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Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

himthe.dev

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Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#251

Post by tracker1 »

blackcatsec wrote: post #240
otikik wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. The ads in he start menu are a sign that you are no longer the customer, you are the product. Windows has other similar “features”.

I do not have ads in my start menu, and no, I didn't "debloat" my PC. This is a base install where I flipped a couple of settings in the start menu options.

It was a test they ran on Insiders channel to see how people reacted to them. It never mated it into GA, or for that matter the entire insiders channels... They'll feature gate things to some insiders users and A/B test them to see how the user response looks. There was a bit of an uproar at the time for those that saw them, including myself... I ditched windows altogether (except my assigned work laptop).

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#252

Post by dz0ny »

I just want to mention that most apps that would be laggy on Wine just work via https://flathub.org/en/apps/ru.linux_gaming.PortProton. Install PortProton double click .exe install app and off you go.

- xTool Studio - for laser engraver - ProppFrexx ONAIR - professional radio station

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#253

Post by xacky »

bdbdbdb wrote: post #16

I've never heard of CachyOS. I'm amazed at how many Linux versions there are and how good they seem and it makes me wish I could try them all.

Gnome comes with built in virtual machine support with the Boxes app, just download an ISO and try as many as you want.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#254

Post by 0x1ch »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #179
Muromec wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was me in 2005. I cant believe people say that M$ started to suck in 2025. It always did.

I started using Linux in like 2007 but the GPU was always an issue. Then it was running games. Linux changed for me around 2013+ when I would install it on my laptops and get a heck of a performance boost. Heck those laptops still turn on to this day. Windows just bloats all hardware.

Been on / off Linux for the desktop since about the same time. Recurring theme across my AMD and NVIDIA gpus. Support has always sucked!

Over the years it felt like a game of whack a mole finding the right combination of driver versions, open or closed source. R9 390 owners back in the day will understand... Fast forward to now, the same problems keep occurring albeit better off then they were.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#255

Post by helterskelter »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #33

As a long-time Linux user who fairly recently dropped the Windows partition entirely, I do think the remaining chafing points are these: * UI framework balkanization has always been, and remains a hideous mess. And now you don't just have different versions of GTK vs QT to keep track off, but also X vs Wayland, and their various compatibility layers. * Support for non-standard DPI monitors sucks, mostly because of th…

> * Support for non-standard DPI monitors sucks, mostly because of the previous point. Wayland has fractional scaling as a sort-of workaround if you can tolerate the entire screen being blurry. Every other major OS can deal with this.

This sounds like you're using some old software. GNOME and sway have clean fractional scaling without blurring, though that hasn't always been the case (it used to be terrible).

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#256

Post by teekert »

coffeebeqn wrote: post #236
teekert wrote: post #72

I have always used Linux personally, only work made me use Windows and Mac (controlled endpoints) for the past 20 years. For 4 years I have my own company, 100% Linux. I know that some things are not as nice on Linux (ie you need to do MS365 in a browser for example, and MS365 files from a NAS in OnlyOffice is not great, etc). But other than that, I just love living in Gnome. What more do you need that just a clean d…

Every company I’ve worked at has used Google Docs anyway so the experience for me is the same on Linux. What’s so appealing about the classic Office suite?

Well, it's mostly annoying if people store office docs on some samba share instead of in SharePoint/Teams. Also Teams has issues on Firefox, and sometimes also in Chromium. But overall works well enough (even with my AirPods on Linux). Things like drawing in PowerPoint in the Browser have become significantly better over the last year, before that I avoided it like the plaque. Whats missing in MS365 online is numbered captions for figures (unforgivable!), or reference management. That just really annoying if people use those features. Also, I worked in an org still on Office 2019 but mixed it with MS365, that also lead to lot of pain. It's papercuts mostly, nothing fatal.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#257

Post by dijit »

blackcatsec wrote: post #240
otikik wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. The ads in he start menu are a sign that you are no longer the customer, you are the product. Windows has other similar “features”.

I do not have ads in my start menu, and no, I didn't "debloat" my PC. This is a base install where I flipped a couple of settings in the start menu options.

You're missing the point entirely.

The problem isn't that ads can be disabled. The problem is that a paid operating system ships with ads in the first place. Full stop. There's no universe where that's acceptable product design, and the fact that you can disable them (for now, at least) doesn't make it less offensive.

I don't understand why you're going to bat for a trillion-dollar corporation here. Your settings work now. Great. They won't after the next feature update, this is a well-documented pattern. Windows updates routinely re-enable telemetry, Bing integration, and promotional content that users explicitly disabled. You're not configuring your OS, you're fighting it.

The TPM2 requirement is pure planned obsolescence. Millions of perfectly good machines binned because Microsoft decided hardware from 2016 is suddenly "insecure"... whilst the actual benefit is DRM enforcement and remote attestation.

It's a corporate compliance tool, not a security feature.

The Insiders build being referenced had actual web advertisements in search results. That's where this is headed. If you're comfortable defending that trajectory, carry on flipping those settings.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#258

Post by jhasse »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #33

As a long-time Linux user who fairly recently dropped the Windows partition entirely, I do think the remaining chafing points are these: * UI framework balkanization has always been, and remains a hideous mess. And now you don't just have different versions of GTK vs QT to keep track off, but also X vs Wayland, and their various compatibility layers. * Support for non-standard DPI monitors sucks, mostly because of th…

I'm using KDE with Wayland and 2 non-standard DPI monitors (one at 100% the other at 150% scale). No workarounds needed, nothing is blurry. I think your experience comes from GNOME which lacks behind in this regard.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#259

Post by ryukoposting »

I just started a new job where I'm subjected to Windows 11. They gave me a behemoth of a laptop. 64GB of RAM, absolute screamer of a CPU, big GPU, the whole deal.

Windows 11's file browser lags when opening directories with more than 100-ish files. Windows 11's file browser takes a few seconds to open at all.

Context menus take a noticeable amount of time to appear.

I'm getting used to a new keyboard, so I keep hitting Print Screen by accident. Half the time I can smack Esc and Snipping Tool will go away. The other half of the time, I have to mouse over and click the X to close it. There is no pattern to when Esc does/doesn't work.

If my computer goes to sleep, WSL becomes unresponsive. I have to save all my stuff and reboot to continue working.

If Windows 11 struggles this badly on a brand new laptop that I'm certain would retail for $4000+, I can only imagine how miserable it is for everyone else. All my colleagues who have been here for a bit longer got last-generation laptops. oof.

Edit... and besides, what does Windows 11 even do that KDE Plasma 5 wasn't doing a decade ago? How did it take this long to get a tabbed file browser?

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#260

Post by 7bit »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #68

This was me in 2022 or 2023. I have posted on HN about my shift a few times. I gave up with Windows 10 because you needed Windows Pro in order to make an "offline" account, I spent $2000+ for a gaming rig, and I couldn't add new users, one program told me to use the other program which brought me back to the original program... I had to go out of my way, buy a license just to make it work. I just went and installed L…

> idk why Arch doesn't invest in whats standard in every other major distro

Because Arch maintainers are a bunch of elitist gatekeepers that don't accept any level of knowledge that is lower than theirs. You can see that through every forum interaction generally and any discussion about the installation process specifically.

Arch is great btw. It could be greater, if all maintainers would quit.

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