I’ve been using Linux exclusively for about 8 years. Recently I got frustrated with a bunch of issues that popped one after another. I had a spare SSD so I decided to check out Windows again. I’ve installed Windows 11 LTSC. It was a nightmare. After all the years on Linux, I forgot how terrible Windows actually is.
On the day I installed the system and a bunch of basic software, I had two bluescreens. I wasn’t even doing anything at that time, just going through basic settings and software installation. Okay, it happens. So I installed Steam and tried to play a game I’ve been currently playing on Linux just to see the performance difference. And it was… worse, for some reason. The “autodetect” in game changed my settings from Ultra to High. On Linux, the game was running at the 75 fps cap all the time. Windows kept dropping them to around 67-ish a lot of times. But the weirdest part was actual power consumption and the way GPU worked. Both systems kept the GPU temperature at around 50C. But the fans were running at 100% speed at that temperature on Windows, while Linux kept them pretty quiet. I had to change the fan controls by myself on Windows just because it was so annoying. The power consumption difference was even harder to explain, as I was getting 190-210W under Linux and under Windows I got 220-250W. And mind you, under Linux I had not only higher graphical settings set up, but was also getting better performance.
I tried connecting my bluetooth earbuds to my PC. Alright, the setup itself was fine. But then the problems started. My earbuds support opus codec for audio. Do you think I can change the bluetooth codec easily, just like on Linux? Nope. There is no way to do it without some third party programs. And don’t even get me started on Windows randomly changing my default audio output and trying to play sound through my controller.
Today I decided to make this rant-post after yet another game crashed on me twice under Windows. I bought Watch Dogs since it’s currently really cheap on Steam. I click play. I get the loading screen. The game crashed. I try again. I play through the basic “tutorial”. After going out of the building, game crashed again. I’m going to play again, this time under Linux.
I’ve had my share of frustrations under Linux, but that experience made me realise that Windows is not a perfect solution either. Spending a lot of time with Linux and it’s bugs made me forget all the bad experience in the past with Windows, and I was craving to go back to the “just works” solution. But it’s not “just works”. Two days was all it took for me to realize that I’ll actually stick with Linux, probably forever. The spare SSD went back to my drawer, maybe so I can try something new in the future. It’s so good to be back after a short trip to the other side!
I’d summarize the current OS situation as
Windows Just Works until it doesn’t, at which point there’s basically nothing you can do about it and you just have to kick it until something clicks into place and it starts working properly again.
Whereas linux Just Works to a slightly smaller degree, but when it stops Just Working it does so in granular steps most of the time, and every part of the ecosystem tries to help you fix things when they break.
Windows is a resin-potted black box that takes input and does stuff, if it breaks you’re supposed to just chuck it and buy a new one.
Linux is a slightly bulkier thing that you can just unscrew and replace a capacitor when it breaks.Only if you refuse to put forth the same effort into fixing windows as you do with Linux. Not wanting to learn doesn’t mean it’s not learnable.
Have a different experience. Usually, Linux does not even boot, due to driver issues, in the first place. So, the first installation process usually easily takes 5 to 10 hours, straight. And this is only for common popular distributions, not to mention lesser known and lesser supported ones. (Talking about Linux GUI based installations, only.)
I almost never had Linux not boot after a fresh install, even with nVidia hardware. It happened a few times like 10 years ago and never again. What hardware are you running?
If you’re willing to put up with the low security options provided by default and don’t have a weird laptop, maybe.
Happened to me all the time, when, for example, setting up very generic and common laptops for family & friends. It never worked out of the box. Every single time, I had to give special treatment. Research extra drivers, etc… Hard to do in some locations, when they do not have a second system to do all the work from.
Laptops have historically been a little iffy yeah. Personally I haven’t had many issues except for Nvidia optimus, but since most of them are non standard and proprietary it used to be kind of a pain. Now though it’s much better, at least on newer hardware, even my newest laptop with hybrid graphics just worked out of the box.
Lol “the main computer market is iffy”
Historically, yeah. Nowadays (as in the last 2-3 years) I don’t really see many issues. It’s fairly solid in my experience.
And let’s be honest, Windows is a nightmare as well on many laptops. If you wipe them and start from scratch, there is a non zero chance that you’ll have to source like half the drivers manually.
To get to a working state you’re very likely to be fine. They’re all using Intel wifi and some elan touchpad, so the basics work well enough to bootstrap up to your vendors website.
For this hypothetical activity most people never think about doing.
Tried it over many years. Last one was last year. Every time, the same problem. I even considered moving to Windows, but it would be tougher for me to administrate for me, as I’m used to headless Linux. It’s just, whenever Linux tries to GUI, it fucks up everything colossaly.
I just don’t see it. I run it on all my PCs with nvidia, amd, hybrid graphics, pretty much any combination (I have too many 😅). It works. Even various friends of mine have tried it on their older setups, no problems there either.
Unless you’re using something like Debian or whatever with crazy old packages, everything works for the most part. Nvidia is still not great on Wayland but it at least works now.
I’m not saying your experience isn’t valid, I’m not trying to gaslight you, but I’m not sure it’s representative of the average experience nowadays.
Yeah, I am very familiar with Debian on servers. It works great on servers. Have experienced with all kinds of stability stages regarding Debian.
However, Desktop Debian usually does not work. Then I switch to the one, which should work the easiest, so Ubuntu or some derivative. And this usually still needs tons of troubleshooting over hours to make it work to a minimum standard…
What PCs? Certified by some Linux supporting company? If you buy a random laptop or pre-made PC, chances are high, that it won’t work. And I’m not even a “beginner”, who does “beginner” mistakes. No, I’m actually a Linux pro. I work with Linux literally every single day, even in my free time.
I think it highly depends on what kind of hardware you are attempting to install Linux on. You can make it work on almost anything, but the graphical installers are best used with hardware that was widely used when the distribution was released.
Also the older and more obscure distros may not have installers that pass secure boot checks, which is very frustrating if you don’t know what is happening.
yeah no i’m sorry but this just sounds completely fucking made up
Over the past 5 years, I’ve installed ubuntu about 30 times on different computers. Not once has an install on an SSD taken me more than an hour, with it typically taking me 30 minutes or less except for rare occasions where I’ve messed something up.
It’s not about the speed of the installation… It’s about the installation not working. Crashes. Hard to see error logs. Drivers missing for the most generic hardware, ever. No, I’m not talking about an unmaintained fringe distribution. I’m talking about Ubuntu, Lubuntu & Debian. Plain old stable and simple.
Oh I just did that
What do you need as proof? All I have to do, is getting a random laptop, doesn’t matter which one and I will make a video for you. Is that enough?
Welcome back to sanity
I can’t relate to this at all.
We use windows machines as software developers at work and really have no issues at all. Never had a bluescreen in these two years.
I use windows at home to play Factorio, Minecraft, and RDR2. Again, never had an issue. No blue screens. I turn it on open steam and play my games then turn it off when done.
I tried Linux again cause I got sucked in by this echo chamber and that did not go well at all. I explicitly said I don’t want to have to be a nerd in my free time to manage Linux which I was assured isn’t the case. Then one day I turn it on and have no sound and no idea why it just died. I swiftly removed Linux and went back to windows.
I do use Linux for servers for Jellyfin and stuff and I like it for those things, but me personally have had a better experience using windows and I can’t understand all these people against it.
Was windows dev for 10 years, I switched to Linux for work and I’m never going back : everything is simpler (may not be easier though) and makes sense whereas you constantly work against the system in windows. It’s an opinion so widespread they even made a subsystem to use Linux tools on windows. As a user windows installation is an utter nightmare, getting rid of the thousands stuff you don’t want is horrible. And also you may not even be able to install it without special ssd drivers that you have to side load manually (for some pretty basic asus hardware) Also don’t get me started on the nearly mandatory microsoft account 🤢
You don’t have to get rid of all the stuff, it doesn’t break the system like missing sounds or whatnot. Some of its even helpful like weather and news. Plus it isn’t that hard to make a Microsoft account, don’t you need one anyway for Minecraft? And since when do you need drivers for an SSD, don’t those usually work out of the box?
Yep exactly, since when do we need a driver for the nvme controller 🤗 at least on Linux it works out of the box. Apps on windows do break the system to some extent by using resources. As a developer I think that KISS is a paramount principle and waste is bad. Account = waste, unneeded 3d viewer = waste, notepad with subscription ad = uber waste.
Yep. The difference is simply put just ppl are used to the quirks on Windows but not on Linux.
How to install an application on Windows
- You hear about some application
- You google the application name
- You get a bunch of links
- You click the first one (and hope it’s valid and not hijacked by malware ads)
- You scan the webpage to find the correct download button (and hope it’s not an ad link)
- Download the application
- Double-click the application.exe
- Windows UAC pops up which you have to allow
- Install start and you click next, next, next (You hope the installer does not change your homepage or install some browser toolbar)
- Installation finished
Windows is so much easier /s
How to install the app on Linux.
You search for it. Highly likely it is not available or barely functional.
IF it works, it’s only packaged for Ubuntu, Debian and Arch. If you use Nix or something even more niche, good luck with proprietary software or sometimes even openly available open source software.
Or, you DO find it, but it’s glitchy/outdated (I think there was an issue with Steam). Or you search for the program, find the website, download a .tar.gz, wonder what the hell is this double extension abomination, double click it, doesn’t work, look it up, apparently it’s a type of container like a zip and not a basic program like an exe and instead of using the GUI like a normal person you have to type “tar -xcv” or something that might as well be black magic (I can’t even remember the correct letters), then to actually install you have to find the magic “make” “sudo make install” command, and it still fails.
Much easier to double click the .exe, accept the license agreement, and hit continue a few times.
Most of the time, the package is available on the standard package manager which makes the process extremely simple. Hardest part is knowing the package name. If you know
apt search, you don’t even have to search on the browser to find the package name. But certain packages are only available as tar.gz or as source. But those are usually not encountered by newbies.If someone is using Nix, they generally don’t have trouble finding packages. Also, Nix has more packages compared to AUR.
apt searchis very inefficient. It outputs way too many results and at least 8/10 times, I search for a keyword related to the package, which is not in the package name or description itself, so the package does not show up for me.Searching online is better, but still crap. I work a lot with Container Images, Alpine etc. professionally and in my free time. Searching for the right Alpine package is always a huge pain in the ass.
Less is more. Nix has lots of packages, but they are barely maintained. For fun, I set up a Kubernetes cluster on NixOS a couple of years back. Had it “running” until last month. Long story short: Kubernetes is broken on NixOS. There are several open GitHub issues since years and nobody fixes them, because not enough people care to fix Kubernetes for NixOS.
Tbf, winget is a god sent and works surprisingly well, took them what? 30 years to get it done?!
winget is everything which Windows fanboys are against. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fantastic (terminals ftw). However, I remember people often smirked about the fact that in Linux you have to type commands to install something and the GUI method is much superior.
I think you were being biased.
- You heard the name of the software
- You search on Google, which takes you to their official website
- You click on the download button and download it
- Double click on the file and follow the on-screen guide to finished the installation
To your conscious brain, it might seem like 4 steps. But we are doing a lot more in reality because install process is second nature to us (Because of several years of usage).
If you tell someone who has never used a Windows PC to install a software and my list is more accurate.
- Forgot scan app with virus total
- Investigate if hits are false positives
- Get frustrated and run exe any way
Exactly. It took me 4 hours a couple months ago to get a scanner to work on our Windows 11 PC. It turns out there was some Windows Image Acquisition service built in that had to be disabled because it was conflicting with the driver of the scanner. Absolute insanity lmao
I told one of my friends about this since my friends sometimes tease me about using Linux, their response was get a better scanner.
lol
Just today I logged into a Workstation at work, just to see 2 versions of Teams being auto launched. And no, no one installed 2 Versions, it was Windows.
Literally the same story happened on Linux in the span of decades countless times. On Windows? Cannot remember this happening more than once.
Using Windows since Windows XP was sired. Using Linux for longer than that, mostly Linux servers, but have tons of years of Linux Desktop experience under my belt, with probably half of all Linux distributions on DistroWatch.com.
Conclusion: Linux server rocks. Windows Desktop sux in many ways, but it just works and I personally have no issues with it. Linux Desktop is the worst hell possible. Barely ever works. It is literal hell and I hate it.
Whenever I try to get into Linux Desktop, I have to meditate and drink a de-stressing tea beforehand, or else I cannot guarantee the laptop’s or PC’s screen’s safety, when dealing with Linux Desktop.
For anyone attempting to comment: note, that there is a huge difference between headless server Linux usage and Linux Desktop/GUI usage. I’m only talking about Linux GUI. Linux headless is fine and works great!
But did you try (the distro I personally prefer)? I’ve tried 500 distros and that one is the one that actually worked for me.
Yeah when I see people say that gaming on Linux “isn’t there yet” I have to wonder how long it’s been since they’ve tried. And people who install Windows on their Steam Deck? Don’t get it.
people who install Windows on their Steam Deck?
I see this way too often, nearly half of the 2nd hand Decks sold here have Windows🤷♂️
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As somebody who works in IT at a Windows-only environment, I know exactly what you mean.
I have to fight with Windows on a weekly basis. Driver issues, firmware issues, software crashes/lockups, performance issues, etc etc.
Just this week, I have two users experiencing issues with their monitors. Identical enterprise grade laptops, identical drivers, identical docking stations, all totally up to date on Windows 11. Their old Windows 10 computers worked fine. Still trying to figure out what’s wrong.
The Windows 24H2 update broke my Bluetooth audio, the sound is completely messed up and makes the system lag a bit. Uninstalled the update, Bluetooth works. The update automatically installed itself again after a few weeks and broke it again but I can no longer uninstall it for some reason.
@feddup @Lettuceeatlettuce Sadly the Debian 12 update did the same to me. I fixed it and it stays fixed. But its annoying nevertheless.
Well, Windows was never perfect. People just got used to its shenanigans. They tend to meddle with bullshit registry yet somehow basic commands on Linux is too complicated.
In windows’ defense, the “complication” comes from the fact that there is no constant visual display of the filesystem structure in a terminal window like there is in the Windows registry.
That said, taking an hour to become comfortable with the terminal is not a difficult task. Understanding
~, and constantly usingdf -handls -al(for me anyway) will help a lot of people figure it out.Poor comparison, honestly. Only like 5% of Windows users will only have a vague notion about what a registry is and a fraction of that would have messed with it under duress. By comparison, nearly all Linux users are expected to learn a handful of commands with strange abbreviations and arcane symbols to perform otherwise basic tasks. That’s not some unsubstantial barrier to be dismissed.
I know it’s not an exact comparison but I think it’s fair. Almost every Windows user (or the ones who fix others’ computers) hit a situation where they had to modify registry (or run a .bat file they have no idea what it does -there were even official solutions like this-) to fix something, at least once in their lives. As a go-to tech-savvy person for a lot of people around me, I know I did this all the time. (I still remember that once someone asked me to remove 3D Objects folder because they couldn’t and it was also a registry fix). On the other hand, while Linux is mature with its commandline, it also came to a point where a normal user don’t need it, just like in Windows (it’s a plus if they know at least how to paste commands if they need though). For example, my sister uses openSUSE and I taught her about YaST and she never had a single issue in the last 2 years, everything is done via GUI. She can install flatpaks if she needs too.
That’s true, never thought about how many times Ive used the registry to do something when the ui doesn’t work, eg forcing games into exclusive fullscreen or getting acces to old features in the Nvidia control panel.
Still my gaming pc “needs” to be windows because of the games i play. Either be it kernel level AC or not getting stretched Res + 280hz gsync to work.
The average user doesn’t even know the registry exists.
My main issue with Windows isn’t its technology, but its attitude. The user is no longer the most important consideration. In that way it’s become adversarial.
Yes. I prefer my os to be more passively adversarial. Like Gentoo. It hates everything equally.
Now I’m imagining an angry Gentoo penguin snapping at fingers any time someone wants to use their PC 😅
All operating systems suck, some just suck harder than others.
Yeah that’s hard to see when i have to boot windows for work every weekday.
The issues are the little things, like 300ms lag here or there where things are instant on Linux. Or the flashing taskbar icon when an app wants your attention. Or the obfuscated settings. Or the ‘everything is an edge applet’. Or the cpu fans racing to send data back and forth with MS services. (Seriously try simplewall sometime. It’s scary to see the connections, and blocking them makes your computer silent)
Booting into Linux at the end of the day is such a relief every single time.
Eh, Gentoo is pretty quiet most of the time once you’ve got it installed. After that, you just have to keep an eye on it and make sure it doesn’t go off its meds (although once every few years, it will come up with a weird and wonderful way of doing so that you can’t block.)
In that way it’s become adversarial.
Back in the 2000s, I was able to say that while a fundamental install took only about a half hour to set up, usability tweaks and a full fleshing out of functionality took another 4-8 hours depending on what the user was going to use the machine for.
I just did a Win11 24h2 install. It took nearly 24 working hours before I considered it even minimally functional for my needs. Cycling through Win10Privacy two or three times was particularly frustrating. Registry work alone took me a good 8-10 hours of trying stuff a step at a time and then rebooting to see how it worked.
At this point, the only reason why I am still running with a Windows rig is for those half-dozen programs that don’t have appropriate non-Windows variants. It’s why I’m also running a Mac Mini and an OpenSUSE tower through the same 4-port, 6-head KVM.
Indeed it is difficult to hammer it in to shape. In addition, Microsoft will often quietly reset setting back in their favour. It’s that constant fight that tipped the scales for me.
Put it in a VM?
VM
That still doesn’t solve 99.9% of my issues, it just tries to solve a problem for which I already have a solution actively in-place: a KVM.
It’s definitely an abusive relationship.
My work just changed from gsuite to m365 and it is atrocious. Obviously fuck google but god damn if microsoft arent just the worst at designing UI and considering actual consumer concerns when dsigning programs. Quit your job if they change to office.
Windows is fine for me. I work with it all day long too. But yeah Windows is just another enshitification product.
I just reinstalled and configured Windows for a friend who’s machine was hacked, so my frustration with Microsoft is very fresh. (She lost 8 thousand dollars of her savings she’s still trying to get back.) After years of using Linux I feel like I’m being punished every time I help someone with their Windows machine.
/Rant
These things in particular drive me nuts:
- Sending everything users do and type (including passwords) back to Microsoft. It’s called spyware when other companies do it. It should be called spyware when it’s an OS called Microsoft Windows.
- Flooding 1/2 the screen with web search results when a search is done from the start menu. I’m looking for an installed program, not a potato recipe.
- Requiring a registry edit to turn that web search off and lots of other simple things that use to be configurable in settings.
- Placing ads throughout the operating system and making it difficult to turn those ads off.
- Forcing the use of the Edge browser no matter what users choose.
- Preventing the removal of unwanted programs without editing the registry.
- Forced updates at Microsoft’s convenience.
- Absurdly long restart times after updating.
- Forced OS version upgrades.
- Reverting settings that have been changed by the user to settings that directly benefit Microsoft’s sales and marketing goals.
- Forced restarts of the operating system causing data loss and the loss of millions of hours of work for millions of users.
- Removing more and more user settings with each new OS release.
- Burying commonly used menu items multiple menus deep.
- Preventing the removal of Start menu items. I will never use the Xbox Game Bar no matter how many time I’m forced to see it.
/
That sucks about your friend. I can relate.
Scammers hacked my elderly mother on her windows laptop. They tricked her with an ad saying there was a problem with her computer, and they had her install remote access software. She mentioned seeing the terminal so I assumed they installed (at least) a keylogger. Luckily, they either ran out of time, or their con took two days, but they said they were going to call my mom the next day and have her log in to the bank to make sure her computer was still working.
So, I wiped her computer and installed Linux Mint with auto updates set up. She only had one simple question about logging in to google chrome and that’s been it for the last month. She has just been using it no problem.
Side note: The next day the scammers had the nerve to call my mom and ask her why her computer was turned off.
My friend got a call from “Best Buy” technical support saying they’d noticed her computer was slow and followed their instructions to set up remote access. Unfortunately she didn’t realize that there was anything to be worried about. It wasn’t until months later when she left the computer on and unattended that the scammers took control. Fidelity wired the money out of her account before she saw the notification and Fidelity has been jerking her around ever since. She’s still badly shaken.
I’d put her on Mint, but as much as I enjoy her company I don’t want to be permanent tech support for her computer.
Sending everything users do and type (including passwords) back to Microsoft. It’s called spyware when other companies do it.
Do you have any proof that Microsoft keylogs you? That’s quite a serious claim.
Recall?
Have you tried a Google search?
Your claim, your burden.
Tempted to put this through let me google that for you just to be smug, but here’s the direct link instead since I’m sure I’d also need to click the results for you. Do I need to read this to you too?
https://windowsreport.com/disable-keylogger-windows-11/
Not even my claim, yet I googled it for you. Guess the burden is on a third party who happened to know this common knowledge already.
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This is very unproductive for discussion
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Anyone who’s so lazy they literally refuse to type the same words used in their comment into a search engine doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously. There are lots of adults on Lemmy, but apparently we have a few children too.
It isn’t about laziness it’s about principles.
I simply won’t argue with someone that refuses to provide their sources. Doesn’t matter if they say something dubious about Windows, say that vaccines cause autism, or that the earth is flat.
Windows is so annoying like why does it always display word, excel etc when I don’t own it. These are paid programs that I do not own they should not be coming up in search results when I’m looking for a word processor.
I used to work for a Fortune 500 tech company that dealt with thousands of other businesses. Someone on the executive team decided that everyone in the company should be actively pushing our products every time they had customer contact. Customer calls about a bill? Sell them something. They have a major problem and are angry about it? Sell them something. Need to use their bathroom? Sell them something.
It just irritated our customers and didn’t result in any more sales. It seems that executive got a job at Microsoft.
oh the times ive seen people at my work try an sell soemthing to an angry customer. It always fails and results in the customer being pissed off and insulted. It should be obvious that if someone is paying you to solve a problem and your software is not working and causing them to complain they are not in the mood to buy another thing to solve the problem they are already paying you to solve.
Forcing upgrades at Microsoft’s convenience.
This is the only one I agree with. Upgrades are necessary for security, it’s just a fact of life.
The problem isn’t the updates. The problem is microsoft downloading things and restarting my pc without my consent (annoying me until I say “fine, do it” is not consent). No one but me decides when my machine installs updates and reboots. I know I’m putting myself at risk if I let my system fall behind on updates. That’s on me, it’s my computer, it is my right to make that decision.
absofuckinglutely.
The problem is, that most people would then not update, get issues, land in a thread like this, make propaganda against Windows, since something doesn’t work or is insecure, when in fact the problem is in front of the screen, who always denied the update, that fixes those issues… That is why upgrades are rightfully enforced. At some point, you gotta upgrade or stop using the system.
If i have to suffer because I’m a dumb dumb, that’s on me. I’m tired of suffering because other people are stupid.
If you never want to update and wouldn’t do it or would do it too rarely (Windows only rarely asks, so the chance is high, you would update way too seldom…), then you are part of those “other people”. :D
It’s not just your decision though. Like vaccinations, your decision affects everyone else so it’s not your decision alone.
Nobody’s writing a NixOS virus to target me. Even if I download a linux virus it will probably complain about unmet dependencies
Not talking about viruses despite the vaccine comparison.
Software has vulnerabilities, even on NixOS.
Sure, all software has vulnerabilities, I just don’t think people will bother to exploit my particular software combination since it’s rare
NixOS is not special there. It runs the same software as any other Linux distro.
Vaccinations are pretty much your choice.
Sure. And this is why we have measles outbreaks still today.
On my kid’s laptop I was holding Windows 11 24H2 back because of Recall, but this week it just decided to install itself. Now it’s a Linux laptop.
See? They forced you to upgrade to Linux, now you’re more secure!
FYI: Recall is delayed and will only work on specific arm computers anyway. So you weren’t in at any immediate risk. Not arguing against installing Linux though. That’s great!
I have an ongoing irritation with windows (use it for work, Linux at home): It steals focus from the window you’re using if another window opens.
Drives me nuts. I’ll be typing my password and pop! Oh look I just typed my password into something else that popped up because IT requires this program to run on login today.
KDE is much better about not stealing window focus like that.
Mac os is pretty bad with that bullshit too
I had to set up an app on Wine + macOS, the app spawns bg processes that have a window (on Wine, not on Windows) for some reason and each time that happens the main window app loses focus. Couldn’t solve it. On Linux + Plasma Wayland the problem is inverse ie. even the main window doesn’t have an icon on taskbar, if you minimize it you can restore with only Alt + Tab.
The sad thing is back in the Windows XP days Microsoft had the focus stealing thing pretty much solved. Well okay - I remember you had to install some of the PowerToys or make some registry edits to get at some of the settings. But once setup pretty much nothing could steal focus away from the current window, which was a welcome change from where we had been. That started to break again in Windows 7, and has gotten worse with every release since then.
Admittedly XFCE isn’t perfect either, but it’s much better behaved than modern Windows.
What windows are you having randomly pop up? That might be width investigating because that shouldn’t be happening.
They’re things like drive mapping scripts, stuff like that. They’re definitely normal for our setup. Just not sure why they have to interrupt me!
The fact that Windows devs seem to not know how to run tasks hidden and in the background always bothers me. I’m sure it’s the fault of Windows itself, but Linux doesn’t open jack until I tell it to. With all the extra helper programs needs in the tray to run all the proprietary hardware, I about lose it with all the shit popping up to yell at me.
It’s very easy to run things like scripts in the background. Showing a command/powershell windows because of a drive mapping script is amateurish (and very annoying). Usually scripts like those are run on logon.
We have an automation server at work that runs a bunch of scripts for all kinds of stuff. It just uses task scheduler. Hiding the script output is as simple as telling it too. We have a lot of servers at work that run important production shit interactively. So someone has to logon the server and start the problem.
It’s utterly disgusting. I recently introduced them to NSSM which can run simple programs as a service, which entirely solves the problem. But it’s bizarre that no one else has suggested that before, or found some other solution.
Fortunately, I’m not responsible for prod applications running on those servers, it just really fucks with our patching procedures.
Say I print something, and it’s going to take 5 minutes, I go and work on an email or something, and the save dialog pops up and what I’m typing for the email starts going into/overwrites the save name. Hate it.
I’m not trying to be difficult but I genuinely don’t follow. I print and write emails at work all the time and cannot relate.
Maybe I should have specified print to PDF.
It sounds like you might have some network places set up for windows to use but that are no longer reachable (or something along those lines) because that shouldn’t be taking so long so you might have things timing out in the background.
Or your internet is slow and it’s taking a long time to communicate with one drive or send its screenshots of your document to their creep department.
Or maybe a print driver that no longer exists still has an orphaned entry in the registry and it spends some time trying to locate it.
Or malware has set up hooks for any new window that pops up but the print to pdf dialog is set up in such a way that it churns very inefficiently on that window specifically.
I joke but any one of those might actually be what’s going on.
Heh thanks, but it’s just that I’m printing 2000+sqft of high res pdfs from many gigs of files at a time.
Automated command-line jobs, in my case, which are technically not random but still annoying, because they don’t need to show a window at all. Interestingly, the one thing I can get to absolutely not pop up any window ever are Perl scripts using Win32::Detached . . . which means that it is possible, but Microsoft doesn’t bother to expose such a facility.
Bluetooth is so bad on Windows. You cannot simply “reconnect” a headset
You have to unpair and pair each time you want to use it.
This was with Intel Bluetooth too which works extremely well, under Linux and Macos.
If anyone wants a great terminal bluetooth manager, use blutuith (https://github.com/darkhz/bluetuith)
What? That’s just not true. If I turn on my Bluetooth earbuds they reconnect to my laptop right away as that’s the last thing they were paired to
Curious what Bluetooth chip you have as this was my experience and the several devices and a couple different windows machines
Windows Bluetooth paired my Google Pixel Buds Pro once and refused to unpair or delete them no matter what I tried, but would happily connect to them every time I booted the system. I had to literally wipe the install clean and start fresh before it was ever fixed. And those same earbuds worked everywhere else, even my fucking gaming laptop with a MediaTek wireless card running Arch. genuinely the worst experience I’ve had with Bluetooth so far.
Yep exactly my experience with several Bluetooth headphones.
Fine on my Android as well.
Windows just seems to always struggle with Bluetooth and printers.
I’m no great fan of windows, but I have no issues reconnecting to bluetooth things. Kinda the opposite really, my phone and windows keep wanting to compete for who gets to be connected to my headset as soon as I turn it on, I have to make sure to turn off bluetooth when I’m done with it. I think the problem may be on your end in this case.
My friend uses the same headset on Linux, that I use on Windows.
When he “mutes” his headset, it is not actually muted on Linux. It is not really fixable. Obviously, on Windows it just works.
I will say I had a lot of trouble with Bluetooth (bluez) on Linux, but I think it mainly comes down to the implementation. I have a cheap dongle and pairing gamepads has been a nightmare sometimes.
I had to transfer files over Bluetooth to a Windows PC. Fuck that is terrible compared to doing it on my Linux PC.
Oh yeah I just use magic wormhole now for file transfer it’s much more reliable
Windows sure is bad, though I haven’t seen an actual blue-screen in years. That’s some foul luck.
You just get forced update while you’re in the middle of work and random settings resets.
I had one last week because of Storage problems.
The problem with Windows is that it is not build to be parametrised. Anyone a bit tech-savy will be frustrated by the inability to tune it effectively for their need.
The problem with Linux is that it is not tech-normie friendly. Sure it has distribution easy to use and pre-parametrised so anyone with basic computer skill can use it. But people with basic computer skill don’t have computers with Linux. Anyone who just want to use a computer has to first learn how to install an OS.The problem with Linux is that it is not tech-normie friendly.
That probably was true 15 years ago. That is absolutely not true now. This misconception stems from the fact that most tech normies have a lot of experience with Windows through job, so people assume Windows is friendly, but in reality they just know how it works.
Learning how to use Linux is dead easy. It’s not popular because it’s not pre installed, as you said, but it’s not because the OS is bad, it’s because Linux doesn’t have multibillion corporation behind it to make sure its everywhere.I tend to disagree, I do have several devices running Linux and with all of them I had issues after install (standby not working, swap partition not recognized, sound only playing on half of the speakers, issues with monitor scaling etc…) Im fine with it and like the journey, but there are still quirks.
Probably Im in an in-between-world where I do have some tricky use-cases, but missing the full know-how to do it…
thing which makes it not normy-usable, are the documentations: for windows issues you can find DAU-conform guides to solve something. Mostly on “official” (with probably too many ads) pages.
For Linux it’s usually a rabbit hole of official documentations (which dont show all the options), forums, reddit pages, where some guy tells another guy to add xyz to the config file…without telling which file and where in the file. Why is this command not listed in the documentation? What does that command actually do?
It has gotten much better, but there’s still some way to go
[…] in reality they just know how it works
In my experience, they know how a few utilities and how a handful of programs work, but have no idea how Windows works. Not that many people actually know how Windows works.
Roughly figuring out the boot sequence of Linux is relatively easy once you’ve used it for a year or two. What happens when Windows boots? Who knows? kernel32 probably is involved at some point.Linux/Unix is actually relatively simple and logical once you’ve figured it out. Windows is a messy dark maze with grues waiting at every corner to eat you.
They don’t know how it works, but they roughly kind of know how to operate it. And they mistake their years of experience for the intuitivness.
It’s a WIMP system. They all work the same way. Worst case you have to click around a bit.
You should have the end of my comment with more attention. That’s not my point you counter here.
Good points.
Yea, I have to use windows at work presently and I hate every second of fighting with it.
Windows doesn’t even have a fully functional implementation of focusing windows on hover, a common feature of any Linux system WM I have ever used. There is a setting to do this in Windows accessibility settings, and it’s true, it DOES change focus on hover; but it DOESN’T change the functionality of foreground windows getting pushed behind those windows, making it pretty much pointless, and actually more annoying to use.
Also just the performance is such shit, probably because it’s now designed to be doing hundreds of unnecessary telemetry tasks at all time on the back end. Also what the fuck is with every piece of Windows software configuring itself to run on boot or as a service? So incredibly annoying.
