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You paid me, a long-time Linux user, to use Windows 11 exclusively for a month: here’s how it went (www.osnews.com)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/linux@programming.dev
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[–] 54 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (35 children)

That was a delightful read. I somehow forgot you had to download every program yourself and update it yourself or put up with a third party update app at all times. I've only been away from Windows for like a year but it's like "I completely forgot about that".

Tldr for you guys, tons of issues with installing and basic functionality but he did say Edge was fine and so was Outlook after paying the ransom subscription and neglecting privacy concerns. Ads though? Yikes. Also they finally got an emoji/character picker, which was news to me. But yeah, massive corporate dumpster fire otherwise.

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  • [–] 16 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    to get a true 'microsoft experience' he should have use a new laptop, one with windows 11 's mode' on it and only 8gb ram--since microsoft now claims that's enough.

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  • [–] 14 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    I had a student who had that, I think. It's like parental controls for adults. She couldn't use any of the software we recommend because it wasn't in the windows store.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)
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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    I'm guessing the s stands for shit? otherwise they would say security, probably afraid of making the claim it's actually secure

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    it's intentionally completely vague so users don't know what they're getting when they buy it.

    's mode' limits all application installs to store apps, which microsoft gets their standard fees for.. plus all the sweet user data and tracking that comes along for the ride.

    turning 's mode' off (i.e. reverting to a standard install of windows) by 'normal' means requires installing a tool from the 'store' that requires a microsoft account to get, which then gets linked to your install and your pc.. so they get your info one way or the other.

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  • [–] 13 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    I’m pretty sure you meant ransom, not random. (My phone autocorrected that one too!)

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    I somehow forgot you had to download every program yourself and update it yourself or put up with a third party update app at all times. I’ve only been away from Windows for like a year but it’s like “I completely forgot about that”.

    The author exaggerates how bad it is, to be honest. The built in winget package manager solved most of my needs for installing and updating software while I was still using Windows, and what it left is no worse than the situation on Linux. There are also alternatives to winget, like Chocolatey.

    In some ways the situation is actually worse on Linux, since I regularly use 4 different package managers on Linux: apt, flatpak, pixi/conda, and uv/pip, on top of having to manually download and install software, some of which I have to compile myself

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (3 children)

    If you used the GUI app you probably wouldn't see that your system uses different package standards

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago* (2 children)

    The GUI that came with my distro only covers 2 of the 4 package managers I mentioned. And I'd have to use a GUI

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 child)

    Is there a good reason to use more package managers? When I need packages that aren't provided by the distro I'm using, I change distro

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    Yes. Firstly because no distro has everything in their respositores, and secondly because different package managers serve different purposes.

    The closest to an all-encompassing package manager is perhaps Arch with AUR, though you are forced to use tools beyond pacman if you want actual package management for the AUR packages. AUR has also shown itself to be a massive liability, since the only way the project has been able to cover as much software as it does, is by doing next to no vetting of the submitted packages. With predictable results

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  • [–] 13 points 4 months ago (19 children)

    I do not really understand the attitude towards installing on windows. It’s so much simpler than Linux. Don’t get me wrong. Updating is so much easier on Linux, but installing? No. I went to install digiKam today. Was it on pacman? No. Button for flatpak on their site though, so I’m already at the same point I would have been on windows. Click that. Error. Well wtf. K so I try through Shelly and that works fine.

    Linux has sooo many ways to install. That’s not good. It’s the most common refrain I’ve heard “use your package manager!” That is never gonna work 100% of the time. Unlike windows where you always have to search for the application, download it from the website, and run it. On Linux it can be a tar.gz, a flatpak, an AppImage, a Snap, a deb, rpm, etc.

    Does anyone ask what format to use to install things on windows? Or is it always “download an exe and run”? While one of the first questions a Linux newb will ask is “how do I install this?” when given twenty different install options on a software install page.

    ——

    On a different note, I completely disagree with most of the authors complaints about windows and also disagree with the things he likes about windows lol. The settings menu is horrific, applications (excluding windows three different UI themes) are themed extremely consistently unlike gnome vs kde apps in plasma, the task bar is for showing running things and is a way better solution to see that something is running that I don’t want running rather than opening btop.

    The author complains about titlebar actions and says they are “such basic settings virtually every operating system and desktop environment support are unavailable on Windows is indefensible.” which is laughable when Linux is only 5% of the desktop market and Mac doesn’t support them either. I use arch and I literally didn’t know kde even had those. It’s such a niche feature but this is exactly what happens with Linux users. They think something is common when it’s impossibly niche.

    Also, windows explorer handles compressed files out of the box, idk how he missed that. I literally helped my wife do so on her work computer last week.

    —-

    Windows sucks though. Go Linux. But seriously, being honest about shortcomings is what continues to improve Linux, let’s not pretend like it’s all sunshine and daisies.

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  • [–] 12 points 4 months ago (13 children)

    digiKam is just in the Debian packages and easily installable via the package manager. YMMV depending on your distro. I guess that's what your complaint amounts to.

    Linux is about having the choice to use what you want to use. If something is too difficult or annoying for you, switch to something else.

    You have that option on Linux.

    Don't like using snaps? Don't use Canonical's bs. AppImages work on just about everything when they're available.

    Deb/rpm/whatever depends on your package manager, so you should really just use what your package manager supports. Don't use rpm on Debian, don't use deb on Fedora.

    It's really not that hard to grasp.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    AppImages don't have any kind of update method do they?

    Debian repo is usually really out of date. Fedora is less so but often I'm still not getting the latest versions.

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  • [–] -1 points 4 months ago (9 children)

    6 paragraphs to explain how it works on Linux vs one sentence for windows. Do you not see the problem here? Claiming that it’s easier on Linux is just plain lying. While you have more choice, sure, but that’s not at all what the author of the article said, nor the user I responded to. The author said it was more confusing on windows, which is just plain false.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (8 children)

    It is more confusing on Windows though.

    I only have to look at the family members I have who have dozens of versions of .exe and .msi installers for the same program littering their Downloads folder, and then for some reason those unpack to subfolders in C:\ and leave their unpacked installer files there without any good reason for it.

    Why not just use the temp folder and remove them afterward?

    That's on top of Windows itself littering the drive with temporary files, installer files or otherwise.

    People who have been using Windows since the early days are still trying to figure out how to clean up after it, and every iteration is made more confusing by Microsoft.

    Cleaning up installers when pulling things in through your package manager is a cakewalk in comparison.

    Considering how appimages are mostly self-contained there's little to clean other than the single file which you run it through, and the few configurations left in ~/.config or ~/.local/share. Easy peasy.

    I have less experience with Flatpak but I'm sure it's similarily easy to find out. I'm never touching snap again after trying it once because it's beyond dumb.

    Of course if you build from source through git or otherwise, you're going to have to make sure you remember where you put things.

    Everything on Windows is just so much more confusing than it has to be. And that's without touching on the whole licensing bs or the way you may find some programs in the installed program list in the system configuration window and some aren't in there for reasons unknown... Where's the uninstaller in that case? Oh, the uninstaller isn't there anymore? Try and figure out how to uninstall the program that doesn't want to uninstall.

    Let's take programs like Avira or Avast or whatever program which embeds itself in your registry and five or six different folders. You try to uninstall it, it claims to have uninstalled, but then Revo still finds thirty different registry entries and whatnot.

    It's easier on Linux. By far.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (7 children)

    So none of your comment is on installing, but on uninstalling or how it installs. Like I said: search for app, download exe, install. That’s the windows workflow. Users do not care how it gets installed, temp files, etc. they just care about the process. It is much much much easier than Linux.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (6 children)

    KDE Discover; search for app, install. You don't even have to download an exe because Discover just installs it for you. Has plugins to work with Flatpak and snap as well. So that's one step less. Since it's one step less, does that immediately make it better?

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (5 children)

    Sure thing! If you’re using KDE. What about Mint? Gnome, cinnamon, etc. these are all things you have to explain to anyone new to the ecosystem.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (4 children)

    The same goes for Windows. Someone who grew up on Macs will have to learn the particularities of Windows or Linux just the same if they wanted to switch to either. Every user has got to put their own effort into learning the ropes. It is no different with anything else in life. You can't just expect everything to be handed to you on a silver platter. I grew up on MS-DOS and Commodore BASIC. Then came Windows 3.x and GEOS, Workbench on the Amiga, and eventually Windows 95. I had to learn each and every one of their particularities as I moved between them. Windows XP? Windows 7? Windows 10? Each one came with changes people complained about. Mac has had its upsets as well. Linux changed from its UNIX beginnings to have the variation we have today. Find something which looks like you want to learn the ropes and stick with it. Or don't and go touch some grass, I guess.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (3 children)

    But it doesn’t… windows has been the same (download and click) for decades. The same for Mac. Linux is different between every distro. And even for one distro you might have several install methods. It’s just not the same at all.

    And if you start talking about other things, not just installing, then I literally covered that in my comment! Updating is much easier on Linux! Even with all the crazy install methods. But we’re not talking about other things, we’re talking about installing.

    This is the same damn bullshit that I’ve been saying for years that the Linux community does. You’re the problem. Stop acting like Linux is perfect. Take feedback. Understand that there are things to improve and that something like having twenty ways to install isn’t a benefit of the platform but a major downside.

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    You're the problem in this conversation because you keep tripping over the smallest things. You start talking about how there's no update process for AppImages and then you tell me not to talk about updates but only talk about installing things when I comment on that. You're indistinguishable from a sealion right now, so I'm out of this conversation. I never said Linux was perfect, that was a figment of your imagination. I just said that every OS has a learning curve. Stick with what you like or work to help fix what you don't like. Yapping about it in the way you have done so far is not helping anyone.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    I didn’t say jack shit about AppImages so clearly you are conflating this conversation with another one. You are the problem here, not me. My message has been extremely consistent. We are talking about installing, that’s literally the only thing I discussed in this thread.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago*

    I agree with you there, installing new software on Linux can often be quite a pain if it's not available on flatpak. Repos will be out of date, appimages don't auto update, grabbing a binary has no easy way to add to the start menu or taskbar and also doesn't generally auto update.

    Even if it is on flatpak then I often end up dealing with flatpaks annoying permissions blocking normal features like streaming my screen in a browser, which is even more obnoxious.

    I still can't get hardware acceleration for video working on my laptop after months, videos players and browsers struggle to play back anything, something that works perfectly on windows with zero setup.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    Well, I've mostly only ever needed pacman but I did have to flatpak something once, which on Cachy is a nightmare.

    None the less, the updating point is quite valid; I forgot how many auto updaters I had on Windows (that yes, I disable but they come back). I think the main thing is the repository method of installing is just superior when it has what you need and it's a shame it can't be done at the scale needed without more Linux adoption.

    As for themes... well, I have no idea what he was trying to run that had such inconsistent themes but it sounded like he was using some very old programs. My experience with KDE differs from yours though; I was surprised just how many apps took my customizations. Granted, they won me over with icons for virtually every app I use, which is something I'm not even sure Windows could do legally (e.g. custom icon for Steam, slack, etc).

    I agree with you on settings, though. My guess is it's more aligned with other OS' settings menus, but I personally like the old control panel more. And task bar? Well, given my system has a tenth as many things running in the background than I used to have on Windows, I haven't noticed Linux missing anything.

    In any case, I also agree there's still room for improvement. The way I look at it, Linux has better concepts built into it that need larger adoption to fully get to where it wants to be. Microsoft has the resources and scale but wastes it on old broken code and enshittification. It's a shame, really.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    I've been on Linux desktop for well over 23 years now

    For the apst 21 years I've used

    apt-get install PACKAGE and everything gets downloaded and installed automatically and updated automatically

    So hard, much difficult

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    If the subset of software available in the Debian package repository includes all the software you ever need, or if you are OK with potentially waiting years to have missing software added, and if you are OK with what are likely outdated versions of that software, then yes, all you need is apt-get install.

    But, personally, I don't think I've had a Linux install that didn't include software installed from other sources

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