I’m going through a similar experience for my kids. I’m super close to pulling a trigger on a iMac G3, which was the first computer I used as a kid (at the school computer lab). Not having it connected to the internet, preloaded with Kid Pix and some other games that I enjoyed as a kid.
The day Windows died
571–580 of 925 posts
Re: The day Windows died
#572I just bought a Lenovo Ideapad from Costco for about $500. The last time I bought a computer preloaded with Windows was about a decade ago. My experience so far: I turn it on, there's a license agreement. Actually, there's two. One is from Microsoft, and it's rather long but I guess it's about par for the course. Then there's the Lenovo license agreement, which is actually a bunch of other license agreements concaten…
> I guess I'll crawl back into my cave and keep using Linux for the foreseeable future.
I’d been using Windows for so long, dealing with all the issues, random installs, shutdowns and all the crap.
Then one fateful day 3 years ago I installed linux, and I haven’t had to think about my computer ever since.
It’s absurd.
Re: The day Windows died
#573Earlier quoted context omitted.
What basic desktop functionality is degraded? I mean, I understand the ads, and the push towards cloud with OneDrive. But what functionality has been degraded? As far as I can tell, Windows still has the best multi-monitor support of the 3, and pretty good window management defaults out of the box. Driver support out of the box as well, and rock-solid stable DE. macOS, on the other hand, has this weird ideas of windo…
Search is an immediate stand out feature. I rarely use shortcuts these days, just "Super + 'term' + Enter" Windows start menu search is almost non deterministic these days. When working from home, I often switch between audio devices - this is something that was easier in previous versions of Windows, same with messing with the audio mixer to change the volume of different apps. The start menu as a whole is _entirely…
Window Search works well for me. I turned off the web results for Windows Search. It only shows me my local files and applications and loads instantly. (Use O&O Shutup tool) Searches inside text and docx files, as well. I agree it could be better, but it's not trash.
Audio devices are easy to switch than ever now. Click the wifi/sound button on taskbar, then click the icon on the right of the volume slider. It's not obvious but clicking it allows you to switch between all available audio devices.
AppData is where your preferences should be stored. ProgramData is for app store stuff. It's confusing and should hopefully clear up in a while. It's a step up from storing everything in \Documents.
OneDrive only does it if you click Next without unchecking it - just turn it off. It's a bit of a dark pattern, I agree, but I don't have that "feature" enabled. There is only one "local" Documents folder (in \Documents). But OneDrive wants to push the Cloud version of it (in \Documents). I think this where the confusion lies.
Settings is pretty well done, imo. Let's talk about recent macOS settings changes now.
No idea on network proxies...? I'll take your word for it, sucks.
> separate workspaces per monitor
I prefer how Windows does it. And GNOME only does it for the "primary" monitor, the other monitors do not get separate workspaces.
> the _only_ thing MacOS has going for it is a bash terminal that is well integrated into the OS.
It's zsh by default, and it's not "well-integrated". It's a leftover vestige from NeXT and they just didn't remove it - it literally has BSD underpinning its OS.
PowerShell with Windows Terminal is very powerful and I like it. It's completely integrated with Windows, and is a first-class citizen, just like on macOS and Linux. You get the added bonus of using WSL2 and having access to all of your Linux tools.
Learning PowerShell has been enlightening and does much more than bash/zsh.
Re: The day Windows died
#574Earlier quoted context omitted.
US public listed prices are tax free. Add 18% tax (if I'm not wrong), you're off by ~50$
Which US state has 18% sales tax???
Who said anything about a US state?
It seems to be the sales tax (GST) applicable in India for iPhones & iPads.
Plus customs duties.
Re: The day Windows died
#575Earlier quoted context omitted.
And that was just the install process. Soon you'll start using it and you'll quickly come to despise anything Windows-related. A good tangent is this absolutely marvelous video put out by the Microsoft Teams people, where they compare the performance of the "classic" version to the brand-new version. A sight to behold: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CT7nnXej2K4
> Congratulations to the Microsoft Teams team on all their hard work! Maybe in a few years we won't have to watch Teams draw itself like a Windows 1.x application on contemporary hardware! Hilarious :-)))
Maybe we can make a comparison with 2001 MSN messenger and it’s more or less instant appearance?
Re: The day Windows died
#576Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I guess I'll crawl back into my cave and keep using Linux for the foreseeable future. Apple makes laptops, TV streamers, and tablets. Is there some reason you're avoiding them?
I don't know about OP but they're significantly more expensive for me (non-US; Asia) than any other offerings, that I feel like I'm being scammed. That with more subscriptions for anything I might want to use (Spotify/Netflix/Prime) just make it kind of a pinch, and so for a lot of people in my country. Edit: for ex: the $799 iPad pro costs an equivalent of $994.35 in India.
To be fair, you can easily use apple hardware for 5 years, where windows is just completely dead and unuseable after 2.
Re: The day Windows died
#577Earlier quoted context omitted.
This post is basically about the author's nostalgia for his early days of computing with Windows 95 and how he wanted his son to have the same experience. This post is screaming out for Linux. Linux is the solution to his dilemma. If he reformats that drive and puts say Kubuntu on it - the kid's first PC experience is going to be a vaguely retro 90's style shell with a start menu, the start menu is going to have a Ga…
> This post is screaming out for Linux. Linux is the solution to his dilemma. I'm not sure about that. Ubuntu at least is being slowly turned into adware. Apt already shows advertisements, the snap store is being expanded and promoted — and yes, these are small changes for now, but that's exactly how Windows started changing as well. Change like this happens, as the saying goes "gradually, and then suddenly". Sad fac…
The standards for what constitutes adware are a bit higher than on other OSes, however I also see this as a warning sign and I despise snap. As someone who also vets Linux installs for some relatives I used Ubuntu on these and I regret it a bit. It's nothing you can't fix yet, but it becomes an annoyance.
This and the silent introduction of phased updates and some broken updates makes me avoid Ubuntu in the future for sure. My go-to would probably be Debian which I personally use, however something like Silverblue or microOS might also be attractive in the future ... but not yet for casual users.
edit: Or maybe vanillaOS, if I ever get over the waste that is a/b partitioning.
Re: The day Windows died
#578I just bought a Lenovo Ideapad from Costco for about $500. The last time I bought a computer preloaded with Windows was about a decade ago. My experience so far: I turn it on, there's a license agreement. Actually, there's two. One is from Microsoft, and it's rather long but I guess it's about par for the course. Then there's the Lenovo license agreement, which is actually a bunch of other license agreements concaten…
> I guess I'll crawl back into my cave and keep using Linux for the foreseeable future. That's a valid choice, but not due to technical concerns. You're presumably very technically literate since you're using Linux. You can just save your license key somewhere and get fresh installation media and reformat the garbage on your device with a clean installation. You don't need any of the Lenovo stuff, your laptop will wo…
I don't doubt that apps installed by Lenovo are exacerbating the problem, but even with a clean install it's still Windows. I use Linux for a variety of reasons, some technical, some aesthetic, but mostly because the systems are usually designed to respect their users in a way that Windows and Android don't. Not that there aren't plenty of problems with Linux as well. They just tend to be usability shortcomings rather than design features that are personally offensive.
Re: The day Windows died
#579I just bought a Lenovo Ideapad from Costco for about $500. The last time I bought a computer preloaded with Windows was about a decade ago. My experience so far: I turn it on, there's a license agreement. Actually, there's two. One is from Microsoft, and it's rather long but I guess it's about par for the course. Then there's the Lenovo license agreement, which is actually a bunch of other license agreements concaten…
Oh and don't get me started about the latency all the trash causes to the start menu. I had this routine, computer starts, you press win-key type 2 letters hit enter and the program you want starts instantly. Since Windows 11 this is horribly slow, like seconds sometimes, especially the first load. I can assure you this is not my hardware setup. Clearly their goal is not "provide the best, smooth and performant user…
The start menu and taskbar are disgusting. There are times where it feels like they’re making a round trip to the moon to get data.
It’s not consistent enough to debug either.
Re: The day Windows died
#580Earlier quoted context omitted.
Destiny 2? Bungie has been unpleasant about this, as I’m sure plenty of other devs still do-which, unlike the past where they could claim no market share, makes less sense now that Steam Deck is a thing and doing great.
Bungie is specifically and on-purpose making the game broken on Linux for no apparant reason. Other BattleEye titles work just fine. There's no technical reason why it doesn't work. All the technical work was done all the way in 2021. https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/4145017/view/31046... This is one of those cases where you need to vote with your money and stop supporting studios that are hostile to Linux.…
As someone who has been on both sides, developing cheats and working in anticheat, AC on linux will always be significantly gimped compared to windows because of GPL related issues, anyone saying otherwise is doing it entirely for marketing reasons.
On windows a closed-source driver that can utilize and scan for anomalies in reverse engineered undocumented internal kernel structures is feasible. If you want to do something similar on linux you need to find a reverse engineer that has never laid eyes on linux kernel sources(good luck with that), have them reverse engineer and take very detailed notes on relevant kernel structures and functions, and then find a software developer that has also never laid eyes on kernel sources to write a driver according to those notes. Needless to say, this takes a fair amount of time and therefore money.
The alternatives are to implement your detections in usermode, where they can easily be fed false information from the kernel, or to publish the source code for your detections making them almost worthless.
Cheat developers have it much easier, they do not give a fuck about licensing and will just read kernel sources and ship a closed source driver, or ship a hypervisor that tampers with kernel data structures that they are able to just copy and paste out of the sources.