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De-crufted Windows 11 coming to Europe soon

arstechnica.com

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Re: De-crufted Windows 11 coming to Europe soon

#191

Post by eviks »

zbrozek wrote: post #43
just_boost_it wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got a mac for the first time this year. Honestly, it feels like taking a shower after getting home from the beach on a sunny day when you've been wearing sunscreen. Everything just works with no extra garbage, no constant intrusive updates, no hassle. The only issue I had was the lack of alt-tab, and that was solved by an app called alt-tab.

I got my first mac through work this year and I hate the UI. It's very nice that it doesn't come with as much bloat (but it does still come it, e.g., Apple news, music, etc). I absolutely hate the window management. Inconsistent behavior on double click of the title bar (Chrome maximizes and Slack doesn't) is annoying. Lack of snapping and tiling (a la super-arrow) drives me nuts. That command-tab will switch me to a…

> Yes, you can install a dozen little extra utilities to customize your way out of most of these things... but I'm not going to

There is no OS where this approach solves UI hate, installing those extra utilities is the only way out

> how often the system is reimaged or whatever

there is another utility that restores your apps/configs, but of course, a no-utility policy breaks that

Re: De-crufted Windows 11 coming to Europe soon

#192

Post by bigstrat2003 »

cmcaleer wrote: post #91
aetherspawn wrote: post #3

Suppose you are buying a new laptop ... does anyone else feel sad that their operating system has effectively turned into some weird social media marketing tracking data harvesting hybrid of a thing? But in the name of progress and security, you can't stay on Windows 10. So for me it's this weird middle ground right now .. waiting for either Windows to U-turn, die out, or for more work apps to port to OS X.

This frustrated me for years but I just grinned and borne with it because game compatibility and WSL meant I could do basically anything I wanted in Windows and it was what I knew. Then one day WSL wasn't enough due to dumb compatibility reasons so I decided to dual boot Ubuntu. Then very shortly after I just... stopped booting in to Windows for anything other than gaming. It was very strange. I've shitposted about y…

Honestly, you don't even need Windows for gaming for the most part. 90% or more of the games I play run on Proton without any tweaking needed. The few exceptions are games which use anti cheat rootkits, games which I want to stream to my friends in discord (which doesn't pick up audio on Linux), and CP2077 (which doesn't seem to like ray tracing in proton).

I was very pleasantly surprised how smooth gaming on Linux is. I maintain a Windows 10 install and will for the foreseeable future, just for the odd cases where I need it. But I rarely boot into it any more.

Re: De-crufted Windows 11 coming to Europe soon

#193

Post by rekoil »

harrygeez wrote: post #114
aorth wrote: post #106

Fantastic! How do we get access to this "European" version of Windows 11? Asking for Europeans who don't live in Europe, and for non-Europeans everywhere who want less Bing, Edge, and upselling in their OS.

When I still used Windows I remember there used to be a Windows "N" version. Some AIO ISOs will let you choose

Is the license the same between N and non-N versions?

Re: De-crufted Windows 11 coming to Europe soon

#194

Post by zerr »

magnio wrote: post #53

Maybe I'm overthinking this, but how on earth did the EU pass a regulation[0] with such far-reaching implications? First Apple opening up to third-party app stores and RCS, now Microsoft giving users a bit more leeway. How come none of the big tech lobby against it in the EU? If it survives the waves of appeals, the DMA will probably change the entire technology landscape in the near future. Not that I'm complaining…

Btw, Microsoft seems to be circumventing US/EU sanctions. While traveling to eastern Europe, the fresh installation of Edge has yandex (pootin-linked company) as the default search engine, and also proposes other similarly shady websites like mailru.

Re: De-crufted Windows 11 coming to Europe soon

#195

Post by eviks »

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #167
cmcaleer wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I got my first mac through work this year and I hate the UI. I am baffled by whoever thought having icons leap in the toolbar as a default behaviour was an OK thing to do. Drives me crazy when I use a Mac other than mine. I have lots of little issues with the UX. Play button opening Apple Music -- ahh! Running unsigned apps is easy but I always get caught out by the right click thing. > you can install a dozen litt…

i am not a mac guy, saw a friend use m1. why does everything have to be trial/paid? i use linux and everyone is expected to be a freeloader and yet people constantly keep on churning our good/bad software for free because its the whole idea of "you scratch my back, i will scratch yours" and "i am doing this for fun. how about you have a problem so you fix this yourself and help everyone" type camaraderie which is opp…

The major obvious factor is because the devs can earn money doing that unlike with Linux, but there are also things like: because it's usually not free to make those apps (mac's developer subscription, without which it makes harder for the users to install apps)

Re: De-crufted Windows 11 coming to Europe soon

#196

Post by bigstrat2003 »

aetherspawn wrote: post #3

Suppose you are buying a new laptop ... does anyone else feel sad that their operating system has effectively turned into some weird social media marketing tracking data harvesting hybrid of a thing? But in the name of progress and security, you can't stay on Windows 10. So for me it's this weird middle ground right now .. waiting for either Windows to U-turn, die out, or for more work apps to port to OS X.

> But in the name of progress and security, you can't stay on Windows 10.

If I hadn't switched to Linux, I would absolutely be staying on Windows 10 until such time as Microsoft stops making a user hostile OS. The rather low threat of my machine getting owned because I can't get security patches any more is far less onerous to me than what Microsoft is doing these days.

Re: De-crufted Windows 11 coming to Europe soon

#197

Post by bigstrat2003 »

cowl wrote: post #141
binkHN wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprisingly, I'm not sad at all. I've been using Windows for a long time and recently purchased a new computer with Windows 11. It's such an abomination that it forced me to try Linux for the very first time on my production machine, and I'm very pleased with the results. A thank you to Microsoft for giving me a reason to look somewhere else, and a sincere thank you to the open source community for all the work they…

the problem is that many many companies have standardised on windows as desktop. you as an Employee do not really have a choice. At first you still try to use windows at work and linux at home but the little differences in muscle memory become too much so sooner or later you cave and use windows at home too.

Not really. I've been using Windows for work and Linux on my home desktop for 2-3 years now, and there's no friction at all.

Re: De-crufted Windows 11 coming to Europe soon

#198

Post by pjmlp »

aetherspawn wrote: post #3

Suppose you are buying a new laptop ... does anyone else feel sad that their operating system has effectively turned into some weird social media marketing tracking data harvesting hybrid of a thing? But in the name of progress and security, you can't stay on Windows 10. So for me it's this weird middle ground right now .. waiting for either Windows to U-turn, die out, or for more work apps to port to OS X.

We can stay on Windows 10 until 2025, and even that is kind of open to debate if there is too much business pressure.

As ex-UNIX zealot, those that during university days used M$ on the email signature (most likely still visible in some online archives), Windows is for me still the lesser problematic.

I like Apple's hardware, however I am not paying their tax, when PC gaming laptops offer me more, rather have them as work issued laptops, and in what concerns GNU/Linux I no longer have tinkering needs, been using it via VMs instead of dual boot, since VMWare became good enough for such purpose.

On laptops, even those sold with Linux pre-installed there is always something missing, or one needs to be stuck with the custom OEM distribution, possibly without major kernel updates.

Re: De-crufted Windows 11 coming to Europe soon

#199

Post by bigstrat2003 »

zbrozek wrote: post #43
just_boost_it wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got a mac for the first time this year. Honestly, it feels like taking a shower after getting home from the beach on a sunny day when you've been wearing sunscreen. Everything just works with no extra garbage, no constant intrusive updates, no hassle. The only issue I had was the lack of alt-tab, and that was solved by an app called alt-tab.

I got my first mac through work this year and I hate the UI. It's very nice that it doesn't come with as much bloat (but it does still come it, e.g., Apple news, music, etc). I absolutely hate the window management. Inconsistent behavior on double click of the title bar (Chrome maximizes and Slack doesn't) is annoying. Lack of snapping and tiling (a la super-arrow) drives me nuts. That command-tab will switch me to a…

The UI is the single biggest reason why I will never own a Mac. I cannot stand having a single menu bar for the entire system, and I'm not about to use an OS which forces it on me. I do at least appreciate that Apple tries to make good products for their customers (even if they are overpriced), but I hate their GUI design and there's no real way around that.

Re: De-crufted Windows 11 coming to Europe soon

#200

Post by mrweasel »

eviks wrote: post #185
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulators didn't enforce cookie banners. Cookie banners are a form of malicious compliance. When you complain about them, you are doing the lobbying work of ad companies for free. The correct solution is to just not spy on people, and the problem is that the EU didn't go far enough and just ban the behavior altogether.

Regulators are the ones accepting the malicious compliance as compliance! So they did enforce cookie banners. When you ignore that fact, you are doing the pro-gov propaganda for free.

> Regulators are the ones accepting the malicious compliance as compliance!

Yeah, I had to read the first version of "the cookie law". The intend was super clear, at least in the Danish version, it was pretty easy to implement and wouldn't really bother anyone... Then came the marketing/SEO/retargting assholes who had a nice thing going tracking the everlasting crap out of everyone and they did NOT want things to change. Some of these people then came up with the "hosted cookie banner" and things went to hell from there.

You are absolutely right that this should never in a million years be viewed as compliance. It mostly didn't, and still doesn't work. What should have happened is that the law should have been amended to prevent outsourcing responsibility.

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