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Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

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Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#561

Post by runjake »

One point that wasn't mentioned is that we've been through this cycle many times before with Microsoft, and we will again.

It wasn't too long ago that Microsoft went "all in" on Windows for developers and power users. WSL was drastically improved, developer tools were revamped and open sourced. The press adored the "new" Microsoft. Many developers moved over to Windows because they "got the best of both worlds".

And then, they just went back to the same old shit. The thing is, the shit phase of this cycle lasts longer than the non-shit phases.

This next phase is just words, so far. But, mind you, even if Microsoft does produce releases to back up those words, they'll be back to their same old shit within a year or two, once again.

And the whole process will repeat.

PS: And regardless of this supposed change of direction, if you listen to recent statements from Satya and other senior leadership, they are still spewing the same platitudes about agentic computing and software. So what's really going to change long-term?

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#563

Post by bigstrat2003 »

nicoburns wrote: post #510
rmah wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Our economic system fundamentally chooses to reward such behavior". This is true, but what people seem to fail to grasp is that rewarding such behavior == buying the product. If people simply didn't buy it, they wouldn't do it. It's really that simple. It may be hard to not buy, of course. The alternatives may be worse, there may be downsides to not buying, etc. But nothing else will really be effective.

Sure, but there's a power disparity here. I think the clearest example is smart TVs where there have been examples of consumers buying a TV, and then having ads retroactively added to the product a year later. There's not much a consumer could to avoid that. It's our regulatory environment allowing that.

Yeah that is definitely the kind of thing we need regulation to address. In the market, the only power you have is to purchase or not. It ruins the free market's ability to function if the company you buy something from can remotely vandalize it after your purchase.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#564

Post by bigbuppo »

JollySharp0 wrote: post #429
cmicali wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree and appreciate you calling this out. It’s easy to not understand the impact or meaning of referring to violence in a flip way when one has never had to have experienced it.

The guy was a Darknet Vendor and has been to Jail/Prison in the US.

So when he looks at Windows 11 and calls it something bad, you should probably pay attention.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#565

Post by falcor84 »

bonoboTP wrote: post #519
harvey9 wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Files and folders are already a helpful metaphor taken from paper based office work. You have container folders and you can put different files (pieces of paper) into different folders. The thing thats a bit conceptually hard for regular people is the nesting, that folders can contain folders can contain folders. The real world has some nesting too, like putting folders in drawers but it's more limited in number of l…

> Without the helpful abstraction of files and folders, all we'd have are bytes stored at various addresses or sectors of the hardware.

I agree with most everything else you said, but would slightly push back on that. I actually quite like the idea of non-hierarchical blob storage searchable via arbitrary indexed metadata, as well as the idea of content-addressable storage (e.g. with magnet links). While folders are an elegant abstraction, I really feel that we shouldn't be beholden to it.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#566

Post by joe_mamba »

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #71
joe_mamba wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, the amount of penny pinching some companies do nowadays is insane. Teams coming "for free" with their Microsoft 365 subscription is net positive for the bean counters.

Chat software is absurdly expensive. I’m not saying teams is good, but being nickel and dimed is a real risk for businesses too.

>Chat software is absurdly expensive.

Define absurdly expensive here. I can probably guarantee that for small to medium sized business paying Slack or Microsoft for chat software is miles cheaper than self hosting it yourself.

My Google-Fu says Slack costs $18.00 /user/mo for their Business+ subscription plan. That's still relative peanuts compared to the yearly salary, let's say 60k/year, of developer you hire to self-host and maintain an on-prem Matrix/Jitsi instance with all the equivalent bells and whistles of Slack/Teams, but guess what, even then your clients/partner will send you MS Teams invites for calls, so you still have to pay for it anyway.

Then isn't it easier if you just fork out the cash for Teams so you can focus on your product instead?

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#567

Post by fullstop »

hedora wrote: post #354
lizknope wrote: post #169

I bought my first x86 PC in 1994 to install Linux on. I wanted a Sun workstation but couldn't afford it. I know people run an operating system to run programs on so it isn't easy to switch but so many windows users make it sound like they have Stockholm Syndrome. My advice as a Linux user of 32 years for normal people is to buy a Mac.

If they have a budget of ~ $1000, then I'd recommend an AMD Linux laptop. For folks here, I'd recommend similar, but pave it + put Devuan or similar on it. For low end laptops, if you can tolerate Apple's terrible window manager, rapidly declining stability, and creeping ads (they leaked expansion plans that are coming soon), then the Neo probably wins. Typed on a macbook pro.

> but pave it + put Devuan or similar on it.

The distribution which left the root account without a password if you selected "Use sudo as default and disable root account"?

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#568

Post by LtWorf »

j_w wrote: post #550
nicoburns wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but there's a power disparity here. I think the clearest example is smart TVs where there have been examples of consumers buying a TV, and then having ads retroactively added to the product a year later. There's not much a consumer could to avoid that. It's our regulatory environment allowing that.

You don't need a TV. If there are only smart TVs then simply don't purchase one. Most consumers are unwilling to take an option that they perceive as inconveniencing them more than getting screwed by the company inconveniences them.

Go to a shop and try to find a non smart tv.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#569

Post by hdb2 »

alexb_ wrote: post #212
bonoboTP wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What percentage of MS Office user can, in your estimation, complete the steps as described in this readme? https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps

Even skipping the first step (which requires a second readme ) the next step involves opening a terminal. Instant fail. The entire point of an operating system is to make computers usable without knowing how they work, what a file is, what a command is, or having to look up anything. If something needs to be done, it needs a GUI. Linux is an important operating system, but anyone under the delusion that it is desktop…

> Even skipping the first step (which requires a second readme) the next step involves opening a terminal. Instant fail. The entire point of an operating system is to make computers usable without knowing how they work, what a file is, what a command is, or having to look up anything. If something needs to be done, it needs a GUI.

I strongly disagree with this; I believe that an OS should be whatever the user needs it to be. In my case, I am a power user that loves the command line, and while I agree that I may not represent the majority of users, I do not care for your assertion that my way of doing things is somehow invalid.

Re: Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

#570

Post by hdb2 »

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…

I had commented this above, but the OS should be flexible enough to do whatever the user needs it to do. "What it needs to do" is pretty broad, but I think that's the point.
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