This is Microsoft’s latest annoying addition to Windows.
The enshittification will continue until morale improves.
linux mint people. youre not really using as much windows as you think
My elderly parents in their 60s use linux mint daily and have never had an issue with it (admittedly I did have to set it up for them still). I just set up the desktop shortcuts for them to their websites and turn on automatic updates. The hardest part isn’t using an alternative OS like mint or pop, its getting an average person to figure out how to install it. Getting into your BIOS to boot into the installation drive, re-partitioning your harddrive to free up space for dual booting or nuking windows off all together, those are the hardest parts for any first timers IMO. After youve done it a dozen times its no problemo but the first time is nerve racking at least it was to me.
Kinda disagree here, my parents also won’t install Windows or any other OS by themselves. An average person isn’t going to switch to an alternate OS. Because they do not care.
An average person however IS going to want that specific Windows only mail client, legacy applications that don’t run on Linux or use their bank website that isn’t supported by Linux.
This is a one way ticket to making yourself the sole family sysadmin.
there is an ‘oem setup’ you can run. so ive been taking old desktop PCs, running them through the oem setup where i can configure the drivers and everything, and then shut it down.
Then on first boot when i hand it to a new end user, they just follow the instructions. i tell them to leave most things default and theres never really any issues… printers sometimes i spose
People say this but if you’re just using something like Linux Mint, it’s vastly simpler than Windows.
The search works. Never will you open the start menu, search for an app, and instead get ads and bing results.
All functions are done through graphical programs (terminal isn’t needed).
It’s laid out in the usual Windows UX, complete with a taskbar at the bottom, start button in the bottom left that opens a familiar menu, minimise, maximise, and close buttons in the top right of a window.
Apps are installed through an app store, rather than searching online, hoping you’ve downloaded the right installer, opening it, going through the installer, deleting the installer afterwards.
Auto updates can easily be enabled at first time setup, in the tutorial program that runs upon first boot.
A distro like Mint is easier than Windows or MacOS. It doesn’t need to be made any simpler, it just needs to be available out of the box on more devices, because no average user will ever change their OS, not even to an easier to use one.
There’s a guy above that listed 11 issues that he couldn’t figure out when he swallowed from Windows to mint. I swear the Linux maximalists just repeat “Linux works perfectly” on loop hoping that’ll make it true
what maintenance? most of the peeps i have using it blindly are just automatically applying recommended updates.
Friend of mine has a System76 laptop and had to talk to their support about issues with the webcam on certain apps. It was fixed but they asked him to check lsusb. This guy only knows the basics of the terminal from me having to teach him.
linux is great for two types of people… those that just need a browser or libreoffice and could use even a livecd or reset-on-reboot kiosk mode type se;tup that’s been set up for them, and those that want to get their hands dirty.
for everyone else, it can really be a pain in the ass sometimes when something goes wrong. help is fragmented in even more ways than the distros themselves, and every third response is usually something along the lines of ‘google it’ (“i did, that’s how i got here”) or ‘rtfm’ (“what fucking manual?”–documentation is lacking for soooo many things) and then silence.
at least with windows you should already know going-in that ‘backup and reinstall’ is probably high-up at #3 on the list of things to try/do, after you search and scan a much larger pile of resources specific to windows and its (relatively few, by comparison) different versions.
This is a take I would have agreed with 10 years ago but not today.
There’s also the SteamDeck and gaming is a very valid use case now. I do admittedly like getting my hands dirty but I use Linux as a daily driver for school and home.
The forum culture has gotten a bit better. It used to be like that more often 10 years ago but now people seem more helpful. It also really depends on what you google. (E.g. my desktop crashed Linux help vs gnome crash error from logs) But you’re also expecting a lot of free support from the community. If you need support buy Linux from a company that offers support like System76, Steam, etc.
Ok, and you can also just backup and reinstall Linux?? In fact some distros automatic snapshots of your system get taken and you can roll back from the terminal, GUI, or bootloader.
The last one I just don’t get. Windows errors are cryptic hieroglyphics or UX’d to uselessness. At least I’m Linux it tells me what went wrong either on the screen or in logs. Even with visual bugs I’ve been able to find an exact bug report with the developers response and the version it will be fixed in after some Googling.
help is fragmented in even more ways than the distros themselves, and every third response is usually something along the lines of ‘google it’ (“i did, that’s how i got here”) or ‘rtfm’ (“what fucking manual?”–documentation is lacking for soooo many things) and then silence.
This, and persistent sound driver issues, are what ultimately drove me away after using Linux as my primary for a few years. Forums were also filled with shorthand and they wouldn’t tell you what to actually type into the fucking terminal. Can’t figure out what the shorthand means? Too bad, because nobody will tell you.
You don’t really need commandline in linux anymore, unless your doing advanced stuff which means you should learn commandline anyway.
As others have said. The real obstacle is getting it all installed. The only advantage to win and mac is it comes preinstalled.
Installing Linux through now-ubiquitous Calamares takes just a few minutes, it explains every step (of which only one is actually technical, which is drive partition, and the rest are like selecting time zone and admin password), and it’s extremely intuitive. It is literally easier than installing Windows.
But yeah, most people never installed Windows either, and just get it preinstalled.
Which in almost all cases you never have to do, unless you go for like Arch or Gentoo or something, which nobody should do unless they know what they’re getting into.
If you installed something like Linux Mint, there’s no reason why you’d ever need to go into the terminal. It’s just an option for if you want to use it, like the command prompt, powershell, or registry in Windows.
Don’t get me wrong. I use Linux extensively, but mostly server loads and gateways. But have used Mint and Rocky as desktops. So I can’t see how someone can reasonably argue that they have the same polish as Windows (or MacOS) for the average user. Too much command line, too many disparate tools without consistency, just to name a couple.
Linux has its place, but it is not for the average person yet. I wish it would get there, but for decades people have been saying this.
Just throwing more personal anecdotal story, I use Mint at home and Win10 at work. The amount of time something wonky happen at work, like Teams being Teams, or issues connecting to wifi, are much higher than at home.
The only time I’ve touch the command panel is when there’s some obscure programs I wanna try out. I don’t even know how to delete a file using the Command Panel without looking it up first.
Using Mint as an Internet machine, and even gaming in my case with Steam making it so much easier, I feel much less resistance with Mint compared to Win10. Win10 just hides everything away and I feel like I need to twist its arm just to maybe have it do things I want, and I just want to print something. Mint was literally just plug and print. Mint feels more like Win7 than Win10 ever did to me.
Honestly, this. It’s very ironic, but with settings hidden God-knows-where and poor support for much of the advanced software, I find Windows way less polished and comfortable than Linux, despite many claiming the opposite
I installed Linux mint on my Framework laptop because fuck windows.
I had to move back to windows, it didn’t feel ready and couldn’t get it working easily how I like.
Heres some of the issues(any pointers would be great)
- 120hz just wouldn’t work on one monitor, it detects it but won’t apply. (Works fine in W10 and Ubuntu).
- Scrolling on the touchpad is unbelievably fast and makes it unusable.
- Fractional scaling is a joke, my laptop screen needs around 125% but everything becomes a blurred mess.
- The mouse is a bit jittery and can’t explain why (usually using a Logitech gaming mouse when docked).
- Governor cannot be different on battery and AC. Defaults to max turbo.
- Fingerprint sensor doesn’t work (works fine on Ubuntu and w10).
- Unsure how to get hardware accelerated disk encryption working?
Some stuff is better but a combination of these just brings me back to windows. It just loads and works?
I’m also on a Framework 13 with a 144Hz external. These problems do sound like some beginner-level issues you’d run into on a distro that runs behind in updates.
The only officially recommended distros by framework are Fedora and Ubuntu (although I’ve run a wide range and they’ve all worked). They have guides here for all sorts.
Issues 1 and 3, you need to use Wayland on KDE or GNOME and both Wayland and the DE need to be up to date. This is an area where Linux is rapidly getting better.
Issue 2, should be adjustable in any DE settings panel. That’s a really strange one because I’ve never run into touchpad issues in my testing.
Issue 4, no idea. Logitech support is pretty good. Does this happen on all distro? I wonder if this is related to the touchpad issue.
Issue 5, they can be. It depends on your governor program. I strongly recommend setting up TLP. There’s some good guides out there in the FW forums. However, avoid disabling USB ports. For other governor solutions I’m sure there’s a config file laying around somewhere or perhaps it’s saving the last used setting.
Issue 5a, if the issue is fan noise. Check out fw-fanctrl.
Issue 6, this just has to be a Mint thing. I’ve had fingerprint reading working on everything. My guess is that maybe they’re missing the fprint package or the UI/UX is rough. You can set up finger print reading from the terminal.
Issue 7, just select FDE on install if the installer offers it. Linux uses dm-crypt for FDE and it has baked in HWE. I would imagine other Linux encryption programs are hardware accelerated by default as well as support for it is part of the kernel. But I may be wrong about that.
All in all your experience of Linux is going to be very distro dependent and yes it may take some work and troubleshooting. But I think it mostly feels harder because it’s different from what you’re used to.
I run EndeavorOS and like that it’s all basic defaults because then I can build it into what I want. I highly recommend it once you become a little more used to Linux.
See this right here is the reason I haven’t switched. 1, I don’t know what half of those things are. 2, there’s so much “this may work on this but sometimes maybe not that, unless this”, when it should be a matter of changing a setting. Yes, I could figure it all out after a massive amount of research consuming time that I do not have, or I just continue with Windows 10 and it’s stupid menus.
I personally enjoy knowing I can easily search for software I need, know it will run and install without issues and I won’t have to fuck around with poorly documented systems when something inevitably breaks.
Sure Windows pisses me off and sucks, but it’s still simpler to deal with.
it was somewhat controversial, but the mint people solved for this by including their own curated software manager (re:store) where you can search for (and install/uninstall) packages known to already work well with the distro.
most of my support calls are ‘wheres that thing i can install apps with?’
That came from Debian long before Mint even existed. The lineage goes Debian -> Ubuntu -> Mint, and the package manager was part of Debian since the 1990s (although you had to use it through the command-line back then.)
Use a popular Linux distro and employ the app store (that, unlike Windows Store, actually relies on insanely rich repositories that have just about anything) - installing apps on Linux is simpler than on Windows.
As per app support - 99% of all programs are either Linux-native or run just fine through Wine. Unless you have to work in field of engineering or employ Adobe software, you should be just fine
Yeah, I’ve used everything from Ubuntu to Arch and can use it just fine. That’s not my point. It’s hard to argue against that software discoverability is worse and implementation/documentation is inconsistent. To find a program for windows, I just need to search for what it does and multiple options show up without using a store or knowing a repo name. Installing is as easy as running an exe (no dependencies, or distro limitations, or editing specific files buried in the system).
I am no fan of Windows by any means, but I never have to worry about edge cases. I will always be able to do what I’m aiming for without fiddling with Wine or anything else.
I wish but I have a Samsung notebook and the damn fingerprint reader won’t work on any Linux distribution.
uhg samsung. reminds me of sony… does sony still do laptops? they had the worst hardware driver support that ever existed.
After leaving Windows I actually still get stressed just reading about stuff like this.
Why do you think you need to download Chrome? Write a 500 word essay explaining how it’s better than Edge.
(For real, though, it’s not. Use Firefox.)
So there’s also this neat feature in Microsoft Office where if you insert a hyperlink to a Google Doc/Sheets/Slides/Forms, Microsoft appends URIs to the end that prevents the link from opening in browsers other than Edge/IE. It can be corrected with a registry edit, but it’s been an issue for years and years at this point. Super annoying!
Or another fun thing I recently saw at work, Microsoft changing Office programs to always open links in Edge by default so you have to edit a setting to make it open the default browser again - which caused a significant productivity loss when people suddenly had various intranet pages opened in a browser they were not logged into, and they all had to contact support to get the original sane behavior back.
Microsoft is being run by marketing teams with hubris these days, there’s absolutely no way they’re testing these things with real humans before release.
but the OS remains hostile against user choice.
That’s just it. Most of us probably work on our computers – imagine if you were a carpenter and your tools actively fought you. It’s about literal quality of life for me at this point.
The worst part is that if Raymond Chen is to be believed (author of The Old New Thing, work(ed) for Microsoft) this is the complete antithesis of what their philosophy was supposed to be in the Windows 96/98 era, which was “let the user have full control over how they want to use their computer.”
That shit went right out the window, didn’t it?
Why use Windows at that point?
My machine still has Windows 10, and ir can’t upgrade to Windows 11. The day they stop supporting Windows 10 is the day I’ll stop using Windows for good.
Kinda sad. I used to like to hate Windows, but I always knew that I could personally use it if needed. But ads? Telemetry? Non-uninstallable software again? They crossed a line.
Personally I hate these tools with a passion as every single one I’ve seen goes overboard and disables potentially wanted features or straight up breaks stuff in its default configuration. It’s always fun to figure out what’s wrong with a machine only to eventually figure out that the owner used one of those tools a few months ago.
IMO people should either do these changes themselves or use another OS, though ultimately there needs to be legislation against this to help the non-technical people.
If you have to do stuff like that, it’s time the cut your losses and stop using windows.
So my conclusion is, you can’t disbale anything unless Microsoft allows you to, yes you can have a less annoying experience with one of the tools I mentioned above, but the OS remains hostile against user choice.
Whats funny there, is people that are forced (I assume that’s the only reason you’d run it) to run Windows hate that shit, while at the same time the Apple cult embraces have zero control of their devices. They know best after all…
I only use Windows at work (because I have to). The thing that drives me fucking nuts, as an advanced computer user in general, is how God damned unintuitive the Office,OneDrive, and File explorer integration is.
I have no idea where I am saving stuff half the time(or more accurately have to change it each time because the defaults are dumb). I don’t want it in my OneDrive downloads folder or OneDrive documents folder. I want it in my fucking laptop download folder or local documents folder.
Then Teams is saving stuff in SharePoint in the background, permissions are annoying AF. At least they’ll flag that a recipient of an email attachment or imbedded url doesn’t have access. So that’s nice I guess.
Oh, then sometimes I’m prompted to save a copy of a shared document, but that’s different from “download a copy”. If you save a copy it just makes a new shared copy for everyone in the SharePoint site.
I feel like a boomer when I work with MS now. Maybe it’s all enterprise settings for where I work and maybe it’s not MS’s fault but hot damn I am so much less productive than if I just used Gsuite, only office, on Mac or .
Maybe I just need to spend a week taking training classes on these products. But who tf has time for that when you have your actual job to do. So I guess that really sums up Microsoft for me: it’s in the way and slowing me down.
Was this at all necessary? You used a generic meme format to reiterate the point someone else made, and because there’s no “hide images in comments” setting yet, it’s just distracting and taking up space.
God damn do I want RES back.
It is not the settings of your enterprise, the file savings mess is 100% on Microsoft. Imo learning to work with it is pointless, since it will be entirely changed sometime in the future again when Microsoft again tries to trick more people into using these programs in order to boost their quarterly statistics.
When saving a file in Word, Excel or whatever, the process looks some thing like this.
ctrl+s
“Save this file” dialogue appears, and it expects I want to dump everything into the root of OneDrive. Well, I don’t.
“Choose location” has some folders, none of which are what I want, because I tend to save my files pretty deep in the tree. Everything has a logical place, you know. I’m not one of those people who have a thousand files and 500 GB on the desktop. I like it neat and tidy.
Click “more options”. Now I can finally navigate to the specific folder I want. If you realize you actually need to create a new folder, this dialogue box isn’t for you. In order to do that, you need to go to “browse” where you’ll get the normal file dialogue box.
Can’t I just jump straight to the browse menu when I press ctrl+s? You know, like the way normal applications do it. Just try to save a file with Inkscape to see what I mean.
This exact same thing happens when trying to cancel a subscription. Magellan TV wouldn’t let me continue to cancel my subscription until I selected a reason for the cancellation.
So I exited the process and contacted support with the message “your website will not let me cancel without providing a reason”.
They replied with “you can just select a reason and then it will allow you to continue”
To which I said “and where’s the option to cancel without you holding my account hostage until I do what you demand of me?”
They replied with confirmation that they’ve cancelled my subscription for me.
It seems petty, but no company should be allowed to forcibly extract additional info out of you when you want to cancel. They can ask all they like, but never force.
Here in Sweden you can cancel a subscription however you wish (as long as it’s within reason). You can send a company snail mail, email, go by their office, phone, text, whatever reasonably reaches them. They’re not allowed to pull the “Oh, buy you have to call [number which leads to an antichurn department]” or “please tell us why” (but of course they’re gonna try anyway. If it’s an online form you usually have a “I don’t want to disclose why”-reason).
