My Windows Computer Just Doesn't Feel Like Mine Anymore

Every time I search on the start menu there is a web search, impossible to turn off. How is that acceptable?

I install Edge Beta to test something, and the I uninstall it. All of the sudden my search provider in my normal Edge is reset.

And the nagging everywhere. No I don't want 'back-up' my files (OneDrive is not backup, it's sync). And I don't want to be reminded later. I don't want to be reminded ever. All this fuzzy language makes me feel like I'm dealing with a kindergarden teacher addressing his/her pupils.

It's not my computer any more.

Oh, I update a driver. And 2 days later Windows installs an older version. Since when is 6.6.1.40 better than 6.6.1.72? Why would you do that?

At the start of the pandemic I bought a PC to game on. 16-core Ryzen, 64 gigabytes of ram. I'd been kind of pleasantly surprised with WSL and just general improvements in cohesiveness. It's still got that Windows jank under the hood though.

But then... It won't f**ing run Windows 11 because it doesn't have a TPM. And they pester me about buying a new computer. You have to be kidding me.

It's just absolutely incredible Microsoft decided to declare very powerful machines only a few years old essentially eWaste.

I'm probably going to give Desktop Linux another go, at least for a bit. I have no idea what distro though.

I ran Ubuntu on some of my older machines for a number of years. I actually loved Unity, I still think it was the best Linux desktop and I'm bummed they basically killed it.

I tried Pop_OS! a couple years ago on a MacBook Pro but it just up and imploded on me after a couple days Windows ME style. I've got Elementary OS on an old MacBook and I've had a decent time with it. The apps not made specifically for it though. Felt real out of place.

My Mac, iPhone, and Apple TV are owned by Apple. My Sony TV is owned by Sony and Google. My Windows PC is owned by Microsoft. My Quest 2 is owned by Meta. My Kindle is owned by Amazon.

At best, the Mac and PC I could install Linux on to make them mine. The rest, not so much

Maybe I'm just ranting, but Ubuntu seems to be by far the most common distro for Windows users, and they're definitely not perfect in this respect. I've been running Linux as my main OS for about 20 years and I can't rid myself of snaps. Synaptic will show that the package provided by Mozilla is the latest version and the snap is the installed version. If I reinstall, it goes back to the Mozilla package, only to mysteriously show the snap is the installed version within a few days.

I don't want to bring up the discussion of the Snap Store again, but this experience is pretty much what you get with Windows, just on a much smaller scale. I'd strongly encourage Windows users to install Mint or some other friendly alternative rather than going with the standard recommendation.

1) Fusion 360 - Just can't get it working under linux well enough. 2) Monitors - Always issues mixing highdpi and low dpi monitors in linux, my main is a 4k 144hz 43", the sides and tops are all 2560x1440 27s. Oh and there's my Ceiling 4k projector which I turn on to watch movies or baseball when I lean back and think. Which leads to the other issue, Nvidia seems to greatly limit the number of outputs you can have under linux compared to windows. With 6 monitors, I've never gotten it to work even with 6 of the same monitor, let alone my messed up setup.

Yes yes, woa was me. I've had linux as a daily driver for at least 10 years of my main computer use since 1998. I do really prefer it but so far just making the tradeoff.

Also I tend to play games that have anti-cheat like CoD / PubG, etc which further locks things out.

I do like the direction things are going

Fortunately or unfortunately, for most people for most things, the host OS hardly matters anymore. The operating system is now the browser. And this "doesn't feel like mine anymore" is 100x worse there because corporations have fogotten that they're voluntarily presenting data upon the request of an external client and what said client does with the data is none of their business. It's as if visiting a website and downloading the publicly available contents is a nation setting up an embassy of "foreign soil" on your hardware. Editing CSS (or whatever) is equivalent to vandalizing a physical storefront because the pixels on your monitor are theirs not yours despite it being your hardware. Even the very protocol of hypertext transport (HTTP/3) is now designed around being encryption verified JS application delivery for corporate person use cases with no allowances for HTML hypertext transport for human person use cases. So not even linux/mac/bsd/etc is free from the trend.

* Setup started in 100% HiDPI scaling, making everything impossible to read. Every time I ran setup, I had to set it to 200% using display settings before I do anything else.

* Installation software crashed twice mid-installation. I was only able to complete installation on my third attempt.

After the installation, I noticed that Ubuntu doesn’t have the features below out of the box: https://x.com/esesci/status/1803374884858347856?s=46 You either had to go through painful and complicated configuration steps, or install third-party software:

* Hybrid sleep (is a must for laptops).

* Face login.

* Live full disk encryption on demand. I’m actually baffled by this as Bitlocker on Windows makes this trivial. I actually expected FDE to be enabled from the installation by default but I wasn’t even asked.

* Fast fractional scaling on HiDPI displays. 200% is just too big and 100% is too small, and 150% hogs the CPU (or GPU?). As I understand, fast fractional scaling is impossible with Linux because fractional scaling is a bitmap operation while it’s just a rendering parameter on Windows.

* No factory reset. If you ran a script that messed up your system, your only option is to reinstall the OS. The problem with that is, if you had to install it using a very slow USB stick in the first place, a reset operation also becomes a multi-hour operation while Windows could just use its local recovery image to reinstall itself in a much shorter time.

All in all, Ubuntu felt like a huge step back from Windows. I haven’t tried other distros, but I don’t think the difference would be significant for the issues I mentioned.

Yes, I also dislike the features in Windows that inconvenience people, but man, does Linux have a long way to go.

- cortana

- ads… ADS… in the OS

- forced updates

- windows live accounts (or is it microsoft.com? wait, no, I think it’s office.com?)

- two system settings screens

- major new versions after “last version of Windows ever: 10”

When I was logging into my work the other day, using MS Teams it suddenly dawned on me that my younger self is very disappointed. There I was in the process of logging into work VPN, the teams app is actually scanning my face couple of times... and god knows what else.

The one thing Windows gets right IMO is binary backward compatibilty, in particular with games, but also with older apps still from the pre-subscription era (3D modelling, Adobe sw, ...). Unfortunately, x86 seems kindof going under. Haven't tested extensively, but I wouldn't be surprised if a regular (non-pro) iPad can run old DOS games on RetroArch/dosbox longer on a charge than any outdated x86 hardware can. Right now, MS also again attempts to bring Windows onto ARM after their former attempt failed miserably with no exclusive software available that people actually wanted to use (cf Dells new ARM-based XPS and others). Is there instruction-level emulation with JIT on Windows ARM for x86/64 like Apple's Rosetta/Rosetta2?

Open Source isn't challenge-free, but it's much closer to the chess experience that I seek than the poker experience of proprietary alternatives.

It's been pretty good so far, and makes Win 11 seem like a usable desktop rather than the piece of shit that MS wants to inflict on people.

Linus Tech Tips reviewed it a while back, and gave it the thumbs up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc7CIkZcWYE

Bizarrely, the earliest versions of AtlasOS used to disable security updates. No idea what was going through their heads when they did that.

Thankfully that stupidity has passed (after lots of people complained), so (security) updates work as expected these days.

Win11 offline install and de-dork instructions is a must:

https://github.com/StellarSand/privacy-settings/blob/main/Pr...

Even then, one must assume win11 comes with a telemetry payload every second update.

Linux has its own share of issues, but is far easier to develop on (if you check the hardware support before purchase). The only parts of win11 that are any good was the FOSS they packaged in.

Strange times for sure, MS still chasing a set-top box market 30 years after it flopped =)

It’s one of many I was able to find!

My favourite version of windows was Windows 2000. It was a true get shit done and stay out of the way experience. I believe the enterprise server versions retained some of that appeal (might still).

Forcing ads into something is a sure fire way to get me to stop using a product.

"We're getting things ready", reboot, create a Microsoft account, 10 data sharing settings to turn off, "almost ready..."

Iirc, a MacBook is ready to use without any updates.

Try searching for a file by name. Third-parties have had this figured out for years and yet Microsoft can’t deliver accurate or quick results.

Two different interfaces for settings since the failed Metro experiment. The jarring introduction of old NT menus where they haven’t updated a setting to the new UI.

I could go on, but the author has done a good job of cataloguing a broken product.

Within minutes of turning it on I get broken features, disjointed UIs, poor performance, outdated software, and exploitative functionality. Not just from third parties, who are a big problem, but Microsoft itself! They've had decades to address these issues but instead just chase marketable ideas. If they course corrected even a little every year they'd have something viable but it doesn't seem like that's part of their corporate culture.

But I guess I'm wrong because they're a multi-trillion dollar company and still dominate the PC market.

I think I might be able to completely get rid of Windows now.

Has this happened to anyone else? I've never experienced an official Windows update rendering a system unbootable. I've certainly broken Windows before, especially when messing with the MBR, dual booting, changing system files for customization etc., but never with a random Tuesday patch.

https://blogs.microsoft.com/eupolicy/2024/03/07/microsoft-dm...

Manjaro Cinnamon LTE: I know there’s some controversy with Manjaro, but it’s been working fine for me and it drastically increased my laptop’s battery life.

AtlasOS, a trimmed down version of Windows 11 for gaming: I know it’s a bit controversial as well, but I’ll never install or store anything sensitive in it. Only games.

If you treat Apple hardware like a subscription model where you make sure not to hang on to anything for too long (these engineering problems that happen after a couple years seems awfully convenient) then you get the arguably better OS / general computing experience without the risk of expensive hardware going wrong over time. And it's an expensive subscription model today, the days of a top spec Apple laptop for £1500 are gone, so a decent general computing experience is now at a premium.

Owning a MBP beyond a few years these days puts you in the ticking time bomb territory, at some point whether it's the soldered SSD endurance or an exploding SSD/T2 chip, it cannot be affordably repaired when it bricks.

In the meantime, hackintoshes have a little bit of life left, and Linux looks to me finally like its only another 5-10 years before the year of the desktop is here, and I say that positively having used it on and off for 25 years

Three days later the computer rebooted and had undone all my fixes and now search was back to using the web!

Definitely never felt like MY system. It feels like a creepy corporation changing my settings. Which is exactly what it does.

Another three days later, Recall was announced.

Three days later, I wiped Windows from all my computers.

All going well for me, I love Pop!_OS

I have not looked much at the OS-modding scene recently, but there used to be huge communities around deep customisation, and they produced "distros" of Windows with very different defaults and much of the annoyances removed, and popular useful thirdparty software installed. It's not 100% legal of course, and that "choice to have Microsoft butt out" is usually an absolute --- no updates at all except ones you manually install, some things might not work (possibly a feature for some), and you are truly on your own (with the community) with those mods.

And this, in a "paid" OS. One, on top of everything, where - other than money - you are paying with compute and ever increasing disk space for "updates" to cover the vendor's incompetence incorporating bug fixes on the fly ...

In no other area of human industry is this model tolerared: Would you buy a car only to gradually receive better (correct) tires aftermarket?)

My computer is how I interface with the critical functions of my life; family, friends, income, entertainment. That is important time to me.

If you put any friction in front of me accessing those things, you are getting the boot. Interruptive advertising? Popups and popovers? A forced login where none is necessary? Delete.

I don't give a baker's fuck how valuable you think your service is, you get about 5-10 seconds of my time before you're wasting it. This is why people want book summaries and reviews, why they scan headlines, why they'll install ad blockers.

I thought that some things like games would stop working, but instead I had to install absolutely no drivers, fix nothing, video playback on my laptop has gotten better (before I often switched to 720p on YouTube) and even high performance requirement games on my desktop just work thanks to proton. It’s actually the year of the linux desktop for me now.

It's especially bizzare that it's a 4 year old laptop with dying battery and Windows 10.

Was it a Window thing or a hardware manufacturer thing? Either way it was very strange

Microsoft and their operating systems are exactly the same. I started using MS operating systems with DOS 2.0. I was hooked. Every new version really was an upgrade. I couldn't wait for each new release because they were all amazing and truly 'upgrades'. I used their stuff because it was good, not because I had to. Slowly however things started to change. Each new 'upgrade' came with things that didn't help and didn't improve. One day I realized they were upgrades, just not upgrades targeted at me. My machine slowly but surely became less and less mine. Eventually I couldn't take it anymore and jumped on the Linux bandwagon. The last two machines I have purchased haven't even made it to the windows startup screen before I wiped them and, just like SF, you would have to pay me a lot of money to move back.

I hope SF and Microsoft learn a lesson from this: If you aren't raising the next generation because they love your product then you are creating a group of people that will leave as soon as they get the chance.

It does sound weird to be hoenst, as this has not been my experience at all. My Macs have never felt like my own, and the obtrusiveness has been of a different form.

But reading through, my experience with Win10/11 has been slightly different as well. I haven't come back the next morning to find it 'broken', so I do wonder if it's about use cases and regional settings too - after all, isn't there a reduced jank in the European zones?

Destroyed that abomination with a nice debian install.

> At this point, I have lost count of the number of times that I've left my perfectly working Windows computer at the end of my work day, only to return to a completely broken computer that won't boot the next morning.

What? I have had this happen maybe three times in my 30 years of using Windows products (from automatic updates). Do people really forget what a pain it was to patch things from scratch in 98, Win2k, or Windows ME? (Probably before then as well, but I didn't have the Internet). I remember using CDs for service packs, specialized software to download updates that MS didn't serve anymore, so many things. When that process failed, it was a all night event for one system.

I do remember rampant malware on Windows (unless you kind of knew what you were doing) until about 2007 when windows defender actually started helping and you didn't need to nuke your computer with Malware Bytes or something every time you used a web browser.

This belly aching and nostalgia is everywhere on the web, and I really think there is a trend toward selecting only the good memories.

We get old. It gets harder to deal with change. IMO, drop the ego, and say what you really mean.

However, I agree with the privacy and advertising gripes.

Swinsian on Mac OS is pretty good when im using a Mac.

Thankfully Linux Desktop is now a completely viable thing for many many professions.

Put all that aside, satisfactory of Windows peeked at Windows 7. Never seriously used Windows 8. Windows 10 was trouble, but still much better than Windows 11. When Windows 10 started rolling out, I heard there was lots of issues, so I ignored the upgrade notice. Soon I noticed the fan on computer was running crazily in midnight, but when I checked in the day time, it looked alright. It went on for around half a year or so, I was woken up and was so annoyed decided to check what was happening. It was M$ trying to upgrade to Windows 10. Alright, let me upgrade then. The manual upgrade failed and the rollback also failed. Had to clean wipe and install Windows 10 to avoid such nonsense. Then I started to notice after almost every update, there would most likely something got fixed or broken randomly. Also the Active Hours setting just annoyed me, but still not quite enough to force me to go to Linux.

Windows 11 is even worse. Got a Surface pro for the kid, took a couple of hours to get it working. Then an upgrade broke the display driver. Uninstall of the offending patch failed, could not rollback neither. So first clean wipe for Windows 10. On my gaming PC, all my settings to disable those defender etc would be lost after an update, the UI is sometimes very lagging, don't want to touch it yet as too much effort required. Then I got a new PC with Ryzen 7840u and 64G RAM, after booting up, the CPU would constantly be around 20% for no obvious reason. Since I didn't really have anything installed, so I directly wiped it and installed Linux. It was so good. Video/Audio drivers installed correctly automatically. CPU usage when idle now drops to ~2%. The only thing I miss about is Visual Studio, but that's about it.

unpopular opinion - almost all annoyances are most affecting those who can then find a solution and apply it (provided they don't get a restricted account from work).

on the other hand, have to agree that when even those publishing such circumventions had enough, m$ got to tread a bit lightly.

Windows 11 installs all sorts of stupid stuff and turns it on.

I feel like I only know how to use Windows 10 and 11 because I know about all the old dialogs from old versions.

I struggled today on a Windows 10 computer with Wi-Fi and ethernet to turn on/off Wi-Fi due to mixed meaning of tile highlight state. Maybe it's just me.

And when Windows 11 installs updates and says "You're almost there" I say, "no, you're almost there and why are you doing this now."

I'm optimistic that eventually leadership will change and this will be corrected. Edit: or somehow a new OS will be developed that's backwards compatible with Windows.

None of the fucking app store icons work?

Terminal, one of the better additions of 10, shows up in the start menu with the image preview app icon...

I have tried all the stupid solutions around the icon cache to no avail.

Otherwise, yeah, Windows nowadays, especially the Windows 11 feels like a cheap bazaar.

I thought of that recently, when I noticed that Github started displaying links promoting Copilot.