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Microsoft is driving users away

christitus.com

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Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#281
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between: 1. Updates have been applied (in the middle of your crucial thing). Reboot in 60 seconds. Fuck you if you think you can cancel haha. 2. Updates for the following packages are available. Apply: Now or later. Windows is #1. Linux is #2. Linux does it right. Sometimes, you're in the middle of something, and delaying makes sense. But shutting down on a 3d print job, or in the middle of a ga…

The only thing is that most users don't know at all, or don't care. If the system doesn't eventually force them to update, they just won't. That's alright in the first order if you just don't care that they will get hacked, but we know what happened in the XP times - the machines join a botnet and attack everyone else. If you're work PC forces you to reboot "right now", that's a corporate policy or some shitty "endpo…

> That's alright in the first order if you just don't care that they will get hacked, but we know what happened in the XP times - the machines join a botnet and attack everyone else.

That's alright also in Windows 10 or 11 when ransomware commes, so it must be something else. /s

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#282

"I've been a lifelong Windows user since the 90s and even MS-DOS back in the 80s, but things are changing. I've been using other operating systems more and more." OK, that's one user. But clearly he is still using Windows. Microsoft has not "lost" him. He is just complaining. He even provides a solution re: printing for other Windows users that implies his readers are still using it, too. "Microsoft is in a panic fro…

Bad article. Microsoft does NOT care about users. It cares about corporate licenses and ads. It will force you to use windows at work. Imagine watching commercials 8h/day. That's the future. You can't avoid it.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As someone that’s been forced to reluctantly wear the ‘Windows sysadmin’ on and off for the past ~15 years due to circumstances beyond my control…this just sounds like the complaint of someone too lazy to learn PowerShell.

The linux subsystem, despite being about as wrongheaded as running linux user space on the Windows OS can be as an idea, solves that problem. Nobody needs PowerShell, unless you're dealing with very old systems. And in that case, you're already lost.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#284

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…

> Honestly MacOS isn't much better.

Any examples to why macOS isn't much better?

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#285
I tried to buy Minecraft for a friend and found that the website declined all my purchasse methods. They also removed it from Amazon. One visit to a grey market key site and I got a good key, and $10 cheaper.

The best economical path forward is to redefine intellectual property and reinstate the fact that math cannot be IP. Repeal DRM clause in the DMCS. This forces big entities to compete by having quality products. Large market power is not supposed to have all the advantages. Innovation is meant to disrupt them when they are not operating in the consumers interest. But corps have been allowed to write their own laws to keep themselves ahead artificially. Change the rules of the game.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#287

For full Disclosure, I once upon was a software engineer at Microsoft. I witnessed first hand the evil decisions around Windows. I left Microsoft in 2006 but I am still part of the Alumni Network. IMO Microsoft can gain users back by: * Not requiring a Microsoft Account * Ending all data/telemetry collection * Not forcing Edge on its users * Stop releasing improved UI updates every week * Make bash, zsh, ... native f…

It's wild how annoying Windows UX can be when it's something that microsoft wants you to use, to help improve their services revenue. TBH, I'm on board with some of the negatives you listed, but I feel like the entire enthusiast community has been screaming about edge, telemetry, and start menu search for years. Microsoft seems determined not to listen, it's astonishing.

Why should they listen? Will doing these things improve their profitability? I don't think so. Having this annoying stuff (telemetry, forcing Edge, etc.) is good for Microsoft's profitability, and that's all that's important. If users don't like it, they can pound sand. It's not like they're going to switch to Linux; if they were really going to do that, they would have done it already in the last 20 years. Microsoft has gotten smart, and realized that all those people swearing "if they do this, I'm finally switching to Linux!" weren't really serious, because they've been saying exactly that for a couple of decades now, and still haven't, so almost nothing they do at this point will actually get them to leave Windows as long as it actually lets them do their work, however poorly and annoyingly.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Make bash, zsh, ... native for Windows Why? There is PowerShell, able to run on Linux and MacOS. And compared to Bash it is actually readable language.

IMO PowerShell is horrible. It is it an object, or not an object. You don't know, unless you know. How about operators? They make ZERO sense (-eq). They went supreme extreme on namespaces. I could write a paper on how bad PowerShell is. You can keep it. I'll stick with zsh or bash.

Um, to be fair, "-eq" is also an operator in bash.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Make bash, zsh, ... native for Windows Why? There is PowerShell, able to run on Linux and MacOS. And compared to Bash it is actually readable language.

IMO PowerShell is horrible. It is it an object, or not an object. You don't know, unless you know. How about operators? They make ZERO sense (-eq). They went supreme extreme on namespaces. I could write a paper on how bad PowerShell is. You can keep it. I'll stick with zsh or bash.

> How about operators? They make ZERO sense (-eq). […] I'll stick with zsh or bash.

Ah yes. Bash, and its highly intuitive `if /usr/bin/\[ 5 -eq "5" ']'; then :; fi` comparison operators.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#290

For full Disclosure, I once upon was a software engineer at Microsoft. I witnessed first hand the evil decisions around Windows. I left Microsoft in 2006 but I am still part of the Alumni Network. IMO Microsoft can gain users back by: * Not requiring a Microsoft Account * Ending all data/telemetry collection * Not forcing Edge on its users * Stop releasing improved UI updates every week * Make bash, zsh, ... native f…

Most of the Linux ecosystem is not really interested in selling Linux, they are interested in solving their problems using Linux and then sharing. This leaves space open for groups like Valve or Google to create a nice UI on top of Linux and sell that. How can they compete with free? It turns out free is not actually interested in competing with them… I still give it, like, less than 50% chance of occurring, but it w…

>they are interested in solving their problems using Linux and then sharing. This leaves space open for groups like Valve or Google to create a nice UI on top of Linux and sell that.

In theory. In practice, this doesn't happen.

Overall, I'd say desktop UIs are actually Linux's greatest failing. It's dominated by two different groups (Gnome vs. KDE) with extremely different design philosophies, and both having major (but different) problems. The whole Wayland vs X thing is also part of the problem. Everything else in Linux generally works really well, which is part of why it's so successful on servers and embedded systems.

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