The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019 • Hacker News Board

Re: The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

#71

Post by lph » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 10:33 PM UTC

everyone wrote: post #22

Just letting ya'll know the best version of Windows 10 by miles is called 'LTSB'. It doesnt come with any shit on it (windows store, xboxlive, cortana etc etc.) MS have also promised It will not receive any updates that change its functionality but will receive security updates, for 10 years. You can only get it if u buy in bulk tho. Or, u can just get it from tpb.. Considering MS are intentionally not selling by far…

Serious question: How can you possibly trust pirated software in 2019? How do you know it’s not riddled with rootkits and backdoors?

Re: The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

#72

Post by silversconfused » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 10:36 PM UTC

crispinb wrote: post #28

[deleted] wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

> The best OS is the one you enjoy and are most productive on. What if like me you dislike them all? Actually I'm not kidding - I find the desktop OS in 2019 pretty miserable. I'm using Windows right now, but not because I like it. Current Apple hardware is of no interest to me, so macOS is ruled out. Linux and Windows are kind of neck and neck - I dislike each roughly equally, but find Windows wastes less of my time…

I have a 95, two 98, and two windows xp machines at home. They are SO MUCH EASIER to use than modern linux, mac, or android. And my goodness are they fast. I've booted my p75 98 machine faster than web pages can load on my i7 mac. Really makes you wonder what kind of hell the ignorance of "right tool for the job" will lead us to in the next few years.

(no, they are not plugged into a network, I'm lazy, not stupid.)

Re: The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

#73

Post by silversconfused » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 10:40 PM UTC

lph wrote: post #71

everyone wrote: post #22

Just letting ya'll know the best version of Windows 10 by miles is called 'LTSB'. It doesnt come with any shit on it (windows store, xboxlive, cortana etc etc.) MS have also promised It will not receive any updates that change its functionality but will receive security updates, for 10 years. You can only get it if u buy in bulk tho. Or, u can just get it from tpb.. Considering MS are intentionally not selling by far…

Serious question: How can you possibly trust pirated software in 2019? How do you know it’s not riddled with rootkits and backdoors?

Well to be fair, pirates are far more honest and helpful than corporations.

Re: The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

#74

Post by wtallis » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 10:41 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #61

pbreit wrote: post #9

I just switched from Mac to Windows and had to move back. I cannot believe how miserable the Windows experience is. I mistakenly thought that since so much is browser-based, it's not a big deal. But literally every single little thing is slightly-to-much worse on Windows. Even stupid things like changing scroll direction, saving the 5 second preference for notifications to disappear, finding a wifi password, arrangin…

Same thing here. Sold my 2013 MBP and bought a Thinkpad X1 carbon. After a year of frustration, bought a used 2013 MBP. Windows is somehow worse than it used to be. There's two control centers for some reason. Much more notifications and intrusiveness. Taskbar auto-hide doesn't work consistently. Updates install without permission. The big thing is the apps. Apps are getting much less functional (just like how the Se…

> Deleting the binary fixed that, and had no discernable affect on mouse behavior.

In my experience, deleting the Synaptics binaries does restore access to the operating system's built-in touchpad control panel, rather than forcing you to use the Synaptics utilities that appear to be barely modified from what I remember encountering on a Windows 95 machine. That makes it quite a bit easier to take advantage of the halfway-decent set of configuration options that Windows now offers.

You have to repeat the purging after upgrading to a new Windows build, or if Windows Update tries to reinstall the Synaptics drivers behind your back. (Updated userspace tools shipped as part of driver updates don't show in the list of installed Windows updates!)

Re: The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

#75

Post by jammygit » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 10:48 PM UTC

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #37

chrisseaton wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I try to use Linux I find it's essentially impossible due to terrible power management support for any hardware I can find. I'm used to 10 hours on my MacBook - how do I get that on Linux?

Their are a variety of ways to manage all of the power management settings on Linux. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Power_management It can be a pain; enabeling sleep for every USB devices will likely result in the keyboard or touchpad becoming broken, increase the latency it takes to respond, etc. But once it's configured it just works very well. I'm getting 10+ hours on a Dell XPS 13" under light web browsing…

As a counterpoint, my XP’s 13 gets fairly mediocre battery life (4-6 hours?) because I never figured out how to configure the power settings. It also doesn’t fully wake up sometimes, but that’s pretty rare now - Ubuntu 19 seems to have fixed that. It’s my desktop that fails to wake sometimes now, even with suspend turned off (also Ubuntu 19. The memory leaks/performance slowdowns are improved too, but not gone - is, the laptop slow down after being on for a couple of hours. I think it’s from failing to fully wake from suspend or hibernate?

That said, it’s a great OS. I just wish it was less buggy. Not planning to switch in the near future

Re: The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

#76

Post by jammygit » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 10:55 PM UTC

samdixon wrote: post #29

An operating system with advertisements will never be my first choice.

It’s like Microsoft noticed all the spyware and adware people kept accidentally installing, and thought: I want in on that.

Re: The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

#77

Post by mdorazio » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 10:59 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #61

pbreit wrote: post #9

I just switched from Mac to Windows and had to move back. I cannot believe how miserable the Windows experience is. I mistakenly thought that since so much is browser-based, it's not a big deal. But literally every single little thing is slightly-to-much worse on Windows. Even stupid things like changing scroll direction, saving the 5 second preference for notifications to disappear, finding a wifi password, arrangin…

Same thing here. Sold my 2013 MBP and bought a Thinkpad X1 carbon. After a year of frustration, bought a used 2013 MBP. Windows is somehow worse than it used to be. There's two control centers for some reason. Much more notifications and intrusiveness. Taskbar auto-hide doesn't work consistently. Updates install without permission. The big thing is the apps. Apps are getting much less functional (just like how the Se…

> Windows is somehow worse than it used to be.

I have to agree. I use Windows probably 90% of the time, but I have to say it peaked with Windows 7 and started going downhill with 8. Now it's a game of "guess which config system has the option you need" + Microsoft forcing all kinds of things power users really should be able to disable.

Re: The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

#78

Post by crispinb » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 11:02 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #13

neilv wrote: post #10

The writer is a journalist. For techies using Mac, there's a bigger question of whether you want to just move from Mac to GNU/Linux.

Whenever I try to use Linux I find it's essentially impossible due to terrible power management support for any hardware I can find. I'm used to 10 hours on my MacBook - how do I get that on Linux?

I ran Fedora on my Dell XPS 15 f/t for about 6 months, and found battery life to be similar to that on Windows. I think I remember reading on Phoronix that Fedora's power management defaults are better for battery life than most distros.

Re: The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

#79

Post by katttrrr » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 11:04 PM UTC

jaden wrote: post #4

> I'll be honest: it wasn't an easy switch at first, but as time went by it's become clear it was the right choice. Let's stop pretending there's a correct OS. We all have different needs and it depends on what you're optimizing for. I have a Macbook for work and run Windows 7 on my home desktop with Ubuntu on my home laptop. They all have their benefits and drawbacks. And Windows 10 has been having plenty of problem…

I couldn't agree more. Personally, I've found dual booting is the best option, but since most hardware isn't optimized for this it does sometimes lead to driver problems. I really wish all computers we're optimized for multiple OS... I mean it's great on a desktop where you can have many drives, but that's not practical for laptops and partitioning really isn't the most stable option in my experience.

Re: The state of switching to Windows from Mac in 2019

#80

Post by everyone » Mon, Jul 08, 2019, 11:18 PM UTC

silversconfused wrote: post #73

lph wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: How can you possibly trust pirated software in 2019? How do you know it’s not riddled with rootkits and backdoors?

Well to be fair, pirates are far more honest and helpful than corporations.

Agreed, pirated anything from a known trusted group or uploader is what I consider a clean copy of something. If I buy the official version of anything I usually use the pirated version anyway.