[sigseg1v]

This is how you can tell that they just don't get it.

Microsoft, your users include developers and power users. We are not all someone's tech illiterate relative who needs constant reminding to check that backups are on, nor do we want to use OneDrive.

If we turn it off, it means off. Updates off = they stay off until turned back on, don't worry, we'll remember. Backup off = it stays off. Edge off = it stays off. Ads off = I don't want ads.

The battle they are fighting is that by using Google, tech illiterate people have found buttons like the ability to disable updates, but don't understand what they're doing, and then leave them off and now their OS becomes part of a botnet in a few months. So Microsoft believes that they are doing a greater good by not offering a real option to actually turn certain things off. But this babysitting behavior is annoying as shit when you want to leave something running that is going to take 6 days. Sure yes put it on a cloud vm. But if I was still using Windows as my OS, why should I have to? Just because your OS can't handle a developer doing something else than using Outlook and OneDrive to store pictures of aunties family get-together?

[pndy]

OneDrive isn't a backup solution but a way to put your personal files in danger as was proven many times. And nowadays probably also a fastest way to get data mined - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45551504

Microsoft has options to provide local image-based backups but they want to make you dependent on their online services - which surely isn't surprising to anyone.

Last time I was installing Windows 10 I had a bunch of 3rd-party tools that gave me back control to some degree. And these worked for most of the things you did mention but Windows Update maintenance services were most pesky component. Nearly every idle period would spawn a bunch of processes which were placed to ensure that updates will be delivered Microsoft way. And while I'm on CachyOS I have W11 in the vm and looks like nothing has changed and I doubt anything will despite these pretty claims up there.

The lack of control over Windows that advanced, power users have to deal with is nowadays insulting.

[vrighter]

their VSS system is actually better than btrfs snapshots, IIRC. It allows you to take atomic snapshots of multiple volumes simultaneously. I haven't found a way to do it with btrfs yet, there's always a race condition.

[xmcp123]

It's wild to me that they don't have an Android-esque "Developer mode" that requires an obscure thing that you need to look up to see the options that can harm you (Click X times on the "Build info", etc).

[ethbr1]

Historically, Microsoft never had to consider that, because Windows was always in developer mode.

The Windows pedigree assumed that everything would at most have an ini or registry setting or group policy to override 99.9% of Windows' behavior or at least an undocumented but accessible internal API to set it.

The Windows 11 transition was the first time Microsoft shipped a sufficiently bullshit OS that it actually needed a developer mode.

But most scathingly... and the original sin... was that some shit-for-brains Microsoft leader made the decision to disable configurability for purpose of boosting platform revenue.

Fuck that person, because they knew exactly what and why they were doing it, and still made that decision.

Tolerate or hate them for all their sharp business elbows, but Microsoft of yore (Gates and Ballmer eras) intentionally made the decision that if they built and owned a platform that most people used (because it worked for them) then there would be more than enough money for everyone. And that it was healthy to leave money on the table for their developers, because developers and the apps they built drove people to the platform (see "Developers, developers, developers!").

[RGamma]

gpedit.msc

[jitler]

> Microsoft, your users include developers and power users.

But their customers are enterprises. Until you’re bringing in the money that those enterprise contracts are, you’re a pathetic speck who can and will get what you’re offered and no more.