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The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

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Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

#91

Post by ChuckMcM »

bo1024 wrote: post #80
ChuckMcM wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Why would that not describe any major Linux distro?" Because Linux distros don't build or spec hardware. A hardware company can make a platform that is 100% supported by a software distribution, but it is currently impossible for a software distribution to be 100% compatible with a HW platform which won't release details of its implementation. One of the things I like about the OLPC XO-1 was that everything was docu…

OK sure, but change the statement to "...any major Linux distro on any major hardware system" and it seems on the money to me. The only place I think Linux is lagging is graphics cards.

In my experience (and I use Linux at home (Ubuntu 12.x) and at work CenTos) Linux is lagging on Graphics cards, wireless support, USB peripherals, file system stability, disk i/o scheduling, user interface tools, network printing, and document preparation. But other than that, its right up there with MacOS and Windows.

Hmm, that sounds a bit snarky. I wasn't going for snark, that is a list of things that I run into at least one of them and often more every week. My latest was trying to get some sort of drawing tablet support out of Wacom for Linux. They point you here: http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/linuxwacom/index.php?t... What is wrong with that picture?

Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

#92

Post by tosseraccount »

csense wrote: post #57

This is a great reason to switch to Linux Mint.

Agreed. Just set up dual boot Linux/Windows. One great thing about Linux is you can tell kids "download whatever you want". For those few times you need Windows (TurboTax), you can boot it. Other than that the only good thing about Windows is Excel which is much better than OpenOrifice or gnumeric. I'll grant that the professional image editing software is better too, but Gimp is fine when you get used to it. For surfing, listening to music, youtubeing, etc. , Linux seems a lot snappier.

Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

#93

Post by jmcqk6 »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #77
beloch wrote: post #67

First of all, this guy's biggest mistake was failing to format his drive and start with a clean Windows install. Installing windows requires far less effort than cleansing a vendor's install of crapware. Users should not have to do this. I must fully agree that MS needs to start restricting what Vendors like HP can install on the PC's they sell. Second, I'm very curious to see how the Windows App store plays out. The…

As I mentioned elsewhere, doing a clean Windows install is difficult if the only means of reinstallation you have is the bundled "recovery DVD" which puts all of the shit right back on there. With regards an APT for Windows, I don't see how that wouldn't be possible to add to Windows as a third party thing. With a nice GUI and search and a default catalog of quality mainly OSS software with no toolbars or BS and have…

I haven't used it yet, but windows 8 has a 'reset windows' option that will basically reset everything to a fresh install of windows 8 without having to do a reinstall.

Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

#94

Post by nitrogen »

fernly wrote: post #26
ChuckMcM wrote: post #13

I enjoyed this rant. The bottom line is that this 'experience' isn't about you, its about who you can be sold too. That is because "you" are too cheap to pay what "we" think should be paid for them. It is like a hotel which sells you room for $100 a night if you agree to let them leave a web cam on 24/7 and sell any useful 'snippets' it catches while you are there. The bulk of the market doesn't buy "computers" they…

> ...hardware designed from the ground up to be developed on, open systems so that folks can easily work with it, and a team dedicated to making sure integration and support is there so that folks like you and I can say "Hey this audio doesn't work when you set the sampling rate to 40Khz" and they can fix it and release that fix... Why would that not describe any major Linux distro?

Because major Linux distros and the upstream developers like to ignore or mock use cases that deviate from their "brand identity" (witness https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/gnome-et-al-rotti... which recently saw the HN front page).

Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

#95

Post by jiggy2011 »

mikeash wrote: post #88
GuiA wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Too bad that of The Two Steves, Jobs gets the accolades and Wozniak gets ignored. Oh please, not this again. But OK, I'll bite: Wozniak was given plenty of recognition for his work at Apple. But he quit in 87, which was 25 years ago. What has he done since? Not that much, really. Steve Jobs, on the other hand, has brought tremendous contributions to a number of industries. In the light of this, it makes complete sen…

It's even worse than that, as Woz effectively left Apple after his plane crash in 1981. He continued to officially be an employee, but didn't contribute a whole lot after that point. Quitting in 1987 was more of a formality than anything. The last Apple computer Woz had a direct hand in designing was either the Apple II or the II+ (I can't quite figure out which), over three decades ago. Woz was a genius when it came…

I'm sure Woz continued to be an influence on Jobs for quite some time though.

I guess if you have seen somebody build one of the worlds first affordable computers out of some bits in garage it probably seems like anything is possible when you have a few billion $.

Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

#96

Post by uniclaude »

revelation wrote: post #81

I had a good laugh at people recommending Ubuntu. I recently installed the very latest Ubuntu on a VM, started the launcher, typed "terminal" ... and looked in utter disbelief as it started showing me random movies and crap from Amazon. If that is your idea of a better operating system, try again.

I'm not an ubuntu defender but honestly, aren't a couple Amazon ads better (or let's call it less bad) than all the crapware OP talks about?

We are talking 1 command against hours of fight against a whole system.

Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

#97

Post by gizmo686 »

nitrogen wrote: post #94
fernly wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...hardware designed from the ground up to be developed on, open systems so that folks can easily work with it, and a team dedicated to making sure integration and support is there so that folks like you and I can say "Hey this audio doesn't work when you set the sampling rate to 40Khz" and they can fix it and release that fix... Why would that not describe any major Linux distro?

Because major Linux distros and the upstream developers like to ignore or mock use cases that deviate from their "brand identity" (witness https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/gnome-et-al-rotti... which recently saw the HN front page).

The difference is that if you do not like the desktop on most Linux distros, you can go into the package manager, install another desktop, and then log out and back into that one.

Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

#98

Post by jiggy2011 »

maurits wrote: post #82
kenjackson wrote: post #70

Why doesn't the author just pay the non-subsidized price and get a clean Signature machine from Microsoft? http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/en_US/pd/product... I suspect that while he doesn't like the crapware, he doesn't mind the $75 subsidy. You really can't have it both ways.

So perhaps the real surprise is, is that despite the rather vocal apple/linux crowd, there is still a very large user group for which the crapware-OEM bundles are not big enough an issue to switch or to act up on. Be it for technical or for economical reasons.

I think it's just that many people aren't aware that there is an alternative.

I'm surprised the number of people who consider a browser that takes 30 seconds to start (on an i5) as normal. No wonder they are awed by an iPad when they use one.

Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

#99

Post by wpietri »

mhurron wrote: post #46
unimpressive wrote: post #25

I remember reading that this is the reason[2] Steve Jobs wouldn't license the Mac OS X operating system to other OEM vendors. As I understand it, a good deal of this crap is caused by misaligned incentives. Software companies pay OEMs to preload computers with their buggy, invasive, resource hogging software. Thanks to the Microsoft Windows operating system having all sorts of nooks and crannies to hide this sort of…

> the reason Steve Jobs wouldn't license the Mac OS X operating system to other OEM vendors The reason Jobs didn't license out OS X is because the last time Apple did that it almost killed the company. One of the first things Jobs did on returning to Apple was end those agreements.

Do you have a source for that?

My recollection was that Apple was in dire straits at the time anyhow, but that the clone makers were substantially increasing MacOS shipments at a time when Apple was threatened with irrelevancy.

I thought Jobs killed the clones because he wanted absolute control, which he saw as necessary to pursue his goals for a high-end, seamless experience.

Re: The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible

#100

Post by dbarlett »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #77
beloch wrote: post #67

First of all, this guy's biggest mistake was failing to format his drive and start with a clean Windows install. Installing windows requires far less effort than cleansing a vendor's install of crapware. Users should not have to do this. I must fully agree that MS needs to start restricting what Vendors like HP can install on the PC's they sell. Second, I'm very curious to see how the Windows App store plays out. The…

As I mentioned elsewhere, doing a clean Windows install is difficult if the only means of reinstallation you have is the bundled "recovery DVD" which puts all of the shit right back on there. With regards an APT for Windows, I don't see how that wouldn't be possible to add to Windows as a third party thing. With a nice GUI and search and a default catalog of quality mainly OSS software with no toolbars or BS and have…

A comment yesterday [1] led me to Chocolatey NuGet [2], a package manager for Windows built on PowerShell. The gallery [3] has almost everything I need to set up a dev environment.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4763895

[2] https://github.com/chocolatey/chocolatey/wiki

[3] http://chocolatey.org/packages

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