With how aggressive Microsoft is becoming with ads, services, and data collection they could at least make Windows itself free.
But no, you still have to pay £100+ per license to have the pleasure of putting up with this crap.
Piracy is not a real solution to the problem. Microsoft allows these sorts of things to exist in the background because they would rather lose out on some sales than lose market share.
Kinda the same thing as winrar. They rather have consumers get used to it so the companies they work at have a higher chance of buying licenses. That’s where the real money is.
Ding ding ding!
Like how Adobe puts minimal effort into protecting from cracks for their software.
They’d much rather have little Jimmy and a million others pirate PS at home and get used to the workflow, so that businesses pay out big recurring fees for Adobe’s tools, which they will if that’s what everybody knows how to use.
Piracy is the solution when what you think you’re buying is not what you’re getting and the company that you’re buying changes the product without your consent.
aka spyware
Every generation has this moment, where they learn to hate Microsoft (or Micro$oft). Then, 4% install Linux, 6% buy a Mac with half the RAM for twice the price; and everyone else to keeps complaining.
With me it was when they killed off my favorite browser. I’m now using the reanimated bushy red corpse of it.
Netscape?
MS has done shady things but Netscape’s own top employees have written about how Netscape destroyed itself with the version 4 rewrite. Joel Spolsky has also written about how complete rewrites are always a mistake.
Their corporate side failed too. If you weren’t fortune 500, Netscape wouldn’t talk to you. I was spending $50k a year with Netscape and they wouldn’t fix a bug unless I paid for an additional $75k a year support tier. ( The bug was Netscape 4 didn’t support dialing with area codes! )
Meanwhile during the late 90’s Microsoft devs put their personal emails in the readme.txts and would quickly patch any bugs or add features if you emailed them.
All the small isp’s (which were over 50% of the market) gave up on Netscape because of this.
What was your favorite browser?
This is the way
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I feel like you’re describing Windows here lol
Windows does manage it quite well with the OOBE to be fully functional with regular hardware. Only special stuff like (d)GPUs and external stuff might require special drivers.
Basic sound, networking, (multi-monitor) video and peripheral support works very good.As does practically every Linux distro. I install it, it just works. Don’t even need to hunt for GPU or printer drivers like I do for windows.
That was the status quo when I tried Linux ~5 years ago. Nowadays, Linux is much more plug and play (and I’m specifically referring to Pop OS).
Cool, but didn’t everyone tell me I should use Mint, for a bunch of reasons including “it’s arguably the most beginner-friendly”?
From what I read, Mint is better for lower-end PC specs, but otherwise, I’d strongly recommend PopOS.
I see. I’ll look into it, thanks.
Desktop Linux requires buying a USB / DVD, inserting it into your machine, and hitting OK several times. If you can’t do that, you also can’t install Windows.
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Verification is optional, but recommended. This is true for all OSs. Don’t do it if you can’t.
Note that I said to buy a USB or DVD with Linux. Burning your own is easy on Linux, but Windows puts up a lot of roadblocks. (One wonders why.)
GRUB works fine, but again, you only have to deal with it if you want to dual-boot.
Some sound cards used to not have first-party Linux drivers, so you’d have to find some third-party workaround. This is the only real problem among the ones you listed, but even this is pretty rare nowadays.
That’s all fair advice. It doesn’t change that installation instructions should have been a lot more thorough though. Once I get a third (or bigger primary) SSD, I’ll dual-boot Mint. I still want to try it. Regardless of my issues with it, I do know Linux is getting better. And we can see how ready I am for it now (and that’s partially up to the software).
Fair. I guess asking users to verify the ISO is just to avoid lawsuits. Buying USBs is more beginner-friendly than burning your own, but it would be very difficult to maintain an up to date list of sellers. They definitely need to explain GRUB and dual-booting better, as well as make it easier to repair / avoid the Windows overwriting GRUB issue.
Burning an iso with stuff like rufus is so stupid easy it should be illegal.
Linux and Nvidia really need to sort out their shit so I can fully dump windows.
Luckily the AI hype is good for something in this regard, since running gpus on Linux servers is suddenly much more important.
Its mainly Nvidia’s shit. The only reason Nvidia is caring about Linux now, is that is the platform AI models use.
The only thing keeping me on windows is the Nvidia GPU in my laptop. If Linux got actual dynamic GPU switching support I would delete windows and never look back.
I’ve been running NVIDIA under Linux for about six years now, with no more issues than one would encounter running hardware/drivers from a number of manufacturers under a number of platforms.
In all honesty, I’ve encountered far more issues regarding HP printer drivers under Windows.
I’ve been using Nvidia under Linux for the last 3 years and it has been massive pita.
Getting CUDA to work consistently is a feat, and one that must be repeated for most driver updates.
Wayland support is still shoddy.
Hardware acceleration on the web (at least with Firefox) is very inconsistent.
It is very much a second-class experience compared to Windows, and it shouldn’t be.
CUDA works fine here, in all honesty it’s never given me any problems. NVENC works fine, DLSS1, DLSS2, and DLSS3 all work fine, RTX runs at acceptable FPS compared to AMD under Linux - and NVIDIA Reflex is supported as of VKD3D-Proton 2.12 and DXVK-NVAPI 0.7.
On top of that, FSR is also fully supported - as is HDMI 2.1.
I only use Firefox, and hardware web rendering works fine. Hardware video acceleration isn’t working yet, but running back to back tests at 1080p with hardware video decoding under VLC, the difference between hardware video decoding and CPU rendering is about 5% CPU usage on average running a desktop PC with adequate power supply/cooling capacity as opposed to a laptop with limited power supply/cooling capacity.
The only problem with Wayland under KDE 6 is the lack of any form of sync, but explicit sync has ‘finally’ been merged, and should be supported under the 555 branch of drivers. Once explicit sync is supported, I really have few Wayland issues left to complain about.
Overall, I really don’t experience any showstopper issues that have me wanting for Windows in the slightest.
PopOS has a good nvidia card support, try it out! It made me dump windows last October.
Pop OS has great Nvidia support out of the gate. Latest mint seems to handle Nvidia well also.
how long is having a GPU you can’t use without an OS going to he worth staying off Linux?
As much as I like Linux, and use it almost exclusively on desktop/laptop, every time I see something like this I am reminded how much I hate the fact that Apple of all companies is about the last bastion of commercial and consumer operating systems who isn’t trying to derive the bulk of their revenue from advertising.
In some sense yes, but advertising for its own stuff is advertising too. It nudges you to use their whole ecosystem.
The most annoying thing for me is that you can’t remove the iTunes component in mission control (the settings deck).
It does nudge you…but it’s not full screen ads that take multiple clicks to get through every week. I was a Windows zealot through W7…W10 got bad…W11 got me to start using Apple and Linux.
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Linux ain’t as mainstream as MacOS and Windows are.
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There has to be a point of diminishing returns for them with this kind of behavior. This is just so aggravating.
I’d wager they are hoping to entrap as many people as they can on the platform, with their TPM restrictions, and store restrictions, and account restrictions, that sunk cost fallacy will keep the overwhelming bulk of people stuck in their web.
I’d also wager that enterprise probably doesnt have any of this bullshit
Can confirm, I run enterprise at home and have yet to see some of these shenanigans I’ve seen posted.
But there’s still enough I hate about Windows 11 that I’m slowly transitioning to Linux and then just running windows in a VM for things there aren’t good alternatives for.
So same strategy as Apple?
This is what happens when they know you won’t leave.
“But muh games…and Linux is too difficult and weird”
I say to those: well then you’ve made your choice, didn’t you? It’s going to keep happening, like it’s been since the 90s.
Why is the target of your comment towards people that use Windows?
I am not sure why People on Lemmy feel like if they point something out to people who can’t see the comment is going to get them to change their mind.
I have and use both Linux and Windows. I prefer both for different reasons.
I know I’m talking into the void. I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind. I’m too tired of trying to do that. Just trying to get people to realize they made the choices they have to live with.
I may be spoiled in that I don’t play AAA multiplayer games, but I do play AAA single player and indie single/multiplayer (usually the type where one of the players is also the server, e.g. Terraria).
Been running Linux on my systems for more than a decade, and - especially since Proton/SteamDeck enchantments made their way upstream - I haven’t had any major ssues (except having to wait a while to play RDR2-PC in Ubuntu because of a weird game-specific graphics card driver issue, but even that was fixed in due course).
Fuck Windows, and fuck the assertion that it’s the only way to run games.
Proton really did marvelous shit.
Made it so easy that even an idiot (like me) could get games running on linux without much headache. Especially nowadays, even big game titles working almost flawlessly on release day.
Again it might be that I pretty much don’t play competitive online games because if there’s anything that ruins gaming it’s random strangers, but I have had practically no problem playing games over the last ten years.
Ads have evolved into a cancer that is just growing and growing, making everything around them worse.
The best part is when spammers and ad generators realized how easy it is to use GPT to automate and increased the number of spam bots and ads.
Another day, another piece of enshittification by MS, another reason to talk about our Lord and Saviour, Linus Torvalds, if you can spare a few minutes.
At this point I’m convinced that the new windows feature announcements are just ads for linux
*Ads for MacOS/chromeos
I don’t see any enshitiffication features and ads in Windows 11 that Lemmy and tech news are reporting. I wonder if it’s because I’m in the EU.
They may have not implemented it yet. I see a lot of things reported that they are still testing.
Yeah, the start menu ads were / are ‘only’ in the beta build.
Now that Linux can run pretty much all the games I play on the PC I don’t think I’m going to have much use for windows at home anymore
May I suggest getting a mini PC if the home PC is going to be used by everyone else at home?
Autodesk! All the others! Can you now, goddammit, for the sake of the mental health of your customers, start building your tools on platforms other than this crap? PLEASE? I mean I’m seriously considering building a parallel system running Linux for all my other office needs and just touch my Win-pc to run my CAD. I hope MS will continue in this way and ai-mercialize their OS more and more so hopefully the software providers will have enough at one point.
At that point you might as well just use a windows VM for CAD. With desktop integration you hardly have to notice you’re using windows.
I’ve certainly considered that, but have a hard time imagining a comparable performance with large assemblies. Any hands-on experiences?
I have used a windows vm at a previous job for a closed source IDE we were required to use. I’ve never used AutoCAD, so I’m afraid I can’t help you there.
I’ve used FreeCAD for hobby 3d printing and plywood CNC projects. It seemed buggy, and the workflow seemed strange, but I’ve never used anything else, so it’s fine, I guess, lol.
FreeCAD is of course the tool of choice for my hobby projects. All of our workgroup’s students get an introduction. But while its a great tool, you’ll notice the lack of … management (?) in the background. I’m not bashing or even judging. I very much appreciate all the work put into it. But it’s simply … not there yet to be considered a serious alternative to one of the big players.
I tried building a Steam box with the bootleg version of SteamOS from the deck… Can’t remember the name of the distro. Steam Games ran great for the most part, but getting Epic, EA and Ubisoft to work was a nightmare. If Linux can get that sorted, I’d never use Windows again.
You don’t need the bootlegged version of SteamOS, there is ChimeraOS (GitHub).
Also Steam runs great on a lot of distros, I use
ArchMint btw. ;-)For Epic Games, GOG and Amazon you can use Heroic Games Launcher (GitHub).
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So, literally every game I’ve bought on steam is playable on my Manjaro box.
Additionally, a recent KDE6 upgrade messed up my config and necessitated a full system reinstall. After remounting the partition where my steam games were installed on in the old sys, they…just worked. Even the ones that don’t cloud sync, saved games all there, DLC all there.
I don’t know how long reinstalling ~1TB of games would take on windows… a lot? Pretty sure you have to fully reinstall them, not just “point steam to the drive where they live”
Frankly I just don’t see why people tolerate windows anymore. It’s just laughably bad.
I used to keep my steam games on a separate windows 10 partition and it worked exactly as you describe after a reinstall, it was all there. It’s still incredibly cool that this works on Linux and we get to use it as daily driver without being forced to dual boot for games. A windows installation still lingers on my desktop but it’s been years since I booted into it.
If you have games in a separate partition, then you will have no need to reinstall it even in case with reinstalling Windows, though.
You haven’t really highlighted any of the linux advantages here.
You haven’t really highlighted any of the linux advantages here.
I wasn’t really on that side quest, I’m only asserting it’s (apparently) as easy as Windows is. If you don’t see “not having to use windows” as an advantage, or if it’s actually an impediment to your non-game-related computer use, that’s totally fair; subjectivity is absolutely part of this. I’m just glad it all works for me in my life and that I’m lucky enough to be able to get to work on the platform I prefer.
Like I wrote, Steam games were generally good, other storefronts, not so much.
Yeah, it’s definitely better now then it was before believe it or not. I honestly just avoid them at all cost even on windows. I hate games that ship their own launcher even though I bought it on steam
Bottles and Lutris would help in this case for you.
It didn’t work before, maybe I’ll try it again when I have the time.
I run both the Epic Store as well as the EA App via Bottles, and I had both up and running in about ten minutes.
You can also install both launchers under Steam via Proton. The process is a little more involved, but far from difficult.
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In total, I expect this to cost about a minute or two of my life if they never remove the ads. This figure is fairly typical for daily windows users, of which ~400kk are on win11. Microsoft will steal ~1.5*400,000,000 minutes with these ads. Ads that nearly no one will even consider clicking. 600,000,000 minutes=10,000,000 hours=1140 years. Multiple lifetimes in aggregate, all to be thrown away for nothing. I’d like to send a very strongly worded knot tying tutorial to Satya Nadella and Brad Smith.
Now figure out how much that is in lost revenue and write a headline like „Microsoft to lose economy one million gazzillion $“.
lost revenue
You can be sure this is retail only.
Enterprise Windows won’t have this feature and now appears to have added value for corporate customers.
That why I pay my gold partner friend for a copy of enterprise he gives to his developers.
Lots of people will spend a few hours then several tens of minutes monthly or so finding out how and then disabling the ads after each update
