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by jchw 2771 days ago
That's the reality I feel every time I boot into Windows to be honest. I work at Google so I am definitely biased but candidly those OneDrive ads in Explorer pissed me off pretty badly, as does start menu ads, Cortana notifications, automatically installing Candy Crush, and so many other things. You can disable most of that, but then I hear there's still telemetry getting sent back to MSFT even after you disable every tickbox in site.

Of course, the obvious solution is to run a good Linux distro or OpenBSD, but frankly it's hard to live with purely just Linux for me. ChromeOS has the advantage of things like near perfect High DPI support.
2 comments
zwaps 2771 days ago
For what's it worth, I have been using Linux as a side-OS since pre 2000, and only in the last two years has it become really good. It's now my main driver on all my machines and frankly I have started to prefer it.

This has never happened in the ~20 years I have been using Linux and other OS. Linux went from "meh" to just as good pretty recently, imo.

Furthermore, this is just a usability consideration. Don't forget that all other OS become more and more closed, more and more about collecting private data, and more and more about proprietary app stores.

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dingdingdang 2771 days ago
My experience too, we've just started switched 100+ PCs at work over to Linux Mint as a result of this maturation - it's just plain better than Windows now, no ads, no upgrade ruining everything, no telemetry, no ignoring and resetting of user settings. Best of all: consistent software deployment via package management that actually works and does not include malware, adware and other janky sideloaded stuff.
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jchw 2771 days ago
Wayland is still a mess. And I can't share my screen via WebRTC in Wayland, and mixed DPI is still not as functional as Windows and Mac and ChromeOS are. I use Linux regularly, but I don't feel like it's really making much forward progress anymore.
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mosselman 2770 days ago
Exactly. I only use Windows for gaming from time to time and I have to be careful about other things on it. No way to work though so I am happy that Steam is making lots of progress on their wine fork.
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