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

No I don't want to turn on Windows Backup with One Drive

idiallo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 464 posts

Re: No I don't want to turn on Windows Backup with One Drive

#301

Post by asimovfan »

brooke2k wrote: post #149
yehat wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, such remarks add nothing except exposing intended bias. In other words that's called a trolling.

Holding the opinion that Linux is currently the most reliable OS option is "trolling"?

He's saying its not very good if thats the case. Which is not the case. I am satisfied with GNU+Linux. It doesn't work against me. It would be great if there were FOSS alternatives to the remaining proprietary software on my computers. Making it sound like linux is almost just as bad, does sound weird. Also nothing about what's actually that bad about "linux".

Re: No I don't want to turn on Windows Backup with One Drive

#302

Post by keyringlight »

tombert wrote: post #123

I just want to rant a bit about Microsoft right now. A few weeks ago, Microsoft decided to auto-update my mom's computer to Windows 11, and delightfully the computer no longer booted. Even after a litany of different boot keystrokes and automatic repairs and attempted recoveries, it would not boot. I think it has something to do with the utter incompetence of the Windows automatic update process not correctly updatin…

On a tangent, one thing I wonder about for the future is all the people doing bypasses on the CPU requirements will at some point in the future be left high and dry. There's already been one win11 update where they started to need the popcnt extension that started showing up in CPUs after roughly 2008, raising the hard requirement from anything that's x64 although still below the official reqs. The scenario I wonder about is how many well meaning upgrades have been done to keep people on a supported version of windows, but MS can either update so the hard requirement matches official and leaves a lot unbootable, or detect it's actually unsupported and at that point refuse to update (I guess at that point you need another campaign such as "end of win11 25h2" to raise awareness of service pack levels subdividing the major OS version) while MS can point to "well, we never supported them anyway" as though that fixes the problem.

I'm struggling to think of a way out that doesn't involve forcefully educating users or MS needing to maintain a low requirements/long term support branch of windows forever

Re: No I don't want to turn on Windows Backup with One Drive

#304

Post by GJim »

vee-kay wrote: post #295
codingrightnow wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just bought my first windows 11 computer. Why are my personal folders like pictures and documents under a OneDrive folder? This is insane. Going to see how Ubuntu runs on it and hopefully never look back.

In Win10/Win11, you can move your user folders to another partition or folder path. Right-click on them in Explorer, go to Properties, click on Location tab, and type/select the new path for them, click Move... then that folder and its contents will be moved to new locate. I've movier following to D: partition as root-level folders: Contacts, Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Favorites, Links, Music, Pictures, Saved Gam…

> you can move your user folders to another partition or folder path

The fact that the default is to auto-magically upload your personal data on to somebody else's box (sorry "the cloud") is fucking insane.

Such things should be opt-in, not opt-out; and certainly not nag-ware.

Re: No I don't want to turn on Windows Backup with One Drive

#305

Post by zaptheimpaler »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #278
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And game devs throwing random shit into My Documents was also fun. I hate this problem with all OSes. We have folders that started out being places for users to put things like Pictures, Documents & home, but over time they get filled with crap from software and it's difficult to find your own files. We should have had a "program-files" subfolder or something by default in all these places to separate things that a…

We do! On Windows, it's (user profile)\AppData. And to be fair, most software does use that. But there are always bad citizens that don't care and clutter up the user's documents folder.

That's nice, I think Linux/XDG has some standards around this too, but they too are not enforced - and many people have no idea these standards even exist unless the OS warns or enforces these things. I think there might also be some gap between "these files are only internally needed by this software" vs. "these files are created by this software, but may be good to show them to the user". It's nice the OSes are making efforts to do that though!

Re: No I don't want to turn on Windows Backup with One Drive

#306

Post by bee_rider »

the__alchemist wrote: post #269
bee_rider wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Open Source ecosystem is a bit weird in that your system can be as reliable or not as you want, depending on what projects you follow. It really truly is a mixed bag in the sense that you can actually have a solid setup if you are happy with it being boring.

> The Open Source ecosystem is a bit weird in that your system can be as reliable or not as you want I'm going to dig into this a little. This feels like shifting responsibility onto the user when things don't go well. E.g. comparing the platonic ideal of Linux when analyzing practical options. I make lots of mistakes in all aspects of my life. I know historically, and projecting into the future that I will get into…

I think it is an accurate description of the situation. I agree that responsibility is accumulating at the user’s feet in an unfortunate manner.

But somebody must be responsible for making your computer work, who should it be?

The companies that sell operating systems don’t seem to be fulfilling the obligation to make a bug free and user-friendly OS. The Open Source community never really had accepting that responsibility as a “business model” because they aren’t businesses.

Re: No I don't want to turn on Windows Backup with One Drive

#307

Post by userbinator »

numpad0 wrote: post #104
Podrod wrote: post #36

I used to use Windows Backup with One Drive years ago but it just really pissed me off, especially with how My Documents is handled. There was that time I discovered several GB of screenshots had been automatically saved to My Pictures from some setting they snuck into the printscreen screen grab tool and then that of course those were automatically uploaded to the cloud. After disabling the option it would sometimes…

It enables in non-consensual manners, break apps and games(because paths change and APIs work differently), clings onto your files even if you tried to save them from the OneDrive folder, and throws a tantrum and irreversibly delete your files if you dare unlink the PC and disable it . I don't know why they commit to especially the last part. To me, it feels like that is why Microsoft's Windows efforts are getting a…

don't know why they commit to especially the last part.

MS thinks it knows better than you. It thinks its owns your data. Remember that this has happened before (7 years ago!): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18189139

Re: No I don't want to turn on Windows Backup with One Drive

#308

Post by 9x39 »

tombert wrote: post #248
9x39 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Proton and Wine seem perfect for gaming, but I have never seen someone get Office right. That might be an audience difference or perhaps MS deliberately frustrates that attempt. You could try 11 IOT LTSC[1] which is super-stripped down like an appliance. Set a few GPOs, get her files synced, set remote access. You could even do something like DeepFreeze if she's prone to clicking on the wrong thing. Restricting…

I'm not sure my mom even does anything that the browser Office won't do; she uses Excel heavily but she's not using any advanced formulas or VBA or anything, and her use of Microsoft Word is generally using pretty basic formatting. Honestly I don't think that she does anything that can't easily be handled by Google Drive or OnlyOffice. That doesn't matter though; the web browser is a complete non-starter, and if it d…

If she insists on Office and won't try Google Drive, perhaps you could experiment with setting up Office in a Chrome PWA for her and sidestep Windows?

Re: No I don't want to turn on Windows Backup with One Drive

#309

Post by toast0 »

vee-kay wrote: post #35
grishka wrote: post #15

And Windows itself still costs money somehow, despite clearly acting as a free product.

Windows 10 was indeed offered free worldwide to users already using older licenced versions of Windows. Microsoft even touted Windows 10 as last version of Windows. But it was typical bait-and-switch gambit by Micro$oft, and support for Windows 10 is ending in Oct 2025 (rejecting the pleas from thousands of companies worldwide to extend its Win10 support for longer while), because M$ thinks everyone will migrate to W…

> because M$ thinks everyone will migrate to Windows 11 (not free).

Pretty sure upgrade to Windows 11 is free for Windows 10 licenses, too. If you need a new computer, sure, most people have a license tied to their computer, and they'll need a new license for that.

Re: No I don't want to turn on Windows Backup with One Drive

#310

Post by fluidcruft »

a022311 wrote: post #240
fluidcruft wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think OneDrive has an "oops I accidentally rm-rf /" window for deletions. Anyway OneDrive used to drive me nuts until somehow it all just clicked in some sort of "aha!" zen mode so I haven't had much trouble with in a long time. The biggest issue is often large changes will time out without error and you have to kick it in the pants a few times.

Sorry if it wasn't clear in the original post, I meant I consciously deleted everything after getting sick and tired of the terrible UX. It's not like I was storing anything meaningful there anyway, I hadn't logged in for a year and I don't regret doing so. I also got an email for deleting many files, which I happily ignored.

No I think you were clear, I was more responding that what you are describing sounds like when OneDrive gets stuck with a sync task that hasn't completed and doesn't know how to force to happen.
Post reply on HN