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My Windows Computer Just Doesn't Feel Like Mine Anymore

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Re: My Windows Computer Just Doesn't Feel Like Mine Anymore

#121

Post by newzisforsukas »

The experience of using Windows is so much better these days, IMO. I too started on Windows 3.1.

> At this point, I have lost count of the number of times that I've left my perfectly working Windows computer at the end of my work day, only to return to a completely broken computer that won't boot the next morning.

What? I have had this happen maybe three times in my 30 years of using Windows products (from automatic updates). Do people really forget what a pain it was to patch things from scratch in 98, Win2k, or Windows ME? (Probably before then as well, but I didn't have the Internet). I remember using CDs for service packs, specialized software to download updates that MS didn't serve anymore, so many things. When that process failed, it was a all night event for one system.

I do remember rampant malware on Windows (unless you kind of knew what you were doing) until about 2007 when windows defender actually started helping and you didn't need to nuke your computer with Malware Bytes or something every time you used a web browser.

This belly aching and nostalgia is everywhere on the web, and I really think there is a trend toward selecting only the good memories.

We get old. It gets harder to deal with change. IMO, drop the ego, and say what you really mean.

However, I agree with the privacy and advertising gripes.

Re: My Windows Computer Just Doesn't Feel Like Mine Anymore

#122

Post by giantrobot »

nikau wrote: post #53
OptionOfT wrote: post #14

I can't even remove 'Recommended' from the start menu, not even on a Pro for Workstations. Every time I search on the start menu there is a web search, impossible to turn off. How is that acceptable? I install Edge Beta to test something, and the I uninstall it. All of the sudden my search provider in my normal Edge is reset. And the nagging everywhere. No I don't want 'back-up' my files (OneDrive is not backup, it's…

Not justifying the shitty antics of MS, but most of the junk can be turned off by registry settings which most large organisations automate via GPO

Until some update resets all those values behind your back.

Re: My Windows Computer Just Doesn't Feel Like Mine Anymore

#123

Post by ChrisSD »

accrual wrote: post #103
OptionOfT wrote: post #14

I can't even remove 'Recommended' from the start menu, not even on a Pro for Workstations. Every time I search on the start menu there is a web search, impossible to turn off. How is that acceptable? I install Edge Beta to test something, and the I uninstall it. All of the sudden my search provider in my normal Edge is reset. And the nagging everywhere. No I don't want 'back-up' my files (OneDrive is not backup, it's…

> Every time I search on the start menu there is a web search, impossible to turn off. How is that acceptable? YMMV, but this is what I used to disable web search on my Win 11 Pro workstation: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer] "DisableSearchBoxSuggestions"=dword:00000001

On Pro it would be better to use the group policy editor. As a bonus this also ensures the setting survives updates, which is not always a given for raw registry edits.

Re: My Windows Computer Just Doesn't Feel Like Mine Anymore

#124

Post by Kostic »

donatj wrote: post #82

I used Windows from about 1993 to 2006. In 2006 I was given a Mac Mini as a thank you for completing an unpaid internship. I fell in love with macOS and have basically been a macOS user since. At the start of the pandemic I bought a PC to game on. 16-core Ryzen, 64 gigabytes of ram. I'd been kind of pleasantly surprised with WSL and just general improvements in cohesiveness. It's still got that Windows jank under the…

Default Ubuntu is still pretty good. I have been using the default Fedora Workstation for almost a decade and it works great for me. I also don't spend time on tweaking it anymore (used to be the complete opposite). The defaults work, I concentrate on my work, side projects and games.

Re: My Windows Computer Just Doesn't Feel Like Mine Anymore

#125

Post by [deleted] »

newzisforsukas wrote: post #121

The experience of using Windows is so much better these days, IMO. I too started on Windows 3.1. > At this point, I have lost count of the number of times that I've left my perfectly working Windows computer at the end of my work day, only to return to a completely broken computer that won't boot the next morning. What? I have had this happen maybe three times in my 30 years of using Windows products (from automatic…

[deleted]

Re: My Windows Computer Just Doesn't Feel Like Mine Anymore

#126

Post by tcmart14 »

newzisforsukas wrote: post #86
silverquiet wrote: post #10

About a year ago I dumped Windows from my personal PC for good. I ran a Linux desktop at work for a decade, but my Steam collection get me with at least a bit of a tether to Microsoft. But Valve finally made Linux gaming a reality. I hope more people can make the switch someday because I'm quite happy with the system (Pop!_OS is my distro of choice these days).

I think Proton is a great project (and CodeWeavers deserve credit there as well), but why does it have to be a choice? I have been multi booting for 20 years, preferring Linux distributions the whole time, but other OSes when I want to use them. I recently started using a dedicated Windows system for gaming and other Windows favored tasks. I am running a KVM switch, using AMD Graphics on a Linux system and Nvidia on…

I don't know if I'd say its a choice between a squabble or no squabble, its just a different set of squabbles.

For me, there are evenings when I am hacking away on a hobby project for 2 or 3 hours. Then suddenly just go, 'I wanna just veg out for another 2 hours then go to bed.' When I'm in that mood, I don't even want to be bothered changing machines. Just hit the steam icon and veg. Thats also bout the only time I end up gaming though, haha.

Last time I dual booted though, I remember why I didn't for along time. Did a Windows update, windows rebooted my computer and it did something with grub and I couldn't easily boot into linux anymore.

Re: My Windows Computer Just Doesn't Feel Like Mine Anymore

#127

Post by ews »

_yb2s wrote: post #35
ews wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NixOS and Guix are in some areas about a decade ahead of Mac and Windows. It's incredible what you can do with those (I can't work on new projects without guix shell anymore). It almost has the same feeling that in the 90s, when distros had package managers and proprietary OSes did not.

I’m not familiar, what do you like about them?

I am going to try to ELI5, but the concepts run very deep.

Both nixOS and Guix are different to 'regular' distros in the way that they are declarative: there is a file that describes the full OS: every user, every package, every system service, where the bootloader goes and so on. The main idea is that you can take that file, nuke your hard disk, reuse it and you'll have the same OS byte by byte. This concept of reproducibility is not only very comfortable, but has profound ramifications in security (you know no compiler or library has been tampered with malware) or science.

But it goes deeper: Since the OS is described by a single file you can roll back to a previous version if your file is hosted on git (both OS manage this transparently without the need of a VCS). Users can have their own 'local copy' of that file with their own programs, including their own libraries with different versions. You can have different files as 'profiles' (one for work, one for personal projects, one for gaming) you can activate at any time when you want to switch tasks, or you can try your friend configuration on a chroot or isolated environment on top of your own system.

The main difference between nixOS and Guix is that guix uses guile scheme as configuration language for that particular file. I have plenty of '(packages (if is-laptop acpi)...)' entry on my own files.

guix shell is just a way to create a temporary environment to try something quick without polluting my OS. For instance, if I want to do some hacking on python2 I would do 'guix shell python2' and it will open a shell for me with python2 without changing my python3 binary and python3 libraries on my main system.

BTW you don't even have to change your whole system, both nix and guix can be installed on top of 'regular' distros (google 'guix foreign distro', which is the way I manage my rasperry pis).

There is way more than all that, I definitely encourage everyone to give it a try, it's a mind bending new way to use a OS.

Re: My Windows Computer Just Doesn't Feel Like Mine Anymore

#128

Post by monero-xmr »

segfaltnh wrote: post #15
silverquiet wrote: post #10

About a year ago I dumped Windows from my personal PC for good. I ran a Linux desktop at work for a decade, but my Steam collection get me with at least a bit of a tether to Microsoft. But Valve finally made Linux gaming a reality. I hope more people can make the switch someday because I'm quite happy with the system (Pop!_OS is my distro of choice these days).

I did this about three months ago in response to Windows insisting again that I must link my desktop user with my Live account. I'm blown away by how viable Linux gaming is now, entirely because of money dumped in by Valve. It's only looking better, too, the deck means people are motivated to at least make sure it boots in Wine, and if they support Vulkan the perf will likely work out well.

I installed Windows for a media PC for the first time in many years, and holy shit it’s insane. The dark patterns. The nags. It’s a given they are somehow tracking everything I do and selling all of my files. They are milking boomers who will never switch from Windows as a cash cow, longterm they know Windows is dead as a personal desktop. Their revenue is no longer dependent on Windows PC so it’s an end game scenario.

Re: My Windows Computer Just Doesn't Feel Like Mine Anymore

#129

Post by tcmart14 »

listenallyall wrote: post #109
karaterobot wrote: post #60

People don't switch operating systems at the drop of a hat. There's got to be a pretty good reason for it. All the people switching away from Windows, those are probably users that are lost to Microsoft forever. I get that their money comes from other places, but I bet there's a second-order effect of people who don't use Windows—maybe even people who now hate Windows—not having any desire stick with their other prod…

- stock is at all-time high - "all the people" is probably actually well under 1% of users - successfully switched all corporate accounts from single-purchase w/ occasional renewal to ongoing monthly subscription - also a lot of of consumer subscriptions - Azure - Github - LinkedIn - OpenAI investment I actually agree with you that the Windows experience is getting worse, quickly. But on balance, seems more is going…

I don't think stock would be a good metric. If I had to guess, Windows at this point is probably just a cost center. Their main revenue streams are office362 and azure. The Windows OS itself is just a rounding error.

Another way to put it. People aren't buying Microsoft stock because of Windows. They are buying because of Azure and Office365.

Re: My Windows Computer Just Doesn't Feel Like Mine Anymore

#130

Post by eitally »

listenallyall wrote: post #109
karaterobot wrote: post #60

People don't switch operating systems at the drop of a hat. There's got to be a pretty good reason for it. All the people switching away from Windows, those are probably users that are lost to Microsoft forever. I get that their money comes from other places, but I bet there's a second-order effect of people who don't use Windows—maybe even people who now hate Windows—not having any desire stick with their other prod…

- stock is at all-time high - "all the people" is probably actually well under 1% of users - successfully switched all corporate accounts from single-purchase w/ occasional renewal to ongoing monthly subscription - also a lot of of consumer subscriptions - Azure - Github - LinkedIn - OpenAI investment I actually agree with you that the Windows experience is getting worse, quickly. But on balance, seems more is going…

To be fair, the Windows experience on managed corporate PCs that are imaged without all the fluff and adware is far superior to what consumers get.

I frankly don't know why anyone who isn't tied to very specific software requirements would ever choose Windows anymore.

I had to replace an aging Pixelbook last year and eventually decided the right decision was to get a Mac. It's stable, the hardware is high quality, it does what it needs to do, most non-enterprise software is available, and the custodian of the operating system isn't licensing my data to 3P advertisers. I almost went Linux -- and have built my own Linux machines dating back about twenty years -- but I just wanted a polished, lightweight laptop I didn't have to worry about. I almost bought a new Chromebook, but the software problem is more acute even if the OS is dead simple, and frankly, the hardware -- ever since the Pixelbook -- has been lacking polish (no matter which OEM you buy from).

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