The day Windows died • Hacker News Board

Re: The day Windows died

#741

Post by causi » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 1:29 PM UTC

safety1st wrote: post #353

apatheticonion wrote: post #332

It's really sad that there is no where for us to go in the desktop OS space right now. I, weirdly, daily drive all 3 OSes. MacOS; Work issued laptop and longish-time user (about 6 years with it). Windows; Desktop PC mostly for games. I've been using Windows since I could walk. Fedora; Desktop PC, dual booted which I use for most everything else. I cannot believe how much of a dumpster fire Windows has become. From th…

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…

What's always kept me from making the jump is that I'll get hours, day, or weeks into using it and then hit a dealbreaker. It's always something basic but bizarre, and the attitude of the community is always "Come on dude, you should've known you can't use that distro if you want to have a network file share with filenames that start with the letter B." The solution is always to either go f*ck myself and start over or change something that breaks some other core functionality. "Ok this patch fixes your issue with pasted text never having capital letters but you'll only be able to connect to wifi 802.11AC or better, not N or G."

Re: The day Windows died

#742

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 1:29 PM UTC

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #403

piyush_soni wrote: post #380

Earlier 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…

This is very much true. The first time I had mouse scrollwheel issues on Linux, I was just casually told to create a bash file to change config settings. Not user friendly at all.

[deleted]

Re: The day Windows died

#743

Post by jodrellblank » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 1:29 PM UTC

xmcqdpt2 wrote: post #670

elihu wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and they're congratulating themselves on having reduced the memory overhead of a chat app from ~1GB to ~500MB.

I'm so glad we have modern computers with gigabytes of RAM so that we can do real-time chat. This app would have been impossible fifteen years ago when computers had only 1GB of RAM or less. Without modern hardware development we would still all be sending eachother long emails like it's 2006. /s

Where was the chat app of fifteen years ago which could open Microsoft Word documents inside it, such that multiple people could have them open and be shared-editing the same file at the same time? Where was the chat app which could record the video call, add automated transcriptions, and upload it to a SharePoint-alike document store with permissions for the people on the call to watch it? Where was the chat app of fifteen years ago which was cross platform Windows/macOS/iOS/Android/Web browser including video calling?

Re: The day Windows died

#744

Post by BrotherBisquick » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 1:32 PM UTC

doctor_eval wrote: post #13

Having never lived in a Windows world I had no idea what life was like on the other side. So many times on HN I read about how MacOS is bad for the user, locked down, rubbish etc etc. But if this article is true then Windows 11 is absolutely insane. That is what anti consumer looks like. Not SIP. Not poor documentation. Not first party apps. While those of us who use Apple’s OS fear for the worst, those in Windows ap…

What is 'SIP' in this context?

Re: The day Windows died

#745

Post by fsflover » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 1:32 PM UTC

kuratkull wrote: post #382

pxc wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > good Linux phone to free me from Apple altogether > Isn’t Android Linux? Yes, but it isn't good, especially not in the ways that desktop Linux is good. Reminder: this thread is about avoiding anti-consumer behavior from manufacturers. Android is practically useless for that.

This seems like where RMS would chime in. Because what we're actually missing on Android are the GNU tools - we have the kernel, but not the userland tools that define the experience.

GNU/Linux phones already exist, see Librem 5 and Pinephone.

Re: The day Windows died

#746

Post by theknocker » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 1:33 PM UTC

[dead]

Re: The day Windows died

#747

Post by _dain_ » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 1:34 PM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #411

einr wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or keep trying to fix the environment + hardware compatibility issues and not work on the actual 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 was doing this stuff in Linux when I was… well, not 10, but 12. Today I work with computers. What do you think ”tinkering” means? I do…

In a lot of ways it was way easier back then as you didn't have the fragmentation. You ran X11/Xorg (no Wayland), sysv init (no systemd), OSS or ALSA, not pulseaudio, you had sane/not insanely bloated desktops like KDE2 or XFCE. Even unicode wasn't something most really had to care much about...world was still mostly ascii.

>world was still mostly ascii.

America is the whole world? ASCII doesn't even have the £ sign for fucks sake, so it wasn't even adequate for Anglosphere countries, let alone two billion Chinese and Indians.

Re: The day Windows died

#748

Post by hospitalJail » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 1:35 PM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #576

h4ch1 wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about OP but they're significantly more expensive for me (non-US; Asia) than any other offerings, that I feel like I'm being scammed. That with more subscriptions for anything I might want to use (Spotify/Netflix/Prime) just make it kind of a pinch, and so for a lot of people in my country. Edit: for ex: the $799 iPad pro costs an equivalent of $994.35 in India.

To be fair, you can easily use apple hardware for 5 years, where windows is just completely dead and unuseable after 2.

I have a $700 Asus that started with windows 7 or 8, from 2014. It does everything except AI, it can play every game I throw at it(1080p) at high or ultra high.

I did just replace the battery last year. I think it was $35 dollars.

This is my main computer, I want to upgrade, but it keeps living.

This is 8 or 9 years so far.

Re: The day Windows died

#749

Post by dspillett » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 1:42 PM UTC

raxxorraxor wrote: post #524

elihu wrote: post #485

I 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…

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…

> I don't understand how Microsoft can cheapen their main OS that much.

If they could just drop it right now, both desktop and server, without causing a major explosion, I'm pretty sure they would.

The hassle of dealing with hardware compatibility and vendors can't be worth the small amount that get per licence these days, why not let Apple and Open Source deal with that collection of end-user grief?

Server-side & similar they don't care what OS you use, or are heading that way, as long as you host it on Azure. If you use any OS directly at all: function-level based hosting being a commonly pushed option ATM. SQL Server claims Linux to be a first-class host OS IIRC.

Desktop support directly is still a bit Windows-oriented and that might not change, but the browser-based alternatives are coming on in leaps which makes user OS less important (and pulls more users towards Azure lock-in via OneDrive and syncing office app files between users).

It used to be that Windows, Office, and SQL Server were their cash cows and everything else was intended to funnel people towards them (or, at least, pull them away from other options). Now that triumvirate is Azure, Office, and SQL Server. In both cases with VisualStudio as a distant forth.

Re: The day Windows died

#750

Post by cbold » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 1:43 PM UTC

I have set up two NUCs with PopOS for my sons. Both very happy and I have full control of the machines.

The problems started with Windows 7 when at some points the updates became obfuscated and mandatory to push "telemetry" aka data snooping. Before that phoning home was considered spyware and a sin.