“Get it the **** off my system” and “in the trash where it belongs” were common refrains as users voiced their displeasure at having Copilot forced upon them. Numerous reports emerged of people imm…
Even the small things. When work upgraded to Win11 overnight and I logged into the Start being in the middle, I almost lost it. Yes, I could fix it, and a few other things, but I had a moment.
I understand it’s not for everyone but I jumped ship to Linux 10 years ago or so. The defining moment was me disabling Cortana only to have her reappear after an update.
At least with Linux when I’m fighting the OS it doesn’t feel like the OS developers are fighting back.
Same motivation here, but it took me until last year to make the switch. Pushing Office on me combined with all the good things I’ve been hearing about gaming on Linux was enough to push me over. I installed in dual boot, but I have never wanted to nor had the need to boot into my Windows install in at least three months.
I did the same thing about the same time as you. I did boot into Windows at one point and it updated, and it absolutely fucked my system. It removed or disabled the boot loader and I think it fucked up the partition table too IIRC. I then removed everything Windows and installed another distro I wanted to try and it’s been smooth sailing since, with no reason to regret removing Windows.
Edit: I was able to recover the partitions, but the Windows section of the bootloader I was never able to get working again after getting it to boot into my Linux install. That’s the moment I decided to just clear out that drive and switch distros.
I’ve been using Linux on my desktop since the 1990s. I’m certainly not opposed to people using Linux on their desktop. But I can definitely think of things, even in 2024, that someone might want Windows for.
If you go and buy a piece of hardware from a vendor, even really obscure stuff, there will almost certainly be a Windows driver. These days, Linux support is pretty common, and stuff like USB device classes providing a standard interface for a lot of hardware deals with a lot of that. But if I were getting something weird like, oh, one of those projectors that displays 3D images on mist, I’d be more-cautious. VR headsets are probably one of the more-prominent recent examples. Yeah, you can get a VR headset for Linux, but not all of the VR headsets out there are Linux-compatible.
Maybe a more-prominent issue – while it’s rare for hardware to not work, it’s more-common for some functionality not to be available. tries to think of an example Okay, here’s one. I have a flightstick and throttle from CH from some years back. These are standard ol’ USB Human Interface Devices. Their axes and buttons are detected, and I can use them just fine. But they also have a little button on both their throttle and joystick that – besides acting as a button – cycles a series of one illuminated LED through three LEDs, green,yellow,red. I believe that it’s intended to switch between different “profiles” – so, like, say you’re just flying along, you have one set of controls, but then you enter into combat in some flight system, you can toggle to the “yellow” profile by tapping a button. Whatever software CH ships to handle that on Windows isn’t shipped for Linux. Okay, you could probably set something similar up for Linux if you’ve the time and technical chops, and maybe there’s a way to do it for Steam games using Steam Input. But there isn’t gonna be software provided to do it out-of-the-box on Linux, whereas there is on Windows.
There are still a few pieces of software that you can’t run. If you specifically need or really want to run something, that may be a problem. There are very few games on Steam that I can’t run, but one happens to be Command: Modern Operations, which suffers from both relying on 3d hardware – so not being VM-friendly – and not having anyone manage to get it working. There are other military simulation games, but no real direct alternatives. Now, I can live without that software package, though I sure would like to run it, but there may users that don’t have that kind of flexibility.
There’s also some software that you can make use of on a machine running Linux, but need to run in a Windows VM. That…works, but is also kind of annoying. A good example might be something like Solidworks, which doesn’t support Linux. There are engineers out there who are going to need to use Solidworks to do their work. I understand that you can run it in a VM – and there’s sufficient demand that apparently the company certifies VM environments with a dedicated GPU for pass-through use with the VM but that’s kind of annoying, if you’re someone whose work revolves around the package.
I agree there are plenty of reasons some people may still want Windows. I think we all know this, and it doesn’t need to be stated every time. However, there are also reasons to switch from Windows to Linux that are better. I just switched GPUS (AMD) today and literally just plugged it in and it’s ready to go. Package managers are also hugely more convenient than the Windows method of each application managing its own updates.
Sure, if you need Windows then you need Windows. Most people don’t.
If MS would sell me a license to own my computer, I would buy it, but they don’t offer that. Instead it’s ads and spam and data collection. And I want nothing to do with that.
I kind of feel like that about Google’s services (to a lesser extent). Like, Google produces some really outstanding services. YouTube is great, and I’d have no problem with paying for it. But I have no idea whether, if I buy YouTube Premium or whatever Google calls it, I can buy privacy or whether it’s just going to mean that they can link my data to my financial information and carry on data-mining.
I don’t mind the taskbar in the middle, it’s like Apple’s dock. What I really hate, is the news popup on the left… and I don’t even mind the floating Start menu, I’ve been using MadAppLauncher for like a decade or more.
Man. Work moved us to windows 11 and you couldn’t ungroup windows on the taskbar… We use RPG / as400 and throughout the day you’ll end up with 4-5 windows… having them all grouped is annoying when I have to hover over a popup to see which window I need.
Googling revealed that win11 wasn’t shipped with that functionality and it was only patched into the operating system in late q3 of last year.
Guess no one at Microsoft realized people use computers differently and more options is always better than one. Or they intended to have the option and either forgot to include it or it was buggy. Either way it was #2 on my “how do you disable this” list, and I had to deal with it for a while. I get how grouping can be good for some things, but when you want to be able to bounce between various windows and some happen to use the same app, it was a pain.
I hadn’t minded it if it were on the center. As you know, it was actually somewhere around the center, changing its position every time I added an icon or whatever in the taskbar. And they were proud enough to call it a UX revolution. WTAF…
if you feel comfortable mucking about in your BIOS, disabling TPM will pretty much guarantee they don’t spring 11 on you. they are really dead set on that requirement for some reason.
How many times are we going to have to teach you this lesson, old man. Don’t fuck with the task bar.
Even the small things. When work upgraded to Win11 overnight and I logged into the Start being in the middle, I almost lost it. Yes, I could fix it, and a few other things, but I had a moment.
I understand it’s not for everyone but I jumped ship to Linux 10 years ago or so. The defining moment was me disabling Cortana only to have her reappear after an update.
At least with Linux when I’m fighting the OS it doesn’t feel like the OS developers are fighting back.
Ironically, Microsoft would later remove Cortana itself in an update.
Same motivation here, but it took me until last year to make the switch. Pushing Office on me combined with all the good things I’ve been hearing about gaming on Linux was enough to push me over. I installed in dual boot, but I have never wanted to nor had the need to boot into my Windows install in at least three months.
I did the same thing about the same time as you. I did boot into Windows at one point and it updated, and it absolutely fucked my system. It removed or disabled the boot loader and I think it fucked up the partition table too IIRC. I then removed everything Windows and installed another distro I wanted to try and it’s been smooth sailing since, with no reason to regret removing Windows.
Edit: I was able to recover the partitions, but the Windows section of the bootloader I was never able to get working again after getting it to boot into my Linux install. That’s the moment I decided to just clear out that drive and switch distros.
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard a similar story. Windows is often not a good neighbor in multi boot configurations.
I’ve been using Linux on my desktop since the 1990s. I’m certainly not opposed to people using Linux on their desktop. But I can definitely think of things, even in 2024, that someone might want Windows for.
If you go and buy a piece of hardware from a vendor, even really obscure stuff, there will almost certainly be a Windows driver. These days, Linux support is pretty common, and stuff like USB device classes providing a standard interface for a lot of hardware deals with a lot of that. But if I were getting something weird like, oh, one of those projectors that displays 3D images on mist, I’d be more-cautious. VR headsets are probably one of the more-prominent recent examples. Yeah, you can get a VR headset for Linux, but not all of the VR headsets out there are Linux-compatible.
Maybe a more-prominent issue – while it’s rare for hardware to not work, it’s more-common for some functionality not to be available. tries to think of an example Okay, here’s one. I have a flightstick and throttle from CH from some years back. These are standard ol’ USB Human Interface Devices. Their axes and buttons are detected, and I can use them just fine. But they also have a little button on both their throttle and joystick that – besides acting as a button – cycles a series of one illuminated LED through three LEDs, green,yellow,red. I believe that it’s intended to switch between different “profiles” – so, like, say you’re just flying along, you have one set of controls, but then you enter into combat in some flight system, you can toggle to the “yellow” profile by tapping a button. Whatever software CH ships to handle that on Windows isn’t shipped for Linux. Okay, you could probably set something similar up for Linux if you’ve the time and technical chops, and maybe there’s a way to do it for Steam games using Steam Input. But there isn’t gonna be software provided to do it out-of-the-box on Linux, whereas there is on Windows.
There are still a few pieces of software that you can’t run. If you specifically need or really want to run something, that may be a problem. There are very few games on Steam that I can’t run, but one happens to be Command: Modern Operations, which suffers from both relying on 3d hardware – so not being VM-friendly – and not having anyone manage to get it working. There are other military simulation games, but no real direct alternatives. Now, I can live without that software package, though I sure would like to run it, but there may users that don’t have that kind of flexibility.
There’s also some software that you can make use of on a machine running Linux, but need to run in a Windows VM. That…works, but is also kind of annoying. A good example might be something like Solidworks, which doesn’t support Linux. There are engineers out there who are going to need to use Solidworks to do their work. I understand that you can run it in a VM – and there’s sufficient demand that apparently the company certifies VM environments with a dedicated GPU for pass-through use with the VM but that’s kind of annoying, if you’re someone whose work revolves around the package.
I agree there are plenty of reasons some people may still want Windows. I think we all know this, and it doesn’t need to be stated every time. However, there are also reasons to switch from Windows to Linux that are better. I just switched GPUS (AMD) today and literally just plugged it in and it’s ready to go. Package managers are also hugely more convenient than the Windows method of each application managing its own updates.
Sure, if you need Windows then you need Windows. Most people don’t.
I use Arch BTW
Funny you say that ah
For real though I use a down stream arch distro.
Installing arch manually is a good learning experience but I’ve got other things to do.
Switched to Fedora at the beginning of the year and couldn’t be happier.
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I kind of feel like that about Google’s services (to a lesser extent). Like, Google produces some really outstanding services. YouTube is great, and I’d have no problem with paying for it. But I have no idea whether, if I buy YouTube Premium or whatever Google calls it, I can buy privacy or whether it’s just going to mean that they can link my data to my financial information and carry on data-mining.
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They killed the vertical task bar with that update, which seems like such a pointless thing to disable.
I don’t mind the taskbar in the middle, it’s like Apple’s dock. What I really hate, is the news popup on the left… and I don’t even mind the floating Start menu, I’ve been using MadAppLauncher for like a decade or more.
Man. Work moved us to windows 11 and you couldn’t ungroup windows on the taskbar… We use RPG / as400 and throughout the day you’ll end up with 4-5 windows… having them all grouped is annoying when I have to hover over a popup to see which window I need.
Googling revealed that win11 wasn’t shipped with that functionality and it was only patched into the operating system in late q3 of last year.
So annoying and a huge productivity hit for me.
Guess no one at Microsoft realized people use computers differently and more options is always better than one. Or they intended to have the option and either forgot to include it or it was buggy. Either way it was #2 on my “how do you disable this” list, and I had to deal with it for a while. I get how grouping can be good for some things, but when you want to be able to bounce between various windows and some happen to use the same app, it was a pain.
That’s why on my kde desktop at home it has a check box that say “allow these windows to be grouped” and I can check / uncheck as needed.
It works so much better. Imho
I hadn’t minded it if it were on the center. As you know, it was actually somewhere around the center, changing its position every time I added an icon or whatever in the taskbar. And they were proud enough to call it a UX revolution. WTAF…
I’m sorry, what!?
At this rate, I’m definitely going to hold onto 10 until they *pry it away from me.
(Yes, I use Linux as well but gaming isn’t perfect on it, etc…)
if you feel comfortable mucking about in your BIOS, disabling TPM will pretty much guarantee they don’t spring 11 on you. they are really dead set on that requirement for some reason.
IT don’t like it. Lock the taskbar. Lock the taskbar.
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How did that work for Windows 8?