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Microsoft is driving users away

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Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#381

Post by firecall »

tux1968 wrote: post #235
firecall wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I don’t think Linux is good enough, usable enough or supported enough! The out of the box experience on Ubuntu doesn’t even come close to modern macOS or Windows 11. Sure, if all you need to do is use a web browser then you’d be fine with a Linux GUI most of the time. But then a Chrome Book is better at that point.

Yeah, i'm not a fan of Ubuntu either. But if Linux isn't for you, that's great. I don't think any of us should work to convince you otherwise. We're fine. You're fine. No problem. P.S. Chromebook is Linux under the hood.

Indeed, it's all good :-)

And I agree, you cant really have a back and forth about it, trying to score points. The requirements are too myriad these days.

Hence my Chromebook comment - because for someone that just needs a device that gives them access to a web browser environment and some apps, it's a good choice.

I was aware Chromebooks are Linux, which is good :-)

I do like Linux - and do use it as my desktop dev environment from time to time. When I feel like a change from macOS.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#382

Post by JohnFen »

alisonatwork wrote: post #239
Animats wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

On the flip side, Windows 8 was a superior interface for the Surface and similar devices to either 10 or 11. While I wouldn't want to go back to 8 due to subsequent quality of life improvements for developers like WSL and winget, I still miss the UI every day. It looked clean and simple and worked great with a touchscreen and keyboard alike. Trying to navigate a Surface on Windows 11 with the utterly useless widgets…

> The backlash against Windows 8 from purists who hated anything mobile

I think that you're being a bit uncharitable here. The issue wasn't "purists who hate mobile". The issue is that what makes a good mobile UI is worlds apart from what makes a good desktop UI. You can't combine the two without making one or both use cases worse.

The pushback was due to Windows 8 being terrible on the desktop.

Microsoft's mistake was in trying to make One UI To Rule Them All rather than having different UIs for different form factors.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#383

Post by rstuart4133 »

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.

> Linux is good enough, but in terms of stability and performance for user applications, it sucks compared to Windows and MacOS.

/me shakes head in disbelief. How can one persons experience be so different to mine? Everything is faster / small under Linux - the file system, the graphics, the size of a base OS install with GUI and brower is literally 1/10th of Windows. Windows taking seconds to respond to a click on the start button (I presume so it can fetch the ads) was the final straw for me.

As for stability, I watched co-workers come in in the morning and find their dev environment was broken due an overnight Microsoft update, and just accept the 30 delay while they fixed it as routine, unavoidable, "it's just how things are". But for one, an update that broke things so badly he needed an OS reinstall to drive him to having a "fuck it, I'm going to Debian" moment. That is rare though.

Meanwhile, I've never experienced unwanted downtime from any Debian security patch. OS upgrades are a different matter, but they only happen once in two years, and you have at least another 2 years to get around to it. Or you can do it once every 4 years. Which isn't surprising. Debian is used by a lot of servers around the globe. Stable is the name of the game, uptimes in years aren't uncommon.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#384

Post by rstuart4133 »

culopatin wrote: post #339
xinayder wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 print…

When you say “Linux is much easier” we can’t pick this weird anecdote of troubleshooting a printer. Is the average printer setup in Linux much easier? What about getting wifi going out of the box? Or Bluetooth? Or even finding out if something is not right? I don’t want to sound like a Window defender (heh) but let’s be honest here. If I open device manager and I see a little triangle I know something is wrong. In Li…

> What about getting wifi going out of the box?

It's 2024. WiFi even works out of the box on Debian now.

> Or Bluetooth?

Getting some random device to connect to Bluetooth is a lottery - on both Windows and Linux. It's a horrible standard. That said, it usually works on both.

> In Linux… ???? Where do you even go?

If we are talking about printers and one of bigger Linux desktop environments, a little red triangle in the notification area usually.

Yes, it will be different to where a Windows user will expect to find it. But given the dance you have to perform between the old control panel, the new settings app, and having to google to find devmgmt.msc I would hope it is different. Windows is no longer has the nice consistent management UI of the XP days. Modern windows is the mess you get after decades of organic growth with very little cleanup. I can just imagine the public derision an open source developer would receive if they delivered something as bad as that.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#385

Post by BizarroLand »

emptysongglass wrote: post #336
Sayrus wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

People who want to run Linux buy hardware and laptops that support Linux. The user you're replying to specifically said they don't care to evangelize the benefits because it works great for them. Replying with an example of a Nvidia card and Ubuntu Snaps doesn't really address them because they're in all likelihood running compatible hardware with a distro that works for them. Please continue to use other OSes with t…

> Please continue to use other OSes with the blessing of the rest of us Linux users. No one is forcing you or trying to convince you otherwise.

Speak for yourself. That condescending attitude is disgustingly lame, and everyone is welcome to use linux, even the haters. It is free and open source, not free and open source (except for people that emptysongglass doesn't approve of)

Everything deserves criticism. Everything is imperfect. Calling out imperfections is not an insult to imperfect systems but a hope that the systems which can change in a way that we humans cannot would change for the better.

And it doesn't matter how upset you get for it, Linux's feelings have not been hurt by the criticisms it has received. Rather, many people have heard those criticisms and raised the flag and ran to the rescue and made linux better because of them.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#386

Post by BizarroLand »

datagrimx wrote: post #124

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…

I would gladly pay $10/m as a home user for a version of Windows that provides those options. I can live without alternate shells and I can accept closed source software for those prices.

Give me the same base setup as Windows 7 but with the Windows 11 security bells and whistles.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#387

Post by alisonatwork »

JohnFen wrote: post #382
alisonatwork wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the flip side, Windows 8 was a superior interface for the Surface and similar devices to either 10 or 11. While I wouldn't want to go back to 8 due to subsequent quality of life improvements for developers like WSL and winget, I still miss the UI every day. It looked clean and simple and worked great with a touchscreen and keyboard alike. Trying to navigate a Surface on Windows 11 with the utterly useless widgets…

> The backlash against Windows 8 from purists who hated anything mobile I think that you're being a bit uncharitable here. The issue wasn't "purists who hate mobile". The issue is that what makes a good mobile UI is worlds apart from what makes a good desktop UI. You can't combine the two without making one or both use cases worse. The pushback was due to Windows 8 being terrible on the desktop. Microsoft's mistake w…

I don't know, I've been using Windows on desktop since 3.1 and found Windows 8 perfectly usable. In fact it was immediately better than Windows 7 because there were more keyboard shortcuts for window management.

The biggest regression in 8 was the Control Panel disaster that continues to this day and is less related to mobile friendliness and more a mismanaged attempt to try break free of some very ugly legacy components that were already behaving inconsistently in 7. Setting up a custom DNS still requires diving deep into multiple layers of ipv4 settings and popups, exactly as it did in Windows NT, I believe. It's a nightmare.

The Start menu at least since 8.1 was toggleable from full screen to corner mode, so I don't think that's really a worthy area of complaint. In every other respect, 8 behaved more or less like 7. Keyboard shortcuts worked the same. Double click worked the same. Explorer was still Explorer.

Edit to add: I just checked and Start menu was still full screen only in Windows 8.1. I guess it never bothered me because Ctrl+Esc still popped it, you could still type the name of the shortcut to find it, Win+X was there for admin menu and you could still hit Win+R to run binaries directly. Having a two-dimensional arrow key navigation felt faster than tree-based to get where I wanted too. Maybe for keyboard-centric users it didn't feel much different, while for touchscreen it was clearly better.

It's Windows 10 where they actually started actively removing features, and Windows 11 has taken that to the extreme by replacing the entire start menu and task bar philosophy that's been a core part of Windows since 95 and replacing it with some hideous MacOS dock like thing. Don't even get me started on the messing up of right click in Explorer. It's like Microsoft got taken over by Apple developers who never used a Windows PC in their lives. Awful.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#388

Post by mostlysimilar »

PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #361
Animats wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 who has tried to combine mobile and desktop UI's has always fucked it up. I'm absolutely convinced it can't be done while servicing both well.

See: basically the entirety of web design nowadays.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#389

Post by shiroiushi »

ReptileMan wrote: post #319
shiroiushi wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's nothing disturbing about not being interested in the latest ultra-violent and ultra-realistic FPS. Similarly, there's nothing disturbing about not being interested in the latest Hollywood movies, which are all Marvel comic-book movies and uninspired Star Wars franchise installments.

Personally, I love playing some classic video games, such as through MAME, once in a while, but new games are nothing like this.

Re: Microsoft is driving users away

#390

Post by shiroiushi »

bee_rider wrote: post #344
shiroiushi wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 (…

i3 and Sway work great. UI isn't a failing in general. Just a particular type of discoverable UI that is needed to sell to non-technical users… Chromebooks sell OK, right?

Almost all the software engineers I've worked with, using Linux desktop systems professionally, use Gnome or KDE (with far more using Gnome actually). I've never even heard of "sway" and I think I've met one person who uses i3, and maybe a few who use xfce.
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