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Microsoft is driving users away

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Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#311

Post by vetinari »

cedilla wrote: post #229
pierat wrote: 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…

> If you're work PC forces you to reboot "right now", that's a corporate policy or some shitty "endpoint protection" tool.

Or they just know their users.

At our company,the policy is set up to request reboot during the next 30 days (so basically till the next patch Tuesday). Who complains the most about updates all the time or every day? Those, who didn't bother to reboot during the last 30 days.

So at some point, you have to force it.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#312

Post by mikub »

funcDropShadow wrote: post #270
cedilla wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The only thing is that most users don't know at all, or don't care. They will learn when they have been hacked often enough. We should stop treating everyone as children. Oh no, children are now treated like adults.

Unfortunately I think they won't learn. What most of them will do is to click the next banner that shows "We detected a Virus on your computer. Please click here to fix this.", but they will will absolutely refuse to click on that popup in Windows that tells them to update, because Microsoft is the ultimate evil that can't be trusted.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#313

Post by vetinari »

Zardoz84 wrote: post #300
pierat wrote: 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…

Also, in Linux you can update and keep doing stuff. Even a full distribution version update! I remember playing Stellaris at the same time that Kubuntu was being updated to the 22.04 LTS version.

It is not safe. Few years ago (around ~2016-17), there was that Nvidia driver update, that killed Xorg during the process. Yes, I was running the update in the gnome-terminal, and it didn't end up well, I spent next few hours piecing the system together from a live usb.

For next few years, I was running updates inside screen, just to be sure.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#314

Post by felsokning »

timetopay wrote: post #150
Solvency wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't get is... doesn't MS get more than enough data/telemetry from its cloud services and now AI usage? Do they REALLY have to shove it into the core desktop OS? As much as I loathe my days being siphoned from me all day long while being forced to use Office, I'd at least forgive them if my daily driver OS wasn't a giant ad-infested spyware app.

Tbh telemetry is really useful for identifying bugs, feature requirements, and security issues. It's anonymized, not really that invasive, and the way they gather it is pretty responsible. However... It's my operating system. Can they not understand why people would be sensitive about this? It blows my mind that, at least, there isn't an on/off toggle in the Pro version. It's really disrespectful to those of us who c…

>It's my operating system.

I think part of the problem is that it seems like an internal (corporate) push (shift?) to view it as only a "licensed" product that you're using, rather than as something you "own" on your machine.

We saw a bit of this with licensing and product validation. Now, we're seeing it with changes driven by internal (e.g.: corporate command chain) drives. They "need" this data but there's no open transparency about why they need it, where it's housed, who has access, what positive changes this data has driven (if at all), etc.

Back during the Watson or WER (Windows Error Reporting) days, that was the only "telemetry" that the company needed and they got by on quite a few versions of the OS without needing more.

I don't have an answer - but I do know that if my work didn't require Windows, I'd be happy to never see another Windows desktop again.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#315

Post by vetinari »

eschaton wrote: post #185
auggierose wrote: post #94

> macos is bland and hasn't changed in years I have the feeling Windows users are a self-selecting bunch.

Yeah. Every time a pundit, even an Apple-focused one, complains that macOS “hasn’t changed” I have to shake my head at such ignorance from people who should know better. The interface changes relatively slowly, all things considered. (When it does change suddenly, some of the same pundits throw a fit.) But the internals are always changing, virtually always for the better; things like the `discoveryd` situation are o…

Under the hood, macOS changes things (and break them) so fast, that Linux distros blush with envy, while they figure out, how to change something in 5 years that macOS does in 1.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#316

Post by vetinari »

eschaton wrote: post #189
daft_pink wrote: post #48

I would say the fundamental problem with Mac is paying through the nose for hard drive space, ram, and multiple display capabilities. However, like you say, Microsoft is driving users away with their terrible choices like forcing me bing and actively adding spyware to my machine, but they are far from the only ones doing it. Other legacy software makers like Intuit are actively sabotaging their software and the enshi…

Maybe people are getting what they pay for.

You think that 460 EUR per 1 TB of flash is a fair price?

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#317

Post by tim333 »

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…

Yeah Windows 7 was cool. After that I though I can't be bothered with further versions and switched to mac. Which is fine though I miss some stuff like that Windows lets you use what hardware you like. And what software - maybe my biggest annoyance with MacOS is when they decided 32 bit software was suddenly verboten because why not. I mean who'd want to use Photoshop PS6 when you could use the new subscription spyware version.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#319

Post by ReptileMan »

shiroiushi wrote: post #293
rincebrain wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really, among people under 25, a lot of them see "the phone" as the computer, and treat using desktops as a burden any time it happens.

It's not just them. Even software engineers under 35 don't use desktop computers any more, except at work. At home, for personal use, they just use phones, unless they're into the latest video games.

> unless they're into the latest video games.

The fact that there can exist sizable population of software engineers that are not into video game is disturbing in itself.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#320

Post by xinayder »

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…

> Linux is still crap software

I've been using Linux as my daily driver since 2019 and I can tell you that the moments I got pissed off where due to companies being extremely hostile towards Linux (ahem, Microsoft) and making their shit with proprietary Windows libraries.

Linux is not difficult, it's much easier to learn than to spend 5 hours on Windows trying to find out which UUID refers to the now-hidden old printer configuration dialog.

Really, even setting up a firewall or hardening your Linux PC is much simpler than Windows.

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