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Windows 11 has made the “clean Windows install” an oxymoron

arstechnica.com

11–20 of 169 posts

Re: Windows 11 has made the “clean Windows install” an oxymoron

#11

Has anyone become so disillusioned with windows that they just have a windows pc sitting around collecting dust? Sometimes I still need to use some legacy program or whatever on there but I feel like the last time I booted into that thing was over a month ago now.

Same here

Re: Windows 11 has made the “clean Windows install” an oxymoron

#12

Has anyone become so disillusioned with windows that they just have a windows pc sitting around collecting dust? Sometimes I still need to use some legacy program or whatever on there but I feel like the last time I booted into that thing was over a month ago now.

Windows is nowadays required for maybe 2 major things: games (I know, Wine is a thing, but let's be honest: it is very much still a hit or miss), and some video conference software (e.g. webex with camera).

I install Windows only for job interviews. Usually I install it 2 days ahead, and keep running windows update repeatedly, until it finally finishes with everything, and I can use the system for a 30 minutes call, before I would install a usable OS.

Maybe a bit tangential: until about 10 years ago I used only Windows. One day I tried make something bluetooth related work on it, I don't even remember what. I just remember that it kept failing in a very cryptic way. It got me so angry after many hours that I just deleted the whole OS, and swore that I will learn Linux starting immediately, and that will be my main system going forward. It became my career after a few months, lol. Don't know if I should be grateful for Windows or not.

Re: Windows 11 has made the “clean Windows install” an oxymoron

#14
It's because everyone got super happy to give their money to apple who has a similar experience in ipad etc. Want to setup apple wallet? Oh you're not backed up here's an iCloud offer in your settings menu. Etc etc.

It's gross but it's sort of the norm now. Why shouldn't Microsoft do it if that's ok when apple does it?

Re: Windows 11 has made the “clean Windows install” an oxymoron

#15

I keep seeing headlines about Microsoft adding adverts to Windows and whatnot but none of it ever appears infront of me. Is that because I'm on Windows Pro?

Pro has all the annoyances the article mentions plus more. Maybe your PC has a genetic mutation like people that can't get COVID.

Re: Windows 11 has made the “clean Windows install” an oxymoron

#16
post #5

Phew. After being a Windows user for literally almost two decades I've happily migrated to Linux and couldn't be happier. Yep, it took some time to prepare but let's be frank, developers already use quite a lot of Linux/Unix tools already so why not cut the middleman and just work directly with what we need most?

Exactly. I made the switch from MacOS and couldn't be happier. The fun thing is that with Linux these days you have the option of a powerful workstation that you can upgrade be it laptop or desktop, can do gaming, and is private. The next thing for me is to "decloud" - meaning remove any and all online services that are not mission critical.

Re: Windows 11 has made the “clean Windows install” an oxymoron

#17
post #4
post #2

In my eyes Microsoft Edge is even more annoying. Even if you install the "business" version you still get that shitty startpage and if you log in to remote desktop that takes ages to render and then you have to a bit of time turn that "start page thing" off. And MS moves the options around all the time! Such a pain! You can't just set about:blank as an empty tab page any more.

Telemetry shows moving the option around results in higher use of the start page thing. Every time it moves less people can find it and the uptake of the new feature improves.

It's funny (in a bad way) that all this telemetry and optimization somehow optimizes for basically antisocial behavior. If I translate what you write into plain language: "every time we upset people by deliberately altering the interface, they are forced to rediscover things and they might start using some new bullshit we want to push".

Imagine if your local supermarket regularly reshuffled all the wares because this would force the customers to rediscover the location of everything again. This is the kind of thing that is being pushed? How do we stop this? To me this seems like a complete and utter resignation of human decision-making and empathy to machine driven metrics. "Computers says that my doohickey metric went up by 30% this month, I'll get a nice bonus".

Re: Windows 11 has made the “clean Windows install” an oxymoron

#18
I'm a lifetime computer user and software engineer with a half bricked laptop caused by Windows 11. Windows wanted me to create a Microsoft account and somehow me not doing that resulted in a boot loop. I installed Linux on it and work around the Windows partition. I did lose a lot of data that's technically accessible, but too lazy.

Re: Windows 11 has made the “clean Windows install” an oxymoron

#19

Has anyone become so disillusioned with windows that they just have a windows pc sitting around collecting dust? Sometimes I still need to use some legacy program or whatever on there but I feel like the last time I booted into that thing was over a month ago now.

Windows is nowadays required for maybe 2 major things: games (I know, Wine is a thing, but let's be honest: it is very much still a hit or miss), and some video conference software (e.g. webex with camera). I install Windows only for job interviews. Usually I install it 2 days ahead, and keep running windows update repeatedly, until it finally finishes with everything, and I can use the system for a 30 minutes call,…

And Android ROM stuff. All the vendor-specific ROM flashing apps are Windows only and I don't have the balls to run it via Wine. Sadly not even macOS (my main system) is an option.
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