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Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

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Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#381

Post by pc86 »

noisy_boy wrote: post #267
pc86 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you have a product that is predatory towards you and you refuse to change your ways. And honestly it seems like you refuse to learn even the smallest bit about human nature. Very, very few people want to "learn" how to use their computer. Walk into a room of 100 graphic designers who have spend the last 20 years using Photoshop exclusively and put GIMP in front of them and and at least 98 of them are going to say w…

I mean I kinda agree on what you are saying but then it logically follows that if you don't want to try out alternatives, don't want to push your government to enact better laws, don't want to spend time taking them to small claims court - basically don't want to do anything but suffer - then just suffer.

The vast majority of people do not test out alternatives to things they just need to use for work, they don't lobby their government even informally for different laws, have never gone to small claims court (or even been in a court room when it's in session). These are all minority "activist" activities for lack of a better word.

The tin foil hat interpretation of this is that it is all by design, by whatever cabal runs everything, to subjugate the masses and control them directly or indirectly. The generous interpretation is closer to an extreme version of Sturgeon's Law[0] where this is just a natural, even inevitable, byproduct of most things being garbage. Like most things the truth is almost certainly somewhere in the middle.

[0] "90% of everything is [crud/crap/shit]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#382

Post by bayindirh »

Kye wrote: post #372
bayindirh wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have Scarlett 2i2G4. I may look into it. On the other hand, I have way more advanced stuff from ESI and Audient, which allows much more customization when compared to Scarlett, and they have no Linux support AFAIK.

Some hope for ESI, maybe: https://kb.esi-audio.com/?goto=KB00337EN If it's one of those and class compliant, you might be able to access all of it through alsamixer or one of the many frontends (maybe too many, maybe one for you): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alsamixer The Audient situation appears to be a proper nightmare realm with non-class compliant stuff, but there is a tool with a list of caveats longer than y…

Well I'll test it when I have some time. ESI has a lot of routing flexibility on board, and I don't know how ALSA will present it to me, but I may report it here.

I didn't expect Audient to work, actually.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#383

Post by hedora »

mkl wrote: post #176
m4rtink wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like your device is supported & has been for a while ? https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/comments/nwr4kd/best_d...

I check out the status every so often. Not much is upstreamed yet, so it requires a patched kernel and some mucking about, likely on an ongoing basis. I'll probably try it at some point but not until I have moved my uses for that machine onto something else.

For what it's worth, I have a surface laying around somewhere. It doesn't run Windows any more. I have plenty of older Linux machines that are still supported.

Moving forward, I'm sticking with hardware where everything works without setting the Linux 'taint' bit (i.e., zero proprietary code in the kernel). Most laptops made in the last few years with an AMD CPU + GPU meet that requirement.

I'd require that even if I was running windows, given how badly I've been burned on short hardware support lifespans in the past. For instance, I also have an Intel OEM reference motherboard that never had Linux video drivers. It no longer boots windows.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#384

Post by WarmWash »

zabzonk wrote: post #97

> injected advertisements into the Windows 11 Start menu's "Recommended" section. These showed up labeled "Promoted" and pushed apps like Opera browser and some password manager nobody asked for. And the Start menu was just one surface, they also placed ads on the lock screen, in the Settings homepage hawking Game Pass subscriptions sorry, I have never seen these supposed ads in win11. the lock screen does display ic…

For some people the threshold for "ad" is an uninterruptible segment that they are forced to watch, or a typical banner ad placed on screen. For others it's the visual presence of any set of pixels that can be connected to a business entity or revenue stream.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#385

Post by BloondAndDoom »

baq wrote: post #22
Macha wrote: post #7

It’s quite common for companies to work their way up to the line of the most user hostile version of their product that users will tolerate. Especially with software where they can just go flip a switch and turn off whatever feature did cross the line but keep everything they gained by inching up to the line, which seems to inevitably result in things like the condition of windows 11. I think the only way this gets b…

> It’s quite common for companies to work their way up to the line of the most user hostile version of their product that users will tolerate. this is in general how the market for pretty much everything works (sometimes 'users' are replaced by 'the regulator', but it doesn't matter too much). lesson in there is 'majority of users don't care nearly as much as you think', usually.

It’s an option issue, I use an extremely modified version of windows, and same one for the last 5 years I think with the updates, local accounts, no ads, no telemetry, tweaks etc. I still don’t like tons of things about windows but compared to Linux desktops it’s heaven (for me). Don’t even get me started on macOS desktop experience it’s a fucking miserable (again for my personal taste).

A lot of windows UI design decisions are pretty good. They mess it up now and then like windows 8 (tablet design mess) disaster, especially now with WSL 2.0, it delivers everything I need.

Do I still hate it , yes for the reasons explained in this article and other stupid designed features like search index, windows defender , mix of legacy and new dialogs, for the shitty design of powershell and then the mess of mixed shells, terminal etc.

List goes on, but comparatively I’ll pick windows desktop over anything out there at the moment. It’s a personal choice but I assume majority of windows user feel this way (or cannot afford macOS :))

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#386

Post by nicoburns »

charcircuit wrote: post #162
Draiken wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think "care" is the right word here at all. We simply don't have options. This is capitalism's biggest flaw: it's based on the assumption that there will be competition, but competition eventually leads to winners that then consolidate their positions and we end up with no real choices. You're telling me people would pick a worse OS because they don't care even if they had real options? I don't believe that f…

If people truly cared then there would be a high enough expected value to invest into building competitor to be financially worth it.

What makes you think a competitor that "plays fair" can compete with a competitor that takes advantage of the system and extracts as much value as they can?

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#387

Post by ndespres »

neves wrote: post #299

For me the worst is Microsoft Start news. I've already turned it off multiple times and it always come back. To add insult to injury, it always displays terrible gossip, sports or far right news. If any developer that works in MS news service is reading this message, please know that I hate you.

It's so mind-boggling that they have control over the default browser home page and the news feed on everyone's taskbar and they choose to show gossip and one weird trick that doctors hate. Don't they feel embarrassed that they pollute their brand like this? Is the revenue from the clicks really worth it, or do they just not care?

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#388

Post by bluescrn »

hedora wrote: post #338
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> XP was good, Vista was bad, Win7 was good, Win8 was a disaster, Win10 was decent again. Now we're in a low part of the cycle with Win11. The cycle is more complicated: * 2000: exceptional * XP: bad (the original XP was indeed bad) * XP SP2 (from a technological perspective basically a new OS): decent * Vista: bad * 7: good * 8: awful (it was so bad that soon 8.1 was introduced) * 8.1: bad * 10: controversial (some…

Windows 8 was better than 10. The UI might have been wonky, but 10's telemetry was a far bigger problem. They had a "last release in the series was best pattern" with Win 3.11 / NT, Win 98 SE / 2K and XP SP2 (which merged the consumer and business tracks). After that, it's been strictly downhill. 7's additions vs XP are purely hostile to the end user, including escrowed disk encryption and DRM. 8 was the beginning of…

> Windows 8 was better than 10.

No, Win8 was all about the Metro/RT nonsense, the attempt to convert Windows into a touch-centric locked-down App Store platform.

While a fair bit of that lived on in 10, it was far less obnoxious. Although they still managed to break things like Sticky Notes in the process of converting them to 'store apps'

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#389

Post by harvey9 »

falcor84 wrote: post #279
fwip wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may be showing my grey hair here, but that's emphatically not the point of an operating system.

I disagree with the grandparent too, but still would argue that an OS's goal is to allow its users to manage their applications and work processes rather than their computer. It's a hard question to figure out what's the proper level of abstraction for this is. And while I strongly resisted it originally, I am becoming more open to the argument that many people don't need to "know" what a file is, to benefit from the…

It should be possible to get creative and business work done on a computer while knowing almost nothing about an os but I use Windows at work and the situation with the file save dialogue in office is a farce. I can't imagine how confusing it is for someone who has no conception of what a file is.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#390

Post by jeppester »

Ranxer wrote: post #104
jeppester wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way this get better is if the user gets to choose between an OS with ads, lock-in, telemetry etc. and then one with none of that. As it is now, buying a laptop in a store is a "pick your poison" situation.

Better yet: don't pick any poison at all -- both System76 and Tuxedo Computers (as examples, sometimes you can buy a latop without an OS and save the money, same goes for PCs) offer laptops with Linux installed: no Microslop tax, and hardware that's guaranteed to work with OSS.

I have a tuxedo machine myself for that reason.

The problem is that I can't get one in a store. It's a product that is only available to those in the know.

In the ideal situation a lay-person would be in a store, and there would be two versions of the same machine, one with ads on the lock screen, one without.

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