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

Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

himthe.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

951–960 of 1001 posts

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#951

Post by accrual »

drillsteps5 wrote: post #348
publicdebates wrote: post #193

How likely is a future where Microsoft (a) gives us back 2000/XP/7/11 options for UI, (b) gives us a desktop-first experience when we have keyboard/mouse plugged in, (c) stops turning every OS feature into an ad, and makes it utilitarian again, (d) and focuses 100% on making a stable OS and high quality dev/office apps? It would be so nice if they just forked a commit from ~2005 and started from there. (Maybe Copilot…

Give me back the proper search which last worked Windows 7-ish (or XP?). And traditional Office interface (not stupid "context-specific" tiles).

I still find myself doing "dir /s *myfile*" on modern Windows sometimes because it's less unpredictable than searching Explorer.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#952

Post by shmeeed »

slashdave wrote: post #557
browningstreet wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using Linux for 20+ years, but I was fairly happy with Windows 11. At its core it did exactly what I needed it to do, and it allowed me to run some commercial software that is harder to install and run on Linux (Davinci Resolve). But my Dell hardware drivers were flaky in Windows. My bluetooth had extremely variable availability. And then Windows rebooted itself, against my wishes, 3x in one week. And then…

I get the intent, but moving to linux for better bluetooth support is... an interesting take

BT can be a shitshow on any OS. Some combinations work flawlessly, some don't. It's not even the OS' fault IMHO, but the device manufacturers'. My Bose headphones have the same problems under both Windows 10 and Linux.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#953

Post by timw4mail »

jjordan wrote: post #749
bambax wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same experience here, but I'm not sure it's just MS fault; companies have a way of installing a bunch of stupid software on top of one another, that you can't get rid of without admin rights, that continuously do things that slow the system down. (And, you can have a tabbed file browser on Win7. I still have a Win7 box at home that works perfectly well and that does have tabs in file explorer. I think it was an addon…

Microsoft is progressively making everything an instance of Chrome. They've seemingly altogether given up the notion of native platform rendering. The win32 api for native ui elements hasn't been touched in two decades. There have been a few failed attempts to move on from it like Siverlight, WinForms, UWP, LightSwitch, etc, but they never bothered to revisit their native UI library. So now everything is a Chrome ins…

And it's objectively terrible

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#954

Post by rekabis »

washadjeffmad wrote: post #936
rekabis wrote: post #853

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I gave up with Windows 10 because you needed Windows Pro in order to make an "offline" account You quit without even trying. Windows 10 and 11 can have all local accounts by using RUFUS to create the install media. And if your PC comes with Windows already installed, there are still commands - even with 25H2 - that allow you to bypass the Microsoft Account requirement during setup and configure a local account. And…

It's the same amount of effort to install Linux and never have to question who the owner of your computer is again.

> It's the same amount of effort to install Linux and never have to question who the owner of your computer is again.

In many ways, Linux is a complete paradigm change away from what is familiar and known in Windows, requiring a complete re-training from top to bottom.

Modifying the OOBE to bypass Microsoft Account requirement and permit a local account is a pebble in the road compared to the alpine pass that is switching to Linux.

And just installing Linux isn’t the issue. Learning from scratch an entire OS that behaves and is structurally very differently than Windows, and requires hundreds of hours to get equally as comfortable and knowledgeable in, is the issue.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Linux. But to say it’s “the same amount” is deeply disingenuous and borderline anti-reality.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#955

Post by timw4mail »

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #672
giancarlostoro wrote: post #68

This was me in 2022 or 2023. I have posted on HN about my shift a few times. I gave up with Windows 10 because you needed Windows Pro in order to make an "offline" account, I spent $2000+ for a gaming rig, and I couldn't add new users, one program told me to use the other program which brought me back to the original program... I had to go out of my way, buy a license just to make it work. I just went and installed L…

> (idk why Arch doesn't invest in whats standard in every other major distro) Trust me it was far more involved of a process 10 years ago, and that's why people liked it. The modern install process is paired down to something like 10 steps. Start the ISO, configure your partitions, mount your root and boot, and use the delightful arch-chroot tool to enter and install in those partitions. Set up your user, configure y…

I'm too invested into Gentoo at this point to really consider Arch, but hey, arch-chroot does make modern Gentoo installs just a bit quicker.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#956

Post by alamortsubite »

jofla_net wrote: post #595
ryukoposting wrote: post #259

I just started a new job where I'm subjected to Windows 11. They gave me a behemoth of a laptop. 64GB of RAM, absolute screamer of a CPU, big GPU, the whole deal. Windows 11's file browser lags when opening directories with more than 100-ish files. Windows 11's file browser takes a few seconds to open at all. Context menus take a noticeable amount of time to appear. I'm getting used to a new keyboard, so I keep hitti…

> There is no pattern to when Esc does/doesn't work. Its non-deterministic, as if developed with LLMs....

Possible but more likely it's an issue with focus, like the user's palm on those occasions coincidentally brushes the trackpad.

To be clear, I have no doubt Windows 11 is just as awful as GP makes it out to be. I'm luckily free to choose my OS and at this point wouldn't touch Windows with a 10' pole.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#957

Post by newsoftheday »

drillsteps5 wrote: post #598
newsoftheday wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you don't sell your games on Steam or in a way I can run them on Linux I am not buying or playing them. Agree 1000% and recently Steam Community Support pissed me off so I am now looking into GOG (I have my first GOG game now and playing it), Epic and Luna. In fact, the GOG game I got was free through Luna ironically. Even more ironic, the excellent Heroic game launcher lets you mark the game to show up in Steam…

While you _can_ use their launcher, you don't _have_ to. Once you buy the game, you can just download the installer and run it to install on your box. If you want you can save the install package somewhere if you think you'll enjoy the game for years to come and don't want to be dependent on GOG. I also found out that they have quite a few fairly recent games. Maybe not the top-10 big budget (however they partner wit…

That's a good point about downloading it. The game I got was Fallout 3. I'd played Fallout 4, 76 and New Vegas and am finding 3 to be fun too. Probably won't get the older isometric (?) Fallout games, I prefer first person.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#958

Post by hiccuphippo »

ryukoposting wrote: post #259

I just started a new job where I'm subjected to Windows 11. They gave me a behemoth of a laptop. 64GB of RAM, absolute screamer of a CPU, big GPU, the whole deal. Windows 11's file browser lags when opening directories with more than 100-ish files. Windows 11's file browser takes a few seconds to open at all. Context menus take a noticeable amount of time to appear. I'm getting used to a new keyboard, so I keep hitti…

I'd recommend Chris Titus' winutil to remove most of the crap. I use the recommended settings and also remove copilot and onedrive. Then from there you can open O&O Shutup10 and disable a few more "features".

It's just a band-aid not a solution, and you'll have to run it again after Windows updates and helpfully undoes your settings, but at least makes it usable.

https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#959

Post by MSFT_Edging »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #710
MSFT_Edging wrote: post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (idk why Arch doesn't invest in whats standard in every other major distro) Trust me it was far more involved of a process 10 years ago, and that's why people liked it. The modern install process is paired down to something like 10 steps. Start the ISO, configure your partitions, mount your root and boot, and use the delightful arch-chroot tool to enter and install in those partitions. Set up your user, configure y…

My first distro was Slackware, which I setup all myself. I just don't see any true value in what could be a simple GUI.

I've had graphical installs inexplicably lock up or silently fail before, so it could be nice on a minimal system.

Personally, I get joy out of setting up a new machine exactly how I want. I haven't broken an arch install bad enough to require re-installing in almost 10 years so its rare I'm actually installing it anyway. If I want a system up quick I'll pick another distro.

Re: Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

#960

Post by unnouinceput »

I feel Windows 11 is in the initial phase of Windows 10. Remember beginning of years for 10? Sluggy, clunky, full of bugs? And everybody and their cat was holding to 7? I was the same, I was holding down the fort with 7. This year 7, next year 7 and so on until at one time I, like countless times before, spun a new virtual machine for a client and as usual I had to put 10 in there. Except this time 10 felt faster. No more clumsiness, no more slop. 2 months later I fully switched to 10 as my host OS.

I am currently on 10 so much that I installed the LTSC version that has support until 2032. Keep hammering Microslop, they deserve it. We need to keep bugging them, throw dirt on their face until they actually fix it. Seems that's the way with them nowadays. So I don't feel any shame to call them names at every corner.

But I am still not switching to Linux. Maybe in '32 when LTSC stop being supported and they still didn't fix 11. Oh, and from my experience, Debian will be the way to go. I like a proven distribution even if their repository is not the greatest and the latest.

Post reply on HN