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Our commitment to Windows quality

blogs.windows.com

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Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#931

Post by 999900000999 »

Figs wrote: post #918
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.

> Normal people can not install an OS. Of course they can. They might be too lazy or ignorant to do so, but it's not really any harder to learn to install Linux than it is to learn to make mashed potatoes once you're motivated to bother -- and billions of people have managed to do the latter just fine. Normal people are absolutely capable of following basic directions like: "download this file", "insert a USB stick",…

That all sounds really difficult compared to going to the Apple store , and buying a Neo.

Not to mention Linux is great, things start going wrong. Cool, you found a DE you like, it's on X11. Another application you want to use only works on Wayland.

Ohh, you want to use a Bluetooth headset, your DE might randomly crash upon connect.

The best thing about Linux is you can customize it. The worst thing about Linux is you can customize it. We have no single answer as to what distro a new user should try.

Ubuntu might not support your wifi card. Ok, so you try Arch. A bad update bricks your system.

I love Linux, but I've spent countless hours to understand and use it. Some people might prefer to buy a Neo and then go play with their cat, etc.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#932

Post by trinsic2 »

brightball wrote: post #698
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 wonder how much of an impact these AI tools are going to have on the Linux ecosystem. Seems like huge potential advantage brewing over proprietary OSs. Look how fast Omarchy came together and improved…it’s phenomenal.

I keep hearing that marketing term beautiful but I'm really not seeing it. It just looks like a tiling windows manager. Feels like we're going back in time.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#933

Post by trinsic2 »

juliangmp wrote: post #883
qingcharles wrote: post #775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used *nix extensively headless for the last 30 years, but I have decision paralysis when it comes to figuring out what the heck Linux distro is good for a desktop.

Just go for whatever DE looks pretty to you, I personally like KDE. Don't be afraid to switch to a different desktop later on, its just a few packages to install most of the time. As for distros, pick something established that looks good to you. You said you have experience, so you probably know what you want from a distro. I ran arch on my machine a lot but recently switched to fedora for its simpler installation.

You know, I tried KDE recently on a UBUNTU install it's got some nice features, but man is it buggy when it comes to scaling on 4K monitors. Also, the UI is a little rough. I switched back to gnome.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#934

Post by helpfulfrond »

delecti wrote: post #903
canucker2016 wrote: post #900

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... the start button is somehow in the middle of the screen ... If you take a look at the size of widescreen monitors, you can kinda guess why someone decided to move the start button/menu to the middle of the screen. I know Samsung and Dell have ginmorous 49 inch monitors. Start menu that pops up from the lower left corner of the monitor would be a bad UX - the user might not even notice that a menu had popped up…

You used to be able to move the taskbar to any side of the screen. IMO the more sensible move for widescreen monitors is to move it to the side so it takes up less screen real estate. Windows 11 removed the ability to move the taskbar like that; it's stuck on the bottom (unless you seek out 3rd party software solutions). Also it should be noted that (at least as recently as September, haven't used 11 since) you could…

> We are introducing the ability to reposition it to the top or sides of your screen...

Using the word introducing is so disingenuous to me considering how long that was a capability.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#935

Post by Traubenfuchs »

jodrellblank wrote: post #860
Traubenfuchs wrote: post #771

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> windows search no longer searches your PC Absolutely baffling, when the perfect, magical, instant, high performance search tool has existed for a decade at least: "Everything" One of THE BEST windows apps.

If you like “Everything”, you might like https://filepilot.tech/ - a 2MB, no install, Explorer clone designed to be quick and including a similar fast search.

As an ex winforms dev, I haven‘t touched windows since I got an M1 max.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#936

Post by EldrRoot »

The fact that Windows cannot even “Shutdown by default” when the user wishes to shut it down is a testament to the pile of garbage that it is. Trillions of dollars and you can’t even collect user data in an efficient way (which is the whole point of Windows, from what I understand now). No one asked for Recall, and shoving Copilot down our throats.

It would be fine if the underlying engineering had any sort of merit. It doesn’t. They cannot even handle scheduling in asymmetric SOC setups (big-little, dual CCD with 3D V-cache). Linux and macOS have solved this years ago.

The only access you can give to an anticheat is exactly what you’d also give to an antimalware - unnecessarily broad. Does this trillion dollar company even understand the basics of security?

I bought an Xbox Ally X to play game pass games on the go, and I kid you not, I couldn’t get to a point where I was installing games until 17 hours of ownership. In stark contrast, I was downloading a game at minute 16 with a steam Deck.

Once Nvidia solves for the DX12 performance in Linux, I will exorcise my computer of Windows for good. And for the games that do not support anticheat on Linux, well, I’ll just not play them. I have zero dependence on commercial crapware that Adobe releases. Looking forward to living without Windows!

I wish Windows ceases to exist in consumer hardware. Stick to enterprise laptops and stay there.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#937

Post by alok-g »

Panoramix wrote: post #894
suby wrote: post #814

Quality is not the issue. We should be more specific - Microsoft has been consciously employing dark patterns that they know will be harmful to users but they do not care because their incentives are misaligned. Employees of Microsoft have surely had meetings scheming of ways to degrade user experience for some internal metric they are trying to hit. A decade+ of conscious, willful decisions which negatively impact u…

All the things you wrote, but also quality. Quality is a giant issue. Garbage usability. Excel is the only Microsoft product I thoroughly respect. The amount of things you can't do in PowerPoint for example is mind blowing.

Excel has many classical dialog boxes with text that becomes too small on high resolution displays. May be they fixed in newer versions (mine is 2021).

Excel is better than other spreadsheet alternatives I have seen though, but is mo longer a software I call trouble-free.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#938

Post by idjdjsndjns »

gerdesj wrote: post #528
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.

There are an awful lot of groups installing Linux on Win 10 cast offs around the world. My uncle runs one in Bradford on Avon and they are slapping on an OS for you whilst you supp tea and chat. Often, the user-agent is set to something Microsoftie in the browser. If necessary Edge is installed but that is frowned on 8) I have not heard of this MacBook Neo thing ... Why would ? I only own a little IT company and hang…

> Why would ? I only own a little IT company and hang around on HN.

Something’s not quite right here.

If you hang around HN you have absolutely heard of the Neo. And I’d be downright frightful to have anything to do with your little IT company (whatever service it provides) if you haven’t at the very least /heard/ of the Neo at this point.

I suspect this is a little white lie just to drive a point home but I fail to see the benefit of such an act when all it does is make you look like you’re lying.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#939

Post by Newbie4E »

Give consumers the choice of a perpetual licence (LTSC-like), at a cost. Optionally, give them the equivalent of EntraID for consumers, a Microsoft account that is never tied to the advertising ecosystem, also at a cost. Keep fixing bugs. That's all.

Re: Our commitment to Windows quality

#940

Post by subscribed »

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…

Works fine on recent Ubuntu and Fedora, both Wayland and X.

"Fine" and not amazing because occasionally I have screen sharing issues, but that's like once in a blue moon? Could be down to my specific configuration, but it's allegedly more stable than my coworker's zoom on Mac.

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