unreadable). And you don't even have pages online, documents are shown with a continuous layout where it's difficult to know where pages start and end.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#488

Post by mulmen »

nikodunk wrote: post #476
apatheticonion wrote: post #471

Kinda at a loss for OS/DE at the moment. Lived on Windows for over 2 decades (completed work via a Linux VM). Windows 8 was horrid and Windows 10/11 is hostile towards user experience (etc, etc privacy, but mostly user experience). Used MacOS for half a decade after that and loved the Unix terminal and tight desktop experience but underpowered and overpriced hardware had me running a hackintosh for over half of that…

Same story for me. Landed on Gnome 4x series Fedora after ditching macOS for engineering after a decade. iCloud, iMessage, appleTV etc etc hooks just got too intrusive and made things too unresponsive in my case.

Messages is basically unusable after Big Sur. The new windows are a huge step backwards. Notifications are mind bogglingly broken. Reminder sync with iCloud… doesn’t. Spotlight indexes Time Machine directories, which create more deltas for Time Machine to index, sending the Spotlight service into a feedback loop. Etc, etc, etc.

I’m hopeful the next MacOS shakeup is similar to the recent return to sanity in hardware.

Apple hardware is finally recovering from Ives’ fever dream. The OS needs saving next.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#489

Post by tcmart14 »

ihateolives wrote: post #437
tcmart14 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the issue here is not inherently with Linux. It is more so with vendors of printers making drivers. If Brother feels that there are enough people running Linux and want to own a Brother printer, they will make the driver. Maybe that is the issue we need solve, or at least the part we need to be vocal about. If brother gets a significant number of emails asking for linux support, perhaps they will finally make lin…

> But the issue here is not inherently with Linux. It is more so with vendors of printers making drivers. Users don't care. For them things either work or not. Users are not going to e-mail Brother or Nvidia or Microsoft to fix their issues with printers, video cards or Onedrive. How is that so hard to understand?

If the vendors got metrics that showed that desktop linux user share was enough and viable enough, they would. The issue is, Linux users are a small share of the desktop market. But, if that number grew, it changes. Hardware vendors would port their drivers over once the potential revenue of customers on a different platform outweighs the cost in doing so. Otherwise, I don't think Brother or Nvidia really give a damn if an end user is running Windows or Linux, they just care that enough of those user exists in their respective ecosystem to justify the engineering costs.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#490

Post by DeathArrow »

Some of the anti-user patterns aren't even pioneered by Microsoft, they simply fall in the anti-user direction many big companies are pushing.

Ads in apps? Pioneered in Android. Tricking the user to log in using Microsoft account? You can't make much use of an Android phone unless you sign in with your google account. Also, Apple requests having an Apple Id.

I wonder what if someone at Apple, Google, Microsoft decides at some point that you shouldn't be able to use your own device, bought with your own money? They can disable your account at one push of a button. Or maybe a state agency decides you are one of the bad guys.

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