In general I have a positive opinion about what MS is doing lately, but Windows is a glaring exception, it’s getting worse and worse at an alarming rate.
In the last two months we had two consecutive updates that broke basic functionality for users who disabled web results in Windows Search (which is a very common setting among those who care about privacy) https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-1903-microsoft-deta...
Now, MS is trying to force upon customers this cloud login garbage, which is obviously not acceptable if you are privacy conscious.
I build my own PCs and have spent hundreds of dollars in Windows 10 retail licenses, I pay for the service so I don’t want to be the product.
I’ve always assumed that I’m locked into using Windows but after all this crap I’m starting to look into alternatives even though they’v got shortcomings on their own.
(Edit: replaced Amp link with real link, sorry I didn’t realise it was Amp)
I didn’t feel the need to specify that in my comment because the linked Reddit thread already explains it, it’s the top upvoted comment, you can see it just below the initial post. When I said “this is incredibly bad” I was referring to the dark pattern, I wasn’t trying to suggest that the option had been completely removed.
To what i see, the top upvoted comment is at the third position behind a lot of subcomments, because of the "hot" ranking of reddit.
By reading the discussions here, i don't think that a lot of people realised that the option is still there.
They're forcing people to online accounts by putting the offline option in the basement, it's the standard 'nudge' in software. Eventually they'll eliminate it completely.
Some would consider this one a dark pattern, I would agree in this case.
Ah, it must be a user option in Reddit, I assumed that everyone else was reading the same thing I was reading. Also, at the time I commented here on HN, the top comment here was this one so I was assuming everyone would see it (but later it went down the page and now it’s hard to find) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21104074
So you assumed everyone else would be able to catch the specific comment you read in a forum thread that will shift comment positions, or allow users to delete them.
There was no malice intended. At the time I commented, also the top comment here in HN was saying the same thing. So I assumed everyone knew what we were talking about. This whole HN thread had like 10 comments in total so it was easy to read. Then the thread made it to the HN front page, and it blew up. (And people in the US/Europe woke up while I was having dinner with friends here in Australia).
Is there anyone that even knows what "Domain join" means? If the button was there but hidden, would that count as "still there"? What if it was there but labeled "Click here to brick your computer"?
Domain joining means connecting the machine to a Windows domain allowing domain user accounts to be used, and allowing for the domain to administer the machine.
It's actually quite a helpful option to have, but it's completely absurd for the only way to create a local account to be via the domain join option.
My knee jerk reaction would be that 'domain join' would be something reserved for connecting to enterprise domains - it might ask me for an active directory connection or something (which, if I'm offline, I wouldn't even think to try in the first place). "domain join" for a single user machine? I wouldn't even make the connection.
Clearly, but that is something us sysads for decades get...
You think that joe mechanic who just bought his daughter a new machine has any of this lexicon.
Whomever is responsible for all of this bullshit at MS should be hit in the face with a shovel.
Recently, and I’ve been in tech since 1997, I bought an office lic at Costco because I needed excel on a machine...
You know what a pain in the ass it is to install office on a generic factory machine with the new bs. They want to tie that install to an outlook account.
Nope. I just want excel this machine won’t even be connected to the internet. But MS says fuck-you-because-thats-why.
If don't need 100 pct of Excel's bazillion features, Libre Office is a decent alternative. It works with Excel files, doesn't need Windows (but it can run there), and doesn't nag you to join any clouds. And it's free. There's very few home users who actually need full Office.
Its on the reverse.... bartender (from seagul scientific, which their software is fantastic by the way) doesn’t support it...
I have a bug filed with them where if you build a thing in google sheets and export to xlsx and attempt to connect to that data source it crashes.... (but if it is native xlsx it works fine) hence my need to install excel on that particular machine, as the bartender software can take tabular input for varying data for each sticker printed ( cannabis compliance labels, which I have now mastered)
They are a great company though, and bartender is an amazing program. I suggest everyone download their free version and learn it.
Every time I click the "domain join" button when I install a PC at work it never even ask which domain I want to join. I have to do it once the OS is fully installed.
The "offline account" was simply renamed to domain join. If it's an sentence selection error i won't be suprised. In this panel, there is nothing about domain join.
“Administered”. I’m not talking about local admin rights, I’m talking about the people in your IT department who administer a fleet of Windows PCs.
It doesn’t normally mean “create offline account”, but domain accounts are not the same as Microsoft accounts, and domain accounts are a normal part of enterprise deployments. So it does normally mean that you can create a non-Microsoft account. Yes, it’s stupid. Not defending it, just trying to explain what “join domain” means.
> They do, else MS would not need those dark patterns.
No, typical end users do not care what “domain join” means. They only care about creating offline accounts. “Domain join” isn’t supposed to mean “create offline account”, it’s supposed to let you join the computer to an AD domain. Or at least, that’s what I’d expect.
Users don't care about "offline account" either. (What does that mean to a user, they can't access the internet any more?) Same with the previous term before that, "local account", had no meaning to most "typical" end users for about the same reason.
Some of this I guess is semi-intentional dark patterns [1], but it's also a complex space where explaining the trade-offs to "typical" end users would involve a ton of wasted space and increasingly local/offline accounts aren't what a "typical" end user wants, because they aren't an IT Admin and don't understand the trade-offs and probably don't care to. Given no one seems to have a good name for them other than "offline accounts" or "local accounts", which would imply "can't connect to the internet" to "typical" end users, it's hard not to feel that it really probably is a Power User feature and it's as much an unintentional dark pattern simply because we don't have a good name for it and no one wants to explain the trade-offs to "typical" end users.
[1] Though I'm more willing than most to ascribe at least some good intentions to it: settings synchronization is more useful to typical end users than local sandboxes and devices that don't roam basic settings. The ability to recover logging into a device when a user forgets a password is also a huge necessary deal in 2019 because passwords are broken and typical end users have far too many of them. Microsoft also wants to kill the password as a thing in lieu of other factors. Getting end users out of daily password input would be good for us an industry.
(Yes, yes, I know the next three commenters will complain that it's all just for telemetry and surveillance, and I understand where y'all are coming from, but you are also not-quite-correct and it's a debate I'm tired of. Windows 10 has been increasingly better at allowing you to explore all of its telemetry collection and better with each update at providing tools for opting out of individual telemetry. Windows 10 and macOS/iOS are at the same levels of telemetry collection and accountability of such today. The telemetry debate is increasingly not productive nor interesting in the comments on HN and elsewhere.)
"Local accounts" is perfectly apt name. "Local accounts" doesn't come close to implying "can't join the internet" either, although "offline accounts" might.
Still none of this really justifies burying the option deep and using vague terminologies to hide this feature. Case in point: I had to google search the procedure to create a local account when I wanted to create an account for guests/others that use my laptop.
The pain point about telemetry is that Windows is a paid product and there shouldn't even be such a thing in a product that people pay for. And although there might (now) be settings to control telemetry, what good are they when Windows updates reset all settings regularly?
> "Local accounts" is perfectly apt name. "Local accounts" doesn't come close to implying "can't join the internet" either, although "offline accounts" might.
You have a higher opinion of the "typical" end user than I do. "Local" invites the question "local to what?" and "as opposed to what?". When the other option is "online account", then yes even "local" leads to "can't use on the internet" to certain types of users.
Burying a power user feature to avoid confusing inexperienced end users is justified. The argument over whether or not "local accounts" or "offline accounts" are a power user feature is a more interesting argument. I do think that if we can't come up for a name for them that isn't confusing to inexperienced end users, than that's at least one indicator that it may be a power user feature.
> The pain point about telemetry is that Windows is a paid product and there shouldn't even be such a thing in a product that people pay for.
People want data-driven improvements in paid products, too. (Would you rather Microsoft just blindly make changes? What are the alternatives? Go back to waterfall and nothing but overly detailed and over-engineered specs of what some PM thought was a good idea because they heard it from some rich Enterprise client at a tech conference three years ago?)
There are tons of paid products with telemetry. It's been highly upvoted advice here on HN, to do things like A/B testing, and metrics-driven development. Lots of paid products have telemetry (including Apple's and Google's).
"Paid products" is another amusing double standard I'm going to add to my list for telemetry complaints. "What's good for the startup goose, is not good for the old tech gander." --HN commenters, probably
> And although there might (now) be settings to control telemetry, what good are they when Windows updates reset all settings regularly?
There were always settings since Windows XP. The only thing Windows 10 did was change them from opt-in to opt-out by default. Microsoft then responded to arguments that the settings weren't granular enough, so now there's dozens more settings with pages of documentation each (and an explorer tool to log and examine collected telemetry data, if you wish).
The resets were bugs in the upgrade process that have generally been fixed since. Microsoft has been taking settings resets seriously, and absolutely considers them bugs. The way in-place upgrades work, migration scripts missing settings is a problem. Microsoft's "Beta" program (Insiders) is sadly not setup to find telemetry reset bugs because they need the telemetry most of all in Beta testing, so I feel it's understandably unfortunate that so many telemetry settings reset bugs have made it into production.
Local means something that is "local" to your computer (the tangible device) as opposed to "online" which is not "local" to your computer. It's a simple word which shouldn't take much effort to parse.
Local accounts aren't a "power user" feature either. I bet every person/household has guests over who might have to use the device (for work or something else). Whose Microsoft/Outlook Account should be used for such use cases? I hope you see the issue with considering local accounts a power user feature.
As far as changes to OS goes, MS should listen to customer feedback first and foremost. A minimal non personally identifying diagnostic information gathering would be fine too but instead you have this with Win 10:
> "This data is transmitted to Microsoft and stored with one or more unique identifiers that can help us recognize an individual user on an individual device" [1]
> It's been highly upvoted advice here on HN, to do things like A/B testing, and metrics-driven development.
Neither A/B testing nor metrics-driven development require overzealous collection of personally identifying data. You would do fine with anonymous data for such testing.
> Microsoft has been taking settings resets seriously
Not seriously enough it seems. The issues have continued throughout lifetime of Win 10 well into 2019 now. If it's a bug, it's easily longest running Win 10 bug now. My own settings were reset after the latest feature update. A google search shows that I'm not alone. I shudder thinking about the poor souls who disabled telemetry and failed to notice how an update reset their settings.
> I bet every person/household has guests over who might have to use the device (for work or something else).
In the era when everyone has a computer already in their pocket? In the era when a Windows 10 laptop can be bought at Wal-Mart for $200 or sometimes less?
We're in an era of single user devices. Statistically the "household computer" is gone, the Desktop/Tower a legacy form factor used mostly just by gamers now, and most "computing" people need is just done on their phones they keep in their pockets. The need to borrow someone else's device today is mostly just to throw YouTube videos on entertainment center screens to share and we've got Chromecast/Apple Cast/Miracast dedicated tools for that today.
Having more than one account, itself, on a device is a power user feature in 2019. Having a distinction between types of accounts and whether or not those accounts are backed by cloud accounts, is probably no less a power user feature than having multiple accounts on a device is in the first place.
> In the era when everyone has a computer already in their pocket? In the era when a Windows 10 laptop can be bought at Wal-Mart for $200 or sometimes less?
Yes. The form factor of a mobile phone is not at all conducive to productivity. You wouldn't buy $200 walmart Win 10 laptop for every guest that would like to work/create a word|excel|powerpoint doc/play games on your computer either.
“Administered”. If you don’t have IT specialists you don’t have people administering your PCs professionally.
I’m not talking about people who happen to use Windows in a professional setting. I’m talking specifically about people whose main job responsibilities include Windows administration.
If you don’t have IT specialists you don’t have people administering your PCs professionally.
Given that your stated alternative was home users, you seem to have excluded just about the entire world of small businesses with that definition. They might not have dedicated IT staff, but they still need to be able to administer their systems and in many cases a designated person will still be responsible for doing so. They just need to be able to do that as well as fulfilling whatever obligations they have in their primary role. Issues like privacy and security apply just as much in this context as in a large enterprise deployment with a whole department of dedicated staff to run it, but they need simple, transparent mechanisms for setting up the office network, deploying updates to the OS and installed software, etc.
> Is there anyone that even knows what "Domain join" means?
And the answer is, “IT specialists supporting Windows in corporate environments.” Generally speaking. I honestly cannot understand the motive or purpose for the rest of your comment, which seems to be about the needs of small businesses, which is not germane.
> Given that your stated alternative was home users, you seem to have excluded just about the entire world of small businesses with that definition.
Right, because I am specifically talking about IT specialists, who “administer Windows professionally”. This is the usual definition of “professionally”, that you “profess” to do something. If I talk about people who “write professionally”, this also does not include people who happen to write emails, memos, and other ordinary correspondence at work.
But this doesn’t really exclude small business, since it’s common for small businesses (and medium) to contract IT services.
Ah, sorry, it seems I misinterpreted your original comment. I thought you were defending Microsoft's decision to hide creation of a local account behind the deceptive button name, on the basis that those who were setting these PCs up in a business environment would know what it meant anyway.
First of all, I would have had no idea that's what "domain join" meant. But second, I love how the option is down there with "terms of use" and other things you're very unlikely to ever read or look at. And third, it's cute how even if you somehow find your way to this option, they have the "but even better, use the online account!" Oh my god.
Under "Domain join instead", I would assume that I could enter an appropriate domain credentials and the computer would join the domain. Essentially the same thing, that the OOB assistant in RHEL8/Fedora does, when choosing Enterprise login.
My initial thought was that they completely removed the option only in the Home version of Windows.
Since (I don't think) you can join Windows Home to a Domain, is that true? Is the option for a local account now only available in Windows Pro, unless you install Windows Home disconnected from the Internet?
Ah ! Maybe.
I only get Windows Pro editions, so i can't test this.
In both case, the outcame is sad:
Everyone here felt for something that is not checked(lacking vocabulary for this sentence), or Windows is getting worst for their users.
> I pay for the service so I don’t want to be the product.
I think this is worth thinking about for a bit. The trope is that if you're not paying then you're the product.
But it doesn't follow that if you are paying you are not the product. That depends entirely on business decisions that customers have little visibility into.
For any product you pay for, there may eventually be a decision to extract additional revenue streams by monetizing your data or attention.
The fact that this happened with cable TV and advertising before the era of the internet indicates that this is far from a new pattern. I expect to see it a lot in the next few years.
As someone in another thread mentioned, it's because the marketing budgets are way bigger than what people would, or even could, pay.
Whichever corporations are paying for these revenue streams of monetized data and attention, they can (and do) easily outbid whatever a human customer is willing or able to pay for software or services that don't track you.
It's pretty obvious when you think about it. All the incentives for commercial software / services / sites anywhere are stacked against the user actually paying with money instead of data.
There isn't even a good infrastructure for getting/passing this money, unlike the giant system of ad networks passing tracking data back and forth.
People (complete idiots, IMHO) have been saying this is the transaction, you're paying with your data for the "free internet". But for starters, there is no choice. Also, nobody asked me. I've been "paying" with my data without consent for YEARS, even though I try not to.
And now we see it's not an either/or question. They can just make you pay for the service AND extract your data and track you. Because why not both? Again we don't have a lot of choice.
> As someone in another thread mentioned, it's because the marketing budgets are way bigger than what people would, or even could, pay.
This makes no sense. Someone paying £43 a month for Sky TV in the UK is only worth another £5 a month in adverts. Maybe that works out fine, but I don't pay for Sky because of this. London Underground brainwashes millions of people every day. They spend £4.50 on a ticket, but TFL want an extra 15p from advert income. Passengers then spend the cost of that advertising and then some on products they see being advertised, a cost they wouldn't have born without the adverts.
Some businesses may make the bulk of their money from advertising other companies, but most don't.
I'm not sure about your examples, they don't seem to be on line data harvesting tracking ads, monetizing consumers of software or content. Maybe I'm missing the analogy here.
> They can just make you pay for the service AND extract your data and track you.
Indeed. When cable TV started, it didn't have advertising. The premise was that you were paying for the service, so they didn't have to show you ads. That situation lasted as long as ice cream in the Nevada sun. Cell companies were capitalizing on tracking data we were providing them -- despite the high cost of cell service -- long before the general public got wise. Microsoft just took longer to get to the same idea.
Microsoft is going to double down on this, and make the consumer version "free" by way of explicit advertising. If they lose customers, they won't care. They've got corporations around the globe by the short hairs for at least another generation. Maybe two. They've been losing the consumer space for years, and they're just going to ride it all the way into the ground.
Look no further than TV manufacturers, the moment one of them decided to substitute below market prices with selling people’s data the others had to follow to stay competitive!
I still wonder how true this really is. Every time this subject comes up, all I seem to find are people who just want a good screen, and often who don't mind paying a higher price for it. Presumably there are also people who are sufficiently price-sensitive when buying a large flat-screen TV that the reduction from having bundled junkware makes a difference, but as far as I know, I have yet to meet one.
If anything, by now I'd say "smart TV fatigue" is setting in, much the same as "smartphone fatigue" a little while ago. Enough people have had these devices for long enough to see all the a-bit-too-clever software get out of date and stop working, and then they start to see the bundled online services and so on as a negative and start asking their more techie friends and family for advice on how to avoid the problems next time.
The irony is that you can still buy just a good screen with good connectivity options and basic controls, but the market is advertised as "display screens" intended for things like advertising or video walls.
I don't understand why the same manufacturers/distributors offering these products don't also pitch them as TVs with well-defined specs and no junk, probably with some sort of "expert"/"pro" branding that makes them look like a high-end choice.
You could pitch one of those, a basic 2.1 home sound system or the like, and maybe a small control/switching box that everything plugs into and that also accepts your source feeds, and you've got a mini home-theatre-style arrangement that could be quite attractive to those who value decent gear but don't have the budget and/or space for a full home theatre setup that would cost at least 2-3x as much for entry-level equipment.
> The irony is that you can still buy just a good screen with good connectivity options and basic controls, but the market is advertised as "display screens" intended for things like advertising or video walls.
That used to be an obvious possibility, but recent products in this category tend to run variants of Android/Tizen/webOS complete with Wi-Fi to support remote management. There are still a few relatively "dumb" models of commercial displays out there, but they seem to be a dying breed.
Because only two manufacturers make large OLED screens and maybe three make advanced LED screens and they are all massive conglomerates that control the market.
I suppose my implied question here is why control the market in that way even if they do have the practical ability to do so? If there is a market for simple, good quality products and people willing to pay a fair price for them, why would you exclude it, particularly in favour of a market where more of your revenue comes from dubious sources that could backfire in terms of PR and/or be less reliable in terms of future potential earnings?
What about not simply enabling wifi connection on the tv? My few year old sony tv is the dumbest possible secondary pc monitor, with great screen quality. I couldn't care less about any of those apps, I have vastly superior PC for those if needed.
This is a dangerous argument to rely on, because it still allows for devices to phone home via independent means. Just as your new car may well have some sort of embedded mobile network access today, so your TV may come with a built-in SIM, or use some kind of mesh network that doesn't rely on your own home WiFi access.
The problem is the principle that it's OK for your devices to monitor you at all without your explicit knowledge and consent -- or even with those things, if the market leaves no reasonable alternative and so the consent isn't really consent at all.
I think this is only true for a small subset of tech-savvy people. Anecdotally, everyone I know that doesn't work in tech loves their smart TV—it's way more convenient for them than having a separate device connected to the TV, and they don't really care (or even know) about the privacy implications. And I suspect that this must be true more generally, otherwise companies would continue to make higher-cost "dumb" TVs to cater to that audience.
I know a lot of people who did like the "smart" features, in that they could stream online content of one kind or another direct to their TV.
I think the change we're starting to see among my group now is that the built-in software is starting to get out of date and not necessarily being maintained by the provider(s) of the service(s) affected, meaning from the user's point of view, the TV just turns on one day and can't connect to service X any more, with no way to fix it.
I'm not sure privacy has much to do with the discontent, because as you suggest, I doubt many people are even aware of the kind of tracking that is going on. When "smart" TVs or related devices get updated firmware and start doing things like injecting ads it really upsets people, but until they have some indication that any of this is happening, of course it doesn't really affect them or their opinions.
That's because Windows Division does not exist anymore as a separate business unit within MS. It's now a part of Azure. And Azure doesn't really care all that much about making desktop excellent. It'll just keep it good enough for you to buy more Azure, but not more than that.
I'm wondering if this is really the right move as in "desktop is definitely going down and everything will be web based". In that case sure, why bother throwing money at it. But should we realize in a couple years that this was overhyped and desktop OS and apps won't go away, everyone will have migrated to OSX or Linux if Windows quality continues to decline at that rate.
And MS as a company would probably be just fine with that. They could even port Office to Linux then. 70+% of Azure is Linux already, so Windows is rapidly becoming a costly liability in Azure. Office customers are captive, it's not like there's anything else available that could compete anyway, so they'll tolerate a lot of abuse. Until there's a realistic prospect of losing significant revenue, MS isn't going to give a shit. It's (tactically, but not strategically) the right thing to do. Win 10 with minor tweaks is going to easily last another decade or more. Who cares if Mac is better: LOB apps don't run there anyway.
>But should we realize in a couple years that this was overhyped and desktop OS and apps won't go away, everyone will have migrated to OSX or Linux if Windows quality continues to decline at that rate.
Windows still claims nearly 80% of desktop market share, while OS X has less than 15%. Linux is around 2%.
Assuming people in any significant number care about having to use an online account is naive. Apple requires it. Google requires it. Amazon requires it. Xbox Live requires it. Facebook requires it. Sony requires it. People are used to this. If you think this will affect Windows in any way, you probably read too much HN.
> Assuming people in any significant number care about having to use an online account is naive. Apple requires it.
macOS does not require a cloud account. Technically you don't even need one for iOS, but most people will create an Apple ID for the App Store (and I hope this distribution monopoly on iOS will eventually be broken up).
In a similar way for macOS enabling the offline root user has been under Network Account Server > Directory Utility forever. Microsoft is not alone in their logic here.
In a similar way for macOS enabling the offline root user has been under Network Account Server > Directory Utility forever.
Isn't that more for security reasons? Apple doesn't want users enabling the root account unless they know what they're doing, so they make it hard to find. (And, really—coming from someone who runs with SIP turned off—there's very little reason to enable that account.)
I wasn't exclusively referring to the online account here. Every update seems to break something in very stupid ways or change things around for no apparent reason. Friends working as admins in companies can't stop complaining over the last two updates. On every family meet up there's someone seeking tech support and I can just shrug and tell them the last version of Windows I really used was 7 and then my current dual boot alternative is still 8.1 which I need like twice a year. Which is immediately countered with "oh yeah I wish things were still like in XP or 7". And yes the most valid argument currently comes from enterprise customers depending on some expensive and important Windows only software. But that argument will only be true until it isn't anymore and then what? Since when has it ever worked out for some tech company to just stop investing in a product and try to milk the cash cow forever? Luckily Microsoft has a lot of other things going on like azure so it won't be the end of them, but that just brings us back to my initial comment: Is it the right move to let Windows go over the next decade and refocus, our might they regret it?
Desktop OS and apps won’t go away for the next 10 or 20 years by sheer inertia of the corporate market, and the halo effect on home users.
And I guess the past month/years issues don’t affect business users (corporate managed desks will have any problematic feature disabled from the start)
“Everyone” migrating to OSX/linux won’t happen for many many years, even if they keep screwimg up home and hobbyist market. Corporate market is also their strong point, so money wise they’ll be fine with that.
PC gamers won't be switching to an Xbox, and so we require a desktop. It won't just be halo effect on home users, but ironically also Halo effect. The remastered collection being ported over as we speak, starting with Halo: Reach iirc.
And for small businesses, the analogous barrier is often "creative software". More and more administrative services used by businesses are moving online, and in some cases we're forced to use them whether we like it or not (for example, because certain tax/legal returns now have to be filed online using approved software). However, when it comes to creating reports, or artwork, or engineering schematics for a new building, or the 3D model you're going to be animating using WebGL on your new site, the dominant software is still almost entirely on desktops.
Some of that software is Windows-only. There are quite a few good products that run on Mac. Relatively little runs on open platforms like Linux. And for now, macOS has its own issues for long-term professional use, starting with Apple's reluctance to give any sort of concrete guarantees about support longevity. So that can be quite a barrier to migrating away from Windows for businesses.
It would be nice to think that in time Linux or other free platforms would fill the gap, but it's a chicken and egg problem. As an interesting contrast, within a very short time after Adobe went cloud/subscription with the dominant package of graphics/publication software, we had several smaller and more agile competitors entering the market at much more attractive (and non-subscription) price points: Sketch, the Affinity products, etc. We don't know to what extent any of these might already have been in development before and how much they were motivated directly by the shift to Creative Cloud, but we do know that the closest OSS equivalents have been around for years and made negligible impact, which doesn't bode well for the viability of Linux desktops as an alternative platform for "normal" business use (as opposed to, for example, specialist work like software development).
The significance of Excel in large corporate environments is definitely underestimated by a lot of people who evangelise other platforms and software like LibreOffice as viable alternatives.
On the other hand, IME this is more of an enterprise-scale thing. Smaller businesses tend to be less firmly tied to existing software packages, and do less heavily customised work with Excel specifically, so there's likely to be less of a barrier for them to migrate.
Excel and COBOL will both still be around in 50 years. The entire global financial system depends on them, and will probably continue to do so at least until the Cyborg Uprising.
I am not at all in PC gaming community, but I had the impression that more and more people were moving to linux. In particular Steam for linux seemed to be praised a lot as a stable platform (up to a point where making non games run on Steam would be a viable option).
Would you see a future where gamers would embrace linux in enough numbers that it becomes a main platform ? I see their communities as willing to bear with some level of technical complexity as long as there are clear results, I was seeing the driver issues as the only real showstopper to have them move out of windows.
if home wireless printers ever become usable (reliably over wifi) i might then consider web based an option, but only because i know that will never happen
I’ve had flawless wireless printing on Mac OS with an HP printer for years. iOS too. Didn’t realize it was still flaky. Guess I got lucky with my combo.
Given Satya's background, it seems fairly clear what the board were looking for when they chose their new CEO, and he's delivering exactly what we might have expected.
To be fair to him, from a business perspective, look at Microsoft's share price since. As long as the cloud hype continues and no-one is looking too closely at where Microsoft's money is (and in some cases now isn't) coming from, the stock is likely to keep going up and he probably has free reign to do almost anything he wants. What is anyone going to do about it?
I'm still a little surprised that none of the other IT giants appears to have identified the Windows 7 EoL next year as a rare opportunity to grab a significant chunk of the desktop market and been building a credible competitor. Even with the current trend for shifting things online, local computing isn't going anywhere any time soon, not least because many people and businesses want a level of security, privacy, longevity and reliability that online services simply don't offer. We've seen many times that a new, significantly different platform with enough "killer apps" to gain a foothold can then grow and do well, from mobile devices to games consoles and of course the whole world of cloud computing and SaaS, all of which have disrupted traditional desktop/laptop/server markets significantly while creative very lucrative new industries in themselves. I was wondering a few years ago as the intended strategy for Windows 10 was becoming clear whether an Apple or a Red Hat or even a traditional heavyweight like IBM might have stepped in. I guess no-one thought the cost/risk was attractive enough.
> I'm still a little surprised that none of the other IT giants appears to have identified the Windows 7 EoL next year as a rare opportunity to grab a significant chunk of the desktop market and been building a credible competitor.
Who, exactly, would be positioned to do that? Apple's not interested. RedHat/IBM I guess I could see, but their customer base is very different.
I wondered if Apple might make a play for that market.
They have relatively little skin in the game in terms of online services. They have credibility in both mobile and laptop markets. They have at least some expertise in related areas like server, workstation and networking products. Perhaps more significantly, historically much of their success has come from making big plays that created new markets, and their current golden goose is looking a bit tired.
I could have imagined them offering an antidote to cloud-everything for businesses, particularly smaller ones that have more flexibility and less lock-in with their current brands, that wanted good centralised management of both static and mobile devices under in-house control.
I could also have imagined them offering some sort of home networking hub where everything from your Macbook to your iPhones and iPads to your TV and media streaming could talk to a centralised box that offered media storage, a controlled way to use online services for things like backups and media streaming, and even some sort of remote/VPN access so you could connect into all your normal facilities over a mobile network while out and about.
Given the pressure they're increasingly coming under with their traditional strategy of trying to promote expensive, high-end mobile devices and a closed ecosystem, I wondered if they might see an opportunity and commit some serious resources to making a play for that hybrid/combined/in-house market. Apparently not.
I also wondered whether there might be some sort of grand coalition among the big Linux players, which probably means Red Hat, Canonical and possibly Valve. There's probably enough money and enough potential upside there to fund the creation of rival "killer app" level software for Linux desktops. And again, then you have both client and server side expertise and some experience building custom hardware as well, which opens up a world of possibilities if you can generate a critical mass of interest.
Then you have the likes of IBM, who have been riding the waves of changing infrastructure and local/remote pendulum swings for many years, and certainly have the resources to build a viable new platform if they wanted to. It's not as if they're strangers to either corporate strategy with enterprise customers or building a solid desktop platform, after all.
And finally, there's always the chance of a dark horse. There are a lot of people out there who used to work for big name companies that are no longer with us and who have developed solid products that ultimately didn't make it for mostly non-technical reasons, and there is a lot of VC money around. I didn't think it was inconceivable that someone would put together a credible executive team and raise a lot of early funding with a prize this big at stake.
> They have relatively little skin in the game in terms of online services.
App Store, iTunes Music Store, iTunes Book Store, iCloud, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, etc.
Apple has been making as much of a PR stink about becoming an online services-focused company as Microsoft has. Arguably Apple has been doing even better in direct-to-consumer online services than Microsoft has in the same time period (their app store underperforming; their recent shuttering of an eBook store; etc). Apple just doesn't have (or seem to have interest in) the "big iron" side of Cloud services like AWS/GCP/Azure.
App Store, iTunes Music Store, iTunes Book Store, iCloud, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, etc.
These are generally not the kind of SaaS online services that compete with desktop software, though. Rather, they're primarily ways of delivering software and media content that is then used locally. That actually fits very well with a model of promoting local devices, local networks and centralised access to online services, which is one of the reasons I thought Apple might make a move in that direction. The notable exception is iCloud, but if you consider that this one is primarily about sync and backup facilities and if you're promoting some sort of office server or "home hub" to centralise storage and connectivity to things like offsite backups, again that would fit quite neatly.
Pretty much all of their brand recognition comes from people who buy a computer that starts up to the Windows logo, or arrive at their office to find a machine that runs Windows. The Backoffice-centric ecosystem will remain where it is out of mostly inertia, but its future is as cloud hosted services.
> In general I have a positive opinion about what MS is doing lately, but Windows is a glaring exception, it’s getting worse and worse at an alarming rate.
I think following the money shows part of why this is true.
It used to be that MS had three cash-cows: Windows, Office, SQL Server. Everything else, even Exchange, sharepoint, etc, on their own, made relatively little or a loss but were part of the larger ecosystem and therefore used to sell the other three.
It is now the case that the cash-cows are Azure (including AzureSQL), Office, SQL Server (on-prem). Windows is very much off the top list and is there mainly to sell the rest of the ecosystem and the fact that dumping it (or even just de-prioritising it too far) would look very bad.
That MS ecosystem is increasingly OS-agnostic and going forward this is going to continue to be the trend. SQL Server runs on Linux too now. VSCode is cross-platform and either that will continue to grow more of Visual Studio's features of VS itself will start to become cross-platform. Office has online versions which while having many notable feature gaps are pretty useable for many tasks and are getting more so. Much of what runs on Azure is not Windows either very much so (i.e. is running on Linux in VMs) or effectively so (running as app services where neither the dev nor the admin cares about the OS underneath as long as the right APIs are available).
Given the amount of effort desktop Windows must take, I'm sure they'd be happy to dump it sooner rather than later: let someone else deal with all that hardware compatibility faf and all those "real" man-on-the-street demanding-but-clueless end users on the desktop and all the security issues that come with them, keep server Windows going for Azure/similar (where the range of virtual hardware can be nicely constrained compared to real hardware variance and the security surface can be easier to manage too), and support other OSs in VMs as well as possible to make running them on Azure resource as friction free as it can be (aside from the friction of needing to pay!).
> In general I have a positive opinion about what MS is doing lately, but Windows is a glaring exception, it’s getting worse and worse at an alarming rate.
Ayup. Win10 finally broke the camel's back and I started the process of figuring out how to transfer as much as we can to Linux.
The hardest part is that our embedded development stuff is all Windows. :( I've been trying to get VSCode, Segger, and embedded boards to play nice together. I haven't been sufficiently successful that I could start pushing it onto the dev team yet.
As a fellow embedded software engineer, I made the migration from Windows to Linux some time ago. You'll see that except for old targets (or highly proprietary ones like fpga) most if not all tools used today are actually open source ones (ide based on eclipse, gcc toolchain, jtag debugger...). Once you understand how they all play together you'll see that it's actually easier to work on Linux, as those tools are in their primary element, not half bad ports to Windows !
> You'll see that except for old targets (or highly proprietary ones like fpga) [...]
Your overall point is stronger than you think: Xilinx's FPGA toolchain [1] has official Linux support, and their embedded software toolchain (based on yocto and gcc) actually depends on Linux!
[1] Xilinx is the market leader for general purpose and high-performance FPGAs. The situation is slightly different for space-grade and very low-power FPGAs, although Microsemi has been supporting Linux for many years as well.
Official Suport for Xilinx means "should work some of the time", provided you use this old and bloated daemon to communicate over USB. You will still need a separate hardware killswitch to work remotely, because the driver is flaky as hell.
Linux is _by far_ the best platform for embedded development.
Vscode is available as an official snap (on Windows you need to download and update it manually), Segger tools and openocd are fully supported. GCC cross-compiler and even some flashing tools are part of the distro and just an apt-get away.
This also means that everyone get the same tools (same version, same bugs). Which makes collaboration much easier.
> This also means that everyone get the same tools (same version, same bugs).
Everywhere I've worked solved this by having the toolchain available via a network share that you would mount/copy, or checked into p4 so that everyone would be on the same version and you would know what compiler version was used to build a particular release. I suppose you could achieve the same thing by building in a Docker container..
This is kind of the idea behind the hermetic environments that Bazel enforces, and is essential if you want bit-for-bit reproducible builds.
Maybe that used to be the case? For at least the last few VS Code updates, it's been entirely in-app. The update is downloaded in the background, and VS Code then prompts you to restart the app to apply the update.
Hmmm, this is kind of the wrong way round. In my experience all the good stuff is on Linux, and windows have these bad broken ports. Depends on a lot things I'm sure...
I've done lots of embedded development on Linux, and it's mostly been a painless experience. Segger has a Linux library which works great, as well as Embedded Studio which runs on Linux. GCC-arm and several other compilers are avaible. I've been working a lot with Nordic Semiconductor's ARM-based SoCs, and I'd say Linux is a fully viable environment for the applications I've worked on.
Proton (Steam's custom WINE) is really really good (you can turn it on for all games). Of course it still breaks games that use excessive DRM, but I avoid those games anyway.
> Games is literally the only reason keeping me installing Windows. Hoping this changes with some viable alternative.
If you have the money and the space for a second computer, use the computer with Windows for that specialized task and use a real* computer for everything else? We've been whining about this nonsense for over two years now and I think we need to take a hint.
Yeah I do have a laptop for work only, however the gaming desktop is always that much more powerful and some things are tempting to do there (not to mention better display). Windows now has embedded Linux, so I can see maybe a setup that uses the same files from Windows by launching some Linux environment when I need to work. I just hope that because of this Linux/Windows integration, some of the reverse can happen and Linux can get DirectX support for current version.
I have little time to play games these days, but I do that.
Have two machines, both always on, one of them a windows one for games, the other runs linux for everything else. I use a usb switch to, on-the-fly, change all the relevant devices (mouse, keyboard, headphone dac/amp, etc) and adjust the monitor input to use one or the other. It works extremely well, and takes ~1-2 seconds to switch.
Dual booting isn't "difficult", but is frought with a lot of little issues that probably should be understood. Ex: UEFI Boot vs Legacy BIOS. Bootloaders, Grub vs Windows bootloader, etc. etc.
I prefer buying a 2nd flash drive and dual-booting across different drives entirely, so that Windows / Linux don't even share the same bootloader. Its not like $200 for another 1TB Flash drive is expensive, and apparently I need the space anyway.
Perhaps more significantly: there are around 1.3 billion PC gamers out of a larger 2.5 billion video gamers globally. Around 35% of Americans are PC gamers, although the largest market region is now Asia-Pacific.
Amongst people most likely to care about the concerns raised here, the proportion is likely even larger.
From my personal experience, there is a large overlap between people who like to play PC games and people who are interested in and curious about computing technology, and would otherwise be inclined to use Linux.
Although the trend appears to be changing with the likes of Proton, the lack of Linux compatibility for games keeps these people tied to Windows, and keeps them from adopting Linux.
Unfortunately, only platform for hardcore PC games that major titles support, at least first. PC has always been at the cutting edge of gaming, however for some reason still DirectX which is owned by MS, is the preferred tech for most major game companies that target PC.
It really seems like the current management is hell-bent on destroying any remaining goodwill among Windows users.
>I’ve always assumed that I’m locked into using Windows but after all this crap I’m starting to look into alternatives even though they’v got shortcomings on their own.
Yeah, I really wish there was an alternative I liked better.
Thanks for that search problem link I am exactly one of those users and start menu search just isn’t working. I have switched to Launchy as an alternative after years of being happy with the start menu search. I can finally look for a solution now, nice.
May I recommend Keypirinha [1]
over Launchy? I recently tried all of the launchers I could find for Windows and KP was by far the best, and does not get enough recognition in my view.
So far, no. I have reset search index, reindexed and tried the PowerShell commands from the KB article.
Search in Windows Explorer works just fine - only Start menu doesn’t. Troubleshooter says incorrect permissions for search directories but I haven’t fiddled with those. Tried repairing permissions and giving everyone permission but doesn’t help :-(
What worked for me was uninstalling the September cumulative update and the August cumulative update[1], then flagging those two to avoid that they get reinstalled the next time Windows updates[2].
The first time Windows update created the spike in CPU, the "fix" was to restore the cache used by Cortana at
"%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_cw5n1h2txyewy\LocalCache"
Come the 2nd update that borked the start menu, I suspected that it might be because I restored the cache and so the "fix" was not applying correctly. I then proceeded to wipe the cache altogether and it simply rebuilt itself.
Protip: If trying to delete files using windows built in tools throw up errors (mostly permissions related. this will not help you delete a file whose file handle is locked though.), trying using rm from cygwin. Works every single time.
I disagree with your premise. For many people this will force increased personal security and make their accounts more easily recoverable in case they forget their passwords.
I'm something of a security expert, having consulted on architure implemented by several of the largest anti-virus distributors and retailers in the world. My honest opinion is that people need a dramatically better understanding of how domains work. If they want the increased privacy they should need to understand how to setup and use a local domain well enough to find the new location for creating a local account.
For those who cannot do this, their device security and therefore personal privacy is far better served by registering a microsoft account.
Any privacy concerns stemming from trust should be addressed by laws governing the acceptable use of user data. California is already pursuing such laws, and we should be supporting those efforts because they are addressing the true root cause of most modern privacy issues.
I agree with the last paragraph of your comment, but still I think users should be able to choose. “Security by dark pattern” doesn’t sound to me like the best solution we could possibly come up with.
It is bad, but I do not think you are stuck. But there are two fronts -- business offerings are going the same way. There is lots of pressure to use almost exclusively MS hosted services. And, in that market, not everything has a good replacement.
The reason why I feel like I’m stuck is based on my personal use case. Basically I need two things:
A. Being able to use some proprietary software not available on Linux
B. Being able to self build so I can select the HW that works for me
With Linux I lose A and with Mac I would lose B. I’m thinking that a combo Mac Mini + Tower PC with Linux could work, but using two OSes at the same time, even with shared NAS, KVM switch etc., would not be the best in terms of UX
What about C: use Linux for the main desktop, use Wine for things that require Windows, use a VM with windows exclusively to launch that one annoying app which won't work under wine?
Oh yes of course that’s the cheapest option and probably good for most use cases, in my specific case I was thinking about a Mac Mini because some of the proprietary SW that I use (Adobe Suite, Ableton Live) probably wouldn’t run very well in a VM (but I may be wrong and I will of course test before spending money)
Edit: besides the VM, I hear Wine supports many apps nowadays so it’s worth trying as well
Look up Bitwig studio as a replacement for Ableton Live. I know it's an expensive tool to replace, but its workflow is very similar to Ableton Live and it supports Linux.
Oh of course, I like Bitwig very much! The modular engine ("Grid") is great! But I have a lot of material from the past in Live so, even if I switch to Bitwig, I may still need to use Live from time to time. But I guess a Win VM would suffice for that type of usage.
Can confirm, was able to run Live 9 on W7 in VirtualBox on ~decade-old hardware earlier this year. It was easy and worked like a charm. Was running Arch Linux at the time, and used the VM images from here: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/v...
I've considered bitwig for Linux production but a big issue is you end up losing a lot of VSTs that aren't native to Linux (Serum and Massive, both wavetable synths, are a good example).
There isn’t just one app, there are plenty. Excel and adobe cs are the obvious ones. If you’re not in programming (exclusively) you’re stuck on Windows or Mac.
I know there are plenty of things that don't work with wine, but realistically, how many of them does each person need to work, and how many are "defaults"? For example if you spend 90% of your time in illustrator, do you need excel specifically, or "an app with text in cells"? And if you're crunching market data in excel all day, do you need Adobe, or just something to draw an arrow on a screenshot?
I had a similar discussion with my mother recently. She was buying a new laptop and went to check it out in the shop a few days before she actually went to buy it. The lady in the shop on the first visit tried to upsell her some office package for some crazy money. I instead got her to think about what she actually needs and wants and got her to realize that for the odd document or letter she writes and prints (and doesn't share files with others where pixel perfect formatting is important), so a copy of Libre Office actually does everything she needs and then some, and saved her, I don't remember how much, $200 or something.
If I had a penny for every time a 'Gold level' supported program simply failed to work properly or required some nearly undocumented workaround* , I'd be rich.
* No, I don't consider having to search bugzilla 'documentation'.
Edit: Note that I'm talking about Wine here. When wine is wrapped by people who know what they're doing it works well - Crossweavers/Proton etc. - for the specific subset of programs they're tuned for. Otherwise you have all the wine-typical issues outside that subset.
Right? Don't get me wrong, that Wine works at all is pretty damned incredible, but anyone who thinks of it as a drop in Windows replacement is going to be severely disappointed.
Whatever worked is highly unlikely to stop working.
New to software development, are we? That is such a laughably bad assumption that I’ll assume what I think you meant to say is not really what you meant to say.
But I’m glad to know that editing slides works just fine in Excel. From the link, “Gold” means: “Works as well as (or better than) on Windows with workarounds.” The test results say online login crashes. That tells me their certification program doesn’t mean shit.
It's not a certification program. It's just reporting system.
And yes, it is what I meant. For software like wine, if something works in version X, you can expect it will work in X+1. Sure, there will always be some regression from time to time, but wine's whole existence is based on the idea that they support Window's APIs. These are not random features they'll decide to remove from time to time.
> For software like wine, if something works in version X, you can expect it will work in X+1.
Anyone that expects this is setting themselves up for disappointment.
My actual experience with this has not matched yours. Wine is extremely fragile. There is a reason why things like winetricks and using dedicated wine prefixes exists, for one.
This is not a knock on wine really, but the complexity of the problem at hand.
> These are not random features they'll decide to remove from time to time.
Emulating windows APIs is extremely complicated. Even with the best intentions of not breaking something it happens, quite a bit.
The crowd on HN is biased towards software development, something overwhelmingly well supported on Linux (it’s my daily driver as much as possible for that). But I assume there is a long tail of other professionals here... using their systems for actual industry work that isn’t programming. An area that is terrible on Linux sadly.
Photoshop and Illustrator and Premiere are not “defaults” on any system I know of.
If you need to draw an arrow on a screenshot, there are ironically more free beer and open source programs available on Windows to do this (even gimp). If someone wants to pirate adobe that isn’t an aspiring designer (which is sort of a rite of passage), and has it just to collect that’s cool, but irrelevant... but I assume if someone has the CS on their machine it’s to do actual work with industry standard tools - that certainly is the case for me.
There are plenty of things to do in Excel that are best served by excel and not crunching market data. I have tried libreoffice calc multiple times in the past. Google sheets is also cool for certain things, but no excel killer.
And here’s the kicker:
If you need to just put arrows on screenshots or an app with text in cells (and you’re not a dev), then you don’t need a desktop running Linux or windows... you can do with an iPad.
A lot of businesses I know seem to be using Office365 for Word and Excel and such nowadays and they work fine in Linux. If you happen to work somewhere that uses Office365, there's no need for actually running Windows or Mac.
> I'm going to suggest that the majority of Adobe users will get by just fine with Gimp.
Well, frankly, your suggestion is useless. Not even the maintainers of gimp have the temerity to suggest that Gimp is a suitable replacement for Adobe photoshop. I don't care about the "users" of Adobe that pirate it. The tools are expensive and people pay for it. The majority of people that pay for Adobe Photoshop have very good reasons for doing so.
You are clueless if you think Gimp can replace Photoshop. You can do a little research to see why, it's well documented. Morons have been suggesting Gimp as a PS replacement since the late 90s and there is now nearly 20 years of responses for why that is untenable.
I'm thinking of going down that route, but for various reasons I NEED Outlook and Office a lot, although my main work is development and could work on another platform.
If you do this (as I did in the past) you're now juggling N Windows VMs to avoid ONE Windows host system..
Sorry, kinda mixed the "Need office" requirement I wrote about and my previous "Different VMs for different needs" (Office was one, a Windows product I build extensions for was in another, then the corporate environment tends to keep VMware images around to simulate a customer environment / to prepare a demo system for sales etc etc).
You're right. One VM could work for office and other utilities. Unfortunately for me it grew into a mess of VMs, fast.
They don’t handle well some edge cases, for example I had Word documents with complex layouts that would be broken and partially unreadable when using the web version of Word.
If your proprietary product is in any way niche (i.e. not the usual adobe/autocad example) I would suggest petitioning the company to support Linux (or web) clients. Software developers are often pro-Linux and a few customer suggestions might be enough to force the issue.
You could go the hackintosh route. Though I haven’t tried it in a decade or more, I’ve seen some people with pretty cool setups. Certainly more work to maintain than just Linux or an official Mac.
Recently hackintoshed a XPS 15 9550, and holy shit it became the best laptop I’ve used so far. Everything (including bluetooth and wifi) works, no butterfly keyboard shenanigans, still decent performance, lots of ports (including hdmi and usb 3), the touchpad works perfectly (with all multitouch gestures).
Try r/hackintosh vanilla guide. You may find, that other guides are refering to old/obsolete tools, and thus will not work with current macOS.
Also expect learning new things and spending several evenings trying. Compared to hackintosh, installing Linux on random hardware is a walk in the park.
> Also expect learning new things and spending several evenings trying. Compared to hackintosh, installing Linux on random hardware is a walk in the park.
I've been a Hackintosh user for the past decade.
I've not done it yet, but the next time I need to do a brand new Hackintosh setup, I'm planning on using ESXI. It seems perfect—you're getting very little performance loss in exchange for a setup which is (kind of) officially supported by Apple.
Maybe when I actually do it, I'll discover some terrible downside, but it seems incredibly appealing.
I did my first hackintosh few days ago just for the learning experience, I have normal Macs otherwise. It does have a problem with flickering screen; I suspect it is due to 10-bits per pixel that I cannot switch from and the cheap HDMI2 cable used.
Wrt ESXI - are you aware, that with ESXI you will lose local console (and all the GPU-goodness)? After ESXI boots, it has only text-mode notice, how to connect remotely and that's it. You will be stuck with remote access. For things like build machine or test-runner, that's fine, but if you want to run something interactive... well, let us know about the experience ;)
Maybe is not appropriate to "convert" you here, but I recommend self building so you get good Linux support, and then running Windows in a VM. Usually you can run program in WINE, but VM should always work.
Thank you. I’m hearing from many other comments in this thread that Wine works very well nowadays, I’ll give it a shot (alongside a Win VM) before investing in a Mac Mini
I use the combo Mac Mini and PC tower at home. The crucial piece of software that makes this work for me is Synergy. It allows you to share a keyboard and mouse across Linux, Mac and Windows (and support cut-n-paste of text across all three). It works like a charm.
Adobe Suite, Ableton Live with various VST plugins. I’m going to investigate the Wine route, as I’m hearing that it supports many applications nowadays
I’m not saying you’re wrong. But winedb gives garbage status to the latest, the installer on playonlinux is unverified and posted by a banned account. I have found no testimonial that the latest works now other than yours.
So here’s the thing. Even if you’re right (and not confusing some older version as the latest.. that often happens in these discussions... what do you think is the latest version of adobe CC?), this is a terrible support story and not something that most pros that rely on adobe tools want to mess around with.
One of the winedb reviews says this:
“adjusting parameters in some effects such as lens blur makes program unusable (must kill app)”
If you have enough RAM you can run VirtualBox alongside your other programs on Linux. I used to run Android Studio in a Windows VirtualBox and it worked perfectly. Never had an issue.
Wonder what happens if you try to install without any network connectivity whatsoever. Like when it asks for internet just dont connect. I feel like it falls back to an offline account.
I'm not trying to diminish your situation, but it seems a bit hyperbolic to suggest that anyone is forced to use Windows. If you really are being physically forced to do so against your will, that seems like even more reason to avoid them as much as possible.
I'm confused, is this not a website for hackers and entrepreneurs whose response to unemployment is starting your own business? Or am I in the wrong place?
> In general I have a positive opinion about what MS is doing lately
Dont get fooled. They got better because they have competition. The company is still mostly a marketing firm longing for the days when it could abuse positions of monopoly.
There has been no changes in their structure that would change their core ethics.
...and from what I can tell, their online account security is craptastic.
Here’s a true story that happened to my family. My son is the only person in the house who uses Windows. For his game machine. He set up a Microsoft online account. It got hacked - someone set up a fake family and managed to get my son’s account listed under it as a child. As a consequence, he couldn’t install any new software. I’m not sure what the point of this particular hack is, but that was the result.
So we called Microsoft customer service. It turns out that there is no way to get an account removed from a family once it’s listed there. The Windows rep we talked to had a recourse, though. He proposed that we, the three of us, attempt to reverse-hack the fake “dad”’s account over the phone by trying to guess his password. I had to explain to the gentleman that, even though we were within our moral rights to do this, a) it was almost certainly illegal, and b) doomed to failure.
He didn’t understand the issue. Eventually we had to agree to disagree, and hang up on him. We never got my son’s account back. We wiped his computer and installed Windows via “use offline account”. I’m glad this was last year and not today, I guess?
> ...and from what I can tell, their online account security is craptastic.
I'm not convinced that their offline security is good, either.
I sometimes will pick up my Surface Pro 4 and disconnect it from the charger. Disconnecting from the charger usually (but not always...not sure what determines it) wakes it. It then turns on their equivalent of Apple's Face ID, and tries to log in.
Sometimes I don't actually want that yet, as I just picked it up to take it somewhere else. So I'll hit the power button to put it back to sleep. The screen blanks...and then sometimes it quickly comes back, logged in.
The thing is I've sometimes had it do this when I've been careful to have my face out of view, holding it so I can only barely see the screen around the edge to see if disconnecting power will wake it up and I'll need to hit power to put it back to sleep.
This doesn't happen all the time, but it has happened several times, leading me to wonder if there is some sort of glitch if you interrupt a face-based login attempt at just the right time via the power button causing it to think it logged in.
Face logon takes some seconds to initialize, and if you interrupt it it gets confused. But the solution to your issue is to have the type cover closed when you unplug it.
As far as I can figure out, you also need to opt for manually unlocking bitlocker via USB key (prone to copy/theft) or via typing in a passphrase (inconvenient) in order to safeguard the encryption key.
Windows will otherwise use hsm to store your key (as evidenced by eg face unlock working) - it's not at all clear how that could possibly be secure if an attacker steals your device?
If the key is in the HSM, then what's protecting your data is the trust in the boot chain not being broken, and the OS login not not being compromised (theoretically).
Booting an alternate OS, or removing the media will result in the HSM not giving up the key, and rendering the drive unusable for all attackers except those able to physically probe the HSM chips and extract keys. (theoretically)
Right. It's not really the hsm itself I worry about (although as we saw with the Xbox hack people are able to do some crazy stuff) , but the possibility of working around/breaking the os login manager - manipulating the camera or hooking up a custom "keyboard" or some such.
For example i have trouble trusting pin login against brute force when the attacker has unrestricted physical access - including the possibility of replacing/manipulating the ram chips etc.
> ...and from what I can tell, their online account security is craptastic.
There's something weird and shady going on: I did created MS account to get this "marvelous" free Windows 10 offer once the update was smuggled on my Windows 7 installation and in subsequent buggy releases I had to reinstall the OS from scratch. So I had to login to activate this thing but I choose to not use the account later switching to local one (I did created an offline one during OOBE) and yet, Windows is still holding credentials to the online account somewhere because Activity section of the MSA Privacy page is still registering OneDrive activity coming from my desktop. I am not logged anywhere in OS, credentials manager is cleared out, OneDrive application is removed but still, it happens.
It seems to me MS customer support is incapable of doing anything meaningful with your account, except making it easier to be hacked via social engineering.
My MS account had my desktop's Win 10 Pro N (the one with less crap) license attached to it. When I bought a new laptop with Win 10 Pro (regular, non-N), my desktop would suddenly claim that its license was invalid. Great. Called support, but nothing they could do except recommending to reinstall Windows. No guarantee the other system would then not go into that "your license is invalid state" if I use the N license again. Solution: Screw them, I'll install kmspico.
I'm probably lucky I use that sh*tshow of an OS only for gaming, and Linux for everything else (including work - we're essentially a Linux company even though most of our customers (embedded devs) still use windows.
>My MS account had my desktop's Win 10 Pro N (the one with less crap)
Not sure what you mean by "less crap". The only advantage of the N versions is that it doesn't have Windows Media Player. You need enterprise to set telemetry level to lowest, and enterprise LTSC to not have Windows store (and a bunch of other UWP apps) installed by default.
The family accounts are crazy anyway. I once worked for an agency that had just bought its first Windows Phone for testing. Setting it up I dutifully signed in with the company’s MS account, but found that I couldn’t install any apps and there were loads of restrictions. It took me multiple hours of debugging to realise that because someone at the past had entered the company’s formation date in the birthdate of the MS account Windows Phone thought I was a child and blocked me from doing a load of the things I needed to do.
It's also a "griefer's first social engineering" hack, so it has at least some small "fun" difficulty connected to it. To add a child account when you aren't directly creating the child account on the same device, Microsoft requires an Invite flow that sends an email to the child account asking them to accept "joining the family". So either the griefer also had the password to the account to login to the account on their machine (or otherwise access emails to it) or they somehow social engineered the victim to accepting an invitation to "join them" for something. The griefer can blame the victim for being gullible and claim that it wasn't the griefer's fault the victim fell for it.
Yep, and last I checked (earlier this year I believe), there’s still a 14-character length limit on the MS account password. My bank’s better than that for crying out loud. Forget diceware or any other sane scheme, say hello to random hard-to-type punctuation characters.
And now you’re forced to use that as your computer password too, which you probably have to type multiple times a day.
(Okay, thankfully local account is still possible.)
Are you talking about online microsoft account or something windows specific? Because that's not true, my password has been 40+ characters for a long time and I change it pretty often.
For local login you can use a PIN, or set up windows hello, if you don't want to type in the long password every time.
> Are you talking about online microsoft account or something windows specific?
I'm talking about the Microsoft online account, and I stand by my statement that I was limited to 14 characters until relatively recently (maybe not earlier-this-year recent, that part I'm not sure). Looking at my Microsoft password history, I've changed it five times since 2012 (when I started using a password manager), each one is 14 characters long; the last change was done in 2016. I've been using 32+ character passwords wherever possible since 2012, so the only reason I was using 14 characters for Microsoft was because of the artificial limit imposed on me. And I did check a few times after 2016 to confirm the limit.
Anyway, I just tried to change the password again and this time I was warned that my Microsoft and Skype accounts would be merged if I carried through with the password change, so something did change after I last checked.
> For local login you can use a PIN, or set up windows hello, if you don't want to type in the long password every time.
I'm aware, but I don't consider a PIN secure, and I don't think Windows Hello is an option for most desktop workstations.
I've got more than a passing suspicion the 16 character limitation for Microsoft Accounts was a compatibility need with Windows XP, because the restriction was fixed almost exactly as soon as Windows XP finally hit EOL.
Thanks for that lovely story. It made me laugh at how badly MS is navigating whatever the fuck it is they envision this path they are going down/paving.
However, it did give me a Business Idea; (this is for some hungry 20somethings out there):
Sell a machine image which is basically a windows VM on top of Linux with support, which can handle and navigate all this bullshit that MS is throwing at common users, instead of trying to force the population to become sysads themselves.
Several people here have talked about “hacks” like what happened to ypur son, and I'm of course not saying they're wrong. I don't quite get the idea what it's supposed to get such hackers, though, so I think you shouldn't rule out sheer incompetence: Maybe someone else has a family member with the same or a similar name and was trying to add rhem, and a search threw up your son's name and they added him by mistake?
Shouldn't be able to happen, of course, but given it's Microsoft we're talking about, who would swear it couldn't?
Especially as a form of revenge. Yeah, it's petty, but it's been my experience that "petty" (and so many other gamers are going to down vote this) describes 90% of gaming cultures.
I'm almost certain that you were not talking to a real Microsoft employee. Most Fortune 500s have their helpdesks and customer service outsourced to the Tatas and Wipros, Cognizants and HCLs of the world, who may or may not further subcontract the actual bodies filling the roles. Quite frankly, first-level support is useless and ignorant; at best they have scripts for common issues, but to do anything you need to defeat their efforts to no-op and close the ticket, and instead get escalated to a real person with some agency and authority.
Even people who are bad at their jobs are real people. We can’t assume that everyone of low intelligence or motivation is sub human. Just say agency and authority, that made your point.
In the context of their jobs, they are a meat-based chatbot.
This is no reflection on them personally, this is by design of their job role. They have metrics hanging over them to close calls as quickly as possible, without escalating. They are expected to handle dozens or hundreds of calls a day. There is no slack to actually try to resolve the user's problems in any way that requires more creativity than sticking to the SOP script, and moreover, they are usually mandated to stick to a very standardized procedure, with defined suggestions and language that they have to use, in a specific order. A good first-level support person would spoon-feed you the right incantations to get escalated, in a way that their cutthroat metrics aren't negatively impacted.
It's a fucked up system, but this is how call-centers work.
“They have not removed it, it just is not visible by default if you are connected to the internet. Either run the setup without being connected to the internet, or type in a fake phone number a few times and it will give you the prompt to create a local account.”
At the very least, it signals that Microsoft really doesn't want users creating offline accounts. Which is troubling, because their TOS for online accounts is quite onerous, and includes a couple of problematic restrictions, including a mandatory arbitration agreement.
If I was a Windows user who relied on local accounts this would be very worrying to me.
To be fair, it’s really unusual that they even let you get an account without an email — I believe they’re still one of the only major sites left that allow this at all.
Not unusual when you consider this fact: when reddit was originally founded back in '05, the ability to create an anonymous account with a pseudonym in seconds was the goal. The redesign is a shame, but I'm glad they chose to stick with their old UI via a decicated URL (old.reddit.com).
You always install windows without a network connection so that you can run group policy editor to install your policies before first network connection. This has been best practice forever.
>Either run the setup without being connected to the internet, or type in a fake phone number a few times and it will give you the prompt to create a local account.”
This is something I really can't see the average user doing honestly.
Except Apple have a lovely ‘Skip’ button at every step of the process.
If you don’t want to use iCloud you’re not forced to by virtue of being internet connected, and there’s a clear option to not allow your iCloud account to be involved in auth or password resets.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think it's even possible to merge your iCloud account (Apple ID) with your Mac user account. Aren't these always separate identities?
I thought what Microsoft is pushing people to do is to use a single identity for both their PC and their Microsoft account, just like Google does with Chrome Books.
My concern with the single identity model is not just privacy. I worry that if something happens to my online account I might lose access to my local data.
At least on Chrome Books this is something that can happen. Not sure about Microsoft's approach though.
That's not exactly discoverable. Try a clean install of a Mac without having previously enabled this feature. You are prompted for your Apple ID and password, then to make a Mac account. If you use the same password for both, the OS won't let you.
And you can get an offline account with Windows if you're offline. Granted it's not transparent enough.
Thing is, what Apple is trying to achieve with iCloud is exactly the same as what MS is trying to achieve: bind you to a single account which will allow them to transition to a more service based business model. It's just Apple does it smoother.
I imagine another good path is to state it's owned by an organization, then clicking "Domain join instead". I can't imagine they removed that, but it just dumps out to a local account because you can't domain join in the OOBE.
It's been obscured though, IIRC, isn't there small text on a same colour (darker shade) background outside the edge of a box. I've only done a handful of Win 10 installs, I just remember being confused "how do you do it without an account again", it has not been clear.
I noticed this change months ago. Probably with the release of 1903 (with a 1903 ISO). It seems to be dependent on whether you have an active connection or not. If not, it shows the offline option. If you do, it makes it really hard to find.
Did you download/create install media at that time? Fwiw I've done a handful of (re) installs of W10 pro at work (over the past year or so) , and the installer experience along with enrollment in azure ad has been different every time...
Microsoft is clearly taking moves that enable "PC as a service".
I imagine the end game is something like you pay Microsoft so much a month on a subscription, receive hardware that is preconfigured with and tied to your Microsoft account details or your company's Azure AD configuration and locked down with InTune, unhackable with properly implemented Class 3+ UEFI and Secure Boot, etc. You then purchase additional software subscriptions, such as your Photoshop, etc., through the Microsoft store, with Microsoft taking a cut like Apple.
If your computer breaks, pay the $50 or $100 insurance and receive a new one from Microsoft, if it's not folded into your monthly "Microsoft Technology Subscription."
So when Microsoft completes its takeover of the PC, what's the platform and OEM landscape going to look like? This endgame clearly puts companies like Dell, HP, Asus, etc. and the companies that provide parts like Intel, AMD in a subordinate position to Microsoft. They probably won't like that.
Will they give up? Will they try to start to make hardware for Apple? Will these companies embrace Linux and provide a third way?
Do they though? My friends that work IT in corporate settings seem to tear their hair out every time MS (or anyone) tries to auto-push an update that they haven't had a chance to rigorously test for compatibility and security with their existing stuff. Some of them have fiduciary responsibility to not add/change/upgrade software without carefully testing it first. That doesn't seem compatible with the trajectory Windows is now on (and that Apple has been on for some time).
They do. I work in a very large corp. 25k+ employees, 5bn+ net revenue per year. Our entire IT dept. is outsourced, we're on office365, rent all of our hardware which is refreshed at regular intervals as part of the deal. Everything developed native cloud, all our offices are rented. We basically do everything we can to reduce capital expenditures.
It's funny that entire IT architectures have evolved just to optimize tax reduction and stock market interaction because of rules about opex and capex.
I wonder though whether this optimization hasn't created a brittleness in operations, where shocks due to security lapses or outsourced provider probls become unrecoverable.
It's not "just about rules". Having the flexibility to spend slightly more or less based on fluctuations in your workforce, or customer demand, is highly preferable to making n-year bets on your needs, even if you end up paying a 10% premium on average for that stability.
It is possible to run large portions of your operations in the cloud and still have in-house admin expertise. Having your own servers is definitely much cheaper than a 10% saving, depending on whether your connectivity needs are more relevant. Servers from hetzner or such like are similarly much cheaper than AWS/Azure.
One thing I definitely wouldn't run if I could help it would be email, going O365 or gsuite saves a ton of effort that doesn't contribute to the bottom line and has significant security advantages. But 'everything azure' or 'everything aws' has its own challenges.
This is one of the things that disgust me about dealing with Windows.
Oh, you want to properly administrate your Windows? You can't unless you buy another Windows! But a more expensive one!
You are unable to wade through our byzantine licensing maze? Buy another Windows to manage that!
Expensive Microsoft solutions for problems created by Microsoft. And then there's this entire army of sods that think this is the best thing since sliced bread, telling you "Isn't it fantastic that Microsoft provides this wonderful solution?"
Macs are easy to write off too I am sure. Also going all in on Linux and donating to appropriate projects is another easy write off. Both of which do not have subscription services.
That kind of difference is invisible to the companies paying for IT services. They pay the IT vendor, IT vendor sorts it out. We already do this today.
However, OP is not talking about a mobile device, but a PC. The PC is in the same device bracket as Macs. And Apple does not provide Macs "as computer as a service". Everything works with a local account. I don't even need to have an Apple ID. The OS also remembers your choice of disabling telemetry, without resetting it after the next update.
Apple provides managed and unmanaged. Microsoft appears not to provide unmanaged in the near future. This would remove the entire Windows PC bracket from the list of unmanaged options. That would be an enormous loss, and not just for some "folks who prefer DIY".
"Everything works" means every aspect of the operating system works. If you are dependent on apps from the App Store, go use the App Store. The process is similar to buying them via a vendor or installing games via Steam. For those who really need that, it's there. But it's not necessary.
I've used the App Store like one whole time in my entire life and that was to upgrade Xcode once.
Elsewhere you mention a VPN client requiring you to download it from the App Store - well take it up with the app developer then because I've used tons of VPN clients on Mac (currently using ExpressVPN in fact) and all were straight out of DMGs.
Wireguard uses the new Network Extensions API, and that usage requries entitlement granted by Apple signature. There's no avoiding that. I've also used different VPNs that didn't require that - but they also didn't integrate so well as wg does.
For Xcode, there is another way - it is downloadable from the developer pages.
Of course but you can still - at least for now, install applications from disk images (.dmg) and toss .app containers into /Applications - that doesn't require Apple ID.
For example, if I need Wireguard VPN client, I must install it from App Store. It is otherwise open-source app, but without the signature from App Store, it won't work.
Microsoft would get involved in Trust issues if they were approaching a monopoly in the PC world. However, one can't rely on law to stop a huge corporation like Microsoft dominating the whole PC world.
I wonder how Apple would respond to this move by MS, since Apple is also shifting towards services. Maybe they will let people install macOS on their own machines (which pass certain requirements)? Will they remove apps made by MS from Appstore? And what will Google's reaction be to all this? Are they going to advertise Chrome books as cheaper alternatives to MS Windows? Or will they remove MS apps from Google Play as well?
That seems really unlikely. People are used to devices being things that you buy once and keep forever without a subscription. Why would Microsoft go out on a limb and do something weird like that?
I see the potential for a future (and the tech is getting there, with Stadia, etc) where OEMs only sell to cloud operators and instead the consumer is sold essentially a graphics card and network card as a streambox. At that point, we can say goodbye to open source ideals, when [[Cloud Provider]] can charge for installing whatever software they want and keep it locked down otherwise.
To the end user, what makes this model preferable to buying the operating system software? For some businesses higher up the stack, it makes sense-- e.g., people spend $X per month on the Adobe Suite, and people tend to enjoy that.
> people spend $X per month on the Adobe Suite, and people tend to enjoy that.
I work in the graphic design industry, and I've got news for you... people do not enjoy Adobe's move to subscription pricing, and on the contrary still complain about it.
Anecdotal evidence, I suppose, but seriously... I haven't met a single person who prefers Creative Cloud to just buying the suites.
My friend who's a graphic designer had to reinstall Windows because, surprise surprise, one of earlier Windows 10 builds released for Windows 7 bricked her machine and that of course comes with reinstalling all software as well. And the fun started when she had to reinstall Adobe stuff: she couldn't reactivate one of older Photoshop she bought because it wasn't supported anymore - it couldn't connect to Adobe servers; helpdesk suggested her moving to CC which was out of the question for her. In the end, she pick the different solution suggested by her friend that doesn't come as SaaS.
Had two of these scenarios too where the software was suddenly not activated anymore. Nothing helped, didn't want to reinstall the OS. At some point I just thought that since the license is there, piracy is the way to go.
The cracked versions installed without issues and neither used any cloud functionality.
A stripped down installer for Windows might also be the way to go here. Of course updates would pose a problem.
A cracked version was indeed suggested to her as well but she decided it's too risky since it was her working machine - in case of any authorities control she'd have to explain whole situation.
Some additional story that I recalled: in the past - around 2003 IIRC, OpenOffice was sold in Poland by some small company so others could use it freely as an alternative to MS Office and fiscal control wouldn't have a reason to give you a fine for using unlicensed software. Luckily, in 2005 some sane people at Gdańsk tax office "figured out" that free and open source software is ok to use and made GNU GPL legal.
With alternative softwares like Figma, Sketch and Affinity, I've been seeing a lot of designers migrate away. Sadly and tangential to other discussions, Figma is the only one that will run cross-platform being WASM-based.
I personally had been holding on to Windows/Mac through college til this subscription model. Since I really only do photo work now, darktable and RawTherapee are great FOSS alternatives. Krita and GIMP get way more flack than they deserve.
I really think if you explained this properly to most end users they will still want something like what Microsoft is moving toward. Let Microsoft worry about it, is what they'll say. Non-tech people don't want to buy and upgrade operating systems. They see the operating system as part of the device.
I'd like to say selling operating systems to non-technical people doesn't work, but I'm not sure it's ever really been tried. The bulk of Microsoft's OS sales have never been to end users, but to OEMs and companies on Software Assurance.
Now technical people are certainly involved where an IT department builds systems for companies, but I think Microsoft wants to eliminate that too.
Sometimes selling operating systems to technical people doesn't even work! Last week, my friend got a new laptop, and he wanted to try out Arch along-side Windows (instead of Ubuntu like he usually did), but he accidentally messed up the boot partition the pre-installed Windows was using when he was installing it. I tried to convince him to just do a fresh Windows install with an .iso since he already had a license key (and that's technically not even necessary, since you can use Windows 10 indefinitely without registering it as long as you don't mind not being able to configure things like the theme and fonts), but he absolutely refused because he liked how the vendor-specific face unlock software worked and wasn't sure if he could get it with a fresh install. He ended up spending several hours figuring out how to repear the partition (which he ended up succeeding at). If someone willing to install Arch and muck around with bootloaders for most of a day still prefers to use preinstalled Windows, I can't imagine how selling operating systems separate from machines can possibly be the optimal business model for Microsoft to sell to non-technical people.
As someone who uses Windows for industrial PCs, I'm pretty appalled.
We've been hanging on to Windows 7, including side-loading drivers into the installation image for modern hardware, because this kind of stuff that Windows 10 does is in these cases simply unacceptable (random tip: Go for AMD, their Windows 7 support is way better than Intel, do not use Intel chipset series 300).
I can't have PCs bogged down downloading updates or randomly restarting when they're controlling endurance test rigs designed to run 24/7.
Driver issues with Linux, no real vendor support and (believe it or not) stability was the reason Windows prevailed in these applications. And MS threw that all out the window.
Oh well, I'd get paid to rewrite the control software in Linux, I'm not really complaining, I just hope there's enough driver support (looking at you, National Instruments...).
Windows is pretty common for control systems in factories. One factory I worked in used a web application, the one I'm in now uses VB applications. One of the control systems I use is running Windows2K. These computers have Internet access too.
You should use the appropriate edition of Windows 10 for your use case: Windows 10 IoT Enterprise. You can disable all the updates and everything you want.
Thanks for this. I must've shrugged it off initially for using the "IoT"-buzzword (who are they selling too?).
Reading up a bit on it here[1], and again, I'm appalled. I don't want to waste time and money cherry-picking Windows versions. There's IoT Core, Mobile and Enterprise, and then there's Enterprise LTSB, apparently with year codes too, what gives?
Nah, all this time and money wasted doing that can be invested in making the jump to Linux, because unlike Windows, chances are, that that will be indeed just a one-time investment. Linux also has a plus of making ghosting hard-drive images much easier, since there are no licensing issues to consider, and therefore could also be done completely offline (PCs are hooked up to local network for remote VNC connections, but are blocked from the Internet).
It may be wishful thinking, but I hope that just like servers are 99% running Linux, the same may one day be said for industrial applications... looks like I'm on the front line, lock and load!
Linux is not a one-time investment unfortunately since the software landscape is constantly changing. For people who are invested this is generally a good thing. There are more distros that you’ll run into in the wild than editions of Windows easily which is doubly true in the embedded space.
In the enterprise where Red Hat and Canonical dominate licensing is becomes an issue again when you use their paid offerings.
So don’t get me wrong. I want people to switch to Linux but we gotta be realistic that it’s not a panacea.
Yeah, but try to get a Windows XP version running nowdays. You have to reinstall every 30 days or so, because of the activation shut-out. Windows 7 improved on this by ways of nagging instead of shut-out, so I thought we were on a good path here. And when those activation servers go down... what then?
Linux? I'd just treasure that one (non-licensed) ISO I used, and that's it. Once I got a working setup, it could probably run for a century. EDIT: ...or at least until 2038 ;)
EDIT2: It's also not really an embedded system, it's a control PC. Embedded PCs are those in ATMs, BK's product screens, running car washes, what we have are full-fledged PCs that just happen to be operating test-rigs. These of course have fail-safe shutdowns (run by actual embedded hardware) if that PC hangs or faults, but they're not actually intended to be embedded.
Granted the IoT buzzword naming is confusing. Windows 10 IoT Enterprise is simply the good old "Embedded" edition which is fundamentally Windows 10 Enterprise with a price-tag. LTSB means that they have a specific version of Windows 10 that they will support for a long time. For embedded applications, that is perfect.
From the link I posted above: "On the technical side, the Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSB is the same as the "normal" Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB. But: Not on the licensing term side."
...whatever's truly true and factual in this case, I don't know, but I'm simply pissed that there's ambiguity about this. And that's just one of the reasons I avoid Windows 10 like the plague.
Technically, maybe. Commercially, the licensing is a huge mess. In some areas with low volumes you certainly don't want (or maybe MS won't even sell to you under reasonable terms) to deal with that. Even with medium/high volume I would find it nightmare.
It does but good luck getting licensing. They explicitly try to make getting the LTSB/C difficult because they know everyone would buy it if they offered a "clean" version of Windows.
But - if you can swing it - LTSB/C is the only thing that I would prefer for any sort of automation etc.
I do believe so but I don't touch that bull. It spies on you I know that. Last enterprise copy I had I sniffed the network traffic post setup and it was a slap in the face. I also think it comes with the Windows Store too.
The ONLY reason I run Windows machines is to do automation on them - I have zero tolerance for the OS.
Probably. But we went from "Here's an operating system available for everyone, consumer and corporate alike!" to "This one's for consumer, this one's for corporate" and MS and their distributors would be fools not to capitalize on that.
In other words, as a business, you now have less choice in distributors, which will increase the investment cost for an operating system. And then there's the whole privacy issue on top of that, too.
It's just a mess, and the customers are intended to take the brunt of it. I want to say "No, thank you" and I'm currently figuring out if that's viable, i.e. Linux.
I understand correcting the title to be more accurate to the situation, but I think the discussion should be focused on how Microsoft is taking power away from users, and has business incentive to do so. I don't like that the greater tech community rallies behind Microsoft for doing some basic contributions to open source and then hand waves away moves like this.
Edit: the comment section has shifted and I'm less disappointed.
Open source contributions for Microsoft are just like charities for big corporations with despicable practices. They can use it to say "hey we are not that bad, after all we support FOSS!"
MS has been open-sourcing a lot of stuff in the past few years, which I see more as meaning that their IP has little intrinsic value anymore. MS used to sell software, so code was sacred and not meant for others to see; now it's more about services, so code doesn't really matter much anymore, and if it's code that can help people use their services, open-sourcing makes sense.
You can see this with Google, Facebook, and all the others which release huge amounts of FOSS; they are not in the business of selling software either.
Eh, I think you're stretching it a bit too far. The code these corporations release as FOSS is a tiny, tiny portion of their software portfolio.
The main reason they open-source stuff is mindshare among the developer community, which helps with recruiting, influencing discussions in the public sphere, and so on.
Yes! This shift of business was somehow perceived by the public as the win of open source, but has actually amazingly been an actual loss on the control that you have with the money that you spend.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. People have short memories of Microsoft practices and for some reason have "drunk the kool-aid". Ballmer was better because his tactics were not "sleazy", they were straight and clear.
This new exec team is sleazy and trying to give a "good face" when the reality is that they are as bad as they have always been. But people get flashed with the new & shiny open source crumbs that are given.
How are Microsoft bad? The topic is about a change Microsoft made to benefit their online services. This isn't a great development by any stretch, for sure. And yet when compared with companies that collect and traffic in personal data Microsoft is in my opinion relatively(!) benign.
Comparing them to Google/facebook and saying they are benign misses the point. They are not using your data for there non-existing web ad-network but they are sending you ads directly through your operating system. You are safe on that front but losing control quickly.
They are funneling you into their cloud services. They are changing purchase models into subscription models. They own your operating system and can do what they want with it including kicking you off. And they also partner with law enforcement freely. Where thoses boundaries start/stop who knows but there does seem to be more underaged porn arrests with a single image found. Didn't microsoft develop some image detection that the police use? Perhaps scans are happening locally.
Facebook will polute your feed with personal ads.
Google will polute the web with personal ads
But microsoft will destroy your life.
Not sure who's better but why do we trust large brands?
"some basic contributions" is a little unfair, don't you think?
* 2 of the top 7 programming languages in use on GitHub are Microsoft created and maintained.
* Jockeying for top place among companies contributing code to projects on GitHub, for 4 years running.
* Top 5 contributor to the Linux Kernel
* Massively popular IDE in VSCode
* Enormous contributions to Kubernetes and the entire community around it,including creating/maintaining Helm.
* Big parts of Azure are open source, including their kubernetes implementation, ML toolkits, IOT components, and even the infrastructure underneath the whole thing, Service Fabric. (Demonstrably capable of orchestrating the varied workloads and scale of the second largest cloud provider in the world).
* Owner/maintainer of GitHub, which for better or worse is the platform for the vast majority of open source.
I don't like windows, I don't like office, and I don't like this move... But let's try to maintain some intellectual honesty here. Microsoft is not anywhere near a "basic" contributor to open source.
I'd argue that a company at the near trillion dollars scale can and should be Contributing mere than the few tens of millions they've put into open source, but you are not wrong and I'm not particularly willing to die on the hill I've climbed.
I've switched to Linux + Mint in part because I don't want to be using Windows any more. Many of my games work with Steam on Linux now, actually. With Google's docs/drive, everything works cross platform. I really have no productivity loss by not using Windows any more.
> With Google's docs/drive, everything works cross platform
What do you use instead of Google Backup and Sync client? I haven't found something that works like that. The "best" thing I've found is the FUSE Ocaml filesystem (https://github.com/astrada/google-drive-ocamlfuse) but still it is a "mounted" over network filesystem and not a sync-on-change solution. I tried InSync but could not make it work and it is not free, and also the Gnome "mount Google Drive" option, but it is also a "mounted" over network solution.
Other than that and some of the rough edges (random bluetooth issues, random issues after updating, completely broken Android ADB support), I like Linux Mint a lot. I do all my work and play (CS:GO, NFS, Cities Skylines, Hitman) on it, even for games that are not supported by default.
I use use a git-like cli binary to sync my google drive (https://github.com/odeke-em/drive). Really like it, and there's no weird background process or automatic syncing going on that's chewing up resources.
You can try rclone, it's a command line tool though and you have to invoke it manually. I've been using to back up my photos to google drive and so far seems to work. I can even leave it running and close my laptop, next time it just continues like nothing happened.
Personally, I have the stuff I want synced in git (at work, mostly just text files) - and look to combine that with zfs and zfs send - with the new pricing at rsync.net that is looking very attractive.
Mega is source-available, and works perfectly under Linux. It's end-to-end encrypted, and the free plan includes 15 GB of storage. Mega supports syncing multiple folders.
I'm using Overgrive, but I can't say that I recommend it. Some files cause it to freeze and crash and you have little control over source and destination folders. I've also experienced a situation where it deleted a folder somehow. I lost data in that episode :(.
Sometimes, I have to wait for a linux port, but the games usually are on sale by then anyway ;).
You unscrew the small screw that keeps the mPCIe wifi card in place lift it out and throw it in the fish tank where it becomes part of the amusing detritus of social commentary and landscape art you've been contributing to.
Now pop in the $18 Intel card you ordered last night and landed a hour ago.
Have you tried Libre Office? I'm not a power docs user but it gets the job done for me. Opting for Google to replace MS on principles is out of the frying pan into the fire.
I have two HP laptops running Linux -- my work laptop is running Manjaro with i3, and the other is Linux Mint with MATE. I absolutely love these two machines, neither have any compatibility problems with Linux.
No experience with Fedora, but of the other distributions that I have tried (Ubuntu, Debian, Arch, CentOS...), Mint is my suggestion for beginners. Now though I like Manjaro for its rolling releases of the newest software.
Probably Ubuntu LTS or Mint. Whichever meets your desktop preferences better.
Fedora is my personal preference, but it is aggressively up to date, including updating to the latest kernels. Good for new hardware, possibly not as good for a 7yo machine, especially with Nvidia graphics.
I don't understand why so many people on HN praise Satya Nadella. I guess good PR is worth much more than actions.
Before Nadella, Windows wasn't nearly as user-hostile as it is now. There was no mandatory telemetry, there were no forced updates, end users weren't treated as betatesters and QA wasn't non-existent. And now they are taking away the ability to use Windows without Microsoft Account.
Of course there are also many other problems with Windows 10, like the UWP fiasco, but they're minor in comparison to what Microsoft is doing with user's freedom and privacy.
I always preferred Windows to Unixes, but at this point I think it's time to give up and switch to some Linux distribution. It's clear that the situation will only get worse.
They watch what companies like Google get away with to see how far they can push things.
> Activity history helps keep track of the things you do on your device, such as the apps and services you use, the files you open, and the websites you browse. Your activity history is stored locally on your device when using different apps and features such as Microsoft Edge, some Microsoft Store apps, and Office apps.
> If you've signed in to your device with a Microsoft account and given your permission, Windows sends your activity history to Microsoft. Once your activity history is in the cloud, Microsoft uses that data to enable cross-device experiences, to provide you with the ability to continue those activities on other devices, to provide personalized experiences (such as ordering your activities based on duration of use) and relevant suggestions (such as anticipating what your needs might be based on your activity history), and to help improve Microsoft products.
> In some cases, your ability to access or control your personal data will be limited, as required or permitted by applicable law. How you can access or control your personal data will also depend on which products you use.
> Not all personal data processed by Microsoft can be accessed or controlled via the tools above. If you want to access or control personal data processed by Microsoft that is not available via the tools above or directly through the Microsoft products you use, you can always contact Microsoft at the address in the How to contact us section or by using our web form.
It isn't a trustworthy company. I uninstalled VS Code and am going to start recommending Spacemacs, Sublime Text, Doom Emacs, Vim, or anything else. That page is also VS Code's privacy statement.
https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/ is being actively kept up-to-date with VSCode's rolling releases and takes care to remove "the corporate/privacy nasties" while still retaining the (rather useful) extensions marketplace. Not a fork or port, just a "filtered build" (or build script if you want to diy). Worked without hiccups for me for over a year now (Linux). Updates come in a few days to a week after the original.
How is anything you quoted a problem? Activity history being synced to your Microsoft account is an entirely opt-in feature. It's designed to assist in the scenario of "I moved from my desktop to my laptop and want to open that file I was working on a few days ago....now what did I name it and where did I put it?"
That feature could easily be opt-in, without any dark patterns. If people want it, they could check a box.
Data shouldn't leave my devices unless I opt-in on a very specific case-by-case basis.
Giving personal data (like browsing history, identifying information, etc.) should not be a requirement for using technology, which has become a fundamental aspect of participating in society.
I have attempted to disable those "for real", and the lengths that MS has gone to in an attempt to stop people from doing it is extremely disturbing; there's half a dozen different services and scheduled tasks with various names which are involved, and if you don't disable all of it quickly, it all comes back. This Hydra-like persistence is something that hitherto was only seen in malware.
I too preferred the Windows GUI, and have been a Windows user since the 3.x days, but the gradual destruction of options (especially in appearance preferences) and increasing user-hostility has pushed me towards experimenting with Linuxes and BSDs more. I've always liked the Unix CLI and filesystem layout, however --- sh/bash is so much more powerful and consistent than COMMAND.COM/cmd.exe (and PowersHell feels more like an overengineered obese clone of the Unix shells), and the "everything is a file" metaphor and single-rooted filesystem is very elegant. I guess my ideal OS would be a combination of a Linux/BSD kernel with a Windows GUI.
Is this on Home or Pro? On Pro, I have them disabled via Group Policy, and I _never_ get an unexpected update, just occasional notification saying "Required updates are ready to install".
The most recent occurrence of this hydra is usocoreworker which most likely replaced previous Windows Update services components; sometimes it's even impossible to kill it even by temporarily elevating rights of task manager or console (for taskkill use) by 3rd-party tools. It can spawn in the background even if you postponed updates - guess that's the MS insurance that OS will receive updates despite of user settings choice and update feature will be immune to bypassing (but luckily, that is possible - at least for this moment, if you of course try hard enough).
Gods, I miss the good times of XP, Vista and 7 where it was possible to control updates and avoid potentially dangerous patches.
I have Enterprise on one machine, Pro on another. I don't recall ever having a reboot forced, but sometimes they make it really annoying, popping up a "please restart now to apply updates!" message multiple times a day - I'd really like a "remind me in x days" option for these notifications.
I use Windows on a day to day basis, and you might sometimes find me defending that.
However, I hate stuff like this. You are right, it is user hostile.
Windows 10 under the hood is solid, but this kind of thing really pisses me off. It’s the same issue with ads or bing in the start menu, you literally can’t turn it off anymore (you used to be able to with the Registry Editor or GP).
I use MacOS as well regularly, and you just don’t get this kind of crap from Apple (just different kinds of crap).
Yep. I am an unapologetic Unix diehard, but the core NT system is nice. Flexible, portable, supports multiple personalities (even if they barely use it like that; WSL1 being an example of leveraging it), parts are borderline microkernel-ish, by all accounts very nicely designed. Then... There are the user-facing parts of the system. The GUI, the licensing, the telemetry/spyware, ads, forced updates, WHY IS XBOX ON THE SERVER BUILDS, just... All of it. So, I live on Linux and the odd BSD... well, really just "Not Microsoft". Because a beautiful kernel under that userspace is still a loss.
The very first comment on that Reddit thread shows that this is a UI change. The functionality is not removed but only hidden if you have an active connection.
What Microsoft is doing with this dark pattern is bad for everyone, but we must accurately represent the situation.
If you love features, KDE Plasma is fantastic, the environment with Kubuntu or KDE Neon. I think it has more features than Windows.
And then there is like antiX or MX Linux where it runs so quick and smooth, using minimal resources, like Windows 2000 with its services disabled.
Linux is great and everyone can find the distro that suits them well.. even if it might take a few tries to find it, ha.
I've been using Plasma since the KDE 3.4 days, although I've dabbled in other desktop environments. I love it. I honestly miss the experience when I'm using other operating systems on machines other than my own personal ones.
And other Linux desktop environments are also honestly pretty good. Plasma's just my favorite, not the only good one.
I hope some people do try Linux on account of stuff like this and find a happy home in it. It feels really good not to be insulted, deceived, or bossed around by your OS.
You'd be surprised about this. A ton of developers use Windows even if they are developing software that runs on Linux servers (myself included). Especially so in the last few years with WSL being quite good and Docker being available.
2019's Stackoverflow report for OS usage put Windows at 49.3% for "Professional developers" with MacOS at 29.2% and Linux at 25.3%.
I happen to have a few tech courses on programming and Docker and none of it requires writing Windows specific apps. Just general web apps. Over 50% of the people who take my courses are on Windows. Windows usage for Linux based development is real.
That's 12.9% less market share compared to just six years ago.
Note that they haven't asked about the OS in 2017 and that the numbers I've found here[0] for 2019 are a few % smaller than yours. I've also used "all respondents" instead of the professional ones because they didn't make the distinction until 2018, but quite frankly, that works in Microsoft's favor since professionals are relying on it even less.
I am certainly open to the idea of being surprised by this -- there very well could be more developers using Microsoft as the operating system they use for their development machine, however I do wonder if the population of Stack Overflow users is a good, un-skewed sample of all developers.
I don't think too many people would be using Windows if it were really bad for Linux based development. I sure as heck wouldn't be.
In an ideal world I would be running native Linux but I had trouble with some audio gear not working and my favorite video editing tool doesn't run in Linux, nor do some of the games I play -- so I use Windows because that's what's available.
As much as I hate to say it, Windows is a pretty good environment to do every day developer things + more.
For example I spent 95% of my time in WSL using tmux and terminal Vim to write code full time (with fzf and everything you would expect on the command line). It's really fast. The wsltty terminal has almost as low input latency as xterm on native Linux (which I run on my modified Chromebook). While developing all sorts of web apps (Flask, Phoenix, Rails, Webpack, etc.) inside of Docker the volume performance is fast enough where I never once had complaints even on 5 year old hardware.
Then I'm a hotkey away from opening any program with command line launchers, switching virtual desktops with other hotkeys, running VMs for testing server deployments, recording and editing videos and playing any games I want without having to think twice about it or dual boot.
Other than bullshit telemetry and forced updates, Windows 10 Pro is not that bad from an all around "I use my computer to do stuff" perspective. I think that's ultimately why Windows is so popular. It also helps that you can put together a beast of a machine for about $750. But with that said I would instantly switch to Linux if all of my Linux problems were suddenly fixed.
In the mean time, if anyone is interested, I have a bunch of blog posts and videos showing how I set everything up in Windows. It can all be found here: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/the-tools-i-use
As much as I hate to say it, Windows is a pretty good environment to do every day developer things + more.
I keep thinking about the eventual replacement for my MacBook Pro. Every time I hear something like this, every time I see MS's open source contributions, etc. I keep thinking about Windows as a replacement.
At the top of the list of reasons why that's unlikely to happen is shit like these dark patterns to enforce invasive telemetry. I don't care how good WSL is, I don't want to be spied on or coerced into allowing spyware to run.
The rest of the list is mostly: I don't believe/agree with you. I've used chocolataey (ugh), and I don't want to do all of my development in a VM. I recently set up a Win 7 VM to get a small C# library built. Turns out it was easier to build it on my Mac and copy it over.
Other than bullshit telemetry and forced updates
Let me stop you right there. I'm not going to consider anything with forced spyware and forced updates. Until those are fixed I don't care about the rest.
> The rest of the list is mostly: I don't believe/agree with you.
All of what I mentioned is documented on my site and in a lot of cases I've recorded and published unedited videos of my WSL (v1) / Docker based dev environment.
You are free to believe what you want, but I'm not lying. If it were not as good as a claimed I wouldn't be using it for full time development / video creation.
Chocolatey had so much promise, but it just doesn't deliver. At least in my experience, software tends to be outdated, and the packaging often of dubious quality. There are also multiple packages available for a lot of software, so you don't know which one to choose. Oh, and the Chocolatey website is pretty awful too.
I do like scoop, but of course the selection available is much smaller than Chocolatey, at least for now.
Come to think of it, it's kind of strange that Microsoft never created a packaging system for Windows (aside from the Store; I mean for non-UWP apps).
Check out the VS Code SSH remote, if your internet is good enough or if you have a spare computer lying around, you can develop as if it's 'on the desktop' but you get none of the friction and all of the bare metal speed, I switched from terminal VIM a few years ago and the intellisense makes it worth it. There is a VSVim plugin that is... pretty good if you haven't gone too far down the VIM rabbit hole (my usage was and still is pretty basic).
I am! I reckon it's a neat OS. They've improved it dramatically (except for that... Candy Crush auto install, that is annoying).
I have used WSL a lot, and now I use VS Code Remote to develop on a Debian 10 VPS. It's glorious.
Being able to build a custom computer that I can do work on, and that I can play games on, and that run the Adobe suite of software, and not pay through the nose for high specs is wonderful.
After 10 year of using Apple and OS X, I felt patronised having to pay double the price for performance. The nail for me was when OS updated were forced through their Apple Store.
It also lets you build bloody good ones. The 3950X will be a ripper when it's out, couple that with a PCIE4 nvme, 3600 MHz DDR4 and you'll have screaming performance for a relatively modest budget that'd cost you a mortgage and a firstborn under Apple - if at all possible.
Absolutely. I see a few people running Linux on their desktop, but the majority are on OSX.
The Linux / Windows world offers more performance for significantly less money, if you're prepared to learn about hardware.
I find it so much fun, although sometimes frustrating when things like bios bugs interfere with normal voltage levels - need to be more hands on these days than before.
Windows is also the arguably the domain of GPU related dev. I see lots of Razer laptops. They are small and same weight as a MBP but you can get a 2080 RTX (previously 1060 GTX). Even the newest MBA's GPU is not 1/2 as fast as the 3 year old Razer (and its peers)
That's right. We use Surface Book with NVIDIA for our laptops and Thinkmate / Supermicro PCs. All with NVIDIA. Our Hollywood clients need NVIDIA for video rendering and we write software in CUDA/C++.
Are people really using these for work instead of just spinning up a cloud instance or using a desktop? I've always thought they were a horrible deal for gaming, and it seems like they'd still be a horrible deal for ML work or whatever.
Windows remains the most convenient OS for video games
Steam's Proton is amazingly good. I recently switched from an iMac to a PC, and was expecting to use Windows for games and Linux for development, but Proton has run everything I've tried with excellent performance and stability.
Go install Linux on a laptop with Nvidia Optimus hardware and you'll see how "amazingly good" Linux gaming is on many devices. No, Linux won't come close for at least the next 10 years. It's much better now with Proton, yes, but still not nearly enough. Even on my machine with the more compatible hardware at least 50% of games crash with Proton before you even see a window.
Wine works pretty well and compatibility is increasingly all the time. Proton integrating wine with Steam is quite convenient. Sure, not everything works.. but then I'm not going to buy every console and handheld just so I can play their exclusives either.
Everyone has their own values but...
I have more games than I can reasonably play in months installed and available to me already, with more coming out all the time.. there's no one game that would make me compromise everything just for recreation.
I do but I don’t pay for it. I have a copy on boot camp and its been a while since the “Activate Windows” watermark stopped bothering me. It boots directly into Steam Big Picture. I know I know... but at least I’m not using malware infested solutions to keep it working.
Currently the poll is 56%. It's barely a majority. My original commenting, say "many" don't use Windows, seems quite reasonable. Granted, this poll shouldn't be considered authoritative.
I run Windows 10. I'm running it now. It works well, and I don't want to cut my nose off to spite my face by worrying about Satya Nadella seeing my internet searches. I'm not that important that I have to worry about these things.
I tend to run it on the "Happy Path" only make a few changes to keep some notifications from bothering me. And I don't buy machines from vendors that try to "add value" by putting crapware or shovelware on the machine. (I buy Supermicro-based boxes from Thinkmate, and use Surface Book notebooks.)
I write software all day long in Erlang, F#, and CUDA/C++ and have to write software that works with popular film and audio production software (which runs on Windows platforms)
Your internet searches are not part of the telemetry - it's nowhere near that invasive [0] (I still believe you should have the option of disabling it though).
> I don't want to cut my nose off to spite my face
I have trouble understanding this perspective since it's hard to see what critical functionality Windows provides, that you can't get with Mac OS or Linux. If they wouldn't be materially different experiences, the metaphor doesn't hold water.
> it's hard to see what critical functionality Windows provides, that you can't get with Mac OS or Linux
With MacOS, your choice of hardware is very limited, and you have to pay way over the odds for it. You also can't run a lot of games on it.
With Linux, the desktop experience is, IMO, not as good as on Windows, and neither is driver support. Things have improved a lot here, but the UX is just not as polished as Windows. I do love Linux though - for servers, I wouldn't use anything else.
I really like Windows 10 Pro/Enterprise (apart from dick moves like this, of course). I can build incredibly powerful desktop or laptop machines, in terms of RAM, CPU and GPU - and everything is more or less guaranteed to "just work", and be stable too. You get excellent multi-monitor and high-DPI support, good accessability features, Hyper-V for running VMs, Sandbox coming soon, WSL for a Linux-like experience - and WSL2 will soon make it even better. And of course your gaming options are much better too.
I can't run NVidia on Macs (Ok, some Mac true believer will tell me I can get an PCI-X external cage and run it over thunderbolt with crazy drivers) and I can't run Adobe Premiere, After Effects, Audition, etc, on a Linux machine.
It's one reason I gave up having a MacBook Pro, the hardware is underwhelming in so many ways.
But my Mac Pro from 2010 still gets nvidia driver updates and cuda support. In the unlikely event someone will pay for a new Mac Pro for me I'll be able to stick a 2080 in it.
You can stick an nvidia card in a PCI-e chassis and it will work on a laptop or Mac mini, but yes it isn't optimal.
I use vscode on Windows with the remote ssh plugin. It's amazing, and I'd never go back. I can kick of compilations of large projects on an 80-core server instead of my laptop. When I need to, wsl works great for small compilations.
If only the Linux on the desktop dreams of a decade ago - along with those Linux-installed PCs they tried to push at Walmart - had a more optimistic outcome...
It might have, if Linux evangelists had pulled their heads out of their asses and actually made what people wanted instead of assuming everyone was too dumb too use a computer and only needed a pretty web kiosk and email. If they had made the OS function in a sane way instead of the Rube Goldberg machine of cobbled together systems that it is. To this day I still hear people blame Linux Desktop's complete and utter failure on pre-installs and lack of prettiness, ignoring completely the complaints of all the ways Linux Desktop just plain sucks, even when they were made by Linus himself.
Since I’ve migrated to web IDEs, my daily driver has become a Chromebook.
Privacy concerns apart, it gets the job done and the battery life is over 14 hours. I’ve migrated from Linux, which is also pretty good as a desktop, but feels a little less polished than ChromeOS.
I've come to love coder.com (port of VSCode), I created a container on proxmox with a base install so I can create environments for any project. C9SDK is also a very solid choice it just isnt as stable as coder.com, lacks many features, and doesnt have the VSCode hype.
For now, AWS Cloud9. It’s pretty good for Python and JavaScript. Go support is subpar, but usable. Besides that, you have access to terminals, so you can use Vim and Emacs in text mode as well.
However, I’m evaluating using that new IDE from Eclipse (I think it’s called Dirigible), because it seems to have more mature Go support.
Microsoft has been able to strategically link their brand with platforms people use and trust -- like github -- allowing them to seem more progressive and open. Ultimately getting everyone to drop their guard.
Meanwhile, the Linux world is wasting its biggest opportunity to take over the desktop space.
IMO, Unintuitive interfaces (e.g. Gnome shell), forced package management (as opposed to decentralized distribution of apps) and lack of care for graphic design are the biggest things keeping the masses away from the Linux desktop, because in other areas (speed, robustness, privacy, control) it just blows Windows out of the water.
All of these are highly controversial opinions, many Linux advocates think they are not problems, but I think they really are.
>forced package management (as opposed to decentralized distribution of apps)
What??? This isn't true at all, you can install deb/rpm packages you download from the internet if you want, there's nothing stopping you. The truth is that you're strongly encouraged to install your applications from a trusted central repository because it's safer and more convenient.
I'd also note that this is not unique to Linux. Android, iOS (this one is actually restrictive), and macOS all use the same model too. Windows also tried it with UWP and their store, and mostly just didn't succeed for legacy reasons.
As a long time Windows user, I switched from Windows to XFCE (Manjaro) and it was pretty seamless. Most of the keyboard shortcuts are the same (or, easily configurable to be the same). I had to hunt down one xdotools script and bind a shortcut for moving windows from one display to another for it to work the same.
There are many things that XFCE does even better or just as good. Window snapping works great. The start menu is back-to-basics simple and fast. Searching in it doesn't search the internet or my whole hard drive by default and it just works and finds things faster. The taskbar is also better IMO because it has way more useful options (such as middle-clicking) and less anti-features. On Windows, I have to use some unsupported 3rd-party thing called 7+ taskbar tweaker to add the same features and remove some anti-features. I am a minimalist and I loved the classic taskbar. I hated some new Windows behaviors like "preview window-content on hover over taskbar item", jump lists and grouped taskbar items - some of which you just couldn't turn off in Windows without that 3rd-party tool. So, after years of fighting against that I figured if I have to hack my DE, I might as well run the one that's free and gives me all the power. (I also have to modify macOS to make it even bearable to use...way more than Windows even, with third party hacks. And Apple certainly gives you less control than Microsoft, so I'm definitely not using that!)
Some things I'm missing on any Linux DE though: GPU acceleration in Chrome. Games.
However, I'm now even doing Microsoft-specific work with dotnet core, VS Code, SQL Server and Azure Data Studio on my Manjaro workstation. For work, I don't really need Windows anymore unless someone gives me some Windows-specific thing to work on, for which I have one machine on standby to do.
Overall, I like how much control I have in Linux. However, Windows is still more stable than any Linux desktop in my experience. For instance, I've lost desktop settings/icons a crash after an update. Wifi stopped working after an update once. But things are/were easy to remedy so I'm staying.
Wanted to thank for the post, it finally triggered me to ditch Windows on my laptop. But it seems that Xubuntu would be a better choice for dotnet core development: there is an official 3.0 SDK for Ubuntu while Arch is not officially supported, and no one has built the 3.0 SDK for it yet.
You know what? Reading your post has now made me want to convert another machine, that I have sitting right here, to use Xubuntu because Ubuntu does seem to have much more official support for things, plus I'd really like to compare it to Manjaro and finally many of our servers are running Ubuntu so it will be nice to get a deeper familiarity with it.
I was just this minute looking at .NET Core 3.0 as well because I had such a good experience with 2.2 on a recent job. Your comment actually alerted me to the fact that I can't get it yet :)
I was off of .NET for years doing mainly Node.js/Angular/React and I'm kind of excited to be getting back into .NET - I'm so glad my 15 years of .NET experience won't go to waste because ASP.NET has been looking very good in web server benchmarks. Plus, C# and .NET are much nicer to work with than JS/TS and Node IMO. Everything is just cleaner.
Anyway - good luck and I hope you have a lot of fun on your Linux desktop adventure. One of my favorite things about the switch over the past year has been the fun of being a sort of hobbyist again, exploring and figuring things out. At this point, I have setup 4 different desktops and I even got advanced touch gestures working on my cheap Acer E5-575g laptop. Can't wait to setup Xubuntu next! So, thanks to you as well!
I'm a big fan of Linux, and have a Linux desktop set up next to my Windows desktop. But. They've been talking about Linux taking over the desktop for the last 20 years. It's not going to happen next year either. And not the year after that.
The only hope we have of the MS Windows / Apple OS X duopoly on the desktop to break up is if the trade war escalates and China starts working towards getting a third ecosystem going. -- Problem is that you'd expect the Chinese to care about privacy even less than the Americans.
I love gnome personally. It’s really easy to avoid using the mouse. Linux desktop certainly has problems, but I’m excited how usable it’s been for me the last couple of years for everything but certain games
I usually don't have my mouse hooked up to my desktop and I've found Cinnamon better to work with without a mouse. I tried Gnome out under Ubuntu (both the latest LTS release and non-LTS) and while it's better than Windows, there were some issues for me. Some reasons off the top of my head
* The default theme no longer outlines which ui element you've selected when pressing tab to jump to the next element. Made it very hard to navigate program menus
* Some windows don't respond to keyboard commands, ie: minimize or move to side. If memory serves spotify was one of the programs this didn't work for but every window I've tried works without issue in Cinnamon.
* Mouse keys has no options provided under accessibility. You can customize the speed and startup delay to make for a nice experience, but the options were simply not there. I googled how to do it through the terminal but all of the top results wanted you to use a package that I couldn't find in the software store. I gave up.
The default speed for mouse keys is unusable. It takes minutes to move from one end of a 1080p monitor to another. Even Windows provides options for this, though the gui options are better in Cinnamon (best in KDE).
* I like pressing the windows key and launching an app by navigating with arrow keys. You have to type to do a search in Gnome?
Perhaps I'm just not familiar enough with Gnome, but I've people say that it's good for use without a keyboard and that's just not been my experience.
> forced package management (as opposed to decentralized distribution of apps)
Come on - downloading random binaries off of random websites and running them is a bad idea. It's always been a bad idea. This is the reason casual people get infected with random trojans, adware, malware, and so on, and the main reason Windows desktops tend to be such a cesspool.
You can still do it on Linux, but it's an exception to the rule not the other way around.
If your hope is to appeal to the masses, there are in my view two cardinal sins in OS naming:
1) Don't put "OS" in the name. It's an automatic "nerd alert." macOS is an exception because you don't have a choice to install it, and Apple is...well, Apple. They're often an exception to many things.
2) No punctuation marks, symbols, etc. Just letters.
Pop_OS! breaks both of them, and one of them twice, and it drives me nuts, because it's a nice distro.
You speak the truth. I've tried to explain this to them previously but they just ignore it. I use Arch now, but if I had to use something Debian-based I'd pick PopOS.
My wife now uses PopOS. It may have been easier to convince her to use it if the name wasn't ridiculous. She likes it now, though.
What Linux really needs is better support from third parties. If I could get a passable version of AutoCAD civil 3D on Linux, I'd never go back to windows. I'd be thrilled to pay for it. Of course... Microsoft owns AutoCAD. Coincidence???
> forced package management (as opposed to decentralized distribution of apps)
Is a great advantage over windows and is now common place with android, iOS, chromeOS and even windows (store, chocolatey) and macOS are trying to go in that direction.
What's forced here? I can use others on ubuntu. I can add alternative repos/PPAs to the default package manager. And what's even the issue? The default package is (as far as I know) entirely open source and/or GNU. "Package management" is not even a concept on windows at all.
I tried to use the Apple trackpad under Ubuntu and only got pointing functionality, no scrolling. The fix was an easy 15 step procedure. Bluetooth receiver didn't work either. By the lack of an outcry apparently nobody cares about that kind of hardware in Ubuntu.
Utter chaos, infighting, and possibly collapse. The GNOME/GTK and KDE/QT camps have very different philosophies, frameworks, preferred languages, and completely incompatible libraries.
This seems like it is preparatory to removing it entirely.
It wouldn't be shocking if in 10 years you need a Microsoft account to use windows on a computer you don't have root access to that isn't allowed to run a non ms os or to
distribute software that ms gets a 30% cut.
If it isn't so it will be because they don't think they can get away with it.
This is problematic even for people who don't mind linking to an online Microsoft account (I'm one of them). There is a long-standing Windows bug where local user directory names are created using a truncated version of the online account's name. This is rarely what you want. The work-around has long been to create an offline account first to name your own local directory, then convert it to an online account.
This will break that work-around, and this is universally bad.
I've just resigned myself to the fact that the last letter of name is cut off. Seems super silly since it's capable of showing the full name everywhere else.
Maybe some MS dev hasn't cottoned on to the string count starts at [0] lol
Used to be that you shouldn't install Windows online to prevent getting exploited by malware before you had a chance to patch.
Now it looks like one has to install offline to prevent getting adware and all kinds of other things, what amazing progress.
As somebody still stuck on Win7 I'm dreading the change, sadly Linux is not really an option because I like my PC gaming.
Any good resources on what to look out for when installing Win10, what to turn off and when to stay offline when setting what things up? I keep seeing/picking up small tips all over the place, but I have yet to find something comprehensive.
> sadly Linux is not really an option because I like my PC gaming.
This is changing and very quickly with Valve Proton. I would advise you try your gaming collection in Steam on Linux. It is getting to the point where one can purchase a game and it will likely just work, with the exception of a few DRM nasties.
It really depends on your video game tastes, I think. There are now essentially three types of games which I enjoy playing:
1) Indie games;
2) Big studio releases (some of them);
3) Competitive online 3D shooters.
My experience is that 1) usually work well on Linux and the small studios these days usually make sure it works on Mac and Linux, which is great.
I do not know of any games in the 2) category that really do work on Linux (Activision, Ubisoft and EA simply don't care) and this actually impacts me in 3) -- unless I want to play a 7 year old CS:GO, I am out of luck on Linux.
(Just to be clear, I am saying this as a person that has Linux at work & on my laptop and who would really love to get rid of my Win 10 on my gaming desktop PC. For gaming lovers with different tastes, I think the situation actually is not that bad if you are willing to have a console at home -- you can cover 1) and 2) this way, just not 3).)
A lot of titles are missing, but has gotten better, and for me personally it's gotten to a point where if it doesn't run on linux, I don't really need to play it.
I have long banned Windows 10 from my computers; I only use it in VMs now. If you desperately need Windows functionality for something but would rather use Linux, you may be in luck; there's quite a few options for GPU passthrough these days. If you're on a laptop you can even share your Intel GPU through GVT-g.
For me, I am lucky. Wine and Steam Proton run basically anything I'd care to run anymore. I use only Linux for work, as well.
I hope it's really worth it for them, because I've probably passed the last time I will ever consider running Windows until I'm in the ground, at this point. It's annoying, vexacious, constantly regressive, and almost literally never improves on this. From forcing you to have Candy Crush to switching your browser to Edge every update, Windows 10 is a piece of shit.
What's worse is win 10 is slower than win7 on hdd, due to superindexing and cortana, making me stick with win7 or ubuntu. Hope we'll get alternatives in the future.
They can just enable these functions on free version, and make enterprise version configurable.
I guess if they still keep this practice, the office will start to change to mac instead.
That seems like a strange place to take a stand, since the specific brand of user hostility that pervades Windows 10 seems to have seen its origin in Windows 8
Windows 8’s windows update is always quick and doesn’t interrupt your work for a long period. The only usability issue on it is the start screen, which can be fixed by installing the classic shell.
Couldn’t resist a dig at Apple in a totally unrelated thread, eh?
You know you can use any monitor you like. You don’t have to buy their $6,000 monitor. I’ve used Macs happily for years and have yet to spend that much on a monitor or a stand.
Apple, with the new Mac Pro. Mac starting at $6k, Screen starting at $5k, but the monitor itself is only good on a (I hope) VESA mount, if you want an ordinary desk stand it's an extra $1k.
It's ridiculous to call it an "ordinary desk stand" it's anything but. A 100% perfectly calibrate weightlessly counterbalanced stand is a godsend for those who need it. The rest can get the VESA adapter instead.
Furthermore, this is a product targeting a market that normally spends over $40,000 on a monitor without any mounting gear or stand to do the same work. Apple's display a bargain in context.
If you think this is "an ordinary desk stand" then you are, without one iota of a doubt, absolutely not the consumer who needs or wants the device or even understands it.
Are they really only marketing to those customers? Given the pitch in the keynote, I kinda doubt it. Reminds me of those fancy six figure sports cars that are capable of all sorts of things you would never do on a regular street...”it’s a good price for those who need all that power”...well sure but most of the people who bought it were convinced by the marketing that having all that power was cool and made them seem like a pro, not because they will ever really use it themselves, and the marketers know it.
Without access to Apple’s sales data, I could be wrong though.
I think they really are marketing that monitor only to those customers. People who want the computer but don't expect to be editing feature films with it can get a 5K LG monitor for $1300. (Of course, those people -- even the ones editing feature films, when push comes to shove -- could also probably get an iMac Pro, or even just a "normal" iMac with bumped-up specs.)
Everything I'd read suggests that Avid Media Composer gets along just fine with 4K video on a (non-Pro) iMac, if you bump up to a Core i9, Radeon 580, and 32G of RAM or so. The eGPU or the iMac Pro would be nicer, but the base iMac is still powerful enough it's not going to make you hate life. There were 4K movies being edited on less powerful machines just a few years ago, after all. :)
Did you actually watch the keynote? It's painfully obvious they are marketing it specifically to reference monitor buyers. They stressed the features those customers would care about super hard and made outright comparisons to products only those buyers would even know exist let alone actually buy.
So yes, their primary market target is that group.
That being said, coming out and saying "Hey man, we made this thing that normally costs like $40k for only $5k isn't that pretty impressive?" should resonate with anyone interested in tech. I guess the issue here is that Apple assumed people not interested in this product would just not get all upset about something that doesn't involve them. But that's not how we are these days is it? Seems like people can't help but attack everything they see that doesn't precisely please them.
It's impressive but still a bit too... rarefied. I suppose most people who were upset about it were so because Apple looks like it's bragging “Look, we're not just for billionaires any more, now mere multi-millionaires can afford our products!” And this is entirely Apple's own fault: They've been fostering the idea that their product shows are hugely important and relevant, that their walled garden is where it's at. So of course ordinary people will expect the stuff shown there to (be at least supposed to) be relevant to... Well, ordinary people.
Sure, this screen, and its stand and everything, certainly deserves praise and adulation from its intended target audience. But the place to present it and receive that adulation is at the Obscure Graphic Artists Conference (attendance 837), not an event aimed at the general compunerdy public.
Personally, I'll be impressed when they repeat the feat at human scale and present a monitor that used to cost $5K for $500.
>this is a product targeting a market that normally spends over $40,000 on a monitor without any mounting gear or stand to do the same work. Apple's display a bargain in context.
Sure, the cost of the stand is peanuts to the overall cost, a pro will buy it without a blink - but that doesn't mean it's not overpriced. Same thing happens in every industry where professional tools come with extras and accessories not worth the price, but not worth the time to shop around either when the cost is a tiny fraction of the total
While I'm 99% sure you're just trolling, on the 1% chance you're really not, the OP is absolutely correct in that Apple is positioning their $6000 monitor against $30K+ cinema editing monitors. They really exist. A lot of the Pro Display XDR specs are really very very clearly aimed at competing with them. Those specs may not be something you care about, but let's not pretend it's "yeah, whatever, I can get this other 6K monitor over here that's just as good for $499, man" deal. (Dell has an 8K monitor for under $4000, but the Apple monitor is 2.5 times brighter, has a contrast ratio that's over 750 times better, has 9 different reference modes, variable refresh rates specifically matched for film use -- you know, like a cinema editing monitor? Yeah, that.)
Apple certainly made a bad marketing mistake with this monitor, but the mistake was marketing it as a $5000 monitor with a $1000 stand. If they'd just marketed it as a $6000 monitor -- and if they'd made it clear right then that there'd be a 5K option available for $1300, too -- they'd have saved themselves a whole lot of this nonsense.
To add on to what the other replier said - hilariously the monitor also doesn't come with VESA mounting holes standard - you have to buy an adapter separately for ~$100, so they screw you regardless of which stand option you want.
Not sure why this was brought up under a reply about linux though.
I’m not going to pretend to know the intricacies of their monitor, but what if just drilling holes in the back in accordance with the VESA standard would damage the underlying screen/electronics? So an adapter would be needed, right?
Now what if you’re the guy who wants the expensive stand? Should you also pay for an adapter plate (I assume) for VESA mounting you’d never use? They could include the adapter and adjust price accordingly or they can allow their customers to pick their poison without being forced to buy something they don’t need. Frankly, I think that’s nice.
I bought an ASUS 3440x1440 gaming monitor (the gsync ultrawide with 100Hz “overclock”). It comes with a base that is heavy as hell and has some LED flashlight like component to it that projects the ROG logo onto the desk. Where is that base now? Sitting in my attic inside a trash bag (for a thin amount of protection from dust and dirt) as I have the monitor on one of my two desk arms. I also paid ~$1,200 for this. If I could’ve paid for that monitor without the stand at a reduced price reflective of the cost of that stand, I’d be pleased, quite frankly.
Im sorry, but I really don't understand your perspective. Does Porsche screw their customers when they charge $500 for an oil change? Is Coach "screwing" it's customer by charging that much for a purse? High five audio devices often don't have cabling that consumer devices do - is that screwing the consumer?
I can appreciate that you don't want to pay that much, but how is it "screwing"?
"Does Porsche screw their customers when they charge $500 for an oil change"
Uh, yes? Either they've designed their cars so that routine maintenance is unnecessarily difficult or they're overcharging for it, either way they're screwing you.
As an enthusiast it's been my experience that high end audio stuff is usually designed in a modular way and uses standard inputs and outputs and it's the cheaper, consumer grade gear that often uses stuff like non standard speaker inputs. Although the HiFi market certainly has it's own fair share of overpriced snake oil.
I don't know much about coach specifically so I won't comment on that, but there are plenty of handbag brands that exist purely as a status symbol and charge obscene amounts of money just because customers are willing to pay that much, and yes I also perceive that as dishonest.
Good thing the Apple Watch is such a good bargain then, since all you get from Rolex for $10000 is one nice watch.
Not all things in technology are created for all people. If you think selling a $6000 screen with a $900 discount if you only need a VESA mount because you already have a $2000 desk & mount setup is absurd, you’re not the target market.
Good thing the Apple Watch is such a good bargain then, since all you get from Rolex for $10000 is one nice watch.
A Rolex is a piece of jewelry, a status symbol. Might as well compare it with a Louis Vuitton handbag. What you are saying is that the display is desktop jewelry.
The online account is crap. I converted my offline account recently to the online one, just to see what's the difference.
The difference is that I cannot even set a password, it asks me to set up a PIN number to log in. Of course you can set it to accept letters in your PIN, so it can function as a regular password.
But what the hell is the point?
(In fact, I didn't set any PIN the first time and at the next reboot I had to log in with my Microsoft account password, which is decidedly more complicated that the not-very-secure one I use to log in my PC. Thank god I have a password manager on my phone.)
I can't even get into my Microsoft account. When I go to reset it, Microsoft claims that there is insufficient information to reset and unlock the account. Meanwhile I can't log in to the account (because it's locked) and still receive notifications about the account (click here to unlock it)
Every time a company does something like this, I remember that I spend more and more time On the Linux side of my Dual Boot, and almost none in Windows (save for some time plying Eve).
Having worked in large enterprises like this, I can also picture some small team, or loud individual with a super ego, pushing for this kind of stuff as if it is a good idea.
For every... say 20 PM/Product Manager/Lead/Devs that actually listen to customers and want to create great software, there’s always Some Dunning Krueger clueless individual who pushes for stuff like this. Often they’re the loudest in the room, while everyone else is suffering from imposter syndrome and afraid to speak up.
Seems like it's still there, just harder to access now.
The "best" sorted comment says:
> They have not removed it, it just is not visible by default if you are connected to the internet. Either run the setup without being connected to the internet, or type in a fake phone number a few times and it will give you the prompt to create a local account.
It's a crazy thing to say, "start the installer without a network connection and you'll suddenly get a new option in the installer." Or, "when the installer asks you for your email, keep spamming invalid responses until it gets frustrated and unlocks the ability to skip the prompt."
That doesn't sound like a sensible UX flow, or even a UX flow with consumer-unfriendly prompts and directions. It sounds like a video game cheat code or easter egg.
Ah. I interpreted it as meaning removing the option was magical. This seems like just an increase in the dark patterns that were already present around local accounts, not a qualitative difference. Microsoft has been pushing back against local accounts hard in the setup process - you already had to carefully jump through hoops to make one.
Trying again without network access is actually one of the first things I'd try, but yes, it's undiscoverable for most people.
And it will end up being used by fewer people, after which their telemetry will indicate that fewer than X % of people are using the feature thus they will claim it's justified to remove it.
Yes, and I bet that data is what provoked them to start doing this already.
Even before this change you have to navigate out of your way to pick an offline account. It would be easy to think "oh, a large percent of users don't want local accounts" just looking at the telemetry data.
When really that's a given because the option is only going to be found by someone who knows beforehand that they want an offline account and fully expects it to be buried multiple menus deep in an advanced setting.
Microsoft was doing really good to gain developer traction with things like WSL, VSCode and the upcoming WSL2 release. But if they ever really do require a real account to use Windows, well... that's enough to cancel all of those things out to the point where die hard developers might just throw their arms up in the air and move to Linux even if it means making sacrifices for certain things.
>> that's enough to cancel all of those things out to the point where die hard developers might just throw their arms up in the air and move to Linux even if it means making sacrifices for certain things.
And would those programmers develop software that's not written for Windows only? I don't think so. As much as I hate Windows and advocate the idea of moving to other operating systems (even macOS), at the end of the day, developers don't have enough discretion in choosing which platform(s) to write programs for; it's the management that decides it.
It is a dark pattern because it is from a corporation that know what they are doing and had passed all the internal UI/UX tests. At this time it should be punished as well as its difficult to avoid telemetry issues.
I don't think this is a light dark pattern. Once you sign up in your desktop computer, which it is also called a personal computer, this is not personal anymore.
> They have not removed it, it just is not visible by default if you are connected to the internet.
That's not entirely true. When you get to the 'Let's connect you to a network' screen just click the 'I don't have Internet' link in the bottom left corner [1] and then choose 'Continue with limited setup' [2]. This will take you to the local account creation step.
It is worrying that this is one of the only two informed comments on the matter, and it's being buried down the thread.
On the other hand, I don't mind Microsoft getting some more crap thrown at, at all. Higher chance that their much eager marketing/PR team will take notice.
I help a friends dad with his computer sometimes. A few times per year, he brings it to me and says it’s being slow. Every time, it’s windows update bogging his machine down for weeks, since it can’t seem to update on its own without crashing and causing issues. Last week it took over 5 hours to reinstall an update - several times longer than would be needed to install windows or Linux from scratch.
I might install cinnamon next time he brings it by
I’ve tried this with my dad. The problem is, he never boots up the bum to have a go. He doesn’t really get how there can be more than one OS on his physical machine. So basically we are stuck in a cycle of him not wanting to switch until he’s used to the “new” thing but him never using the new thing.
This is a bit hard to understand for young people, I know :-)
Older people have already spent so much time on learning new stuff that they feel spending even more time to learn something they already know how to do is a waste of time. I'm slowly moving into this category myself. Why do you have to redesign something that works just fine? Just because you want to get paid more is not ok reason.
I’ve had issues with performance related to Windows update, though the issue is typically space remaining on c for the update (I’ve since bumped my Windows partition up to ~500GB since the macOS one I don’t need a ton so have 500:500 instead of 900:100).
I’d recommend not running VMs when it is being sluggish for Windows Update because the VM is going to feel sluggish too.
I always do that for the same reason. I do use a Microsoft account with Windows, but I want to pick my own name for my own user folder in C:\Users. So I install Windows with a local account, and then after logging in I connect it to my Microsoft account.
why do people still use windows? It's stupid and naive to ask that, but I keep wondering why devs aren't successful in getting changes made at their companies.
I use Windows because pretty much every program ever runs on Windows. Buy some weird device? Hey, it has drivers! Want to play the latest game? Hey, there's a Windows version! The same is simply not true of other platforms. The reality is that it's the most popular OS, so when someone can only write their computer program once, they do it for Windows. It sucks, but that's how it is.
I use Linux for pretty much all my work, though, preferring a Linux VM to a Windows-native setup. I have tried to make Powershell usable, but the console is terrible (and the replacements are equally bad) and the language itself isn't that amazing. (Their "curl" equivalent requires you to open IE once to activate some setting, for example.) I also hate putty. Never in the history of computing has a program made it so difficult to use the same font for every server you connect to, or to talk to something on a serial port, etc. The way Windows deals with serial ports and the like is so silly that I just have an RPi on my desk for interacting with USB devices... I ssh to that, and then don't deal with Windows anymore.
You may be interested in MobaXterm. Don't let the name fool you; it's a good SSH client for Windows. I spent 20 years or so hassling with PuTTY, and just discovered this a few months ago. More people should know about it. I still need pagent for git, and the like, but at least Moba solves the set-the-terminal-options-once-for-all-SSH-sessions problem.
Both my previous linux install attempts resulted in effectively unusable machines. BIOS tweaks were required to even get usable software rendering on one, which didn't support my quad 4K monitor setup. Without the tweaks, I was dumped to a blank screen on boot. I might've been missing working audio drivers on the other - which I was using as a media PC.
As a gamedev, for my actual work machines, I rely heavily on windows-only tools, and I want to debug on the actual target platform customers would use (so, windows again.) Gamedev generally uses windows for even it's build servers. Maybe with a token mostly ignored linux box. Or a couple of mac minis if dabbling in mobile.
I don't want Mac for I prefer cheaper handpicked hardware.
I want to believe in Linux, so every now and then I get fresh Ubuntu installed.
Now last time with 18.04 it would get blank screen immediately after logging in, which I was only able to fix by manually adding NVidia apt sources, and installing the latest driver from command line (which you have to google how to do on another device).
Second thing I faced is trouble getting a tiling window manager (oh irony: I made my own for Windows after reading articles about Linux's ones). Turns out, when you are trying to use, say, Awesome, it replaces the whole desktop environment. Which in default configuration makes desktop work like shit (personal opinion): you are no longer able to use Win key to search like in Gnome, window buttons are non-existent or look terrible, and window managing is actually very much non-intuitive (if it supports mouse resizing/moving at all? you could not tell without reading manual). On Windows custom managers rarely replace the (perhaps not ideal but intuitive) default behavior completely, so are much easier to use. There was a mode of Awesome, which was supposed to replace only Gnome's WM with it, but I was unable to make it work, and gave up.
Finally, JetBrains Rider still turned out to be worse, than Visual Studio for debugging. Which I could probably live without if not for the other two.
Basically, I want to work, and not waste my time on debugging the OS core components.
I have windows 7 on virtualbox, because our software depends on a vendor who only provides a COM interface to their API. Thus we need some windows glue.
Also, there is some really neat software built for windows and it comes pre-installed on virtually any computer you intend to buy for an office that people keep it as their main OS. So if you intend to write a service that runs on a client's computer, it almost certainly has to be usable on windows.
Well, I like Windows. I also like, and regularly use macOS, Android, iOS (well, iPadOS now) and Arch Linux. I don't have any interest in stopping my use of any of those operating systems.
For the same reason they kept using Windows in the first place: spreadsheets (read "business").
When most of the business world relies on Windows, more and more software gets developed for it which in turn encourages even more people to use that shit. Seriously, if you want to stop this madness (Windows), you should start at the top of the pyramid and persuade businesses to switch to something "sane".
It's been a long time since I've run windows but I remember quite a lot of hassle playing games. With DRM being more common and all the crappy stuff that comes with "windows as a service" I doubt it's gotten better.
Last year one of my friends had windows update remove their graphics drive so machine ran with vesa graphics. Their description of it was something along the lines of "everything is big and slow and I don't know why."
You want to play games without hassle? Install arch and play the stuff in AUR. Honestly compiling everything is less hassle than dealing with the misbehaving blobs programmed by the changing whims of manipulative corporations.
I've been using Visual Studio for many years, but it still needs the ReSharper plugin to be truely great. As much as I love VS, I've always found it to be a little buggy, and I grew tired of listening to my laptop fans whining constantly.
I switched to Rider, and I love it! It took a while to find a theme that worked for me, but I have it setup perfectly now. There is honestly very little it can't do that VS can, but that goes vice-versa too. I don't recall it crashing even once in all the time I've used it, and it uses far less CPU than VS.
I really dislike this online-only trend. It feels like a step backwards in usability design. If anything, every app should strive to be offline-first.
Microsoft is turning everyone's PCs into internet nodes that collect data and stats. It's a way for them to get more social and behavioral data on their incredibly large market.
I sure miss Windows 7. Microsoft ruined things with Vista, which 7 fixed. They ruined 7 with 8 and 9, which 10 sort of fixed. They're ruining 10 by including all of these "modern" features like an AI assistant, and having an "account" on their backend.
There needs to be an alternative to Windows out there that actually uses Windows apps and drivers. WINE in Linux is not good enough for me yet.
They just released a new version of ReactOS and I haven't checked it out yet. If it can run Google Chrome and run MS-Office and Visual Studio I might just switch to it.
Everyone knows the saying "If you're not paying for it, you're the product, not the customer". Well, when companies I've paid good money to still go against my wishes, I just assume I'm still partially the product... meaning I'm not paying them enough and they've sought other sources of income (or have removed features to simplify the product and devote less human-hours to maintaining it to cut costs).
So what I'm saying is... Who out there is willing to make an OS at a $xxx/license price point that will just fucking do what I want? Any takers?
When ever I lock screen it get black so i have to type password blindly. So overcome this I put laptop to sleep with wake up locked option disabled. So it wake up logged in immediately for now.
This is more a dark pattern issue: user who's connected to the Internet during OOBE stage of installation will be forced to create or login with online account because it won't have other choice visible while the choice still exist but is simply hidden, because of MS "goals".
Can confirm. I was installing Win10 for a fried a few weeks ago and couldn't create a local account. After a couple minutes of search to no avail, I tried:
Just how is that supposed to work if I unplug the internet?
Last time I had to reinstall, OOBE creator nagged me twice to go online when it couldn't detect network connection - it even show me Wifi page while my PC has an older motherboard that doesn't feature it. That was kinda... desperate.
The same way implicitly-ticked "I agree to receive spam^H^H^H^H your newsletters every week" are "just a UI issue".
Yes, it's implemented through an UI element, like most computer-related things today, but let's not pretend it's not a dubious move that's done for the benefit of anyone except the people who paid for the damn thing.
It's funny how expectations being set differently can lead to such massively different reactions.
Chrome OS or Android devices require Google accounts? No problem.
Windows requires a Microsoft account? So angry!
I think there's also something to be said for the ubiquity and usefulness of these accounts outside of the OS setup. I don't really feel that I need a Microsoft account in my life and I can't say for certain whether I have one or not. I definitely have a Google account which I use many times per day.
> Chrome OS or Android devices require Google accounts? No problem.
Never had a Chromebook, however at least in Android I know that you can skip the Google login on setup and it does not use any dark pattern (just click Skip when asked).
I always tell peole to use offline accounts. Microsoft, in their eternal wisdom, sets your username to your first name when you do the on line account thing. If you're John or Chuck, it's fine, if you have non ascii characters in there, it's not. Some programs crash when saving to C:\Users\Yourname if Yourname contains non asci chars. Some even create a separate user folder with a broken encoding.
I setuped a Windows VM today.
It's still easy to do, but you need to know where it is, or to persist like me: clicking around then i found it behind "set up for organization" and "domain join instead".
It's refreshing for me to read this thread. I've had the same issues, worries and irritations about Microsoft and Windows for a long time. I just never know how vocal I should be about them. I am surrounded by people who use Windows to write code, test software, manage, etc. every day, but they don't really seem to care or notice anything's wrong. This makes me anxious about sharing my concerns - what if they're just a personal illusion driven by some unconscious biases? My guess is I'm not the only one who feels this way.
Some might say that whining about these things is counterproductive. I disagree. I don't want Microsoft to fail. I don't want people to hate Microsoft. I want every company to make good products and expend its employees' efforts in a productive way. I believe filling out feedback forms is not the best way to go about trying to change the curremt state. I think that once enough people in our field know about those issues and voice their concerns, we can somehow push Microsoft back in the right direction. And even if that's a pipedream, our comments might help people forced to use Windows at work to go about it somewhat more securely and conveniently.
When it comes to my personal experience, I've recently had Windows: force me to update (gave me 20 minutes to save my work); install some software I don't need during the update and then prompt me to log in (namely, MS Teams); break bluetooth drivers (they work now but not as well as they used to); make the machine get stuck in the boot process (I had to reset it and pray no data was lost); change the wallpaper.
I just want to do my job. I don't need updates for that. I might need the security ones, but trying to install Teams on my machine and breaking other stuff in the process while all I need is Visual Studio and a working OS really grinds my gears.
Rant: I'm just using MS Win for the first time after 15 years of using Linux (most recently KDE/Plasma on Ubuntu) .. how does anyone not throw the thing out the window.
I have a surface pro with dock for extra screens. Every time you undock-redock you now have to rearrange your windows .. no workspaces? Does anyone at MS even use their stuff? Why would it not show a "docked view" and "undocked view" automatically?
As for the lack of "keep above", and nevermind "focus follows mouse but don't raise", ... argh.
You can install apps to fix these things (some AutoHotKey based, for example) but as a daily work tool it seems awfully deficient; and of course our IT people won't allow installs.
It doesn't seem feature complete for the basic task of window management.
I don't get why people who have a choice keep taking this abuse. Stockholm Syndrome perhaps? I switched from Windows to Linux about 6 years ago and my computing experience went from having to deal with soul crushing bullshit every day, to feeling productive and in control of my environment again. Sure, there is the initial pain of having to learn a new environment and admittedly the GUI experience is a bit less polished, but jeez, how can any one take the inexorable, insidious, malevolent take over of their computing experience by this bullshit? Just bite the bullet, install Kubuntu on hardware known to work and move on. You will be in pain for about 2 weeks and happy from point on.
Completely agree. As a Linux power user I get a sort of smug satisfaction reading about problems like these. That said, I do wish others had more choices than a convenient OOTB experience that exploits users and a respectful experience that they must invest large chunks of time and effort into setting up.
I agree, but unfortunately, end-users just want to buy products that just work without fiddling around with settings, etc.
The HN audience and generally programmers are usually pro-Linux which makes sense, but they keep forgetting that apps like Office, Adobe, etc are only on Windows / Mac which Linux has to resort to fiddling with hacks like Wine which is not enough for an out-of-the-box experience with end-users.
The mindshare, user experience of Mac and Windows just prevents end-users from bothering to try, fiddle and learn Linux just to do serious work for anyone that is not a programmer these days.
Arguments like this also ignore the success of Chromebooks. The "average" person doesn't actually care about the things you listed. Some professionals might. But the average person isn't a photoshop user, and libreoffice works well enough. A default Ubuntu install doesn't require much if anything in the way of settings mungery, and I recall many a nightmare of getting drivers working on Windows back in the day.
> A default Ubuntu install doesn't require much if anything in the way of settings mungery...
I don't think any user would be bothered in attempting to install Ubuntu to replace Windows unless they are 'tech-savvy' enough or a software engineer. Such users would only see that as a double negative in losing their apps + UX mental model just to get things done. They first have to unlearn Windows/Mac and then replace their missing apps just use the selected Linux OS (Ubuntu, ChromeOS, etc) which just isn't worth it.
> I recall many a nightmare of getting drivers working on Windows back in the day.
Yes, Windows is a nightmare for getting drivers working, but I have heard worse stories of Linux users complaining about X11/Wayland bringing down their desktop plus the graphical issues Wine has when running Windows apps and games.
I'm not going to entertain any more ideas of "users are stupid and therefore cannot figure out an Ubuntu installation". It's extremely simple and I don't have that little faith in the average person. It's not hard, and I'd appreciate it if we dropped this stupid argument once and for all. It's defeatist and false.
>Yes, Windows is a nightmare for getting drivers working, but I have heard worse stories of Linux users complaining about X11/Wayland bringing down their desktop
In the last 10 years? This is no longer a problem.
>plus the graphical issues Wine has when running Windows apps and games.
The "average user" doesn't care. They want to read Facebook. See my previous comment.
> I'm not going to entertain any more ideas of "users are stupid and therefore cannot figure out an Ubuntu installation". It's extremely simple and I don't have that little faith in the average person. It's not hard, and I'd appreciate it if we dropped this stupid argument once and for all. It's defeatist and false.
Realistically the "average user" has better things to do than to install Ubuntu or another OS these days just to get work done. It's even better for Windows users thanks to WSL which gives them less of a reason to switch to a Linux distro or even to buy a Chromebook. Android is a good example of what the mess of the Linux distros should have been but for mobile.
> In the last 10 years? This is no longer a problem.
Well you brought up an anecdote about Windows as so did I for Linux. But as with both graphics cards and their drivers, this is still an eternal issue on the majority of Linux distros, especially those who keep using NVIDIA and Intel.
> The "average user" doesn't care. They want to read Facebook. See my previous comment.
Exactly. Why should the "average user" bother with all that trouble in switching/migrating if Windows / Mac users have everything Linux has to offer but with a sainer environment and established support and ecosystem.
I recently set up a ci system in Windows, spending over a month getting things working with various versions of visual studio, etc.
I tried with Windows 10, and widows server 2019. The end result was that Windows 2019 is super fast to set up, and literally compiled the same c code in half the time it took in Windows 10. The user interface was a lot snappier, and just felt nice, like how xp felt after disabling all the eye candy.
If it weren't for the insane pricing, server 2019 would be the ultimate windows os...
I dislike this because I would need to use a much more complex password for my home computer. Or I can choose to use a simpler to type/remember password for the online account and I don’t feel comfortable with that.
I’m sure that many of you use long complex passwords for your computers but I don’t for my home computer. I have to type if often to login and the environment is not a high risk area. I do use longer and more random passwords for accounts with a wider exposure.
Is macOS usable without without apple account? Last time I was given a MacBook at work it seemed that updates go through their appstore app which requires apple account.
mac OS is plenty usable without an Apple account. It was still possible to install OS updates through the app store without an apple account. Now in Mojave it has become much easier, as they have moved OS updates to System Preferences.
I'm sitting typing this on an my Windows 7 PC I built in 2011. Used to game a bit but that declined so the quad core and 16GB in this thing have been more than enough for my needs. It keeps running and I keep it patched.
I've been holding off upgrading to Windows 10 as I wanted to see how Microsoft would handle the cloud/cortana/ad/telemetry nonsense. I'm glad I waited; It'll never run on my home machines. My Linux box is seeing more and more use and my laptop is now running Alpine Linux.
My only gripe is I work in industrial automation, a field who unfortunately embraced Windows as a platform to build their tools on. This is a huge ball and chain that I'd rather not drag around anymore. So I'm still stuck giving my money to these schmucks.
Sigh. Go away Microsoft. Just leave us alone and stop chaining us down with your bullshit. It's been 20+ years of whining about stupid draconian Ms bullshit. I'm so fucking tired of this.
I can't see what on earth can MS gain from making this change. What does Microsoft gain from users having a "Microsoft account"?
If they go to a services model their Windows marketshare will plummet. As soon as users have to directly pay a monthly fee, all the Linux UX issues will seem meaningless.
Um, I just installed the latest Win 10 Development VM on Tuesday from a download of the image the same day, and it most certainly allowed me to install with a non MS account. I dont have the exact build number on hand, but its supposed to be the fast insider ring, from what I read.
I don't use Sir, or Alexa, or Cortana. I think the always-on voice recordings are terrifyingly creepy. Hate that they've been invented at all.
A friend of mine came over, with his kid, and I offered to let him watch TV while we talked. 2 minutes later the kid is bawling is eyes out... He couldn't figure out how to make the TV work without talking at it. I handed him a remote, and it was like ancient Egyptian algebra.
Anyway, terrifying glimpse of what's to come. Consumers that don't know how to push any buttons. Who find even using a mouse to be too complicated. Scares me a bit because the tools to create content aren't in that space... by making usage so silly easy, we diminish opportunities to build skills that help turn users into creators.
Tangent: I've been running Windows 10 on my work laptop since January 2019 and I use the PIN feature for login. Every so often I'll try to enter my PIN to log in and it says something along the lines of "your pin is not available". What on earth does that mean? The messaging is absurd and gives me no indication of what to do. I don't believe it's directly related to network availability because I'll retry again in a few minutes and it is still unavailable. The only reliable means to get around this is to reboot or enter my full username and password by typing 60 characters in from 1Password on my phone.
I ran into that with my last test VM setup. Very annoying. I'm glad my daily driver is Ubuntu Linux for development. Went with the Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition on this refresh cycle and the hardware support has been perfect.
You can still switch to Audit mode during install using SHIFT-F2, follow https://bartsimons.me/sysprep-generalize-windows-image-witho... to disable OOBE, then replace e.g. Narrator.exe with cmd.exe and set an administrator password. After that you can revert Narrator.exe back. It's a bit complicated, but it works and you don't have to create any additional accounts if you don't want to.
@Everyone 'Windows 10 LTSB' is the true user-focused version of Windows 10.
Its become one of my favourite OSes.
It doesnt come with any shit on it (windows store, xboxlive, cortana etc etc.) MS have also promised It will not receive any updates that change its functionality but will receive security updates, for 10 years. You can only get it if u buy in bulk tho. Or, u can just get it from tpb.. Considering MS are intentionally not selling by far the most user-respecting version of their OS to regular folks, it behooves us to pirate it.
I think you can also get it if you have a Visual Studio subscription (previously called an MSDN subscription) or an Action Pack subscription. The Action Pack is incredible value, BTW.
Agreed. 1000x. I do Windows Server because I should be able to have simultaneous multi-session instead of the intentionally hobbled singular "multi-session" offering in Client.
I have been using Arch Linux for 5+ years exclusively and I don't plan to change that. There have been a few issues over time, but overall it meets all my needs. Even video editing is fine with Kdenlive, Cinelerra GG or OpenShot. Gaming support improved with DXVK and Lutris. There is VSCodium IDE and also webapps are popular. Unless you must use SW like Photoshop, there is little reason to use Windows anymore... Just check HW compatibility when buying a new HW (e.g. printer, scanner support) and you will be fine.
If I use my live.com account, Windows sets system username automatically with first five letters of my first name. Then I see this stupid choice every time I open Windows console.
Yeah, I've always found that behavior really annoying. And it's basically impossible to fix it after the fact without making a separate account. The trick, if you know it before hand, is to make a local account (I guess you need to be offline for that now) and then link it later.
Relatedly, when I wanted to enable full disk encryption on Windows 10 Home, it insisted that I switch to online account (as in, it was impossible to enable FDE until I did). WTF?
I kind of understand this decision. Users forget their account password and lock themselves out. Then they complain about Windows loosing all their data. With an online account they can reset their password via mail, etc.
There definitely should be an option to encrypt it like the in the pro version, but then you could also just buy the pro version (then you can also disable auto-updates...). It's not really expensive in the EU.
Is there an available Pro update for arm64? Heck, I couldn't even find an install image for the version I have, and for some reason, Windows reset doesn't work, so I hope Windows won't hose itself ever on that machine, because it will then be a brick.
Oh that’s so annoying, it’s the only 100% reliable way I’ve found to not have my user folder not named the first five letters of my truncates username.
This is good to know. I was about to buy a Windows machine to use with an EEPROM programmer (using most of them with a Mac or Linux is a faff) but this just stopped me.
Another ex-win7/10 user here who switched to Linux Mint because of stuff like this and a lot of simular sh*t. Never looked back and sorry I didnt do it before.
To workaround a lot of other similar issues, to remove crapware bundled with Windows, to move entire profiles (and not just some folders) to another disk, to make installation experience much more pleasant I use NTLite. Windows setup can actually install Windows we want. Just it is not exposed to GUI and Microsoft original configuration tools are extremely terrible and confusing.
This is what the market wants. There are good alternatives like BSD, Solaris, various Linux distributions for those that want more control. And for those that enjoy the lock in there is also Apple devices and Chromebooks. It would be interesting if Intel and others would create an open Linux core enterprise pre installed OS with decentralized options for support and services.
For the last year I have been logged into Windows as my son (complete with getting weekly screentime reports about myself) because I once tried to set up a network game of Minecraft and somehow this associated a Microsoft account with my previously offline user account. There is no way to undo this without creating a new account from scratch and deleting the old one.
Who told you that? Look at all the games on steam proton. All the best indi games run fine on linux. I was playing eve online last night and subnautica a few days ago. Ksp, factorio, minecraft ... there are tons of great games on linux.
it's made by the guy who made monkey island. you'll love it. i was so stoked to have my book on the library shelf in the game. there were user submissions while the game was in progress and it really added something special to it.
I wasn't offered the “use offline account” option when I was installing Windows 10 home edition but I've then restarted the installation with the Internet wire detached and it was there.
If there is no way to use an offline account any more I'm certainly not installing. Bye, Windows, it has been amazing 25-yr-long adventure I've enyoyed, thank you and bye.
I've never created an online account with Microsoft. I don't see any advantage in giving them my login information. It makes me mad every time I have to pixel hunt for the link that is way down in the corner and one shade darker than the background. Like people at Microsoft have to know this is absolute bullshit and yet they keep doing it.
In theory I have two Microsoft accounts but I think there was a botched DB migration at some point because they've been merged somehow into a weird broken state that shows info from both.
I tried to contact Microsoft support to get this fixed but they were totally useless, and that's when I gave up. Not going back.
Microsoft Windows 10 is the least secure OS on the market.
Tracking, spying on, selling all user data to the highest bidder. MS is an abomination to privacy and security.
I still have an installed copy of Win 8 for special use if need be. However, I am avoiding the use MS products if at all possible.
Is this true even on more enterprisey versions of windows? I tend to use py-kms to activate licenses when I rarely need them (such as on VMs), and I generally stick to workstation or LTSB versions of windows. LTSB is actually pretty nice.
This is why I pirate Windows Server and KMS activate with an instance of vlmcsd on my home router (with the DNS SRV wizardry set up to allow automatic discovery). You can pay and pray, or you can vote both with your dollar and wits!
I just want to point out that nobody should really be surprised by this. It's essentially why I dropped windows like a hot potato when Windows 8 asked me to make an account tmfor the first time.
This might sound insane, but there is a literal cult taking over Microsoft with the explicit intent on spying on people and dominating the conversation regarding privacy. Just a hunch.
Realized after buying a windows laptop you can’t get bitlocker or drive encryption without having a MS account or paying for pro. So security isn’t a feature, it’s a paid add-on.
If you're going to pirate, might as well pirate Windows Server, which is basically the same kernel with a far less offensive (and bloated) userland configuration.
I'm not sure, I've not tried LTSC --- but the fact that I've met a few Microsoft employees who run the Server version on their company desktops and even laptops (because as an employee, they can get legit licenses for basically free) speaks volumes about what they think of Win10...
Why do you even need Windows in that case? Internet isn't any different when seen from Ubuntu and if you really have to use Windows, because AutoCAD and Photoshop, then you're paid enough to not worry about 260 usd.
Yes, there are several. All three of the following are free of charge on Linux.
OnlyOffice is an open source office suite that has native support for Microsoft Office formats (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx). There is a desktop version that works offline and an online version that integrates with Nextcloud. There are also mobile apps (closed source).
WPS Office (previously known as Kingsoft Office) is a closed source office suite that works on Linux. The software is quite popular in China, and the Android app has over 100 million downloads on the Play Store.
I am unable to replicate these findings and I did 3 fresh installs in a VM. For Ref I used US install media but I am in the EU so maybe they are doing this based on region based on my IP address all 3 test where done while online (couldn't be arsed to VPN to the states to test).
(I only have pro license's to hand, maybe its diff with home licenses, EDIT: Just got a home license. I'll test with that for the shits and giggles off it. But honestly, we should be installing pro for people so we have easier control via group policies anyways BRB testing more now i'm back home.)
First test: I installed a fresh copy of Retail Win 10 Pro 1903 downloaded today from https://microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10iso (Note: unless you fake your UA to be something other than windows it will redirect you to the media creation tool download. Say you are an iphone for example it will happily let you download the raw ISO without the media creation tool) During install it gives me the option to use an offline account in the bottom left [0].
(note: the two pic's will look the same, but they were taken from the 2 diff iso's - granted it will try its hardest to get me to change my mind during the rest of the set up but the option is there.)
Third Test: I installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 Pro with obv a local account, I then upgraded 7 pro to 10 1903 pro using the media creation tool, I selected the option to keep my existing files and apps and allowed the upgrade to take. Told setup NO to all the extra's (location, personal ad's etc etc etc) and the install took using the existing local account and didn't prompt me to "upgrade" to an MS account.
As for real hardware I upgraded a friend of the families laptop 2 weeks ago from 7 to 10 using the media creation tool and it again upgraded without pestering for an MS account. (And I'll be upgrading another in the next week or two when they are ready for me to do it. They would rather have the process hand holded for them incase of any oddness during the process, so I'll be able to report back then)
I'll bash MS as much as the next person but I'm unable to replicate these findings. I know they try their hardest to push an MS account onto people (I run the insider build on my personal rig and every major update I get a prompt about all the wonderful things a MS account brings... But I am still able to say Nope, local account thanks :-)
EDIT: Fresh install with home and they moved the offline button. Typed in some random numbers in the account bar [2] and it gave me the option to use an offline account on the next page [3] which then took me though the process of creating a local account [4] - Is it an annoying dark pattern? Yes. Did they remove local accounts? Nope.
Some are limited to having to use it - while still agreeing with the McDonalds assessment.
For instance, I'm a musician , teacher and producer and I do most of my work in a DAW called Cubase. It runs on Windows or Mac, and my main workstation is on Windows. I've been banging on about how great it would be to have it running on Linux for maybe 20 years, but it'll never happen. I'm sure people will suggest switching to something like Bitwig (which does run on Linux), or any of the free options, but either they don't do everything I need (free options), or I just can't get used to using them and they still don't work in a way that I'm comfortable with after nearly 30 years using Cubase.
You gotta literally workout hard to keep things under your control if you're a poweruser who's aware what happens under the hood - there are 3rd-party tools that help you achieve that. But if you're an "enthusiast" kind of user you probably don't bother at all with control over the system taken from you.
Only delusional ideologists even entertain the notion that the primary reason Linux hasn't caught on widely as a desktop OS is lack of preinstallation or marketing (or pick your corporate crime du jour).
Desktop Linux has many uses (it's my main OS right now). But the reason it hasn't caught on widely is perfectly obviously that as technology for the regular consumer, it's bloody awful. Many Linux enthusiasts admit this perfectly readily, but for obscure reasons some insist on clutching Linux to their chests as an identity totem. This is probably less harmful than nationalism, so I guess I shouldn't object too much.
As a privacy concerned individual who is more tech savvy than some (but by no means a technologist or even a dev) - NO. no freakin' way man. I tried to do a dual boot WIN/Linux setup once. What a shitshow - took me hours, multiple attempts, drivers not working, weird quirks trying to get peripherals to work, games not working. Recalling it now makes me angry all over again.
90% of this planet is not capable, nor will ever be capable, of dealing with something that is not a fully fledged, 'stable' mainstream OS, either Windows or Mac OS. That's not good, it's not bad - it just...is. Better get used to it, or come up with a better strategy for changing it.
This is unfortunate but entirely true. I'm a software developer and though absolutely not a Linux expert of any kind, nevertheless very far from being a computer novice. But this is kind of my experience with Linux. I keep logs of configuration & software difficulties I have with OSs. My Linux one for this month is longer than my Windows & OSX ones for the past decade combined.
And I'm writing here as (currently) a Linux user - it's the main OS on my work laptop because the things I like about it (stellar performance, notably from the filesystem, fantastic developer tooling) are more important to me than the difficult things. But the difficulties are numberless, and I accept that many things I take for granted on Windows or OSX just will never work well. Most of them could work, but I'll never have time to track down & absorb all the Arch wiki, SO & manpage resources I'd need to sort them out.
Stuff like this is why I switched to Mac for daily use about 2 years ago. On the rare occasion that I have to get on a Windows machine, I’m shocked by how poor the experience is in comparison to MacOS. Not looking back, the MBA is a good value and the hardware is undeniably more refined and higher quality.
I am not even sure why Windows matters anymore. MS probably gives 0 fucks about your usual consumers and cares only about those customers who will also buy Office365 subscription.
This post has become far too popular for something that isn't really true. Similar to news about Xbox needing to be connected to the internet.
1. Windows 10 always prioritized account creation with an online account simply because it was more feature rich.
2. Windows 10 always had an option (dark) to create account connected with no online account. It was hidden. And discouraged.
3. Windows 10 still offers offline account creation through user control panel within an existing account.
4. Imagine being able to go to any computer and logging in with your account that is based in some other machine.
5. Imagine going to a computer without your account that also prevents others from logging in because it is password protected. And being able to log in anyway through your online account.
Stop freaking out. This expands options nicely.
Edit: it would be nice to be told why the disagreement.
In general I have a positive opinion about what MS is doing lately, but Windows is a glaring exception, it’s getting worse and worse at an alarming rate.
In the last two months we had two consecutive updates that broke basic functionality for users who disabled web results in Windows Search (which is a very common setting among those who care about privacy) https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-1903-microsoft-deta...
Now, MS is trying to force upon customers this cloud login garbage, which is obviously not acceptable if you are privacy conscious.
I build my own PCs and have spent hundreds of dollars in Windows 10 retail licenses, I pay for the service so I don’t want to be the product.
I’ve always assumed that I’m locked into using Windows but after all this crap I’m starting to look into alternatives even though they’v got shortcomings on their own.
(Edit: replaced Amp link with real link, sorry I didn’t realise it was Amp)