DMA already paying off
De-crufted Windows 11 coming to Europe soon
251–260 of 347 posts
Re: De-crufted Windows 11 coming to Europe soon
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
Win11 Pro user here. It doesn't require too much effort to tame the beast. Until the shit is gone, sure it's not nice - and you still benefit from taking the installer offline mid-way so that you can choose your own username and such, which is a pita. But once sorted, it's a great and very responsive ui. And at least with Windows 11, as opposed to Win 10, I can tell the different windows apart, with a certain level o…
It doesn't matter how much effort it is, though. It's unacceptable that one has to do it at all. I paid for Windows 10, I should get an experience that prioritizes my needs (or at least the needs of users generally). Not one which prioritizes Microsoft corporate profits.
I don't disagree at all. The (out of the box) cacophony of internet content jammed into every nook and cranny does my head in completely.
I care much more about that than the telemetry stuff, but I completely appreciate that others care equally or more about the latter.
Once the crap is gone, the experience is awesome. It's such a shame they have to push it this way. I'd bloody pay extra for a lean edition.
Re: De-crufted Windows 11 coming to Europe soon
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
Been using Debian Linux as my main os for over 20 years. And happy that there’s less and less of a need to run a Windows vm. But even though most people are not happy with the recent evolution of Windows, most people will complain and then use it anyway. And Microsoft will get away with it and will take another step with the next release…
Microsoft is shooting themselves in the foot; Windows is dying and they are milking what's left. The new generation will not touch Windows with a 20 foot pole.
Yeah, 1,3 billion more to go...
Re: De-crufted Windows 11 coming to Europe soon
#254>> Camera, Cortana, and Photos can now be uninstalled When a user would uninstall an app, would it actually be removed from the system, or just the icons and entries would be. Motivation for asking: Several built-in apps are listed in the Apps section of the settings as having just a few kB in size, which does not match how bloated in size apps typically are in the current times. I've seen mouse drivers occupy hundre…
I think for app uninstallation to be relevant it's not whether the app resides on disk that's important, it's whether it's interfering with how you use the system. E.g. for a browser it's just important that the browser isn't registered as the default browser everywhere, but you can install your own browser. Being able to "uninstall" an app in a relevant way means being able to make it appear as if you don't have it. Whether or not the files the app uses are still on disk is perhaps relevant for disk space, but from a legal standpoint that seems almost irrelevant.
Re: De-crufted Windows 11 coming to Europe soon
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is called the Brussels Effect[0] Put simply, given how large the EU market is, and how strong its regulation is, it is cheaper for companies to comply, even outside of the market. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect
This explains why they comply to the EU regulations even in the USA, but not why they don't try to lobby more in the EU to avoid those regulations in the first place.
One reason is that there are more hands in the cookie jar in the EU. Less so in the US.
Re: De-crufted Windows 11 coming to Europe soon
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been on linux for the better part of the last 6 years. Legitimately the only times I can recall _not_ being able to do something on Linux were a handful of use cases: - Multiplayer games: Steam Proton largely solves compatibility for a lot of games now, but the included DRM and anti-cheat for some multiplayer games made them unplayable. - Certain specialist tools like Photoshop, some CAD software, etc. Open sour…
I tried multiple times to use Linux as primary desktop. I gave up. Windows hardware support for consumer devices is just better. And games, especially old games. Linux is amazing , but for a everyday machine. I've given up on Linux, I don't have time to configure it. Also every desktop ui Ive used on it isn't quite as polished as windows.
I think iforgotpassword gave a good reply to this, but I wanted to add a bit.
I agree it's not for everyone day-to-day, since I feel like inevitably you have to dive into the CLI to fix things with trying to get more obscure programs working.
As for desktop UI, IMO the tradeoff is that Linux DEs have no added cruft. I'd take that over Windows which to me seems filled with bloatware from MS before even the hardware manufacturer gets their hands on it. I've tried many DEs in my time with Linux, and I think GNOME in the last year or two is one of the best as a good mix of good visuals and highly customisable. KDE was closer to Windows but I've just never had luck with it being stable on various machines (seems to be surviving on my Steam Deck though).
Consumer device support is better I agree, though again IMO/IME that's more for certain niche hardware pieces or anything that has its own control app. Bluetooth is also something that I've still struggled with, especially when it comes to headsets.
Old games I can't agree with you on, but maybe that depends on your definition of old. I've had about the same experience getting old games (say from 2000 onwards) working, either with emulation or Wine supporting old software fairly seamlessly. And things have improved too. For example when I started using Linux around 2017, I recall Wine basically couldn't run The Sims 2 in a stable manner. Over the years since however, Lutris, Crossplay and Proton have taken the mantle and made games from that era work very nicely.
Re: De-crufted Windows 11 coming to Europe soon
#257I don't see mention of removing news from the widgets bar. I could actually use the widgets bar for things, but it's pointless with more than half the bar dedicated to low-quality clickbait that I can't get rid of.
Re: De-crufted Windows 11 coming to Europe soon
#258I remember the first time I used a Windows system last year after tens of years on Linux/OSX, and it was really a somewhat strange experience: the moment I connected the ethernet cable I was instantly looking at random flashy news articles from another part of the world. Not in the browser, not in some kind of "News" app, but right in my taskbar! The most amazing part is that I did not even have to click on it – the…
> It feels like you don't really own this system but use it in some kind of public library.
You don't, commercial OS manufacturers want you to see and treat your computers as app consoles, similar to game consoles.
They successfully got you to view phones and tablets as app consoles, the rest of your computers are next.
> What also caught my eye so much is the amount of branding around – there are Spotify, TikTok, Amazon Prime, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger icons right in your menu bar before you ever need them or attempt to download and discover these apps for yourself
Microsoft desperately wants you to use their app store to run these apps on your app console instead of on the web or on their competitors' app consoles.
Re: De-crufted Windows 11 coming to Europe soon
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
My anecdote is this: I had a Ubuntu 20.04 VM from university with 64 GB memory and my process needed 70 GB and it did lock my system. And the anecdote continues: I ran a 55 GB process on a 16 GB Mac and it finished without a problem and without me having to configure anything.
You’re comparing apples and oranges here. Independently of the operating system , your 70g process might have an actual working set of 70 g, while the 55g might have had a working set of 1 gig. Furthermore your Vm was running most likely in a shared environment, your swap partition running on shared not super fast io, etc - you may not even have had 64g of ram ( despite your Vm claiming the contrary ). Your Mac on th…
> swap partition
This is the difference. Linux has a swap partition. You fill up the dedicated swap partition (which you decide when you partition your drive and is unusable for anything else, so you want to keep it small) and boom you're out of memory, OOM starts killing random stuff.
macOS uses a dynamic swap file (technically its multiple files) on your boot drive that starts at 0 bytes that grows until your main partition runs out of space.
I wrote a small program to do some image processing, I had a memory leak that leaked uncompressed bitmaps, after a couple minutes browsing HN "why is that process so slow?", I go check, it turns out it had burned up like 200 GB of RAM on my 16 GB Mac without me even noticing. But it did actually complete without me bothering to fix the bug, so problem solved.
This also means macOS has a lot more leeway to, say, swap out background tabs you haven't touched in a week in favor of live data since it can grow that swapfile full of stale garbage.
Re: De-crufted Windows 11 coming to Europe soon
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "the system carefully opened it for me to delight me with some low-quality not-even-local news" To be fair, Apple does this exact same thing on their operating system. On a freshly installed iPhone, swipe right at the home screen. It takes you to the widget screen which is loaded by default with Apple News showing random junk. Microsoft deserves the flak for turning Windows 11 into a billboard, but Apple isn't immu…
But they don't do the exact same thing at all. One comes preloaded with apps you didn't choose and news or ads right on the task bar. Apple does none of that.
By default, Apple loads up the news widget in the macOS notification area.
Clicking on a story opens it in the Apple News app, which is also in your dock by default.