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Our commitment to Windows quality

blogs.windows.com

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Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#711

Post by pxc »

PaulKeeble wrote: post #469

Microsoft has spent over a decade swimming against their users interests at this point and during that time frame Linux has been improving its desktop and improving kernel performance. We are now at the point where Linux emulating Window's entire API space for games with worse drivers is dangerously close on performance with none of the privacy invasion and anti user features. Its pretty late in the game for them to…

Are the Linux graphics drivers actually worse, though? I thought it was widely agreed that the open-source user-space drivers, e.g., in Mesa, are actually very good these days.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#712

Post by com2kid »

hungryhobbit wrote: post #530
bigyabai wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normal people can definitely install an OS. Last weekend I set aside time help a friend install CachyOS. They'd never used a terminal before and wanted some help. When I called them, they had already set it up and was playing Risk of Rain 2. They started streaming for me on the Discord Flatpak they installed from the app store.

Define normal. I would argue at least 75% of the US population has zero interest in learning how to install a new OS, let alone actually do so themselves. I say this as a decades-long Linux user (who has tried to evangelize it many times).

Gamers are one of the few demographics still buying new Windows PCs. There are now so many discord servers and subreddits filled with people discussing which Linux distro to use.

Honestly for your average home consumer, there isn't much need for a Windows PC now days.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#713

Post by Nifty3929 »

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #269
dmos62 wrote: post #195

I'm somewhat surprised that Windows is still most of personal computers. In my eyes, it's fundamentally inferior to Linux, and its superficial superiority only comes from the ecosystem, which is to say adoption, not some inherent trait. But then, since Linux adoption didn't meaningfully change in the last 20 years, I'm forced to confront the fact that either I'm wrong about its fundamentals, or the market is able to…

Windows is not technically inferior to Linux. To the extent it has problems, it is mainly because of top-down anti-user behaviour mandated from corporate. But anyone capable of using Linux is capable of hacking out that BS and getting a generally superior experience. I use both literally side-by-side, two laptops with a KVM switch, and I still greatly prefer Windows for many reasons. Some reasons: Even as a low-level…

Me too! I daily-drive Windows as my personal, Mac for work stuff, and Linux for all server-like activity. And I have been for 20 years.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#714

Post by branon »

Lammy wrote: post #625
aeternum wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of big tech became Product leaders running amok. Somehow It shifted from users know best to "Product" knows best. I think this all stemmed everyone wanting to be Apple except no one actually achieved it and now we have 3 different versions of the audio control panel in Windows, the start button is somehow in the middle of the screen, and windows search no longer searches your PC. Deleting "Product" might save wi…

> and now we have 3 different versions of the audio control panel in Windows And yet somehow none of them are as nice as https://eartrumpet.app/ lol

Even this cannot adjust volume levels independently for multiple tabs in the same browser, which I have always been able to do on linux with pulseaudio/pipewire. People on windows use browser extensions for this, with full access to all tabs/sites...

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#715

Post by com2kid »

hdivider wrote: post #605
PaulKeeble wrote: post #469

Microsoft has spent over a decade swimming against their users interests at this point and during that time frame Linux has been improving its desktop and improving kernel performance. We are now at the point where Linux emulating Window's entire API space for games with worse drivers is dangerously close on performance with none of the privacy invasion and anti user features. Its pretty late in the game for them to…

I really hope you're right. The challenge with Linux still seems to be practicalities -- like in particular, does Zoom run well on most distributions? Reports seem to be of system crashes and degraded performance. I imagine there are lots of 'it works for me' stories, but think: for Linux to eat into Windows user market share (which I would greatly support), critical things like Zoom have to work at least as reliably…

I installed PopOS (22) and zoom worked fine right off the bat. So did steam and all my steam games. Heck even my printer worked. (It has since become more temperamental and now only works with one of the 3 print dialogues on my Linux box...)

My game controller worked, my BT headset, the media keys on my keyboard even worked.

Lots of stuff was mildly broken but no more so than it was on Windows. It is just differently broken.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#716

Post by glitchc »

radlad wrote: post #276
glitchc wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm somewhat surprised that Windows is still most of personal computers. In my eyes, it's fundamentally inferior to Linux, and its superficial superiority only comes from the ecosystem, which is to say adoption, not some inherent trait. I'm not a Windows fanboy by any stretch, but it is a remarkably resilient OS. Case in point: I took the OS drive (SATA SSD) from my old workstation and installed it into a laptop. T…

Why would you have to modify fstab? Surely you are using UUID/PARTUUID these days. I also wouldn't expect a kernel panic on Linux... Maybe no video though.

That's exactly why fstab needs to be modified. If an old machine previously had two partitions/drives, the entry for the missing drive will prevent Linux from booting.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#717

Post by bombcar »

QuercusMax wrote: post #307
fgonzag wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Change is hard. My father is a 70-year-old software engineer who programs .NET Core in Notepad and builds using custom BAT files that build the project using csc (the outright compiler). He browses and copies files in the Windows Terminal. He is also accustomed to Linux since we deploy to it in our business, and he can do everything comfortably in the Linux terminal. He trusts me almost blindly, yet I can’t convince…

Notepad, of all things, is a CRAZY thing to be so tied to. It's not even a good editor! MS-DOS edit.com was honestly a much better experience.

I've met a surprising number of people who are seriously tied to the specific editor they're used to, some going so far as to not even wanting to change the version they are on.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#718

Post by bombcar »

natas wrote: post #421
dmos62 wrote: post #195

I'm somewhat surprised that Windows is still most of personal computers. In my eyes, it's fundamentally inferior to Linux, and its superficial superiority only comes from the ecosystem, which is to say adoption, not some inherent trait. But then, since Linux adoption didn't meaningfully change in the last 20 years, I'm forced to confront the fact that either I'm wrong about its fundamentals, or the market is able to…

In business, the “best” solution doesn’t win—the one that aligns with incentives does. You can argue Linux is technically better than Windows, but Windows wins in many orgs because of familiarity, vendor support, existing tooling, and lower perceived risk. Adoption beats superiority.

That's just a way of saying that "best" is a wider net than the "fans" want it to be.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#719

Post by gnarlouse »

aeternum wrote: post #527
PaulKeeble wrote: post #469

Microsoft has spent over a decade swimming against their users interests at this point and during that time frame Linux has been improving its desktop and improving kernel performance. We are now at the point where Linux emulating Window's entire API space for games with worse drivers is dangerously close on performance with none of the privacy invasion and anti user features. Its pretty late in the game for them to…

Much of big tech became Product leaders running amok. Somehow It shifted from users know best to "Product" knows best. I think this all stemmed everyone wanting to be Apple except no one actually achieved it and now we have 3 different versions of the audio control panel in Windows, the start button is somehow in the middle of the screen, and windows search no longer searches your PC. Deleting "Product" might save wi…

Apple achieved it with Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Apple then spent ~15 years un-achieving it. It started with iOS 7, and has culminated in the Liquid (Gl)ass era: a mess of unintuitive menus, terrible and inconsistent UI patterns, the lobotomite twins Siri & Apple Intelligence.

Although, surprisingly, built on top of absolutely incredible silicon.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#720

Post by nofriend »

glitchc wrote: post #716
radlad wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you have to modify fstab? Surely you are using UUID/PARTUUID these days. I also wouldn't expect a kernel panic on Linux... Maybe no video though.

That's exactly why fstab needs to be modified. If an old machine previously had two partitions/drives, the entry for the missing drive will prevent Linux from booting.

depends what the fstab says. nofail is highly recommended for anything nonessential to boot.
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