There was that time I discovered several GB of screenshots had been automatically saved to My Pictures from some setting they snuck into the printscreen screen grab tool and then that of course those were automatically uploaded to the cloud. After disabling the option it would sometimes reenable itself.
And game devs throwing random shit into My Documents was also fun. Ubisoft were terrible for this, after playing a game I'd notice a bunch of cache files they dumped into My Docs being uploaded. I mean putting save games and config files inside my docs is annoying enough, random cache files is just taking the piss.
Also windows backup would mess up my desktop between systems on occasion which was also very fun!
I disabled most of the shit but it was still annoying on occasion. Then a year or two ago I solved the problem by just using Linux for 90% of things, Mint at first but now Fedora, and grudgingly booting back into Windows for the other 10% of my needs.
Not to say that MacOS isn't occasionally very annoying as well. It is. But as a tool it's also much more useful than vanilla Windows, which helps a little.
This is not unique to Windows.
How do you do you block One Drive on Windows from nagging you constantly?
However macOS doesn't cram this party advertising, news headlines, shopping coupons and (for now) AI services down your throat.
If you have any notifications you actually do want, this isn't a viable solution. But personally I have yet to ever see a notification on my computer which I considered important.
Good timing to plug this other article on the top page, Exactly om that paradox:
Maybe that of 20 years ago, it's very smooth these days if you use e.g. Debian.
Techie users might just find tweaks online that allows disabling dark patterns on their devices.
I don't know how people who care but aren't techie enough to install workarounds (or to tell good ones from bad ones) deal.
Generally if the company is deploying Windows they are using OneDrive, although the exact configuration will vary.
Windows has always been designed with corporate customers in mind. That's true more than ever today, the whole Azure ecosystem is very lucrative for them. Personal Windows users have always been an afterthought, but starting around Windows 10 they became less important than their own data. Which Microsoft has been getting away with brazenly claiming as its own.
Though it's very well possible to use another service as a corporate client. We did for many years.
You install it onto a fresh Win10/11 install, and it strips out the dumb crap that MS forces on everyone. It's especially targeted towards people doing gaming on Windows, and seems to work pretty well.
Even Linux allows such basic customization.
If Apple allowed this type of user-friendly customisation on MacOS, I suspect a lot of Windows users will migrate to Mac.
Classic Mac OS was released first, with well-considered, consistent design standards. Windows arrived almost 2 years later, and in the interest of not looking it like copied Macs, Microsoft essentially flipped the positions of everything, including window controls, toolbars, desktop icon placement, and button order. (Yes, both copied Bell Labs).
Windows has no standards, so maybe they could provide that kind of option instead.
All in all, Windows still comes with that 90s-early 00s flat 9x widgets buried deep beneath fancy W11 interface for compatibility reasons. Because Microsoft never could have their OS9 to OSX transition equivalent. They swapped DOS based 9x line but interface was still same - hell even NT got sprinkled with 9x and dropped old 3.x one
The users are much more simple than this. Most have never even tried Mac. If they want to, they will just buy one the next time they need a computer and accept the new experience as being the new norm.
> Even Linux allows such basic customization.
Does Windows allow such customization? I think that's the relevant comparison. Both macOS and Windows are trying to be "user-friendly," which more and more means "take what we tell you and like it." I personally am a techie and like the Unix way of exposing everything that one can imagine to customization, but I do know that I'm often lost when I want to learn a new piece of customization-minded software and have to decide how to, and whether to, twiddle lots of knobs before even getting into just using it. I think that there's definitely a reasonable place for an OS that spends its time getting those settings right so that the user doesn't have to worry about them.
(Whether any particular setting is right or wrong is, of course, going to depend on the user. I'm a Mac user, there are some defaults I've always hated, and others that I think used to be good but are moving in the wrong direction. But, so far, I stick with it at least in part because there are lots of other things it gets right, and it doesn't feel fundamentally hostile to me in the way that Windows does.)
Bit of an overreaction, the majority of the world is on Windows (I use both as my daily). I'm sure as a Mac user you remember the days around 2007 where there were a lot of compatibility issues on Mac, it has come along way.
Your annoyance with Windows is likely due to what I see a lot of which is simply that the operation system works and does things differently, which requires you to do things in a way you might not be familiar with. We use operating systems almost instinctively once we're familiar, jumping to another OS is going to rock your boat.
That kinda solved the only big issue I had switching OSes constantly, the copy paste shortcuts. Apple is command-c/v and if you constantly switch you never get used to it.
Yeah, would not recommend. From my experience tweaking three OSes to be similar enough to be able to form muscle memory for efficient use is not trivial.
Unless you spend 99% of time in terminal, then it can be done, but in that case OS doesn’t matter. That is what I personally ended up doing.
I just wish the Affinity suite would be available for Linux too.
(Agree that Liquid Glass is miserable, though.)
Once you realize that the dedicated app is basically just a browser shell, using a real browser becomes somewhat of a no brainer.
Edge even supports PWAs on linux which can give you the "app" experience without the app.
The Office-in-browser experience is laggy and slow and long-learnt familiarities are gone.
Additional old-man whinge: Outlook keeps wanting to open in a browser window now. I have enough things open in a browser that are difficult enough to manage that I don't need Outlook getting lost in that forest as well. It's convenient having a separate Taskbar icon that will definitely open my Calendar or Email.
When everything's a browser tab, what's the point of the taskbar?
When everything's a browser tab then the browser is the Operating System.
Every day I'm forced to use Microsoft at work, I'm increasingly glad I ditched it at home.
Just want out of the box 4k hdr 120hz vrr and 5.1 surround sound over hdmi on nvidia gpu, it can boot straight into steam for all I care. Performance should not be worse than windows.
Is this possible? Install and it just works out of the box; of course games will have to be compiled for this... but if this becomes a major market.... then games will support it.
I would LOVE this.
Would be drop in OS replacement for my dedicated windows gaming PC on LG OLED tv. ps: These things are amazing for gaming due to fast pixel response times. Great for couch co-op!
Especially non-tech people. Look at how popular Ubuntu VMs are with research chemists. And successful chemists tend to be highly technical.
> Look at how popular Ubuntu VMs are with research chemists.
Are they? I actually have no idea.
> And successful chemists tend to be highly technical.
But not necessarily in any IT sense. STEM skills are very specific.
Sorry, it looks like I’m just being petulant and saying “I’m not sure” about your every sentence, haha, that wasn’t my intent but it is what I ended up doing I guess.
I'm going to dig into this a little. This feels like shifting responsibility onto the user when things don't go well. E.g. comparing the platonic ideal of Linux when analyzing practical options. I make lots of mistakes in all aspects of my life. I know historically, and projecting into the future that I will get into trouble with Linux, so I don't daily-drive it. Yes, there are always ways to fix things when a system gets in a bad state, but there is a time and effort cost to this.
Saying it's my fault for breaking it doesn't help restore the system. e.g. "Should have used the LTS release", "Should have only installed software from the package manager", "Shouldn't have used sudo", "Shouldn't have edited a system file without knowing what you're doing". If I was doing those things, it probably seemed like the best of available options, e.g. the only way to make a certain piece of hardware or software work.
But somebody must be responsible for making your computer work, who should it be?
The companies that sell operating systems don’t seem to be fulfilling the obligation to make a bug free and user-friendly OS. The Open Source community never really had accepting that responsibility as a “business model” because they aren’t businesses.
In Windows or Darwin you are not responsible, because you can't tell the computer what you want to do, but in a free OS, you can and do order what the computer is doing and that's why you also need to deal with the consequences.
I instead buy a pencil from a different brand. It doesn't come in the color I want, but it's good enough, and lets me focus on the drawing. The pencil engineers and enthusiasts keep telling me the customizable mechanical pencil is much better. They love it, have learned its intricacies, and take pride in this.
Buy a newly announced Windows laptop with a new CPU model. Try Ubuntu, you're day is about to suck.
[1]: "Break" here meaning "behaves in a way I don't want"
I am switching to Linux for both my desktop and laptop from here on out.
I just don’t want to be sidetracked by overly aggressive and pushy decisions by my OS vendor anymore. I’ve been happy with the stability of my Debian/Ubuntu systems for getting work done. I have been using apple laptops for 10+ years, and I still like their build quality, but I don’t like the direction macOS (or Windows) is heading.
Linux has its own idiosyncrasies, which may or may not make it worth. E.g. ABI diaspora, installing things can be inconsistent and high-effort, the cycle of copy+pasting CLI commands and system file edits from old forum posts or these days LLMs to fix something, treating your PC like a multi-user system that has an admin by default, etc. My general experience is that installation and things work smoothly with the built-in or package-managed software, but gradually degrade as you start installing software and drivers.
I think I have the opposite orientation: In the past when family and friends needed help to install/rescue their machine (on Windows versions that supported it) I always ensured there was a separate "Manager" admin login and then made their main account "limited", albeit with UAC popups.
If nothing else, it made repeat visits much easier.
Spotlight got a major update in macOS 26 where it can now perform actions. I can open spotlight and type "run <enter> <some terminal command or script>" and get the output right there, selecting it will put the resulting text into my current window.
16:16 up 23:27, 1 user, load averages: 1.72 1.78 1.90
Spotlight is also context aware... Say I run across some text in another language:
Spiegami come funziona questo coso.
I'm not a fan of all the UI choices that have been made, but those will get ironed out over time. Meanwhile, I get some more powerful out of the box features without needing to resort to 3rd party apps.
I wish unserious complaining like this wasn't mixed with actual technical criticism of software.
Big Sur is, somehow, the exact opposite. Corners are rounded off as if they could hurt someone, and margins are padded more than a cell in solitary confinement. Space is wasted everywhere. It's Fischer-Price design philosophy and I'm hardly the only one to point it out.
In a side-by-side, so much screen real estate gets wasted that it's genuinely disgusting: https://www.andrewdenty.com/blog/assets/img/macos-new-ui/fin...
Just feels like I’m using an iPad now.
Here’s a fun exercise. Look at how huge the window borders are to achieve that insane corner radius. The cursor changes to the resize arrow at the corner before it even touches the window, the bottom arrow is a good 4-5px away from the window lol.
What is the intent of dumbing-down the Mac design language? iOS superfans already have devices to use, the Mac has to compete in the professional segment of the market, not the casual one. The only motivation I can see is to enforce solidarity with VisionOS, which by most accounts seems to be a professional flop too. An ecosystem shouldn't aim for superficial similarity across devices, each experience should enforce their unique strengths/weaknesses in the UI and then network their state to each-other in the background. Apple used to know this.
Sure, that's a reasonable technical criticism. Wasted screen space is, in my opinion, an issue in modern interface design trends. Good design uses space in a thoughtful manner. The designers of macOS clearly don't agree with us, but we can have a reasonable technical discussion about that. We can consult the data. We can consult the users.
> It's Fischer-Price design philosophy
You're mixing the two again. Fisher-Price was not consulted in the design of modern macOS interfaces, and complaining about not liking the design language cheapens all your actual points. No real discussion can be had around this taste garbage. You're rage baiting.
I don't know why they commit to especially the last part. To me, it feels like that is why Microsoft's Windows efforts are getting a lot of negative press lately; there must be lots of writers and media individuals who had lost data to that exact behavior who are now perpetually biased against them for that reason.
Just why?
You can't re-sell a boring utility every one/two/three years.
Nobody wants it - not the top management (bonuses for the revenue growth), nor the middle management (bonuses for the succesful new projects), nor the guys who implements the things (reconginition for the new projects).
Or talking simpler - KPI. And there is no 'we improved the stability for 0.0000002% of clients' indicator along with 'customers are happy with the thing we sold them in 2017'.
And don't forget what it was some fruit company what even wasn't in the corporate which made it fashionable to have a 'totes new and refreshing experience (along with a hefty price tag)' every year or two.
MS thinks it knows better than you. It thinks its owns your data. Remember that this has happened before (7 years ago!): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18189139
There is a setting to disable Google Drive and it just works. It won't auto-enable, no popups or nags or anything. Even Google Docs/Workspace falls back to a trimmed down offline version.
Google has another photo gallery app called just Gallery, that's what I'm now using.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
Perhaps Gmail is a better example to see the incumbent acting as it wishes, enabling and disabling features without worry about the end user's POV.
Windows is certainly on the same path but I'm not sure how far ahead or behind they are in the competition to screw their users over with these dark patterns. They only have to trick you once.
Right-click on them in Explorer, go to Properties, click on Location tab, and type/select the new path for them, click Move... then that folder and its contents will be moved to new locate.
I've movier following to D: partition as root-level folders: Contacts, Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Favorites, Links, Music, Pictures, Saved Games, Searches, Videos.
The proper way to do it without breaking everything is via a symbolic link or junction.
The fact that the default is to auto-magically upload your personal data on to somebody else's box (sorry "the cloud") is fucking insane.
Such things should be opt-in, not opt-out; and certainly not nag-ware.
I stopped using these long ago because every other app you install puts something there so it becomes a landfill automatically.
Just create an additional partition and put all your non-OS files there. This is a classic idea people have been using since the DOS days, still working great.
No time to check every Windows update if I got surprise features like that. In my opinion Microsoft has lost it completely when it comes to user demand and their main OS.
But if you don't have an account, MS cannot just sync the data anywhere... at least yet...
I hate this problem with all OSes. We have folders that started out being places for users to put things like Pictures, Documents & home, but over time they get filled with crap from software and it's difficult to find your own files. We should have had a "program-files" subfolder or something by default in all these places to separate things that applications put there vs. things that you put there.
My dad turned it on not knowing what it meant and it completely messed up his workflows and now I have to figure out how to safely disable it and move his files back.
I will remember Microsoft causing this problem for him every time I think of or get asked if someone should use a Microsoft product or service.
When uploading 10k photos from macOS to Google Cloud using the Google Cloud macOS app, it said syncing had completed about 2 hours earlier than my back-of-the-envelope calculations predicted. "Great", I thought, but was still a bit suspicious, so just in case, before deleting the local copy, I closed the Google Drive app and reopened it, and it immediately started syncing - there were 2k photos/videos to go (!!). That's how insanely easily it could be to lose precious memories due to a tiniest bug in cloud software.
Surgical precision and extreme thoroughness are the only ways to approach these seemingly simple operations of moving files from one computer to another.
Storage is cheap enough that this attitude is possible.
But I guess keeping all of your designers aware of it across thousands of teams is too hard.
They only care about the bits they can sell to advertisers. Actual user data is only a burden to them, and occasional data loss is not a big deal.
Even on HN many people can't be arse to use Firefox, how could we expect anyone to avoid giants like Microsoft?
Running out of options these days
Of the few problems I have, some are due to my unconventional setups - like the one I'm typing on now. It's a remote app, running on a vm w/ a copy of a profile storing logins.
I presently don't have any Ffx issues pending. Ironing them out took less time and energy than posting a rant about it.
Just because other people aren't having problems doesn't mean I'm lying about my experience or that my comments need downvotes.
I love Firefox and only mention anything out of anxiety that enshittification is coming for it, too.
Then when macOS provided native support for cloud filesystems, it migrated to that. And it's been a complete mess. Uploads often don't get triggered until you restart the system, exactly what you're describing.
I'm pretty sure they're Apple macOS bugs, not Google ones. Because those kinds of bugs are constant across everything iCloud and Mac, but I don't generally see them on Google-only stuff.
When was that? I haven't regularly used a Mac in a good four years. At the time I had the Google Drive app with a business subscription, and I don't think there was any other option. It was terrible, to the point I completely gave up on it. Just like the other poster says, it would say, "I'm all synced up", but only half my files would be synced. I'd need to restart it to get syncing again. When I would try to get a large amount of files from the cloud to local storage, it would randomly crap out.
Basically, it would stall very often, and this was on wired gigabit ethernet, not some spotty mobile connection from a phone via wifi in a crowded cafe.
https://support.google.com/a/answer/13067413
Apple calls it File Provider.
I've been using the Google Drive for Desktop file streaming version since it launched in 2017 (file streaming, not exactly sync), I think it was originally called Google DriveFS, and never had any problems until they switched to Apple's File Provider.
There's a different Drive app that only did sync, I think that's what you're talking about. It's much older. Then they got merged into the current one.
This is an instance of Microsoft being evil.
It's not even something you have to "fix" just pay and enjoy
Except they were still claiming to love Linux whilst paying off government officials to hurt adoption amongst other deceptive behaviour.
Some people are really naive.
Try Windows 98/2K in a VM and see how peaceful the Windows experience used to be.
However they still want you to use windows because it makes it easier to sell their services. Windows has become a marketing vehicle which is why it now demands we create a Microsoft account and constantly pushes things like OneDrive as the article alludes to.
I don't think they were ever any more benign. It was always a pretty hardcore business. First software then services (and now they're hell-bent on becoming the biggest AI player, not very successfully so because they're really only a reseller of watered-down OpenAI services)
One is the many many years old renaming trouble, renaming a file in Windows Explorer inside the OneDrive sometimes select all while I am alread typing extension to the end of the file name, clearing everything with the following keystroke, either resulting in something stupid saved on Enter if I do not realise what is happening (and being mad not remembering what the original name was), or just have to cancel and restart the renaming. Very frequent and annoying.
But a ... lets call it funny, so a funny trouble I recently discovered is that file name completely fine with Wndows is incompatible with OneDrive, OneDriva mandates me to "change the filename! change it!" (with different words but the same tone). What the f! Microsoft is not compatible with itself? : D What a clusterfuck. It is fairly new, I believe there are spaces in fron of the file name that is generated with some software I am trying, I don't care that much, nonessential, but very comedic. I have too much difficulty with using Windows to care with all the trouble and spend any time on those, I work around those, I increasingly give no f. (my work mandates Windows, ah!)
I also seen some sort of message box when a certain software tried to automatically open a newly created file in OneDrive, something like this: "The file http://sharepoint.blablabl/bla/bla/newly_created_file.ext" cannot be found. Whaaaat?! I work with a desktiop only software, it does not even care about internet connection. Saving the file to an ordinary folder works great, opens automatically. Sounds like at some point querying the full path of the file produces an internet address? Again, I give no sht to this crp that much to go ino and investigate and diagnose this hundredths of bug, just to have fruitless conversation a very understanding and very useless support guy or a forum audience suggesting how should I wrap my life around the stupidity of Windows.
We all wish that. But if you look at their responses, when people report bugs, tough times. They. Don't. Give. A. Shit.
The mandate to identify ways to increase profit comes from above, and it is the PMs (through marketing/research/developers) that come up with ways to satisfy these requirements.
And failure to meet these requirements means a bad review and a chance of being laid off.
Trust the HN crowd to know.
-> https://endof10.org/ (it has a map with people who can help install Linux)
-> https://www.opensuse.org/ (what i'm using on my PCs, works fine for the most part[0])
-> https://www.linuxmint.com/ (people seem to like this)
-> https://bazzite.gg/ (seems to be popular with gamers)
-> https://www.debian.org/ (almost everything is based on this :-P)
[0] for the most part because nothing - not even macOS where Apple controls the entire stack from CPU up to the OS - is without problems. Though i'm doing weird stuff with my PC - on my laptop i just threw it in ~3 years ago and it has been working without issues since then
- Davinci Resolve
- Adobe suite
- AutoHotkey scripts, lots of them
- Microsoft Office, mainly PowerPoint, Excel and Word for creating and interacting with other companies' docs. Libre/OpenOffice mangled them/were missing features I depend on
- Issues with my laptop's Nvidia card (screen tearing etc.) last time I tried to switch, and rabbit holes that I don't have time for anymore (solopreneur)
That said, I would love to switch back. I loved rofi [0] last time, for example.
Can anyone speak to the above? What's the status of running Windows apps like Adobe, Resolve, Office, for instance? Or AutoHotkey or equivalent?
[0] https://github.com/jordansissel/xdotool
Amazing that this free-to-download application supports Linux when Adobe doesn't. Or maybe not so amazing given their different approaches.
https://github.com/NapoleonWils0n/davinci-resolve-freebsd-ja...
Has nativ support.
- Adobe suite
- Microsoft Office
https://www.winboat.app But beta.
- AutoHotkey scripts, lots of them
I'm afraid there is no easy way. https://pyautogui.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
- Issues with my laptop's Nvidia card
Get AMD.
> I don't have time for anymore (solopreneur)
Fair. Second PC to play around from time to time is probably the best in this case. But I fully understand, unless as a hobby, that infesting a lot of time makes little sense.
In terms of office compatibility OnlyOffice iirc has the best compatibility. Easy to install via flatpak (I really enjoy this move in desktop linux because now I can easily remove network access from apps / set the permissions I want).
The only thing that seems unsurmountable is probably Adobe, not sure how much of a dealbreaker that is.
I'd suspect there's probably versions of all those that have been made to function basically through WINE.
If your curious, it's very easy to use it as a hypervisor, and pull out what you can, though IOMMU/SR-IOV might be tricky.
Alternatively, checking if Blender/GIMP service your use cases wouldn't even require switching...
AutoHotKey has been solved a lot of different ways, for sure.
But yeah, granular detailed control over your hardware is still the primary use-case for Linux, so if you view bad defaults, annoying install procedures, occasional show stopping bugs a hindrance rather than an opportunity, maybe it's not a strong candidate.
I'm guessing others here who are primarily on Windows can relate to this. We've been disappointed with what Apple and Microsoft are doing, and we want, not necessarily more customization of our OS, just less interference.
I'm running Ubuntu on a laptop with a 3070m. I don't have any issues like this. I did have issues related to using an external monitor but they all seemed to resolve when I switched from Gnome Wayland to Gnome X11.
2. Google drive/docs/*
3. Hacky office on Linux work around - several found on github
Davinci Resolve seems to run faster on Linux.
It's very similar to Bazzite, which you listed, but not gamer focused. You get an easy install, auto updates (without reboots), and a bulletproof, immutable OS that is nearly impossible to break.
If you want bling and tiling, Omarchy is the new hotness: https://omarchy.org/
It should be noted that this specific framing ("it's just a disagreement," "someone didn't like it," "it's nothing big") is used by the people that, instead, like the "comment." It's an extremely common pattern. So is one of the words he uses later, "histrionics."
The comment in question is an ethnonationalist blog post. Not a comment somewhere, but an actual goddamn essay. But you don't have to take my word on it, you can read it yourself:
https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-london-e7d38e64
You should also click through his archive for more, because this isn't really new for him, it's just taking it to a new low.
> by a small group of terminally online histrionics
Again, witness the minimization of the actual thing he said and the redirection to the critics. Why? It's the argument pattern they've adopted.
The term that the parent post would be looking for it actually "social shaming." You see, shame used to be an effective tool against bigotry. Not wanting to associate with bigots isn't histrionics. On the contrary, being OK with bigotry is bad, and wrong!
Moreover, the false equivalence you're drawing between opposition to immigration and bigotry is part of what let the problem fester in the first place. I think people should be allowed to oppose immigration without being called racist, its not the same thing. The open bigotry and racism by the right in many countries is partly a reaction to this false equivalence. They saw immigration in some cases as causing social disorder, as a tool to suppress wages, as causing increased crime etc. and they were forcefed a message of "all immigration is good and any opposition is racist" to reasonable objections. No one is obligated to accept every person who wants to come in.
Despite the fact that it mostly runs in powershell, it still has a better UX then the majority of Microsoft apps. (Except for the confusion about their only GUI pop-up window, you put a check mark next to the built-in apps you want removed, which was led me to reread the instructions to make sure I had it right the first time I used it).
It has both built-in sane default for people who just want to debloat Windows 10/11, along with a "custom" option which takes less than 60 seconds to get through but gives you all the customizability you need.
(No connection with the author except mad respect.)
—sent from my Linux desktop, but alas..
With overlays to get packages outside of the core distro tree, a lot of software is just available, and even when it's not, you usually have the build tools or can easily install them so building whatever else from source isn't an obstacle. (I do sometimes have to use debian/ubuntu/mint (mint is on my travel laptop that I only use when traveling) and it still gets me sometimes having to make sure build-essential and various -dev packages are installed to do anything.) One downside is that your glibc will likely be newer than a lot of other systems out there, so that creates obstacles to shipping binaries around. You can also create your own packages in an overlay fairly easily as well, or keep some old ones around that have lost their maintainers and get removed from the tree.
There's also a somewhat annoying 'license' system (adding license names you accept to a configuration file) but with it the tooling can automatically fetch certain things for downloading (e.g. nvidia driver blobs) that some companies want people to get manually so they can harvest your data/force you to accept some EULA. I'm now remembering that 16 or 17 years ago, the last time I tried Fedora, I was testing it out by plugging in a flash drive (yay it auto mounted) but it failed to play an MP3 file and suggested I pay someone money to install codecs. It's left a sour impression on Fedora ever since, not to mention my lingering question why anyone would want a Red Hat derivative outside of a locked down office (and even then at my old BigCo job we devs got to use Ubuntu).
For casual use I still think Mint is probably the best distro at the moment. I tend to recommend the mate desktop environment since it's what I like and am used to but it's a poor distro if you can't easily install any DE of choice on it.
Maybe one thing I had with Fedora: I had to trail one major distribution behind, because going for the most recent releases always ended up hurting me.
But that's just for work. I don't think I can move my gaming to Linux yet
With Ubuntu I kept running into bugs which had already been fixed upstream, or which were caused either by Debian's or Ubuntu's patches. And even filing regular bug reports was basically impossible: the Ubuntu packagers will almost certainly ignore it, the Debian packagers aren't interested in bugs happening in mutated versions of outdated packages in their unstable repo, and the upstream maintainers aren't interested in bug reports for weirdly-patched old releases.
After several attempts at getting bugs fixed (sometimes even sending complete patches) and getting no response for years I gave up on Ubuntu and switched to Fedora. Their policy is to ship the freshest upstream releases possible, with as few patches as possible. This means I can just directly file my bug reports at the upstream vendor, and a fix will usually land on my system fairly quickly.
I do notice that I am slowly using more and more Flatpak desktop apps: why bother with the middleman when you can trivially get the latest release directly from the upstream vendor?
What particular issues were you experiencing?
As a counter anecdote, on my Windows installation I routinely run into "WTF" moments, such as BitLocker randomly deciding I need to enter recovery codes, the constant nagware that is OneDrive and friends, plus when I search for the same binary exe I've launched a dozen times Windows still displays "web results" first - fooling me just about every time.
The point is that even though I have 95% de-Microsoftized my life for the past 2 decades, I still need to run Windows for a few specific flows, and I run into the same issues as the article author here.
I'd say "vote with your wallet", but when all the tech platforms are doing it, there's not much choice. PCs / laptops are probably the last hold out: Just switch to Linux (but be careful which distro you pick) or MacOS (for now).
The political pendulum is going to swing far left in the US given the disasters that are playing out in DC. Hopefully this sort of crap will be banned when that happens.
1. The WiFi just would not work; I couldn't see any networks. 2. I have 2 monitors, and one monitor would display 80% of one screen, and 20% of the other. I suspect that it was because the monitors had different refresh rates and resolutions.
I then tried installing Windows, and everything did just work.
Especially speaking of playing games, I periodically see newcomer Linux gamers hitting problems due to Mint being outdated and not having good Wayland support. Especially for any kind of recent hardware.
Personally I'm using Kinoite[1], an "immutable" version of Fedora that has an immutable base image, which makes it nearly impossible to break things during updates (even major upgrades).
KDE also started making its own Arch based distro now: https://kde.org/linux/
But it's one of those immutable flavors. I prefer something more flexible.
With AMD, always make sure to use latest kernel, Mesa and amdgpu firmware.
But then there was a strange glitch on every single game (both native and Proton-based). Periodically (e.g. every ~10 seconds on some 3D games, on every screen reload on some other) the screen turned black for about 2 seconds.
Then I remembered that I had some issue when I first installed Debian 12 two years, though I forgot which issues exactly, and that I solved them by switching from Wayland to X11.
I'll try updating the firmware and drivers manually if I have more issues in the future, thanks.
Like, in regular Gnome/KDE land, you have Wayland which is a huge improvement over X11, HDR works, fractional scaling works... None of that works on Mint.
The former is Mint's specific problem, while the latter is a general problem of all long period release distros that don't take care of updating Linux kernel, Mesa and etc. to actual recent releases.
Remember that ABI when you're pulling out your hair over whatever MS's latest snafu is. The PC isn't about personal computing, no ,no, its about desperation. Its about using the fulcrum of ABI stability to see how much someone can accept wedged down their throat, because yeah, well, don't wanna loose that ABI.
Remember that ABI, 'next time 'Error: Something Happened.'
I don't personally have any knowledge of the answer to this question but, hundreds of people had to vote for it and they rarely all have the same things in mind when they do.
It's better to focus on what legislation does and says rather than what it was meant to do.
Maybe it is possible and I just missed it. But either they don't allow it, or they have enough dark pattern bullshit to trick me, either way, it's the same as windows to me.
What do you mean? Windows doesn't do that. Contrary to what the blog post claims, you can easily uninstall OneDrive (unlike iCloud).
And using Windows without an online account is possible, although the process is cumbersome enough to deter the average user.
I think Windows will always be able to work without a MS account, because there are many critical (offline) deployments out there. But they'll probably make it difficult if you're using a "consumer" edition.
[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufactu...
Gatekeeping and second opinions don't really move the needle on where I stand with either company.
And unlike Windows it doesn’t turn itself on randomly or install additional apps like OneDrive, Teams, and Skype etc. with every OS update.
Linux is good enough to be a daily driver for most things these days.
Reminder that Apple's revenue from ads is in the billions and climbing at an accelerating pace. The enshittification comes for all. They don't need to be good, they just need to be better than Microsoft.
Neither GNOME nor KDE get anywhere near as bad. It's really only these commercial "holier than thou" operating systems that think they know best.
With Windows, a regular seemingly normal update appeared almost as if I was upgrading from Windows 10 to Windows 11 and it prompted me to do the backup to OneDrive. I accepted it because I was worried the update to Windows 11 would get screwed up. After the update completed it was just a normal update after all and there was no need for me to accept that onedrive backup!
I've got my fair share of horror-stories with both OSes, I switched between dailying Mojave and Windows 10 for a big portion of my life. Nothing will ever top updating to Catalina, booting up Ableton Live and seeing all my paid plugins go from "working fine" to "completely unsupported" in the span of an update.
But the problem is that modern tech companies are using it as a dark pattern to completely eliminate the No option. Sadly, I think this just might need to be regulated out. I don't see any reason why there shouldn' be a regulation that a “Maybe Later” button can't appear in a prompt as the only alternative to Yes, there needs to be a No/Never option as well.
Like in Android: Do you want to back up your photos to the cloud? "Yes" or "Maybe later" which means being asked every week. Also, the checkbox is selected by default, and if you close the dialog by accidentally clicking outside of it (maybe because you were already going to click on something else, and the dialog opened in the last millisecond) that by Google standards counts as consent.
Of course, turning on the backup of photos in clouds only requires a single click (or misclick), but turning it off requires following a long tutorial very carefully...
File History is a backup feature in Windows that automatically saves copies of your files from specific folders, like Documents and Pictures, to an external drive or network location. It allows you to restore previous versions of your files if they are lost or damaged.
To enable File History in Windows, connect an external drive or network location, then go to Settings > Update & Security > Backup, and select "Add a drive" to choose your backup location. Finally, turn on File History to start backing up your files automatically.
Even with this and OneDrive enabled, I managed to lose years of family photos when trying to free up space thinking "oh I've got this backed up" and then thinking the same when freeing up space when deleting my backup. I wish Windows could be less confusing...
Sadly some of the potential is gimped (point in time restore of individual files) but in a pinch you can grab an eval copy of Server and run it in Hyper-V, attach the backup drive to that, and do it that way
You are the one missing the point by suggesting off-the-shelf backup solutions.
For corporate users, getting off-the-self solution as alternatives (even if it's open-source) software may not be easy (corporates typically have strict controls on what software they allow for users, and usually they contractually need to reveal to customers if they are using open-source software), but they can use File History for free, by setting it to back it up to a network path/drive if their IT admins permit.
OneDrive is treated as a normal app that is installed by default, you can actually just uninstall it through Add or Remove Programs in the Control Panel.
Bejeweled and friends tend to show back up again on consumer machines too, I've noticed.
Absolute headache...
(No, Linux was not an option)
Try using Group Policy to disable it. I think Applocker is on Win 11 Pro now - if it is, you can block the execution of whatever programs and DLLs you want. I've used that to block Windows Update.
AppLocker is included with all editions of Windows except Windows 10 version 1809 or earlier.
Applocker can help prevent users from running unwanted software (including DLLs and scripts).
However, AppLocker requires Local Security Policy, which isn't available in Home edition of Windows, but it can be installed easily for free.
https://www.thewindowsclub.com/local-security-policy-missing...
Here's how to use AppLocker to block an unwanted app:
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/124008-use-applocker-all...
(This is a must-have to turn off web browser antifeatures as well, you can't block extension install from the browser settings for any browser but you can by policy.)
https://ntdotdev.wordpress.com/2024/01/08/the-complete-tiny1...
https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat
* be warned, this also removes Edge, so you have to grab your own browser installer of choice
Please note that Brave browser in mobile these days gives problems for some websites like Reddit.com, etc. Same sites open fine with Edge (another Chromium fork) and Firefox (Gecko engine).
I hate Chrome & Edge and their nasty of creating multiple instances and auto-starting and running in background even when I am not using the browser.
If I recall right, Chrome uses to have an nasty memory leakage issue so it will keep chugging for more memory even if not in active use.
Firefox uses to be sluggish, but it is better these days, and its extensions/plugins support (especially on Android!) is necessary to block ads & trackers (via uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger extension) is highly useful and necessary.
I prefer Brave for PC and Firefox for Android.
1. in OneDrive settings under Account, click "unlink this computer"
2. in "add or remove programs", you can uninstall OneDrive completely (listed as "Microsoft OneDrive")
I've had to tell dozens of people to move their git repos to folders that aren't managed by OneDrive. I've seen where someone will change branches and OneDrive will start pulling files back down from the old branch. It's quite the mess.
onedrive is not a backup: like all automatic sync systems it is a liability. It may be useful but it is still a liability.
I deleted everything from my OneDrive today and got especially mad that the Android app shows a download icon in folder details yet it's disabled. There's absolutely no way to get your files through there. Had to log in on the web just to get a ZIP of everything (it's surprising that's still possible). As soon as I move off Outlook I'm out of this ecosystem.
Applocker can help prevent users from running unwanted software (including DLLs and scripts).
AppLocker is included with all editions of Windows except Windows 10 version 1809 or earlier.
However, AppLocker requires Local Security Policy, which isn't available in Home edition of Windows, but it can be installed easily for free.
https://www.thewindowsclub.com/local-security-policy-missing...
Here's how to use AppLocker to block an unwanted app:
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/124008-use-applocker-all...
It's not like I was storing anything meaningful there anyway, I hadn't logged in for a year and I don't regret doing so. I also got an email for deleting many files, which I happily ignored.
Microsoft even touted Windows 10 as last version of Windows.
But it was typical bait-and-switch gambit by Micro$oft, and support for Windows 10 is ending in Oct 2025 (rejecting the pleas from thousands of companies worldwide to extend its Win10 support for longer while), because M$ thinks everyone will migrate to Windows 11 (not free).
However, many Win10 users will remain on Win10 for years (just as they had stuck around with Win7/Win8 for years), and many will migrate to Linux or MacOS instead.
Microsoft will out find the hard way that people can be as stubborn as it can be.
I know all this because my desktop that can easily run triple-A video games isn't good enough (secure boot) to be upgraded, so I'm supposed to buy a MS surface and use it as a boat anchor I guess...
https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/bypass-windows-11-tpm-re...
https://gist.github.com/asheroto/5087d2a38b311b0c92be2a4f23f...
So you can upgrade to Win11 even on an older PC. No need to pay through the nose for extended Win10 Support.
But in my personal experience, Win10 runs better on older PCs than Win11. I also prefer the Win1o0 start menu, to the Win11 one.
Pretty sure upgrade to Windows 11 is free for Windows 10 licenses, too. If you need a new computer, sure, most people have a license tied to their computer, and they'll need a new license for that.
- "Yes" -> Consent.
- "No" -> Popup asks you again some time later.
- "Don't ask again" -> Meaning "Yes, and don't ask again".
For the first 5 years, the processes would be swapped, and set in stone. So, you'd need to call a number, sit on hold and be disconnected a few times to get a mailing address. Then you'd buy some stamps and an envelope if you want to submit a "Please sell my personal information" form. Grocery stores would charge you more if you used a loyalty card, and so on.
Of course, a better approach would make the collection, sale, querying, possession of, and engaging in transactions involving consumer marketing databases illegal. (All those protections are needed since Google redefined "sell personal information" to not include any of their revenue streams.)
> ( ) Yes
> (•) Remind me in 3 days
[1] - https://ibb.co/gbVsYLCy
This way, I always know that Z:\ is the only drive I need to back up, while C:\ remains clean and expendable. Even my Dropbox folder lives on the secondary drive.
There’s a checkbox, but instead of “Remember my choice” it is “Ask every time.” Diabolical.
That Win11 is not an OS, it is an advertisement billboard.
Windows 10 isn't any less ad-ridden than 11. I remember it in all the OneDrive pushing, default browser resetting, lockscreen ad inserting 'glory'. Only after you manually stamped all of that out did it start being usable. But you can do that with 11 too. For now.
Then I remember, in a moment of Eldritch revelation, my mom daily-drives this OS. My siblings and cousins probably use it at work. Billions of people around the world chafe through these lockscreen ads, "live tile" updates, OneDrive nags, Windows + G Xbox Game Bar (whatever the fuck that is), Cortana... it's baffling. The same thing runs through my head looking at recent macOS screenshots. Are geriatrics really expected to put up with all this theatrical nonsense? Is this subscription service racket really more attractive than trying to compete as a normal desktop?
Been using Linux for six years now. I cannot remember a single time I've truly missed Windows or macOS.
reminds of circa 2000 watching all the new Internet users struggling with the multiple/cascade pop-ups on websites. That's what's so odious about the situation now: The OS bears the same relationship to the user as those spammy websites.
speaking of "geriatrics" I wonder if the youth are actually responsible for a lot of this, unintentionally. this constant line between corporations and my device reminds me mainly of the smartphone experience. And, I'm told, modern videogames. Older folks like me tend to thnk of their desktop OS as inviolate--too many decades when a program phoning home on its own without my permission meant virus or other grave problem. Maybe people who grow up with smartphones don't have this boundary. Msft would know this.
The corporate user and the power user are expected to use group policy to control their OneDrive, and they do. You can also sort-of force turn it and other components off with their App Locker system.
The home user probably should just allow it? If you want to plant a flag in the ground and say, no, the computer is mine and it shall obey, I can't argue on that ground except to say indifference among consumers outnumbers you. We accept less than total control in phones, cars, refrigerators...
I do a fair bit of pro bono help with small businesses and older people and the expectation that your computer should just save your stuff is pretty strong. Perhaps it was trained it by non-free software, but I think MS product managers are correct in betting people want Windows to be batteries included when it comes to saving peoples stuff.
Again, the power user has control, you just have to exercise it.
It's tough being a user.
Imagine being a non-tech savvy one who just has to wade through all that and doesn't know how to block it.
After I lost 8 months of photos with a phone ~10 years ago, being sure it was all backed to Google Photos, I would rather trust Microsoft, than risk losing data, and now backup to both clouds. The paid Office+OneDrive is great value.
It just works. Yes, defaults are annoying, but could be changed. I recently enabled a blocked-by-default outgoing firewall, and I have much more questions to JetBrains Rider trying to ignore my system DNS setting and so to bypass Pi-Hole multiple times per minute, than to Microsoft.
Frame it as "it's 2025 and this is my first look at Windows", it's pretty bad, and it sucks because if they installed on a Home SKU, we end up having to tell them to reinstall to get control.
Maybe we have Stockholm syndrome.
Reliance on the internet is the problem. No windows version including windows 11 REQUIRES the internet to operate. Install your OS from disk. Activate by phone(or don't bother...). Install seasoned updates from catalog. If the program wont specify the ports and servers it uses, DON'T USE IT AND DONT WRITE CODE FOR IT.
So much this. It's not that technically minded people can't figure out how to florb the nerfwedge. It's that it shouldn't be needed to begin with, and you have to know about it to begin with (which usually happens by getting burned by not doing it, either with one's own machine, or a friend's or family member's machine).
This to me sounds like “I check my tire pressure every 8 miles because I don’t want them to explode catastrophically like they do for other people. Everyone should be doing this!” No. No, everyone should not have to do this.
I admit to being in the category OP speaks of; i.e. would love control over what programs can access over the internet, but haven't the slightest clue how to set it up and manage it day to day.
What is the barrier IYO, is it that awareness (or technical knowledge) just isn't there, or that installing isn't the issue but doing day to day work with a restrictive firewall becomes an inconvenience?
Usually there is an easy workaround. For example with One Drive shenanigans, you just need to save the files outside of Documents, Pictures etc, and that's it. I got fed up many years ago and moved to Linux, because I like my fights with Linux better. With Microsoft (and most other corporations), it's their way, or the highway. And it always have been.
You can use a Powershell to see if onedrive.exe is running and kill it with the -force option to do something similar ( ps * onedrive * | kill -force ) with no spaces between the asterisks and the word onedrive, but that turned out to be a little heavier to have running continuously than I wanted.
If you use a process like this, you absolutely need to run it at intervals because the onedrive exe seems to execute at regular intervals.
On Enterprise, you can use its built-in App Locker features to block the execution of any Windows component. I've used it to block Windows Update completely at home after it filled my drive to the last byte and I was sick of my gaming box disobeying.
Hi there, would you like me to come in and talk about my religion and what types of nonbelievers deserve to be tortured for eternity? No? Okay, sounds good. I'll just plaster these signs and posters all over your property, so if you change your mind, you'll immediately know where to go. You'll only see them once a day, every time you exit your house! Also, for your own convenience, we'll be watching your front door, and every time you reenter your house we'll be nullifying your past response, so you'll just have to tell no to our faces again.
Hey, I really wanna do this thing with you, do you consent to it? You don't? You say you don't want to see me ever again? Okay, okay, chill out. But in case if you change your mind, I'll be asking you again every day of your life. It's for your own sake. Also, one day, I might see the smile on your face and just "assume" you'd definitely agree. But don't worry, that's just a minor, accidental, technical mishap! I'm committed to helping you and enriching your life. I care about you, don't you see.
` HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Notifications\ Settings\Microsoft.SkyDrive.Desktop\Enabled = 0 (DWORD) `
https://www.urtech.ca/2018/03/solved-gpos-to-disable-notific...
The problem is that looking at the presented options, you can basically choose "Yes" or "OK".
If you export a PDF to a OneDrive folder, Office (especially Word) will instead create this file onto OneDrive itself (not local).
Its a 50/50 chance that your local OneDrive will sync it properly especially if you're in a fast workflow (e.g., preparing for a meeting soon with minor amendments) or you wait for several minutes for it to sync or you logon to OneDrive web to get manually download the file.
You pretty much have to export to a non-OneDrive synced folder for PDF export to work on local reliably.
A few weeks ago, Microsoft decided to auto-update my mom's computer to Windows 11, and delightfully the computer no longer booted. Even after a litany of different boot keystrokes and automatic repairs and attempted recoveries, it would not boot. I think it has something to do with the utter incompetence of the Windows automatic update process not correctly updating keys to satisfy UEFI but I am not sure.
Of course my parents being my parents, there were tons of precious documents that were not backed up anywhere else, so we needed to get them off before doing anything nuclear. After awhile, I was able to talk my dad through flashing an Ubuntu image and I was able to get a live USB going (because as far as I am aware there isn't a legitimate way to do a live USB with Windows), and from there he read me a tmate URL and I was able to mount the drive and rsync all the data to my server.
With many, many failed attempts at trying to convince them to install Linux Mint, I eventually walked them through flashing a USB drive with Windows 11, and we were able to nuke the drive and install Windows 11, which seems to be working, so I guess all's well that ends well, but not really. Key point here, before anyone says anything, the laptop is a bit old but it seems to be able to run Windows 11 just fine, it's just the automatic update that broke it.
You might be saying "live and let live, if they're happy with Windows then stop trying to force them to use Linux", and to that I would say "it's not just about them". When something breaks on their computer, it's expected that I am the one who fixes it. Microsoft, a for-profit trillion-dollar corporation, is so utterly bad at their main job that they actively broke my mother's computer with an automatic update that she couldn't easily opt out of for an operating system she didn't want, and if she didn't have a son who was a software engineer she would have been forced to buy a new computer. For all I know, another Windows 11 auto update will come in two weeks and break the computer, and I will be stuck going through this nonsense yet again, because I love my parents and I want to help them out.
If anyone from Microsoft is reading this, especially if you work on the automatic update or the Windows 11 team, I'm afraid that I have to say that I actively dislike you. You've cost me many days of effort because ultimately I think you are extremely bad at your jobs and you should consider doing literally anything else.
I'm struggling to think of a way out that doesn't involve forcefully educating users or MS needing to maintain a low requirements/long term support branch of windows forever
Part of the reason I like Linux, despite its occasional headaches, is how willing they are to keep supporting old computers. There are lots of distros that are lightweight while still being modern. Oh, and it won't automatically install an update and brick the computer, and even if I did I could use a modern filesystem that supports proper snapshots instead and recover, instead of something from 1993 that doesn't have any modern features.
I didn't hate Windows this much until a few weeks ago. I'm very annoyed.
The desire to make Windows an appliance falls flat when older PCs get on that auto-update treadmill.
For example, Windows now comes OEM with Bitlocker drive encryption enabled. Good in theory - when you toss/donate/sell your old PC, normies don't think about their personal lives and banking details being available, so that's good. However, they almost never get backups working right, and this cripples anyone from rescuing them from a drive failure in a critical PC that has their entire business books on it. This is not uncommon.
I think it's the unfortunate result of different PMs for different features strong-arming things on, but at different paces and maturity levels, and the result is Windows isn't safe to trust for the non-technical user.
My checklist these days when I end up assuming responsibility for someone: Drive encryption off, Passwords into a manager, Backups set, Updates disabled, Remote access installed.
In the case of my mom's computer rescue, as far as I can tell, literally the only legal way to recover my mom's Windows NTFS drive contents was to use Linux. I had to use Linux to fix Microsoft's incompetence.
I am quite confident that my mom would mostly be fine with Linux Mint on this computer; 99% of what she does on the computer is use Chrome, which works fine on Linux. Hell, Edge works fine on Linux now if you want to stay in the Microsoft ecosystem. The only blocker now is that I am positive that she will not use a computer unless it can run Microsoft Office directly on the computer, and I have not been successful getting Office 2016 or Office 365 running on Linux with Wine or Proton in my attempts.
Maybe for Christmas I will buy my mom a Macbook or something. Then she'll be forced to move to something better.
You could try 11 IOT LTSC[1] which is super-stripped down like an appliance. Set a few GPOs, get her files synced, set remote access. You could even do something like DeepFreeze if she's prone to clicking on the wrong thing. Restricting her to running Chrome and Office with Applocker is a possibility for her safety - I have literally interrupted scammers "from Microsoft" on the phone with the elderly and naive.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-...
This didn't used to bother me much, until Microsoft decided it would be best to brick her computer because the people who run Windows Update don't know what they're doing. The one job of Windows Update is to not break shit, and they've proven incapable of that. Whomever works on it should be embarrassed for working on one of the most consistently hated pieces of technology know to humanity.
I thought about using one of those appliance releases of Windows, but I also don't really want to LARP as a Windows Sysadmin, especially since I don't even have a Windows computer in my house. If I were to somehow convince her to use Linux, there would be "security via ignorance"; she doesn't know anything about how to use Linux so she wouldn't do much outside of the easy, relatively safe path, and if she did break it then it would be much easier for me to log in and fix it with tmate or Tailscale + SSH.
ETA
I installed it, and it works remarkably well. I'll try pitching it to my parents.
It's so disrespectful, infantilizing, and paternalistic.
But you see it everywhere now -- Microsoft, Apple, mainstream respected news and media sites constantly asking if you want to use their app instead of their site, or upgrade your plan.
And I don't understand why. It's hard to believe it increases conversion. But it does make people like me angry at the brand.
It isn't for me. I see people being converted just to stop the nagging, or just doing it on auto-pilot. It worries me, but it makes it pretty obvious why the corps aren't asking for proper consent. They don't care, they don't need to, and it's clearly working.
I believe nagging increases conversion. I'm just taking about the obnoxious "maybe later" wording.
Seriously though: kick the habit, just move off Windows, the longer you stay in the harder it is to get out.
All Windows Pro gives me is the very complex enterprise policy manager with its thousands of options but all the upsell nags, user privacy and other "good for MSFT monetization" options are still defaulted on in Windows Pro. And these options are buried deep in separate tree nodes. It's the same dark pattern Facebook uses around privacy settings. Whenever they have to provide privacy options that allow opting out they adopt "malicious compliance" and over do it in as granular and complex a way as possible - with no "opt out of everything" macro option.
Now I know that I can change all the policy manager options in the registry editor too, and frankly, it's not really much more complex. A couple years ago I realized I make so many changes fixing a new Windows install to be livable and useful that I'd never remember them all. So every time I make a registry change to fix something, I store a registry script that'll make the edit automatically in dedicated folder on my server (it's easy to export a single registry key as a script). As of today there are over a hundred scripts there. I'm getting to the point where I'm probably going to switch to Linux soon. Which sucks because I used to really like Windows (with a few notable exceptions which can be addressed with fixes and helper apps). But the level of work required to keep Windows usable and useful has skyrocketed in recent years. Before I was just dealing with occasional random bugs, regressions and feature oversights by a generally well intentioned OS vendor. Now I'm fighting a rapidly escalating battle against a malicious opponent. It's so dumb because I'd actually pay $100/yr for a "Power Windows" version with no ads, upsells, agenda promotions, dark patterns and a full restoration of all the power user features they keep dropping from Windows 11 (like advanced taskbar functionality).
You might get traction with trying the IOT LTSC versions, which are often very stripped down. Used to be LTSB, then LTSC, but now on 11 I think you need to opt for IOT LTSC which is different than just LTSC.
IOT LTSC will have half the processes out of the box and less bullshit that you hate. It's possible apps that do OS checks will grump at you - Adobe Lightroom for example comes to mind, but it's an idea.
Of course, a lot of music stars sold out for one reason or another. tbh
The choice to say only “yes” or “ask me again later” is closer to what a stalker or a psychopath offers.
Fortunately for most of us, Linux and MacOS exist. But companies that have built their entire IT infrastructure on Windows really have no clear way out other than to follow Microsoft down the rabbit hole - which is, of course, the whole point of these recent changes.
I'm wondering if there's a market out there for helping regular computer users switch to linux?
I'm more feeling like average users are just jumping straight to a phone (or maybe a tablet) as their main computing experience, and their PC are either pushed out of their life completely, as their other devices can do its job while being less hostile, or their PC is reduced to doing only the tasks which are either impossible or very-very inconvenient on a phone or tablet (PC games, long-form writing, content creation, Excel, et cetera).
Linux has some of these remaining niches nailed down pretty well, but still not well enough that the choice is obvious (Proton is really good, but kernel-anti-cheat is still a thing. Libreoffice is good for simple writing, but not for the Office power-user), and even then, this is really just the crumbs that are left after most users just exit the PC market as a whole, since they figured out the don't need one in the first place any more.
The native version was forced onto people's Windows machines and automatically configured to sync people's local desktop and documents to Microsoft's servers without explicit consent, so some of the hate directed towards Onedrive might be an expressions of hate of Microsoft's abusive and deceptive behavior. But even if the Onedrive app itself is amazing (I don't know if it is), installing anything from such an untrustworthy company seems like a bad idea.
All Your Files Data and Media!
if you want to use onedrive ok thats a choice, if its impossible to store locally, and you have the sword of deletecles hanging over your head, thats not a choice, thats a consequence.
Yes, it's annoying, and many might say what's the big deal? People's harddrives used to die all the time and they would still lose data. Why suddenly because it's ransomware, is it a bigger deal? I think it just adds a moral dimension to it that wasn't as acute before.
MS took the risk to be a little bit of an asshole as a way to counter even bigger assholes.
That's only really acceptable if they can hold up their end of the deal and maintain absolute privacy and security for that data without trying to analyze it and apply Minority Report pre-crime to everything.
This is not so, at least for the present. In current Windows releases, go to "Control Panel," then "Programs and Features", then select and uninstall OneDrive. If it's not installed, it cannot run.
Before you do this, make sure you have moved all your files from OneDrive to your local storage devices.
In the future, Microsoft will doubtless make OneDrive mandatory, along with requiring everyone to have a Microsoft account and watch their ads 24/7. But there's a remedy for that too -- install Linux. "Yet another European government is ditching Microsoft for Linux" : https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-german-state-schleswig-hol...
It's clear they want to remove local accounts and tie everything to O365.
My mom (68 yo) recently got a Windows update that then prompted her to backup her stuff. I had disabled all this and used Win11 debloat previously. OneDrive only had 5gb of storage and prompted her to upgrade.
She thought she got hacked because it was asking for money. Then when I went to turn it off it warned me that I might suffer data loss disabling one drive. Which is a story that we have seen play out many times.
Sure enough I backed everything up to an external drive, and when I disabled OneDrive the files were totally gone.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/5309251/...
https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/1ef8pgr/one_dr...
https://www.elevenforum.com/t/i-tried-to-disable-onedrive-lo...
So sure, you can get around it, but there are going to be hundreds of millions of other people who won't.
1: Make random files full of absolute garbage data
2: Upload 5GB of garbage data, delete (free limit capacity)
3: Repeat 1 and 2, forever, 24/7.
At 10mbps it would take 68.3 minutes, at 50mbps it would take 13.7 minutes to upload 5gb.
At 10mbps you could upload 5gb 7665 times, at 50mbps 38,325 times a year.
that works out to 38,325gb/10mbps and 191,625 GB at 50mbps per year
So yeah, if Microsoft wants to allow a user to upload 10's of thousands of completely worthless useless bytes of data and delete and reupload why not?
Anyone care to think how many hard drives you could destroy with the constant writing? And you could also automate downloads too, so they have to deal with reads.
Let's see how long they want your 'data' for then ey?
Consider it a digital form of 'fly tipping' and it's completely free, legal and they have begged you to do it!
They all provide backup via their own paid clouds and ask for an opt-in.
Microsoft is using all the levers at their disposal to force users to use online Microsoft accounts to log onto their local computer and even turn on formerly optional features like One Drive.
My assumption is that Microsoft is using their access to user data to build up everyone's advertising profile, and forcing you to be logged on through a Microsoft account makes sure that the data they collect is linked to a specific person.
Windows Recall is another example of a "feature" they wanted to force on users that can be used to fill out everyone's advertising profile.
Also it should not be locked to a single online storage provider but use some sort of standardized protocol (or at least some pluggable mechanism) to allow any online storage provider - including using self-hosted options - to work with it.
This is how you make something that works for your users instead of taking advantage of them.
(I've had it turned on for so long that I honestly don't know what they do.)
