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The day Windows died

thomasbandt.com

351–360 of 925 posts

Re: The day Windows died

#351

I am sure I will get all kinds of hate for saying this: despite the extra up front cost, apple stuff is a better value. Lets take device lifetime: I have a 2013 MBP 15 and 2015 MBP 15. I use them for intensive things like music production. Both devices work flawlessly. I also a System 76 Oryx Pro which cost more than any mac I own. The webcam failed 5 months in, several keys don't work anymore, and it gets hotter tha…

Browser support (including Safari support) is the main reason why expensive desktop Macs eventually become paperweights, as has happened to my father in the last year. Safari, Firefox, Chrome, all stuck at ancient and insecure versions, with the web slowly breaking on these older browsers.

Despite how glossy and powerful the machine still is, if it doesn't have a working web browser it's only semi-valid. Watched my Dad go through this three times in the last 20 years, and no stranger to it myself. My own current Macbook Air is just a thin client for a Remote Windows instance, but I suppose eventually that the browser interface for that is going to become a problem too, when it 'ages out'.

Re: The day Windows died

#352

It's really sad that there is no where for us to go in the desktop OS space right now. I, weirdly, daily drive all 3 OSes. MacOS; Work issued laptop and longish-time user (about 6 years with it). Windows; Desktop PC mostly for games. I've been using Windows since I could walk. Fedora; Desktop PC, dual booted which I use for most everything else. I cannot believe how much of a dumpster fire Windows has become. From th…

Mac/Windows aren't interested, but Linux is that + not capable, were doomed :(

Re: The day Windows died

#353

It's really sad that there is no where for us to go in the desktop OS space right now. I, weirdly, daily drive all 3 OSes. MacOS; Work issued laptop and longish-time user (about 6 years with it). Windows; Desktop PC mostly for games. I've been using Windows since I could walk. Fedora; Desktop PC, dual booted which I use for most everything else. I cannot believe how much of a dumpster fire Windows has become. From th…

This post is basically about the author's nostalgia for his early days of computing with Windows 95 and how he wanted his son to have the same experience.

This post is screaming out for Linux. Linux is the solution to his dilemma. If he reformats that drive and puts say Kubuntu on it - the kid's first PC experience is going to be a vaguely retro 90's style shell with a start menu, the start menu is going to have a Games folder and even a Science & Math folder. (I don't think Scratch is installed by default but he should install it.) Better than Win95! There will be no commercial nags, no pre-installed social media apps, no news about mass shootings.

And of course it's Linux, so there's infinite opportunity to get under the hood and tinker.

Re: The day Windows died

#354
post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What extra up front cost? The Macbook Air costs $799 at BestBuy. Only if you go with the absolute lowest specs. Which means you cannot upgrade them and will have to chuck that MacBook Air much sooner than any Windows laptop because it’s unable to keep up with you. Maxing out the specs on any Apple hardware is practically required for maximizing usable lifespan, and unfortunately, represents a massive barrier to ent…

This is not really true. While the base spec won't meet all needs, you don't need to max out the spec to get a usable machine with a long life.

Yeah, but the base models really are crippled by a lack of storage. I've had to help a couple of family members with their 128GB Macs and 16GB iPhones and I hated every second of it. I bought my partner a Macbook with maxed out storage just so I don't have to deal with that shit again.

Re: The day Windows died

#355

It's really sad that there is no where for us to go in the desktop OS space right now. I, weirdly, daily drive all 3 OSes. MacOS; Work issued laptop and longish-time user (about 6 years with it). Windows; Desktop PC mostly for games. I've been using Windows since I could walk. Fedora; Desktop PC, dual booted which I use for most everything else. I cannot believe how much of a dumpster fire Windows has become. From th…

I'm fairly happy with my situation: Windows 10 work machine, I do almost everything in WSL. WSL is pretty impressive these days, with native graphical support and decent filesystem and device interoperability. Windows has come a long way; it has a decent terminal now and utilities like ssh and curl have been added to stock cmd.exe . I've been able to turn off all the awful ad stuff. Never crashes, and I can do vertical taskbar and three monitors easy.

Then I have a kubuntu laptop / convertible tablet for all my personal projects which as you say is great but has lots of weird issues like rarely surviving sleep, screen tearing, high touchpad latency, etc.

The big win is avoiding Apple.

Re: The day Windows died

#356

I am sure I will get all kinds of hate for saying this: despite the extra up front cost, apple stuff is a better value. Lets take device lifetime: I have a 2013 MBP 15 and 2015 MBP 15. I use them for intensive things like music production. Both devices work flawlessly. I also a System 76 Oryx Pro which cost more than any mac I own. The webcam failed 5 months in, several keys don't work anymore, and it gets hotter tha…

Browser support (including Safari support) is the main reason why expensive desktop Macs eventually become paperweights, as has happened to my father in the last year. Safari, Firefox, Chrome, all stuck at ancient and insecure versions, with the web slowly breaking on these older browsers. Despite how glossy and powerful the machine still is, if it doesn't have a working web browser it's only semi-valid. Watched my D…

> Browser support (including Safari support) is the main reason why expensive desktop Macs eventually become paperweights.

https://github.com/blueboxd/chromium-legacy

Re: The day Windows died

#357
post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you know, you could stop fighting with your computer/OS/vendor and pick a different OS. No OS brings enough of a difference these days that it’s worth suffering an adversarial relationship with.

Then you'll get to enjoy all sorts of other fights with your OS. (I, will, of course, be put in my place by everyone who is ready to chime in that if I just change , then .

If you are that unique then obviously you will need to develop your own unique operating system to perfectly get what you want...

For me, either Mac or Linux works just fine, no fighting required. I am just not that special.

Re: The day Windows died

#358
post #134
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but Steam doesn't run natively, and is very heavy on battery and GPU. So it isn't good for playing on a laptop when mobile; signficantly worse to native game binary running on a tablet or laptop.

Steam runs natively. It is a linux application (to my knowledge, and it wraps "a webview", so there might be some nuance here. But native enough for this distinction). Steam uses a compatibility layer called Proton to run Windows games under Linux. Running the games that way is not significantly worse. It can get the same or even better performance (but sure, sometimes worse) and will affect battery life pretty much…

Functionality for older windows games is a little bit more absurd. I have a few games I kinda gave up on because they stopped working on windows 10, until I chucked them into proton or wine and suddenly those games were working. That was a confusing evening for a moment.

Re: The day Windows died

#359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truly, what has happened here? Windows search was so good circa 7. It is astoundingly awful in 10.

Theyre transmitting every keystroke to their servers, thats whats happened…

Former MSFT employee here. Not every keystroke, but a surprising amount, yes. A startling amount. (Disclaimer: I was on Azure platform, so I can't speak directly to Windows.)

You can disable it (there are lots of articles all over) but the sheer scale of the problem makes these mitigations rather unreliable.

On the other side of the one-way mirror, there's this thing called Kusto which lets you sort of surf through someone's sessions, at least for the web apps. Someone brilliant in my unit hooked it up with emojis, which you could read in columns; it was very nearly like those columns of green figures in _the Matrix_, but, you know, with emojis. Just scan down from top to bottom; dude opens file... dude renames file... dude copies file... dude wanders away for 15 min... etc

Because EU regs, we can't see PII, but frankly if you named your folder 'Bob Bobberson's Bobfiles' whoever is on DRI is seeing your name. "Don't name your folder your name," we always said, to our customers. They always did anyway.

This was always uncomfortable but since the political breakdown has progressed, I've started to worry that these reams of data will either (a) be seen by some True Believer for one side or another or (b) quietly collected by the usual (legal) means, by a federal agency that is itself compromised.

This is in the context where there are literally states with bounty programmes for e.g. people seeking (or helping) women get abortions. How long is it until $10K sounds good enough to a disgruntled layoff-rattled rank-and-file? What happens if those programmes are expanded to include other things? What if you had a folder named, say, "Getting my wife TF out of TX?" What if you did five years ago? Think it through.

The worst part is I'm sure it's no different anywhere else, in 2023, at least so far as commercial apps go. Even some FOSS stuff like Audacity.

That's why I run OpenBSD and NixOS, and have even managed to wean myself off VSC.

I definitely did not enjoy seeing the sausage be made.

Re: The day Windows died

#360

It's really sad that there is no where for us to go in the desktop OS space right now. I, weirdly, daily drive all 3 OSes. MacOS; Work issued laptop and longish-time user (about 6 years with it). Windows; Desktop PC mostly for games. I've been using Windows since I could walk. Fedora; Desktop PC, dual booted which I use for most everything else. I cannot believe how much of a dumpster fire Windows has become. From th…

I'm fairly happy with my situation: Windows 10 work machine, I do almost everything in WSL. WSL is pretty impressive these days, with native graphical support and decent filesystem and device interoperability. Windows has come a long way; it has a decent terminal now and utilities like ssh and curl have been added to stock cmd.exe . I've been able to turn off all the awful ad stuff. Never crashes, and I can do vertic…

The last update broke WSL for me.
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