Our commitment to Windows quality • Hacker News Board

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#401

Post by politelemon » Fri, Mar 20, 2026, 10:36 PM UTC

I will give them this one benefit of the doubt. The tone in the blog post is a straightforward one that is rare to see in such communications, without fluff or marketing speak. It's a rare acknowledgment of going a bit nuts with the copilot integrations. It did look like they were trying to see what sticks and presumably the answer is, we can't figure out what did.

Personal computing is a rare niche these days thanks to the majority who have chosen to give over the personal aspect to the privacy hostile duopoly of MS and Apple (while celebrating doing so) who hold the leash.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#402

Post by wasabi991011 » Fri, Mar 20, 2026, 10:36 PM UTC

maxrecursion wrote: post #331

lm28469 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently installed Fedora and holy shit it's still not production ready. During the initial setup you need to input your location, you have a choice between clicking on the map or typing the city, I don't remember which it is but one of them makes your system freeze, no way to get out other than a reboot. It's documented since Fedora 42, and was still there on Fedora 43 Every time my swap is full the entire system…

I have been daily driving fedora on my laptop for over a year now and haven't ran into a single issue. Not saying you're lying, but if you are having that many serious problems it might be a hardware issue. The OS is definitely stable and perfectly fine to use.

Picking the location odurong setup is a hardware issue? I find that hard to believe.

And do you mean hardware issue or hardware incompatibility?

The former would most likely manifest itself across many operating systems, but if you mean the latter... why would that matter in terms of a given person deciding whether to switch to Linux?

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#403

Post by colordrops » Fri, Mar 20, 2026, 10:37 PM UTC

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #308

colordrops wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a horrible take, nothing but a tautology. It only runs the apps most people want to use because it's installed on so many computers, so developers target it. Linux can run anything Windows can. It's the same hardware, and if it was a much more popular desktop you bet your life that banks and streaming companies and AAA game developers would target linux as a supported platform. Has nothing to do with the quality…

It doesn’t matter why it only runs apps most people want to use. As long as you don’t think a “quality” of something is that “it can do what I want it to do”.

As long as you think of "quality" as "something that is not quality". bad logic. There are many systems that are only usable because they are popular but everyone hates them and thinks they are garbage. Market capture doesn't equal quality, sorry, that's a horrible take.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#404

Post by fgonzag » Fri, Mar 20, 2026, 10:37 PM UTC

Jblx2 wrote: post #317

fgonzag wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Change is hard. My father is a 70-year-old software engineer who programs .NET Core in Notepad and builds using custom BAT files that build the project using csc (the outright compiler). He browses and copies files in the Windows Terminal. He is also accustomed to Linux since we deploy to it in our business, and he can do everything comfortably in the Linux terminal. He trusts me almost blindly, yet I can’t convince…

I'd love to hear more about his programming journey. vi? EMACS? Nope, notepad.exe.

It's honestly short and pretty unique.

He wrote a programming language for his master thesis, so obviously he used it to write all his software. His first project was the POS/management system for his father's music store (Now famous as the Mexican company that acquired Sam Ash). I believe they didn't switch until around 2005 or so (so about 30 years maintaining it or training a software developer on it as a side thought)

He then started a large sized customs software company with i that ended up getting acquired.. Everytime the language required a new feature the devs would just ask him (like when he had to write a graphical toolkit for it because it started as a text only runtime). There is no record of this language anywhere as far as I know.

I believe around the 2000s as part of the sale of the company he rewrote the whole stack in C#. And he's been using it ever since, including the company we started together in 2013 (together doing a lot of work here). Still with good old Notepad and CSC.exe just like year 1.He curses everytime the ecosystem has big required changes (async, nuget) though I've managed to coerce him into keeping up with the times, dragging and screaming.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#405

Post by GettingOld » Fri, Mar 20, 2026, 10:38 PM UTC

fgonzag wrote: post #242

dmos62 wrote: post #195

I'm somewhat surprised that Windows is still most of personal computers. In my eyes, it's fundamentally inferior to Linux, and its superficial superiority only comes from the ecosystem, which is to say adoption, not some inherent trait. But then, since Linux adoption didn't meaningfully change in the last 20 years, I'm forced to confront the fact that either I'm wrong about its fundamentals, or the market is able to…

Change is hard. My father is a 70-year-old software engineer who programs .NET Core in Notepad and builds using custom BAT files that build the project using csc (the outright compiler). He browses and copies files in the Windows Terminal. He is also accustomed to Linux since we deploy to it in our business, and he can do everything comfortably in the Linux terminal. He trusts me almost blindly, yet I can’t convince…

I'm only a decade younger - I write .Net (C#) professionally - work it is Windows & Visual Studio (there is no way I'd want to mange any project that size without an IDE, tbh I much prefer using a IDE since I first got one in early 90s)

But at home - I use Jet Brains Rider (free non commercial) for C# .Net projects on Linux machines (Debian + KDE or Mint depending on machine)

I wonder if you mean Notepad++ not Notepad - I find KATE on KDE is good enough, when I just want to edit a file, but I've run Notepad++ under wine before.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#406

Post by peacebeard » Fri, Mar 20, 2026, 10:39 PM UTC

mattstir wrote: post #280

Although I haven't touched Windows in a few years now, my understanding is that the OS has been having a very rough few months with unstable updates, bricked devices, etc. And yet the first thing they mention is moving around the task bar? Is that really what they want to lead with? It's just baffling. It's also a bit disturbing to see "reduced flicker for file explorer" as a main focus. Just how bad is the Windows e…

Their vulnerable introduction leading into the 4 task bar screenshots made me laugh out loud.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#407

Post by natas » Fri, Mar 20, 2026, 10:39 PM UTC

hyperhello wrote: post #160

natas wrote: post #151

I recently had dinner in Bellevue with an individual who holds a relatively senior position within Microsoft’s executive leadership. During our conversation, she emphasized repeatedly that Microsoft does not primarily view its offerings as consumer products. According to her, the company’s leadership is strongly focused on B2B strategy, with revenue growth driven mainly by Azure, AI, and enterprise solutions. Her per…

I recently saw this comment. You made it a few weeks ago, copy and paste identical.

I’ve included this here because it’s highly relevant to the discussion. That said, anything not closely tied to revenue will not be prioritized, which limits the impact of this microsoft post.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#408

Post by jumpman_miya » Fri, Mar 20, 2026, 10:39 PM UTC

stevage wrote: post #326

deng wrote: post #225

If you want to know how serious to take this, just look at this gem: > Enhancing Search: [...] Clearer and more trustworthy results, with results from content on your device easy to understand and clearly distinct from web results So yeah, you still get web results in your search bar, a feature absolutely zero people want and which is just there to fake Bing success, just with a little divider now next to the applica…

Not just me then? Those integrated search features have been around for so long, and always irritating. I use macOS. Same problem. Searching your computer or searching the web are fundamentally different tasks. I'm curious if anyone actually approaches them the same.

[dead]

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#409

Post by pdonis » Fri, Mar 20, 2026, 10:39 PM UTC

dmos62 wrote: post #195

I'm somewhat surprised that Windows is still most of personal computers. In my eyes, it's fundamentally inferior to Linux, and its superficial superiority only comes from the ecosystem, which is to say adoption, not some inherent trait. But then, since Linux adoption didn't meaningfully change in the last 20 years, I'm forced to confront the fact that either I'm wrong about its fundamentals, or the market is able to…

> I'm somewhat surprised that Windows is still most of personal computers.

The reason is simple: Microsoft has a lock on PCs used by corporate and government employees, so the vast majority of people who use computers at work use Windows computers. And so they naturally buy the same kind of computer for home that they're used to using at work. People like me, who run Linux at home even though I'm forced to use Windows at work, are outliers. And probably always will be. So the only way for the Linux desktop to really take off would be for large corporate customers and governments to switch from Windows to Linux. I would love it if that happened, but I'm not holding my breath.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#410

Post by applfanboysbgon » Fri, Mar 20, 2026, 10:40 PM UTC

anal_reactor wrote: post #390

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows is not technically inferior to Linux. To the extent it has problems, it is mainly because of top-down anti-user behaviour mandated from corporate. But anyone capable of using Linux is capable of hacking out that BS and getting a generally superior experience. I use both literally side-by-side, two laptops with a KVM switch, and I still greatly prefer Windows for many reasons. Some reasons: Even as a low-level…

Linux just isn't friendly to newcomers. 1. Lots of rough edges "yeah it almost works if you tweak it a little" yeah thank you but no. 2. CLI is better for doing the thing you want, but GUI is better for discovering what options you have in the first place. The fact that GUI is an afterthought on Linux says a lot.

Not only is GUI better for discovery, it's not even always true that CLI is better for doing the thing you want. Depending on the complexity of the task, building a tower of CLI commands/arguments can be a pain, and if it's something you do ~once a month, good luck remembering the syntax. A GUI lets you not even have to think about it, not have to memorise syntax or go out of your way to write a script to save it. And while CLI is great for things you do routinely... Windows still offers great CLI support, so you simply get the best of both worlds.