Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

https://www.sambent.com/microsofts-plan-to-fix-windows-11-is-gaslighting/

by h0ek • 4 months ago

1046 755 4 months ago

sambent.com

no_shadowban_32• 4 months ago

These flowers smell like shit.

If you don't use Linux or MacOS yet, why?

jacooper4• 4 months ago

Macs are too expensive for the same performance/ram, and Linux still can't run proper creative software.

troupo4• 4 months ago

Macs are too expensive for the same performance/ram

This hasn't been true for at least a decade. And it's especially not true for the M* series Macs.

Even Macbook Neo can handle editing several layers of 4k video files in several apps while running everything else https://youtu.be/Mo6o8RKn7jE?is=opeCYMDbt7bUAdvS Try that on "the same performance/ram" Windows Machine

maxnoe• 4 months ago

"Most companies still do not publish Linux builds for creative software"

There, fixed it for you.

It's not like Linux is the blocker here.

nunodonato• 4 months ago

are you a creative professional? because I see that argument quite often as if people use Adobe CS daily, and then its mostly people who do basic stuff (that photopea or gimp can handle fine), but they like to feel "pro" by launching their pirated version of photoshop.

yourusername• 4 months ago

This used to be the case but looking at Macbooks now they are not much more expensive than a Windows laptop you would actually want to buy. And since they will still have some residual value 5 years from now i think it's about even.

dirasieb2• 4 months ago

feel free to link a windows computer (pre-built or parts, whatever you want) that outperforms the m4 mac mini while costing either the same or less

troupo4• 4 months ago

Macs are circling down the same drain.

nextlevelwizard5• 4 months ago

In what way?

conceptme• 4 months ago

Games

mschild4• 4 months ago

Fair. Depends on the game to be honest.

I switched from Windows 10 to Fedora recently. Most of the games I play work without issue but I know there are some which categorically refuse to work (mainly some specific anti-cheating software reasons).

no_shadowban_32• 4 months ago

Do you play fortnite? Steam's linux support is really good but I kept a Windows install for a couple of years so I could keep playing fortnite.

eknkc• 4 months ago

I have a desktop computer that I use for gaming so it had windows forever. Lately it started running laggy. Occasional frame drops and stuff. Reinstall, bios update etc nothing helped.

For debugging I installed Bazzite (Linux gaming distro) assuming compatibility would be shit but I can at least test native linux builds of some games to see if there is a hardware issue. The thing runs perfectly. I've been playing propert windows games on Proton with higher / more consistent FPS. It is kind of funny at this point. Granted I do not play any competitive / multiplayer games.

I guess Valve did a great job on the Steam Deck sw.

wildrhythms2• 4 months ago

I've been running Fedora (or a flavor) on my gaming PC for two years. All my games work. I understand some competitive games with intrusive anti cheat are incompatible, but with the success of the steam deck I don't think the gaming argument is holding much water these days.

JollySharp08• 4 months ago

I was playing RE9 at 4K on my Debian 13 last weekend. The vast majority of games work, even some live service games. 5 years ago you would face significant issues, today that simply isn't the case.

dude2507112• 4 months ago

Because they suck.

scrollop• 4 months ago

I moved to ultramarine linux and it's great - fast, has a nifty desktop management system, a few bugs but more than happy compared to using microsoft.

"It sucks"

Ha!

bob1029• 4 months ago

I use a blend of Windows, MacOS, iOS and Linux.

Each is good at its own thing. I don't understand the game of picking exactly one hill to die on.

I spend about 60% of my time on Apple operating systems, and 40% elsewhere. Windows really does suck from a UX perspective, but if you are trying to make money doing things professionally with a computer, it's hard to beat. Running outlook and office on Mac just doesn't hit the same way.

red3692• 4 months ago

I agree completely about each being good for its own thing. I quite like iOS as a phone OS. The limitations often bother me, but since it's tiny screen that needs to fit in my pocket, I'm creating my own limitations anyway so I'll use it less (1).

I switch around enough that I try not to do crazy amounts of personalisation in my desktop OS. Probably this evens out the OSs and there are aspects I like and dislike about each. I guess I prefer KDE Plasma to Windows or MacOS. I choose that for my own computer, but I spend far more time in Windows. I'm not sure I agree it it much worse from a UX perspective. It allows keyboard only usage very easily, which is something I struggled with in MacOS.

1) I'm only focusing on the UI - there are some things I struggle to forgive, like not being able to set add my own ringtone or alarm tone, or not being able to have the volume of a ringtone increase as the phone rings like on every ancient feature phone.

hu32• 4 months ago

macOS sucks! you need a ton of third party tools and customizations to make it sane for basic things like window management. It's no better than Windows with regards of ammount of tweaking needed for power users.

And it scans every executable and command run and sends a hash to motherbase. I don't know how people put up with this. There's probably some dangerous way to disable that like, let me guess, disabling SIP...

And it sucks at gaming.

Linux on the other hand is great for power users!

alex_duf3• 4 months ago

I've installed linux (debian LTS with XFCE) on my mom's computer and she recently called me to thank me. She says her computer is much quieter now (meaning fewer notifications). She only needs a web browser and a text editor.

So you're right, it's great for power users, it's also great for other users.

dahcryn4• 4 months ago

you need a ton of third party tools to make it behave like Windows, that's what you mean.

I'm perfectly happy with my "vanilla" macbook. Runs Baldurs Gate 3 and my final fantasy ps2 emulator just fine, and even trackmania was quite easy to get installed and runs well.

Can't comment on that hash thing, but I don't see why that would be a problem? It's not linked to your name or something. Windows does a ton of things too that I find inexcusable, such as changing settings or permissions after updates, those have an actual impact on my daily experience with these things

g947o2• 4 months ago

Window management: only if you are the kind of power user who needs complex layout. I have used Windows for decades and have used Mac on and off, and have even bought one of those window management app on MacOS, but never needed to use them. In rare occasions where I need several windows open, side-by-side on each of dual screens is usually good enough, if not I probably am working in a terminal where I use tmux.

Gaming: that's a fact but again doesn't matter to most people. Most people play video games on phones/tablets/consoles if they play games at all. PC gaming is a relative minority, and (regular) Windows laptops can only do lightweight gaming anyway. The amount of people who decides what "everyday computer" they should buy based on whether they are going to play games on it is very small. Plus, you get much better ROI by buying a PS5+Macbook Air than spending the same amount of money on a gaming laptop.

skc• 4 months ago

Because Windows works just fine for me.

I'm a dev, I don't game. No issues.

Why people find this hard to believe is kind of puzzling to be honest. As if everyone's experience simply HAS to match your own.

matltc• 4 months ago

Do you use powershell or run WSL

nirava3• 4 months ago

Depends on whether using someone else’s windows machine leaves you crazy annoyed.

My windows machine is also “fine” for the most part because i turned off whatever I could and tried to mod whatever I could not. Even so, every once in a while, typing “code” and being taken to an edge bing search makes me want to rip it to shreds.

And I delay every update as far as possible and am filled with dread when it finally wont let me postpone it.

It isn’t that fine now that I think about it.

Mashimo2• 4 months ago

I used linux on Desktop 15 years ago, tried it once in a while every few years. But there was always something. Often video driver, tearing, hardware video decoding, or a specific game that I played a lot. And now it would be that my DJ software does not run on it.

Still use it on my server though.

I might try a MacBook air at some point, but they are quite expensive when you need 1TB disk for your music files. But for now my ThinkPad T14 Gen1 still runs fine. I don't need more battery or power. No fan could be cool.

alexb_5• 4 months ago

The last time I tried to use Linux, I said "fuck this" when I had to open up a text editor for something so basic as making a shortcut with command line arguments. This is the easiest menu in the world on Windows, but it took me looking up a bunch of things to get it to not work on Linux.

The real crime, by a lot, it middle click. I did not realize how often I use middle click scroll until I switched to Linux and it didn't work anymore.

whobre• 4 months ago

I do use Linux at work and for programming at home, but for general office work Windows is just better, sorry.

As for MacOS, I just hate it.

krige3• 4 months ago

Linux doesn't run the software I want to use, or runs it badly. MacOS... lmao.

stndef2• 4 months ago

I think we need to be a bit more careful and considerate around the use of language around physical abuse, or abuse in general, and using software.

Saying that here as someone that isn't fond of the Windows experience these days, but the two are not relatable.

nextlevelwizard5• 4 months ago

Beating is a normal English idiom. While I do sympathize with anyone suffering from abuse, I highly doubt anyone is actually suffering from use of the word.

stndef2• 4 months ago

I'm willing to be wrong, but it's specifically mentioned as an analogy for abuse in the article itself.

Not trying to turn everything "woke", but phrasing of scenarios around this just takes away from the severity of what actual abuse is.

afandian3• 4 months ago

I agree with stndef. "Flowers after beating" is a very direct evocation of physical abuse in an intimate relationship. Whether or not you think it's appropriate.

WithinReason• 4 months ago

Heartbreaking: The Worst Company You Know Just Made A Great Point

halflife• 4 months ago

Enough with the memes.

mdrzn• 4 months ago

Why are there so many "slop" animations in this article? They don't actually provide anything useful over the already explained text, and the "click to restart" is incredibly distracting.

alberto-m• 4 months ago

Reading the article without Firefox's reader mode is a pain. Maybe it's a secret plan of Mozilla to promote their browser.

baal80spam4• 4 months ago

Don't all browsers have it nowadays? I feel like it's been in my Brave forever.

RankingMember• 4 months ago

Whenever I see stuff like that I ask myself "who is this for", like who wants to see those elements animated for no good reason?

Macha2• 4 months ago

It’s quite common for companies to work their way up to the line of the most user hostile version of their product that users will tolerate. Especially with software where they can just go flip a switch and turn off whatever feature did cross the line but keep everything they gained by inching up to the line, which seems to inevitably result in things like the condition of windows 11.

I think the only way this gets better for consumers is if customer response more often insisted further roll backs than just the last straw if a company crosses the line. The risk of losing other gains at the expense of the user should discourage companies from trying to go full on maximum extraction.

Sadly the only recent cases to achieve that level of success were the reactions to Unity’s install pricing and wizards new OGL. Mostly companies get away with “oh my bad, this final step was just an experiment, we’ve rolled it back for now” to try again later, or just toughing out the negative reception and hoping their competitors come along for the ride too so users have no choice

mschild4• 4 months ago

The other thing is availability of alternatives.

Most standard users simply dont have an option. Mac Neo brought Apple into a lower price range, but requires a new device. Linux is there (and frankly fantastic at this point) but good luck getting the average person through the setup process.

chii• 4 months ago

good luck getting the average person through the setup process.

an enterprising hardware manufacturer can take on the mantle, and be the trail blazer with a no-setup machine that works.

Personally, i would imagine something like framework laptop, and steam machine, are the best candidates.

ineedasername• 4 months ago

Good luck getting the average person through the setup process

AI is part of the problem with what MS has shoved in to things but it may be part of what can help with the underlying issue of this behavior by corporations.

The average user increasingly will not need to be walked through in certain ways, they’ll only have to be aware something, some way, is possible. Because we are most of usthe average, meaning outsider to knowledge and understanding of things their functioning on a computer. I can strip out tired windows behavior to some extent and certainly stand up a Linux desktop. But I didn’t know how to easily manage retrieval of data from an old disc image that refused to mount. But I knew it was there and not impossible so I asked Claude. A one shot prompt that a few minutes later had Claude reading raw bytes in someway and finding the location of a few files I needed.

So there is potential for AI to fill some gaps in this way and make some things easier and more in reach of average users. It’s potential only though, so continuing to work and ensure open models remain a thing, it’s important. Just like the Internet enabled a lot of things previously out of reach of people. And yeah, that was not an un mixed blessing with the rest, so all the more reason to move forward thoughtfully.

dude2507112• 4 months ago

I think managers were promoted for infecting their features with Copilot, and developers for infecting them with React, and here we are.

OneDrive managers on the other hand are one step away from inventing some way of adding a gacha mechanic.

mexicocitinluez7• 4 months ago

Blaming React is absurd. Its like blaming the screwdriver instead of the person using it.

goalieca• 4 months ago

So you’re saying that the people (HR) team is responsible and that their retention and growth policies are to blame.

severak_cz• 4 months ago

Infecting with React can be easily explained by pathetic state of desktop application development environment.

See https://domenic.me/windows-native-dev/

esafak• 4 months ago

It is worth pointing out that it is the Recommended section in the menu that uses React Native. See also https://devblogs.microsoft.com/react-native/rnw-settings-win...

I ditched Windows long ago so I'm mentioning this only in the interest of accuracy.

baq2• 4 months ago

It’s quite common for companies to work their way up to the line of the most user hostile version of their product that users will tolerate.

this is in general how the market for pretty much everything works (sometimes 'users' are replaced by 'the regulator', but it doesn't matter too much).

lesson in there is 'majority of users don't care nearly as much as you think', usually.

Draiken4• 4 months ago

I don't think "care" is the right word here at all. We simply don't have options.

This is capitalism's biggest flaw: it's based on the assumption that there will be competition, but competition eventually leads to winners that then consolidate their positions and we end up with no real choices.

You're telling me people would pick a worse OS because they don't care even if they had real options? I don't believe that for a second.

awakeasleep• 4 months ago

If a regulator is effective at protecting the users, that regulator becomes a target for the industry

mihaaly2• 4 months ago

Things forced on you is not market. You are not talking about market rules at all. This is not it!

BloondAndDoom3• 4 months ago

It’s an option issue, I use an extremely modified version of windows, and same one for the last 5 years I think with the updates, local accounts, no ads, no telemetry, tweaks etc. I still don’t like tons of things about windows but compared to Linux desktops it’s heaven (for me). Don’t even get me started on macOS desktop experience it’s a fucking miserable (again for my personal taste).

A lot of windows UI design decisions are pretty good. They mess it up now and then like windows 8 (tablet design mess) disaster, especially now with WSL 2.0, it delivers everything I need.

Do I still hate it , yes for the reasons explained in this article and other stupid designed features like search index, windows defender , mix of legacy and new dialogs, for the shitty design of powershell and then the mess of mixed shells, terminal etc.

List goes on, but comparatively I’ll pick windows desktop over anything out there at the moment. It’s a personal choice but I assume majority of windows user feel this way (or cannot afford macOS :))

surajrmal2• 4 months ago

A single product meant for all the users will inevitably be a poor fit for most of them. We need more variety of products for the different segments of the market. Alternatively we need more knobs to tune things to user needs. One promise of AI is enabling folks to personalize product experiences, but so far it's all been surface level.

I think the desktop Linux ecosystem is an example of something healthier, but it goes too far in the other direction. There are too many options to choose from that it's hard to find the one for your needs.

Henchman212• 4 months ago

lesson in there is 'majority of users don't care nearly as much as you think', usually.

How can this be your takeaway when there is no channel for communication with the users? There is no signal at all so you assume what is convenient for you. But this has no bearing on actual user sentiment, its just convenience for you.

Part and parcel of the “problem” with tech people is they assume they can just fill in the gaps with their preferences and pretend they’re actually user preferences. In the rest of life this is called “bullshit”.

jeppester2• 4 months ago

The only way this get better is if the user gets to choose between an OS with ads, lock-in, telemetry etc. and then one with none of that.

As it is now, buying a laptop in a store is a "pick your poison" situation.

jacquesm5• 4 months ago

What bugged me for years is that I ended up paying the microsoft or apple tax that way. In the end I figured out a more efficient way around that than any of the rebates/refunds: just buy second hand hardware. Someone else paid for and used the windows license, I just need the box.

prox• 4 months ago

This.. give me the - option - to not be an ad infested hellhole of an OS and sell me a product.

Ranxer• 4 months ago

Better yet: don't pick any poison at all -- both System76 and Tuxedo Computers (as examples, sometimes you can buy a latop without an OS and save the money, same goes for PCs) offer laptops with Linux installed: no Microslop tax, and hardware that's guaranteed to work with OSS.

jorvi• 4 months ago

I mean, this goes way beyond OSes.

Look at the mobile YouTube client. The bottom navigation bar has the "+" create button stuffed right in the middle of it, larger than any other button. What % of users creates YouTube content? Probably <1%. What pp of those do it in the mobile YouTube client? Probably 0.1%. Yet the button is there, with no way to disable it.

In general, why don't apps have a "creator" toggle, off-by-default, that optimized the entire UI for viewing / consuming? Just how apps like Uber have either an entire separate app for 'partners', or toggle.

I know the reason this happens is because we aren't the real customers of an app. Nor are the creators / partners. The real customers are the shareholders. And YouTube has no competitor, so they can go buckwild with anything that synthetically increases KPIs.

I think the only app in recent memory that I have seen right the ship is Spotify. The past year they have introduced a lot of toggles for things like the shuffle algorithm, the dumb looping album art videos, audio loudness normalization being split out into normalization and compression ('volume'), etc; About the only thing that's missing is a toggle to disable podcasts, just like YouTube needs a toggle to completely disable shorts.

Any PMs reading this, be our hero. Fight the good fight.

geophile• 4 months ago

On the Linux subreddits recent, I have seen a great increase in two kinds of posts: 1) That’s it, I’ve had it, windows is dead to me, I have moved/will move to Linux. Help me pick a distro. 2) I’d love to get off window and move to Linux but I can’t because it doesn’t have an app that works identically to word/excel/photoshop/whatever.

njovin• 4 months ago

I hate to sound like an apologist but it seems unfair to me to lump MS and Apple into the same bucket here.

Yes, Apple has a 'walled garden' to an extent, but I've never once worried about MacOS serving me an ad from a third party, and their privacy controls are top notch and seem to get better as advertisers attack methods get more sophisticated.

I can count on one hand the number of times I've had to jump through a few hoops to get an unsigned app installed, and each time it's been relatively painless.

yfw2• 4 months ago

Like that windows recall feature which they keep pushing

Gigachad3• 4 months ago

Because Microsoft makes far more money on enterprise and ai products than they do selling windows licenses to consumers.

h1fra• 4 months ago

That's how the world works for everything: software, politics, social stuff (good or bad), war, etc. People are bad at judging gradual/slow changes but when you push a bit too far, you have already gained so much that you can usually just say sorry and move on

HexPhantom5• 4 months ago

The rollback only ever applies to the thing people noticed. Everything else quietly becomes the new normal.

kiicia• 4 months ago

Too late now. Multiple people having anything to say when choosing hardware and software, including me, will no longer advise or approve buying windows machine or using windows in general.

dmos622• 4 months ago

I think private interests should not run what is effectively public infrastructure, like Windows. Or, put another way, infrastructure of national importance should be publicly controlled and governed with transparency and public interests in mind. Either that, or true capitalist competition has to be reenabled aggressively: forbid walled gardens, split up the Googles, etc. This centralization of public utility and power in the hands of private individuals, coupled with an uncompetitive market, is nonsensical. Competition or nationalization.

apetresc• 4 months ago

Windows is not public infrastructure. If the government's reliance on it has reached the level of "national importance", then that's the problem that needs to be addressed, not Windows' ownership.

Public infrastructure should be built on open-source, period.

fsflover• 4 months ago

It’s quite common for companies to work their way up to the line of the most user hostile version of their product that users will tolerate.

It's called "enshittification": https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/26/ursula-franklin/

ruszki• 4 months ago

It’s quite common for companies

This is not general. This is true only on markets which are full regarding available customers, and there is no foreseeable growth.

What we can see in IT in the past 10-15 years (especially after around 2015) is the slow progress towards this state from a rich and competitive (and personally I think a way more fun) one.

I worked for dying companies (e.g. Ericsson), for slowly moving ones (e.g. Santander), and for several now dead startups, and what happened with Google, Microsoft, etc is that they slowly moving from the "startup" market - there is still available non conquered market segments - to the dying, slowly moving one - where there are a few large players, and it's not possible to grow in any meaningful way with your own skills. The only difference now compared to the decades until the 90s is that antitrust checks and balances are dead, and they can artificially inflate their own power, which haven't happened in this scale for at least 100 years. And it caused world shattering problems back then, and it will now too.

I would leave this field happily, even when I'm exceptionally good in it, because it's more and more disgusting. Only if there would be any good alternatives, which wouldn't require me to loose at least a decade of my life. But unfortunately, the balance is way more fucked up to easily change my lifestyle at this point. And it will be just worse than this.

nicoburns5• 4 months ago

I think the only way this gets better for consumers is if customer response more often insisted further roll backs than just the last straw if a company crosses the line.

I think consumers have little power here. Our economic system fundamentally chooses to reward such behaviour. Until we change that, the power will always be with these kind of companies.

Perhaps governments could levy punative fines in such situations. But that seems like a bandaid (and ripe for corruption). Ideally we'd have structural change that prevents this behaviour in the first place. Perhaps worker representation on company boards. Or progressive corporation taxation that more strongly encourages smaller companies and more competition.

maerF0x03• 4 months ago

I think consumers have little power here. Our economic system fundamentally chooses to reward such behaviour.

Consumers have the final say, our economic system fundamentally is consumer spending. (Ok, save for most recent year(s) of mag7 AI buildout. But generally that's the case for USA economy).

We have to stop taking out our wallet and just accepting things like sheep. (nearly) Every one of the "scrapped" computers could have run a *nix OS and been a middle finger to microsoft.

tantalor2• 4 months ago

consumers have little power here

Don't buy their products, and tell your friends

deaux3• 4 months ago

None of those. All we need is enforcing laws that are already on the books. Antitrust laws. Break up big tech.

KetoManx64• 4 months ago

The reason we are in such a position is because government contracts and government involvement with companies like Microsoft Amazon. They don't have to care about consumers when they have multi billion dollar Gov contracts.

rmah• 4 months ago

"Our economic system fundamentally chooses to reward such behavior". This is true, but what people seem to fail to grasp is that rewarding such behavior == buying the product. If people simply didn't buy it, they wouldn't do it. It's really that simple. It may be hard to not buy, of course. The alternatives may be worse, there may be downsides to not buying, etc. But nothing else will really be effective.

observationist2• 4 months ago

I'd love if everyone switched to Linux and the walled gardens just died, but the most realistic outcome would be Microsoft and Apple having to up their game and improve their respective products. Right now they're driving hellbent for leather into OSaaS monthly computer subscriptions, eliminating use agency to the greatest degree possible, and exploiting every possible intrusion and usurpation of consumer privacy, vacuuming up every last bit of data and monetizing it to the greatest degree possible, without any concurrent return in value to the consumer.

The only way that stops is by having enough people leave that they change their behavior, and it's not sufficient to switch to the competition that is operating under the same perverted incentives under the same system with the same failure modes. No Windows, no Mac, no Chromebooks, no enshittified corporate quagmire of awfulness and despair.

The solution is simple - use Linux. Set your family up with Linux.

It's the year of the Linux desktop; it's never been easier or better, and it's never been more important to make the leap.

mlsu• 4 months ago

The best solution would be competition. But go ahead try to compete, you will be crushed.

halJordan• 4 months ago

Your are suffering from a fundamental misidentification. There are only people. There is no system doing anything. There are people doing things. Consumers have as much control as they want.

When you insist that the people comprising the system have no agency, you're the one perpetuating it

deaux3• 4 months ago

It’s quite common for companies

It's quite common for megacorps, FAANG and friends, NASDAQ bigwigs.

It's rare for small companies, and extremely rare for independent developers.

GolfPopper• 4 months ago

Speaking only for myself, this sort of behavior is a great way to break the Trust Thermocline [1]. The point where I am so frustrated, so fed up, so expectant that said company will abuse me again, that I refuse to do business with them at all, under any circumstances, no matter if it is inconvenient to avoid them or not.

1. https://x.com/garius/status/1588115310124539904

willis9362• 4 months ago

Exactly. This behavior is blindly driving to "line go up" without realizing they just dug their own grave. 2025 was a series of existential missteps for Microsoft. This is a historic moment. These suits would rather die than try to build trust.

SilverElfin• 4 months ago

It’s quite common for companies to work their way up to the line of the most user hostile version of their product that users will tolerate.

Yes, when there isn’t real competition. And that’s in part due to a long history of anti competitive practices but also simply because Microsoft is too big and should be broken up.

cratermoon2• 4 months ago

It’s quite common for companies to work their way up to the line of the most user hostile version of their product that users will tolerate

I get the impression that many companies are working through this with AI-assisted coding. How bad can the product get before the revenue loss is greater than money saved by firing programmers and deploying AI slop? For products like Windows and Office, the subscription model and enterprise account revenue provides a huge cushion for decreasing quality before they even have to apologize and roll back.

htx80nerd2• 4 months ago

"It’s quite common for companies to work their way up to the line of the most user hostile version of their product that users will tolerate."

developer delusion. devs who barely use their own apps. who dont understand the day-to-day user experience.

samrus• 4 months ago

No this is product and finance. Product wants more features because that looks better to leadership. And finance likes ads

m463• 4 months ago

The answer to all of this has traditionally been robust competition.

A framework of just and fair laws and regulations should support this, backed up by open enforcement.

but, yeah.

omoikane• 4 months ago

The underlying philosophy for these companies seem to be "ask for forgiveness, not permission". Some of us are done forgiving, but I am not sure there are enough of us to reverse this cultural trend.

jayd16• 4 months ago

You'll note that those are both B2B fumbles. The savvy end user usually doesn't have the needed weight.

kivle• 4 months ago

I've noticed recently that my Windows 11 start menu isn't a 50% gray empty blob anymore. I always disable "recommended apps" (eg. ad supported app suggestions), so 50% of the space in my start menu was unused, yet it was still there of course. Kind of refreshing to have a somewhat normal looking start menu again with something as revolutionary as a list of apps right when you open it. Let's see how long it takes before they mess it up again.

coffeemug• 4 months ago

A view from my small corner on the inside: taste isn't merely not incentivized, it's actively disincentivized. It's not selected for during the interview process, if you demonstrate a little of it nobody cares, if you demonstrate too much of it you clash with everyone else's priorities which quickly becomes career limiting. So people willing to fight for taste never advance.

This isn't some nefarious plot to screw over users. Taste is not prioritized because nobody has it and thus can't recognize it. Can't value something you don't even recognize. This is orthogonal to talent btw. Lots of people there who are insanely good at what they do, who produce the most hideous API specs you've ever seen, as one example.

A much more mundane (and almost certainly true) explanation is that people who put all that crap in legitimately thought it's a good idea. Taste is its own thing and it's just not in Microsoft's DNA.

justonceokay• 4 months ago

I think about how a successful and robust ecosystem is one in which there are many parasites at every level of the food chain. If your ecosystem doesn’t have parasites then it’s not operating with nearly the amount of interconnectedness or efficiency that it could be otherwise.

It’s similar to that idea that floats around where $0 lost to fraud is not the optimal amount. If you over index on removing fraud from your system eventually you will spend more on monitoring and removing it than you save on the fraud itself. That is time you could have spent building more things that make money.

The ecosystem is a beast of its own and the optimal state of the ecosystem is /not/the optimal state for any actor within it

dreamcompiler• 4 months ago

I call this odious practice "profit maximization titration" and almost all companies do it now. They continually enshittify the product a little at a time until they notice a dip in profits and then they dial back the shittiness a bit. Or if they're really sophisticated they will enshittify the product by a large amount and then do a binary search to restore product functionality in logarithmically smaller steps until the balance between profits and customer dissatisfaction re-stabilizes. They 'git bisect' the product's shittiness, as it were.

naikrovek• 4 months ago

The old “two steps backward, one step forward” routine.

nineteen999• 4 months ago

This wasn't even the first time for MS .. Win98SE was a similar disaster stuffed full of junk, most people don't remember Vista fondly either. In each case they redeemed themselves temporarily .. XP following 89SE and Windows 7/8 after Vista. History repeats I guess.

raxxorraxor• 4 months ago

That is power the user loses if he chooses SaaS for the most part. An OS is still a different case, but that part is covered with restrictive update policies.

I do believe that Microsoft does bleed users though. This is an effect that isn't easily observed, but users tend to follow developers at some point when the software repertoire begins to get more attractive on other operating systems. The industry still employs a lot of native Windows apps, but more and more get replaced through alternatives and here Windows will be less relevant at some point as well.

ptero2• 4 months ago

Microsoft lost its way much earlier than 4 years ago. It abused users at the time of Netscape wars and forcing Internet Explorer down people's throats.

But they hit an infinite gold mine with government adoption and for the last 30 years no amount of bad engineering was able to shake off government use.

Windows 11 is bad? Yes, but did you try Microsoft Teams? The only way to force Microsoft into "users matter" engineering is to get govvies off it. My 2c.

mschild4• 4 months ago

I find Teams is often simply picked because of cost reasons.

A lot of companies are paying for office and teams comes bundled with it. Why pay extra when its included?

joe_mamba3• 4 months ago

Yep, the amount of penny pinching some companies do nowadays is insane. Teams coming "for free" with their Microsoft 365 subscription is net positive for the bean counters.

9dev7• 4 months ago

That was the reason we ditched Slack. I hate Teams with a passion, but we're not going to pay 6k per year for a chat app if we get Teams for free. There's just no way to defend that decision.

dahcryn4• 4 months ago

yeah I don't understand how this isn't blatant market abuse through their monopoly position

Regulators should be all over it. EU has tried, but unsuccesfully, since it was lawyers who came up with the mitigation.

account423• 4 months ago

Don't forget network effects. If other companies you are working with use Teams then there is less friction if you also use Teams yourself.

throwa3562623• 4 months ago

Am I the only one who prefers Teams to the Slack and Zoom?

The ability to write in the meeting chat before and after a meeting for example. That is some serious quality of life function that all others are lacking.

smackeyacky• 4 months ago

No but it’s hard to get excited about two different flavours of shit sandwich. Teams is terrible piece of software no doubt but slack is worse, marginally

BLKNSLVR2• 4 months ago

Yes, and you are wrong.

Objectively.

Ekaros3• 4 months ago

I haven't had that many issues on Windows "native" client. So I really don't get what the critical issue is... To me it has long looked like good enough.

jwrallie• 4 months ago

Teams is not that bad if you are using Office and OneDrive anyway, as it integrates well with those.

Most of my team members are using different named chats for discussion instead of channels, which are used for more important notices. Somehow it works, and our channels on slack were also basically chats anyway.

My only gripe is that Linux does not have a “native” client anymore and the web client is full of bugs on Firefox. But it’s Microsoft, what can you expect. It’s not that bad except for memory consumption on other platforms.

delecti2• 4 months ago

Teams if you only use it for meetings is great, truly. It's easy and simple. Messages in the attached chat rooms of recurring meetings is really convenient. DMs work seamlessly and sort in between those meeting chats.

The problem is that the "teams" in teams are a cobbled mess that works like a combination of forums posts and chat rooms. If you have coworkers who really like that functionality, you're forced to interact with the garbage underbelly of the app. My opinion of Teams shifted drastically when we got a new PM (former MS employee) who started putting things there, making them hard to keep track of.

projektfu2• 4 months ago

I don't like either very much. Both Teams and Zoom try to stay resident after you're done. I use both from the browser now because they are both abusive.

rishav_sharan• 4 months ago

Well I genuinely like Teams. Being forced to work on a mix of Zoom & teams in my new work, I have found an appreciation of using M365 connected tools - Outlook,claendar, teams, sharepoint, copilot etc just work very well together for me.

a_victorp• 4 months ago

Zoom has this feature as well

dismalpedigree• 4 months ago

Completely agree. Not just govt, but everyone who interacts with govt, especially DoW. Meetings are on DoD teams. Proposals and updates must be Powerpoint. Memos in word. Windows to connect to some networks.

We tried not using Office or Windows. Ended up needing a laptop with Windows and Office anyway.

Note to MS Product Manager: this should not be a success story. I was once your biggest cheerleader, now I am so desperate to get away from you that I am starting to look at Google as my savior.

GuB-422• 4 months ago

We could say that Microsoft never lost its way in that regard, it has always been predatory.

Where it lost its way however is Microsoft actually cared about Windows, it was their flagship product after all. It was terrible in some aspects, but also excellent in some others. I particular, they took compatibility very seriously, which is far from an easy task in the wild PC ecosystem. They were also quite good in the UI/UX department. The Office suite was unmatched too, I tried a few alternative, none of them came close.

Now, they completely broke their UI/UX, and that's not just the ads, forced Copilot stuff, etc... It is pure incompetence. They still have good compatibility, but it is not as impressive of a feat as it once was, as apps today are naturally more portable because of all the abstraction layers (performance be damned, but that's another story). The traditional Office suite is still good, but they are in the process of sabotaging it with web-based apps that remove tons of features without actually simplifying anything.

yfw2• 4 months ago

Its as steve jobs said, once you control market share theres no incentive to build a good product and you lose the ability to do it.

olav• 4 months ago

The traditional Office suite is still good

I don't think so. The web version is mostly incompatible with the Windows or Mac desktop versions.

Have you compared the UI of Word/Powerpoint/Excel with alternatives like Apple Pages/Keynote/Numbers or Google Docs/Sheets? For me, the MS products are a complete mess with arbitrary collections of unrelated buttons, abysmal font rendering and insane defaults.

Gigachad3• 4 months ago

Windows used to exist in a competitive environment where they had to fight to remain relevant. For a long time now they have become complacent, no matter how many ads, product placements, and user abusive features they push, people will tolerate it.

The situation has only just changed now that Apple and Valve are getting close to threatening the Windows monopoly.

HexPhantom5• 4 months ago

Yeah, it used to feel like "we'll crush competitors, but at least we ship solid software"

blincoln• 4 months ago

Where it lost its way however is Microsoft actually cared about Windows

I agree with you, but I feel like they've stopped caring about most of their software. Windows is just the most egregious, high-impact example.

SharePoint and Teams were the first ones I noticed. I used to run an enterprise SharePoint farm for a big company. Under the covers it was a Rube Goldberg machine. Microsoft has some of the best database-related developer knowledge in the world because of SQL Server, but SharePoint was storing its data in giant XML blobs instead of using proper, efficient table schemas.

That lazy "it works (most of the time), and it's cheaper for us to offload the cost onto our customers' devices" approach was even more pronounced in Teams, and now Office and Windows itself each spawn about a million Edge WebViews for the same reason.

I never thought I'd be nostalgic for the Microsoft of the mid-2000s.

tremon3• 4 months ago

It's a bit baffling to me that people are talking about Microsoft "losing their way" as if they ever operated differently. They have always been user-hostile if it increased next quarter's outlook. There's a clear continuing thread from the Halloween files in the 90s via antitrust probes in the 00s, the handling of Skype and Teams in the 10s, and now Copilot -- and that's ignoring all the mishandling on the business side of things (e.g. forcing Dynamics cloud migrations, Power Platform in a permanent state of unworthiness, the customary rug pulling via user license changes, constantly renaming products).

Microsoft being good to their customers is the anomaly, not the other way around.

bell-cot• 4 months ago

I'd read "Microsoft lost their way" as a description of how the speaker's worldview has changed, as they've gained experience and perspective.

Microsoft is often good to their customers. Generally in situations where badness has a poor RoI, or they're trying to lure you deeper into their clutches.

philistine3• 4 months ago

Microsoft has indeed lost their way with Microsoft, but not in the sense that they became evil ghouls. They've always been evil ghouls. No, what's happened is that Windows became a minor part of Microsoft's profits. The whole company is not focused on Windows the way Apple is with the iPhone.

The higher ups no longer care about Windows as a product itself. They only care about Windows as a storefront to their other efforts (OneDrive, Office, Copilot, etc.)

tombert6• 4 months ago

I mean, at least their software used to be pretty good. The Windows NT kernel is arguably a better design than Linux. I complain about NTFS now, but thirty years ago it was better than most other filesystems. And Windows NT at least didn't jam a billion ads down your throat.

Granted, MS has always been a pretty evil anti-competitive company, so I'm not trying to sanitize them much here.

HexPhantom5• 4 months ago

Even if gov adoption dropped, I suspect the incentives wouldn't change much unless there were genuinely viable, low-friction alternatives.

bluescrn5• 4 months ago

Windows has historically oscillated between pretty awful and pretty decent.

XP was good, Vista was bad, Win7 was good, Win8 was a disaster, Win10 was decent again. Now we're in a low part of the cycle with Win11.

Maybe there's another 'good Windows' on the way. But I'm sceptical this time, being in the era of enshittification and the AI slop bubble, where everything is user-hostile by design, where if something seems like a good deal, you know it's a bait+switch.

aleph_minus_one6• 4 months ago

XP was good, Vista was bad, Win7 was good, Win8 was a disaster, Win10 was decent again. Now we're in a low part of the cycle with Win11.

The cycle is more complicated:

* 2000: exceptional

* XP: bad (the original XP was indeed bad)

* XP SP2 (from a technological perspective basically a new OS): decent

* Vista: bad

* 7: good

* 8: awful (it was so bad that soon 8.1 was introduced)

* 8.1: bad

* 10: controversial (some say it's "decent"; some say it's "bad" because of the magnitude of telemetry (spying) that Windows 10 introduced)

* 11: awful

So, in my opinion it's rather a general downward trend with some overlaid cycle.

JollySharp08• 4 months ago

No they haven't oscillated.

Generally Windows NT line to Windows 2000-7 was pretty decent. Even Vista once Service Pack 1 came out was pretty decent. Vista Service Pack 2 is basically Windows 7. Win 8 and everything after has been garbage.

duped• 4 months ago

Yes, but did you try Microsoft Teams?

People seem to forget Teams is the unloved child of a forced marriage between acquisitions, it was never going to turn out successful.

dartharva• 4 months ago

What % of Microsoft's revenue comes from government contracts? I'd be very surprised if it's more than 2-3%

i_cannot_hack• 4 months ago

Pulling the emergency break promising to improve a situation will in general not build any trust unless the mea culpa also includes:

1. An analysis of what allowed the situation to get out of control to begin with

2. Systematic changes to prevent it from happening again

Otherwise you will just be in the same situation again in 3 years. And neither is included in Microsoft's messaging here.

Wobbles42• 4 months ago

I don't really see that happening here.

Microsoft doesn't have any trust to lose, and they won't be gaining any by this move.

That is the one advantage they have in all of this. Their public image is as bad as it can get.

raddan2• 4 months ago

they won't be gaining any by this move.

Then why even do it?

itopaloglu83• 4 months ago

Microslop is saying “I’m sorry that you’re offended” and will continue to abuse their users. All of this is a PR campaign to fix their image so that they can raise more money.

gentleman112• 4 months ago

I think this "emergency break" is just going to get eye rolls from most people

mexicocitinluez7• 4 months ago

Every product manager at the company in the Windows and MS office products divisions need fired.

They have made so many unforced errors in recent years its hard to imagine serious people currently inhabit those roles.

Office.com, the cornerstone of Office, is now just a prompt. A prompt!!!!

They make it near impossible to manage a small/medium sized company with the unending tweaking, moving, and rebranding of every single portal in that product.

It's absolutely wild that a company as big and important to the business world as they are is playing this fast and loose. I'm quite frankly embarrassed for them.

M95D2• 4 months ago

Yeah, but...

Did they increase profits and/or stock price or not? That's the only relevant question. Not what happend to Office.com or what you think about their products.

Also, you and me are not the customers. Govs and corporations are.

anthonylevine5• 4 months ago

Not what happend to Office.com or what you think about their products.

I don't understand this point. Are you suggesting that less people being happy with their product and thus less people buying it is not related to the valuation of the company and their stock?

Also, you and me are not the customers. Govs and corporations are.

Huh?

I get you're trying to make a point about the bottom line, but that doesn't mean the bottom line is impervious to bad product decisions or that the people who are paying for their products are not in fact their customers.

wewewedxfgdf• 4 months ago

Windows 11 should run on ANY PC.

I am customer and I absolutely hate it that they have restricted the machine that Windows can run on.

If they don't fix this sort of anti customer garbage then all their words are pure horseshit.

SloppyDrive• 4 months ago

This is one of the areas that annoy me due to how limp microsoft is with the requirements...

Either give a solid set of requirements that let a dev assume things about a windows 11 system (good hardware security, in particular), or fuck off entirely.

alex_duf3• 4 months ago

have you thought about switching to another OS?

mkl3• 4 months ago

Unfortunately Linux doesn't run well on my Microsoft Surface Pro 4 (which is perfectly functional other than the lack of Windows security updates). I'm very unlikely to buy or recommend a Microsoft computer again, even though I liked the hardware.

Havoc• 4 months ago

Their office subscriptions are also going up in price at. Crazy rates. Giving Stiff competition to food price inflation

All because it has some AI stuff on it that I don’t want.

BLKNSLVR2• 4 months ago

Funny thing: I wanted to try out Copilot to help with creating a starting point for a diagram in Visio.

Copilot isn't in Visio (at least in the subscription my work pays for).

I used Copilot's chat interface instead, and it is unable to generate a diagram in the Visio .vsdx format; it tried, failed, tried to fix it, failed.

Sigh.

SturgeonsLaw• 4 months ago

Copilot's glaring limitations when interacting with Office are insane considering that's its main value prop

CrimsonRain• 4 months ago

I opened a blank document and pasted a fairly large markdown text. Converting it to word (or html) formatting is easy, there are online tools and/or any other LLM can do it. This one time I opened the Copilot willingly and was excited about getting it done with a few keystrokes: "convert to word formatting".

It generates a formatted response but cant edit the document. How stupid you have to be to integrate copilot and not allow it to update text in a text editor??!

throwa3562623• 4 months ago

Yes the price hike is almost 2x

If anyone knows how to revert to non-AI version of the subscription let me know

Scoring6931• 4 months ago

It's called 365 Classic and it's hidden in the Subscriptions section of your Microsoft account.

xdkyx• 4 months ago

Did they really fix the taskbar? I still cannot change it to either side of the screen, am i missing something?

mkl3• 4 months ago

I don't think the fix is released yet, except for possibly Insider builds.

dahcryn4• 4 months ago

no, the big news is that finally they have the intention to do it

DarkmSparks• 4 months ago

Replaced all our windows machines with mac silicon and linux 6 months ago. No one is going back no matter what they do now.

steveharing1• 4 months ago

Finally they realizing the power of linux is cannot be taken for granted

c0l0• 4 months ago

Thanks, but no thanks. The only winning move, long-term, is to excise everything this wretched company makes from your life as vigorously as possible. It's been true 20 years ago, and it's even more true today.

sgbeal• 4 months ago

The reason, i opine, that so few people switch from Windows to any Unix flavor is that Windows users are waiting for the two productivity suites which make Windows at least marginally usable (cygwin and msys) to be ported to any of the Unix flavors.

;)

SV_BubbleTime2• 4 months ago

It’s just office.

Make office work and people will happily leave in droves.

greatgib• 4 months ago

I don't that their organisation even know how to do things well. It's not in their DNA to not fuckup their users.

But that being said, I have a good laugh at their announcement because you know they will spend money to try to make the thing nice, everything they can at their own cost, to be able to win the users back and lock them, and then they will start to fuck them up again once they feel confident enough.

1vuio0pswjnm7• 4 months ago

Love the quiz at the end

It's remarkable that computer users are paying $139 to give data to Microsoft through an ad-supported "operating system"

Back in the day (generally) only OEMs paid

What is the $139 for

zabzonk3• 4 months ago

injected advertisements into the Windows 11 Start menu's "Recommended" section. These showed up labeled "Promoted" and pushed apps like Opera browser and some password manager nobody asked for. And the Start menu was just one surface, they also placed ads on the lock screen, in the Settings homepage hawking Game Pass subscriptions

sorry, I have never seen these supposed ads in win11. the lock screen does display icons for things like local events and weather, but i consider them useful at best, and innocuous at worst - it's not like i spend much time in the lock screen. i have never seen an ad in the start menu or settings.

am i specially blessed, or is there a bit of (wrong) groupthink going on here?

as for microsoft accounts, i find having one (i have 365 subscription) more useful than not. day to day it doesn't irritate me at all, because i never see it.

mostly, i find win11 pretty good - its fast, smooth and the UI is about as good as UIs get.

wildrhythms2• 4 months ago

sorry, I have never seen these supposed ads in win11

It's a setting called "Get fun facts, tips, tricks, and more on your lock screen", and it's checked by default.

albert_e• 4 months ago

Not only is it enabled hy default ... it magically gets enabled by default after some days, desktop spotlight feature that pushes some lock screen wallpapers and trivia overriding my personal wallpaper, Edge trying to do the same thing to homepage, edge trying to steal browser favourites and extensions from other installed browsers once every few weeks, edge stealing default app linkage for PDF viewing, copilot in various flavours appearing on taskbar, start menu, edge, ...it's mayhem out there.

Death by a thousand cuts. So many micro abuses by the OS that keeps reminding you who has the power.

krige3• 4 months ago

Ah, it's available only if you pick a specific wallpaper image, that's why not everyone sees it.

fortran77• 4 months ago

I have the same experience. I'm on a Windows Surfuace 7 Arm laptop right now. There's no Copilot icon next to the start menu. I press the start icon and I don't see a single ad anywhere. There are no ads on my screen. I use Edge and I don't see anything odd while I shop. Granted, I run "Pro." Maybe the home edition has more of this?

I pay for a 365/OneDrive subscription and it works well. I get the apps on desktop/laptop/phone and 1 TB storage for a decent yearly rate. I log into the PC and laptop on the same account and useful things sync.

I've done mild tweaking to turn a few things off, like the icons in the "search" bar, but nothing's been "hacked". On Macs you're pretty much have to make an Apple account too, but somehow that's not evil?

senfiaj5• 4 months ago

On Macs you're pretty much have to make an Apple account too, but somehow that's not evil?

Really? Isn't this only for App Store and other Apple services? You can still do your everyday basic things, including downloading and installing software from internet.

crancher• 4 months ago

Macs don't need Apple accounts at all. I just set up three Macs with no Apple accounts, not needed for intended use. They all work fine. Apple accounts are only needed if access to Apple services is desired.

timpera• 4 months ago

Same for me - I find Windows 11 pretty good and I've never seen an ad in the Start menu. It might be specific to some editions or regions?

WarmWash• 4 months ago

For some people the threshold for "ad" is an uninterruptible segment that they are forced to watch, or a typical banner ad placed on screen. For others it's the visual presence of any set of pixels that can be connected to a business entity or revenue stream.

mock-possum4• 4 months ago

Oh I’ve definitely seen all those things… in the short minutes after a fresh install, before I wipe them out.

tjungblut• 4 months ago

Sorry Pavan, I'm happier with Fedora Atomic and Bazzite now.

pharrington• 4 months ago

Desktop and laptop sellers need to end their abusive business relationship with Microsoft, and start selling systems with a Linux distribution. They'll save costs while selling a better product. People who know they need Windows will always have the option to install it themselves.

throwa3562623• 4 months ago

I actually belive that is what triggered this.

There was a rumour 1-2 months ago about Lenovo and Asus meeting Microsoft execs and warning them that if win11 issues continued to cost them support hours and devicw returns they would be forced to find an alternative.

jacquesm5• 4 months ago

Now there's an idea I can get behind.

hedora7• 4 months ago

I've installed Win 11 in VMs and linux on bare metal quite a few times this years.

If you count "time to unobstructed desktop + working hardware drivers", Debian beats windows by a large margin. (10 minutes vs. 1-2 hours). Also, with windows, you need to type weird crap like this into a terminal:

   & ([scriptblock]::Create((irm "https://debloat.raphi.re/")))

Debian mostly lets you avoid such stuff.

pixeldash9283• 4 months ago

Highly doubt it's good for the mass consumers and non-power users in the long term. Most consumers would prefer household OS name like Windows or MacOS over Linux as a pre-installed OS. OEMs will always prefer Windows because of the profits they make whenever there's a Windows Refresh, no matter how bad the version is.

snozolli• 4 months ago

Lucky me, I'm stuck one or two releases back. Windows Update fails every time it tries to upgrade. I wasted a couple of days trying to troubleshoot the problem, reading their completely unhelpful logs, but gave up.

I sure wish we could just have Windows 10 back. My machine was so much faster.

seebeen• 4 months ago

When I saw most of the games I play work perfectly on linux, and that emulator support is even better - I swapped my RTX3090 for 9070XT and installed Fedora 43.

ccppurcell• 4 months ago

I believe they are abusing their customers but I think it's in poor taste to compare this to domestic violence.

abkolan• 4 months ago

Thank you for saying this. Some journos don’t mind crossing the line for a click bait headline.

Dumblydorr2• 4 months ago

Yeah, fully agree. The idea domestic abusers care about flowers is ludicrous. They’re violent and mostly remorseless about it. Anyone who dealt with it personally would chuck the flowers in the bin.

sgt• 4 months ago

You'd be surprised how much that happens. They'll sweet talk their way back and that's how these relationships often survive.

onemoresoop2• 4 months ago

Flowers are not because they care, it's damage control only. I actually liked original derisive title in this article, Microslop needs to be shamed into doing the right thing.

HexPhantom5• 4 months ago

The underlying point about power imbalance and gradual normalization of bad behavior is fair, but that analogy carries a lot of real-world weight that doesn't map cleanly to software decisions

autoexec5• 4 months ago

but that analogy carries a lot of real-world weight that doesn't map cleanly to software decisions

It's imperfect. We have way more choices in domestic partners than we do with operating systems but I think there are a lot of similarities though too. User-hostile software like Windows is intentionally designed to develop dependence and learned helplessness in users. Windows will gaslight you. Microsoft will victim blame. Many shared tactics. It's a fair comparison to make.

SlinkyOnStairs• 4 months ago

but that analogy carries a lot of real-world weight that doesn't map cleanly to software decisions

Twitter literally runs CSAM-as-a-service.

While Microsoft is not quite that evil, building the North Korean computer surveillance system with "Recall" comes pretty close. Other examples include things like Facebook's regular doxxing of it's users with their real name policy.

It's a crass comparison, but not unreasonable on both sides. Abuse goes beyond just physical violence, and the practices of these tech companies really do match those other kinds of abuse. The other half is that software has eaten the world, and these changes really do affect people's lives.

cmicali• 4 months ago

I agree and appreciate you calling this out.

It’s easy to not understand the impact or meaning of referring to violence in a flip way when one has never had to have experienced it.

mapotofu• 4 months ago

I also appreciate the callout but don’t believe it’s in bad taste. There are enough analogs, and it makes you question the type of people who run the companies and make the decisions. In MSFTs case, Bill Gates was an associate with a known pedophile and likely an abuser himself.

I completely understand it being triggering but shying away from it because of that protects perpetrators. A lot of executive circles are filled with abusive freaks and their decision making reflects that.

JollySharp08• 4 months ago

The guy was a Darknet Vendor and has been to Jail/Prison in the US.

zahlman3• 4 months ago

the impact or meaning of referring to violence in a flip[pant] way

I don't think you actually mean "violence" in general, unless you think that word means something radically and fundamentally different from what I think it means (and my understanding is based on what dictionaries say; but I will happily acknowledge that I have encountered very, very many people whose apparent understanding of the term is utterly incomprehensible to me). I say this because I never, ever see people object to the use of idioms such as https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/you+killed+it . The objection is only ever raised with respect to very specific kinds of violence.

Or will you also object when I kill a process, or when POSIX-standard systems (I'm pretty sure this is part of the standard but I'm not that kind of nerd) continue to use `kill` as the command name? How about when a new startup releases a "killer app"?

madeofpalk• 4 months ago

I felt the exact same way. Put a bad taste in my mouth and I just stopped reading.

hedora7• 4 months ago

I disagree. Microsoft's actions have real world consequences, increasingly including violence. They're building a surveillance machine that is already being used like organizations such as ICE, and that's not even the worst of it. Look at how they are trying to tip the balance of power from employees to employers with telemetry in Windows 11, Office 365, LinkedIn and GitHub.

Like domestic abusers, things only expand and escalate from here.

oasisbob• 4 months ago

Not too surprising in a society where we use the language of homicide and violence for trivial things like describing a good comedian.

boca_honey• 4 months ago

For a moment there, I also thought it was in bad taste to compare shitty software to domestic violence. Then you came in with this and reminded me that maybe I was being too fragile and should get over my self-righteousness.

Do you also have a problem with "killing" a process on a computer? A kill-fee on a contract? How about killing time?

JollySharp08• 4 months ago

The title is supposed to be provocative and hyperbolic. Much of what is provocative and hyperbolic could be considered to be in poor taste, that is the entire point.

The guy is an ex-Darknet Vendor and regularly interacts still with people that build ransomware, hack the US government, sell online drugs and he is quite pleasant compared to these people.

mynameisvlad• 4 months ago

The guy is an ex-Darknet Vendor and regularly interacts still with people that build ransomware, hack the US government, sell online drugs and he is quite pleasant compared to these people.

It’s _almost_ as if we don’t use “people that build ransomware, hack the US government, sell online drugs” as a baseline for “pleasant”.

PoignardAzur• 4 months ago

I strongly disagree, and not because of the "Microsoft is associated with bad things and that's a form of violence" points other people mentioned.

The end result of treating domestic and sexual abuse like Serious Important Subjects that people should only talk about in a Serious Respectful Tone isn't that people become more mindful of abuse dynamics, it's that they avoid bringing up the subject at all.

In practice, yes, abusive practices of corporations echo abusive practices of violent partners, and the parallel is worth highlighting. Bringing up the fact that both of them will use grand gestures to stop you from questioning their pattern of behavior isn't disrespectful, it's useful information.

If anything, abuse victims should hear that message more often.

zahlman3• 4 months ago

Strongly agree with you (and disagree with GP).

I'll also note that the same demand for Serious Respectful Tone never seems to be invoked for metaphors that refer to other kinds of serious crime (including violent crime, such as murder). You can say "great job, you killed it out there", or "oof, my sportsball team got destroyed", etc. etc., and nobody seriously proposes that this somehow devalues life (human or otherwise).

g947o2• 4 months ago

I had enough of Windows 11's ads that I bought a Mac mini for personal use and requested a Macbook to replace my Windows laptop.

I will have to use Teams and Outlook at work because I don't have a choice. But that's it Microsoft.

pedrohlc• 4 months ago

Thanks for the curated and well described list!

codeulike4• 4 months ago

I resisted upgrading to windows 11 for as long as I could because of all this hysteria. I actually did upgrade 6 months ago and it seems ... fine? I havent seen any adverts; they must be somewhere I'm not visiting. The start menu search still excludes web results like i told it to with Windows 10 (the setting must have come across). I havent seen copilot pop up anywhere annoying in Windows (although it is everywhere in ms office as similar things are popping up in whatsapp, jira, google search, every app).

I'd say the problem these days is not Ads, its Content. Firefox and Chrome (desktop and android) and Edge start with a tab of content - celebrity tat and sensationalistic world news. Windows taskbar was the same, weather and news gave me a load of tatty Content. You go and find the setting to turn it off and it goes away. But I hate Content much more than I hate Ads. Content is the problem and on that front Windows is about the same as everything else.

jpfromlondon• 4 months ago

'Microsoft was entering a mode called "swarming",'

Swarming, as in locusts, or else flies on shit.

lizknope3• 4 months ago

I bought my first x86 PC in 1994 to install Linux on. I wanted a Sun workstation but couldn't afford it.

I know people run an operating system to run programs on so it isn't easy to switch but so many windows users make it sound like they have Stockholm Syndrome.

My advice as a Linux user of 32 years for normal people is to buy a Mac.

Dumblydorr2• 4 months ago

Mac’s are way more expensive than most people need. If anyone asked me today, I’d say buy a cheap laptop and I’ll install Linux on it for you. Ask ChatGPT on your phone if ever any bugs come up. Problem solved, hundreds of dollars saved over the Mac.

rpgbr• 4 months ago

Other brands' USD 599 laptops are atrocious. Neo is guaranteed to be a reliable, pleasure, and long-term investment.

Ask ChatGPT on your phone if ever any bugs come up.

This is a dealbreaker compared to never (or even rarely) having any “bugs”.

drooopy2• 4 months ago

Most PC laptops at Neo's price point (or cheaper) are essentially manufactured e-waste.

bluescrn5• 4 months ago

The Macbook Neo seems likely to be a a huge seller. It's got the price of entry down to where it's now the obvious recommendation for less-technical friends/family wanting an affordable-but-nice laptop for light home/office/student use.

I suspect it's going to hurt iPad sales though, as a real Mac running MacOS is vastly more capable than any iPad.

torginus• 4 months ago

I don't think Ipads are selling well. I have an old style basic one (from 2019 I think?), and the only thing I use it for is to read articles and occasionally look at emails, for which it's perfectly adequate.

lizknope3• 4 months ago

The Macbook Neo seems likely to be a a huge seller. I

It already is.

MacBook Neo Just Broke an Apple Sales Record, Shipping Delays Continue
The laptop is a record-breaking release for sales to first-time Mac owners, according to Tim Cook.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/macbook-neo-just-broke-an-apple-s...

zbentley2• 4 months ago

I suspect it's going to hurt iPad sales though, as a real Mac running MacOS is vastly more capable than any iPad.

Maybe, but I somewhat doubt it, for a few reasons:

- Kids like iPads for gaming/video watching, and the overhead of computer interfaces for them might discourage laptopping (understandable for littler kids; regrettable loss of tech familiarity for older ones, but true regardless).

- Parents/rough users like iPads 'cuz there aren't moving parts or gaps to get hammered and damaged, though the screen is a risk.

- Cellular iPads/huge phone-alikes are pretty popular, and the vast majority of users are unfamiliar with the idea of hooking a computer-shaped device up to cellular internet.

- iPads are easier to MDM-manage/lock down. You can do that on MacOS too, of course, but a lot of folks find it easier to regulate kid/employee/etc. use of an iPad because the management system is familiar and simpler.

- iPads feel like a big phone. That's a pretty intuitive switch for a lot of folks who either don't have keyboarded computers at all, or associate them with non-fun (work/school) computing. Silly distinction to draw, to be sure, but very significant in the minds of many users. The single-brick/touch aspect of iPads is desirable enough that a fold-out laptop isn't going to overlap with a lot of those users.

devilbunny• 4 months ago

for normal people is to buy a Mac

Thus, the MacBook Neo. For the average user who only occasionally needs a general-purpose computer, it's powerful enough. As the geek in my friends-and-family circle, it's what I will be recommending to most of them if they ask.

Most of them only use phones or tablets anyway.

hedora7• 4 months ago

If they have a budget of ~ $1000, then I'd recommend an AMD Linux laptop. For folks here, I'd recommend similar, but pave it + put Devuan or similar on it.

For low end laptops, if you can tolerate Apple's terrible window manager, rapidly declining stability, and creeping ads (they leaked expansion plans that are coming soon), then the Neo probably wins.

Typed on a macbook pro.

fullstop• 4 months ago

but pave it + put Devuan or similar on it.

The distribution which left the root account without a password if you selected "Use sudo as default and disable root account"?

kakacik5• 4 months ago

Is there a full equivalent of Total Commander there? I don't mean just something with 2 panes, I mean full equivalent. Those I have seen were clunky, slow and lacked features thus completely breaking the flow. When I see folks doing something more complex in File explorer or similar stuff I rather walk away, make a tea/coffee, have a chat or two, come back to watch them hopefully progress a bit, when it would take few quick operations in TC. Its like doing java development in Notepad vs Idea, both work but man I always thought engineers craved efficiency...

That program is so powerful when used in skilled hands, it saves me tons of time every day, easily 30-60 mins compared to other colleagues doing similar tasks. Editing files directly in archives (or archives in archives), quick file comparison, tabbed panes, dir sync, ftp client, etc.... and tons of customizations of behavior and visuals, plugins ecosystem, and its freakin' fast and stable.

Another one could be Notepad++, ie mass edit of lines as cells in spreadsheet is a powerful feature.

pamcake• 4 months ago

For Linux you have

https://midnight-commander.org/

https://krusader.org/

http://www.boomerangsworld.de/cms/worker/index.html

conz• 4 months ago

You state: "My advice as a Linux user of 32 years for normal people is to buy a Mac."

And as a Linux user since the the MCC Interim distro[0] was made available through the floppy-distribution network in 1992, my advice is for most normal users to begin the process of migrating to Linux.

Why? Because even if the Mac has some current advantages over Linux for some normal users today, in the long run, Apple cannot ever be trusted any more than Microsoft can. If you believe that they can be, you're delusional. Whatever enshitifaction process Windows has undergone, whatever further reductions in user rights and freedoms Microsoft has introduced since it became platform hegemon, Apple will do the same. This is almost a law of nature.

Here's an example of this:

https://www.wired.com/story/bytedance-apps-are-no-longer-ava...

No, it is time for everyone to understand that in the long run, if we want a free and open society, the only way that that can be achieved is through free and open software. And as software comes to dominate the operation of society, then this becomes critical.

So, the sooner most every normal user bites the bullet and begins the migration to Linux, the less painless it will be for them in the long run, and the safer for humanity.

Cheers.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MCC_Interim_Linux

[EDIT: Typo.]

whatsupdog• 4 months ago

Don't care about windows. Haven't used a windows computer in over 20 years. Happy Ubuntu user here. What bothers me is the upcoming Android restrictions. I distribute an app that none of the app stores want to touch with a 10 foot pole. That's fine -their store, their choice. But now, to distribute the app from my website I have to jump through hoops and pay their stupid fees through a credit card (at a time when I'm trying to stay anonymous because of the nature of the app). I don't know what to do.

willis9362• 4 months ago

I like Ubuntu. My only regret is having an nvidia GPU and not getting an AMD one before computing components became unaffordable. Nvidia on wayland is 100% busted and juggling DEs for gaming vs productivity work is inelegant.

journal• 4 months ago

Microsoft is on track to be judged for digital genocide.

HexPhantom5• 4 months ago

The pattern is pretty familiar at this point:

1. Ship something user-hostile 2. Wait for backlash 3. Roll it back partially 4. Get credit for "listening"

kalavan• 4 months ago

Also called the door-in-the-face method.

Silhouette2• 4 months ago

In the end this kind of thing always comes down to trust and choices. Microsoft has by its choices and actions lost the trust of many of its customers. Some of those customers did not have a viable alternative available and so had to accept whatever Microsoft was offering even if they didn't really like it. For those who have had viable alternatives some will have chosen them and presumably will continue to do so. With the shift towards using online services at work and the decreasing reliance on desktop applications more of Microsoft's customers are probably finding they do have viable alternatives.

Speaking only for my own small business in the UK we have never understood how it can be possible to comply with our legal and regulatory constraints on issues like privacy/confidentiality while using an operating system that is under the control of another company with a proven track record of forcing updates that are incompatible with those standards. Issues like pushing saving/uploading to OneDrive or the potential implications of Recall if they do push it out are very serious concerns if you're working with any kind of sensitive data.

For us the "last ever version" of Windows was Windows 7. We aren't confident that we could legally use Windows 10+ for a lot of our real work. We are too small to run the enterprise editions where they don't dare try to remove control from corporate IT departments in the way they have been forcing on everyone else. So apart from occasional testing for products where the users are likely to be running on Windows we exclusively use other platforms now. I don't see that ever changing back unless there is a root and branch reform of Microsoft starting with totally new senior leadership because it's no longer a technical decision or based on the capabilities of the products.

hedora7• 4 months ago

^--- this

It is completely impossible to comply with European privacy law if you are using up-to-date Windows for your business.

The US CLOUD Act compels companies to provide access to data on machines they have the technical ability to access.

Starting in Windows 8, Microsoft granted itself the ability to pull locally-stored documents out of (non-onedrive) folders on all machines for "debugging" purposes.

Since then, EU courts overturned the Privacy Shield deal with the US because our laws are in direct contradiction with their privacy protections, so no, there isn't some backstop that lets Microsoft be the good actor if they get a bogus warrant.

If the EU could ban Windows, I'm sure they would have done so already.

Source on "they can read your files": https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/compliance/assurance/assur...

Note that this policy began in the Windows 8 days, and didn't originally have the Microsoft 365 branding attached to it. Now that Windows 11 mandates login, they changed the wording.

projektfu2• 4 months ago

Recently I got tired of having random changes occur to a Windows installation I use for one purpose: running X-plane. I took the drastic measure of disabling both inbound and outbound network access in Windows firewall by default and turning off most of the pre-installed rules. Then, I allowed outbound access from the things that really need it. Spurious network traffic dropped to zero and surprises are gone. If I cared more, I'd explore profiles for enabling only useful network activity in more situations, but this has been really good for my use case.

X-Plane runs on Linux but my simulator devices do not work as well. So I keep Linux for work, Windows for flight.

Helmut10001• 4 months ago

I think nowadays the only safe and sane way is running Windows isolated as a VM (e.g. QEMU on proxmox). I did this with my gaming server. The VM sits on ZFS which I can snapshot before any Microsoft stuff happens, to revert any action. I can cut off the network card virtually and shutdown the guest whenever I get tired of it. I could even disguise the CPU/QEMU config, so that the anti-cheat from Star Citizen didn't recognize it was running in a virtualized environment. Pair this with Moonlight+Sunshine and you can game without issues on any remote client. Why I prefer Windows for gaming? It is just (still) the default and provides the least barrier and setup effort for most games.

nicbou2• 4 months ago

I used to dual boot Windows to play a single game too, and every few months something drastic would change with no input on my part.

jovial_cavalier• 4 months ago

Until they talk about being able to remove Edge, they aren't serious.

tantalor2• 4 months ago

Thus begins the next phase of their neverending cycle. They do this same shit every 10 years or so. This has to be what, the third or fourth time?

selectively2• 4 months ago

Domestic violence analogies for computing....really gross. I wouldn't hire or work with 'Sam Bent'.

xfz• 4 months ago

Completely agree, we can be edgy without being insensitive.

selectively2• 4 months ago

Or, even better: let's not be edgy, because we are not tweens circa 2002.

bigstrat20032• 4 months ago

There's nothing "gross" about it. You are making a mountain out of a molehill, and honestly the kind of behavior you're displaying here would be absolutely miserable to deal with at any job. Nobody likes someone who complains about trivial non-issues like this.

kbelder• 4 months ago

I wouldn't hire or work with 'Sam Bent'

Saying something like that is far grosser and more inappropriate than a using a metaphor.

DoingFedTime3• 4 months ago

Good think I work for myself.

Noticed you didn't push back on any actual facts, just emotional 'outrage'.

bbstats• 4 months ago

I mean...this is a huge company. For them to do something even mildly consumer-focused I'll take as a win.

Jackevansevo• 4 months ago

Don't worry, they'll just destroy any goodwill they tried to claw back with these 'fixes' in following releases.

They absolutely can't help themselves but make their product more and more user hostile.

twilo2• 4 months ago

Am I the only one who’s been using 11 on multiple machines for years without any issues?

mkup2• 4 months ago

Shameless plug: My products (FlashBoot and Emergency Boot Kit) can filter all types of potentially unwanted traffic from your Windows PC to Microsoft cloud: namely, Telemetry, Windows Updates, OneDrive, builtin advertisements, tracking of your location and many more — making Windows 10/11 completely quiet online — something competitor’s tools (e.g. various GitHub scripts) can’t achieve. https://www.prime-expert.com/

wackget• 4 months ago

I admire your effort to increase user privacy but it's very difficult to argue that allowing a piece of proprietary closed-source software to make fundamental changes to your operating system is a good idea.

For starters, it doesn't explain what exactly it does. This is all I could see on the info page:

Privacy Enablement Center: Politely ask already installed Windows 10/11 to phone home less, or add Privacy Enhancing DNS Proxy to already installed Windows, in order to block Telemetry, Windows Updates, OneDrive, builtin advertisements, tracking of your location and other types of potentially unwanted Windows network activity — making Windows 10/11 completely quiet online — something competitor’s tools can’t achieve.

That sounds an awful lot like using the hosts file or a firewall such as Portmaster[1] to block known tracking domains, no?

[1] https://safing.io/

mkup2• 4 months ago

Pure hosts file solution won't cut it for several reasons:

1) certain domains (the most offensive privacy infringers) are whitelisted by Microsoft's DNSAPI.DLL to always bypass hosts file lookup (DNSAPI.DLL is a place where hosts file parser lives on Windows, so this parser just ignores hosts file records which don't align well with data vaccuming purpose of modern Windows versions)

2) hosts file can't blacklist domain hierarchies (domain + all subdomains), it can blacklist only apex domains

3) some domains to block are not quite domains, rather domain names regexps (set of domain names to block is not finite)

So, I would say it's rather list of regexps to block than list of domains to block (in our product it's compiled to highly efficient finite state machine in C, plus a user-friendly list of categories to choose blocking preferences from); but in principle you are right: all of it currently boils down to DNS packet interception.

oldandboring• 4 months ago

Today's reminder of how old I'm getting: this is totally predictable. Microsoft has been doing this for 30 years. Disclaimer: I'm aware of these things and have used most of them, but really none as a daily driver since Windows 2000. So I'm probably leaving some stuff out.

Windows 95 and 98 were great releases. Windows ME was so bad they scrapped the Win9x codebase entirely.

Windows 2000 was game-changing. One of the best OS releases of all time. Windows XP was very successful as well (although I, and many others, despised its default theme). Windows Vista was monumentally bad.

Windows 7 was the release they HAD to get right and they did.

Windows 8 was Vista all over again. Everyone hated it. The iPad had just come out and everyone lost their minds trying to develop some kind of convergence UX where everybody was convinced modal/tablet was the future. The OSS guys got into it to: Unity Desktop and GNOME3 went in the same direction. In fact GNOME is still like this.

Windows 10 unwound the experiments again and took us back to the good old Start Menu.

Windows 11, from a UI perspective, at least still feels like Windows. I get the annoyances though.

neves• 4 months ago

For me the worst is Microsoft Start news. I've already turned it off multiple times and it always come back.

To add insult to injury, it always displays terrible gossip, sports or far right news.

If any developer that works in MS news service is reading this message, please know that I hate you.

ndespres• 4 months ago

It's so mind-boggling that they have control over the default browser home page and the news feed on everyone's taskbar and they choose to show gossip and one weird trick that doctors hate. Don't they feel embarrassed that they pollute their brand like this? Is the revenue from the clicks really worth it, or do they just not care?

xXSLAYERXx• 4 months ago

While crazy to us, I bet we're in the minority. Average computer user might actually like it or at worse (to MSFT) not even notice it. Their web experience is bombarded with "1 weird trick" ads everywhere.

Vinnl• 4 months ago

I don't think it's about revenue from clicks; they probably believe that it is what customers want, because those customers click on it. That surely means that they want it.

BloondAndDoom3• 4 months ago

Use this https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 or something similar, unfortunately without this level of tweaking it will be a shit show, not deeply modified windows feels like browsing the internet without an ad blocker.

garganzol2• 4 months ago

No worries, this is just how manipulative relationships work: they always aim for unidirectional communication.

You're obliged to consume the most important news from the most important entity on the planet Earth (Microsoft/Facebook/X/...), eat piles of informational crap that get dumped onto you, waste you emotional energy on processing the whole thing, participate in drama and show your admiration. Why? Because you're very convenient when in this state, you're mendable and coercible for whatever action the entity wants you to do without saying it directly.

But when it's time to listen to you and your concerns - surprise-surprise, nobody's home. It's one way only, see you next time, maybe.

P.S. Forcefully installing an attention-pollutve app like News in the Start Menu is nothing less than a way to control you. And for an insatiable ego, the sense of control is everything. This is why it keeps coming back, again and again, as if it's a lucky reoccurring coincidence. A Windows Update repairs the system? Yes, plus it repairs the system of control. Security patches are very convenient vehicle for that - once you eat it, you'll be served special dishes you never asked for.

tencentshill• 4 months ago

It's slop in the traditional pre-AI sense, though the term was still vaguely related to 4chan then.

doomroot132• 4 months ago

I turned it off exactly once through the settings and it's never appeared again over years of updates. How did you "turn it off"?

garganzol2• 4 months ago

I presume that it's a difference between Windows OS editions. I turned it off too, but it wasn't as easy as one click, I had to use Group Policies to decrapify the adjacent aspects of the system. Group policies are not available in Windows Home edition, for example.

htx80nerd2• 4 months ago

do you really expect us to believe ms is pushing 'far right news'?

perhaps youre just so far left that anything slightly in the center feels 'far right'?

when bing / edge recommends me stories it's never ever 'far right'. it's almost always something pro-left or that makes the (R) look negative.

onemoresoop2• 4 months ago

You really have no clue how this works. Microsoft is just the intermediary. They take money from whoever pays to shove you ads, sometimes malicious ads that could infect your machine (if you're not heavily protecting yourself from that). And it's not only Microsoft that's the culprit, they all do it. Google does it, Meta does it, Microsoft does it.

jabroni_salad2• 4 months ago

No no you don't understand. "Here's a picture of some gross toenails" is the sincere best most valuable advertisement that the fourth most valuable company in the united states is capable of delivering. If anything better existed, they would be using it.

codeulike4• 4 months ago

I've never seen any adverts in Windows. Just saying.

How many of the people pearl-clutching in this thread actually use Windows?

dpkirchner2• 4 months ago

I think it's more likely that what you consider ads and what we consider ads don't quite line up.

codeulike4• 4 months ago

No, I just havent seen anything in Windows that could be described as an advert. Where are all these adverts supposed to be showing up exactly?

luckys• 4 months ago

Maybe it would be a good idea for Microsoft to split Windows into a version for business that supports all the cruft that has accumulated and is needed, and another version where they start from scratch. Something that is lightweight and respects the user. A man can dream.

zbentley2• 4 months ago

I like your dream. I think financial incentives make it unlikely, though. The writing's been on the wall for user-friendly general computing OSes for awhile, I think. So Microsoft's incentive is to treat Windows like a loss leader (even if it's not) and use it as a funnel for services/subscription revenue from their other products.

I hate that/wish it weren't so, but I think the last ~15y of M$ decisionmaking makes a lot of sense in that context.

keyringlight• 4 months ago

Another aspect to this is that I really doubt consumers would go to linux if there was any pay-wall or 'donate for more features' type aspect to it. Something that really isn't emphasized much is how lots of OSS/linux work is done by the various big corporations often for goals that are not aimed at the small scale users, and it's a happy byproduct that many aspects of their system may run better just by swapping OS, all free to them. Similarly Valve's efforts seem tightly focused on what matters to their products/services and being available to everyone is a byproduct.

The windows cost gets hidden/de-emphasized when buying a PC, or other users just ignore it which is seems to be below MS's pain tolerance for lost revenue on those users. If there was a price of admittance to linux for any other company to devote resources to work on it where it couldn't be treated as a loss-leader for something else, it'd be an even tougher struggle to migrate users over. (and it's likely right now most people moving to linux are somewhat enthusiasts)

bjacobel• 4 months ago

This already exists, but you have the markets backwards. Microsoft wants to force the cruft onto everyday users; it subsidizes the cost of the operating system license. Home users can be conned into paying for OneDrive or Copilot subscriptions much more easily than enterprises can. On the other side, Windows Server is their lightweight version, and it's made for the only customer that Microsoft respects: ones that paid in full upfront.

lizknope3• 4 months ago

I see people saying the opposite and saying MS should sell windows Enterprise or LTSC (Long-Term Servicing Channel) version to consumers. These have less of the bloatware and forced features that most people are complaining about.

I have 10 Linux machines and 1 Mac at home. I never use windows for anything personal. At work we have windows laptops that I really only use for email /web and to connect to a remote Linux desktop where I do all my work. The windows enterprise version we have seems to have far less of the crap that people complain about.

BloondAndDoom3• 4 months ago

Back in the day windows NT was serving this purpose and a lot of pro users would use it over windows 98. (At least in 3rd countries where all licenses are pirated).

It actually used to work well, and I think there are still some windows editions like this they are more strictly separated and not that good for daily en user usage.

drooopy2• 4 months ago

Introducing Windows NNT (New New Technology).

p_ing5• 4 months ago

You don't want that dream.

It's a whole new set of unknown bugs, security issues, lack of essential features, and app compat issues.

And the internals of NT are quite good and still largely modern. There's not a lot worth replacing (my only thought would be to rip out the file system filter driver model though I don't know what would replace it).

accrual• 4 months ago

There's "MinWin", I wish this could be used as the foundation for a consumer Windows OS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MinWin

zejn• 4 months ago

Don't you ever complain about that regulation which will require [x] on window corner to cancel-close.

senfiaj5• 4 months ago

If MS brings back normal local accounts, I'll switch back. This is insane, imagine I have bought a kitchen stove or a washing machine which requires to setup an account on some website.

daft_pink• 4 months ago

I would just like to add forcing users to use bing online to search their local files to one of their cards. I think that’s the main one they missed, but it’s a good article.

luxuryballs• 4 months ago

Wait the local user account workarounds are totally gone now? I assume that means the only reason why it still works for me is because my iso is still on a previous version, good to remember…

dirasieb2• 4 months ago

the funniest thing in this whole "fixing windows" campaign is that you can download "fixed" (read: not enshittified) windows TODAY instead of waiting for microsoft to deliver on these promises

reduces focus on AI, better performance, more stable updates, etc are all already here with windows 11 LTSC, why the hell would i move back to the GA release and deal with their crap?

trynumber9• 4 months ago

Unfortunately Apple is learning to be as annoying too. I don't want to upgrade to Tahoe which is inscrutable to me. Maybe remind me next year. But they pop up every week reminding me to "upgrade" even though most the problems are unfixed. They have pushed iCloud in the settings application as if it is an adboard.

Hopefully they stop but I recognize these steps from Windows slippery slope.

nicbou2• 4 months ago

I haven't upgraded, and the notifications are fairly rare and unintrusive.

pier254• 4 months ago

I get it at least once a day. Sometimes as "Update to Tahoe" and sometimes as "Install pending updates tonight".

pier254• 4 months ago

This sucks. Sometimes they even disguise the update to Tahoe notification as "Pending updates to install later tonight".

gib444• 4 months ago

Yup this is the sneakiest they've ever been in trying to trick people to upgrade. They try to trick you when installing Sequoia updates - they preselect Tahoe instead of the Sequoia updates

conartist6• 4 months ago

Holy shit they crossed the line to "actually fucking evil"

ape4• 4 months ago

So will I be able to upgrade my old computer without a Trusted Platform Module 2?

LetsGetTechnicl2• 4 months ago

I wish there was a better alternative for average users. It's easy to say, especially on HN, that using Linux or Windows LTSC is a way to avoid these issues (and I do.)

Also, who is paying for Windows in 2026?

dryarzeg• 4 months ago

Also, who is paying for Windows in 2026?

Buyers of PCs, laptops and other devices with Windows pre-installed. I guess that the cost of the Windows licence is included in the price of each device.

LetsGetTechnicl2• 4 months ago

That's true, I meant that as a reference to the article where they mentioned people paying $139 at retail for Windows. Which seems bonkers. Why would you do that.

pier254• 4 months ago

Microsoft should be scared about the Macbook Neo. They're going to lose a good chunk of the market because of it.

smt88• 4 months ago

No they're not. They're going to continue making enormous amounts of money from corporate IT lock-in, Azure, and AI.

Windows' biggest competitor is iOS, and many people have stopped using Windows entirely and just rely on their phones. Microsoft has had record profits since that started happening.

exhilaration• 4 months ago

Funny you mention iOS - my MegaCorp-issued iPhone has Microsoft entune for device management and Active Directory membership, Microsoft Authenticator for single sign-on, and really high quality versions of Microsoft office apps - Teams, Outlook, Word, Excel. Microsoft is all-in when comes to iOS.

Over Peak I had to update a shared Excel file on SharePoint each night - because as we all know, Excel is the finest multi-user database in existence. I had no problems doing that from my iPhone.

mock-possum4• 4 months ago

But what PC user is going to be like “oh now that the NEO is out, I’m finally willing to switch to a completely different operating system”

pier254• 4 months ago

What about new users that don't have a laptop yet?

Or users that have a very crappy Windows laptop and would like to improve to something good hardware wise?

Or what about Windows users that have other Apple devices and don't have strong hardware requirements?

Let's not forget about RAM and SSD prices increasing PC prices through the roof.

p_ing5• 4 months ago

Apple isn't capable of manufacturing the amount of volume necessary to displace x86/Windows.

Apple shipped 25.6 million Macs in 2025. Lenovo shipped 19.3 million PCs in the 4th quarter alone.

pixeldash9283• 4 months ago

You'd be surprised to know that though this might be a possibility, MS Office Suite or whatever it's called now will still be some of the top installed/grossing apps on the App store. Windows is just one of Microsoft's gateways to get you on the office suite.

johnnydoe9• 4 months ago

Side note but is this page not optimised for mobile at all or is it just me?

Either way, it's too little too late for me. I'll be trying to get into Linux again after Windows 8 times cause I've had it with Win11.

admax88qqq2• 4 months ago

This follows the standard windows pattern of every release alternating between bad/good.

98 good

ME bad

XP good

Vista bad

7 good

8 bad

10 good

11 bad

When 12 comes windows will be tolerable again.

mock-possum4• 4 months ago

Inshallah. This is the first ‘bad’ version I’ve caved on updating to, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the next ‘good’ one looks like.

oybng• 4 months ago

Really highlights the plummet in quality and massive shift in user tolerance that w10 is considered "good" now

admax88qqq2• 4 months ago

The conspiracy version of this is each bad windows release is purposefully extra bad so the next "good" version is perceived as artifically well.

It's a shame too, I feel like the underlying OS has some really good engineering in it, but the layers of cruft and anti-features on top make for a poor overall product.

senfiaj5• 4 months ago

Windows 10 was not as good as Windows 7 for its time (and even now). After 8/8.1 things started to go downhill. Windows 7 was a really good polished OS with beautiful and consistent UI. Windows 10 UI looks like a Frankenstein, and MS fired a lot of QA folks, now the testing is primarily done on the insiders and regular users. Also these privacy / telemetry / ad problems started from Windows 10.

canticleforllm• 4 months ago

Would rather seed 9front torrents at this point than use Windows 11 after seeing how they shoved slopware into everything immediately. Just fuck off with that noise.

And these apologies they’ve been rolling out - to whom? For what? Gabecube is going to eat their gaming market share, servers are already predominantly Linux. I’m sure they’ve got tons of enterprise customers. Fuck ‘em, they can keep them.

laylower• 4 months ago

Are we pushing sambent.com now?

zymhan• 4 months ago

Yeah there is something suspicious about this site.

DoingFedTime3• 4 months ago

Yeah? What? 0 facts or logic in your reply.

- sam bent

hendersoon• 4 months ago

The forced telemetry and blocking local user accounts is particularly egregious. I've been running Shutup10 for over a decade now, disabling their telemetry after every update. It's outrageous that they force mt to do this.

And local accounts, all the methods required following a guide, using a hidden hotkey like shift-F10 and typing in an obscure command. Nobody did this by accident, or was coerced into it. These were sophisticated users who did not want to login to a MS account. Microsoft not only didn't care about their users' preferences, they actively fought us. It's downright offensive.

And like a battered spouse, we lived with it, we took the hits, because we wanted to play videogames. Well, now Windows is no longer required, thanks to Valve's work on WINE. And suddenly they're apologetic and conciliatory. No thanks, Microsoft.

ThePowerOfFuet• 4 months ago

What an incredibly well-written article.

shevy-java• 4 months ago

"By October 2025, Microsoft had systematically hunted down and killed every single workaround for creating a local account, the `oobe\bypassnro` command, the BypassNRO registry toggle, the `ms-cxh:localonly` trick, even the old fake email method."

I don't know how it is for Windows 11, but for Win10, activating it is super-trivial, even without downloading some crack .exe. With that in mind, I never bought Microsoft's claim that it hates "pirates". In particular one work around that is even published on github - which is owned by Microsoft - so there is no way Microsoft does not know about it. Why does it not take that github site down?

Clearly Microsoft does not have anywhere near as much as a problem with pepole using Windows as such. I switched to Linux more than 20 years ago so I don't care much about Microsoft anymore. I do have a secondary computer run Win10. I don't see why I would want to switch to Win11 ever though - it only has drawbacks. And Win10 was already really bad. Microsoft used to be objectively better; all that trend to AI or ads, lowered the quality. It seems that corporation past a certain size, become super-lazy.

torcete• 4 months ago

Sometimes I wonder what Operating Systems do nowadays that they didn't do 15 years ago that requires so many resources.

saurik2• 4 months ago

Collect telemetry to send back to the mothership.

cute_boi• 4 months ago

microslop isn't going to fix anything. Action matters more than talks.

smukherjee19• 4 months ago

Just a guess, with Macbook Neo releasing, M$ likely got scared of mass exodus to MacOS (the average PC user can now consider a Macbook and it likely wipes the floor with all Windows laptops out there) and decided to throw in a damage control piece.

guestbest• 4 months ago

Hilariously, the MacBook neo has the same taskbar issues since it was what Microsoft copied. No one is getting replaced so I’ll guess they’ll just add some customizations to make it more Mac-like to win users back.

ConceptJunkie2• 4 months ago

I have to be honest. The idea that Microsoft is even admitting that their products are less than perfect is a step in the right direction.

A step on a thousand-mile journey, perhaps, but it's a step.

senfiaj5• 4 months ago

One major thing is the mandatory MS account. And it's (or more precisely its laxing / removal) not listed in the improvement list. Optional online account is fine and I might even use it. But mandatory online account is a big NO. This is disrespectful and an invasion of my privacy and control over my computer. I bought a PC / laptop and I want to use it the way I want, without any permission from some fucking server.

runjake• 4 months ago

One point that wasn't mentioned is that we've been through this cycle many times before with Microsoft, and we will again.

It wasn't too long ago that Microsoft went "all in" on Windows for developers and power users. WSL was drastically improved, developer tools were revamped and open sourced. The press adored the "new" Microsoft. Many developers moved over to Windows because they "got the best of both worlds".

And then, they just went back to the same old shit. The thing is, the shit phase of this cycle lasts longer than the non-shit phases.

This next phase is just words, so far. But, mind you, even if Microsoft does produce releases to back up those words, they'll be back to their same old shit within a year or two, once again.

And the whole process will repeat.

PS: And regardless of this supposed change of direction, if you listen to recent statements from Satya and other senior leadership, they are still spewing the same platitudes about agentic computing and software. So what's really going to change long-term?

elboru• 4 months ago

I remember being excited about Edge, I even started using it because it was fast and had a couple of built-in features I liked. It was a big improvement over the old IE, it felt like Microsoft was going the right direction, but then they kept using dark patterns to change my default search engine to Bing.

buccal2• 4 months ago

Now you have "rounded edges" in Edge that add a content area limiting margins to all sides. Also, they took an open source browser and do not provide the source for Edge. So much for love of open source.

robotnikman• 4 months ago

And now Edge is just another one of many chromium based browsers.

malfist• 4 months ago

Every third version, as the saying goes.

alex435782• 4 months ago

Unfortunately that’s not unique to Microsoft. It’s a fundamental tug of war between the pushback from consumers and the worst ideas and misaligned incentives in an organization

MacOS has had the same ping-pong between good and bad releases, with the latest being particularly poor. Same with video games: one patch brings great fixes, the next introduces absurd cosmetics or a P2W mechanic.

rendaw• 4 months ago

When was the last time Linux pingponged between quality and trash?

gentleman112• 4 months ago

That wasn't an up cycle, was it? Wasn't Microsoft was doing that at the same time as adding ads and stuff to the os. Silicon Valley people were just wowed by the open source initiatives and money. Everyone worshipped the ceo for it while windows for users swirled down the toilet, while new analytics couldn't be disabled, etc etc etc

dsign• 4 months ago

The solution for "Windows" is to use the current US derangement to convince the EU, China and even the Russians that, as a matter of national security, it's in their best interest to come to the negotiation table and create an international organization that "adopts" WineHQ[^1] and any other projects that focus on a Win32 compatibility layer. It can be financed with increased sales taxes for any PC software distributor that doesn't natively support Linux.

[^1]: https://www.winehq.org/

BitwiseFool• 4 months ago

While I have many grievances with Windows 11, I am particularly upset about the taskbar. Back in Windows 10, I used a double-height taskbar positioned at the bottom of the screen. I forget the name of the specific setting, but all windows would appear as their own item, and, the taskbar would ensure that all items retained the same width.

The taskbar in Windows 11 is a downgrade in every conceivable way. I can look past having the icons be centered and grouped by default, as that is an option that can be configured. I can't get past not being able to at least make a double height taskbar. But the biggest frustration is that Windows 11 refuses to make ungrouped items have a static width. Moreover, the width of a taskbar item will depend on the title of the window. So when I have a browser open with multiple windows the taskbar will animate the taskbar item expanding or contracting based on the title of the page I am looking at. I, personally, find this incredibly distracting, especially considering how often one visits a different page or tab while browsing. While Windows 10 also changed the size of taskbar items, it only did that when opening a new window and the taskbar was full. Even so, it would resize all existing items to the same dimension.

This became nigh intolerable for me, but thankfully, I was given permission to install a third-party taskbar and start menu replacement called Start11. I would say it gives me about 95% of the functionality I wanted back. At home, I'm still running Windows 10.

mrmuagi• 4 months ago

I am particularly needy when it comes to the taskbar. I installed a few mods:

* Windhawk - can tweak taskbar with extensions similiar to gnome tweaks imo (free)

* DisplayFusion - qol for multi monitor setups (paid)

I would give it a try if these two applications help you, honestly there's just so many settings to explore -- but afaik static width was something I needed and got done through Windhawk.

buccal2• 4 months ago

You should not have to hack Explorer to make it usable.

Tempest1981• 4 months ago

Yes, it seems like UI designers only solve the basic use case: beginner user with 3 apps open on a 14" laptop, each full screen, or tiled side-by-side.

I imagine them presenting their design on a static PowerPoint slide, and upper-management says "beautiful", and they move on to CoPilot features, never looking back.

jabroni_salad2• 4 months ago

The Teams... team... took several years to let us pop out chats to their own windows. The minimum size of the window was almost half my screen for a long time, which was annoying since it had a mobile app and my phone is way smaller.

Someone would send you a document and it took over the entire Teams window. You had to exit it in order to chat with the person about the document. The concept of having more than one 'thing' on screen at the time was completely missing. My only explanation was that the developers had never used a computer before.

major5055• 4 months ago

As I saw it, there are 4 things that lock people in the windows platform today.

- Gaming: a problem being tackled by Valve mainly, and I getting better day by day;

- Printing Services: a lot of manufacturers, specially of high end business printers only work on windows.

- Photoshop: I think many of these will eventually just fully migrate to mac.

- Excel: the rest of microsoft office is used because its in the package. But is not necessarly irreplaceable.MOst people already exchanged Outlook by the webmail (damn, outlook itself is just the webmail in a electron wrap in the new version). Word is a pain, but there are suitable open source and paid replacements. But Excel is the big one. Tons of small and big business runs on Excel, and there's simply no alternative in the market for it, with 100% compatibility. And considering the ammount of stuff running on obscure excel formulas, and excel macros, it will take a lot of time before one arrives.

Its the curse of the power user.

tombert6• 4 months ago

Excel is the biggest blocker for my dad, and why I keep losing the argument to get my parents to move to Linux or Mac.

Pretty much all their other stuff is stuff that either works fine on Linux or is just in the browser anyway, but the only thing that I don't really have a rebuttal to is when my dad points out that he uses the full-fat excel and a lot of the more modern features.

I would so rather they move to Linux, and just put Excel inside Winboat or something, but they won't have it. Annoying since I'm still expected to play tech support for them and Microsoft's recovery tools do not work, and as far as I can tell have literally never worked for anyone in human history, and I'm not entirely convinced that the people at Microsoft have ever tested them.

hiciu• 4 months ago

just put Excel inside Winboat or something, but they won't have it

Just curious, is it about different tools / workflow / the new thing to learn (and those are valid reasons!) or are there some technical issues with for example Winboat?

bombcar3• 4 months ago

What do they do with Excel for Windows that they can't do with Excel for Mac?

adiabatichottub2• 4 months ago

Don't forget general familiarity. I don't know about today, but Apple was once very big on giving large discounts to education specifically for the purpose of getting students familiar with their machines.

https://americanhistory.si.edu/comphist/sj1.html#kids

My point is it's harder to switch from the system you know.

inversepolymath• 4 months ago

This was the biggest blocker for me. I've only used a windows DE. I have managed various headless linux systems though. I decided to try cachyos (plasma) a few months ago by dual booting and a few weeks ago I backed up my W11 install and no longer run Windows. I've ran into various issues but overall it was less scary than I thought. The issues range from figuring out which package manager contains what software to flickering issues when using Citrix. Luckily LLMs make these issues fairly painless.

coole-wurst• 4 months ago

You can run Photoshop and small Excel (fine for 90%) on Mac without an issue.

The real problem is more specific industry software - Revit, Solidworks and probably a thousand smaller ones.

major5055• 4 months ago

yeah, solidworks. forgot about it. A lot of people depend on that.

fragmede• 4 months ago

It very depends on which part of the software is needed. SOLIDWORKS is usable on a windows VM via Parallels thanks to their GPU acceleration (it's totally unusable via Virtual Box/VMware on a Mac). Would love to hear the other thousand smaller ones. Davinci for professional video editing is a multi-platform. No idea about Mastercam.

opan• 4 months ago

Tons of small and big business runs on Excel, and there's simply no alternative in the market for it, with 100% compatibility. And considering the ammount of stuff running on obscure excel formulas, and excel macros, it will take a lot of time before one arrives.

I was thinking about this compatibility problem the other day. Usually someone moving between office suites (MSFT Office, Google Drive, LibreOffice) complains stuff broke, then they give up / drop it / work around it. I was imagining an ideal path would be to document these cases of incompatibility as bugs/issues in LibreOffice. Describe the difference and how it should work, then LibreOffice fixes their software to better match. I don't know if this already happens. Personally I avoid all office software like the plague and try to work with plain text files and vim. I just hear about these issues enough that I'm mildly invested in the situation by now.

I tried to tell a friend about WYGIWYM stuff like LaTeX, groff, and Typst the other day. He seemed more interested in "figuring out" why stuff broke when changing between office software. I tried to tell him that MSFT doesn't follow their own spec and everyone else has to reverse engineer it, resulting in implementation differences. Plus MSFT's own implementation being proprietary so it can't be easily copied. I'm not sure the weight of the situation got across to him.

major5055• 4 months ago

Another thing that I consider hard tonreplace from microsoft is Active directory. This thing is universal. And after tring alternatives its easy to see why. Is its probably the most complete tool I used for humans and device managers. But linix and mac had done a good job adapting to it in the last decade.

gosukiwi• 4 months ago

Out of those I think Gaming might be the biggest, and some games like League of Legends (all Riot games) need Vanguard, their anti-cheat which only works on Windows. So it's not easy for Valve but hopefully it will get there sometime.

The biggest reason I don't just migrate is because gaming. Most steam games could work on Linux but then if you want to play one that doesn't you have a problem. I'd rather just use Windows and never have a problem, because the game was designed for my platform.

That being said, for work I use macOS.

major5055• 4 months ago

Gaming is a problem of chicken and Egg. Devs wont support Linux in anti-cheat if theres no larger enought installed base. With the Steam Deck and soon the steam desktopo, tI think this can fially change, as they will see linux pc like any other platform, like ps5 or Xbox.

Valorant runs on the ps5, that is pretty much a very customized FreeBSD. If they could bother to run it there, theres no reason it could not run on linux.

redml• 4 months ago

Even if they fix it, and that's a big if - It doesn't really mean anything when they have a ton of MBAs and product managers working internally to make it creep back in. It's going to take a decade to grow trust again and I don't think they're up to the task.

adabyron• 4 months ago

Has it always been a case of incentives with Microsoft?

Builders - let's build awesome stuff with great experience.

Execs - need to meet next earnings reports goals. Let's sneak a few features to help M$FT stock price at expense to our users.

Product suffers... Execs then allow builders to make the products better. Then execs step in again because they need some quick wins. Visual Studio and .NET really seemed to exemplify this a few years ago as Code was eating into Visual Studio's user base.

I for one hope ending quarterly earnings reduces patterns like this in companies.

maevyn11• 4 months ago

No idea why anyone would buy a Windows machine over a mac unless in this day and age unless they can't afford one, Microsoft's OS dev philosophy has been trash for years.

tombert6• 4 months ago

For that matter, Linux has been better than Windows for decades.

Yes, Linux has some jankiness, I don't dispute that, but when people say that they're often smuggling in an assumption that Windows doesn't have jankiness, which is decidedly not true. People are more used to Windows and its shittiness and they forget how much bullshit they actually put up with for it.

Windows Update, for example, is awful software and if anyone who works on it is reading this, you should consider getting out of the software game because you are not good at your job and considering how consistently bad Windows Update has been for its entire existence I don't think you'd be good at other software jobs either.

Windows Update bricked my mom's laptop doing an automatic update to Windows 11, I believe because they broke some boot keys, and since Microsoft's restore and repair tools don't actually work, my parents called me in a panic because there were of course tons of irreplaceable files that they couldn't access. I had to walk them through flashing a Linux USB, walk my dad through booting off that USB, walk my dad through setting up tmate, and then I had to mount the NTFS drive and rsync the files to my personal server. Just to reiterate: I had to use Linux to save Windows because Windows' tools do not work.

If Microsoft used a filesystem that didn't coexist with dinosaurs, I could have set them up with recurring filesystem snapshots and this could have been fixed at the filesystem level. You know, like what has been readily available on Linux since like 2010 with btrfs and other Copy on Write filesystems.

To be clear, before I get a lecture, I'm aware that updates are a hard problem when you have a diverse set of hardware, but I should point out that it's not like my mom installed the OS on some arcane custom built rig, this was an OEM install on her laptop, so they don't have that excuse. Additionally, I update every Linux computer in my house literally every day, and I have never had it so thoroughly brick the boot process as I had with my mom's computer.

My elaborate point here is that Windows has lots of jank, more than Linux, but people just act like that's part of the deal, but don't extend anywhere near that same level of courtesy to Linux.

nurettin• 4 months ago

If it starts to get better after it absolutely cannot get any worse and users start to parade their experience switching to other platforms like badges of honor, is that really a win? After so many got their time and money wasted?

I mean I guess there is no reason to care, since their main products work in a browser, powerbi users and gamers can endure anything and old people will just get their grandchildren to fix their windows.

freediddy• 4 months ago

i am never switching off windows 10, even when it goes off completely support. if i have to i'll switch to mac instead.

oopsiremembered• 4 months ago

Microsoft is effectively a malware company now.

Vektorceraptor• 4 months ago

Still getting MSN widget displayed, even though I turned it off. The best was - the unremovable desktop icon for the desktop wallpapers! That's what people who love a clean desktop always wanted for.

hkon• 4 months ago

I hear about people in my extended circle moving to linux every week now. Windows users of 10-25 years++ have had enough.

seu• 4 months ago

I was dual booting Linux Mint (work) and Windows 11 (games). A month ago, Windows started trying to push an update, which I resisted. A week ago, they just force fed it to my computer. I deleted the partitions without a second thought, tried CachyOS, realized that the games I play worked perfectly out of the box, and now I'm using it as my main OS. I'm never again installing windows on a computer I own.

haolez• 4 months ago

Kinda off-topic, but I wonder if a hypothetical OS that reimplements the Windows APIs (like ReactOS[0], but with perfect modern hardware support) would be better for end users than a Linux distro with a modern DE.

In the past, this hypothetical OS would be a revolution. But I feel that, in recent years, this gap is not as big anymore and Linux supports way more apps than in the past. Such an OS might even not be relevant anymore, even if it exists.

Do I have a blind spot on this? Is there value in having a "working ReactOS" as of 2026?

[0] https://reactos.org/

profsummergig• 4 months ago

We are not far away from an era where AI will code up a Windows clone.

If MS doesn't protect the user-experience of Windows users, it's over for them.

AnonyMD• 4 months ago

Simplicity is best. They should return to that fundamental principle. Current Windows has far too many unnecessary features.

yungporko• 4 months ago

there is literally nothing microsoft could possibly do or change now or ever to make me even consider going back to using windows on a personal machine. i don't care if they turn windows into the greatest OS in the world and make it free, microsoft can fuck right off forever

kwar13• 4 months ago

Once windows started bundling with cortana and candy crush, I vowed to never return

sitzkrieg• 4 months ago

the only fix for windows 11 is installing windows 10 LTSC

natas• 4 months ago

My company is now removing all microsoft products, all of it. Laptops are moving to OSX. Office365->Gmail+G-suite. Zoom->Google meet. Fortunately we don't use Azure or Github, so that will make the transition easier.

pixeldash9283• 4 months ago

This is still bad, but maybe less bad.

laxpri• 4 months ago

why no one is taking about the Stucking problem on windows ,Edge stucks , file explorer stucks even Note pad stucks , even their native apps are not working . Wifi selection is a disaster , it cant even remember the last hotspots it was in , and even if I manually connect it will automatically switch bad network or another one even the hotpots is on . Is this only with me because I am using laptop , why people are not talking about it .

windex• 4 months ago

With the Mac neo, some of us will not have to tolerate Win 11. They were forcing us to upgrade, well, they made people upgrade to the Mac neo. An all metal Apple notebook that isn't actively user hostil is a massive quality upgrade for most people.

fuzzfactor• 4 months ago

I don't think I'm going to have much faith in a fix while the opposite type of thing is still going on simultaneously:

Windows 11's free video editor Clipchamp now requires OneDrive

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47515936

drumttocs8• 4 months ago

Would be really interesting to know what % of Microsoft devs use MacOS at home.

Microsoft's "fix" for Windows 11

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