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The day Windows died

thomasbandt.com

751–760 of 925 posts

Re: The day Windows died

#751

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…

I mostly agree, Windows has been an awful experience in the last few years.

If I didn't use software made for Windows, I'd be gone.

Linux has finally gotten decent enough for main use. It is incredibly nice not to be harassed by M$ ads + annoying features.

Re: The day Windows died

#752
post #735

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why they wouldn't be able to install it themselves, tbh. The last n times I've installed (various distros) the install process went something like: select keyboard layout, select locale/timzone, go away while it installs, reboot. There was nothing there to do unless you want to get into customising disk partitions or something.

>I don't know why they wouldn't be able to install it themselves, tbh. putting the ISO on the USB, telling the BIOS to boot from the USB, dealing with any random failures in grub or whatever, these are showstoppers for nontechnical people. (actually the grub failures are a showstopper for me as well, I've never been able to figure out what you're meant to do if you boot up and get an error at that stage. I just re-ro…

Very true. I'd not thought about the "pre-installation" steps/prep. I take it all back.

Re: The day Windows died

#753
post #741

Earlier 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…

What's always kept me from making the jump is that I'll get hours, day, or weeks into using it and then hit a dealbreaker. It's always something basic but bizarre, and the attitude of the community is always "Come on dude, you should've known you can't use that distro if you want to have a network file share with filenames that start with the letter B." The solution is always to either go f*ck myself and start over o…

ChatGPT may have solved your problem. Instead of getting the sarcastic answers from the community, you can have ChatGPT figure it out.

Re: The day Windows died

#754
post #730

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess I'll crawl back into my cave and keep using Linux for the foreseeable future. Yeah you could do that, but now even Ubuntu includes ads when invoking apt. There is no escape from the ads, and it will only get worse. Even flatpak must be immediately removed, and snaps for that matter. As it is adware clutter for the system.

>now even Ubuntu includes ads when invoking apt Not saying this is wrong but I haven't encountered any ads when I use Ubuntu on WSL2 through a terminal. Does it happen only in the "proper" desktop version? What do the ads look like?

AFAIK it's just a blurb telling you that you can get Ubuntu Pro. Not exactly a real ad; it's just that some people don't like the fact that Ubuntu can advertise its services in its distro.

Re: The day Windows died

#755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you could do a better job of trying to empathise with people who are not like yourself and who do not conform to the norms of your social class.

"I think you could do a better job of trying to empathise with people who are not like yourself and who do not conform to the norms of your social class." This statement is extremely ironic. You are scolding someone about not empathizing more. Do you see it?

Interesting mental gymnastics. Calling for more empathy is... the same as not having empathy?

Re: The day Windows died

#756

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I think you could do a better job of trying to empathise with people who are not like yourself and who do not conform to the norms of your social class." This statement is extremely ironic. You are scolding someone about not empathizing more. Do you see it?

Interesting mental gymnastics. Calling for more empathy is... the same as not having empathy?

Calling for more empathy has nothing to do with empathy. It has to do with status.

Re: The day Windows died

#757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm so glad we have modern computers with gigabytes of RAM so that we can do real-time chat. This app would have been impossible fifteen years ago when computers had only 1GB of RAM or less. Without modern hardware development we would still all be sending eachother long emails like it's 2006. /s

Where was the chat app of fifteen years ago which could open Microsoft Word documents inside it, such that multiple people could have them open and be shared-editing the same file at the same time? Where was the chat app which could record the video call, add automated transcriptions, and upload it to a SharePoint-alike document store with permissions for the people on the call to watch it? Where was the chat app of…

I would imagine that fifteen years ago, nobody needed a document editor embedded in a chat app. In fact, today we don't need a document editor embedded in a chat app. As far as "automated transcriptions", they weren't necessarily practical fifteen years ago. And cross platform? Hello? There have been IRC clients for every platform since forever. And Matrix clients. And many other clients.

In short: Teams is not all that revolutionary or even great.

Re: The day Windows died

#758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said I wanted to spend only $500? The issue is more this stuff is brought in to justify the garbage end of the spectrum then creeps into the rest of the spectrum because its normal and the lower end didn't complain.

If you are willing to pay more, can you not just buy a laptop with no OS and have a separate installation of Windows premium done on it? That will at least save you from the OEM cruft.

Realistically we cannot walk into Costco, get a $500 laptop and expect it to be free of bloatware and ads. There has to be a compromise somewhere if you really need something at that price level. It doesn't take much effort to wipe it all out as you say, do a fresh install and disable the features of Windows that annoy you the most. The question is if 2-3 hours of your time are worth the cheaper tag price.

Re: The day Windows died

#759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very much true. The first time I had mouse scrollwheel issues on Linux, I was just casually told to create a bash file to change config settings. Not user friendly at all.

why is that user-unfriendly? Didn't it work? Did you miss the ads and the tracking you cannot turn off, updates that ninja-popup and log your PC for half an hour if you not careful for half a second while writing something or the simplicity of selecting the type of user you want to setup by pulling the network cable or disabling your wifi?

>why is that user-unfriendly? Didn't it work?

assuming you're not trolling, it's user-unfriendly because novices are used to changing settings in GUIs. changing settings in a bash script is a qualitative difference, and paradoxically leaves novices more helpless, despite being a more powerful tool in principle.

they don't know any of the syntax or semantics of bash, so they may as well be pasting something written in Kanji. they must put their trust in some random person on the internet who told them the incantation, that it isn't malicious or outdated or irrelevant. if it doesn't work, they have no idea what to do, or how to even begin to debug it, or how to undo it. they don't know if the change they made is permanent or if it will go away if they delete the line and reboot. they don't know about man pages, or the difference between .bashrc and .profile, or what the PATH environmental variable is, or what an environmental variable is full-stop, or what sudo means, or file permissions, symlinks, shebang lines, package managers, or any of the myriad incidental complexity which might crop up when you try to run some shell command from stackoverflow.

because often it isn't as simple as running that shell command. it turns out you need to run it with sudo, or apt install some missing command, or it uses some syntactic construct that doesn't work in your current shell, or a grep option that doesn't exist on your version, or you're in the wrong directory, or you need to activate some systemd service first, or it says to pip install something but actually you should use your system's package manager, or X or Y or Z ... experienced users run into little snags like this all the time and fix them without even thinking about it. do an experiment for me right now: go through your bash command history and find some command you used to solve some minor problem. then look at the commands before it for the failed attempts and workarounds and diagnostic steps you did. you probably forgot you even did those. then ask yourself if a total novice could have done them. the answer will be "no".

compare a GUI: a GUI settings dialog will have options labelled in English, and leans on well-understood semiotics of checkboxes, dropdown menus, sliders and so on. those constrain the possible types and values (compare with stringly typed shell commands), and it's clear how to undo them afterwards if necessary. they inform you of both the current state of the system, and how to change it (contrast: viewing the state of the system vs changing the state is two different terminal commands).

novices have a perfectly rational fear of screwing with things on the terminal.

Re: The day Windows died

#760
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People want low prices, and care about little else. Possibly because it’s simply one of the easiest to understand metrics. How does a Ryzen 4678v compare to an i12363k? I follow computers and have no idea. Price matters a lot even if you do know all the ultra-technical things. How do you make computers cheaper than the next guy? Subsidizing. Who will pay? Ads and internet companies. People complain Apple stuff is ove…

> People want low prices, and care about little else Yeah I mean look at the iPhone, this was key to the success of that product. Oh wait no, its the opposite and testament that enough people don't just want the cheapest no matter what that a whole extra ecosystem from silicon to apps exists just to satisfy the pent up demand of it.

The iPhone is unique. Like the Mac. There aren’t 12 manufacturers competing making identical iPhones.

Wintel computers are a dime a dozen. And with little else to differentiate them price seems to have quickly become the prime factor for many people.

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