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Microsoft is driving users away

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Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#131

Post by bee_rider »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #70
firesteelrain wrote: post #4

As much as I like Linux, tides won’t be shifting for desktop to Linux. It will be Microsoft Windows for years to come

I guess because the majority of Linux folks don't really care about making it a solid user experience for normies, and those that do so might have strong opinions on things that might not roll with everyone, especially coming from Windows (read: gnome). I've maintained an in-house distro for a couple years so I know the ins and outs of systemd, dbus, polkit, xorg and whatever crap is needed to run a desktop session,…

The Free Software and Open Source ecosystems are, at their best, about communities putting together projects to serve their own needs and then generously sharing those solutions out.

I think an easily discoverable UI for non-technical people is not a problem that many technical communities have. Anyone who does try to start that project is signing themselves up for a lot of complaints from outside the project, almost by definition. I don’t really see why anyone would do it.

The Chromebook is probably the right way to go. I’d recommend them to my non-technical friends if they weren’t designed by an ad company. As it is, I have no idea, there legitimately doesn’t seem to be a good desktop OS for non-technical users anymore.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#132

Post by bhewes »

layer8 wrote: post #92
forinti wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I managed to convince my mother-in-law to use Linux and drop Windows. But it seems that convincing the network guys at work is harder than convincing a retiree. Apparently it's easier to administer a Windows network than a Linux one.

There is no good replacement for Active Directory, by a large margin. It’s the single biggest factor that keeps Windows alive in the enterprise.

In addition to Windows, I manage Ubuntu, MacOS and iOS via Azure Active Directory. I like Azure.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#133

Post by dijit »

uxcolumbo wrote: post #86

Install Windows 10 LTSC - keeps you sane for a few more years. By then the newer Windows should hopefully be better.

unless of course you need:

* Intel Arc drivers

* eGPU drivers

* Razer Blade 18 drivers

* native ssh

* windows containers

* WSL

(and likely many more that i haven’t found yet)

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#134

Post by hawski »

Lammy wrote: post #62
ThePowerOfFuet wrote: post #3

>To Access the old devices and printer use the run prompt and type the following: shell:::{A8A91A66-3A7D-4424-8D24-04E180695C7A} This is the finest advertisement for every OS not named Windows that I have ever seen.

It's just a GUID. They're a good thing and very useful. Spoiler alert, your Linux systems probably use them too: [lammy@emi] blkid /dev/mapper/nvme0n1p5_crypt: UUID="RjKq3i-w2ov-ZXcp-Uc60-Ylzp-Gc56-xtjpkg" TYPE="LVM2_member" /dev/mapper/mint--vg-root: UUID="4d5373f4-d9e2-4787-98d8-24c33a1574b7" TYPE="ext4" /dev/nvme0n1p1: UUID="d6b28757-9cd9-44a5-b68a-25515537e540" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="bc0382eb-01" /dev/nvme0n1p5: U…

I don't think the OP meant to piss on GUIDs. I think they are laughing at a very cryptic command line recommended to access "old devices and printer". That was always a classic jab at Linux and this looks extra cryptic as it is a literal random string.

Also UUIDs in the classic sense do suck in my opinion and Linux and FreeBDS use them, because they have to, to support standards that were made with Windows in mind. UUIDs are strange - i.e. their mixed endianess or how version bits are placed in them. All for a 128 bit random identifier as it is mostly used nowadays. I like the below to get a random identifier:

    __uint128_t random;
    char id[17] = {0};
    getentropy(&random, sizeof(random));
    for(int i = 0; i > i) & 0xf);
    }
This gives a 16 character identifier, like: pphlfcjmophlnohl

Chrome Web Store uses something similar.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#135

Post by PicassoCTs »

zeroCalories wrote: post #34

It's amazing to me that Microsoft messed up Windows. All they had to do was not not change things, but they continued to force junk on me that I don't need, take power away from me, and spy on me. Honestly MacOS isn't much better. Linux is still crap software, but we've reached the point where most things can be done on Linux, so good riddance. I hope that more people switch and Linux continues to improve. There's ac…

Internal promotion-point systems similar to google decouple large companies from customer demands and reactions. One huge hamster-wheel producing unwanted features and deprecating the one thing that kept windows valuable, the customers are already trained in to the operating system when they enter the workforce.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#136

Post by Solvency »

Animats wrote: post #90
zeroCalories wrote: post #34

It's amazing to me that Microsoft messed up Windows. All they had to do was not not change things, but they continued to force junk on me that I don't need, take power away from me, and spy on me. Honestly MacOS isn't much better. Linux is still crap software, but we've reached the point where most things can be done on Linux, so good riddance. I hope that more people switch and Linux continues to improve. There's ac…

> It's amazing to me that Microsoft messed up Windows. It is. At Windows 7, they pretty much had desktops right. Everything mostly worked. They'd finally fixed the crashing problems. (How? The Static Driver Verifier validated that third-party kernel drivers would not crash the rest of the system, and a classifier applied to crash dumps routed similar crash dumps to the same maintainer.) The UI was reasonable for a de…

Everyone loves to use the meme "enshittification" but fat fingerization started the whole downward trend. In fact, most UI is designed for a big fat doughy hand to sloppily slap a single giant rounded button.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#137

Post by dcan »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #123
Animats wrote: post #40

"To Access the old devices and printer use the run prompt and type the following: shell:::{A8A91A66-3A7D-4424-8D24-04E180695C7A}" And people complain about Linux.

They changed things to hide 'less common' actions when you right click. To disable that you need to hand edit a registry key.

The most bizarre thing in my experience is that they removed "Refresh" from that context menu, yet Explorer will a) not update when an application writes a new file, and b) when you rename a file, it does not get automatically sorted.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#138

Post by whatshisface »

tux1968 wrote: post #112
zeroCalories wrote: post #34

It's amazing to me that Microsoft messed up Windows. All they had to do was not not change things, but they continued to force junk on me that I don't need, take power away from me, and spy on me. Honestly MacOS isn't much better. Linux is still crap software, but we've reached the point where most things can be done on Linux, so good riddance. I hope that more people switch and Linux continues to improve. There's ac…

> I hope that more people switch It's reached a point where it no longer really matters. Linux is good enough, usable enough, and supported enough, that getting more users won't change much. It might actually be worse if a lot more users, with a lot of wide-ranging needs and demands, switch to Linux. At least, I am happy with the current state of Linux usability, and no longer care to evangelize the benefits of being…

I have a hard time imagining a world where Linux is used in a more diverse set of operating environments than it already is.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#139

Post by magicalhippo »

nickelpro wrote: post #53
naasking wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not angry that it changed, he's angry that the new settings interface doesn't let him fix the issue at all, and while he used to be able to easily access the old interface so he could fix it the old way, MS has now hidden that ability too. If not for some user-hostile magical incantation, printing would have been permanently broken. Who wouldn't be seriously annoyed with this situation? How many non-technical us…

The article doesn't specify what the issue was, neither you or I can say what the best way to fix the problem would be, if it required something specific of the old panel unable to be accessed via more appropriate or modern tooling. I suspect this is on purpose.

Well I still need to access the good old control panel each time I long on to a new machine, since the new settings app thing still doesn't have all the regional settings.

Quite basic stuff, at least it's still available in the old control panel for now.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#140

Post by PicassoCTs »

Animats wrote: post #90
zeroCalories wrote: post #34

It's amazing to me that Microsoft messed up Windows. All they had to do was not not change things, but they continued to force junk on me that I don't need, take power away from me, and spy on me. Honestly MacOS isn't much better. Linux is still crap software, but we've reached the point where most things can be done on Linux, so good riddance. I hope that more people switch and Linux continues to improve. There's ac…

> It's amazing to me that Microsoft messed up Windows. It is. At Windows 7, they pretty much had desktops right. Everything mostly worked. They'd finally fixed the crashing problems. (How? The Static Driver Verifier validated that third-party kernel drivers would not crash the rest of the system, and a classifier applied to crash dumps routed similar crash dumps to the same maintainer.) The UI was reasonable for a de…

I sat near an administrator who loudly cursed all day, because they force that gui down upon all system internal tools and ruined the info-density of the dashboards.
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