Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Our commitment to Windows quality

blogs.windows.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

821–830 of 1001 posts

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#821

Post by 999900000999 »

frm88 wrote: post #809
999900000999 wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normal people can not install an OS. Aside from like 3 ThinkPads on Lenovo's website, you can't really buy Linux pre installed on a computer. This is about the MacBook Neo coming for the budget laptop market. At 500$ it's an easy choice.

When did you ckeck last? They are everywhere, even Bestbuy sells them: https://noai.duckduckgo.com/?kax=-1&q=pre-installed+Linux+PC...

Best Buy has a marketplace of 3rd party sellers.

I guess you might be able to order one or something?

I can not walk into my local best buy and get a computer running Linux.

It's a moot point anyway, since you'll usually have to pay more for a Linux laptop vs buying a Windows one and installing it yourself.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#822

Post by rmunn »

econ wrote: post #662
MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never been bothered by Windows's changes, and I mostly think they were reasonable. But for a number of reasons it's never going to be easy for them to gain total acceptance: 1) the massive backwards compatibility back to Windows 95 stuff, 2) the willingness to try new and/or silly things that Apple is too stuffy to try, and 3) the fact that there's only ever going to be one "flavor" of Windows; if we were stuck…

If you have two candidate ui designs you pick the best of the two. If you have an established ui and a candidate the new design needs to be dramatically better. It has to scream superiority. If it isn't that you are just ruining ux. I install Gimp one time. I like to casual draw on autopilot, usually while doing something else, talking, watching a movie, listening to a podcast etc. For some reason half the icons were…

> This would have been a waste of their time if it was only an option for no one who wants this some place buried deep in the settings where it would only clutter the nesaserily complex options.

I'm not sure what this sentence means. Perhaps you already knew that Gimp's monochrome icons can be replaced by colorful ones by going to the Gimp settings under Theme -> Icon Theme, and unchecking the "Use symbolic icons if available" checkbox. That may be what you meant by "some place buried deep in the settings". But if you didn't, at least now you know how to get the colorful icons back.

The reason I'm making this comment, though, is to contrast it with Windows. A comment by chasil, left shortly after your own comment, said that "[a]n attentive steward of Windows would allow older gui themes (xp, Win7 Aero, etc.) to be applied for the nostalgic." Gimp has done just that: in Icon Theme, you can choose the "Default" or "Legacy" icon theme, so if you got used to the older icons, you can get them back. And you can still use the newer icon set if you like, but get the icons' colors back by unchecking a (confusingly-named, the name definitely needs improvement) checkbox. Windows doesn't have any built-in way to get the older themes back; if you want Windows 11, or even 10, to look like Windows 7 or XP or whatever version you trained your visual memory on for years, then it takes third-party software to make that possible. (And it may not even be possible, I haven't checked).

When even one of the most infamous-for-confusing-UI pieces of open-source software (I mean Gimp, of course) is doing a better job of providing good UI than Microsoft is, Microsoft has a problem.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#823

Post by Turskarama »

999900000999 wrote: post #795
Induane wrote: post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those and System76 of course. Plus the SteamDeck is Linux, as are a number of other handheld gaming systems. The new Steam Machine is as well.

Starting at 1700 USD, vs 500$ for a Neo or a very capable Windows PC on sale. My personal favorite is a lightly used Thinkpad, you can get a nice Linux machine for under 400$. But it's still a lot of work for most people. If a Ubuntu update does something weird, what do you do with your 1700$ System 76 laptop ? With your Neo, you go to the Apple store and they'll sort it out.

If Windows update does something weird what do you do?

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#825

Post by roflcopter69 »

Maybe a bit of a weird analogy, but y'all know about the basic advice to not come back to your abusive ex? Don't trust Microsoft to always respect you as an user, even if they now are trying to tell you they'll change and do so again. It's all just damage control PR speak.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#826

Post by user2722 »

sonofhans wrote: post #340
hirako2000 wrote: post #237

> pause updates for longer when needed > all while reducing update noise with fewer automatic restarts and notifications. Pause for longer.. why not just stop. And resume when wanted. Fewer automatic restart. What about no automatic restart. I couldn't read any further. Mind bended leadership to think this sort of wording after the obvious fiasco would make users hopeful. I stopped using windows personally 15 years a…

> “why not just stop” Because most regular people will never choose to turn them back on, that’s why. We already know what the world looks like when millions of computers run an unsecured OS. Last I heard, a stock Windows 98 machine lasted 30 seconds online before being compromised. Automatic updates are good, and they’re here to stay.

Actually it's the wrong question. Implement rebootless updates is the right ask. You'll have to reboot like once a month still but it's better than how it is now.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#827

Post by RobotToaster »

chasil wrote: post #707
MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never been bothered by Windows's changes, and I mostly think they were reasonable. But for a number of reasons it's never going to be easy for them to gain total acceptance: 1) the massive backwards compatibility back to Windows 95 stuff, 2) the willingness to try new and/or silly things that Apple is too stuffy to try, and 3) the fact that there's only ever going to be one "flavor" of Windows; if we were stuck…

There are two major problems with modern Windows. The first is coercion . Installing without a Microsoft (Outlook) account is more and more difficult. An attentive steward of Windows would allow older gui themes (xp, Win7 Aero, etc.) to be applied for the nostalgic. And there would be an easy control to disable all Copilot integration. Microsoft is coercive towards their customers with these and other actions. The se…

The fact that Microsoft are doing zero nostalgia marketing is baffling to me.

Put a clippy skin on copilot and people would probably install it voluntarily.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#828

Post by Tomis02 »

asveikau wrote: post #609
hdivider wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How many hours has Zoom put into making the client stable on Windows and Mac? How many hours have they put into the Linux client? My guess is the answer to these questions indicate more of how it got there than anything the distros or upstream components can do.

> How many hours has Zoom put into making the client stable on Windows and Mac?

Users don't really care, do they?

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#829

Post by ffwd »

Noumenon72 wrote: post #104
ffwd wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that this happens when you enter folders that have media files like audio files, video files and so on. One way to fix it is to enter one such folder, then remove all columns (like file name, date modified - those columns) and remove all the columns that are media metadata columns. Things like track length, artist, contributing artist or whatever else, then click in the File explorer menu on the 3 dots icon (*…

> remove all columns (like file name, date modified - those columns) and remove all the columns that are media metadata columns. Surely you don't mean remove all columns, and if you did you wouldn't have to also specify removing media metadata columns?

Sorry I messed up how I wrote that. I meant to only remove metadata columns, not all columns.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#830

Post by mxkopy »

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…

One thing I will give to them is the MSVC ecosystem. (Something something developers)

No doubt it’s starting to show its age but it’s like watching a lion die. Win32 amenities just being automatically available is quite sick and I wish there was something similar for Linux.

It’s like windows devs and users live in alternate realities, I’m sure a lot of cool things can happen if they bring some of that dev love over to their UX.

Post reply on HN