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

dendory.net

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

#261

Post by randomchars »

contextfree wrote: post #22
eli wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is nonsense fanboism. Modern versions of Windows are extremely similar to OS X from a usability perspective. OS X has plenty of counterintuitive warts. Computers of any flavor are pretty hard to use. > I never understood the install wizards for windows software... I never understood why half the time when I download Mac software and double click it, nothing seems to happen because it's a "disk image" (talk about…

We're not really talking about usability in general - the particular issue of default installs being crapped up is pretty Windows PC (and maybe Android?) specific

WHat's wrong with Android installers? A single file with a single button to press.

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

#262

Post by randomchars »

givan wrote: post #12
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I never understood the install wizards for windows software, in 99% of the time you just click "next" until it stops asking for more "next". Well, if you use the Windows Store to get applications, you can finally get rid of them. >the OS has almost nothing bundled Really? Windows 8, for instance, comes with much of what you'd need. It's bundles a lot more than previous versions of windows >nothing you can choose in…

>I'm not quite sure what this means. I was referring to the fact that Microsoft does not bundle multiple browsers to choose from and forces everyone to have IE installed and unfortunately most users don't understand what a browser is to fix this. And this is the reason web developers had nightmares with IE6 in the past and some still have with IE7.

By that logic MS should also bundle multiple video and audio player, calculators, image editors, file explorers, email clients and who knows what else. And what's that if not bloatware?

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

#263

Post by randomchars »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #165
dendory wrote: post #39

A few added things: - To those suggesting using Linux, I use Windows because I need to. I run programs that require Windows, and don't really want to start messing with Wine. Also, from seeing the recent Ubuntu stories here on HN, it really does seem like the people behind Ubuntu and Gnome in particular are guilty of the same thing with their "brand" - While Apple probably doesn't do this on MacOS they sure do try to…

It would be interesting to see the list (or at least types) of programs you use that require Windows. I've got a CAD program that I've been using forever that does (TurboCAD) and I'm more facile in Corel Draw than Inkscape (which is horribly, horribly under-performing on the same hardware booted into Ubuntu 12.10).

For many this list has just one item:

- Adobe Photoshop

If you rely on it for work, than you can't just switch to Linux. GIMP is closer to paint than to PS.

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

#264

Post by drivebyacct2 »

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #223
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a good laugh at people that dismiss an entire OS for a problem solved with 10 seconds and 20 characters of effort.

Go read the article again. Now consider how inane what you just said is? The whole point of the article is that these issues can be solved but that the combination of all of them eventually make the platform bad. Your "just turn it off" statement couldn't be more off-base for this discussion if you tried.

Give me a break. `sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping` or as the other replier comments, a single check-switch will disable this. It clearly is NOTHING compared to the daily bullshit in Windows.

What a self righteous jerk. The article is about the regular bullshit that Windows users go through. A single choice made to bolster revenue of an open source project is vastly different than a system that simply hasn't been innovated on for the past 20 years and just sucks in a lot of places.

If you can spend 20 seconds of effort and fix breaking issues like installation standardization, or (un)installation cleanup, or package management, or the new security system that manages to suck harder than GateKeeper... then you can come back and talk down to me.

edit: even just drivers. Do you know how frustrating it is to be given a laptop as a gift from Microsoft only to find that the drivers are difficult to locate, impossible to install without several Admin-level command line statements and a reboot and several scary warnings, and that even after installing them, several of them were just disasterously bad. Fedora, everything works out of the box. Ubuntu, everything works out of the box.

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

#265

Post by coin »

jerhewet wrote: post #55

> The first step was getting rid of the usual pre-installed crap [...] It took me over an hour to go through all the uninstallers. I was at least three sentences into a long "Uninstallers? Seriously?" rant when I realized that this is exactly what the average poor bastard on the street would do if they wanted to get rid of the crapware that infests a new machine. [long thoughtful pause] Jesus. It really is that big o…

And why should one have to reinstall the OS on a brand new machine? I don't need mod or install new firmware on my new car. I don't need to swap parts on my new washer machine.

No, a PC, car, washer machine should just work, as purchased. The idea that a new Windows PC can't be used out of the box just shows how broken the user experience is.

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

#266

Post by keithpeter »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #242
jeremyjh wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RHEL is a server product, I guess I don't follow your comment. Do they even sell desktop support? If you are suggesting Ubuntu should focus on the server market - well they have put a lot into that too but they cannot get the market share required to sustain their business from that. RHEL is far too entrenched.

RedHat quit the desktop market years ago exactly because they found it to be unprofitable.

https://www.redhat.com/apps/store/desktop/

Red Hat seem to be selling a Desktop support package still, but minus the support! I assume this is a cost for the installer and updates.

I've donated the sterling equivalent of $49 to Ubuntu, and would do that on a yearly basis if it meant a cruft free system.

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

#267

Post by npsimons »

viraptor wrote: post #118
biturd wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a company that does what you suggest. I will probably get down voted for saying it, but Apple. They put in the time to make a pretty darned good user experience for first impressions. There's no junk, no spyware, nothing to remove. Occasionally you might get a software bundle, like Office, or Quicken, but literally just drop it in the trash and you are done with it. Rarely would you have to find an u…

I see you never needed quicktime on windows? Their download page asks you for the email to "Keep me up to date with Apple news, software updates, and the latest information on products and services." Their privacy policy starts with: "You may be asked to provide your personal information anytime you are in contact with Apple or an Apple affiliated company. Apple and its affiliates may share this personal information…

I don't think they're different from other companies at all.

They aren't. Believing they are is the quintessential feature of the fallacies of Apple partisans.

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

#268

Post by w1ntermute »

ajross wrote: post #15
karpathy wrote: post #6

I feel that this is one of the major reasons I find myself using tablets more often. The UX on PCs has turned to crap. All programs want to run in the background, they all compete for my attention every 30 minutes, they all want to be updated all the time and they all want to install some stupid toolbar into my browser that you can't remove, or even if you do it will somehow come back. Installing new programs has tur…

There are other perspectives, though. I've been on a Linux desktop almost exclusively for 19 years now. I continue to be amazed at the amount of spammy crap I have to put up with on my phone and tablet (running CM10 and stock 4.0.2 respectively, so it's not like I'm beholden to a manufacturer). Seems like every game wants to tell me about new features in the status bar every day. All the online services want to conne…

> And my desktop distro just goes on, doing what it's supposed to do, year after year.

What distro are you using? Because not all of them are free of this sort of crap. For example, Canonical decided to pollute the universal search in Unity, starting with Ubuntu 12.10, by adding in results from Amazon.

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

#269

Post by npsimons »

brian_cloutier wrote: post #62
oscilloscope wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

System76 is attempting to do this. I liked the Gazelle Professional. Considering they're not an ODM, the Gazelle was pretty decent for its specs and screen when it was released. There was no bloat aside from vanilla Ubuntu, except a driver to improve the screen brightness buttons. Still though, you can always throw Ubuntu on a Thinkpad. A small company like System76 can't match the form factor and battery life of pro…

I'll second System76, I've bought laptops from them for a couple years now and never had a bad experience. They only throw in hardware that ubuntu supports and there's absolutely no bloatware. There are still things I have to put up with like Ubuntu's recent decision to use Unity, but gnome3 is a single command away.

I'll third that; my Darter Ultra is still running smooth as glass, although I did eventually swap out Ubuntu for plain Debian, due mostly to personal preference.

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

#270

Post by npsimons »

tsm wrote: post #10
aristidb wrote: post #2

And I fear this kind of crappy PC experience is a significant factor in why many people move to primarily using tablets.

The problem with mobile devices is that when they are prefilled with OEM crap (mine came with Motoblur, Blockbuster, and several other terrible media-streaming apps), there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. Windows may have a terrible default experience, but at least it's fixable.

You have heard of rooting and using something like TitaniumBackup to force remove apps, right? And of course, there's always the option of going with the clean versions direct from Google.
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