Some of the author's points are right, however in my opinion a lot of them are wrong, and seem to be coming from the perspective of "it's not linux so it sucks"
>The user as a system administrator (thus viruses/ malware - most users don't and won't understand UAC warnings).
How is this different from sudo?
>No good packaging mechanism (MSI is way too fragile).
In all of my years using windows I've had msi fail only a handful of times.
>No system-wide update mechanism (which includes third party software - to be fair there are third party applications which offer this functionality, but then such applications don't support core Windows updates).
Microsoft update will update some third party software, like flash. There is so much software on windows that a centralized update system isn't really tractable.
>In certain cases it's extremely difficult to find or update drivers for your hardware devices (anyone who's tried to install a fresh Windows onto their laptop will testify).
Problem with the oem, not with windows. It's up to the hw manufacturer to publish drivers in easy to find places.
>Windows is extremely difficult to debug (e.g. try finding out why your system is slow to boot).
While not as easy as debugging with source Microsoft provides debug symbols for all major kernel components. This makes getting a kernel stack trace and examining structures very easy.
>Windows boot problems are too often fatal and unsolvable unless you reinstall from scratch.
Only if you don't know the correct utilities to use. Most boot issues can be fixed with a combination of bcdboot, bcdedit, and repairing the dism image. On the rare occasion that those don't work you can go even deeper with a kernel debugger.
>The Windows OS installer doesn't give a damn about other OSes installed on your PC and it always overwrites the MBR. In case of already existing Windows installations, it sets the newly installed Windows as the default OS - no questions asked. In case of UEFI, booting of other non-Windows OSes is unsupported and Windows actively prevents this.
This was true back when MBR was used. It is now extremely difficult to use MBR with windows, and almost all other OSs support UEFI by this point. Saying booting of other non-Windows OSs is just wrong. This person's source is a technet post, which you can consider the microsoft equivelant to stack overflow. The accepted answer is from a community moderator. In my experience if it's not a Microsoft employee replying, then there's a 90% chance that the answer is wrong. Windows does not wipe out any other UEFI boot application binaries or the boot nvar entires. It just adds its own binaries, adds a nvar boot entry, then set's that entry as the default. Hitting your boot menu key when you boot will allow you to select any of the other entries, and your firmware setup utility will allow you to change the order in which they boot.
>Windows anti-virus products oftentimes make your PC less safe - so if you want perfect security and privacy, stop using Windows and migrate to Linux right away. OEM updaters make your PC wide open for attacks.
For most power users, it's true. AV products do increase your attack surface for only a small benefit. However, in a corporate enviornment with less tech savy users, they are extemely needed. People will just click whatever links and download and run anything.
>Microsoft has recently decided that you will no longer be able to download certain Windows updates manually. You'll only be able to get them via Windows Update.
That is 100% not what they're saying. They're just saying they used to publish the update files to two places, and now they're going to reduce redundancy and only publish them to one, the update catalog. You can visit the update catalog in a browser and still download all of the updates.
>"sfc /scannow" is offered as a solution to most Windows Update Service and Microsoft Installer Service errors, yet in absolute most cases it's totally ineffective.
This is commonly offered as a solution on community forums, but I rarely see it offered as a solution on official Microsoft documentation.
>Windows does not automatically clean temporary files ever, however it must do that for every reboot/power cycle - partially solved in Windows 10 1809.
This seems like personal preference to me. I'd rather keep %TEMP% around and only clean it out with cleanmgr when needed. Several browsers store their cache in %TEMP% and I'd rather not have that wiped out across reboots.
>Windows keeps a large number of databases of the applications which the user runs: Windows Activity History, bam.sys, Prefetcher, Program Compatibility Assistant and others.
The only one you should be upset about is Windows Activity History. BAM is used to help determine when the machine is idle and background maintenance tasks can be performed without impacting the user. The prefetcher is used to speed up the initial start of applications. The compatibility assistant is used to help increase backwards compatibility with older software.
>Safe Mode has become impossible to access unless you've booted into ... the running OS, which totally defeats its purpose. Also Safe Mode is hidden behind almost a dozen of steps vs. a single F8 key press on boot in every Windows version from 95 to 7.
True that they've made it much harder to access by default which I think is the wrong move. If you reset the computer while windows is in the middle of booting several times you'll be brought to a recovery menu which will let you boot into safe mode.