It is a niche subset of an enterprise only product along with a specific update number. If you don't know what that is, it doesn't impact you. The fact it doesn't impact you nor many people, is their whole point.
What would you want to see in MS Linux? I'm terrified that having "embraced" linux they are scheming in the background to "extend" it in a way that they don't release the source. That's got to be part of their strategy. If they wanted to play nice and make a distro that would be cool, but I see no chance of that.
Redhat and Nvidia have been pushing the boundaries of GPL recently, and Free software / open source as a concept continues to get watered down. I wouldn't be surprised to see MS try something.
Red Hat did no such thing, they are completely in compliance with GPL. Customers who pay for RHEL get the source code just like the GPL intended. It's within their right to stop selling you future RHEL licenses for re-distributing this and it's not even remotely morally wrong. No normal person was affected by this, just freeloaders like Oracle and other downstream people who wanted RHEL without paying for it and set up a whole automated system to keep an identical clone.
Just because you're annoyed they put some roadblocks for freeloaders, doesn't mean you get to distort facts.
What is the reason for such an angry reply? They're pushing the boundaries and going against the spirit of free software. It's apparently legal but damages open source. There's been lots of discussion about it.
Because I hate in politics when people repeat a lie enough and it becomes the new reality that everyone will eventually accept, and I don't like seeing this sort of thing infect tech. I see this Red Hat narrative being adopted in real-time on tech forums and IRC.
What Red Hat is doing doesn't damage open-source. Open-source is meant to guarantee the end-user (ideally a normal person, not a tech giant, at least for me that's the only person I care about) has the freedom to use/modify the software they paid for. Everyone can still do that.
What's gone is the abuse of the GPL for systematic, automated cloning by parasites like Oracle or Cloud Linux Foundation, simply for the purpose of using RHEL without paying for it.
If you need RHEL on your systems, use one of the 16 free RHEL licenses they give you. If your app runs in a Docker container, the RHEL images require no license to use. If this isn't enough, switch distros (I hear CentOS Stream is pretty close) or pay for RHEL.
I simply don't see legitimate users being affected by this.
Only the kernel is GPL. If they wanted to E&E Linux they could ship a proprietary userspace. I can't think of any reason MS would want to create a desktop Linux distro though (I know about Mariner and it's not relevant).
What I really want is LSW. A paid, reasonably priced ($10/instance?) but semi-disposable binary-blob VM to run games and other commercial applications in, with privileged access to the GPU, and without privileged access to network interfaces.
I used a windows computer this week for the first time in years. I was really happy with WSL and how well integrated it was, in particular how easy it was to setup GPU drivers which historically I've found is very touchy. I hate to say it but windows+wsl felt like a viable alternative for my current setup of a mac for office apps and a linux laptop for development.
That said, the only times I really interacted with windows was to install chrome (despite various pleading), to have it automatically bing search for whatever the screen background was when I logged in (only fell for that once), to have random news and other crap pop up, and to have to turn off the speaker because it kept making notification noises about whatever useless stuff it constantly is notifying you about.
As someone who is easily distracted, I don't know how people can work in windows, it always felt like it's not made for me, it's made for microsoft to push stuff at me. But for people who are less touchy it seems decent these days, particularly in light of wsl.
I did Windows/WSL for years and have bailed. No amount of integration or functionality will ever make me put up with the user-hostile and attention-thieving design of Windows 11. I'd stop using computers completely if I had no other option.
> As someone who is easily distracted, I don't know how people can work in windows, it always felt like it's not made for me, it's made for microsoft to push stuff at me. But for people who are less touchy it seems decent these days, particularly in light of wsl.
For what it's worth I find disabling all of that nonsense once, usually with a script, far more conducive to my work experience than having MacOS randomly shut off every USB port every handful of minutes and costing the organs of my first born for mediocre hardware.
If you want office apps have you tried a windows virtual box VM in seamless mode? It puts application windows into your Linux DE rather than showing you the whole windows desktop. (Kinda like a Remote Desktop Services remoteApp)
I'm curious as to why you find WSL superior to the fully-native macOS command line as a replacement for "Linux for development", when you already have a Mac...?
I didn't see any of that. Because, unlike Windows, I can turn those ads off with an ad blocker or whatever. Windows, OTOH, will throw ads at you even after you go to the trouble of flipping all of those hard-to-find switches (according to TFA). Also unlike Windows, I also didn't pay any hard-earned to view the web page.
Maybe I just glance over them now, but I don't see any ads in Windows at the moment? My start menu just has the applications I installed. Notifications are just from my apps. The most egregious thing I can think of is the news app (which cmon, just unpin it from the taskbar) and how search will look up web results.
I hate that this is the only practical "alternative," as OSX is a uncompromising commitment. You have to buy a whole new device and completely change your software ecosystem. Its like getting up and moving to a different country.
It would be cool if one of the OEMs finally "snapped" and started shipping Android, SteamOS, ChromeOS, or some other distro in a default dual-boot config. Then again, most are happy shipping horrific bloatware that makes Windows 11 ads look like hand written assembly, so perhaps not...
"Anyone with a brain" is not the same as "Anyone confident in using their BIOS and editing the EFI partition/partition table."
Because, at the bare minimum if nothing else goes wrong, that's what you need to dual boot Linux + Windows. Windows and Linux updates will both periodically wipe each other's entries without a very careful manual config. And if you can't set up that perfect config first time, well, I guess the user is stupid.
> are walking around without one.
Even in jest, this kind of arrogance and abrasiveness is what I really dislike about the linux community, especially at the upper levels. Especially the "What, you don't already know how to do X?" and the immature insults coming from adult developers.
At some point you need to accept that you're wrong about your beliefs. That you want some random person on the internet to wait for you to stop being ignorant is on you. Wake up, my friend, you are in a prison of your own design. You can live a better life, you just have to think about it for a minute or two.
> Because, at the bare minimum if nothing else goes wrong, that's what you need to dual boot Linux + Windows.
Newbie-oriented distros like Ubuntu will do this for you automatically.
> Windows and Linux updates will both periodically wipe each other's entries without a very careful manual config.
Not really, on a modern UEFI system. Windows may occasionally set itself as the default, but the Linux entry will still be installed as an option you can select in the UEFI firmware settings.
Linux shouldn't be "wiping out" anything. Typically you want GRUB to be your default bootloader, and chainload from there to Windows as desired. Again, any competent newbie-oriented distro will do this for you.
> will still be installed as an option you can select in the UEFI firmware settings.
Exactly. But to the first time user, their linux has disappeared, and they have to go look up what happened, then they have to figure out how to get into their motherboard's boot menu... and by now, you lost 99% of users.
And I recently had my (systemd-boot) Windows entry fail on the linux side and had to go in and fix it. Not sure about GRUB these days.
This is a microcosm of linux. Things just work if you go in and fix this little thing here and there, but most people don't do and won't do any kind of maintenance like this.
TINA to dragon naturally speaking. Toy Whisper implementations transcribing text is not GUI integration, context switching to a VM is a royal pain and anyone with brain will avoid being forced to type the current English spelling trash pile.
This seems more like a list of “ways” Windows is going in the wrong direction, but I already know about those. I'd be far more interested in the “reasons” the title promised, which I don't think are as simple as just money.
From what I've heard (rumours but it makes sense) it is mostly an evolved version of the "The Raymond Chen Camp and The MSDN Magazine Camp" conflict Joel described back in 2004 [1]. The exact issues are mostly different, but you still see echoes (traditional file explorer vs. UWP file explorer).
Two takeaways: your API better be damn fast or developers will go directly and then that method is the API and, after twenty years sharepoint still sucks.
Props to WINE for making it viable to ditch Windows entirely. Windows 10 and onwards abuse their users so hard it amazes me that they have any users left.
Abuse is a good word for my experience using Windows. Every time I need to log in to Word and it tells me it's "getting Office ready" when I know it's checking my subscription. Or whenever an upgrade happens when I thought I was just shutting down the machine for the day. Or starting it up. I didn't consent for you to do that Windows, but there you go again.
Microsoft has done such a terrible job making a clear way for devs to make windows app with native UI. Should I use Win32 legacy? How about WinForms? Can I have device independent sizing in WPF? Should I use the dumpster fire that’s Maui? Can I get away with the limitations of WinUI?
I find the state of native development a real pain point in 2023 and Microsoft’s internal infighting is doing nothing to improve the situation.
I don't think that's such a big issue nowadays because which devs shops enter the market to make money by making new Windows GUI apps nowadays, in order to be confused on which GUI libs they should start with? Not that many.
I don't see anyone wanting to write Windows-native apps anymore. App development moved to the web.
Windows apps are mostly all legacy stuff like Notepad++ or $CORPORATE_WARE written in the same libs from 20 years ago, or cross-platform stuff written in QT or Electron.
Reading this comment made me feel like I'd been transported back to 15+ years ago, when the same laments existed; and it's mostly the same actors, er, frameworks/libraries/tools being mentioned. WPF was released in 2007, five years after WinForms was initially released, and people were saying then "yet another? really?"
I'm not bothered by ads in Windows 11 because I turned off widgets and don't use Edge or Bing. I'm not sure why the author says you have to do a lit of fiddling to not see ads. I'm very happy with my Windows.
Ya where are all these ads? Not using Edge (and what ads are directly in that I dunno), not using any widgets or MS News app, so there are no ads in the OS anywhere. Icons. Apps. Settings.
Because every update there is a new setting that needs to be turned off, which is pretty obnoxious. I said similar stuff when Windows 11 RTM, but I've since been turning brand new junkware off at least twice a year, and I'm fed up.
On a fresh new installation with defaults I'd likely need to spend almost an hour playing with settings and would miss some. For example almost every single subsection within "Personalization" now has ads settings turned on by default:
- Background: Windows Spotlight
- Lock screen: Get fun facts, tips, tricks, and more on your lock screen. Also Windows Spotlight again.
- Start: Show recommendations for tips, shortcuts, new apps, and more
> Because every update there is a new setting that needs to be turned off
That's not my experience at all. I don't have to do anything after updates except learn the changes. They keep changing Terminal, Notepad and Paint, but I'm ok with that. They're better.
I still use Win 10 at work, but even there the ad situation is out of control. They don't just come in with widgets or Bing/Edge. They sneak in everywhere.
I thought that I'd disabled everything that leads to ads, but there was one that kept showing up through the notification center (which I thought I'd disabled). It took far too long to figure out how to stop that one.
I was a happy Edge user for ages, but their constant pushing of ads to accept the new Bing search and what not is really doing my head in.
So have been moving over to Firefox. Much better! And bookmark synch works great, across different Microsoft logins.
10 vs 11? I like that in 11 the windows don't blend into each other like a giant mush, so I greatly prefer that. I'm on 4 monitors - three wide, one on top, aluminium profile mounted.
I've turned off what I can of the web content and it generally doesn't get in my way. Things like monitor sleep actually seems to work, unlike in 10 where one of my myriad USB devices tend to block it no matter what I do with the `powercfg` command.
I have been a huge Microsoft fan for ages, I loved my windows phone, and my Zune HD.
This is the first time I haven't updated my OS to 11. Not that I love 10, but I fear that 11 is going to be more aggressive with all the things I dislike about 10. Mostly around ads, notifications, and generally feeling like my computer belongs to them.
I've been on OSX the last few weeks while I'm developing a iOS app. I don't love it. But I don't fear it either.
I would love to have a linux OS where IO devices (screens, cameras, etc) just work.
My co-founder is on linux and is constantly messing with microphone, camera, etc not being picked up on linux, and having to mess around with settings to get things to work.
Felt the same way. Unfortunately went to 11 due to really desiring WSL(g) and Wi-Fi 6E 6Ghz support. The thing is I like a lot about the OS. But it's ruined for the reasons you mention. Such a shame.
I decided to test drive Windows 11 & see what life is like on commercial OSes. A bunch of these are sore points for me: being coaxed to sign in & having to use absurd arcane nonsense to avoid it, not having a taskbar on the side. These dings resound.
One thing I didn't see mentioned is that I keep searching online for how to do things via keyboard or quickly, and there's site after site saying oh there's a new Windows 11 shortcut to do that thing! But then the shortcut doesn't work for me. I seem to have like 1/10th of the shortcuts that have ever been announced. And the helpful hints Microsoft had been dropping showing off shortcuts in apps seem to have vanished.
I was trying to move apps between monitors via hotkey last night & couldn't get any shortcuts to work.
There's also the puzzle-game required to turn on good features now. Go look for an article on how to do something, and there's a sizable chance you need to go download vivetool & know some magic id number & enable it. For example, I wanted a hotkey for adjusting volume or at least opening the mixer, and yup, there's a vivetool id to enable for that! I think I have done like 4. Vivetool has a /query command to show you the status, but it's many dozens of entries & at best you have a super brief ProgrammerCodeWords for the feature to tell you what it is. I feel like trying to use this OS is like being locked in an escape room.
https://www.neowin.net/news/windows-11-now-has-a-dedicated-s...
Looking on at the Windows/MacOS world from the sidelines today is painful, both platforms used to have far more user centric, stable and consistent interfaces. I occasionally get a glimpse into this world overlooking a colleague and I don't know how they stay sane. So much shit is thrown at the user these days.
On Windows it is the ads, on Linux it is the restrictions.
"Type your password". "Sure, once again, my dear Linux". "You can not write that file". "Oh, sorry, my dear Linux, for looking at the files of master root"
Great point. And Windows ads remain disabled too. It never turns itself back on, not even when Microsoft force-pushes an update.
Unlike Linux. Where even if you disable sudo password, it will randomly turn itself back on, and then force you to type it in for access to even your own files.
Then you get used to it. Then you start to like it. To crave it. Before long, your life feels incomplete if you haven't fed sudo your nutritious password for ten minutes. The enslavement is nearly complete.
The final blow lands when you get so comfortable with Linux that you feel bad about having to shut it down. So you don't. Great.
Until you have to edit a root file. Of course you open it in vim, because that's what master Linux tells you to use. And now you are fully, completely, totally enslaved. Because you don't want to shut down Linux and don't know how to exit vim.
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Completely unrelated aside: should one ever feel the desire to feed a troll, it is better to use healthy, low-nutrition trollfeed.
Microsoft should wake up one day and simply recognize that everything that came after Windows 7 had been a terrible mistake, and they should re-release Windows 7. The world would be a beautiful place if that ever happened.
There's a lot of good new stuff in windows 10, like an updated scheduler, WSL, etc. But yeah they need to ditch stuff like the "new" settings app and forcing edge down your throat.
What do you mean by updated scheduler? Task Scheduler? It looks the same as it did in the older Windows to me.
I love WSL but what does it do that cygwin didn't? I guess let you use the distro directly including package manager. But a VM can do that. And WSL2 is just Hyper-V virtualization, that's all it is.
So it's nothing really new here, if you want this on Windows 7, then just install Virtualbox/Hyper-V/whatever, create a Ubuntu VM (with shared folders), configure it to launch at Windows startup, and create a launcher shortcut to SSH into it.
I argue that peak windows was Windows 98 and that is still generally how I configure whatever desktop environment I'm using. 98 had all the lessons learned from 3.x and 95 with none of the BS that came with 2000 and Vista.
I think that Vista will historically be called the "Death of Windows" at which point all real men abandoned ship for Linux.
I'm very curious why you don't mention XP in all that—it didn't have "the BS that came with 2000 and Vista", and was generally both much more robust and much more broadly compatible than Win98.
(I have no particular dog in this fight, being a Mac user since the Mac Plus era—I'm just genuinely curious.)
Windows vs Mac is like politics in the United States right now. Both options suck.
You have a choice between spending $2k-3k on a machine from Apple to get decent ram, storage and io specs, or getting a Windows laptop that basically comes loaded with so much Microsoft backed spyware, forced output of telemetry data, and interfaces that force you to use their different cloud services like Bing and OneDrive that it just gets in the way of using your computer.
What is the lesser of two evils? Do you pay through the nose for your computer, or try to scrape off all the crap they've put on top of windows.
When I do write a windows program, I use Lazarus/Free Pascal[1] which, as near as I can tell, uses the old ancient Win32 api to get everything done. I'm going to hang on to Windows 10 as long as I can.
My next OS will likely be Genode[2] in a year or two. I've been watching their progress for half a decade, and it looks almost to the point I can grok everything. I look forward to actually secure general purpose computing.
Not dropping Window is one of the reasons they carry on being so anti-user. MS will automatically assume that their changes dont bother you and carry on doing what they want. As far as I can see Linux is the only real option if you want to free of their control, its not easy to migrate but its something that needs to be done.
You guys need to just give up and start the progression down the linux path. At this point you have to pay me to use windows and the rare times i have to run it for work are max pain, the user experience is just so much worse
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