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The Windows 11 Trash Party

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201–210 of 523 posts

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#201
post #31

Windows is my daily driver. I actually like the OS but Microsoft would do well to listen to these concerns being raised consistently. They need to ask some deep questions of themselves of what they want Windows to be. This reminds me of the days where Ballmers goal seemed to be to lock everyone into Windows and MS products when the real upside turned out to be “make MS products fully available where people already ar…

Maybe I’m wrong but Windows is “free” (as in beer) unless you want to change your desktop, and then you have to fork over 100 dollars (if you don’t just buy a license from one of these grey market sellers who advertise on youtube). It seems pretty clear to me that Microsoft serves ads and collects people’s data to subsidize, at least to some degree the losses of not selling license codes for 150-200 dollars.

This is because Google has its Chromebook platform that sells a laptop with ad subsidized (its their business model afterall) word processing, other cloud apps and “operating system.”

I don’t know if I’m missing something but if I’m not I don’t understand why people think Microsoft is just randomly serving ads on Windows (to keep up earnings wise with google from quarter to quarter as it gives one of its former cash-cows away for free).

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#202
Everything about this article nicely encapsulates why I dropped Windows and moved to Ubuntu 22.04 (with KDE Plasma) about four weeks ago. I've been using Linux on and off since 1999, but now it's finally a really good option on the desktop.

All of Microsoft's telemetry was also an issue, which pushed me to look at NextDNS, which I now pay for. I've blocked MS, Apple, Google, TikTok, Canonical (Ubuntu), and more, from being able to track my usage of their services (except with Google, to a large degree, as I directly use their products.)

I've sacrificed a lot with this move, like being able to use my large collection of Elgato hardware for video production. Also, a lot of games, some of which I was playing with friends, but no longer can (ProtonDB says they're bronze or unplayable some cases, like PUBG.)

Over all, however, I couldn't be happier.

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#203
post #31

Windows is my daily driver. I actually like the OS but Microsoft would do well to listen to these concerns being raised consistently. They need to ask some deep questions of themselves of what they want Windows to be. This reminds me of the days where Ballmers goal seemed to be to lock everyone into Windows and MS products when the real upside turned out to be “make MS products fully available where people already ar…

Maybe I’m wrong but Windows is “free” (as in beer) unless you want to change your desktop, and then you have to fork over 100 dollars (if you don’t just buy a license from one of these grey market sellers who advertise on youtube). It seems pretty clear to me that Microsoft serves ads and collects people’s data to subsidize, at least to some degree the losses of not selling license codes for 150-200 dollars. This is…

> unless you want to change your desktop, and then you have to fork over 100 dollars (if you don’t just buy a license from one of these grey market sellers who advertise on youtube).

That, or you install vlmcsd somewhere and activate against that.

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#205

There are two Microsofts, as I see it. The one with DevDiv and stuff, which has amazing and mostly free development tools like VS Code, VS 2022, Windows Terminal, WSL, Azure, the .NET ecosystem, the MSVC C++ STL, PowerShell, TypeScript, and so on. And then there's the bean-counting, irritating part of Microsoft that has stuck around since the 90s and doesn't seem to go away. This part justifies adding advertisements…

Agree with you except the prefer reason. I like to using Window because of its advantages about UX, which I cannot find in Linux or macOS. For example: the consistent keyboard shortcuts, the explorer's UX and UI when accessing by mouse and keyboard, the window management including tiling flow, the muti-monitor management... I feel that there is power at Microsoft forcing Windows including terrible adware as now, just…

If you haven't found tiling window management that rivals or surpasses Windows in the Linux world, you really haven't looked very hard.

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, few enterprises have asked for any of this trash either. I'm pretty sure that most of them would be perfectly happy with a windows 98 style GUI, that supported modern hardware. They don't want all this churn either, they want something that is stable, doesn't change very fast and doesn't require them to constantly retrain their staff or waste their IT admins time fighting with whatever new options require a new…

It is somewhat strange then that enterprise linux is not more common, you get stability and configurability. I mostly put this down to bad salesmanship/C*s tending to be effectively technological cavemen...perhaps there are backroom deals we are not privy to, though.

> It is somewhat strange then that enterprise linux is not more common, you get stability and configurability.

Subjectively, I am under the impression that, in the enterprise desktop space, Linux is a more serious competitor to Windows than mac OS is.

For example in public administration: At one point the city government of Munich had replaced over 12000 desktops from Windows to Linux [1], and you keep seeing ideas to do similar things pop up in political party manifestoes and position papers like [2].

It is also not uncommon for large universities and research facilities to run on Linux.

Meanwhile, an enterprise running hundreds or even thousands of mac OS devices is something I've never heard of.

I think, in the past, enterprises were a bit more locked-in than they were now because they ran Windows software that they custom-developed, or off the rack but very niche and available for Windows only. But with the trend over the last two decades having gone towards writing that kind of software as web-based software, I think that element of lock-in is gradually but steadily decreasing as well.

The problem is that, once this competitive threat against Microsoft reaches critical mass, it's a bit too easy for Microsoft to counter the threat by simply backpaddling on the trash. In the meantime they just want to milk the cash cow as much as they can possibly get away with.

De-trashing an OS is easy. Meanwhile, they are working hard to make sure that Windows is the OS that runs the widest array of software on the widest array of hardware, which is not so easy (anything Windows from ancient to modern, Windows subsystems for Linux and Android). Windows emulation on Linux is also making massive progress, thanks in part to Steam, but I guess that structurally, it will always be easier for Windows to emulate Linux than for Linux to emulate Windows.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux [2] https://www.transformation.gouv.fr/files/presse/Declaration_...

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#208
post #31

Windows is my daily driver. I actually like the OS but Microsoft would do well to listen to these concerns being raised consistently. They need to ask some deep questions of themselves of what they want Windows to be. This reminds me of the days where Ballmers goal seemed to be to lock everyone into Windows and MS products when the real upside turned out to be “make MS products fully available where people already ar…

Maybe I’m wrong but Windows is “free” (as in beer) unless you want to change your desktop, and then you have to fork over 100 dollars (if you don’t just buy a license from one of these grey market sellers who advertise on youtube). It seems pretty clear to me that Microsoft serves ads and collects people’s data to subsidize, at least to some degree the losses of not selling license codes for 150-200 dollars. This is…

Microsoft doesn't really care about pirate home users, their primary source of income is business users, and these tend to buy many more Microsoft products than just client Windows. Moreover, the vast majority of home users just buys a laptop with a fully licensed copy of Windows preinstalled.

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#209
The forced tabloid news is honestly horrific. I was begrudgingly willing to turn a blind eye to candy crush adverts on the start menu as I tend to like the OS, but this is just terrible. I have bad enough focus issues as it is without Windows bombarding my with crap notifications and clickbait in the widgets menu. I have turned off as much as I see possible and my blocklist for the news must be hundreds of entries long but I still get absolutely inane crap recommended to me. Oh I hate it so much it makes me rage. This is worse than the Windows 8 start menu.

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#210

Edit: I'm comparing it with Windows 10. For me it felt like Microsoft lost it's way after 8.1 and now coming back to the Windows 7 way of things. Design wise aero looks similar. Windows 11 has been the most beautiful most stable and consistent windows I've ever used. It feels like a modern and rock stable update of Windows 7. I never got a blue screen or anything bad. Finally it feels like Microsoft is trying to make…

No one wanted ActiveDesktop. It was one of the first things you turned off after installing Windows98. It was removed in XP. Then they brought back a variation of it called Desktop Gadgets. It was poorly supported and full of bugs so, again, the first thing you were advised to disable after installing Vista/7. They ditched it in Windows 8. Now here we are again with Sidebar which we're sure is what Windows users want and definitely won't burn down, fall over, and sink into the swamp.
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