Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Our commitment to Windows quality

blogs.windows.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 1001 posts

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#251

Post by glitchc »

dmos62 wrote: post #195

I'm somewhat surprised that Windows is still most of personal computers. In my eyes, it's fundamentally inferior to Linux, and its superficial superiority only comes from the ecosystem, which is to say adoption, not some inherent trait. But then, since Linux adoption didn't meaningfully change in the last 20 years, I'm forced to confront the fact that either I'm wrong about its fundamentals, or the market is able to…

> I'm somewhat surprised that Windows is still most of personal computers. In my eyes, it's fundamentally inferior to Linux, and its superficial superiority only comes from the ecosystem, which is to say adoption, not some inherent trait.

I'm not a Windows fanboy by any stretch, but it is a remarkably resilient OS. Case in point: I took the OS drive (SATA SSD) from my old workstation and installed it into a laptop. This was a Dell 7910, with a dual CPU Xeon configuration, NVidia graphics card and ECC memory. The laptop the drive was transplanted into was an old T520. The OS was Windows 10. Firing it up, I expected a kernel panic given how different the drivers would be between the two and resigned myself to a couple of hours using the Recovery partition. To my surprise, it booted up to the desktop and automatically started installing the missing drivers. In the meantime, I could actually use the darn thing.

In all my years of using Linux, I have yet to see that work without a hitch. A chroot to modify fstab is usually the starting point, then comes the inevitable blacklist and driver removal. Linux LiveCDs come close, but this was a full fledged Windows install with custom swap file configurations, 10G network card, etc.

Barring all this user-hostile behaviour from MS, at the OS level, Windows seems well-engineered.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#252

Post by lm28469 »

dmos62 wrote: post #195

I'm somewhat surprised that Windows is still most of personal computers. In my eyes, it's fundamentally inferior to Linux, and its superficial superiority only comes from the ecosystem, which is to say adoption, not some inherent trait. But then, since Linux adoption didn't meaningfully change in the last 20 years, I'm forced to confront the fact that either I'm wrong about its fundamentals, or the market is able to…

I recently installed Fedora and holy shit it's still not production ready. During the initial setup you need to input your location, you have a choice between clicking on the map or typing the city, I don't remember which it is but one of them makes your system freeze, no way to get out other than a reboot. It's documented since Fedora 42, and was still there on Fedora 43

Every time my swap is full the entire system freezes for a good second, sometimes it stays stuck, no way out besides rebooting, I've never experienced that in any other OS ever

It's impossible to get more than a few days of uptimes, it's like the ram is never ever freed, last time I had to reboot my mac I had close to one year of uptime.

A friend sent me a png to print, every time I open it with the image viewer it uses 100% of my memory instantly (10+gb), causing the system to freeze. The image is 700kb and opens fine on gimp

I completely understand why people stick to the alternatives, it's way too easy to "hold it wrong" with Linux

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#253

Post by rfrey »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #217
dmos62 wrote: post #195

I'm somewhat surprised that Windows is still most of personal computers. In my eyes, it's fundamentally inferior to Linux, and its superficial superiority only comes from the ecosystem, which is to say adoption, not some inherent trait. But then, since Linux adoption didn't meaningfully change in the last 20 years, I'm forced to confront the fact that either I'm wrong about its fundamentals, or the market is able to…

> and its superficial superiority only comes from the ecosystem So the only superiority is that it runs the apps most people want to run? And this is why geeks are always the “Less space than Nomad. No Wireless. Lame” types or the HN equivalent when talking about DropBox: “For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and…

People loved the iPod. Users loved Dropbox. Nobody loves windows.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#254

Post by redwall_hp »

kriz9 wrote: post #154
ChicagoDave wrote: post #105

No one wants copilot. You can make it an app, but any OS level integration is a non-starter. My next laptop will be a MacBook Pro. My Surface Laptop 5 will be collecting dust in case I need it, but that’s highly unlikely.

As a long time windows user I have no regrets making the switch. If it wouldn't be for the games I would not touch windows at all.

I switched to Mac around Vista and never looked back. For games, enlightenment is realizing the PC gaming tribalism is dumb and PlayStations are actually really nice. It's an appliance that plays games without giving you trouble, in a comfortable place instead of encouraging you to spend even more time at a desk.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#255

Post by nomel »

dmos62 wrote: post #195

I'm somewhat surprised that Windows is still most of personal computers. In my eyes, it's fundamentally inferior to Linux, and its superficial superiority only comes from the ecosystem, which is to say adoption, not some inherent trait. But then, since Linux adoption didn't meaningfully change in the last 20 years, I'm forced to confront the fact that either I'm wrong about its fundamentals, or the market is able to…

> it's fundamentally inferior to Linux

The context here is the average user, so you need to consider if this they share this perspective of fundamentally inferiority that is so obvious to you.

Here's a litmus test: Put your non-programmer relative in front of each, have them do some common simple tasks, like print an email on their printer, and ask them.

You are *NOT* an average user.

edit: people are focusing on the printer too much. my point was some arbitrary task they would be common to an average user. OMMIT THE PRINTER. After they use their computer as they normally would for a week, what is it exactly that so clearly results in their perception of "obviously inferiority"? My claim is somewhere between nothing and the very first thing to go wrong.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#256

Post by evilduck »

ffwd wrote: post #76
itopaloglu83 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but I need to see it to believe it. Otherwise who can explain, how the Windows Explorer struggles to list 20 files. How is it even possible to spend 4-5 seconds to show a list of files in a local freaking folder?

I find that this happens when you enter folders that have media files like audio files, video files and so on. One way to fix it is to enter one such folder, then remove all columns (like file name, date modified - those columns) and remove all the columns that are media metadata columns. Things like track length, artist, contributing artist or whatever else, then click in the File explorer menu on the 3 dots icon (*…

It's less work at this point to just wipe the drive and install linux.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#257

Post by layer8 »

dmos62 wrote: post #195

I'm somewhat surprised that Windows is still most of personal computers. In my eyes, it's fundamentally inferior to Linux, and its superficial superiority only comes from the ecosystem, which is to say adoption, not some inherent trait. But then, since Linux adoption didn't meaningfully change in the last 20 years, I'm forced to confront the fact that either I'm wrong about its fundamentals, or the market is able to…

There is a reason that this submission is currently on the top of the front page. There are enough “hackers” that still care about Windows, because it did a lot of things right.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#258

Post by heap_perms »

EastSmith wrote: post #201

I've used Windows since 3.11 and I am using macOS for 5+ years now for work (requirement). Switched to Linux on my personal devices 2 years ago and using Ubuntu and PopOS! on two different laptops. I've had very small number of issues. Can't understand people moving to Mac - it is the same messed half backed OS as both Windows and Linux (flavors). With the llms these days, any linux issue is fixable within minutes. W…

Yes!

> With the llms these days, any linux issue is fixable within minutes. I think this point is really it. What in the past needed a 40min google search to fix something, llms now fix it in seconds.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#259

Post by bigyabai »

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #79
mfro wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows is still a solid 'gets out of the way' operating system (with numerous tweaks, customizations, and stripping) when it works. If they focus on fixing UX issues and improving stability and performance, it may be enough to slow the rise of desktop Linux. Better support for F#, or really any language other than C# is a longshot though. Those resources were likely 'reallocated' to AI R&D indefinitely.

> Windows is still a solid 'gets out of the way' operating system A good way to put it. There are third-party tools that Microsoft really need to adopt to make Windows a bit nicer (WizTree, VoidTools Everything, adopt improvements from Total Commander, make more PowerToys default), but broadly it is still a decent OS. There are issues like slow `CloseHandle()` because of Defender (which needs to be a bit less zealous…

As someone that ran the Insider channel from ~2014-2019, Windows has been in a real weal-and-woe situation. Some parts are so hopelessly bad that they can never be fixed (eg. UI frameworks) while others are extremely promising and justify using Windows for ordinary work (eg. WSL). It's easy to subscribe to either extreme and assume that Windows is doomed or perfect because some specific feature exists.

Five years of Windows Insider made me pretty weary, though. Being downstream of Microsoft's changes is like reading tea leaves, WSL2 had broken networking for four years before any fix ever came up. I can appreciate the work that Microsoft does to ship a stable OS to millions of users, but my impatience got the better of me in the end. I switched to Linux waiting for WSL2 to get fixed, and while it's not a perfect experience it does consistently improve in a transparent and open manner.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#260

Post by pnce »

jacquesm wrote: post #184
Someone1234 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't think people like having something shoved down their throats. The dedicated Copilot button on keyboards and adding Copilot shortcuts all over the OS (and automatic popups/ads) was far too far. I think OS level integrations that are opt-in, not opt-out, may even be popular. But they have to be done carefully and tastefully.

I have the same feeling about any kind of integration. We're moving away from Google because we simply do not want to have this kind of forced relationship with products and/or services. It either fits and we'll pick it or it does not and then we don't. We won't pay for things we do not intend to use. And we don't want exposure to products that may constitute a security or a privacy risk.

The forced Workspace price hike to "get" Gemini felt like the beginning of the end.

Do you know what you'll be moving to to replace what Workspace provides (email/IdP/calendar/Chrome policy management?)

Post reply on HN