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Microsoft is driving users away

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Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#211

Post by earlone »

Solvency wrote: post #155
earlone wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes agree. I started using Linux (Gentoo) as student 20 years ago to learn LKMs programming, and with my main Desktop being Windows currently, I give a new try to linux distros every year. I see Linux distros improve year after year, but they are still light years away from providing a good user experience. And even if I don't agree with many Windows 11 updates (like the cumulating number of services required to run…

How has had the entirety of the open source developer community not managed to make even a mediocre step forward in UI/UX of even the biggest Linux distro?l in 20 years? Hell, even Blender has made big strides and I thought that'd be impossible.

The bottleneck regarding UI/UX was (and is still) X11 / Xorg, with the obsolete client/server architecture inherited from a time when computers had no graphic card. Wayland has been in progress for some time now to replace X11 / Xorg, but it is still bugged to some extend, and driver support needs to be improved.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#212

Post by suby »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #173
dcan wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Reminds me, recently removed a folder and explorer showed it still being there and you could click on it and see the files. I'm suspicious that they're trying to move to 'one drive' for the whole file system and so need to cache everything for reasons. Performance and also the files on your drive might actually be only in the cloud. IE your hard drive is for local caching not for storing data long term. Means perhaps…

I installed Windows 11 three days ago because I need to make Windows builds for software, this was my first serious attempt at using Windows since 2017. I thought I unchecked everything I possibly could regarding telemetry / cloud services, but I either missed something or they, without permission, uploaded all data in my users folder to their server. It was at almost 2 gigabytes of stuff on their cloud before I realized what was happening. Completely unacceptable to me, and a reminder for why I left Windows in the first place.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#213

Post by logtempo »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #60
probably_satan wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've converted a handful of some of the least computer tech heavy people to Linux. This was years ago. The final few nails of Microsoft's coffin are being nailed as we speak. Not only because they are just fundamentally bad at innovation, but because they also sold out the United States to China. Billy boy is scared, and he should be.

Is converting the least tech literate an issue? I assume some of the easier distros are pretty much plug and play now, and if your only goal is to browse Facebook and print off recipes from an already set up printer pretty much anything can do that easily. But these people would probably be happy with an iPad if their iPhone wasn't cutting it. I think the big middle of the population that's the problem, people who ar…

you have a valid point. I always had Macintosh machine and then Linux, discovered at the university.

I think I fall in the case of tech literate people who know how to do things in Linux but don't care to relearn it all in Windows.

So I guess it's true for the opposite too ahah

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#214

Post by brikym »

wouldbecouldbe wrote: post #43

With the latest m2 macbook air's you actually get a significantly better laptop, for a lot less money, then a windows version I've found. Let alone the fact it just damn sexy. I got a DELL laptop from a client to be able to access their windows applications. I used it for coding for a bit, it was so painfully slow, so I switched back to my macbook air m2. I thought the Dell was just a cheap laptop, found out the reta…

Who doesn’t like to have sex with their sexy MacBook?

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#215

Post by makeitdouble »

overgard wrote: post #200
makeitdouble wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBF I don't think there's any control panels people are in love with. Apart from the issue of needing control panels mostly to solve problems, they're just not great. Windows legendarily keeps multiple versions of them, while for ios/macos it's a game of finding which image is actually a clickable button or understanding that wi-fi hotspot is under sharing and not networks. The FA was about command line incantation t…

Sure, but here's the thing, all they really have to do is... nothing. Just leave the old control panel alone and stop making new ones. Make small evolutions, not redesigns. It might not have been brilliant, but once people learned where things were there's very little upside to changing it and all sorts of downside.

I think we're underestimating the amount of stuff going on in Windows and the amount of settings that are globaly needed after decades of trial and error.

Right now, we have machines that basically do what macs do (traditional "computing", a mouse, a keyboard a screen, office or image related work).

Then you have tablets (the whole Surface Pro line + 2 in 1 convertibles) and their touch options, including the impact on existing settings (you now have two or more sets of keyboards that might be in different mappings with different interlocked behaviors. Same for screens. and so much more)

Then thin clients, mirroring and remoting. For mac it's remote desktop or screen mirroring at most. Windoes gets a flurry of inbetweens.

Then all the hardware that only works on Windows and need some way to be managed relative to the system.

All in all, mac made the choice to only cater to the proverbial 20 of the 20/80 power law. Windows fundamentally can't just pile on the existing chaos, even if it means bringing new layers of chaos.

I don't even think a full rewrite in a new layer would be humanly possible at this point.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#216

Post by tux1968 »

zeroCalories wrote: post #210
tux1968 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Linux is good enough, but in terms of stability and performance for user applications, it sucks compared to Windows and MacOS. There really isn't a company or organization that focuses on that, besides maybe Valve. We need more attention on it, for our own sanity, but most of the money is in enterprise servers.

> it sucks compared to Windows and MacOS

There are tradeoffs. Linux's advantage is that it's not an adware platform, or a walled garden. For my money, I don't care about extra performance or stability, it all works well enough for me.

Of course, that doesn't help if your particular application doesn't work on Linux, you're out of luck. I just don't think it's a worthwhile goal, to try to attract those people to Linux. If they want to fight for it themselves, great! But there's not much benefit for those of us who are already happy on Linux, to work to attract anyone else.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#217

Post by logtempo »

Solvency wrote: post #155
earlone wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes agree. I started using Linux (Gentoo) as student 20 years ago to learn LKMs programming, and with my main Desktop being Windows currently, I give a new try to linux distros every year. I see Linux distros improve year after year, but they are still light years away from providing a good user experience. And even if I don't agree with many Windows 11 updates (like the cumulating number of services required to run…

How has had the entirety of the open source developer community not managed to make even a mediocre step forward in UI/UX of even the biggest Linux distro?l in 20 years? Hell, even Blender has made big strides and I thought that'd be impossible.

I find it better than windows rn. Linux mint especially.

I mean there is even a playstore-like "app" to install softwares

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#218

Post by Propelloni »

overgard wrote: post #73
nickelpro wrote: post #15

This is basically an article by a guy angry that the UI for printers changed and predicting the end of the Windows empire based on that.

Every Windows user I know hates the new control panels. (I use plural because they've been trying to replace the actual good control panel basically every version of Windows since 7 and it's an incredible mess). Enterprise users put up with Windows because it's better to administrate than anything else, so taking away that stuff really is murdering windows.

I disagree with this notion. Enterprise GNU/Linux environments with a configuration management system like Salt are easily on par (if not superior) to Enterprise MS Windows environments in all regards. Add a 389 or Samba4 domain controller on top and off you go. The difference is obviously that you need people who can administer such systems. 389 is just as part-time admin friendly as AD, but Salt actually requires you to understand a little bit about the computers you are administering.

Will the 10 person SME run such an setup? Unlikely. Can a 100 person SME that employs four MSCE run such a setup? Yes, but you only need two RHCE or LPIC-2 admins now (for vacation and somesuch). Those are rare, I know, but they will scale to 1000 persons, no problem.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#219

Post by Sayrus »

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…

My own experience doesn't reflect that. I've been using Linux for work for years and tried to switch from Windows to Linux for games.

NVIDIA drivers and game support on Linux is not an experience I'd recommend to anyone without experience. On laptop it's awesome, unless you have both an iGPU and dedicated GPU, then switching properly is a pain. WiFi drivers are a hit or miss: some cards are great, some others are not well supported. Knowing which is which before buying requires reading extensive documentation. Even Dell on their XPS 9310 fucked up Linux support so bad they dediced to quietly remove the option to buy Ubuntu laptop and communication about supporting Linux.

My personal laptop recovers all screen when waking up from sleep, my work laptop doesn't and I need to unplug and plug them again.

One thing that works awesomely well for me is Printer supports (scanners are another pair of hands though). Anywhere I tried, discovery works great out of the box, even for USB printers it works without having to download a driver from a strange website.

When using snap (default on Ubuntu) Firefox crashes often if it updates in background. Libre office is far from the Office experience, which I tend to forget as I use Google Workspace apps instead.

Having tried working on Windows, Linux and MacOS, I wouldn't move to another environment. The pros greatly outweigh the cons for my own use-case. But I will still keep a Windows for gaming and cannot recommend it to relatives.

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