[Rapzid]

As someone with a sizeable background in Linux system engineering.. I prefer Windows to MacOS.

It's IMHO a better desktop now with the edge snap tile layout and etc. Excellent device compatibility. And I get my linux environment needs satisfied via WSL2 these days.

But damn if they don't get in their own way. I have my own Pro licenses, and even with Pro turning off ads and features is text book whack-a-mole:

* Frequent "Let's finish setting up your PC" after updates

* Killing OneDrive is a like night of the living dead

* Edge popping up "ads" asking you if you want to pin apps when it closes(a lot of windows apps wrap edge, like streaming apps, and show this too on close!)

* Scary Power Automate crap getting injected on updates(haven't seen this in a while)

* Internet search results in the "Home" search

* Random popups and product recommendations

* Registry disabled "features" randomly resurrecting after Windows update

Holy. Hell.

Edit: I recall now; Windows was installing a power automate extension into Chrome during Windows Update un-prompted last year. Caused a minor panic.

[ryandrake]

This might be obvious, but all of those things have a single common denominator: Microsoft, over you, getting to decide what your computer is doing. This is the biggest generalized danger in computing today: That OS (and device) manufacturers have gotten it in their heads that it's OK for them to have a strong say in what your computer runs. User doesn't want X, Y, or Z running on his computer? TOUGH. We are going to run it and make it really hard or impossible for user to turn it off. As a user, I no longer feel like I'm driving the car--I'm just a passenger. "Where do you want to go today?" has turned into "You're going here today, whether you want to or not!"

[jojobas]

But Apple decides what your computer is doing even before it boots up, Microsoft is not even in the same league.

[eeixlk]

Curious about some examples of this. Consumer windows computers have historically had a lot more preinstalled garbage software. Do you mean app store restrictions or something else?

[legacynl]

Although prebuilts often come with preinstalled garbage, that is software that only runs after the whole OS has started and intialized. Before that there are several pieces of code that run.

When the motherboard first gets power, there's a chip that 'runs some code' that powers all devices connected to the motherboard, and loads the BIOS from another chip on the motherboard. Then once all components of your computer are powered and in a ready state, the BIOS takes over. Once the bios performs its checks, it loads the 'bootloader' from the harddrive. This is the first piece of MS code in a windows pc. The bootloader will locate the installation of the windows installation, and then load and run the actual windows install..

That's what the guy above you meant. Any motherboard can be used in any desktop, because the chip on the motherboard provides a standard way of loading a bios. The bios can be changed out, as long as it uses the same standard of talking to the motherboard, and it is able to load a bootloader, it should be able to function. The bootloader and the OS itself can be changed too. Basically the whole system is designed around standards that allow people to do whatever they want.

Apple on the other hand doesn't do this at all. The write every piece of code themselves, and all their chips are custom built to do whatever apple wants it to do. This is why it's hard to replace certain components, because there's code in some chip on the motherboard that runs way before the OS even starts, that checks if all your components are allowed by apple. And in contrast to whatever Microsoft this is something they build into the hardware, so it can never be disabled by the user.

That's the difference in control that you have between an apple and a (Microsoft) PC. If you install linux on a pc, there is nothing MS related left on your pc. If you install linux on a macbook, you will still have apple code running on your device.

[jojobas]

I mean Activation Lock Server Check.

[brookst]

As someone who had a brand new M1 MBP stolen from a San Jose coworking space. I am 100% in favor of the this having at best some parts and not a working computer.

[legacynl]

I do hope you understand that 'bad thing X happened to me, therefore any measure to prevent X is good' is a logical fallacy?

"As someone who had a brand new mbp stolen from me, I'm personally 100% in favor of the remote-c4 installed in every mbp. Just imagine if he could have accessed my banking information?"

[jojobas]

Yeah let's all surrender what remains of computer ownership to a software-hardware conglomerate, because theft.

[cesarb]

> all of those things have a single common denominator: Microsoft, over you, getting to decide what your computer is doing. [...] OS (and device) manufacturers have gotten it in their heads that it's OK for them to have a strong say in what your computer runs.

As I've said before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44923555), in my opinion the starting point of this slide for Microsoft was WGA on Windows XP. It was the first time that they made the operating system treat the computer's administrator as hostile.

[brookst]

Not coincidentally, that was around when Microsoft really internalized that they are an enterprise company, not a consumer company.

In enterprises, the local user IS hostile, or at least some percentage of them are. The ethos of “we can’t trust end users” leaked from enterprise fixation into general Microsoft culture.

[abustamam]

Local user being hostile should be a user group setting in enterprise versions, not a default across all versions of them.

But now that I think of it, I was pretty hostile to my computer when I was ten years old and running windows 2000. I don't think we ever saw so many pop-ups before.

But even so, the admins of the computer system should have control over their computers. I can understand if my mom's user profile might have limitation, but the my admin profile should not.

[TeMPOraL]

Security isn't an unqualified good. You're always secure something from some threat. Keeping the subject and the threat actor implicit is causing confusion in minds of many tech people, and is in part the reason how we land in situations like this.

Windows is not just an operating system on your computer. It is a product (nowadays, a service) of Microsoft. Some security systems in it are meant to protect the PC/system/user from external threats. Others are meant to protect Microsoft, and Windows as a product/service, from the user.

Being specific about what is being protected and from whom, is more important than specifics of the actual security technology. After all, depending on the answers to those two questions, the very same security technology is protecting you from a cyber-criminal installing a rootkit on your PC, protecting Microsoft from you pirating Windows, and protecting copyright interests from you trying to watch a movie in a geographic location they don't want you to watch it in.

[ctoth]

All true, and yet: Windows accessibility actually works. I use a screen reader daily. Linux a11y is complete dogshit — AT-SPI2 is unreliable, Orca is barely maintained, Wayland broke what little existed.

I need something that actually works. When Linux goes off and decides it'll rewrite its working desktop stack and it's still, ten years later, not useable?

ADHD-Driven development might be fine if you can see your system. When you can't, being at the whims of some teenager chasing the new shiny is just frustrating.

[roenxi]

> When Linux goes off and decides it'll rewrite its working desktop stack and it's still, ten years later, not useable?

In fairness it wasn't just the rewrite that was the problem, but it looks for all the world like there was a large faction in the Linux UI world around Wayland that believes accessibility is insecure and designed the new systems to make it impossible. It has been an interesting if unfortunate situation that seems to be slowly being fixed.

[TeMPOraL]

> but it looks for all the world like there was a large faction in the Linux UI world around Wayland that believes accessibility is insecure and designed the new systems to make it impossible

Agreed.

FWIW, accessibility is insecure, that is a fact, and it's also fine. The problem is that many security-minded people forget to ask the critical question: security for whom, and from what. There is no such thing as "security" in general. There is always a subject being secured from a threat.

With Wayland, like with most modern software development, the user ends up being the thing to secure from, and what is being protected are the interests of the vendor.

[randomNumber7]

Why was gnome pushed so hard? In my eyes it looks horrible and I still prefer xfce...

[robotnikman]

I wonder the same thing. I've been using KDE Plasma and have not looked back.

[LtWorf]

All of this in the name of being able to run proprietary malware like you do on android.

[MrDrMcCoy]

What on earth are you referring to?

[LtWorf]

That the security model on Unix (and Linux) is to trust your applications and mistrust other users of the same machine.

While now the security model is that your applications are closed source and you cannot trust them, which is why you need wayland.

[LoganDark]

macOS supports VoiceOver even in the boot disk selection screen. That's the real king of accessibility.

[Atlas26]

macOS has some strengths and is certainly ahead of Linux in terms of a11y but my experience working in web accessibility, it seems most visually impaired individuals have a preference for windows, seemingly because it has the most mature set of accessibility/screen reader tools around largely because of how long windows has been around and how much of a requirement it is for enterprise environments.

[legacynl]

> When Linux goes off and decides it'll rewrite

You're acting as if Linux is a single entity that can just decide to improve this or the other. The phrase "Linux should do X" is as useful as "Society should do X". It's not useful unless you can state what needs to change specifically, or you're talking to the right people.

> When you can't, being at the whims of some teenager chasing the new shiny is just frustrating.

Since most development on linux-related projects is based on volunteering, perhaps you can volunteer and organize for your own 'whims'? Personally I would love it if someone like you would get off their ass and use your knowledge about screenreaders to improve things for everyone.

[lll-o-lll]

Question. In this new weird age of agentic everything. Does running your system from an agent TUI resolve much of the issues you’d otherwise have without a decent screen reader?

[smackeyacky]

What can be done to address this? Which project needs the most help do you think?

[chickensong]

A fundraiser and/or financial grant to a foundation like gnome, or a distro that makes a11y a priority, is probably the best way to approach it. Without the financial investment, many contributors just aren't considering or even aware of issue.

The distributed best-effort approach works ok for some things, but is at a disadvantage for supporting holistic standards across independent apps.

[jorvi]

I mean, why are you even on Windows then? Apple is the accessibility king by far. Both Windows and Android are aeons behind.

[jmspring]

I'm not completely sure I would call Apple the accessibility king. It's UI gets worse with each release. Modal dialogues with no keyboard options to make a choice in the window at times, etc.

[Atlas26]

Eh, no. My experience working in web accessibility, it seems most visually impaired individuals have a preference for windows, seemingly because it has the most mature set of accessibility/screen reader tools around largely because of how long windows has been around and how much of a requirement it is for enterprise environments.

[jorvi]

As far as I know, accessibility has been built into macOS since the early days, and with great care. Which then propagated to application built for macOS, and later on, iOS. iOS is rather magnificent for (visually) impaired people.

In contrast, Windows has had its accessibility features bolted on, and the best ones are third-party which makes it even more bolted-on. And then you have twenty different frameworks to make Windows applications, all with varying (but usually mediocre) levels of accessibility support built in.

[rlpb]

> This might be obvious, but all of those things have a single common denominator: Microsoft, over you, getting to decide what your computer is doing.

Sure, but Microsoft have to strike a balance, too. If they push too hard in this direction, they'll lose their users to Macs on one side (probably the majority) and Linux on the other (a minority in number, but perhaps significant in expertise and clout). Once an exodus begins, it's much harder to stop. So where we are in that balance, and the state of user mindshare migration, is still interesting to discuss.

[ekianjo]

> Microsoft, over you, getting to decide what your computer is doing.

Nothing new. Microsoft has been exactly like that since its inception. People are asleep at the wheel of they only realize it now.

[hluska]

You’re exaggerating - my computer has never prevented me from doing what I want to do with it. There are some annoyances but that can be said about absolutely every system.

[hn_acc1]

It's more: you want to go to location A? Sure, but we're going to make a quick stop at locations B, C and D first, and the only available car is a known-to-be-dangerous self-driving robotaxi with no steering wheel or pedals.

[m_mueller]

... which in the middle of the route decides to instead drive onto a container ship and bring you to a robotic island?

ah no wait, that's the announced next update.

[kipchak]

I've had good luck with the winutil tool, which is wrapper for a bunch of powershell commands and registry edits in a .ps1 to remove bloat. After using it on a fresh install I can't recall the last time I've had any of the mentioned issues.

If you're (understandably) concerned about the security implications most of the changes can be done manually going off the docs.

https://github.com/christitustech/winutil

[anthk]

Bloat will come back on every update. It's futile.

[ewoodrich]

I’ve used this Powershell script on every Windows 11 machine in the last four years (5+ devices) and have never needed to re-run it after an update.

It’s the first thing I do on a fresh install, and with my selections I see fewer ads (0, more or less) than I do on my MacBook for iCloud products so I’d hardly say it’s “futile” in actual use and only takes like 5 minutes to run once.

I always hear people say nothing sticks after an update but have literally only encountered that with Microsoft Edge and the default search engine. Not any of the Windows features disabled or configured by the script.

Not sure if it’s just outdated or a meme being repeated by non-Windows users but in any case it is not at all what I’ve experienced exclusively running debloated Windows 11 installs for years.

https://github.com/raphire/win11debloat

[Atlas26]

> I always hear people say nothing sticks after an update but have literally only encountered that with Microsoft Edge and the default search engine. Not any of the Windows features disabled or configured by the script. Not sure if it’s just outdated or a meme being repeated by non-Windows users but in any case it is not at all what I’ve experienced exclusively running debloated Windows 11 installs for years.

Yup. From what I’ve gathered, there was once a legitimate bug that did renable features that users previously disabled, and from then on that just became canon behavior for windows, even though they fixed that issue fairly quickly and I did not see it reappear. I have a similar experience, stuff that was disabled magically becoming re-enabled is not something that’s ever happened to me either over the years with windows.

[quyse]

I had Windows on a Lenovo laptop, and Windows update installed and/or re-enabled Lenovo system services almost every time (those included things like popups helpfully telling you that you pressed CapsLock and crap like this). I ran debloating scripts, tried fiddling with policies, etc, but Windows Update would inevitably bring those services back.

Another thing is Intel drivers. There's official Intel driver assistant software which installs latest drivers for Intel things (graphics, network, and so on). Only for Windows to re-install their "stable" outdated graphics driver next time it sees it. Again, I couldn't stop it. How hard is it for Windows to see that the driver already installed is newer already? Why even Intel cannot talk to Microsoft and decide between themselves a solution for this?

[Atlas26]

This is guaranteed just to be windows reinstalling drivers it thinks the laptop needs by default for basica functionality (it is considering the Lenovo service a standard system driver like the Intel ones since sometimes those are used to enable custom key and other functionality, so it makes sense to be a default driver so everything works out of the box for non technical customers). This is easily disabled by simply setting group policy manager to not automatically install drivers.

I’ll happily shit on windows endlessly but I can’t fault them for this, I think with the windows driver model this makes sense, otherwise you’re gonna have a ton of issues cropping up for normal users, especially since power users can always disable the policy. That was always one of the first policies I set and it never gave me any issues or automatically reinstalled unwanted/standard drivers again.

[anthk]

Install "Bulk Crap uninstaller", which is libre software. Begin uninstalling every bloatware you find.

[kipchak]

I'm not sure if I'm lucky or it's because I have feature releases deferred or if the tool ripped enough things out but this hasn't been my experience so far. If it does you could save off the changes as a JSON template and re-apply after updates, or automatically with task scheduler.

[gruez]

Use LTSC and you get 10 year support period, so you can update whenever it's convenient for you.

[da_chicken]

Yeah, that's a PITA for Windows 11.

It's an extra cost. $100 to $200. You can't buy it, generally, except through a volume licensing partner. You may need to have a tenant ID depending on exactly how you're getting it, too. Alternately, you need to have a Visual Studio subscription which is $3k/yr. Oh, and you can't upgrade to LTSC from Pro. You have to do a fresh install. And IoT LTSC is even worse.

[IG_Semmelweiss]

hmmmm does this work if you are unable to skip account creating?

[Miraste]

I also think Windows' native window tiling is one of its best features, but there's a fantastic program called Swish that implements tiling for MacOS in a very native-feeling way. It supports keyboard shortcuts, but it's built around really elegant touchpad gestures. Highly recommend if that's all that's keeping you on Windows.

The other native Windows feature I really like is the clipboard manager, and I don't have a great replacement for that yet. I'm kind of shocked Apple hasn't built one. If anyone has a recommendation that feels native instead of like a ported Linux widget, please share.

[chuckadams]

They mentioned Visual Studio, as in full-fat VS, not VS Code. That's only ever going to run on Windows.

[Miraste]

It actually did run on MacOS until recently. Personally I like Rider over Studio, but yes, if that's a hard requirement they are stuck.

[grujicd]

No, it was not real Visual Studio on MacOS, it was rebranded Xamarin IDE.

[jlokier]

*> the clipboard manager [...] If anyone has a recommendation that feels native

I use Maccy (https://maccy.app/). I've been very happy with it, and wish I'd installed it years earlier than I did. It's open source, and does its one job well.

I haven't used the Windows clipboard manager so I don't know how they compare on features.

[sylens]

Apple did introduce one this past fall as part of Spotlight

[nchmy]

I moved from Windows to Pop_Os! 6 months ago and am generally quite happy except for the window tiling. It really is fantastic in windows.

[legacynl]

Idk which desktop environment you're using, but window tiling on KDE Plasma is quite good.

[nchmy]

Thanks. Though, I can't find much about it's capabilities. Does it do "automatic" tiling, where windows just snap automatically into spaces and resize? Because popos can optionally do that too, but it's not what I'm looking for.

I want Windows-like functionality where new windows are full size and then I can use windows key+ arrow keys to resize and it will then automatically prompt me to select a window to snap into the remaining space. That's what's missing in popos

[grujicd]

I'm using Raycast on Mac, it has a bunch of stuff included but I use it only for its Clipboard History extension.

[maleldil]

It has window tiling too.

[brookst]

Thank you for the Swish recommendation! Just installed, looks great.

[varispeed]

Don't forget the search that doesn't work. You have app "X" installed? You type X and it doesn't find it, but gives you irrelevant results about X.

[Someone1234]

Windows' search has been broken for multiple generations now. Some people inside Microsoft seemingly even know, that's why the PowerToys team created "PowerToys Run." A Windows Search that actually basically functions correctly.

People act like it sudden was broken in Windows 11 when in reality it never worked correctly in 7, 8, 8.1, or 10 either. Instead of fixing it, they've only made it worse. It seems like nobody in Microsoft works on core stuff anymore.

[branko_d]

If memory serves, Windows 2000 was the last version where search worked reliably. It was a simple linear search through files which could take a while on larger folders, but was reliable and predictable since it did not rely on a background indexing service which seems to get stale or just plain wrong most of the time.

If I search for “foo”, I’d like to get all files containing “foo” please, without a shadow of a doubt that some files were skipped, including those that I have recently created. I still can’t get that as of Windows 11!

[mikkupikku]

> It was a simple linear search through files which could take a while on larger folders, but was reliable and predictable since it did not rely on a background indexing service which seems to get stale or just plain wrong most of the time.

It would be easy to have your cake and eat it too. Have the file search default to the index. Allow frustrated users to then click a button that says "search harder" which would initiate the full enumeration of the relevant filesystems. Of course some UX professional will tell me I'm wrong, they don't like anything they didn't think of themselves.

[TeMPOraL]

Almost everyone's search has been broken like this. I don't trust Windows search, I don't trust search in Explorer - but I also don't trust search in my Samsung at OS level, in Google Drive, in OneDrive, in Dropbox, and in just about any other webshit there is.

I can't put my finger on what's going on exactly; there seems to be some design choice commonly made, that makes search behave (or appear) inconsistently to the point you can't really trust it to be exhaustive. I.e. "if I search for term 'foo' and it finds nothing, it means 'foo' thing is not on file". It's a fundamental guarantee search systems should deliver, but these days most don't. Without this guarantee, I always seek out means to manually walk the resource catalog (e.g. filesystem tree).

[kdheiwns]

Yeah, I've never experienced Windows search ever working. Even on XP, it couldn't find commonly opened folders or programs for me. It always felt like some sort of joke feature just meant to fool me into wasting time.

[Krssst]

As far as I remember it was working well in 7 and 8 (deterministic and shows programs that you expect it to show). From 10 it started behaving erratically (same time it got binged but maybe unrelated).

[beart]

It had problems in 8. I would frequently type my search term, see it was the number one result. I would then attempt to arrow or tab down and hit enter to launch that result. Between arrowing down and hitting enter, the result list would update/reorder and suddenly I'm launching some unknown program. Happened all the time.

[jasonfarnon]

I don't know how but it works beautifully for me on windows 11. What I mean is, I have been using windows for decades and I do not like any changes at all, they are all forced on me. But this change successfully turned me around. I find I rarely use File Explorer/file managers any more and access most applications and documents through the search.

I do remember it sucking on previous versions. I did use winaero tweaker to turn off the web results (and many other annoyances).

[pooploop64]

It's weird how it does seem to do something even though it doesn't do anything. You can see the search indexer running and it's pulling a varying amount of power towards some kind of goal but nobody seems to know what it is. Does it build an index that always corrupts? Is it in a loop of crashing and restarting itself? And it's been like this my whole life practically. It really shows how anything can be normalized if it goes on long enough.

[Rapzid]

At one point (last year?) internet search results would load in first so quickly typing and pressing "enter" from muscle memory would often result in opening some internet page instead of the app you wanted..

Then also in the past year or two the internet search results were lagging the entire search UI causing type jank and stutters.

I disabled internet results in the registry but a recent update seems to have caused that setting to no longer apply ;(

[skeeter2020]

>> would often result in opening some internet page instead of the app you wanted.

and even worse, in Edge!

[user34283]

I heard people talk about registry hacks for the internet search results on here many times.

Windows has a "Search" page in the Settings app. You can also reach it via the kebab menu on the search results.

There you can simply disable Bing.

[badpun]

One of the first things to do on a fresh install is to disable the Web search results in Start menu search. There's a setting in the registry to do it.

[user34283]

There's also a setting on the Settings app's Search page, which you can conveniently reach via the kebab menu on the search results.

[JTbane]

There is a definite disconnect, I cannot think of ANY scenario in which I (as a developer and power user) would want the Start menu to search the internet.

[ranger_danger]

If I need to google something and I'm working in another app, it's easier for me to just type a search term into the start menu than it is to find the browser to click on, open a new tab and then enter the search terms.

[BeetleB]

Same problem on MacOS.

[alpaca128]

As someone who uses both that's news to me. For some reason its AI based image recognition doesn't seem to work anymore but it actually finds files based on their name, something that hasn't worked in Windows since at least Windows 10.

[Griffinsauce]

Not with Raycast :D

[Krasnol]

...where we get to one of the best things about Windows: there is a free (and probably open source) tool for everything: https://www.voidtools.com/

[asah]

LOL, any __ONE__ of those would be a deal-killer for me. The sum is so WTF I can't understand how anyone willingly chooses Windows over... anything.

(mind you, MacOS has its own nightmares from KeyChain hell, iCloud crap, signed apps etc - but I can use my Mac laptop without iCloud/etc and go weeks without thinking about Apple)

[grujicd]

The right answer is that these things don't really show up that much. Like I encounter something like that once in a year? Yes, it's infuriating that they show up during install, or while you're downloading Chrome from the Edge, but apart from that, none of these show up on a regular basis. Or perhaps you're a casual user, agree to one thing here, don't disable another thing there, then yes, you'll get some of those. But that's not reality for any semi-experienced user. I mean it was perfectly normal to install replacement for start menu when it was bad at one point and that's it, you're good to go, and you'll use it for years the way you want. We're not masochists.

I guess many of these are fuel for enragement posts (and deservely so), but it's not a reality of how we use Windows.

[Rapzid]

Could be because I don't like "tinkering" with my desktop OS. I'm either:

* Configuring and operating them professionally as part of a larger system. I have "The Linux Programming Interface" and "Windows Internals" sitting right next to each other right next to me.

* Using productivity software professionally or for hobby.

* Doing leisure activities like gaming, reading, etc.

These annoyances are like 0.001% of my interaction with the OS. While super annoying, they are mostly brief and can be worked around(mechanics car though). The value proposition for me is still super high and better than the alternatives for me.

Probably the biggest negative impact on me is how these problems feed the flood of "Microslop" slop drowning out more interesting discourse.

[kevin_thibedeau]

The only tolerable Windows 11 experience is a corporate PC with Active Directory login.

[actionfromafar]

And an IT department vetting updates before they go out.

[fc417fc802]

Was it the 8 to 10 upgrade that MS slipped into Windows Update or a different one? Whichever it was, the IT department where I was at the time had apparently left Windows Update untouched and it wreaked havok.

[j16sdiz]

the same IT department that got blamed not allowed user changing wallpaper or installing crowstrike

[LordDragonfang]

If you're on Pro, Group Policy tends to be more stable than plain registry tweaks.

In particular, I advise everyone to turn off web search in the start menu, it makes it so much faster and more useful:

   Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Search > Don't search the web or display web results in Search

[pityJuke]

Ditto. I've found it pretty tolerable once I've used "ShutUp10!" to disable the annoying stuff. I've used harder tools than it, but I've then found it breaks useful stuff (like the Xbox Gaming stuff, which some MSFT games use).

[figmert]

I dunno, you say you prefer Windows over macOS, but it sounds to me like you're fighting your OS.

MacOS has a lot of flaws, but at least I'm not fighting it. If I say to do something, it does it. It doesn't suddenly revert your decision.

[unleaded]

My sentiment with windows (likely shared by most people here consciously using it) is that it's a good OS at heart somwhere. The core of it is very solid and has been for a while, and most of the crap parts that people complain about (see above) are "tacked on" to it and could fairly easily be removed/reverted if Microsoft wanted to (in fact they already have done, see IoT Enterprise LTSC and Windows Server), and it would still unmistakably be Windows.

I don't know much about MacOS but the same isn't really true of [desktop] Linux. Most of its flaws are not easily fixed in the same way and are much deeper architectural/social issues that require a lot of work to fix.

[SpaceNugget]

If by "conciously using it" means picking it over the alternatives and not using it while unconcious, then yes presumably that subset of people prefer it over the alternatives. That's pretty circular reasoning. Most people who actively choose to use linux also think that linux is a good os.

And I think most linux users would pretty strongly disagree that it's easier to fix windows, a user hostile, closed source operating system with far fewer options for every single user facing aspect of the OS than linux. You have that completely backwards.

[unleaded]

>If by "conciously using it" means picking it over the alternatives and not using it while unconcious, then yes presumably that subset of people prefer it over the alternatives. That's pretty circular reasoning. Most people who actively choose to use linux also think that linux is a good os.

I'm not saying people who use it think it's better, I don't know where you picked that up from. I'm pointing out the awkward, strained relationship between its users. Like, "it's shit, but it could be so much less shit if Microsoft got their act together!". That sort of sentiment.

>And I think most linux users would pretty strongly disagree that it's easier to fix windows, a user hostile, closed source operating system with far fewer options for every single user facing aspect of the OS than linux. You have that completely backwards.

The other replies are confused by what i meant by this as well. Obviously it's easier to add a driver or patch a problem than on Windows, but the Linux ecosystem is fundamentally fragmented. You can't really boss people around when you're not paying them, so as a result there are a hundred different ways to do the same things. This is one of Linux's greatest strengths, but also a big weakness as people can't really agree on how to integrate things when it's important.

There is no real solution to this problem that I can think of.

[figmert]

> don't know much about MacOS but the same isn't really true of [desktop] Linux. Most of its flaws are not easily fixed in the same way and are much deeper architectural/social issues that require a lot of work to fix.

I'm not sure where you got this, but I've been a fulltime Linux user for near 2 decades, and I promise you almost everything is fixable. The biggest issues are drivers, but even then you're bound to find someone who has developed some drivers or if not, you can develop your own if you have the skill or pay someone if you don't.

[jasomill]

I agree about Winndows, but increasingly feel the same way about macOS.

As for Linux, hard disagree, but only because I'm able to fix most anything that annoys me myself with enough elbow grease (same goes for Windows and macOS) except for application compatibility.

Then again, a lot of this comes down to the fact that all three have decent terminal applications, shells, tolerable programming interfaces, and the same choice of cross-platform browsers.

Mobile devices, on the other hand, are the real enemy.

[TeMPOraL]

Alternatively: you're not fighting your OS because you know you can't win, so you give up before even considering fight as an option.

Windows is super annoying to power users in large part because you know it can be beaten into submission with enough effort, but that effort is usually just not worth it.

[figmert]

Exactly! And this was a huge reason why I switched to Linux as my primary OS. For a while the only problem for me was gaming, but that's less of an issue now because of Valve but more so because I kinda stopped playing games.

[guilamu]

Use LTSC. It'll fix all the issues you are mentioning here.

[pomian]

Second ltsc -look into it once you try you will never go back. Available from various resellers nowadays. It is, what windows should be sold as.

[GuestFAUniverse]

AFAIK Office isn't supported on LTSC fka. LTSB.

Installed LTSB for a conservative superior. He just wanted to work, without changes. I supported that happily. Until we had to start using Office 365.

Or did they revert that restriction?

[Krssst]

LTSC cannot be bought as a regular customer unfortunately. Legally, regular customers are only allowed to use the enshittified version.

[cyberax]

You can get access to it, but it's a quest. You need to buy a volume license, and this requires at least 5 licenses (about $300). Then you'll be eligible to buy an LTSC version.

It doesn't require a corporation or anything, you can do that as a private person. But it IS annoying.

[guilamu]

Why not just get the iso, install, activate with massgravel and be done for life?

[majorchord]

Because it's illegal and that matters to some people

[guilamu]

That's true indeed, but Microsoft is not giving us any other option so why not use the good version at home? I mean what is the risk really?

[userbinator]

MS has always been (and probably still does) wanting you to pirate Windows instead of jumping to Linux or Mac.

[PufPufPuf]

FYI macOS now natively has edge snap, half-half tiling with draggable divider that resizes both windows, and even tiling options similar to Windows except a bit less options (e.g. no thirds) -- ok for a laptop screen, ultrawide monitors benefit from a free app to add more options.

And the shell environment is POSIX, with most bash scripts just being ootb compatible without WSL-like shenanigans.

[will4274]

> Frequent "Let's finish setting up your PC" after updates

Fwiw, this one is entirely predictable. Windows shows the Second Chance Out Of Box Experience (SCOOBE - pronounced like Scooby-Doo) each time a semi-annual update is installed, i.e. once every six months.

[p_ing]

Which you can disable in Settings.

[grujicd]

Recently I'm finding MSN home opened in Chrome over night. Aparently it's connected to some "active probing" feature, and I do have scheduled nightly restarts in the home router. But come on... No one could convince me it's not intended to inflate MSN numbers.

[Melatonic]

Get Windows LTSC instead and run Firefox ! Most problems solved.

[pdntspa]

Where?

[throw384848t]

is not mozilla advertising company, that heavilly pushes AI? How is their spying any different from microsoft?

[sombragris]

Easy solution: Ditch WSL, ditch Windows altogether, and use a good Linux distro with Plasma 6.6. Problem solved.

[yourapostasy]

I use Linux exclusively on the backend, a Windows laptop is usually what my clients issue to me for gigs, and I migrated years ago from macOS to a Linux laptop as my personal primary daily driver (though I still use macOS, just not where I spend 90% of my personal time). I agree with Windows having its own issues like you pointed out. To be fair however, Linux and macOS daily driver experiences are also not without their annoyances.

The Linux daily driver windmills I am currently tilting at are the lack of 3D infrared sensor-based secure facial recognition. On Linux we currently are missing true 3D mapping, the option to bind the biometric data to the onboard TPM, and running the matching in something like the Protected Media Path stack Windows uses, so Linux facial recognition solutions like Howdy are not as secure as on Windows.

Other deep gaps in the Linux daily driver role are not having a solution to encrypt our disks and hibernate under Secure Boot, nor a comprehensive common application framework for power management like Apple's IOKit and IOPowerSources so my Linux laptop gets far less battery life than my macOS laptop. Linux has many different ways for applications to participate in power management, so as a result there isn't a single way for the applications to cooperatively negotiate for this centralized scarce resource based upon user preferences.

But the death by a thousand tiny cuts I was experiencing on macOS led me to reluctantly conclude I'd rather face the thousand tiny cuts in Linux where at least I have the option to go to the source and address or fix it myself a particular cut got annoying enough. In my clients' corporate land, I hide behind a small army of desktop teams that grind away most of the annoyances you list (mainly through the pricing discrimination magic of Windows enterprise licensing).

I've resigned myself to not hold out hope for re-experiencing what I felt was my personal peak user experience of the early 2000's PowerPC PowerBook and Intel MacBook Pro and early Mac OS X. It was a portable Unix workstation that could run a full virtual Windows box inside, giving me the best of all worlds, and It Just Works bled into every nook and cranny of the entire stack.

I believe a lot of it came down to that Steve Jobs was an intensely personal user of his own products from the perspective of someone doing it himself as much as someone who is the head of a multinational multi-billion dollar corporation could be, with as little corporate desktop support as necessary, and he had an extreme intolerance for annoyances in the small details.

Linux as a daily driver has many, many rough edges. But at least I can durably contribute into it as I solve my own annoying small details, and hope a flywheel effect eventually takes place in the future.

[fsflover]

> not having a solution to encrypt our disks and hibernate under Secure Boot

Did you consider coreboot with Heads and a hardware key instead?

[yourapostasy]

Thank you Kind Internet Stranger!

[jayd16]

Pro is almost pointless these days. If you really want to be upset about what could be you should try a windows server trial with Desktop experience.

Zero bullshit and it just works. Why does this have to be $1k+???