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Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

blogs.windows.com

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Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#131
There are two mentions of "reliab[ility]" (I searched for the first five letters to be sure I got other morphological forms of the word). It appears twice: once near the top, as a general goal, and once at the bottom, as part of the general goal. Nothing in between, like saying "we'll be using {less AI | more AI debugging | more human screening | magic wands | secret sauce} in an effort to improve reliability". So at least as far as this post goes, hardly even lip service. Given the number of botched updates reported earlier this year, that's astonishing.

Disclaimer: I switched to Linux last year.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#132
post #27
post #4

Just switch to Linux people!

I got a new computer a couple weeks ago, with a 5070, and installed ubuntu on it and it was incredibly slow. I looked online and found some claim that 24.04 has some incompatability with nvidia, tried installing a bunch of different driver versions and nothing helped, tried turning everything off in gnome tweaks and still slow, tried installing 26.04 and 22.04 but the installer hangs forever in both, tried linux mint…

Try CachyOS instead. Ubuntu is not great.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#133

I recently got locked out of my machine because logging in with the mandatory Microsoft account-backed primary user of my machine didn't work anymore. It said I was offline and I had to use the "previous password" even though I didn't have a previous password for that account. Hacking around in the recovery console to add another administrator user worked, but then I couldn't reset the original user's password becaus…

Also years of Windows muscle memory here, especially the keyboard shortcuts. I’ve used Windows since 1997. I’ve decided I’m done. A new PC arrives in a month. It’ll be running Ubuntu. I’m done. Maybe there is a Linux language similar to DirectX you might transition to? Maybe test code in a VM? (Although that gets you right back into Win11.)

Ubuntu will also introduce AI. Why not use pure Debian? (and the distribution flame war starts)

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#134

What people realy want: as little OS as possible to let them run just the things on their computer they want to run. What Microsoft wants: Windows as their straightjacket into the Microsoft services as that is where the revenue is. Why Windows got this bad: incentives and coercion placed on the teams to show uptake on the services no matter what leading to perversion in tactics and complete alienation of the user bas…

> What people realy want: as little OS as possible

I see what you're saying but that isn't how I think about it.

I'm happy to have as "much" OS as is useful and adds value, convenience, or user experience for me.

Example: I quite like Windows Hello. Facial recognition is the smoothest, most pleasant form of biometric authentication available on a laptop, and it's nice to be able to use it anywhere throughout the whole OS that a password would otherwise be required (e.g. before revealing hidden passwords in a password manager, when opening a command prompt with elevated permissions, or before applying passkeys to log into a website). It starts up fast, works in low light thanks to IR emitters, and recognizes me pretty close to 100% of the time. It's a great experience. My use of my laptop would only be reduced by having "less OS" in this case.

What I don't want is anything that compromises my utility, convenience, or user experience in order to make the OS useful and valuable for someone else.

Example: advertisements embedded in the Start menu are plenty valuable to M$, but compromise my user experience in the process.

Example 2: Inserting Copilot into Paint and Notepad seem valuable for pumping M$'s stock price, but both annoy me by cramming unwanted AI into my basic utility programs where I have no interest in it.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#135

What people realy want: as little OS as possible to let them run just the things on their computer they want to run. What Microsoft wants: Windows as their straightjacket into the Microsoft services as that is where the revenue is. Why Windows got this bad: incentives and coercion placed on the teams to show uptake on the services no matter what leading to perversion in tactics and complete alienation of the user bas…

Windows has been “this bad” for a long time.

You had Windows ME which was a terrible, buggy OS. I don’t know a single person who didn’t lose all their data on Windows ME.

Shifting personal windows to the Windows NT foundation provided a massive relative boost, but even that took until XP SP2 to reallt settle in, which was followed by the disaster that was Vista.

Then Windows 7 came along and it was genuinely really good. Probably peak Windows.

And then you came to an actual straitjacketing of windows in Windows 8, where the entire desktop Windows ecosystem was relegated to being a single app no better than calculator in the mobile first, completely undeveloped Windows 8 interface.

Windows 10 got us back to sanity, and barring a few minor UI mishaps Windows 11 was originally a nice refinement. This was the longest stretch of Windows being decent as a personal computer. The addition of WSL (well actually it took until WSL2) made Windows competitive with Mac as a developer desktop.

That was nearly a decade of enjoyable and productive Windows. Unfortunately, now we have AI, and Windows is once again being destroyed to serve the its AI master.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#136

What people realy want: as little OS as possible to let them run just the things on their computer they want to run. What Microsoft wants: Windows as their straightjacket into the Microsoft services as that is where the revenue is. Why Windows got this bad: incentives and coercion placed on the teams to show uptake on the services no matter what leading to perversion in tactics and complete alienation of the user bas…

Linux would need to be willing to safe the work millions of people put into memorizing excel, word and windows workflows.

Libre Office (and a couple others) is pretty close to MsOffice. Not exact, but close.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#137

What people realy want: as little OS as possible to let them run just the things on their computer they want to run. What Microsoft wants: Windows as their straightjacket into the Microsoft services as that is where the revenue is. Why Windows got this bad: incentives and coercion placed on the teams to show uptake on the services no matter what leading to perversion in tactics and complete alienation of the user bas…

The problem is that "to let them run just the things on their computer they want to run" changes when they want it to run something new. They don't care about cloud backup for their data? One hard drive failure, and suddenly they do. And if you want to sell the same version of the OS to different people, you need the union of what everybody wants and what everybody is going to want later.

But there needs to be a way to turn something off that you don't want, and to not get nagged about it repeatedly thereafter. But for that to work, there has to be a clear, easily findable way to turn it back on later.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#138

What people realy want: as little OS as possible to let them run just the things on their computer they want to run. What Microsoft wants: Windows as their straightjacket into the Microsoft services as that is where the revenue is. Why Windows got this bad: incentives and coercion placed on the teams to show uptake on the services no matter what leading to perversion in tactics and complete alienation of the user bas…

> Regaining trust is extremely hard after you've crossed an edge. Microsoft needs to learn consent. Everywhere there's a Yes and "Remind me later", there has to be a No. And the No has to work and be remembered forever, not forgotten after the next update. Using Windows has to stop feeling like you're being roofied all the time.

Avast does this well. It has "do this" options for now, in an hour, in a day, and "next century".

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#139
post #124

What people realy want: as little OS as possible to let them run just the things on their computer they want to run. What Microsoft wants: Windows as their straightjacket into the Microsoft services as that is where the revenue is. Why Windows got this bad: incentives and coercion placed on the teams to show uptake on the services no matter what leading to perversion in tactics and complete alienation of the user bas…

But I really wonder, is wanting a "little OS" just a hacker thing? For most people, they probably just want a full-featured OS. I don't have a solid take on this yet.

"For most people, they probably just want a full-featured OS."

I don't think so. Most people just want to get to their websites or email. They don't care about the OS, and may not even know what an OS is.

The problem is that they may just click "yes" on any popups, to make them go away - which is probably what Microsoft wants. "Yes" track me, "yes" show me ads, etc.

For your average user, Xubuntu or Mint are both great choices: simple, understandable desktops, and otherwise they stay out of the way. I set up Xubuntu for my elderly BIL a few months ago. He's a smart guy, but completely non-technical. One support call since, otherwise he has reported no problems.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also years of Windows muscle memory here, especially the keyboard shortcuts. I’ve used Windows since 1997. I’ve decided I’m done. A new PC arrives in a month. It’ll be running Ubuntu. I’m done. Maybe there is a Linux language similar to DirectX you might transition to? Maybe test code in a VM? (Although that gets you right back into Win11.)

These suggestions are like telling someone that that is being harassed to maybe wear something different. While it would, yes, likely avoid the problem happening again, it shifts the responsibility to the party that should not be at fault. Meanwhile the harasser is like “what’s wrong? I took an anti-harassment class?”

It's more like telling someone in an abusive relationship to leave the abusive relationship.
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