At this point, I have lost count of the number of times that I’ve left my perfectly working Windows computer at the end of my work day, only to return to a completely broken computer that won’t boot the next morning.
I find this to either be a lie or self inflicted. I manage a small fleet of a few hundred windows systems and all updates have been fine for years.
In the windows admin user groups there are more than a few that are deploying updates within 24hrs of release to thousands of servers and workstations and have not reported issues.
Lastly I think that tech bloggers say things like this to get clicks, so they can get ad revenue. Then they also tell you how to disable updates so they can get more clicks and ad revenue.
It’s disingenuous and probably harmful to be telling people to disable updates that lead them to be exposed to vulnerabilities.
That’s the difference between the Home and Pro versions though. The things that generally break on the Home versions are all the things not generally enabled on a domain controlled Pro version. Thisbis more about Microsoft just being bad at small updates versus these giant roundup packages they like to ship.
What things? Home just doesn’t have GPO as far as I know.
The interesting thing for me is that I own two different surface pro 7 tablets. I have one for work and one for home (now that work doesn’t require me to bring my own device anymore). The work surface has windows 10 pro on it. My home one doesn’t, The difference is very interesting. The IT team have disabled a lot of stuff on my work surface that I don’t even have access to on my home unit. I don’t often have bugs from updates breaking things at work. I do at home though which is enough for me to perhaps upgrade the windows key on my home unit someday. If I don’t install linux first which is a possibility.
I find this to either be a lie or self inflicted.
“I’ve never experienced what you describe, so it must be either imagined or your own fault.”
I’ve seen this nonsense over and over again in communities of all kinds, most often in tech forums (where there are always a few participants suffering from a big-fish-little-pond effect). It’s a very rude and foolish bit of human behavior.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
I think the guy you’re replying to is probably right, just because you can tell from the article the author is not really an expert or advanced user.
But I upvoted you because honestly we do not get enough random Shakespeare on online comments lol
Not just me, many others.
It’s disingenuous and probably harmful to be telling people to disable updates that lead them to be exposed to vulnerabilities.
That is probably why Microsoft forced updates on people in W10.
I can kind of feel the author on this. I’m in charge of a lot of “special projects” at work that basically come down to, “figure out a way to replicate this extremely expensive technology or software using low cost or free alternatives”. It ends up being an unholy mix of programs and hardware that is held together with duct tape and super glue and any minor perturbation means something breaks.
Sounds like less of a Windows problem than an individual problem, though.
Blaming Windows cause your Frankenstein machine breaks often is disingenuous.
I’m not passing blame. Just giving an example.
There have been two distinct Windows updates in recent memory that have broken things.
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The one that stopped network printers from working, and you had to change a specific GPO setting which was not available in Intune at the time, meaning I had to do it manually on each computer.
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The one that removed all shortcuts to Office 365 apps from the desktop and start menu, necessitating a repair… manually on each affected machine.
So it does happen on occasion. It’s not as bad as in the XP days, but it still can be a little sketchy at times
I had an update completely and permanently bricked my webcam, and another that fucked up my audio (but that eventually got fixed months later).
Oh yes, I remember the audio one, too!
Odd, i didn’t need to address either of these.
I would have scripted it for Intune.
This was before proactive remediations were a thing. Script probably would’ve worked, although I find them a bit vague as to how they work
Intune was def missing a lot of features early on.
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I’ve been using windows 11 since general release and have had zero issues. Not with ads, not with updates, not with one drive. Well, unless you count clicking away pop-ups to use new features from time to time. Not once has a file been saved to onedrive.
I‘ve had several faulty Windows updates in recent years and my machine is pre-built. And going by the threads I sifted through in search of solutions I am far from the only one. It‘s perfectly fine to not have the newest update at all times so as long as you update once a month when you can afford a potential faulty update. Having an older than most recent version is far from your biggest concern regarding security. I would even say it‘s a non-issue compared to good old fishing mails.
Seriously, anytime people make complaints like these about windows, it just tells me they are either
- Tweaking their system in ways far beyond what the OS is designed for (which is fine, but then don’t blame Microsoft when updates break your system)
- Doesn’t know how to use a computer
- Knows how to use a computer but is willfully ignorant so they can rant at MS and get clicks
- Incredibly unlucky and not representative of the general population
I just got a new laptop and was genuinely gonna try windows 11 and wsl for my coding needs. But in first boot, it demands internet to do updates. Ok, I connect to coffee shop wifi. Nope, won’t do it because it can’t handle the click through screen to accept wifi ToS. Fine. I take it home, where my Internet is great but has a glitch where it drops out for a few seconds now and then. Turns out that windows will literally cancel updating and demand I reconnect and restart for the kind of drop that I barely notice day to day. So I gave up, plugged in my ArchLinux thumb drive, and
mkfs.ext4before rsyncing my entire old computer to itYou use Arch Linux but can’t fix your wifi?
Actual autism I know
You sound like a Linux veteran.
I mean you probably want to have internet when you install any OS…
Haha… NO
Right. Having your OS up to date is not important, I suppose?
There is a difference between asking nicely and shoving down the throat.
Microsoft tried nicely during the XP era. We all know how it ended. The average user shall never be trusted with security.
I didn’t say otherwise…
I’m down but if it can’t handle a 5s dc then rip
The fact that it’s a requirement - and moreover automatically creates and integrates with MS cloud services - is what people don’t like.
Nobody is arguing that it’s a bad idea to let your chosen distro installer automatically pull the most up-to-date packages.
That’s great but none of that was mentioned in the comment I replied to.
the fact the install media can’t provide a working desktop by itself is pathetic.
They gave it access to the internet twice.
Let’s be honest, very few people who talk about how much they hate Microsoft will even consider alternatives
I used to help maintain a Linux distro, and there is a level of polish Windows has that I feel cannot be reached by the FOSS ecosystem due the resources dumped into hiring dedicated teams at MS. Microsoft has tons of money. I’m sad about the direction of windows, but it generally works pretty well for how it’s designed (which is in some cases awful).
there was a time where that may have been the case, but microsoft has been chipping away at any polish they had for years. sure there’s still some rough edges in linux, but it’s only getting better where windows continues to get worse
I agree with your point, but I never would have thought of describing Windows as “polished”.
It’s a sliding scale
Sure. I could accept hearing “Windows is more polished than most Linux distro’s”. But to say blankly that Windows is polished is crazy talk. It’s jank as balls. Its got like 3 totally discrete and independent UI frameworks for the menus operating in parallel, and somehow none of them provide all the functionality you would need, have to mix and match them.
That’s just a single example. I could rant for hours.
please do, i LOVE long rants about windows :]
I’m sad about the direction of windows, but it generally works pretty well for how it’s designed
That is a bold claim. And absolutely wrong for many configurations.
A good amount of Linux distros don’t seem to want to get the basics down. Constant churn vs stable but way out of date is more how is describe the choice, while windows at it’s core is actually a pretty stable platform. I don’t have to, for example, get annoyed at Firefox middle mouse scroll not working because I forgot this distro still defaults to x11 even though it installs Wayland too blah blah blah.
Firefox middle mouse scroll works fine in X11. I use it all the time. But I guess that’s beside the point; I’m sure we could come up with a different example.
You right, that’s just a weird firefox setting
Was thinking of touch: https://superuser.com/questions/1151161/enable-touch-scrolling-in-firefox
That’s my point, people may complain but nothing else competes.
I’m not allowed to do my full-time job from any other computer besides the windows one assigned to me.
Doesn’t apply to the author here, so I don’t understand why you brought it up?
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The author hopes for a future version of Windows that offers more user control and less interference from Microsoft’s software-as-a-service products.
Currently there is zero incentive for Microsoft to do this, and only upside potential to keep doing what they’re doing.
You’d need thousands of companies to abandon their dependency on Windows, Office, and the entire Microsoft ecosystem for them to change course now.
Microsoft is constantly experimenting with how far they can push users into a corner and get away with it. There might be a day when Microsoft caves and releases a Windows that is more like what we wanted, but I imagine it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets any better. We have not yet seen the worst MS has to
offerforce upon us.Just look at how bad the car industry is now. Your car spies on EVERYTHING.
Windows can still get a lot worse before we begin to see an improvement.
That’s fine. I’ll just stick with Windows 7 for the next 30 years.
I switched all of my Windows systems over to Windows 10 LTSC a few months ago, and it’s been a game-changer. I still get security updates, but no advertisements, bloat, or new “features.” I believe it’s supported until 2032.
After that, I’ll probably switch my remaining systems over to Linux, but until then, it’s not half bad.
I ran ltsc for a few months… Then I found it didn’t have simple stuff like the camera app? I forget why, but there was one all I really needed that I didn’t have, so after fighting trying to install it, I just want back to Windows pro. I might give windows enterprise a try though.
VLC, Open Capture Device would probably have worked. Or OBS if you wanted to get fancy.
I’m thinking about doing it too but with w11
I haven’t tried W11 LTSC. Even if you cut out the bloat, I just can’t stand the interface. Hopefully 12 is better, but I’m not hopeful.
The interface is fine. The inconsistency of it is awful. Makes me wonder how the most popular os in the world, can that be bad and useless.
“popular” as it “it came on every computer every Luddite got from Best Buy and contracted to every business”
Honestly, it Linux was as easy as Windows and played every steam game without any effort, windows would drown a slow death.
You got it the wrong way round. It’s awful because it is the most popular os. If you look back at Windows XP or 7, they were clean, consistent and a pleasure to use. Everybody had XP, then 7 and by then it was too late and everybody was used to it and Microsoft can do whatever they want now and people will just take it because they’ve always used Windows. No need to put in effort.
People that lived through getting kicked off XP are like “w11 interface is fine. I’ve been through worse”
Hopefully 12 is better
Hahaha. Oh man, I needed that laugh. Thanks. 🥲 This is a one way journey until all computers look and behave like smartphones. Hopefully I’ll have dementia by then so I won’t remember how amazing computers used to be.
Hopefully I’ll have dementia by then so I won’t remember how amazing computers used to be.
I swear this is the only explanation for people claiming Windows gets a good version every other version.
Acceptance is the last stage of grief. You are ready to move on.
It’s like when people in abusive relationships suddenly realize that their partner doesn’t actually care about them, and everyone around them is like “Yeah, no shit. Fucking leave their ass.”
In Linux I wanted a window to open in a specific place on boot. Fairly simple bash script.
In Windows FUCK YOU.
With llm’s you can get a lot of bad info but for Linux commands, basic tutorials and scripting Linux is WAY easier to learn nowadays.
Edit didn’t mean to imply Linux is easier than Windows to learn in general.
Registry keys are inferior but they do exist. The last time I used Windows I just had to set some magic reg keys and it was easy to make that happen.
I always found that deeply problematic. Here is some obscure path to follow to set some obscure value where half of the naming does not indicate what exactly you are doing there. Also if you don’t set the data-type exactly it wont work. For a fucking 0 or 1 off/on value flag.
It sucks, but at least it’s in a centralized location. Back in the INI file days you’d have to set the config in various places. Which, come to think of it, is kind of how things work in Linux.
Related to the OPs problem, do you know if there is a Startup folder in Windows still? Back in the Windows 95 days we could just drag a BAT script to that folder and it would always run on login.
Not like Linux and it’s loads of shell scripts and commands is so much different.
Yesterday I booted an antivirus live-cd compiled by a computer-magazine (aimed at IT-professionals and tinkerers). The ISO is a Ubuntu 22 release. The things I had to find out (as a mainly Windows user) to set a static IP was way too annoying. When I finally found out how to configure netplan and when I did I got a nice error that gateway4 is deprecated and to please use routes.
As someone else in a thread said: It’s nice and all that Linux fits some specific uses and users but it’s not really fit for every user.
Additionally there are too many ways to do the same thing. And it applies to distros as well. A Debian-solution might work to some degree in Ubuntu but if a RHEL way works in Debian or Ubuntu is your best guess.
Would you mind sharing that script? That sounds incredibly useful lol. I’m new-ish to linux as my daily driver and love customizing it!
of course sorry for delay.
Requirements: wmctrl, xdotool
My left screen is 1440p, second screen to the right is 1080 in portrait so you will have to swap the horz/vert locations to match your layout.
#!/bin/bash # Time in seconds to wait after launch of program and manipulation of window timer=5 # Launch FreeCAD maximized on the main screen freecad & sleep $timer # Wait for FreeCAD to launch wmctrl -r "FreeCAD" -b add,maximized_vert,maximized_horz # Launch Cura on the second screen, top half cura & sleep $timer # Wait for Cura to launch xdotool search --onlyvisible --name "Ultimaker Cura" windowsize 540 960 windowmove 2560 0 # Launch Firefox on the second screen, bottom half firefox & sleep $timer # Wait for Firefox to launch xdotool search --onlyvisible --name "Mozilla Firefox" windowsize 540 960 windowmove 2560 960 echo "Applications have been launched and positioned."
What’s the use case?
Just setup for various hobbies.
For example Launch freecad on my main screen, cura & firefox etc in their preset positions and windowed sizes on the second screen.
on my i3wm workstation it’s literally a one liner in my config file, which is comprehensive across all of i3wm. Ignoring external scripts.
Edit didn’t mean to imply Linux is easier than Windows to learn in general.
It is though. People just neglect that in today’s world, no one “learns” Windows from scratch.
Learning to do anything from scratch is easier on most Linux distros than on Windows. The tools are better and the documentation is light years ahead. Windows is a steaming pile of horseshit in comparison. But once you’ve made yourself a cozy nest in the middle of said pile, getting to the comfy whirlpool hot tub that is linux requires you to scale over the walls of horseshit surrounding your nest. And that is what makes people claim “but Linux hard, muh duh!”
In atleast 3 distros I wanted to add program at start-up, easy peasy on windows , Linux is mess , some has gui for that but these three distorsion HAD ZERO option for it and I still don’t know how to do it.
In windows i want to serch for here is program installed, so easy to know and find . In Linux I had to fight multiple terminal commands ( in 2024 no less) and ev n then indid not come across whwre is the program installed
In Linux I plugged in hdd and wanted a program to acess its content, turns out I can’t do that without mumbo jumbo or wv n with it Whwre as in windows , inplug it and VOILA! I can access it across anything.
Linux MAY be good at something , but it still sucks for real Common usage.
I had none of these issues and i don’t know what you are talking about.
If you install programs through your package manager they come with a start-menu entry just as easily findable as in Windows. If you don’t install programs with an installer in Windows you get the same problem.
Also mounting HDDs made its content accessible to all my programs so far, without any issue. I think you must have chosen extremely obscure distros or fucked things up by yourself during install processes.
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Which distros? Just saying Linux is kind of pointless. Linux is the kernel.
Some distros come with more pre-installed features and functions, some come with less.
Some are more average user-friendly than others.
I put Debian on my laptop and have not had any problems accessing external drives or plugging in multiple monitors.
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Thanks in party to the spirit in Lemmy (thanks guys and gals) and getting pissed off at the ever more enshittification, I really went full-on on taking back control, and I don’t mean just changing my home PC (mainly used for Gaming) from Windows to Linux, but also replacing the TV Box that’s bundled with my ISP subscription (and will be changing ISP when the current contract is over) with my own Mini-PC with Lubunto and Kodi (which is also my Torrenting host with an always-on VPN and my home’s NAS) replacing the original Samsung Android (which had been bloated due to updates to the point of filling up all memory) of my aging tablet, with LineageOS and even doing the same on my brand new Smartphone.
Granted, I’ve always had the spirit of avoiding “smarts” in stuff that doesn’t need it - like TVs - but now I went and as much as possible took back control on even the stuff that does need “smarts”.
So far I’m quite happy with it all: I’ve maintained (improved, even, such as my Tablet now having more available memory) my level of Tech access whilst cutting of the ways in which companies exploited my time and patience for advertising money - I definitely feel I’m better now than before: a lot of things became more convenient and less restricted than they were before.
Things are becoming really bad out there when it comes to treating customers as cattle to be milked and I reckon that the only future were Tech is actually a pleasure to use for users is for those people who take control back from the corps on all of their devices.
also thanks to lemmy I made the switch from Windows to Linux and I’ll never go back.
What distro did you settle on for your PC?
Since that machine is mostly for gaming, I went with Pop OS!
Pop!_OS is great, not just for gaming
doing the same on my brand new Smartphone
Watch out, rooting a phone may have unexpected consequences, like losing LTE on Samsungs or losing access to banking apps.
I’d like to leave a warning for anyone working with Uber or Lyft as well, a friend of mine flashed his phone with a custom ROM and couldn’t work for a week until I managed to reflash the original ROM on it.
It took a while cause his phone was from a not so well known brand and it took a lot of hours on russian forums to find the stock ROM.
https://plexus.techlore.tech/applications/uber
Gotta check before you flash and fuck up a livelihood…
Note that if you are Uber user (idk about driver) their website is good enough; for me it works in Firefox mobile (in “Desktop” mode only). Lyft is app only…
Yes, I was talking about the driver apps. The apps won’t work on custom firmware, I know there’s some magisk thing you can do but there’s reports of account blockages in my country following that method.
Banks are a bunch of dicks anyway. I recently received a ToS that forced me to have all my OSs on their latest update, and never install anything that doesn’t come from official stores.
Next day all of my money was in another bank.
Well, that phone is a Xiaomi, not a Samsung (who had already made my shit list some years ago thanks to all their bloat), and the new ROM is just a bloat free MIUI, so from the same maker as the phone.
And yeah, as somebody else mentioned, if the banking app stopped working it would be the bank losing me - it wouldn’t be the first time I changed banks because they pissed me off.
Retail banking as a service is a commodity - they’re pretty much all the same - so sticking or not with a bank should be something one does based on cost and convenience and a banking app that doesn’t work on my phone reduces convenience.
As it so happens my banking app works fine.
That said, your alert can be important for other people and points one more reason to avoid Samsung like the plague.
Ask your doctor if Linux is right for you
He prescribed me a medication but when I went to get it from the pharmacy they just gave me a bunch of precursor chemicals which are just toxic if not combined in the right way. When I asked for help the pharmacist just said “RTFM”
Also, what is a comorbidity?
It isn’t your computer, user license clearly states you’re renting the software. You always have been, it’s just now they can enforce that agreement more readily. Microsoft is making a lot of bad decisions at the moment, but the majority of consumers really don’t care - adverts and surveillance are what they grew up with.
You can switch to Linux, but as much as I love it (it’s my daily driver for work and for travel gaming, oh and the community is absolutely amazing), it’s not 1-1. You will have to jump through hoops sometimes to get things to run (but damn me there are amazing people out there who can and do help). Then again, you own it because it is free, and it will run most things with the right tweaks.
I can’t speak for MACs (too poor to use one, my devices tend to be upgradable or VERY long life), but I hear they’re a better experience in terms of less bloat/adverts. Again though, you are renting with Apple, and are largely trapped in their ecosystem, and they have a ‘reputation’ for lack of repairability…
It isn’t your computer, user license clearly states you’re renting the software
It IS your computer, it’s just not your software.
Whoa whoa whoa an operating system is not software depending who you ask lol. It’s the program that manages both your PC’s hardware and software resources. /s
I’ve been a macOS user for over a decade and I am never going back to Windows. That being said, Apple does have iCloud (their version of OneDrive) which is tightly integrated into the OS and they’re not shy about asking you to pay for more storage. They also want you to log in with an Apple ID when you first start your computer and I don’t know how easy it is to use a local account.
It’s not the same as Windows in terms of aggressive ads and upsells, but Apple aren’t innocent in wanting more of your money. If you want true freedom you have to pay with your time and energy and run Linux.
It’s not that people ignore it, it’s just that they don’t really have an alternative. You can rent from Microsoft or Apple, or go the Linux way where you don’t have the proper UX an average user needs and is accustomed to with Windows or macOS.
That’s because you’re the victim of a crime: extortion
I have nothing critical on it, and I will make my 8.1 last as long as the disks and fans still spin!
I wonder how many years until all mainstream websites and web based apps like steam refuse to work because you’re os isn’t supported by the latest browser version.
As soon as they bake drm checks into the os
I mean they don’t need drm if updated requirements can’t be met by the host system. Steam stopped officially supporting windows 7 because of some core platform security libraries that is needed for newer versions of chrome just doesn’t exist on windows 7 and won’t because windows 7 is EOL.
Using windows will do that.
Like, I’d understand a free version of Windows that has the ads and bloat, but the idea that people are paying $100 for this disrespect is insane.
