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Not-so-great features coming soon to Windows 11

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Re: Not-so-great features coming soon to Windows 11

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think OP's point is that there's one more major use case — gaming — for which Windows has a newly viable competitor. It's not that Linux is going to replace Windows, but that Windows could suffer a death by a thousand cuts. I'll note that more and more offices that I encounter seem to be switching to Chromebooks.

People keep saying this and then run into minor problems becoming bigger problems because frequently used programs end up being unusable or 3rd class citizen, behind both mobile and Mac users. Unless Linux is braindead easy to use without frustrations, it won't happen. Gamers pay more for lesser ease of access increases.

Yes, people are strange. Every problem on Linux is deal breaker, all the problems on Windows aren't.

Re: Not-so-great features coming soon to Windows 11

#33
post #5

Bad time to be pushing this crap with the Linux desktop wooing the gaming/ power user overlap crowd now that steam deck is on the scene. I have been using Windows my whole life but now I have a PC dedicated to Linux for the 1st time and I'm thinking about seeing one up for my wife, as I'm sure Linux will be perform better on the older laptop I'm considering 'upcycling'. People forget that tech trends often flow outwa…

>People forget that tech trends often flow outwards from the nerds who will actually try something new, then evangelize it to the world - see chrome for example

trillion dollar marketing seems to be more important factor than "nerds"

see Linux for example

There's ofc Android, but people have no choice - you are either "rich" (outside US) and want to buy iphone or go with android

Re: Not-so-great features coming soon to Windows 11

#34
This can all be summarized as: Microsoft is going down market.

Of course if Apple starts with this stuff they too will start going down market and open an opportunity for someone else to own the high end.

If I pay for it it better not have ads. If something I pay for starts adding ads I cancel.

Re: Not-so-great features coming soon to Windows 11

#35
What really kills me about the ad-spam being added to menus everywhere is that eventually they start having problems and drag my computer to its knees. I end up with behaviors where the Start Menu takes several seconds to appear, or a search will stall, and when navigating folders in the File Explorer have very serious and noticeable drag, taking one or two seconds. So far I’ve eventually been able to figure out how to turn them off with registry edits and fix the delays, but it seems to be getting harder to do, and MS is definitely omitting controls from the control panel.

It very well may be superficially my fault these things happen, due to customizations or features I’ve enabled or disabled, or software I’ve installed, or due to my company web policies and firewalls, but I have no way to track down the causes. The true culprit though, IMO, is the blurring of the line between application software and operating system. Allowing all these hooks into basic OS functionality seems like a bad idea. It’s crazy that opening the menu to log out or shut down will first go out to the web to scrape some news headlines or shopping suggestions for me, crazy I say!

Re: Not-so-great features coming soon to Windows 11

#36

It's such a shame because Windows is a good operating system for a lot of desktop use cases that happens to be smeared with shit all over the user interface. Honestly I'm expecting them to introduce mini advertisements in the task bar any time soon. It's not like those pixels are being used for anything when there aren't many windows open right?

The Weather/News Flash taskbar pretty much does this already. Nothing like an angry red triangle warning to keep me up on the latest celebrity news.

Re: Not-so-great features coming soon to Windows 11

#37
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes 2023 is sure to be the year of the Linux desktop. (/s) The reality is the computer form factor involving a keyboard is slowly becoming more and more of a niche. Windows has a lock on this niche for business and gaming. For other home use there is strong competition from apple and for education there is strong competition from chromebook. Linux is still not really in the running, sorry.

I think OP's point is that there's one more major use case — gaming — for which Windows has a newly viable competitor. It's not that Linux is going to replace Windows, but that Windows could suffer a death by a thousand cuts. I'll note that more and more offices that I encounter seem to be switching to Chromebooks.

If using Windows is death by a thousand cuts, using Linux is obliteration by ten thousand.

Linux has completed 90% of the work, but the last 10% (usability) is a long way away.

Re: Not-so-great features coming soon to Windows 11

#38
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes 2023 is sure to be the year of the Linux desktop. (/s) The reality is the computer form factor involving a keyboard is slowly becoming more and more of a niche. Windows has a lock on this niche for business and gaming. For other home use there is strong competition from apple and for education there is strong competition from chromebook. Linux is still not really in the running, sorry.

I think OP's point is that there's one more major use case — gaming — for which Windows has a newly viable competitor. It's not that Linux is going to replace Windows, but that Windows could suffer a death by a thousand cuts. I'll note that more and more offices that I encounter seem to be switching to Chromebooks.

I actually wrote about using Linux as a daily driver for a week for everything, gaming included: https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/a-week-of-linux-instead-of-...

In short, Proton is making pretty good progress and anyone can check their own Steam library with ProtonDB, to see how many of the titles they care about are likely to work.

Out of the popular mainstream games, around a half will work on Linux, whereas in the case of my Steam library (mostly indie titles) that figure is closer to 75%. This is no doubt thanks to shipping games now being simple in most of the popular game engines out there (like Unity, Unreal and even Godot). However, some games have the occasional bug, whereas others just straight up refuse to launch.

Also many users don't use things like AMD Software, but I personally didn't really find a good alternative for it on Linux, to limit my GPUs power usage and alter the fan curve, CoreCtrl coming close but not quite being a viable replacement: https://gitlab.com/corectrl/corectrl

Back to games, there will be issues with either really old niche titles that you might want to play, or many of the modern games that have multiplayer components (and anti-cheat systems), or sometimes even two games from the same publisher/developer might have one of them be available on Linux but not the other (e.g. War Thunder works but Enlisted doesn't).

In short, Linux is definitely getting better and might already be sufficient as a desktop daily driver even for the folks who want to do some gaming, but isn't a 1:1 replacement and some things just won't work for a variety of reasons. That said, claiming that "The Year of the Linux Desktop" might eventually come no longer feels delusional - it might just be 5-20 years until we get there for regular folks.

This probably wouldn't have happened without Valve's involvement, as well as all of the people who work on Wine and other software like that.

Re: Not-so-great features coming soon to Windows 11

#39
post #12

Is there a version of Windows that lets you pay your way out of this bullshit? I may need a Windows machine for work next year and this shit is terrifying. I haven't touched Windows since around 2006 so I'm not familiar with their offerings. They used to have a consumer and a professional edition of Windows in the olden days with the latter being far less annoying.

Wouldn't Pro versions of Windows don't have this mess?

Re: Not-so-great features coming soon to Windows 11

#40
Firefox (mobile) was pushing ads at me on [what is supposed to be] my home screen last week (Addidas and Nike being put in the first two slots).

Why would Microsoft not advertise in their browser when supposed competition is doing the same. Like, switch to Google and get their tracking, switch to Firefox and get their ads, ... "might as well stay with Edge" becomes a more realistic proposition every day.

[I'd personally probably move to links before using Edge, but that's just me.]

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