It’s good that these tools exist, but it’s so frustrating that it’s a constant cat and mouse game of Microsoft trying to make their products as cumbersome and shit as possible and the community trying to salvage Windows to the best of their ability.
At what point do OEMs just say actually nah, I’m tired of you making our laptops frustrating to use?
At what point do they say fuck it I’m going the Valve route and moving away from a company that wants to undermine my products and my brand?
uhh they will include copilot key in keyboard in new laptops…
Very useful, just like my dedicated Cortana key. 🤡
The people who use tools like this are in the minority. The majority (probably the vast majority) of people use Windows as it is out of the box.
The number for people I have seen with search box still enabled in taskbar tells me that’s true.
Everyone. Everywhere.
It blows my mind, but then I realise that we here on Lemmy are the 1% of IT users.
Yes, I know.
But it’s not like these people actually love ads all over the place, or bing results in start menus, or popups asking them to pwetty pwease use OneDrive, or can you pwetty pwetty pwease use Edge instead of Chrome, they just either:
-
don’t know they can get rid of that stuff
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don’t trust tools and are afraid they’ll break something or the tools will contain a virus
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don’t care enough to research this crap
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view using their PC as a chore anyway, and so power through the annoyances
I don’t own a Mac, and don’t intend to, but of the biggest things people like about them is that there are far fewer of these types of annoyances.
It’s not just extreme power users that can be irked by all this crap - they’re just the ones who do things about it and chat on forums about it. A normal person just sighs and thinks ugh I’d rather just do this on my phone
View using their PC as a chore anyway, and so power through the annoyances
Damn, good one.
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At what point do OEMs just say actually nah, I’m tired of you making our laptops frustrating to use?
LTT put out an (surprisingly insightful) video about ChromeOS and how it’s kind of secretly spreading Linux. I don’t think its crazy to say that in 5-10 years ChromeOS or similar will be the default and Windows will be a premium add on or something.
“premium”
lol honestly maybe competition will force them to reverse the ehittification of their product
I doubt it. Google will squander it away one way or another. It could work on a technical level, I’ve been using flex since before Google bought it for family members, it’s just poorly advertised and explained.
it’s a constant cat and mouse game
It’s not just Microsoft. Never heard of always on DRM? Or government making it difficult for people to receive assistance (disability or homeless)?
At what point do OEMs just say actually nah, I’m tired of you making our laptops frustrating to use?
You’re under the impression that most people care about the horrible parts of windows?
I think they do.
Enough to do much about it, other than maybe buy a MacBook if they have money to burn? Nah.
But enough to use their PC less and try to do as much as possible on their phone/iPad? Honestly, yeah, I think so.
I hear normies complaining about stuff in Windows all the time. It’s just when you go “well you could…” they turn off and don’t want to do anything about it.
Is your point that you think laptop and desktop makers could increase sales by ditching windows? That feels like suicide to me and I am a Linux lover. At what point do they do that is what you asked. When they’re desperate enough to take a risk, if ever, would be my guess
To be fair, Window$ has been bloat since the very day M$ stole it from its Unix roots, and Linux is everything that the OS could’ve been were it not run by money-grubbin’ cringelords.
Unix roots? Lol wtf
Why wtf?
Microsoft started as a UNIX-based programming company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix
Hell you see remnants of it in the reserved filename list.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/naming-a-file?redirectedfrom=MSDN
Devices in windows are not typically “files” like they are in unix/linux… So why CON, PRN, AUX, NUL, COM0, COM1, COM2, COM3, COM4, COM5, COM6, COM7, COM8, COM9, COM¹, COM², COM³, LPT0, LPT1, LPT2, LPT3, LPT4, LPT5, LPT6, LPT7, LPT8, LPT9, LPT¹, LPT², and LPT³ are all reserved? Because they maintained compatibility with features businesses used at the time… and never deprecated the function.
Edit:
Why are we downvoting literal computer history? It is a known fact that Windows started on Unix systems. It’s a known fact that they released their own BSD-based software up to and including a full fledged Unix-based OS, and it’s a known fact that MS-DOS 1 and 2 were both Unix compatible. This is LITERALLY the definition of “roots”. Are we so touchy here that we can’t acknowledge actual computing history?Hmm, I always thought MS was founded to steal/modify MS DOS. Interesting that they briefly did Unix stuff, but I still take issue with the way op phrased it. “Their Unix roots” makes it sound like they were heavily invested in Unix and carried that forward even into windows. I don’t know if they used any of that code in windows, but if they did you’d never know it by using dos or any windows version I’ve seen. Even despite both having command line interfaces, almost everything is different from Unix except the command “cd”, to my recollection.
For me it is so weird, that you have to use extra tools to disable telemetry and unwanted features in windows systems. Why is windows not giving me a central option to decide on those things? Is it maybe because they do not want me to decide for myself and therefore splitting the places where I need to disable all that unwanted stuff as opaque as possible? Can they be more obvious that they do not value your opinion on how you want your OS to behave?
Quit Windows. It is a dead end and get worst with every release.
If you tolerate this, then your children will be next.
It’s a shame. I really love Windows 10. It’s fast and the UI’s ergonomy is near perfect.
On my work laptop we recently had to switch to Windows 11 and it’s a fucking pain to use. You have to jump through so many hoops and do extra clicks to do what you want. And the start menu has become completely useless. And I hate the gaps and rounded corners everywhere. And that’s just on the surface. Performance is piss poor and you have all that crap spying on you to collect your usage data.
The day Windows 10 becomes unsupported is the day I go 100% Linux.
Forced to use it at work, too, and only by the grace of being in the IT department do I have the ability to make it less shitty.
There’s registry entries to restore the full context menu, and PowerToys Run has effectively become my defacto start menu, though obviously you need to use the keyboard so it’s not a perfect UI replacement. Meanwhile for searching, I’ve got Everything running and set global keyboard shortcuts/touchpad gestures to it. Maybe I’ll grab an old gaming mouse and shortcut them to the extra buttons.
They finally implemented never combine on the taskbar, and it’s…tolerable, but buggy and still resizes things for no reason
Unfortunately I’ve yet to find a way to get some damn 90° angles back. I can not wait for a few years down the line when we finally swing away from this Apple-chasing “bubbles with an inch between them on a white/black field” design aesthetic. I’m tired of everything looking like a toy, especially at the cost of its actual utility.
And not just a toy, the same toy. It’s seriously Corporate Memphis levels of lifeless, forced design with no character, creativity, or ingenuity.
This has been exactly my stance ans well apart from ever having used Win11. Never did and never plan to, downloaded Mint a few months ago to start getting familiar with it. Turns out I’m not real great at technical stuff but I’m getting there. Dual monitors was kind of a booger and now I’m trying to figure out how to install some games since Bottles is being a real wiener about Battle.Net. I’m glad there’s so many resources and forums out there but I still hope some version of Linux gets dumbed down a little more before Win10 sunsets to make the transition easier for us blue collar folk
I had problem with bottles and battle.net too. It went flawless year ago, then I went to play other games and when I finally wanted to play Diablo 2 again, battle.net kept crashing all the time. I solved it by running that bottle in wine-ge. Easier way to get it (and manage such prefixes) is ProtonUp-qt that is also on flathub.
For games, running stuff through Steam makes things much easier, as it configures Proton for you automatically. Also check out https://www.protondb.com/ for ratings and help with specific games.
Steam’s been fantastic! Problem for me is that some of the battle.net games aren’t on there. If there’s a way to download those somewhere and run them through Steam that’d be incredible. I didn’t even think to consider searching around for that possibility. I’ve seen people run Diablo 4 on their Decks so it’s clearly possible, I’m just still learning how to troubleshoot Linux and I’m trying to be extra careful since their OS doesn’t have much in the way of guardrails to prevent dummies from nuking themselves
Yeah, I will say I have personally found Blizzard games tend to run poorly on Linux. It has mostly lead to me playing less Blizzard games. I have more games than I can possibly ever play, I don’t need to bang my head against a wall for a specific one. Though, it has also helped their sequels have been less-good than their prior games. Starcraft 2 wasn’t as good as Starcraft, Diablo 4 just never appealed like Diablo 3, I’m now playing more Guild Wars 2 and ignoring WoW, etc etc.
I’ve been using Manjaro on an old modded chromebook. Windows is not gonna be on my next machine build.
Windows 10 already had telemetry (what you call spying) and what it didn’t have in the past got patched in. So when it comes to that both Windows 10 and 11 are the same.
Performance is totally fine for me on Windows 11, but the new right click context menu sucks.
Overall there’s really not much difference between the two otherwise.
MS even backported spying to Win7
want your OS
That’s the problem, it’s not your OS.
I switched to linux yeats ago but i now need to build myself a windows 11 base image thats as lightweight as possible for my vms and im dreading that immeansly. I just want onw toll that can kill literally everything thats unessasary. I mean unless proton and wine has gotten good enough to run autocad programs.
Use Windows LTSC, it doesn’t have this stuff. Then permanently license it with the MAS tool on github (let me go find a link)
Thanks for updating the link, I forgot!
This is absolutely the way. My wife needed windows for school recently… Ltsc was the only way to go.
I use windows 11 for work and it’s absolutely horrible… took them a year to let us ungroup windows on the task bar. Win11 literally didn’t ship with that ability.
In Win7 and Win10 I always had my own Toolbar added with a bunch of .rdp, .bat and .ps1 for quick and easy access.
In Win11 that feature is missing. :(
Tiny11 is good too!
Link?
Yep.
Isn’t Tiny11 just LTSC with stuff removed? My Tiny10 VM reports as LTSC.
If you tolerate this, then your children will be next.
Trust me, I’m not installing Windows as the Operating System for my Children’s brains.
Been this way since windows XP. There’s always been good folk who go out and provide tools to remove bloat.
I removed it by installing Linux
Annnnnnnnnnnd there it is!
I removed your useless post by blocking you
There’s a nix based distro called SnowFlake that I am not sure why but think might be interesting for you.
Might be your whining. Will never know, I guess
You’re hilarious! Your projection is truly first class. I’m amazed that you think it’s totally fine for some nix bro to post the exact same comment on every post about windows but anyone who dissents is a snowflake. Get the fuck over yourself.
You’re truly an embarrassment to us linux enjoyers.
Thanks now we all know what idiot to block 🤣
install random third party software that may be sniffing or leaking information to remove shady features from windows that sniff and leak information.
windows sucks.
The app is open source so you can review the not-leaking-your-information that it does yourself.
Windows on the other hand …
I wonder how many apps this actually happens for, my guess is “way less than people think”
That they leak information? I work in commercial software development and I have to do a lot of open source security reviews. The answer is: virtually none.
Private, closed-source software on the other hand… If it could sniff your farts and send the smell to advertisers, it would; in almost all cases.
No, that people actually take the time to check the source code before installing them
I’ve seen enough crypto scams to know that even when the code is public, people don’t bother… Heck, there are scanning tools for crypto that tell you how risky the shitcoins are and people still get scammed out of thousands of dollars!
Not everyone have to check something. But there are people that do routinely check popular stuff, either on their own or for their job. Sometimes this raises issues, which are usually handled appropriately. Of course if you download a little unknown piece of software made by a single person and never advertised anywhere, you’ll have to do the job yourself. But anything semi-popular attracts enough attention to get some level of audit, at least because business uses a lot of open source. There are even businesses whose main product is auditing and developing open source, kind of like bounty hunters.
And of course there are counter-examples, too. TrueCrypt got pulled out quite dramatically, and I’m not sure we know why even now. But the more sensitive the stuff, the higher the chance of it getting some level of investigation.
As a software user, you can either care about your privacy or not. Caring about your privacy and not either vetting what you’re planning to use or checking that someone else has before using it, is akin to sticking your hand in a fire to find out if it’s hot.
Taking that analogy further, malicious open source software is kind of like a burning building. It only takes one person to raise the flag for it to spread pretty quickly through social media or other means that it is malicious. The whole community doesn’t need to acknowledge the fire for something to be done about it.
I used to have a power shell script that a coworker gave me that would uninstall a huge number of services and apps on windows, change a bunch of config settings etc.
I’ve always wished there were a way to roll out a stripped windows release as an open source project without getting sued.
That’s pretty cool I just used Enterprise Edition and ran Powershell to uninstall shit. Also Chris Titus Tech’s tool is quite nice as well.
There is. It’s called slipstreaming and IT people have been doing it for decades
Configuration Management is the term I’m familiar with, third party tools or SCCM, or just group policy.
They keep inching me towards Linux with all this bullshit
Just make the jump. I keep a cheap n100 box as a backup.
Problem I’ve had with all these “fixes” the issues come back or the OS craps the bed
I use AtlasOS to debloat and optimize (disabling animations, annoying requests and so on) Windows 10/11
I’ll thank you ahead of time, i’ll checl this out (hopefully) this weekend. It’s bookmarked.
I’m tired of playing the debloat game, especially with the frequency of Windows updates that undo and add things.
just use linux lmao
did i type this right? are you going to upvote my comment
It’s called WinPilot now.
As someone who uses windows to produce music, bloat is a huge issue, latencymon Is a great tool to check for programs and drivers that can cause audio dropouts.
And win 11 has been great, didn’t have to change much to get it to work. I tried several forms of Linux and it was too slow, driver issues, and plugins that were impossible to get working.
Win 10 was bad, but 7 was worse.
It really is a shame that music production is so painful in Linux. All I need to make the final switch
After leaving Macs (and Logic) (Apple software great, Apple iMac shit) switched to LInux over 10 years ago. Haven’t made music since (hardware in boxes). Fully learned that Linux music ain’t got that swing.
I recently heard that newer PipeWire has improved things a quite a lot. Haven’t tried it yet … not sure I remember how to play any instruments any more.
You could try bitwig, the daw is really good and has a native linux client for years.
Ya know … I’ll just give that a close hard look. Thanks!
As someone who uses windows to produce music
Exactly and some other media/creative stuff as well. Windows is the only way to run Ableton with full VST support on my own hardware. Then if I’m going to need a Windows workstation anyway, I might as well use it for gaming too, and lump in all my other “power station” uses. It’s sometimes frustrating when you mention this and people who aren’t familiar with these programs to try to debate you or assume you haven’t entertained the alternatives. In my case I run Linux on my laptop and servers, and even some of my instruments like the monome norns and m8 are rpi based. Real time audio synthesis on linux is actually amazing, PureData and Supercollider are the ones I’m somewhat familiar with.
go to linux alreadiii
Sigh.
Sure.
Now how do you: CAD, exchange, Publisher, Access, Excel (no, open versions of excel still don’t come close, they can’t even do tables), Onenote/SharePoint, etc, etc.
And Linux is as messed up in its own way. Power management is off by default, so it kills your laptop battery (at least on every version I’ve tested). Notifications that you can’t silence without looking up a command line.
No, the learning curve is still too steep to recommend to people who I will have to support.
And while the Open/Libre office apps are “compatible”, people don’t have time to waste dealing with the ways they whack a document. Libre couldn’t even properly display the spreadsheet I use to setup a new machine, with 3 sheets and a few hundred lines, because tables.
“Switch to Linux” is a simplistic answer that doesn’t address the needs of users. And I use Linux every day, as a serverOS, running VM’s and docker.
They hated him for he spoke the truth…
“Switch to Linux” is a simplistic answer that doesn’t address the needs of users. And I use Linux every day, as a serverOS, running VM’s and docker.
“Let me debate you about why you shouldn’t use Windows” as if I want to use Windows, people who have no experience with the software in my industry dropping alternatives. Even had someone debate me after saying I’m a sysadmin in a mixed environment, and how I alone should just move the whole company and all our software vendors to Linux.
Just as a minor correction - Librecalc can do tables. Why they didn’t call it tables and bind it to CTRL&T is beyond me though. link
select the cells -> Data -> AutoFilter
I create them with CTRL&T through the custom shortcuts in options. They work about the same as Excel.
Librecalc is a little rough, but I’m actually starting to find it superior in functionality and customization compared to MS. And it’s about 10x faster on very large spreadsheets for me.
I would also definitely recommend using use dark mode if you’re going to use calc. Options -> Application Colors -> LibreOffice Dark
uh hu, you locked yourself in. Imo if you dont need Excel, OneNote or any of that shit, its perfectly cool. For devs its even nicer not to have to deal with all the windows shit ways of doing things. As for documents, LaTeX is great.
Also, in the end, the command line is even easier than having to learn shitty user interfaces. And you get much faster with command line too. Windows likes to have 3 different design languages from different decades for no reason.
Using it as OS and as Server, it has been perfect for years.
People who don’t use it either have a life and simply dont want things to change, or are too foolish to realise they are getting trolled with every update.
For people starting, just dual boot a Linux Distro. For the shit that requires windows boot into it. The rest can all be done in linux. Even boots faster.
And for average people probably the google documents / slides […] will be more than enough.
Rip to people that need windows shit to be in their life for work. Though they could also use a windows vm.
What learning curve? Whether my mom clicks on the Firefox icon in Ubuntu or Windows makes zero difference
Dude literally just explained the issues facing actual workers that use computers for productive activities, not your mother looking up tendie recipes.
What’s for dinner tonight, I wonder
Joe Mama
They “can’t even do tables”!!!
What’s slowing down Linux adoption?
Is it the monopoly Microsoft has on all PC hardware and strong relationships it has with desktop software partners that make leaving windows near impossible?
No, it must be the users.
/s insert principal Skinner meme
Commercial support for it.
On a personal level, I installed Ubuntu for the first time in over a decade and found the experience worse. Previously I could download everything I needed either through the package manager or deb file easily. Ow I ran into a new flat pack type installer that has failing dependencies that weren’t found through command line either. The new mouse driver in gnome was hot garbage too with the touchpad sensitivity so high I couldn’t scroll more than a page and a half at even the lightest touch. No settings to change it either. Windows is far easier at this point.
Nothing near the level of Adobe software for example.
Gaming
Gaming on Linux is ridiculously easy. And for some, easier than on Windows.
It’s only really in VR where I notice Windows being better.
There are some games that use kernel-level anti-cheat (essentially a rootkit for your PC), these don’t work in Linux, and Linux devs have made clear they won’t accept inclusions of rootkits in the kernel.
Sorry but will games like GTA V, Forza Horizon 5, Doom eternal, Horizon Zero Dawn,Cocoon and all run on linux ?
I’ve not heard of Cocoon, but the rest of them I own and yes.
Open steam, press play, game is running.
E: apparently Cocoon is steam deck verified, so works flawlessly.
Yes. Check yourself :). https://www.protondb.com/
Not all will run out of the box. Some require tweaks, some won’t run as good as on windows. But many games will run day one nowadays .
From: protondb.com
GTA V - Gold; seems to be playable for most people, with a few performance hiccups depending on your system.
Forza Horizon 5 - Silver; requires significant tinkering, but playable.
Doom Eternal - Gold; works well for most, but has some reported performance issues on some systems.
Horizon Zero Dawn - Gold
Cocoon - Platinum
Single player experiences like these aren’t typically where you find problems with linux gaming, however. Games with accompanying anti-cheat software, like competitive shooters, fighters, etc. are typically problematic. Competitive titles are the only reason I have a windows partition at this point.
Gaming on linux is more viable than ever, and becoming more and more stable all the time - mostly thanks to Valve. That being said, your experience will be dependent largely on your hardware. There are known issues with Nvidia cards on linux, because Nvidia refuses to cooperate with the FOSS community, but even those issues seem to be easing up (although to be fair I don’t follow this topic closely, as I have an AMD system). Anyone telling you there are no issues is lying to you, but so is anyone who tries to tell you that linux gaming is still borked. Do your research if you’re interested in switching, and determine if the games you play are well supported or not. In the end if there is one game holding you back from switching and you want to switch, it’s always an option to keep a windows partition around as a backup for games that don’t play nice with linux.
I am not sure if jest, but you could always take a few seconds at protondb to see that yes, all of those games do in fact run on Linux. Forza in particular seems to have issues for some users, but everything else works with minimal hassle.
I game on Linux all the time. I’ve been playing apex legends, phasmophobia (VR), palworld, the finals, and so much more. It all works on Linux. There’s not a lot of games that I can’t play. Most of the time my sister, who’s on Windows, has more trouble getting her games running.
I forgot what 2008 was like. Thanks for the reminder
Can you imagine installing Windows and having to install 10 seperate programs just to fix all the issues with it?
Every day with Windows is like this. It’s a fucking nightmare. I don’t know what else to do.
Install linux :)
I tried installing Linux on the new work laptop yesterday.
The keyboard wasn’t recognised. The fucking keyboard.
Apparently it’s fixed in kernel 6.6 but nothing has that yet coz they’re all using the earlier LTS
i didn’t even have to scroll to find the first instance of this comment
Truly Truly, I say unto you, install Linux; it’s what you really must do.
I have a few games that don’t run on Steam. How big of a pain is it to get them running?
This is like 50-70% of my PC usage.
Fairly easy with something like lutris or the heroic game launcher if said games are on gig amazon gaming or epic
No, they have their own launchers.
I game on Linux and mainly play games bought from GOG. Both GOG and Epic games are extremely easy to get working, and are as simple as downloading Heroic Games Launcher, signing into GOG and/or Epic, and choosing the game you want to download from your library. While it is possible to use the official GOG Galaxy client with Lutris and WINE, I personally don’t recommend it, as it’s quite a glitchy and laggy experience, and is only done by people who can’t live without GOG achievements. For GOG… just use Heroic. It’s just as easy to use as the official Galaxy client is on Windows and also supports cloud-saves.
I’ve never used Amazon, but Heroic also recently added downloading your Amazon Prime games as an option, which I imagine is just as easy to get working as GOG and Epic Games already are.
This part isn’t necessary, but if you want to play those games but launch them from Steam, you can add each game individually to Steam as a non-steam game through the Lutris or Heroic Games’ interface. A handy app I recommend, which I never hear people mention, is BoilR, which automatically adds all of your non-steam games in bulk into your Steam Library.
As for the EA App and Ubisoft Connect, I ditched them over a year ago due to not wanting to support the companies (same with Epic). I honestly don’t remember what the process was exactly for those launchers, but I do remember it was very easy to set up in Lutris.
Lastly, I’ve never used Battle.net either, but I’ve heard it’s quite easy to set up in Lutris.
You can search on e.g. Lutris if the game is supported. It’s usually just a one button install
Thanks. Looks like it’s all Wine wrappers. 🫤
It is not uncommon to find “Wine wrappers” to actually work better than on Windows itself.
Right, right. Smh
Onenote, publisher, CAD. Excel (and don’t give me open/libre can do it, no they can’t. They are marginally compatible).
And a laundry list more of the issues trying to replace windows with Linux on the desktop.
If you work by yourself and don’t share docs, yea, could probably work. I need to trust that what I send is what people see.
Try to open an excel workbook with tables on open/libre and see what happens.
To this point just use Linux already. You will be doing a lot of telemetry cleaning and even might be breaking things.
My anti-cheat don’t work on Linux
But that’s worse, because that implies ring 0 anticheat. That is synonym of rootkit.
or use the enterprise edition which is the only windows edition with an option to disable telemetry using group policy editor. in the other versions, you have to resort to terrible hacks.
It is bad the AMD support in windows. In Linux is better in my case. For sysadmin sorry but powershell is overengineered garbage. You need a very long command when in shell you got in three pipes. Even what are your proposing its hard to do, and sincerely i think it is better to just use a sane linux distro.
idk it’s over-engineered but it’s actually pretty cool in it’s own way. it’s like a crappier version of nushell i guess. still I’d rather use nu.
