So, how do you fully get rid of preinstalled software for all users? or anything from Microsoft Store? Thanks!
The day Windows died
701–710 of 925 posts
Re: The day Windows died
#702I just bought a Lenovo Ideapad from Costco for about $500. The last time I bought a computer preloaded with Windows was about a decade ago. My experience so far: I turn it on, there's a license agreement. Actually, there's two. One is from Microsoft, and it's rather long but I guess it's about par for the course. Then there's the Lenovo license agreement, which is actually a bunch of other license agreements concaten…
Been a Linux user for almost a decade. Built a PC for someone recently and they wanted 11 Pro. Whatever, I shrugged, and downloaded the iso from Microsoft. I dd'd it to a usb, like every other iso, and boot to the installer menu. I'm greeted by an error that there are missing drivers. I'm familiar with this error, still, but I'm surprised to see it on the latest O/S. It looks exactly like I remember from 98. So, I sp…
> Been a Linux user for almost a decade. [...] No, it's because I was dumb enough to think I could just DD a Windows ISO, like every other ISO I've ever encountered. Microsoft are special, I need to use special tools.
You haven't been a Linux user for long enough. The Linux ISO you can "just DD to a USB key" is a hybrid ISO, which is actually a hack which has both a HDD-style partition table and CD-style headers, carefully set up so that their data areas overlap. Early Linux ISO images, like every other ISO image you would encounter back then, weren't hybrid; they could only be booted from a CD drive, and you had to use special tools to convert them to something which could boot from a USB key, or you could instead DD a floppy disk image (helpfully found in a directory within the CD image) to a floppy disk and boot from it (it would still read all the installation files from the CD).
Re: The day Windows died
#703So which Lenovo model works best with Ubuntu and isn't a number of years old? I'm ready to take a plunge with a non-Windows, non-OSX laptop.
Re: The day Windows died
#704Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but no matter how much I love it, Linux is janky. To be honest though, so is Windows (in certain aspects). I believe that someone who works with Linux every day, gets used to certain stuff being janky and no longer notices it - just like someon working with Windows every day gets used to the jank found there, and no longer notices it. It's only when you are used to one system and switch over to the other, that you…
I think a key difference is the type of jank we're talking about. In Windows, non-tech-savy users can get by. Most have never ever had to type a command, and it would paralyze them. Love it or hate it, the maddening level of clicks and menus it takes to get stuff done in Windows (or Mac OS) also makes it understandable to much more people. A CLI is just a much higher barrier for most people than memorizing a series o…
What you are saying was true at some point in the past - but Linux has come a very long way since then, and the system UIs of many distributions these days are pretty slick, and do offer graphical settings windows for everything a non tech-savvy user ever needs.
Ask my 80 y.o., non-tech-savvy dad, who after struggling with Windows for years, is really happy with his Laptop running on Linux now. The amount of calls I get from him needing help with his machine has gone down to a fraction of what it was before.
Re: The day Windows died
#705Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And of course it's Linux, so there's infinite opportunity to get under the hood and tinker. - Or keep trying to fix the environment + hardware compatibility issues and not do the actual work/study. Or keep editing some random xorg.conf file because his monitor's display suddenly became weird. Or try to fix some other random files since the sound driver doesn't work. He's 10. I'm 40 and still horrified to deal with…
It either works or it doesn't. Workarounds are usually permanent. Example: I booted a friend's Thinkpad t440p with an Ubuntu 22.04 pen drive to check that she was OK with it and that there were no issues. All went well (screen, touchpad, USB, printer, scanner) except resume from sleep: the pointer froze. An internet search returned the workaround from many years ago sudo modprobe -r psmouse sudo modprobe psmouse It w…
> Given the age of the workaround it will never be fixed
Man, there are so many of these. Not just in FOSS but software in general. What makes it annoying in FOSS is the fact that developers would rather rewrite everything in rust than fix many-years-old issues, even when someone has submitted a patch.
Re: The day Windows died
#706Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 Ga…
> And of course it's Linux, so there's infinite opportunity to get under the hood and tinker. - Or keep trying to fix the environment + hardware compatibility issues and not do the actual work/study. Or keep editing some random xorg.conf file because his monitor's display suddenly became weird. Or try to fix some other random files since the sound driver doesn't work. He's 10. I'm 40 and still horrified to deal with…
I'm not sure which year you are from. Over ten years ago, it was definitely the case. But now, Windows 10, especially 11, bothers me much much more than Linux.
Just in around 3 months, this is already the 2nd time that Windows 11 screwed up and I wanted to clean wipe it. I never imaged a triple hit before: a bad update fcked up the external display; then uninstall the update again fcked up the whole system; and at last system restore did not work. And that's on a damn surface pro 8.
On the other hand, another toy laptop with Fedora installed has running flawlessly for quite a few years, started from Fedora 30 to 37 without a single hiccup.
For Macs, never liked Apple products, so no comments.
Re: The day Windows died
#707I still find Windows to be pretty snappy and easy to use, but I completely agree with the author about all of the junk that comes with it (or is suggested to you in the Start Menu) and the pushing of ads and Bing results/news articles. I've started to use macOS more and more at home in addition to at work. I've been contemplating just hooking up my Windows desktop to my TV to basically use it as a game console, because that's the only reason I really boot into it anymore.
It's really hard for me to tell what the direction of Windows is these days. At least under Ballmer you knew what they were trying to do, either with the Windows Live software package or the push for Windows 8. What's humorous about this is that the disinterest in Windows is harming other areas of the company; the failure of UWP and the Windows Store continue to hamstring the XBox division, who had to build their own client for Game Pass games, and even that is a slow and buggy React Native app because Windows has no compelling native app dev focus anymore.
Re: The day Windows died
#708I just bought a Lenovo Ideapad from Costco for about $500. The last time I bought a computer preloaded with Windows was about a decade ago. My experience so far: I turn it on, there's a license agreement. Actually, there's two. One is from Microsoft, and it's rather long but I guess it's about par for the course. Then there's the Lenovo license agreement, which is actually a bunch of other license agreements concaten…
Something I try to spread general awareness for whenever someone posts a local account workaround: The easiest and most foolproof workaround to get a local account is to attempt to use a banned account. Someone conveniently got "no@thankyou.com" banned so if you attempt to log in with it (use anything for the password, you're not actually trying to succeed in logging in) it'll dump you straight to the local account s…
Out of curiosity, how does one get an account banned?
Re: The day Windows died
#709Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand how Microsoft can cheapen their main OS that much. If they really wanted to emulate Apple, they wouldn't fill their OS with trash in every corner. This also extends to the default landing page of Edge. This is the worst form of bullvard, it is a tiny bit better than directly advocating for penis enlargement on the internet. But not by much at all. There should be no ads on the OS level. Especially…
This. I'm forced to use Windows at my current gig, and I'm gobsmacked by the presence of baked-in cheap consumer marketing, and celebrity news, front and center in this supposedly professional environment. I've been able to suppress or route around ~all of it, but it's kind of ridiculous that I have to mitigate it in the first place.
Enterprise images and settings should make it easy to squash that -- what is IT doing?
Re: The day Windows died
#710Funny thing because the author experiences also mirror mine while setting up a computer for kids. I've got two: regular HP laptop with ad-ridden Windows and Raspberry 4 (the one that is all-in-one keyboard).
I can't stand Windows with their ugly dark patterns. Kids actually prefer Raspberry since Minetest works there just fine (although I'd be happy to have a little bit more powerful machine for that).
And I'm thinking on rather getting a more powerful Linux machine (Khadas Edge2?) than de-cluttering Windows (which is a sisyphean task by itself).