My Windows Computer Just Doesn't Feel Like Mine Anymore
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Comments117https://www.howtogeek.com/my-windows-computer-just-doesnt-feel-like-mine-anymore/Open linkView original on feddit.nl
As much as I disliked Steve Jobs, the man was 100% correct when he talked about companies rotting from the inside. They get taken over by sales & marketing types and the product designers and user experience experts get kicked to the curb.
Apple being the pinnacle of this. They were the first ones that made devices theirs, not yours.
Yeah, exactly. I find the shilling for MacOS a bit concerning, already from the article and also the comments.
A Mac feels more like yours than Windows? Just goes to shows how shitty Windows has become, not how MacOS is better.
Mac has always felt more like mine than Windows. Nothing has changed there.
And neither holds a candle to the pure, blinding, white light that is Linux. GNOME, KDE, the world is your oyster and the desktop is your choice.
In comparison with Windows and iOS, Mac OS is a paradigm of respecting the user. Of course that's only because the bar is firmly embedded on Earth's inner core.
Respecting the user? Lol
Yeah dude, holy shit. Cannot believe these comments here. Does anyone of the MacOs evangelists have an example of how MacOs "respects the user"?
They have the close, minimize and full screen buttons in the upper left corner instead of the upper right.
/s just in case.
Do you understand what "comparing" means?
Apple has always been about locking down the system and forcing the user to do things the way Apple wants. Not only within one device, but also in locking down inter-device protocols and removing standard ones, as well as obfuscating information about the hardware, not letting the users make an informed decision. And that's already after the fact that you aren't legally allowed to use the system on non-Apple hardware.
Steve Jobs was no different from the rest in Silicon Valley who would spout virtues out loud while simultaneously undermining them in practice.
I'd even go as far as to say many of them today are just copying Jobs. He was a terrible person.
But compost is good?
Not if you payed for an "apple" but got compost. But of that's your thing you could try to eat it 🤣
Some people love compost, it's already half digested.
Not so much inside your home.
Like Steve Jobs lol.
Yeah, he was a hypocrit and I despised the guy. Woz was the real hero of Apple. But Jobs did say that stuff, and he was correct in that moment. We see it over and over.
What are you on about? Yes they made sure their gadgets were easy to use, but Apple and Jobs were the pinnacle of "locking you in" on their ecosystem for the profit of it. Sure they weren't as careless about users when compared to Microsoft but they weren't too favourable of you using anything else. They invented this stuff.
From a company perspective, it's a common sentiment. Google and Amazon have mantras around trying to stay agile and relevant despite being behemoths, and both have arguably kept into boomer tech territory the second they made a poor CEO hire. Microsoft had their Ballmer era, and while Nadella did a lot of good at Microsoft they've had a lot of failures in established divisions to be soaked up by AI and sales.
I think that all of big tech has struggled over the last 3 years. Sacrificing employee skill for shareholder value has ultimately moved them all into IBM territory, whereas the cool tech is happening at startups again. If AI is a bust, and another company comes along and eats their lunch in their established markets like consumer devices, web tooling, or cloud computing, they're in real danger of another huge set of layoffs and resetting their businesses to only core profit-making ventures. What I think we've seen companies shift towards death, Day 2, rotting from the inside, or whatever your business calls stagnation.
Jobs was quite good at UX, right? Will we ever have such skilled ceos
Tux awaits your arrival friends. Join us.
join tux
I 🎮 on Bazzite BTW.
I installed Bazzite on a sibling's laptop. It's very good and super user friendly to install.
Despite the huge advancements lately it's just still not as good for gaming. I have very limited time I don't want to waste it negotiating settings and forget games that use anti cheat. It's really a shame because for anything and everything else Tux wins
I’ve never had an issue with settings stuff except for maybe a super old game like fallout 1, but I expect windows would have the same issue.
But you are right about anti-cheat stuff. Luckily I don’t care about online gaming.
As the other commenter suggested, try bazzite. Setup as easy as configuring a new smartphone and ready to game right off the bat
Unfortunately I'm on a big destiny 2 kick and that's firmly in the category of I can go fuck myself
Living my best life with Guix!
This dude is begging for an ad free windows at the end. Why? They're too far gone. Go make a new home in another OS. It will be okay.
He’s addicted to the Microsoft flavored kool-aid.
I'm too dumb to learn Linux and too poor for macs. What am I supposed to do?
Your not too dumb to learn linux. I know it seems scary, and a lot of the autistic people that like it will try to convince you it's only for really smart people. But at the end of the day a lot of basic tasks are actually easier on linux. There are some that are harder gaming used to be very difficult for example. Although thanks to valve, and the steam deck for the most part if it's a steam game you can just click play and it's probably going to work.
But as an example of a more basic thing, let's say you want to install an application.
Windows: go to Google, type app name, make sure it's the real actual website officially for that app and not a sponsored result or some other fake website, find the download, pray it's not buried in a bunch of fake download buttons, double click the exe, be careful to make sure it's not installing any toolbars or other packaged bullshit, finally get your application.
Linux: there are some variations (apt dnf pacman) but all of them work the same, for arch it's "pacman -Syu " id argue thats WAY easier. If it's not in the main repos chances are high it's in the AUR (arch user repository) so you just yay -Syu . It's not harder (imo) just different.
I've actually had a number of pretty average computer user friends let me help them transition to Linux because of the crap Windows is doing lately. And after getting used to the differences they agree that Linux is not actually harder, it's just different, they grew up with windows, they are used to how things are done on windows, so it seemed difficult just because it wasn't the same. But once they got used to it they would actually agree that a lot of things are actually easier.
Now whether or not you want to put in that time to learn those differences, and change how you use your computer, is an entirely different question that you have to ask yourself. But you are not too stupid to learn Linux because realistically it's not any more difficult than Windows is
They dont need to know any commands.
Everything in Linux is point and click. There's an app store where you'll find everything you'll need. You will not need to open the terminal at all. All drivers will get installed through the OS.
Only things which do not work are the keyboard software and stuff to map macros to your keys and/or mouse buttons ans tweak the colours. Like the Razor software.
Distros like Ubuntu, popos, Linux mint are incredibly beginner friendly. There are, without a doubt, others.
They didn't need to know any cmd/powershell commands using windows and they definitely don't need to know how to use a Linux terminal to browse/mail/install software on Linux.
Depends on the distro but you are largely right. You can easily use Linux Mint or Ubuntu without being familiar with the cli.
Even Endeavour comes with Discover installed, and stuff like Octopi exists and is pretty bug free these days.
I mean, it's good to know the apt commands, because sometimes app stores can break.
Come on, you are on lemmy. You are not quite dumb.
If you can use windows, then you can use Linux. The effort of switching is not really any different than the effort of switching to Mac.
Try a Linux variant that isn't arch.
You are not too dumb to learn Linux. If I learned how to use it then you can. Start with with something simple and easy to install such as Linux Mint or Ubuntu and you will inevitably learn more as you go on. If you can read, type, point, click and observe then you have all the skills required to install the aforementioned distros.
You don't have to learn how all bits and pieces of the system work. You just have to learn how to use it.
You probably don't know how all of windows works and that doesn't bother your daily routine.
Most beginner friendly Linux distros have installers. You just need Rufus and a guide to making a bootable USB (its like 5 steps)
If you've never had to dig into a registry file or obscure hidden folder path in Windows, you aren't enough of a power user to ever have to in a Linux distro either.
That's a perfect way to put it. I remember starting college and being really excited about the cloud, having my stuff accessible anywhere, changes automatically saved, etc etc. but now I don't want any of my shit anywhere near their servers, it's mine and mine alone and I'll manage it myself and buffer against losses the best I can. I'd rather have myself fuck up and break a hard drive rather than let microsoft or apple wipe my stuff over a bug or because I didn't pay them enough. Horrible, misleading bullshit.
I think you'd like syncthing
this.
I helped my parents migrate to linux mint and they are very happy with the transition. No more ads, dumb bing search suggestions, or MS edge.
The irony
How is that ironic?
You didn't purchase a "HowToGeek" licence, I imagine. Nor was one included with your PC.
There's a reason I run Linux, and root my Android
Because it actually feels like my device now
(And fixing issues is significantly easier, if you know where to look)
Aww.
If you love it, set it free!
I prefer to keep it locked in a cage and disable as much of it's bullshit as I can
And yet, if you do that to your girlfriend, people have issues. Double standard here, people! Double standard!
Buying windows is like self flagellation. You have to be a masochist to enjoy it,especially the apologetic users.
Unfortunately for many, even in this day and age, there is not much choice. I main linux but also keep Windows on my PC as there are still tines when something will only work in Windows. Usually work related or gaming (VR in particular for me) and in fairness its increasingly rare.
Many other users aren't motivated to change. For Microsoft, its a bit like boiling a frog - if you turn up the heat slowly the frog just puts up with it. That's what Microsoft is doing to its customers - a slow constant enshittification, seeing what it can get away with. Try something and it causes outrage? Don't worry, just undo it and just try again in a few years! Many are already used to no privacy and being sold as a commodity that they don't even question it happening on their own personal computer.
You don't need Windows for gaming.
Sure, some games only work on Windows but some only work on Switch or PS5 and you can still play video games without playing those in particular.
it never been
#RUNBSD
I love hip hop too but music is not the answer.
Plan9: Return to monke
TempleOS it is.
That good and all for your saints and what not but how about us sinners.
Kali.
You mean that distro people use to pretend to be a hacker/security researcher. It's just hardened Debian with a few tools installed. I've set something like that up in an afternoon tbh.
You don't need to invest an afternoon because Kali exists.
The point ist that you can't do it yourself, the point is to get something running quick without much hassle.
Don't take it personally, it's just a direction I haven't seen many researchers/pen testers use. I've seen most run it on a virtual machine or a second computer and modify Ubuntu/Debian to better suit their needs and a primary computer/os for business transactions etc.
I can't speak for hackers but from anecdotal evidence it seems like they can do their work on most systems but hacking hardware is just easier on Linux in general.
BaSeD
The thing that makes me laugh/cry/be happy I switched to Linux, is that it's in that state, but it's a paid product.
If the license was free it was somewhat okay, but it's not. People are still paying.
It's the year of the Linux desktop.
For me, it's been the year of Linux since 2005. I do dual boot, though.
Are there different versions of Windows 11? Mine doesn't show ads at all.
Same
I'm curious about this. Do either of you run a custom dns for blocking ads, like adguard or pihole?
Did you turn off a bunch of stuff when you first got the PC?
Do you have corporate policies being applied in your registry?
I have Win 11 Pro. I had Starfield ads on my lock screen for a while. I also had those search recommendations, but that's it. Now I have nothing. Maybe it's related to EU?
Yeah, you all get all the nice things we don't in the US.
Massgrave.dev can help you get an LTSC version of windows that have no ads
Only now?
My Windows computer stopped felling mine when 10 came around
Always has(n’t) been.
I disagree.
I'm sorry, there's microtransactions in minesweeper?
What the actual fuck
And unskippable ads in solitaire
This is an OS (most people) pay for
Oh, it's now tied into Xbox Live so you need an Xbox account, get achievements, collectibles, challenges and making it ad free requires a subscription of €1.99 per month. Not shitting you.
What?
I remember that marketing campaign. Windows Vista had a shaky launch, because the hardware manufacturers hadn't polished the Vista-compatible drivers yet. 6 months later, they had caught up, but people still had a bad taste from it.
So when service pack 1 came out, Microsoft made a reskinned version of it and started an ad campaign with "customers" claiming "Windows 7 was my idea!" and the public ate it up.
As I remember Vista had some areas that were hard or unintuitive to configure, Win7 cleaned up those parts.
Win7 also made the disk hungry background processes play nice, Vista would occasionally lock up with 100% CPU and disk usage while the os scanned something.
And I agree Win7 is just a reskinned Vista.
I remember my vista experience was excessive amounts of prompts to confirm it was using some privileged access for literally anything I tried to do.
Ah yes now I remember, they were very annoying.
XP wasn't yours when MS pushed an update without permission or announcement.
And you were free to turn that off.
That's the thing. It WAS off. MS blasted through with their back door
I imagine, you guys might be measuring with two different scales. Early Windows versions were fine, but even back then, a switch to Linux would give you so much more customizability to actually make it yours.
This is a dumb anecdote, but I switched to Linux from Windows 8, and pretty much the first thing I did, was to figure out how to hide the window titlebars. Mostly because I realized, I could, but they also just took screen space away on my laptop.
Windows 2000 was the last Windows that I felt I could just slap on any old hardware.
Which is weird, since Win2k definitely had lower hardware compatibility than XP, Vista, 7, etc.
It wasn't consumer-focused and just didn't have the driver compatibility from vendors yet.
Quite the contrary, it had exemplary compatibility, including Plug'n'Play and wide native USB support.
With the things you tried it did.
Believe me, I was part of a team testing compatibility.
And a shortcut to open Microsoft® LinkedIn® at OS level, and what surprises me the most is that uses your default browser instead of always opening it in Edge.
That's not true at all.
Is BeOS still floating around?
@ChickenLadyLovesLife @dvdnet62 Not as such. I mean it is but its drivers are 25 years out of date now. YellowTab Zeta is out there too which was updated a bit but is still ancient.
But there is Haiku. Bigger, slower, more complicated, but it does a lot more.
As I recall, Gasse was offered something like $440 million for BeOS by Apple and he turned them down. Not sure it would have made any difference in anything by this point, but at least Objective-C wouldn't have been littered with classes with the "NS" prefix.
@ChickenLadyLovesLife I was a big fan of BeOS. I reviewed it about quarter of a century ago:
https://archive.org/details/PersonalComputerWorldMagazine/PCW%20200007%20July%20Created%20From%20PCW%20Cover%20CD%20%28No%20Cover%29/page/n50/mode/1up
... and I liked it a lot.
Yeah, BeOS was awesome. I remember a coworker showing it to me in 1996 - he also taught me how to wow the c-suite with giant printouts of insanely over-normalized databases, a parlor trick that has served me well over the years.
@ChickenLadyLovesLife
I am sorry but I don't junderstand any of this.
> the c-suite
(?)
> with giant printouts of insanely over-normalized databases
(?)
> a parlor trick
(?) How is a database a trick?
What does this stuff mean?
CEO, CTO, CFO etc. In a '90s Internet startup like the company I worked for, the "C" really stood for "clueless".
Over-normalization is a database thing - a simple example of normalization would be a "People" table where instead of having the "Salutation" field just contain text like Mr, Mrs. etc., you have a separate "Salutations" table with all the possibilities listed and keyed with an ID (usually just a sequential number), and then the "People" table stores a Salutation ID for each entry instead of the actual text. It's a valid and standard thing to do with database design, but it can be taken to extremes where absolutely every possible trivial thing that can be normalized is, producing an overcomplicated mess that is extremely difficult to work with programmatically.
Printing out this over-normalized mess of a database on multiple sheets of paper which are then taped to the wall is utterly useless.
The printout is the trick - it fools the bosses into thinking you're doing something amazing and productive when you're really just fucking around. It only works on the technically incompetent, of which there was no shortage in '90s Internet startups (or today).
@ChickenLadyLovesLife I see. Thanks.
@ChickenLadyLovesLife I've written about it since, too:
https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/18138.html
I personally strongly believe that if Apple had bought Be, Apple would be nothing but a fading memory now. :-(
No but here is a open source branch of it called haiku and it works great!
Seeing the windows 3.1 interface took me back to a much happier time.
I definitely wasn't happier with my computer back then.
M$ is terminal and most of the world is hooked up to a terminal entity; Most of the world is terminal.
I've had the displeasure of being forced to use windows at my last two jobs over the past 7 years. Its never been mine. Since the mid 80's, I've always used Unix/Linux including my personal computers.
Indeed, Linux and FLOSS more broadly was never about technology itself, it's about empowering. It "just" happens to be where software change could lead to a pragmatic difference for so many lives.
Own your computer, own your devices, value your life and don't interact with the numerical world through manipulative blinders.
Sounds like a personal problem. Windows works great for me.