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Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

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Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#231

Post by Helmut10001 »

projektfu wrote: post #225

Recently I got tired of having random changes occur to a Windows installation I use for one purpose: running X-plane. I took the drastic measure of disabling both inbound and outbound network access in Windows firewall by default and turning off most of the pre-installed rules. Then, I allowed outbound access from the things that really need it. Spurious network traffic dropped to zero and surprises are gone. If I ca…

I think nowadays the only safe and sane way is running Windows isolated as a VM (e.g. QEMU on proxmox). I did this with my gaming server. The VM sits on ZFS which I can snapshot before any Microsoft stuff happens, to revert any action. I can cut off the network card virtually and shutdown the guest whenever I get tired of it. I could even disguise the CPU/QEMU config, so that the anti-cheat from Star Citizen didn't recognize it was running in a virtualized environment. Pair this with Moonlight+Sunshine and you can game without issues on any remote client. Why I prefer Windows for gaming? It is just (still) the default and provides the least barrier and setup effort for most games.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#232

Post by blincoln »

GuB-42 wrote: post #84
ptero wrote: post #11

Microsoft lost its way much earlier than 4 years ago. It abused users at the time of Netscape wars and forcing Internet Explorer down people's throats. But they hit an infinite gold mine with government adoption and for the last 30 years no amount of bad engineering was able to shake off government use. Windows 11 is bad? Yes, but did you try Microsoft Teams? The only way to force Microsoft into "users matter" engine…

We could say that Microsoft never lost its way in that regard, it has always been predatory. Where it lost its way however is Microsoft actually cared about Windows, it was their flagship product after all. It was terrible in some aspects, but also excellent in some others. I particular, they took compatibility very seriously, which is far from an easy task in the wild PC ecosystem. They were also quite good in the U…

> Where it lost its way however is Microsoft actually cared about Windows

I agree with you, but I feel like they've stopped caring about most of their software. Windows is just the most egregious, high-impact example.

SharePoint and Teams were the first ones I noticed. I used to run an enterprise SharePoint farm for a big company. Under the covers it was a Rube Goldberg machine. Microsoft has some of the best database-related developer knowledge in the world because of SQL Server, but SharePoint was storing its data in giant XML blobs instead of using proper, efficient table schemas.

That lazy "it works (most of the time), and it's cheaper for us to offload the cost onto our customers' devices" approach was even more pronounced in Teams, and now Office and Windows itself each spawn about a million Edge WebViews for the same reason.

I never thought I'd be nostalgic for the Microsoft of the mid-2000s.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#234

Post by krater23 »

Ranxer wrote: post #104
jeppester wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way this get better is if the user gets to choose between an OS with ads, lock-in, telemetry etc. and then one with none of that. As it is now, buying a laptop in a store is a "pick your poison" situation.

Better yet: don't pick any poison at all -- both System76 and Tuxedo Computers (as examples, sometimes you can buy a latop without an OS and save the money, same goes for PCs) offer laptops with Linux installed: no Microslop tax, and hardware that's guaranteed to work with OSS.

Linux is just no good option. Linux has it's own issues that make them unusable for people that don't want to put time and effort in their OS itself. Current example: Slidly incompatible unix tools, still not 100% complete, but rewritten in rust.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#235

Post by numpad0 »

jorvi wrote: post #230
jeppester wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way this get better is if the user gets to choose between an OS with ads, lock-in, telemetry etc. and then one with none of that. As it is now, buying a laptop in a store is a "pick your poison" situation.

I mean, this goes way beyond OSes. Look at the mobile YouTube client. The bottom navigation bar has the "+" create button stuffed right in the middle of it, larger than any other button. What % of users creates YouTube content? Probably In general, why don't apps have a "creator" toggle, off-by-default, that optimized the entire UI for viewing / consuming? Just how apps like Uber have either an entire separate app fo…

That's a terrible idea. The greatest thing about the Internet is that there's no segregation between creators and consumers.

TV has it. Only TV program production companies can create shows. That literally undermine ... a lot of things. We don't need that.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#236

Post by jwrallie »

throwa356262 wrote: post #46
ptero wrote: post #11

Microsoft lost its way much earlier than 4 years ago. It abused users at the time of Netscape wars and forcing Internet Explorer down people's throats. But they hit an infinite gold mine with government adoption and for the last 30 years no amount of bad engineering was able to shake off government use. Windows 11 is bad? Yes, but did you try Microsoft Teams? The only way to force Microsoft into "users matter" engine…

Am I the only one who prefers Teams to the Slack and Zoom? The ability to write in the meeting chat before and after a meeting for example. That is some serious quality of life function that all others are lacking.

Teams is not that bad if you are using Office and OneDrive anyway, as it integrates well with those.

Most of my team members are using different named chats for discussion instead of channels, which are used for more important notices. Somehow it works, and our channels on slack were also basically chats anyway.

My only gripe is that Linux does not have a “native” client anymore and the web client is full of bugs on Firefox. But it’s Microsoft, what can you expect. It’s not that bad except for memory consumption on other platforms.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#237

Post by prathamtharwani »

pc86 wrote: post #198
happymellon wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, "learn the FOSS version" is not a solution Hard disagree. Not that it has to be FOSS, but you have a product that is predatory towards you and you refuse to change your ways. Leaving an abusive relationship is hard, but sometimes you have to do it.

> you have a product that is predatory towards you and you refuse to change your ways. And honestly it seems like you refuse to learn even the smallest bit about human nature. Very, very few people want to "learn" how to use their computer. Walk into a room of 100 graphic designers who have spend the last 20 years using Photoshop exclusively and put GIMP in front of them and and at least 98 of them are going to say w…

Everybody "learns" how to use a computer. It's just a question of what they learn first.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#238

Post by Macha »

krater23 wrote: post #234
Ranxer wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better yet: don't pick any poison at all -- both System76 and Tuxedo Computers (as examples, sometimes you can buy a latop without an OS and save the money, same goes for PCs) offer laptops with Linux installed: no Microslop tax, and hardware that's guaranteed to work with OSS.

Linux is just no good option. Linux has it's own issues that make them unusable for people that don't want to put time and effort in their OS itself. Current example: Slidly incompatible unix tools, still not 100% complete, but rewritten in rust.

First of all that's only Ubuntu, but also at this stage uutils is way more compatible with the GNU tools than Apple's tools are.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#239

Post by nirava »

alexb_ wrote: post #216
nirava wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you switched something as fundamental as the OS, and were pissed that it was … different? You can fault Linux as the primary desktop environment for a few things, but that it’s different to MS is not one of those. Do you also rant about having no windows key on a MacBook?

Yeah, it's kind of annoying. But middle click scroll is something I use literally every single second of every single day on my web browser. It's a deal-breaker.

Ok that's fair ig. I used to be a fairly heavy user of the middle click scroll feature on windows like a decade ago. Made the switch to Debian w/ Awesome, and that habit just casually fell away. The switch is probably a 3 day annoyance at most. IMO arrow keys and scroll are fine. On laptop trackpads two finger scrolling and momentum scrolling are far more accurate IMO. Also if you have the mx master mouse, it has a crazy good scroll wheel that you can "throw".

Also you can turn on Firefox specific middle click scroll feature "autoscroll" which is the same thing. They may have similar stuff for other browsers. Long story short, in less clicks than it takes you to turn off stupid notifications and ads on Windows, you can get a semi decent middle-click-scroll feature where you need it the most.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#240

Post by GuB-42 »

olav wrote: post #154
GuB-42 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could say that Microsoft never lost its way in that regard, it has always been predatory. Where it lost its way however is Microsoft actually cared about Windows, it was their flagship product after all. It was terrible in some aspects, but also excellent in some others. I particular, they took compatibility very seriously, which is far from an easy task in the wild PC ecosystem. They were also quite good in the U…

> The traditional Office suite is still good I don't think so. The web version is mostly incompatible with the Windows or Mac desktop versions. Have you compared the UI of Word/Powerpoint/Excel with alternatives like Apple Pages/Keynote/Numbers or Google Docs/Sheets? For me, the MS products are a complete mess with arbitrary collections of unrelated buttons, abysmal font rendering and insane defaults.

> For me, the MS products are a complete mess with arbitrary collections of unrelated buttons

In the case of Office I actually consider it a strength. Office has to take into account a large number of use cases, most people will use only a fraction of what is available, but not everyone use the same fraction. So that "unrelated button" may be someone else's essential feature. The "insane defaults" are what people are used to. I don't know about Apple, but I tend to get to the limits of Google Docs/Sheets rather quickly. It may cover 99% of my needs, but Office gives me the missing 1%.

That's for the traditional Office Microsoft are sabotaging, the web versions are only a shadow of it, and by most points worse than the Google suite, and that's the problem.

As for font rendering, I am sure that Apple is ahead, it has always been their strength. Microsoft may be the king of the office, but when it comes to art and creative work, Apple has always been on top.

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