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The Reason Windows Hate Is Exploding: It's the End of Personal Computing [video]

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Re: The Reason Windows Hate Is Exploding: It's the End of Personal Computing [video]

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if it is governmently mandated that it is, it might become, at least the user facing distros.

The nature of Linux makes this pretty much impossible. Say Ubuntu ships with some package for identity validation bullshit. What stops anyone from repackaging it and offering it without those packages?

They might force the Linux kernel to add a value 'age' to the couple username/password. Although in Europe OSS is exempt from age verification obligation.

Re: The Reason Windows Hate Is Exploding: It's the End of Personal Computing [video]

#122
For over three decades Microsoft offered a free planned obsolescence to PC manufacturers. Windows got heavy and slow after a couple of years and needed a hardware upgrade which generated billions of revenue and all were happy. This continues till today and is the reason that MS increases the Windows bloat and HW vendors keep installing them.

If they installed Linux, we would still have our 12 yo PC until now. The year of Linux desktop will never come due to this reason.

Re: The Reason Windows Hate Is Exploding: It's the End of Personal Computing [video]

#123
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was it. It involved dismantling the machine, removing a screw, and some other maneuvers.

Depends on the Chromebook. Some use a screw as a write protect jumper, some do not.

Agreed. This was, so far, my worst experience with liberation of locked down machines. It’s fun that it scaled to that many units.

Re: The Reason Windows Hate Is Exploding: It's the End of Personal Computing [video]

#124
post #73
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's been awful compared to any competitor it's ever had. TBH, Windows 3.1 was reasonably nice compared to macOS 7, and much faster than OS/2 or Solaris 2.1 on the same hardware.

Faster than OS/2, sure. Now try to download a file in the background while doing work in the foreground. You would be lucky if your Windows 3.1 communications application could complete it without multiple retries. The two operating systems were trying to solve different problems, and had different system requirements because of that. Windows 3.1 was fine for running multiple interactive applications since neither ap…

> No one bothered to try programming under Windows 3.1!

VB and Windows 3.11 paid for my first home. I wouldn’t enjoy programming in C in Windows though, and, IIRC, it was a while before Microsoft’s C tooling got a Windows version.

Re: The Reason Windows Hate Is Exploding: It's the End of Personal Computing [video]

#125
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's been awful compared to any competitor it's ever had. TBH, Windows 3.1 was reasonably nice compared to macOS 7, and much faster than OS/2 or Solaris 2.1 on the same hardware.

Didn't MS also do OS/2 early on? Didn't they bill IBM by line of code? I can't say much about Solaris, I used it - much later - on sparc and amd64. I can say that I was writing 16 bit windows apps in '95, including drivers and VxDs, and Win 3.1 was a piece of garbage inside and out.

3.1 was still nice compared to its main competitor, which was MacOS 7. Only the richest kids would be running things like Solaris, SCO, and other preemptive multitasking systems because memory demands were high and memory was very expensive.

Also, Windows 3 would run on 286 computers (as would OS/2), which made the barrier of entry very low. I started running it on a 286 with a Hercules adapter.

Re: The Reason Windows Hate Is Exploding: It's the End of Personal Computing [video]

#126

I strongly prefer my Linux machine but use Windows mostly so that I can run Quicken. I feel doubly trapped: can't get off Quicken and thus can't get off Windows. I'm only very slightly less reluctant to get an Apple machine (though the M* chips tempt me) and there will probably be incompatibilities between the versions of Quicken. I think I should probably rip off the band-aid and migrate to: + spreadsheets (more con…

Do you need to run Quicken locally on your PC? Can you just use the cloud version of Quicken?

At my work we use quickbooks enterprise (which is a desktop app) for some clients and another (not Intuit) online/cloud app for other clients. I have extensive experience using both. The cloud apps are slow, buggy, lacking features, immature UI/UX, and not as open.

The principal limitation of qbe is lack of multi-location support. The main advantage of cloud is the ability to provide direct access (though the role/permission models I’ve experienced have other downsides).

It’s a mixed bag, but the advantages of qbe outweigh the aggravations of windows—for now.

Re: The Reason Windows Hate Is Exploding: It's the End of Personal Computing [video]

#127
post #28
post #2

Pretty sure it's just that Windows is horribly broken, privacy-invading, ad-ridden malware disguised as an operating system. I swear it seems like nobody at Microsoft not even once have asked the actual users for what they would like to see in the OS.

Nah. I think the problem is that windows and macOS did everything users wanted them to do about 10-15 years ago. Everything since then has been lipstick on a pig. If windows were a building, they need to stop tacking on more rooms like it’s a gaudy McMansion. If they really wanna keep working on it, work to make what’s already there more beautiful. Optimise. Reduce the install size. Clean up some of the decades of te…

I agree, I've been amazed watching people release after release upgrading to newer versions of Windows and office, when what they used them for functionally didnt change. I could never make sense of how people didnt see it for what it is, and accepted the continuous costs. But hey, I guess that's capitalism, and people are captured by it. If it has a new shine, and everyone else is doing it, let's all jump over the cliff's edge.

Re: The Reason Windows Hate Is Exploding: It's the End of Personal Computing [video]

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if it is governmently mandated that it is, it might become, at least the user facing distros.

The nature of Linux makes this pretty much impossible. Say Ubuntu ships with some package for identity validation bullshit. What stops anyone from repackaging it and offering it without those packages?

A bit of a tangent, but your worst case answer here is the culmination of all the secure boot and remote attestation concepts.

What would stop it is a combination of not being able to buy new hardware that will even boot the modified kernel, and not being able to get vintage hardware to connect to any public ISP etc. due to being unable to attest its validated boot chain information, signed by a required modern hardware OEM key.

So you would be stuck in some kind of underworld of vintage folks attempting mesh networking between themselves. Then, because of basic market forces/economics, there will be a dwindling amount of software that is able to run in such environments. It will become the esoteric realm of old-school hobbyists who don't need to run any commercial apps which require ABI/API features of the modern commercial OSs which require this boot chain of the modern commercial hardware, etc.

Re: The Reason Windows Hate Is Exploding: It's the End of Personal Computing [video]

#129
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Faster than OS/2, sure. Now try to download a file in the background while doing work in the foreground. You would be lucky if your Windows 3.1 communications application could complete it without multiple retries. The two operating systems were trying to solve different problems, and had different system requirements because of that. Windows 3.1 was fine for running multiple interactive applications since neither ap…

> No one bothered to try programming under Windows 3.1! VB and Windows 3.11 paid for my first home. I wouldn’t enjoy programming in C in Windows though, and, IIRC, it was a while before Microsoft’s C tooling got a Windows version.

I should have said: no one in my programming class bothered to program under Windows 3.1. Clearly there were people out there writing software for Windows 3.1, and I have heard that VisualBASIC was a nice development platform for Windows 3.1.

I'm not sure what the C situation was like for Windows 3.1. I did have Borland C++ and fiddled around with the Windows IDE a bit, but never recalled making any progress.

Re: The Reason Windows Hate Is Exploding: It's the End of Personal Computing [video]

#130
post #2

Pretty sure it's just that Windows is horribly broken, privacy-invading, ad-ridden malware disguised as an operating system. I swear it seems like nobody at Microsoft not even once have asked the actual users for what they would like to see in the OS.

Users want a one time payment of $150, for a 50 million LoC software product, and then get 10 years of support. Everyone here slinging mud, while getting paid out of the SaaS pot. Would windows be a better product if it was user focused but cost $40/mo? From Microsoft's POV it would probably kill numbers.

There are more than 10x more users than lines of code
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