111–120 of 270 posts
Ultimately, the only reason we need to look at is late stage capitalism (and I say this as someone who believes in the market economy). Windows was the historic money maker at Microsoft, they held all the keys, all the power. The regime is changing however. OSes are more and more commoditised and the money has moved to Cloud and now AI. But there is one rule of the market: you have to post gains every quarter. So wha…
I have a theory, which I have no way of backing up or testing at all, that the entire slump in the laptop segment is driven by the fact that Windows is just utterly user-hostile garbage, and there aren’t any alternatives really, other than MacOS, which is too tied to Apple. Like any reasonable tech savvy person I use Linux of course, but I’d have trouble suggesting it… lots of people just don’t want to use the termin…
Chromebook, if you're okay with Google having your data.
Kinda makes me think, tech literate people have a moral responsibility to push back somehow and contribute towards a more healthy relationship between technology and humanity.
On Linux, configuring the fingerprint to work everywhere requires reading through different online threads and edit a config file. Enabling TPM auto disk decryption involves 10 steps command line. Enabling proprietary video codecs necessitates adding a third party repository. And many other small issues that I have to troubleshoot (shutdown freezing, sddm crashing after wake-up from sleep, PackageKit unable to update package, having to turn on a kernel flag for touchpad to work...). I really want Linux to work for me but still have to decide to use Windows on my personal laptop, coming from someone who has to work with Linux everyday at work.
I recently had to install windows on 2 computers after some years without doing it. Had to spend an entire day debloating the thing. Had to use a handful of tools and powershell scripts to do it. I still can't imagine how they managed to make a context menu open in almost a full second. In Windows 9x on a 200Mhz it was instant. A useless one too, because all the options that matter are in the old one. The only thing…
> The only thing holding me from Linux I've spent the last 25 years using linux and seeing this statement. There's always something.
I recently had to install windows on 2 computers after some years without doing it. Had to spend an entire day debloating the thing. Had to use a handful of tools and powershell scripts to do it. I still can't imagine how they managed to make a context menu open in almost a full second. In Windows 9x on a 200Mhz it was instant. A useless one too, because all the options that matter are in the old one. The only thing…
It's worth noting ChromeOS doesn't let you do that either, while MacOS doesn't require an iCloud account. iOS doesn't either, but is pushy about having an iCloud account. Don't know about Android.
I have a Samsung phone and while I'm allowed not to have a Samsung account, it's pretty pushy(pun intended) about it. There's an eternal notification active that tells me to add one. If I dismiss it, it reappears, either instantly or within a couple minutes. It can be snoozed, but the option to mute it indefinitely is greyed out in the notification manager. The app responsible can't be disabled or uninstalled. I can…
Ultimately, the only reason we need to look at is late stage capitalism (and I say this as someone who believes in the market economy). Windows was the historic money maker at Microsoft, they held all the keys, all the power. The regime is changing however. OSes are more and more commoditised and the money has moved to Cloud and now AI. But there is one rule of the market: you have to post gains every quarter. So wha…
You can use a program called Rufus to create a bootable flash drive from a Windows ISO which lets you bypass the Microsoft login.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>and let the Pro version just be an actual tool to use hardware. Pro has Group Policy, among which is an option to block Microsoft account logins at the OS level. It kind of breaks Microsoft 365 subscriptions if you need Office 365, but that's obvious. Other Group Policies include ones to turn off Windows Autoupdates, block OneDrive, block Copilot, and more.
Any good resources on flipping these switches?
There are so many policies you can configure to your heart's content that it's better to learn by doing than hearing.
I have a theory, which I have no way of backing up or testing at all, that the entire slump in the laptop segment is driven by the fact that Windows is just utterly user-hostile garbage, and there aren’t any alternatives really, other than MacOS, which is too tied to Apple. Like any reasonable tech savvy person I use Linux of course, but I’d have trouble suggesting it… lots of people just don’t want to use the termin…
But do they know they don't have to use a terminal? You can use Linux Mint perfectly fine without ever opening a terminal, like MacOS. Seems like more of a reputation issue.