The right time to write that article was after Windows 10 was released, but I'll take it any day. I think he glosses over how bad Windows has been with resetting inconvenient settings during...
The right time to write that article was after Windows 10 was released, but I'll take it any day. I think he glosses over how bad Windows has been with resetting inconvenient settings during updates or removing customization features from the Pro edition. But I definitely empathize. I don't see a reason why it would get any better at this moment though.
Me: "Hey Microsoft, my laptop has a trackpad. I know who made it, I have the driver here. I've set it up how I like it. Please, leave it alone." MS: "Oh, time to update" Proceeds to install the...
Me: "Hey Microsoft, my laptop has a trackpad. I know who made it, I have the driver here. I've set it up how I like it. Please, leave it alone."
MS: "Oh, time to update" Proceeds to install the most generic driver, trashing settings.
I used to think that the problem was me - I grew up with computers that gave me access to everything. That character in the top left of the screen? I can find out what it is with a PEEK command of the screen memory address, and I can change it by POKING data to that address. Obviously this would be a stupid level of access to give a user on a machine that is also used for home banking, so I traded control for security. I accepted that this was probably a good thing - living through the 90s and all those rooted windows machines with people willingly installing malware - browser toolbars, strippers in the taskbar.
And then vendors enshittified security to push their garbage (oh hi, here's a rootkit; hey, time to destroy a bunch of your settings; here's some ads in your start menu).
It sucks.
I'm moving to a dual boot system - a tiny partition for windows and MS Teams, and then FreeBSD (my preference) or Linux (with a fluxbox window manager). Or probably Linux Mint because it's easy and I'm a bit distracted at the moment.
I just want windows to be able to save the volume for system sounds. It resets after every reboot just to blast my headset to pieces when the next uac prompt appears
I just want windows to be able to save the volume for system sounds. It resets after every reboot just to blast my headset to pieces when the next uac prompt appears
Funnily enough this does not happen to me, which only confirms my previous observations: that the Win10 experience seems to vary much more than with previous versions. Many people say Win10 has...
Funnily enough this does not happen to me, which only confirms my previous observations: that the Win10 experience seems to vary much more than with previous versions. Many people say Win10 has been the most stable, painless system they've used, while for me personally it's been a step to pre-Win7 times regarding the number of (often unsolvable) issues I've experienced.
Maybe they're conveniently forgetting that when they installed Windows 10, 7 or 8 years ago, they used a... creatively modified flavor of Enterprise, and then followed a guide or two to flip...
Maybe they're conveniently forgetting that when they installed Windows 10, 7 or 8 years ago, they used a... creatively modified flavor of Enterprise, and then followed a guide or two to flip thirty or forty switches in the registry and policy editor and removed all the bloat in such a way that even Windows Update - which only runs when you want it to - can't do much to it. And if this sounds oddly specific and you'd like to know more, I won't admit to anything in court and I demand a lawyer.
In all seriousness, though, this is like DRMed software. Even if you paid for it, there are unambiguous advantages to using the stripped down version.
I don't think this applies to Win10, because the feature removal in Pro version for example was happening gradually iirc. Microsoft also phased out some old drivers in some of the updates, which...
I think it's just a case of not being an early adopter. If you use any version of Windows after 5 or 10 years of updates, it's usually pretty good.
I don't think this applies to Win10, because the feature removal in Pro version for example was happening gradually iirc. Microsoft also phased out some old drivers in some of the updates, which made some of my 10 years old hardware stop working (works flawlessly in Linux) etc. New bugs appeared. Usually with previous versions of Windows you only got new features and fixes, but Win10 has been gradually changing both positively and negatively, which is a new thing and is another reason why I dislike it so much.
Windows 10 also came right after Windows 8 which had one of the roughest starts since Vista. I switched to 10 immediately and enthusiastically bc at the start it was not very different from where...
Windows 10 also came right after Windows 8 which had one of the roughest starts since Vista. I switched to 10 immediately and enthusiastically bc at the start it was not very different from where 8 was at that point. It was usable throughout its life for me... but Windows 11 is what convinced me to switch to Linux so.
This specific bug has actually driven me crazy. It doesn't happen on any other windows machine at my house, but on the one it does effect it has persisted through multiple formats/reinstalls as...
This specific bug has actually driven me crazy. It doesn't happen on any other windows machine at my house, but on the one it does effect it has persisted through multiple formats/reinstalls as well as hardware swaps. The only hardware that I haven't changed since experiencing this is the mobo and psu. I've tried different audio drivers and even third party tools to control volume for certain processes. I've just given up on getting the system alert volume to behave in windows.
This is way beyond my pay grade, but given what you’ve described, I wonder if it’s something to do with the order that the motherboard itemises devices as it boots up?
This is way beyond my pay grade, but given what you’ve described, I wonder if it’s something to do with the order that the motherboard itemises devices as it boots up?
Do you have your audio running through HDMI? I wonder if it's something to do with either a faulty HDMI cable or the monitor having some sort of issue, such as going to sleep and causing Windows...
Do you have your audio running through HDMI? I wonder if it's something to do with either a faulty HDMI cable or the monitor having some sort of issue, such as going to sleep and causing Windows to change the audio device.
Something to do with audio device switching is my guess, as often my audio can get weird and go full volume on my server when I remote into it.
My audio is just a headset I have plugged into the out and mic in lines on the mobo. Nothing fancy. It may just be my motherboard doing something weird. It's an asrock x570 taichi which I've seen...
My audio is just a headset I have plugged into the out and mic in lines on the mobo. Nothing fancy. It may just be my motherboard doing something weird. It's an asrock x570 taichi which I've seen gives some people problems with no audio output, but I can't find anyone with it conflicting with windows like this. It's not a huge issue, but I am sorta tired of getting jumpscared by computer audio once a day lol
HATE Windows 11, even though I'm not dealing with ads thanks to a corporate Pro loadset. The only obvious ad is the Copilot teaser taking up valuable screen real estate where the time/date used to...
HATE Windows 11, even though I'm not dealing with ads thanks to a corporate Pro loadset. The only obvious ad is the Copilot teaser taking up valuable screen real estate where the time/date used to reside.
I just got back from a work trip where my laptop's carefully tuned battery optimization power profile (intended for walking around a hospital all day with DWGViewer and other heavy tools open, only plugging in at lunch) got wiped after an update.
I drained the battery to a no-warning shutdown (also lost the battery warning at 10% setting) in under 2 hours, and nearly lost an embarrassing amount of work. [Yes, I habitually save every 10 minutes or so, but didn't want to repeat the conversation that led to some important notes.]
This. Should. Not. Happen. Worse still, after wasting precious onsite time recharging and re-adding the battery and power tweaks, I couldn't get back the original 5+ hour battery life.
I'm accustomed to recovering from bad Windows updates and lately, my somewhat fragile corporate Lenovo laptop's Gen1 Ryzen drivers. Completely losing a batch of system settings is cruel and unusual. Windows 11 power settings have a new glossy skin that matches the rest of the updated UI. But this time, it greeted me with "You can't adjust settings in High Performance mode". I had to go digging into the old Windows Control Panel power settings that date back forever.
The idea that this botchery might in future require eternal subscription payments makes me want to barf. PopOS Linux on the home laptop just feels so much cleaner.
Windows is a huge offender, but there are innumerable other examples of software that do the same thing. They sacrifice sophistication in the name of friendliness for less tech-savvy users. They...
Windows is a huge offender, but there are innumerable other examples of software that do the same thing. They sacrifice sophistication in the name of friendliness for less tech-savvy users. They make it harder to customize your experience because they need you to use the program in the specific ways that feed their KPIs. No doubt most of it is enshittification to extract value from users and convert it into revenue, but sometimes it just seems like bad design with no benefit to any party.
The problem with Windows is that they keep changing where certain settings are so you can't even follow their online guides. I feel like I almost never find actual support from Microsoft that...
The problem with Windows is that they keep changing where certain settings are so you can't even follow their online guides. I feel like I almost never find actual support from Microsoft that isn't way out of date.
Then they'll close the thread as resolved if you don't reply within several dozen milliseconds. Forums can be a great resource, but not as primary L1 support, and not when you keep rearranging the...
Then they'll close the thread as resolved if you don't reply within several dozen milliseconds.
Forums can be a great resource, but not as primary L1 support, and not when you keep rearranging the deck chairs and breaking every solution your quasi-employees have found for your shoddy QA.
Any reason to use Scoop over WinGet? I have no experience with scoop whatsoever, so I'm interested to hear your opinion. And have you any experience with Ueli compared to Keypirinha?
Scoop
Any reason to use Scoop over WinGet? I have no experience with scoop whatsoever, so I'm interested to hear your opinion.
And have you any experience with Ueli compared to Keypirinha?
Oh, that's really neat. That's what stopped me from using WinGet more. Stuff gets just installed in arbitrary folders. Getting the portable version of stuff is pretty cool, I have to look into it....
I just found Scoop simpler and saner because it defaults to the portable versions of the programs
Oh, that's really neat. That's what stopped me from using WinGet more. Stuff gets just installed in arbitrary folders. Getting the portable version of stuff is pretty cool, I have to look into it. Thanks for sharing your experience!
Nowadays I increasingly feel that when using this kind of sw I am just supposed to shut up and do as it says because it knows best what is good for me. Then there are the fundamental privacy and...
Nowadays I increasingly feel that when using this kind of sw I am just supposed to shut up and do as it says because it knows best what is good for me.
Then there are the fundamental privacy and basic function violations in the form of forced updates, forced telemetry, ads in a paid os, online account requirement, ever increasing obfuscation of settings, bastardization of search, various ui tweaks just to have ui tweaks.
And yes there could be a debate about updates, but it should be a debate acknowledging both viewpoints.
Just up to release of Windows 10 the os used to be a tool that the user used and it if it did not do something you wanted it was bug or just not implemented, not a forced normally uncustomizable behavior that you have to go digging way past normal user space just to try to curb this one instance and there will be more.
And yes, due to legacy nature of the os you generally still can go an run various scripts and have more or less unobtrusive os, up until...
If I absolutely have to fight the os I'm using I personally prefer to fight bugs rather than malice(or just shut up and take it). At least the first one stays fixed.
I’ve had to use Mac for work for a long while, but Windows has pushed me with ads and worthless AI garbage to using it for personal use as well (the Steam Deck helped too). One thing I could never...
I’ve had to use Mac for work for a long while, but Windows has pushed me with ads and worthless AI garbage to using it for personal use as well (the Steam Deck helped too). One thing I could never get over is how much of Windows is just built on top of the same old foundation. Needing to fix an obscure setting is like time traveling through the last 30 years in OS menus.
Coincidentally just yesterday, I spent much of my day installing Linux (Mint) to my desktop computer that I do most of my work on. It was a bit more hassle than I anticipated but about exactly the...
Coincidentally just yesterday, I spent much of my day installing Linux (Mint) to my desktop computer that I do most of my work on. It was a bit more hassle than I anticipated but about exactly the same as I feared, as I ended up doing it the hard way: have it dual boot with Windows 11 on a UEFI machine, maintain Bitlocker and encrypt the Linux drive, and so on. But now I have it running fine, and Windows seems to be functioning normally as well.
Over the past quarter of a century, I have tried to make the jump to Linux every couple of years. But apart from a brief detour to OS/2 in the 90s and switching to using a MacBook as my laptop a couple of years ago, I have been a Windows user. Despite my best efforts, Linux has just always been too much hassle to switch to.
And while I'm not sure if it will stick this time around either, I think I'm more determined to make it a success than ever. I had many issues with Windows 10 but I could still live with it. Meanwhile, Windows 11 seems to have many issues with me, and I'm not really prepared to live with that. Nothing major as such, but so many little things that just make using the OS unpleasant. And I feel I've given Windows 11 enough time to get its act together, without seeing much progress.
Meanwhile, the Linux ecosystem keeps developing features that make it an increasingly attractive option for me. I actually found it hilarious that while I've been having major issues getting Windows 11 to support my wifi and printer/scanner properly, Linux Mint automatically detected both and they seem to work out of the box. This used to go the other way around. The recent announcement that Linux Mint will likely soon natively support Microsoft OneDrive sync (Ubuntu I think already does) will be a big help for me because of work, and the quickly growing gaming support on Linux also attracts me. And my switch to a MacBook a couple of years back has already broken many of my earlier Windows-only dependencies anyway.
I feel this is how Microsoft may gradually lose its OS market share. Not with a bang but a whimper.
I likewise tried to make the jump to Linux every few years, off and on since 2008, but although I was always interested in it, I never really felt like it was ready for prime time (meaning what I...
I likewise tried to make the jump to Linux every few years, off and on since 2008, but although I was always interested in it, I never really felt like it was ready for prime time (meaning what I personally needed a computer to do).
After a lot of the same pain people are describing in these comments, I finally pulled the trigger about this time a year ago and moved to Linux full-time. I was tired of fighting my W11 install--I would say that I like W11 when it works, but in my experience across multiple machines since its release, it never does. Now I use Linux, beginning full-time with Zorin and since moving to Fedora, and it's pretty painless. Everything works, no ads or telemetry, it generally seems to run faster and better overall, and I'm not a Linux expert in the slightest. Couple of things finally made it viable that weren't true in all the previous years I tried to make the shift:
First, the web versions of Office got better in the last year or two, so I can do the professional work stuff I have to do via browser, or PWA for Outlook and Teams (which seem to be much more stable as PWAs in Linux than the native apps in W11 for some reason). Also, OnlyOffice is a native Linux app built in Office XML and works great for MS files if I need to work offline, although I notice it does start hanging on any Excel data larger than about 10k rows, otherwise very solid and 100% compatible. Historically, not being able to do basic professional stuff always ended up being the dealbreaker for me, and Libreoffice et al were absolutely not acceptable solutions for what I need an office suite to do. Now? No real issues at all. Worth noting that I don't need VBA for anything, which Linux still doesn't have a solve for, so YMMV. In fact I did have a use case for VBA when I first arrived at my current job, and switched my team off of it to a different (and better) workflow just so I wouldn't have to switch back to a Windows machine.
Second, Proton development has completely changed gaming on Linux, in that I can play 95% of my Steam/GOG catalog with minimal or no fiddling. Also worth noting that I don't play any competitive online games as I know some of the most popular ones (esp. ones that use anticheat) don't run, but I can play all the stuff I want to play, like Elden Ring, Cyberpunk 2077, Witcher 3, Skyrim, any of the Fallouts, Elder Scrolls Online, etc. I have about 1100 PC games in my library across Steam, GOG, Epic, etc. and although I certainly haven't tested every one of them, I've tested a lot of them, and in a year so far only 2 games didn't run at all, and maybe 2 or 3 required a little fiddling up front and then worked just fine. The rest ran out of the box once you turn Proton on for non-native games in Steam or Heroic Launcher (for GOG and Epic).
Again, I'm not proficient at Linux, just a casual hobbyist who found it shockingly easy to switch completely away from Windows when I would say even 3 years ago it would've been a fool's errand. My PC can do everything I want/need it to do and nothing I don't. Despite all the jokes people have made over the last 20 years, I can't help but feel like it finally became The Year of the Linux Desktop, but quietly, when no one was looking.
Thanks for mentioning this! I too need to deal with MS Office files at work and while I was hoping that either the browser versions or LibreOffice could work for me, it's great to hear a strong...
OnlyOffice is a native Linux app built in Office XML and works great for MS files if I need to work offline
Thanks for mentioning this! I too need to deal with MS Office files at work and while I was hoping that either the browser versions or LibreOffice could work for me, it's great to hear a strong recommendation for another alternative.
Sure! I primarily use it for Excel files, as the web versions of PowerPoint and Word are much more capable now and usually enough. Excel on the web works okay for basic stuff but still has some...
Sure! I primarily use it for Excel files, as the web versions of PowerPoint and Word are much more capable now and usually enough. Excel on the web works okay for basic stuff but still has some gaps, especially with its charting tools--it can read but can't create or edit a combo chart (two y axes) for example. But OnlyOffice can do the stuff that web Excel can't, and if you need it, its charting tools are better than native Excel's IMO--not more capable per se, just a nicer and easier-to-use editing interface if you spend as much time making semi-complex charts from data as I do.
It also has a tabbed interface for its whole suite, unlike native Office, so everything you work on regardless of file type is in a single application window that you can tab between. Its only drawback, besides struggling with very large Excel files above a certain size, is that unlike native Office it doesn't have OneDrive/Sharepoint integration and autosaving, so if you use those at work you'll just have to manually save and upload to your cloud drive. (OnlyOffice has its own cloud service that costs money and provides the same functions as OneDrive integration/autosaving but if your company is on MS there's no advantage to using it.)
I waslucky that my notebook almost died on me sometime around 2008 - internal HDD connector broke. I couldn't afford new one while I still wanted portability. I fought Win XP trying to get it...
I waslucky that my notebook almost died on me sometime around 2008 - internal HDD connector broke. I couldn't afford new one while I still wanted portability. I fought Win XP trying to get it running from USB drive and eventually succeeded, but I was unable to use swap file which was bad on 512MB machine. My friend suggested Linux, as "it will certainly run from USB drive". And it did! Since I had only this PC, I had swotched to Linux that day. And honestly - I have never looked back!
I'm a gamer, always behind HW-wise but gamer nonetheless. I strugled a bit setting up Wine and everything but eventually I got somenative games running and some Wi dows games running as well. Then Steam for Linux came out and native games with it. Then later Proton came out and from that time, I can basically run 99% of games I want to play hassle-free. So the main category I use my PC for is on par with Windows for me.
Through the years I've seen KDE3(.5?), then 4, then I tried Gnome (the "tablet" one) and last 10 years I use MATE. There is some charm in simplicity.
For me and my needs Linux is at its best for almost as long as I use it. It os perfectly usable system for non-demanding user and even for demanding one if the user is willing to switch to dofferent program or do a bit of tinkering to run Windows version of some Windows-only program.
So for me HW issue back in the day solved the "try Linux every so often" - I had to switch and had to use it everyday. Thank god for that HW issue!
I honestly don't have many complaints about Windows 10/11. The two that I can think of off my head: Backing up my media drive requires me to go through the ancient Windows 7 dialogue, last I...
I honestly don't have many complaints about Windows 10/11. The two that I can think of off my head:
Backing up my media drive requires me to go through the ancient Windows 7 dialogue, last I checked. I couldn't set up a sequencial backup to an internal drive in Win 11 because they want you to buy OneDrive.
I hate that all my computers are tied to my Microsoft account. It doesn't bother me much on my two computers I use routinely, but I'd like to have my media center setup with no password, so my kids could just get into it without an issue. This will probably change soon, since the PC is old enough it can only run Win 10, so I'll switch it to Linux when support ends.
Otherwise, Windows has been pretty painless. It does what I want it to do, it keeps all my settings just fine on my various machines and yeah, it does come with ads, but you know, I actually don't notice or pay attention to them. I find all of it plenty easy to ignore and if you didn't tell me the OS had ads, I'd probably say I've never seen one.
Whenever I can no longer use Windows 10 I’ll switch to 100% Mac for personal usage. Windows telemetry and privacy-hostile attitude are going to offset the loss of being able to game. I’ll just use...
Whenever I can no longer use Windows 10 I’ll switch to 100% Mac for personal usage. Windows telemetry and privacy-hostile attitude are going to offset the loss of being able to game. I’ll just use a Steam deck or other streaming solution for windows only games.
What games do you play that Proton/SteamOS can’t run? Competitive games with anticheat? When it comes to games, almost everything I put on it launches with a few exceptions. You may need to do...
What games do you play that Proton/SteamOS can’t run? Competitive games with anticheat? When it comes to games, almost everything I put on it launches with a few exceptions.
You may need to do some tweaking but for me been it’s Steam controls that I need to tweak.
I have only heard of SteamOS.. I haven't actually tried it yet to be honest (just that it seems people don't think it's quite there yet). I mostly play Bethesda and VR games on my PC (I prefer...
I have only heard of SteamOS.. I haven't actually tried it yet to be honest (just that it seems people don't think it's quite there yet). I mostly play Bethesda and VR games on my PC (I prefer console otherwise).
A forced Windows 11 update was dropped on my head the other day - something I never agreed to at all. Just like they'd increasingly force Edge on us, the brazen "recommendations" that we do the...
A forced Windows 11 update was dropped on my head the other day - something I never agreed to at all.
Just like they'd increasingly force Edge on us, the brazen "recommendations" that we do the new thing are becoming more and more coercive as time goes on.
BSOD should be few and far between. It's not just MS that's worked on fixing code that caused them. Hardware and drivers play such a huge part in what caused most BSOD and with things like WHQL...
BSOD should be few and far between. It's not just MS that's worked on fixing code that caused them. Hardware and drivers play such a huge part in what caused most BSOD and with things like WHQL drivers, you shouldn't see them.
Apple control the whole of their system, from hardware through to software. MS have to try and support world+dog, and then the Chinese dodgy after-market as well. They've made great strides over the past decade and they actually deserve the compliment.
I love my Mac. So much so that even when I built a really nice gaming computer that was years newer with better hardware, it was just my gaming computer and I used my mac for all my computing...
I love my Mac. So much so that even when I built a really nice gaming computer that was years newer with better hardware, it was just my gaming computer and I used my mac for all my computing needs. My gaming computer will stay on 10 as long as I can (until I can't run games on it anymore) and then maybe SteamOS will be a thing. And now I have a newer Mac that can do the one other thing I used my PC for besides gaming (Fusion) so my PC can be a pure gaming machine.
Also, as a Mac user it astounds me you can't move programs around in Windows or it gets confused and you can't install programs on different hard drives or it gets confused.
TBF though I've always preferred Macs but there have been a few Windows I found not bad (XP was pretty good and I don't mind 10 so much but I mostly interact with steam on my pc with windows 10). And as some one else said, windows now seems a lot more stable (I used to prefer Mac just cause it seemed more stable, even the pre os x stuff). IE blue screen of death doesn't seem to be much of a thing anymore (though I found what usually happened is the PC would start acting glitchier and glitchier til you had to restart).
But yeah, when I started to hear that they added adds to the OS... ugh... makes me glad I'm buying from a company that is trying to sell hardware and the OS is a carrot to get you to buy (meaning they want you to like the OS feel).
I switched to Mac a few years ago and now I feel the same way. I think growing up on windows teaches a bunch of things that people start to think is “normal” for computers but makes absolutely no...
I switched to Mac a few years ago and now I feel the same way. I think growing up on windows teaches a bunch of things that people start to think is “normal” for computers but makes absolutely no sense. Learning macOS for me wasn’t really learning something new, it was unlearning all of my weird windows habits. The first time I installed a program was an eye opening experience. A program is really just a single file* that you can put wherever you want? It can’t be that easy right? Don’t I need installers and a bunch of random files in Program Files or one of the other directories programs like installing to? I can uninstall an app just by dragging it to the trash? I don’t need to track down the program’s uninstall script and hope it actually works? Windows has taught us that computers need to be complex. macOS allows computing to be simple for the vast majority of scenarios and allows complexity when needed.
* macOS apps aren’t actually single files, but folders that the finder displays as files. You can open them as folders to view the contents. This is a perfect example of the UI being simple for the majority of tasks but allowing complexity when needed. Also some programs do have installers, uninstallers, specific install directories, and other annoyances, but these are the minority and mostly cross platform programs like office and the adobe suite.
Hell if you are familiar with Unix you can even get around what MacOS won't let you do. I managed to save some files that were on a dying hard drive that were behing a corrupt area. The Mac tool...
Hell if you are familiar with Unix you can even get around what MacOS won't let you do. I managed to save some files that were on a dying hard drive that were behing a corrupt area. The Mac tool would just quit and say corrupted area, can't get past. Went to the genius bar and the guy figured out I at least had familiarity with Unix and taught me a command with some options to tell it to ignore the corrupted area and copy everything else.
The right time to write that article was after Windows 10 was released, but I'll take it any day. I think he glosses over how bad Windows has been with resetting inconvenient settings during updates or removing customization features from the Pro edition. But I definitely empathize. I don't see a reason why it would get any better at this moment though.
Me: "Hey Microsoft, my laptop has a trackpad. I know who made it, I have the driver here. I've set it up how I like it. Please, leave it alone."
MS: "Oh, time to update" Proceeds to install the most generic driver, trashing settings.
I used to think that the problem was me - I grew up with computers that gave me access to everything. That character in the top left of the screen? I can find out what it is with a PEEK command of the screen memory address, and I can change it by POKING data to that address. Obviously this would be a stupid level of access to give a user on a machine that is also used for home banking, so I traded control for security. I accepted that this was probably a good thing - living through the 90s and all those rooted windows machines with people willingly installing malware - browser toolbars, strippers in the taskbar.
And then vendors enshittified security to push their garbage (oh hi, here's a rootkit; hey, time to destroy a bunch of your settings; here's some ads in your start menu).
It sucks.
I'm moving to a dual boot system - a tiny partition for windows and MS Teams, and then FreeBSD (my preference) or Linux (with a fluxbox window manager). Or probably Linux Mint because it's easy and I'm a bit distracted at the moment.
I just want windows to be able to save the volume for system sounds. It resets after every reboot just to blast my headset to pieces when the next uac prompt appears
Funnily enough this does not happen to me, which only confirms my previous observations: that the Win10 experience seems to vary much more than with previous versions. Many people say Win10 has been the most stable, painless system they've used, while for me personally it's been a step to pre-Win7 times regarding the number of (often unsolvable) issues I've experienced.
Maybe they're conveniently forgetting that when they installed Windows 10, 7 or 8 years ago, they used a... creatively modified flavor of Enterprise, and then followed a guide or two to flip thirty or forty switches in the registry and policy editor and removed all the bloat in such a way that even Windows Update - which only runs when you want it to - can't do much to it. And if this sounds oddly specific and you'd like to know more, I won't admit to anything in court and I demand a lawyer.
In all seriousness, though, this is like DRMed software. Even if you paid for it, there are unambiguous advantages to using the stripped down version.
I don't think this applies to Win10, because the feature removal in Pro version for example was happening gradually iirc. Microsoft also phased out some old drivers in some of the updates, which made some of my 10 years old hardware stop working (works flawlessly in Linux) etc. New bugs appeared. Usually with previous versions of Windows you only got new features and fixes, but Win10 has been gradually changing both positively and negatively, which is a new thing and is another reason why I dislike it so much.
Windows 10 also came right after Windows 8 which had one of the roughest starts since Vista. I switched to 10 immediately and enthusiastically bc at the start it was not very different from where 8 was at that point. It was usable throughout its life for me... but Windows 11 is what convinced me to switch to Linux so.
This specific bug has actually driven me crazy. It doesn't happen on any other windows machine at my house, but on the one it does effect it has persisted through multiple formats/reinstalls as well as hardware swaps. The only hardware that I haven't changed since experiencing this is the mobo and psu. I've tried different audio drivers and even third party tools to control volume for certain processes. I've just given up on getting the system alert volume to behave in windows.
This is way beyond my pay grade, but given what you’ve described, I wonder if it’s something to do with the order that the motherboard itemises devices as it boots up?
Do you have your audio running through HDMI? I wonder if it's something to do with either a faulty HDMI cable or the monitor having some sort of issue, such as going to sleep and causing Windows to change the audio device.
Something to do with audio device switching is my guess, as often my audio can get weird and go full volume on my server when I remote into it.
My audio is just a headset I have plugged into the out and mic in lines on the mobo. Nothing fancy. It may just be my motherboard doing something weird. It's an asrock x570 taichi which I've seen gives some people problems with no audio output, but I can't find anyone with it conflicting with windows like this. It's not a huge issue, but I am sorta tired of getting jumpscared by computer audio once a day lol
HATE Windows 11, even though I'm not dealing with ads thanks to a corporate Pro loadset. The only obvious ad is the Copilot teaser taking up valuable screen real estate where the time/date used to reside.
I just got back from a work trip where my laptop's carefully tuned battery optimization power profile (intended for walking around a hospital all day with DWGViewer and other heavy tools open, only plugging in at lunch) got wiped after an update.
I drained the battery to a no-warning shutdown (also lost the battery warning at 10% setting) in under 2 hours, and nearly lost an embarrassing amount of work. [Yes, I habitually save every 10 minutes or so, but didn't want to repeat the conversation that led to some important notes.]
This. Should. Not. Happen. Worse still, after wasting precious onsite time recharging and re-adding the battery and power tweaks, I couldn't get back the original 5+ hour battery life.
I'm accustomed to recovering from bad Windows updates and lately, my somewhat fragile corporate Lenovo laptop's Gen1 Ryzen drivers. Completely losing a batch of system settings is cruel and unusual. Windows 11 power settings have a new glossy skin that matches the rest of the updated UI. But this time, it greeted me with "You can't adjust settings in High Performance mode". I had to go digging into the old Windows Control Panel power settings that date back forever.
The idea that this botchery might in future require eternal subscription payments makes me want to barf. PopOS Linux on the home laptop just feels so much cleaner.
Windows is a huge offender, but there are innumerable other examples of software that do the same thing. They sacrifice sophistication in the name of friendliness for less tech-savvy users. They make it harder to customize your experience because they need you to use the program in the specific ways that feed their KPIs. No doubt most of it is enshittification to extract value from users and convert it into revenue, but sometimes it just seems like bad design with no benefit to any party.
The problem with Windows is that they keep changing where certain settings are so you can't even follow their online guides. I feel like I almost never find actual support from Microsoft that isn't way out of date.
And instead of actually offering support most of the time they just point you to their community support forums
Where someone who barely speaks English will tell you to click on a button that was removed four updates ago.
Well often they'll list 4 or 5 vaguely correlated things for you to try, none of which solve the problem.
Then they'll close the thread as resolved if you don't reply within several dozen milliseconds.
Forums can be a great resource, but not as primary L1 support, and not when you keep rearranging the deck chairs and breaking every solution your quasi-employees have found for your shoddy QA.
That’s so interesting, are there any tutorials on how you use the autohotkey with GPTs?
Any reason to use Scoop over WinGet? I have no experience with scoop whatsoever, so I'm interested to hear your opinion.
And have you any experience with Ueli compared to Keypirinha?
Oh, that's really neat. That's what stopped me from using WinGet more. Stuff gets just installed in arbitrary folders. Getting the portable version of stuff is pretty cool, I have to look into it. Thanks for sharing your experience!
Nowadays I increasingly feel that when using this kind of sw I am just supposed to shut up and do as it says because it knows best what is good for me.
Then there are the fundamental privacy and basic function violations in the form of forced updates, forced telemetry, ads in a paid os, online account requirement, ever increasing obfuscation of settings, bastardization of search, various ui tweaks just to have ui tweaks.
And yes there could be a debate about updates, but it should be a debate acknowledging both viewpoints.
Just up to release of Windows 10 the os used to be a tool that the user used and it if it did not do something you wanted it was bug or just not implemented, not a forced normally uncustomizable behavior that you have to go digging way past normal user space just to try to curb this one instance and there will be more.
And yes, due to legacy nature of the os you generally still can go an run various scripts and have more or less unobtrusive os, up until...
If I absolutely have to fight the os I'm using I personally prefer to fight bugs rather than malice(or just shut up and take it). At least the first one stays fixed.
I couldn't agree more.
I’ve had to use Mac for work for a long while, but Windows has pushed me with ads and worthless AI garbage to using it for personal use as well (the Steam Deck helped too). One thing I could never get over is how much of Windows is just built on top of the same old foundation. Needing to fix an obscure setting is like time traveling through the last 30 years in OS menus.
Coincidentally just yesterday, I spent much of my day installing Linux (Mint) to my desktop computer that I do most of my work on. It was a bit more hassle than I anticipated but about exactly the same as I feared, as I ended up doing it the hard way: have it dual boot with Windows 11 on a UEFI machine, maintain Bitlocker and encrypt the Linux drive, and so on. But now I have it running fine, and Windows seems to be functioning normally as well.
Over the past quarter of a century, I have tried to make the jump to Linux every couple of years. But apart from a brief detour to OS/2 in the 90s and switching to using a MacBook as my laptop a couple of years ago, I have been a Windows user. Despite my best efforts, Linux has just always been too much hassle to switch to.
And while I'm not sure if it will stick this time around either, I think I'm more determined to make it a success than ever. I had many issues with Windows 10 but I could still live with it. Meanwhile, Windows 11 seems to have many issues with me, and I'm not really prepared to live with that. Nothing major as such, but so many little things that just make using the OS unpleasant. And I feel I've given Windows 11 enough time to get its act together, without seeing much progress.
Meanwhile, the Linux ecosystem keeps developing features that make it an increasingly attractive option for me. I actually found it hilarious that while I've been having major issues getting Windows 11 to support my wifi and printer/scanner properly, Linux Mint automatically detected both and they seem to work out of the box. This used to go the other way around. The recent announcement that Linux Mint will likely soon natively support Microsoft OneDrive sync (Ubuntu I think already does) will be a big help for me because of work, and the quickly growing gaming support on Linux also attracts me. And my switch to a MacBook a couple of years back has already broken many of my earlier Windows-only dependencies anyway.
I feel this is how Microsoft may gradually lose its OS market share. Not with a bang but a whimper.
I likewise tried to make the jump to Linux every few years, off and on since 2008, but although I was always interested in it, I never really felt like it was ready for prime time (meaning what I personally needed a computer to do).
After a lot of the same pain people are describing in these comments, I finally pulled the trigger about this time a year ago and moved to Linux full-time. I was tired of fighting my W11 install--I would say that I like W11 when it works, but in my experience across multiple machines since its release, it never does. Now I use Linux, beginning full-time with Zorin and since moving to Fedora, and it's pretty painless. Everything works, no ads or telemetry, it generally seems to run faster and better overall, and I'm not a Linux expert in the slightest. Couple of things finally made it viable that weren't true in all the previous years I tried to make the shift:
First, the web versions of Office got better in the last year or two, so I can do the professional work stuff I have to do via browser, or PWA for Outlook and Teams (which seem to be much more stable as PWAs in Linux than the native apps in W11 for some reason). Also, OnlyOffice is a native Linux app built in Office XML and works great for MS files if I need to work offline, although I notice it does start hanging on any Excel data larger than about 10k rows, otherwise very solid and 100% compatible. Historically, not being able to do basic professional stuff always ended up being the dealbreaker for me, and Libreoffice et al were absolutely not acceptable solutions for what I need an office suite to do. Now? No real issues at all. Worth noting that I don't need VBA for anything, which Linux still doesn't have a solve for, so YMMV. In fact I did have a use case for VBA when I first arrived at my current job, and switched my team off of it to a different (and better) workflow just so I wouldn't have to switch back to a Windows machine.
Second, Proton development has completely changed gaming on Linux, in that I can play 95% of my Steam/GOG catalog with minimal or no fiddling. Also worth noting that I don't play any competitive online games as I know some of the most popular ones (esp. ones that use anticheat) don't run, but I can play all the stuff I want to play, like Elden Ring, Cyberpunk 2077, Witcher 3, Skyrim, any of the Fallouts, Elder Scrolls Online, etc. I have about 1100 PC games in my library across Steam, GOG, Epic, etc. and although I certainly haven't tested every one of them, I've tested a lot of them, and in a year so far only 2 games didn't run at all, and maybe 2 or 3 required a little fiddling up front and then worked just fine. The rest ran out of the box once you turn Proton on for non-native games in Steam or Heroic Launcher (for GOG and Epic).
Again, I'm not proficient at Linux, just a casual hobbyist who found it shockingly easy to switch completely away from Windows when I would say even 3 years ago it would've been a fool's errand. My PC can do everything I want/need it to do and nothing I don't. Despite all the jokes people have made over the last 20 years, I can't help but feel like it finally became The Year of the Linux Desktop, but quietly, when no one was looking.
Thanks for mentioning this! I too need to deal with MS Office files at work and while I was hoping that either the browser versions or LibreOffice could work for me, it's great to hear a strong recommendation for another alternative.
Sure! I primarily use it for Excel files, as the web versions of PowerPoint and Word are much more capable now and usually enough. Excel on the web works okay for basic stuff but still has some gaps, especially with its charting tools--it can read but can't create or edit a combo chart (two y axes) for example. But OnlyOffice can do the stuff that web Excel can't, and if you need it, its charting tools are better than native Excel's IMO--not more capable per se, just a nicer and easier-to-use editing interface if you spend as much time making semi-complex charts from data as I do.
It also has a tabbed interface for its whole suite, unlike native Office, so everything you work on regardless of file type is in a single application window that you can tab between. Its only drawback, besides struggling with very large Excel files above a certain size, is that unlike native Office it doesn't have OneDrive/Sharepoint integration and autosaving, so if you use those at work you'll just have to manually save and upload to your cloud drive. (OnlyOffice has its own cloud service that costs money and provides the same functions as OneDrive integration/autosaving but if your company is on MS there's no advantage to using it.)
I waslucky that my notebook almost died on me sometime around 2008 - internal HDD connector broke. I couldn't afford new one while I still wanted portability. I fought Win XP trying to get it running from USB drive and eventually succeeded, but I was unable to use swap file which was bad on 512MB machine. My friend suggested Linux, as "it will certainly run from USB drive". And it did! Since I had only this PC, I had swotched to Linux that day. And honestly - I have never looked back!
I'm a gamer, always behind HW-wise but gamer nonetheless. I strugled a bit setting up Wine and everything but eventually I got somenative games running and some Wi dows games running as well. Then Steam for Linux came out and native games with it. Then later Proton came out and from that time, I can basically run 99% of games I want to play hassle-free. So the main category I use my PC for is on par with Windows for me.
Through the years I've seen KDE3(.5?), then 4, then I tried Gnome (the "tablet" one) and last 10 years I use MATE. There is some charm in simplicity.
For me and my needs Linux is at its best for almost as long as I use it. It os perfectly usable system for non-demanding user and even for demanding one if the user is willing to switch to dofferent program or do a bit of tinkering to run Windows version of some Windows-only program.
So for me HW issue back in the day solved the "try Linux every so often" - I had to switch and had to use it everyday. Thank god for that HW issue!
I honestly don't have many complaints about Windows 10/11. The two that I can think of off my head:
Backing up my media drive requires me to go through the ancient Windows 7 dialogue, last I checked. I couldn't set up a sequencial backup to an internal drive in Win 11 because they want you to buy OneDrive.
I hate that all my computers are tied to my Microsoft account. It doesn't bother me much on my two computers I use routinely, but I'd like to have my media center setup with no password, so my kids could just get into it without an issue. This will probably change soon, since the PC is old enough it can only run Win 10, so I'll switch it to Linux when support ends.
Otherwise, Windows has been pretty painless. It does what I want it to do, it keeps all my settings just fine on my various machines and yeah, it does come with ads, but you know, I actually don't notice or pay attention to them. I find all of it plenty easy to ignore and if you didn't tell me the OS had ads, I'd probably say I've never seen one.
I'm assuming you have Windows 10 home, since it's easy on Pro. Do the workarounds to setup a Local Account no longer work?
Whenever I can no longer use Windows 10 I’ll switch to 100% Mac for personal usage. Windows telemetry and privacy-hostile attitude are going to offset the loss of being able to game. I’ll just use a Steam deck or other streaming solution for windows only games.
As some one who has a Mac and a PC solely for gaming... I'm just hoping SteamOS becomes viable by the time you can't game on Windows 10.
What games do you play that Proton/SteamOS can’t run? Competitive games with anticheat? When it comes to games, almost everything I put on it launches with a few exceptions.
You may need to do some tweaking but for me been it’s Steam controls that I need to tweak.
I have only heard of SteamOS.. I haven't actually tried it yet to be honest (just that it seems people don't think it's quite there yet). I mostly play Bethesda and VR games on my PC (I prefer console otherwise).
A forced Windows 11 update was dropped on my head the other day - something I never agreed to at all.
Just like they'd increasingly force Edge on us, the brazen "recommendations" that we do the new thing are becoming more and more coercive as time goes on.
I've had no issues with my Windows 11.
Im no fan of Windows 10 but I WILL give MS a left handed compliment that I haven't seen the Blue Screen of Death in a couple of years now.
BSOD should be few and far between. It's not just MS that's worked on fixing code that caused them. Hardware and drivers play such a huge part in what caused most BSOD and with things like WHQL drivers, you shouldn't see them.
Apple control the whole of their system, from hardware through to software. MS have to try and support world+dog, and then the Chinese dodgy after-market as well. They've made great strides over the past decade and they actually deserve the compliment.
I love my Mac. So much so that even when I built a really nice gaming computer that was years newer with better hardware, it was just my gaming computer and I used my mac for all my computing needs. My gaming computer will stay on 10 as long as I can (until I can't run games on it anymore) and then maybe SteamOS will be a thing. And now I have a newer Mac that can do the one other thing I used my PC for besides gaming (Fusion) so my PC can be a pure gaming machine.
Also, as a Mac user it astounds me you can't move programs around in Windows or it gets confused and you can't install programs on different hard drives or it gets confused.
TBF though I've always preferred Macs but there have been a few Windows I found not bad (XP was pretty good and I don't mind 10 so much but I mostly interact with steam on my pc with windows 10). And as some one else said, windows now seems a lot more stable (I used to prefer Mac just cause it seemed more stable, even the pre os x stuff). IE blue screen of death doesn't seem to be much of a thing anymore (though I found what usually happened is the PC would start acting glitchier and glitchier til you had to restart).
But yeah, when I started to hear that they added adds to the OS... ugh... makes me glad I'm buying from a company that is trying to sell hardware and the OS is a carrot to get you to buy (meaning they want you to like the OS feel).
I switched to Mac a few years ago and now I feel the same way. I think growing up on windows teaches a bunch of things that people start to think is “normal” for computers but makes absolutely no sense. Learning macOS for me wasn’t really learning something new, it was unlearning all of my weird windows habits. The first time I installed a program was an eye opening experience. A program is really just a single file* that you can put wherever you want? It can’t be that easy right? Don’t I need installers and a bunch of random files in Program Files or one of the other directories programs like installing to? I can uninstall an app just by dragging it to the trash? I don’t need to track down the program’s uninstall script and hope it actually works? Windows has taught us that computers need to be complex. macOS allows computing to be simple for the vast majority of scenarios and allows complexity when needed.
* macOS apps aren’t actually single files, but folders that the finder displays as files. You can open them as folders to view the contents. This is a perfect example of the UI being simple for the majority of tasks but allowing complexity when needed. Also some programs do have installers, uninstallers, specific install directories, and other annoyances, but these are the minority and mostly cross platform programs like office and the adobe suite.
Hell if you are familiar with Unix you can even get around what MacOS won't let you do. I managed to save some files that were on a dying hard drive that were behing a corrupt area. The Mac tool would just quit and say corrupted area, can't get past. Went to the genius bar and the guy figured out I at least had familiarity with Unix and taught me a command with some options to tell it to ignore the corrupted area and copy everything else.