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The day Windows died

thomasbandt.com

641–650 of 925 posts

Re: The day Windows died

#641
post #576
post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's really not true, I ran each of my "Windows" laptops for 6 years; a Toshiba from 2011-2017 and a Asus UX430UA from 2017 to this year. Bought a MSI GF65 Thin for a GPU, I refreshed Windows and installed only what was necessary and removed dead files/services, with constant HW health monitoring as long as I could; then migrated them to Arch/Fedora with i3wm; keeping as minimal of a setup as I could.

I don't know if that qualifies as easily using hardware, but I think I am very lazy, and that was the path of minimal resistance to keep them up and running. Both those laptops are happily being used by my parents for keeping track of their finances, doing admin tasks for whatever organizations they're a part of. My father even uses them for complex SAP tasks. The only HW fault that came up was the Toshiba fan broke once and was very quickly replaced and has been working fine since. The battery is dead of course, but the Asus still gives a 2-3 hour backup if necessary.

Re: The day Windows died

#642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Windows; Desktop PC mostly for games. That's totally fair, but I would definitely recommend that you try installing games on your Linux desktop as well. Proton is absolutely stunning in what they've managed to accomplish. I'm always a little surprised when a game _doesn't_ run well in Proton now. If you've got particular games that you must play that don't run well on Linux, you'll probably want to keep the Windows…

This is actually something I try to make a point of doing frequently. I tend to try games on Linux first before falling back to Windows after. Big call out is controller support. Sometimes I game on my TV, when I do I use an Xbox whatever-the-current-gen-is controller with the official usb dongle. To get it working on Linux, I had to compile/install a third party kernel extension from GitHub via the command line - fi…

> Big call out is controller support. Sometimes I game on my TV, when I do I use an Xbox whatever-the-current-gen-is controller with the official usb dongle.

My 8BitDo controllers connected just fine on Linux. Once I add them as trusted devices, they connect automatically as soon as I turn them on

Re: The day Windows died

#643
post #485

I 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 don't understand how Microsoft can cheapen their main OS that much. If they really wanted to emulate Apple, they wouldn't fill their OS with trash in every corner. This also extends to the default landing page of Edge. This is the worst form of bullvard, it is a tiny bit better than directly advocating for penis enlargement on the internet. But not by much at all. There should be no ads on the OS level. Especially…

Comparing Microsoft and Apple seems appropriate because they both develop operating systems that compete in the consumer market. It’s really not.

Apple is a hardware company that develops an operating system and services to add value to their hardware. They make nearly all of their money from hardware.

For the longest time, Microsoft didn’t really make any hardware at all, apart from some peripherals like keyboards and mice. Now they have Xbox and Surface, but they’re still predominantly a software and services company. The biggest reason they’re trashing up their OS with advertising and other crap these days is that they now make a lot less money from Windows licenses than they used to.

Long gone are the days when people lined up at the stores for their chance to snag a copy of Windows 95 on CD!

Re: The day Windows died

#644
post #631

Don't worry. If Linux ever comes popular in Desktops it will end exactly same place, or probably beyond as anyone doing the customization probably knowns enough to be more dangerous and nothing prevents those changes... Just look at many Android phones and how something like Facebook can't even be permanently removed...

Does SteamOS do this? (genuine question - I don't run it, but it's probably one of the bigger consumer-grade Linux distros)

Re: The day Windows died

#645
post #485

I 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 don't understand how Microsoft can cheapen their main OS that much. If they really wanted to emulate Apple, they wouldn't fill their OS with trash in every corner. This also extends to the default landing page of Edge. This is the worst form of bullvard, it is a tiny bit better than directly advocating for penis enlargement on the internet. But not by much at all. There should be no ads on the OS level. Especially…

To be fair to Microsoft this was a Lenovo laptop.

Though why Microsoft continues to do business with a company that thought it was a good idea to install a root certificate (with a publicly known private key) onto every single laptop they sold so they could MITM some ads into websites is beyond me.

Re: The day Windows died

#646
post #485

I 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…

Companies are not charities. To bring down prices so that you can buy a brand new laptop for $500 they will have to make that money somewhere else.

Re: The day Windows died

#647
post #402

It's really sad that there is no where for us to go in the desktop OS space right now. I, weirdly, daily drive all 3 OSes. MacOS; Work issued laptop and longish-time user (about 6 years with it). Windows; Desktop PC mostly for games. I've been using Windows since I could walk. Fedora; Desktop PC, dual booted which I use for most everything else. I cannot believe how much of a dumpster fire Windows has become. From th…

> but no matter how much I love it, Linux is janky. I see this a little bit different. I have ADHD and this relates to my operating system because I tend to go with the path of least resistance a little more so than my peers, or at least that's my anecdotal experience. Which means I haven't used Linux for a loooong time, exactly because it's janky. Where Linux is improving, however, both Windows and MacOS aren't. Mac…

I'm playing Diablo Immortal on Fedora with the help of Lutris. Just be careful though, it only takes one sudo dnf update to break the whole thing.

Re: The day Windows died

#648
post #485

I 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 had the same experience when I bought a new laptop last year. Well, I don't think it was quite as bad then, but almost. There was an option to proceed without creating a MS account but you had to go through a couple of nag screens asking if you were absolutely 100% sure you didn't want to create an account and telling you about all the features you'd be missing out on.

I guess if you are using Windows on your personal laptop for years you probably don't notice the change but coming to it after using Linux for years it was shocking - like it reflected a whole different philosophy of what a laptop is: a tool that the user owns and can use as he or she sees fit, vs an access point to the Microsoft SaaS/shopping ecosystem.

Re: The day Windows died

#650

I am sure I will get all kinds of hate for saying this: despite the extra up front cost, apple stuff is a better value. Lets take device lifetime: I have a 2013 MBP 15 and 2015 MBP 15. I use them for intensive things like music production. Both devices work flawlessly. I also a System 76 Oryx Pro which cost more than any mac I own. The webcam failed 5 months in, several keys don't work anymore, and it gets hotter tha…

I wish more people could have the experience of using Mac and Win11 on a daily basis for real work. I've been developing on Mac/Win11/Linux for 8 years. Win11 vs Mac/Linux is night-vs-day. But you really can't get a sense of how awful windows is without spending serious work time on both Mac & Win. It's not an exaggeration. The simplest things, like remembering settings, switching displays, or setting up hardware, Wi…

> I wish more people could have the experience of using Mac and Win11 on a daily basis for real work. I've been developing on Mac/Win11/Linux for 8 years. Win11 vs Mac/Linux is night-vs-day

I never used Win11. I actually prefer Win10 in comparison to Mac.

Linux is much better than any of those anyway.

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