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The Windows 11 Trash Party

birchtree.me

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Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#371
post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet that there is already some Linux version reverse-developed inside Microsoft with a windows copy on top and a working compatability layer below.

they already have a compatibiltiy layer for "SQL Server on Linux", they had one for WSL1 (but WSL2 just runs in a VM), Edge already has official Linux builds. And as Office moves to the cloud all they need is just a thin-client running Edge. WSL2 already uses a VNC/RDP something to show Linux applications on the host, so it's not far-fetched to run the old legacy stuff in Windows VMs on Azure and VNC/RDP that to the…

> but I think corporate IT is still in love with group policies, and many fancy "endpoint security" things (device management for compliance), and they might be slow to change

Aye, AD rules the roost, as does O365 and being able to lock down work laptops.

I've done work w/ FreeIPA and OpenLDAP stuff -- and as much as I hate to admit it, I think AD is better for that, and it's not hard to find an SME. Also kinda liked powershell, though I don't use it very often.

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#372
post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not that different. Look at Azure and tell me with a straight face that it’s not the biggest clusterfuck of all time. Look at it. Azure is the single biggest reason why .NET developers have high blood pressure around the world. Azure is so bad people actively filter out jobs where the company uses Azure. The only other software which triggers this much aversion in people is MS Teams.

it's insane how good Microsoft sales people are, if they manage to make Azure sell this well when GCP and AWS are objectively better at basically everything, including cost considerations.

it's insane how good Microsoft sales people are

Having seen Microsoft, Google and Amazon people 'pitch' their cloud solutions to a mid sized company I used to work for with quite 'normal' cloud needs, I can tell you it's not that MS sales people are great, but rather that Google and Amazon are terrible and can't be bothered to even make a serious effort for anything but the largest of deals.

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Azure is Microsoft's biggest money-maker, not the inclusion of ads in Windows. Windows itself drives 12% of Microsoft sales[1]. [1]: https://www.kamilfranek.com/microsoft-revenue-breakdown/

I long for the day when someone will dissect the numbers, and show how much of Windows' vaunted desktop share is due to corporate licenses. I think it would show that -- when people are buying with their own money -- they're preferring Macs 2-to-1 over PC's now.

when people are buying with their own money -- they're preferring Macs 2-to-1 over PC's now.

I suspect that most people actually spending their own money are spending less than $1000, which more or less puts Apple out of the running.

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#374
post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does on Wayland. X11 isn't likely to get it because it's EoL. Currently using it right now on Sway: https://man.archlinux.org/man/sway-output.5.en

And Wayland is compatible with everything one would expect?

The question isn't possible to answer, what one person expects to work another person might not consider it important. Likewise, what does "compatible" mean?

I have used Wayland exclusively for over a year and not found any software I could not run.

For example, JAVA doesn't have native Wayland support, so if you launched GUI JAVA software Wayland will run it in a sandboxed X11 server (XWayland) that behaves mostly like Wayland in the context of the rest of your system but is just X11 under the hood.

However, because that JAVA software is technically running in X11 and X11 doesn't have the level of support as Wayland does for HiDPI then that specific GUI program can't inherit your pixel config. This will probably just mean the default layout for that program will be too small or blurry.

This is a good example because it's not unreasonable that in 2023 you may not be running any GUI JAVA software and you may never even realise this was an thing. Equally, GUI JAVA software may be the only software you run in which case this may be unacceptable.

There are other things Wayland does differently to X11 (because it's different software). For example, Wayland doesn't have a method for a program to register a global hotkey - if you want a global hotkey you have to register it in your WM or DE. This is because the tighter security model stops one program from capturing inputs to another AND because the developers can't come to a consensus on the API to enable this.

You may consider Wayland not supporting arbitrary global hotkeys to be incompatible with what you expect. I don't because I have no issue with the centralised global hotkeys in my WM.

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#375

I've been daily driving Linux since March 2020 however recently purchased a Valve Index and decided to pop Win 10 on a completely empty secondary M.2. The setup kept failing because it just could not handle the fact that the primary M.2 had a Linux boot loader on it. It just refused to install. My work around was to setup a QEMU VM inside Linux where I provided the VM with the secondary M.2 as the main install drive.…

If "Linux" could ever fix the consistent sound mixer / bluetooth issues, it could really be the de facto OS. I don't know how but across multiple people and distributions sound issues always start surfacing after 2-3 months.

What's wrong with PulseAudio? It's not great for pro use-cases with an unfortunately high latency (not that Windows's audio server is better in this regard), but it kinda has always just worked for me.

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Vista was an universally loathed disaster, but users took it because where else to go? Who? "Nobody" used Vista except eg schools. Same with 8 Maybe for me it feels diffetent maybe thats country difference, but the windows migration felt like: xp 7 10 ... 12? People were using xp and 7 as long as they could >In windows XP, microsoft learned their users accepted some abuse,e.g locked theme engine, plastic default the…

>>In windows XP, microsoft learned their users accepted some abuse,e.g locked theme engine, plastic default theme >No idea what you are talking about, what do you mean? It turns out to be quite hard to find links about this bygone era, even if everyone screamed bloody murder at the time. I found these: Third party themes, a feature loved by win98 users, are forbidden by microsoft in XP. https://www.theregister.com/20…

The reasoning is very good, you cannot deny it.

>Users were assumed to be responsible agents, and protection against malware or legal usage was their responsibilty.

This is naive as hell.

Such approach doesnt scale.

There are billions non tech people.

Just because theres loud minority: hundred loudy nerds on HN and other tech news sites screaming about lack of customisability

Then it doesnt mean that it was bad decision, nor that it was actually impactful. Theres way more people outside tech.

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#377

Go to Personalization / Taskbar. Turn off the widgets icon. Hide the Search bar. Turn off the Chat icon. Voila! Just Windows. Instead of cursing at the sky, I just turn off what I don't want. MacOS is an old, outdated clown car of an OS that looks like it hasn't been updated in 15 years. Let me know when the Year of Linux happens. Meanwhile, Windows is the most efficient, easy-to-use OS for development and media task…

while you do all that needed tinkering I'll be just working/playing games thank you very much.

Jokes aside, Windows is just as viable as an daily driver like MacOS or Linux. But to state it is the most efficient & easy-to-use, that's stretching it a little bit.

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#378
post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont know how to explain it. I’ve used all major OS’s including a couple of flavors of Linux. I just love windows. 11 is pretty awesome for me where I use it on my surface pro 8 and it’s just really nice especially with touch. Touch is definitely a huge part of my workflow too to the point that when I sit at my desktop I sometimes try to touch the screen. There are so many tiny quality of life things like being abl…

I would quibble about the fact that the screenshot functionality was stolen from macOS, but the thing that really kills me is your comment about File Explorer. My impression, after decades of Windows and now a decade of macOS, is that you just don't have to spend as much time with Finder in macOS as you do with Explorer on Windows. There's something about working on a Mac that simply alleviates a lot of the work of f…

Not OP but I hate Finder. I just want to see my folders and access them, let me do that ffs, why does that left panel hate me?

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#379
post #296

The sad thing is, Windows (even 11) can be great. I bought a new PC 18m ago, and due to the particular software I need to run, I needed a primary Windows installation. The PC came with a Windows 11 license, but I downloaded a stripped out ‘gamer’ focused ISO and installed that instead. It’s brilliant. Thanks to the nature of the ISO, it is totally debloated – far beyond just the obvious removal of things like ads and…

> The only downside of this approach is you have to be careful what’s been stripped out before you make your choice. Not just about what's been stripped out, but what malware may have been added.

Typically these are open source projects they are referring to. EG: https://github.com/Atlas-OS/Atlas

Re: The Windows 11 Trash Party

#380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question - what do you like about Windows? I used windows from 3.1, NT, 95, 2000 until XP, at which point I switched to Linux for my main OS. Obviously I used all the later versions of Windows too for work, but each version seemed worse and less usable (7 was ok I guess).

For all its faults, Windows is the only operating system that manages to balance practicality, versatility, customizability, and reliability all in one single operating system. Linux? The fucking thing breaks down if you so much as look at it wrong. No reliability, zilch, nada, /dev/null. I don't trust Linux with anything mission critical, unless I'm paying someone monies to make sure my time isn't wasted (eg: Red Ha…

> Linux? The fucking thing breaks down if you so much as look at it wrong. No reliability, zilch, nada, /dev/null. I don't trust Linux with anything mission critical, unless I'm paying someone monies to make sure my time isn't wasted (eg: Red Hat, Synology, Steam Deck).

From the mention of Steam Deck I'm going to guess most of the "breaks down if you so much as look at it wrong" is from graphics related stuff?

Or maybe using Ubuntu? When I stopped using Ubuntu the bug reporter came up often and quickly crashed.

However I've been using NixOS for many years now and had nearly no stability issues. The one I can remember I just rebooted and went to an old generation.

Before that I was using Debian and also had no issues, but their packages were outdated.

> So Windows is the only operating system that I can use to do everything I want to do on a computer, in the ways I want to do them, with the software I want, trusting my time will not be wasted on trivially stupid nonsense.

s/Windows/Linux or perhaps even s/Windows/NixOS for me :)

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