So, there is basically little you can do with Windows out of the box but buy subscriptions and log into pre-installed social media apps. One thing I knew right on the spot: That’s not an environment I want my kid to make his first steps “on a real computer.” Not in a hundred years. Never.
Some people recommended tools to me which can be used to switch most of those things off. But honestly: How do you trust a system (or its manufacturer) if you can’t even know if those settings, which you deliberately chose, persist? What if I remove app x for a reason, and it suddenly pops up again after the next Windows update? Or the news section in the search menu? No way. I can no longer see a good use case for it, at least not in my home.
Windows 11 is a dystopian experience.
The problem with that opinion is – it is the opinion of old generation. And new users are born every day. While older ones are slowly on their way out.
There is plenty of people to whom this is going to be absolutely normal. Nowadays the sound of MP3 is more natural to many people compared to analog sound, or even CD.
Do i like this state of affairs? No.
Can i do anything about it? No, At least personally i have alternatives. But unless a lot of people vote with their feet (let alone their wallets), we cannot expect things to change.
[email protected],
This post seems kind of O/T to me, but anyway…
AAC is more common than MP3 these days for new media. The superior fidelity of old analog equipment gets thrown around a lot yet it is often exaggerated. Vinyl records were ok but they were lacking quite a bit of frequency response, same with FM radio. Let’s not even talk about the cassettes tapes of the 80s, haha. Digital CDs were a major improvement. The low quality of MP3 originally stemmed from the need for higher compression across early networks, but this is no longer the case. Newer codecs and higher bitrates make digital superior in every way. Of course I don’t really care what equipment people prefer to use, but I still find it interesting the way older generations look down on younger ones. Maybe they don’t like today’s music and/or the way it’s mastered (equalization and esp. loudness wars). But the criticisms about fidelity specifically always seem to be brought about by sentimental value rather than objective comparison.
What is even more funny about people that uses analog x digital arguments is that, for years and years, the main factor curbing quality was the speakers, and the usual “trick” manufactures had inserted on their equipment to lure consumers were distorting the frequencies human ears are more sensible to, instead of opt for fidelity, but, alas, many of us have cultivated this strange habit of ignoring what sound science say.
Depends on what you want to do with your computer, but if you’re the average media consumer, an iPad should be enough as a daily driver.
I remember my first computer, a Commodore VIC-20 (before the C64) and booted in a couple seconds into a basic language prompt that gave you full power of the 750 kHz, 3.5 KiB memory machine.
If a computer is now nothing more than an “Application Store” recipient that could remove any functionality out of your workflow (not even speaking about ownership) than that’s not what many many people have in mind about computer as a tool you own and control.
Hopefully an open source alternative may exist someday. Not Linux that is somewhat taking the same path.
“If a computer is now nothing more than an ‘Application Store’ recipient that could remove any functionality out of your workflow…”
“Linux, that is somewhat taking the same path”
In what way has Linux been taking the same path? I haven’t really used Windows in forever and I haven’t changed Linux distributions in around 14 years, so I’m really out of the loop. 😀
Not to speak for them, but Kochise may be referring to the increased commercialization and shift towards proprietary solutions that Ubuntu (the “face” of Linux whether we like it or not) has been taking recently. Canonical seems hell bent on reaching a point where they can sell Ubuntu and its related services and stop giving it away as FOSS. This became most apparent with the Snap ecosystem, which has at its core a closed source and proprietary infrastructure that Canonical controls. If you use Snaps in your distro you are forced to use Canonical’s infrastructure alone. It’s not fully open source and Free like Flatpak, Docker, and AppImage. It’s only a matter of time until subscription based junk and monetized telemetry gathering comes to Ubuntu.
Morgan,
I think it’s a legit concern for things to go south even with linux as you are saying. However there’s a big difference in that linux has a lot more competing distros. Some people cite this fragmentation as a con (and it can be), but when it comes to pushing anti-features I for one am happy there are viable alternatives that don’t require moving to a completely different platform.
That’s it. Got a Snap issue recently, the Docker package was way outdated and I needed to remove it to install the regular, official version.
Having a convenient “App Store” is one thing, but if you’re served only outdated/flawed shit for you to use, that’s not the bright future I was promised in the late 70s, early 80s when we would all be living in orbital stations and travel between planets.
The computer industry has become a useless money pit that now serves no other purpose but to enrich shareholders, not bring up solutions. Or if it does, its pace is really slow to what it could really be.
Hence we go full circle with Windows and now even with Linux. Don’t get me wrong, you still can do shit with Linux, but for how long ? Do the “next generation” ready to become a “power user” to get their hands dirty into system maintenance (DBus, SysV, …) when all they want is watch the latest flix using proprietary codecs ?
I miss the good old days, late 80s, early 90s, when you had diversity (Amiga, Atari, Apple, Amstrad, …) but I like the power of nowadays computer. It’s sad you have to have gigabytes of memory just to get them started.
Anyway, I think I’ll do it : my operating system upon a scripting language. Not TempleOS (good idea, bad implementation), but some kind of Lisp machine that empowers you from the really beginning. And that will run on almost anything, including the Raspberry Pi and similar, of course.
@Alfman:
I completely agree and it’s why these days I use Void Linux as my daily driver on the workstation, and OpenBSD on my laptop. I was perfectly happy with Ubuntu and recommended it to people, even after they were forced to move to systemd, until they started the Snap nonsense. Now I wouldn’t touch it with someone else’s keyboard, let alone use it on my hardware.
@Kochise:
Do it! There are a few Lisp based operating system projects out there, Mezzano comes to mind, but the more the merrier! I’m not a programmer at all and I have only a vague understanding of what Lisp is and why it’s awesome, but I’m intrigued nonetheless.
Kochise,
Many of us in CS like to try our hand at this sort of thing. I did this at university but one is more likely to get struck by lightning than for it to go anywhere, haha. I don’t want to discourage anyone doing it for personal gratification, but at the macro level the world doesn’t need yet another OS. Still though if you do want to give it a go that would be awesome. Back when Neolander was here on osnews and working on his OS we’d have some awesome technical discussions. I miss that!
Lisp is a solid functional language, but OMG there are so many parentheses, haha. If you’re open to experimenting with scripting language operating systems, maybe consider prolog or haskell as these bring some interesting functionality to the table.
@Kochise
“I miss the good old days, late 80s, early 90s, when you had diversity (Amiga, Atari, Apple, Amstrad, …)”
I hear you. That said, we have a lot more diversity today than we did not that long ago and true monoculture ( outside of browsers ) seems to be receding.
Windows market share is at its lowest level in a long time. There is MacOS of course. iOS and Android are really competitors to both of those at this point. On the gaming front, you have the Steam deck and Proton hinting at a less Windows future.
Linux is more viable than ever and, in terms of platforms, we have not had this much choice in a long time. Beyond x64 there is ARM which has a lot of diversity in itself. Apple Silicon is practically its own thing at this point and RISC-V looks like it is going to emerge as a true alternative. There are not just desktops and laptops for all of these platforms but a rich ecosystem of SBCs. As above, there are phones and tablets as well.
The diversity in Linux distros provides some of the same innovation that came from the competing platforms you mention. Of course, there are also the BSDs. I am having fun with Chimera Linux which blends the two.
It is also becoming more realistic to run a truly alternative OS. I could almost get away with Haiku as a daily driver. How long until something like SerenityOS fits that bill? Maybe Redox will even get there someday.
Finally, there is an embarrassment of “hobby” potential these days including modernised versions of the platforms you mention and all manner of upgrades for legacy hardware. There are even brand-new 8-bit platforms. Or I can build my own following videos on YouTube.
Anyway, I hear what you are saying but compared the the late 90’s or early 2000’s, we are doing ok. And it feels like it is getting better ( more diverse and interesting ).
When you say that “Linux” is “somewhat taking the same path”, I assume you mean that some distributions ( Ubuntu perhaps ) are making some of the same mistakes.
One benefit of Linux is that each distribution is its own OS from a user experience stand-point ( which is what this article is discussing ). If I do not like the behaviour in any given Linux distribution, I can choose another one or even make my own if that is who I am. The applications that I used are still available to me.
It may be that distributions like Ubuntu are making choices you do not like. Debian may be on a track more to your liking. If not, Arch is making different choices. Chimera Linux is making different choices again. Switching between distros is a lot easier than making the jump from Windows.
Of course, there are lots of other Open Source options outside of Linux as well. In may cases, mostly the same application universe remains available.
Yeah, obviously I have old rips in mp3 format, but for years I’ve been using flac, and man does it make a huge difference. Makes me want to go back re-rip a ton of media. Time is my enemy here.
The whole TPM thing isn’t the biggest issue, though for many that will be frustrating, but even more frustrating IMHO is saying that anything prior to 8th gen CPUs (and there it even varies) is crapola.
We have found Microsoft’s biggest enemy and it is Microsoft.
Disclaimer: Microsoft employee who no longer works on Windows
This article is written from the point of view of a parent who wants to protect their kid. That parent recounts how he “snuck out to the study with my sister, booted the machine, and figured out how to play a game”, which sounds like his parents were trying to protect him too. In his personal experience, he quickly found how he could use the machine to do the things he wanted, but with his own kid, assumes that keeping Tiktok off the start menu is sufficient to prevent them from using it.
Technology changes, but the dilemma of trying to expose a child to a world in a safe way is constant.
I have no idea what the article is about, if I had to guess it’s something about locking his kid in the cupboard under the stairs and restricting his early coding attempts to things done with meccano!
There are some fundamentals that, for example, Swedish schools are finding out the hard way. Penmanship is best learned using pen and paper, not pecking away on a laptop or… tablet. The teachers see the results of this forced digital transformation in practice.
bubi,
Yes I agree that computers and phones are definitely hurting penmanship, I feel this is true for myself too. I’m not against learning on digital devices, but I think it would go much better if everyone at least had access to a high quality digital stylus interfaces. But these are too expensive and the devices we’ve got now are terrible for anything but blunt input buttons and extremely crude sketching. Sometimes I find myself longing to use a quality pencil/pen.
This is a bugbear of mine, unfortunately, but. I mean who gives a rats ass what penmenship looks like? Everything is digital now. You don’t need to read my handwritting. Basically no one does. I need to be able to print semi-legibly on what exactly? Everything I do is on a device. Taxes, Banking, all letters to friends are digital. I just can’t fathom why I would pick up a pen.
Bill Shooter of Bul,
For me it depends on what I’m doing. Working with photos, spreadsheets, text, etc…computers offer lots of value and make us more efficient, so I wouldn’t want to do these things without a computer. But on the other hand freehand sketches and “brainstorming” can be better with a paper & pen or whiteboard. It’s hard to fully match both the detail and efficiency of paper and pencil using the computing hardware that most people own.
I’ve seen artists do great things with a quality digitizer to take advantage of human dexterity, but the thing is most people don’t have access to this hardware.
Realistically Windows reached its peak with Windows 7. After that it started turning into something else. What i find interesting is nobody really asked for that to happen. And likely a lot of people using Windows are not happy with that. On the other hand they are prepared to endure it. Regardless. But all in all Windows is a dinosaur now. Young people would trade it for TikTok any day of the week. It’s just not the same anymore. Where generations up to lets say Windows 7 would chose Windows over TikTok any day. This changed.
While I also think that Windows 7 had the best interface, the complaints inside the article seems tangential to me.
For years, there were, largely, two kind of Windows users: those that used it professionally, i.e., to get things done to earn money, like developers and “office” workers (and students and assignments also), and those that used it for communication/enjoyment. People in first type still uses Windows, even though many of them could be moved to Linux, but won’t, due to many factors, compatibility and familiarity being the most usual factors. The latter, when the subject is communication, are better served by phones now, as you integrate mostly all the needs in one device. Enjoyment, is the only field where we don’t have, and I don’t think we will, a “form factor” dominating, as its needs spreads way more than what happens in the others.
I doubt masses moving from Windows to GNU/Linux is a thing these days. If that would to happen it would already happen. When people still knew what it was all about. Instead most people chose to stay ignorant. And that was that. As for the professionals to use Windows. In my opinion Windows is a rather “safe bet” for amateurs of all kinds. In professional environments there you actually find beasts like GNU/Linux. Even Microsoft has their own GNU/Linux distribution for company internal professional usage.
The new interface was irritating for my mother. But for 99% people at my job… They don’t care.
Apps aren’t problem, because they don’t run them. Only damn Teams autostart and isn’t easy to block.
You’re confusing an app with an os.
Also, can we stop pretending that one person’s experience is in anyway universally representative.
I know plenty of people who prefer windows 10/11 to anything before it. Plenty of people find the Frutiger Aero anesthetic period to be abhorrent
Read the article, the author is complaining about unwanted, preinstalled apps and services that are a core part of the OS, apps and services which will sometimes reinstall themselves with future updates against the user’s wishes. Even the “Pro” version of Windows 11 does this, the only way to get a version of Windows 11 which doesn’t is to buy an Enterprise license, which no home consumer should be expected to do. The OOTB experience for Windows 11 Home AND Pro requires one to use or create a Microsoft account so the user can be tracked and their eyeballs sold, and while there are workarounds for this **there shouldn’t have to be workarounds!**
And no one is “pretending” anything, this is an objective fact for all Windows 11 Home and Pro installations on any new machine you buy. I know this because I administer Windows machines at my job, which now includes Windows 11 machines, and I have to deal with this bullshit every time we get a new workstation. We aren’t big enough for an Enterprise licensing setup, so we buy so-called “Pro” machines from Dell and HP that come with Windows 11 Pro, along with Tik Tok, Facebook Messenger, Spotify, several pay-to-win games, useless antivirus apps which are just spyware themselves, and so on, preinstalled and wasting my time to remove them because none of those belong in a work environment.
Morgan,
I agree. Companies used to innovate to increase sales, but operating systems have reached a sales plateau and they are turning to advertising and subscriptions instead. It used to the the OEMs were the primary culprits installing crapware. Many of us would go out of our way to reinstall windows using microsoft’s own media in order to get a “clean install”. But now microsoft themselves are getting in on the crapware business lacing windows with trackers, advertising, forced microsoft accounts. There are tons of youtube videos offering hacks and tips to disable windows anti-features, but it’s becoming more work and more complicated to have a windows install that doesn’t have this junk. Even users who do this can be overridden by windows update and have to go through it again.
Unfortunately it’s not just consumer operating systems that are undergoing this transformation.
(I submitted this as it’s own osnews article but it didn’t get published)
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/01/business/gm-apple-play-evs/index.html
(my emphasis)
Ugh, things are getting worse for consumers who just want to buy good products without all the hustleware.
Out of curiosity, do you know if it’s the vendor that’s doing the preinstalling here? I have a Dell Precision 5560 for work here that came with 11 Pro, and it had none of your list preinstalled. If it matters, I’m in Canada though.
It may well be a regional thing, the units we buy most often these days are the HP ProDesk Mini series and the Dell Optiplex Micro series, direct from the manufacturers (we have an account with Dell where we get good discounts, and we buy last-gen from HP when they go on sale). We are in the state of Georgia in the US.
I was replying to Geck. Have no idea why my comment showed up down here.
It sounds you need to start doing your windows pro deployments with autopilot, though.
Cheers.
I swore off windows years ago. I haven’t even touched a machine running windows 11. Physical or virtual.
Windows 10 was already annoying enough imho, i can’t imagine things have gotten any better.
The last reason most people might have to run windows, namely gaming, is also disappearing rather quickly.
With all the things i keep reading about windows 11, i think it’s quite possible that a lot of people might leave the platform behind.
Windows 10 pushed a lot of people to linux or macos back in the day, so i think it’s reasonable to assume that the same might happen with windows 11.
The TPM issue alone is quite infuriating imho. I understand the advantages it can arguably bring to the platform, but just make it optional.
I don’t want to sound like some anti-windows curmudgeon, because i’m not. To each their own, but microsoft isn’t doing themselves any favors imho.
Why do you think people may leave the Windows ecosystem? For office workers, Microsoft Office, still, is what they want (and ask, and complain when alternatives are proposed). For engineers on mechanical and civil fields, Autodesk tools, still, are an unavoidable necessity (actually, many of the most sophisticated apps for civil engineering only run under Windows). The same may be said about artists and Adobe Suite. Microsoft was smart enough to add WSL to their offerings, and many developers can stay under Windows to do things that were better done under Linux (or BSDs).
As I said, the complaints the author of the article cited are almost tangential, most users don’t give any attention to them or are, mostly, indifferent.
acobar,
You’re not wrong, but it’s not always as simple as that either. I’ve heard from tons of windows-using customers complaining about microsoft products. Whenever they change office or windows, more often then not users are complaining about changes they didn’t ask for and don’t want.
To be clear, these same users would totally be complaining about linux as well, but sometimes we act as though windows doesn’t have these problems when it does. The thing is, despite how frustrated they may be with windows, it’s still quite a lot easier to keep using it, which is what typical users do.
Office workers, engineers and artists aren’t most people. Computers used in a professional setting are going to be used in whatever is the most convenient or cheapest way for the company to provide and maintain these tools.
Most people just use their computer for menial tasks like reading email, writing a document, balancing their check book, etc. Of these tasks, a very large portion, if not most, are just done in a browser nowadays.
If the operating system (or any other piece of software) is going to cause them grief, then they will go look for alternatives, which is what happened with windows 10 as well.
MacOS is gaining popularity, while windows is on the decline:
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#monthly-202110-202303
Whether these users migrate to macos or linux doesn’t really matter. It is market share that microsoft loses for either a long time, or forever.
Windows still not dead to me. While I agree with the annoyances listed, For most users it doesn’t matter. I mean Mac OS is also terrible in its own way, as is any Linux distro. They all suck in different ways. You just choose the ways that suck less for you. There will be times some of those might seem awesome, and for a while they might be. But we want so much from desktop operating systems, its just not possible for them to not suck for very long. I really want some kind of insane debian/redhat mismash Linux with infinite compatibility for what ever the heck I want to run on Mac M1/2 hardware but not there yet. Or if we’re really dreaming make that Haiku or os/2 or amiga os.
They don’t all suck the same. With Linux, yes, there are annoyances, but you ultimately own the platform, and can do whatever you want with it. macOS is just a subjectively better platform than Windows, in terms of it’s internal consistency (yes, there are problems) and it’s support for basic things, like multiple monitors with different DPIs, and differing color profiles, and all that. Things “just work” on macOS in a way that Windows can only dream of, but a lot of that is subjective. What isn’t subjective is that the underlying systems are based on UNIX, and once you learn them, you find that the knowledge transfers to other *NIX platforms, including Linux distros. None of that is true for Windows. Windows users just don’t know any of this – Windows users all have Stockholm syndrome. They love their platform because they haven’t experienced anything better.
Ironically you can replace Windows 11 with Android or iOS and guess what? Its still 100% correct. I mean good luck getting a different OS on a modern smartphone or removing gapps (have 3 octocores rotting in a drawer right now because the OEMs didn’t update and no third party supports ’em) and say what you want about Windows but my 2009 Phenom II has a fully updated Windows 10 install compared to my 2019 phone that hasn’t gotten a single update since it came out the factory.
And news flash old people here at OSNews…the young folks? They just do not care. I have a ton of teenage grandkids and all of them are on social media all the time anyway, a social media focused OS? Their idea of heaven.
IDK, its flaky. If you want a supported OS that gets updates you can certainly get one for android you just have less of a choice of hardware manufactures. But yeah, its still not great but the future of the software industry as the recent past has show is for software as a service. So your operating system might get updates if you subscribe to updates, or it can just be subsidized by more frequent device purchases, or other third party services that the os manufacturer gets a cut ( app stores). The single purchase of an OS or pretty much any other software purchase is unfortunately not a thing that could economically last. It sucks for many reasons, but its the future.
As a Linux user, at some point I just decided that I don’t want to do Windows support anymore. Windows is not my career, so I am free (thankfully) to make that choice. I think these feelings began developing in the days of Windows Vista, then they went up fairly drastically with Windows 8, Metro, and the wanton contempt for the PC using public. And then they skyrocketed with Windows 10 and now, fixing Windows is about as appealing to me as doing janitorial work. At least if I do janitorial work, I get some exercise!
The thing you have to understand, is that when a company expresses such contempt and disregard for it’s users, it is a massive turn-off. Even though I could support their products, it is much more satisfying to me and it serves as more of a symbolic middle finger to help convert users to something else. Thankfully most users have done this already, mostly to Macs and Iphones. I think that more geeks should refuse to freely fix Windows computers for friends and family, and instead help convert these users to other platforms (as I do), not necessarily to Linux. If enough of us do this, Microsoft will certainly feel it. What good does turning the Windows product into an abusive nightmare do, when all of the users sans the corporate types who disable all of this stuff as part of group policy, have migrated away from it?
kdb,
Sure, but in some ways migrating from microsoft to apple is moving from one captor to another. Apple converts have to relinquish owner control & accept a higher degree of vendor locking. Presumably most apple users don’t care about this, but those who do have to come to terms with the fact that apple is engineering products to be harder to service and is paying lobbyists to go around the country fighting against every state’s right to repair bills. This keeps consumers dependent on expensive apple repairs and upsells that lead to more ewaste. Youtubers like L Rossman cover this topic extensively.
I also have some serious concerns around some of apple’s nasty business practices, like contractually mandating recycling partners to destroy used products rather than allowing them to be sent for refurbishment.
https://www.theverge.com/apple/2020/10/4/21499422/apple-sues-recycling-company-reselling-ipods-ipads-watches
This is objectively bad for the world, in fact it’s the exact opposite of what we need to be doing to tackle e-waste. Repair shops need those working authentic parts from used devices for repairs. It’s bad enough that apple contracts deprive the market of used goods, but apple has addressed the “problem” of destruction non-compliance by programming devices to reject authentic parts from donor boards so that they can no longer be refurbished at all. Oh bravo, this is a company I want to support with my dollars /sarcasm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2WhU77ihw8
The truth is that they’re both unethical greedy bastards bent on cranking out more corporate profits even if it means undermining consumers and public interests, adding anti-features, manipulating markets, using planned obsolescence, etc. There a lot of BS on both sides, it merely manifests itself differently!