I mean, at the bare minimum, software companies (especially the most prominent and prevalent ones) should be adopting the "principle of least astonishment"[0] and not enabling sketchy crap by default. Also simply starting up a new computer and getting going shouldn't require paging through 5+ pages of inexplicable configuration steps that cannot possibly be effectively summarized by a one-line 12pt-font description.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishmen...
Or is it just not possible any more? Surely I can install the OS without creating a MS account? My intention is to disable all the nags, bloat and advertising bullying, leaving only an essential OS that doesn't bully my non-technical relatives.
I won't be telling him about that. He deletes emails and even text messages as soon as he's read them, for fear of them causing problems. The last thing he wants is Windows popping up some message, contextually trying to be smart and know what he's doing without him inviting that bot into his world.
Microsoft (and other giants) simply don't get it.
Why are you setting this guy up with Windows 10 then, instead of a system that actually respects the user and has decent security, like Debian GNU/Linux? (There is an enduring notion that Debian systems are hard to install or administer for the casual user, but one might argue that it is 5 years out of date - maybe even 10 years out of date.) Does he rely on some Windows-only hardware or software of some sort - and if so, could he run that on a dedicated, airgapped system?
There are some very user-friendly GUIs out there that are easy to install.
Prepare for a lot of nags about logging in to a Microsoft account.
Oh also, I seem to recall I had to disable/hide Cortana _after_ the setup, as there was nothing in the initial computer setup that allowed me to turn it off (again, IIRC).
The implicit deal with Facebook, Google and other free services is that you pay them with their data. Fine.
But paying for being spied on? This is scam pure and simple.
Critical mass starts with you.
-- someone who's been using Linux since 1998, Linux desktops for work stuff since ~2008 and has more machines with only Linux at home than ones with Windows, but still spends the majority of recreation time on a Win7 box because not all games run nicely with Wine, or at all.
Vote with your dollars. What do you care about most? PC Video games, or having an operating system that respects your freedom and privacy? Critical mass starts with you too, if you want PC Video games that run on free operating systems, us those systems and the vendors will follow.
No, it's not a viable alternative for everything, it's damn close. Valve is doing some incorporation of Wine into Steam that should make many "Windows-only" games play effortlessly.
Don't use Linux if you don't want to obviously, but complaining because you can't play all games written for a completely different OS is a valid complaint. If you know people that are concerned about surveillance and privacy, don't scare them away. At least tell people about multi-boot.
Please get over the idea that linux will ever be a 100% perfect drop-in replacement for windows. If you can't accept that their will be some pain involved and things they have to give up then you should expect to be stuck in this abusive relationship forever.
Are you saying that generally or to the person to whom you responded, because it looks like you're both saying the same thing with the current wording and I find it a tad confusing.
As long as MS know that people aren't willing to make sacrifices (and we're using the term loosely) like that they will have no reason to change and the cycle will continue.
Just the system packages need to be stable (eg, distro's repos).
Also worth mentioning is snaps and flatpacks (though I'm not personally a fan, they do exist).
If you gave them a system and promised nothing major would change for 5 years they'd be thankful.
If I fork out money for a product, I expect to do what is says it does. To have Windows auto update and serve ads in the start bar or lock screen is just too much
It would be better if:
1) Microsoft didn't beta-test with actual customers.
2) Microsoft figured out how to update things without restarting so commonly (as I understand, this is due to how files are locked and how dependent services are updated).
3) Microsoft didn't push out unnecessary crap as "critical" or essential/important updates.
4) Microsoft didn't force updates on shutdown.
I mean Apple has made their phones the preferred secure devices of several organizations because of how well they keep them updated. It's a pain for me in IT when an app wants to require a recently-released version of iOS, but I do see the benefit to forced, frequent updates.
This morning I researched a way to turn off these forced updates but Win10 wouldn't let me apply the option without entering some obscure credentials that I don't know.
I'm not trying to excuse microsoft....if anything there's really no excuse for them not to have a proper session restore and non-forced updates that don't auto-restart your computer.
Just pointing out they really dropped the ball twice here.
They usually don't, because of historical UI paradigms, but there is no reason they can't. It's universal on mobile because mobile rebuilt UI paradigms from the ground up, discarding desktop legacy nonsense in the process.
Let's say I have a private browsing session. Or a password manager session where I've been manipulating an unlocked database. I might have manually mounted a file system over the network and might have a bunch of programs running, editing the files over there.
You cannot restore these things automatically after a shutdown. It's annoying each time, and sometimes you are simply going to lose data.
If you can keep the stuff in RAM, you can also serialize it to disk and then restore it from there. The only thing you cannot do is reply to external inputs during that time (so keepalive connections may be a problem if your updates take too long), but that can also be dealt with.
We are very far from getting there though.
.. by default.
An owner should always have the final say in what his machine does. If they choose to disable automatic updates, then that's their prerogative and they bear the consequences.
I want to be able to decide if my computer updates... It's not even that big of an ask.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/update/w...
As for the opening of you windows after a restart/shutdown that too is a Registry or Group Policy change you can make to adjust its behaviour (They may have promoted the setting to somewhere in the settings app since I changed the behaviour myself)
Basically if you don't want it to reopen your applications / windows when you next log in you make a small change to the shutdown command that executed when you shutdown in your preferred method (If you shutdown / restart with a certain flag windows won't do this).
EDIT: A quick google tells me they have indeed promoted such behaviour to the Settings App.
To change this setting, head to Settings > Accounts > Sign-in Options. Scroll down to the Privacy section and set the “Use my sign-in info to automatically finish setting up my device and reopen my apps after an update or restart” option to “Off.”
AND
launch File Explorer, click the “View” tab on the Ribbon and click the “Options” button. On the View tab, scroll down and locate the “Restore previous folder windows at logon” option. Ensure it’s unchecked or Windows will reopen any folder windows when you sign into your PC.
That's a really great feature. I'd love to see even better window management in 10.
Even a full Shutdown/Restart, I open the machine and boom, Chrome opens and the speakers are blasting whatever I had playing on YouTube the day before.
Shutdowns should be respected. What if I had something inappropriate open before doing the shutdown ?
Apparently Microsoft is doubling down on "we will make things CONVENIENT and you WILL like it!".
I won't restart my chrome now, but i'm pretty sure a YouTube tab will only keep playing if it's in focus.
regedit.exe All the tweaks I make to friend's & family's machines can be done in either the registry or in GPE, Its just GPE is a bit more user friendly than regedit but when I've come across a home licensed machine I can still make all the needed tweaks in the registry.
> The way they reset settings after forced upgrades should be criminal.
They have stopped the resetting of privacy settings after updates. I only notice major resets with large insider build updates (But those updates are more "refresh installs" then "Update installs" so I will let them off on that one) apart from one thing...
Audio. Seems like they are transitioning audio config from control panel to Settings and every now and then they reset my preferred audio settings But I do have a pretty weird audio set up.
The power you rightly object to is not limited to Microsoft, or the Windows OS. That power comes from the power of proprietary software over the user. All proprietors possess that power and leverage that power largely in ways we can't describe in detail until it is too late to stop it from being used against users. But we know that all proprietary software is untrustworthy precisely because it doesn't respect a user's software freedom.
Microsoft got caught leveraging that power against their users before, this isn't new. But given how long it took us to learn about some of their abuses, it's a safe bet that there are other ways they have of using the Windows OS to report on the user without their consent and do anything else the endpoint is capable of doing. After all, Microsoft has a universal back door on every version of Windows. Since a lot of those endpoints are connected to the Internet, it is not hard to get those endpoints to do whatever Microsoft wants them to do.
https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-microsoft.html has a list of Microsoft's back doors, insecurities, DRM, instances of surveilling users, and more.
Switching to Apple won't address the underlying problem -- a lack of software freedom. There's plenty we know about Apple's proprietary malware too listed at https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-apple.html. But picking one proprietor over another isn't gaining freedom, it's switching masters.
Consider a free software GNU/Linux distribution (some are listed at https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html) and run it on hardware you get to control (https://www.fsf.org/ryf has pointers to such hardware), and then install nothing but free software on top of that. That will go quite a ways to keeping you in control to the degree you're willing to look into things or have others do this work for you. I find it's a big job I can't do all myself, so I have to trust others in this. There's no known guarantee against malware. But a free system is the best practical means to avoid malware, and computer security is impossible without free software. The structure of proprietary software immediately tells me that we simply can't do away with the malware you mention if we run proprietary software. You'll also need to have a stiffened spine against those who try to frame the issue around convenience -- run the software on this website, install and run this program, etc. -- because there are a lot of ways to run proprietary software on your computer these days (installed or not). Liberating yourself from forced upgrades, ignored/reset settings, advertising, nagging, surveillance, DRM, and more is all possible. But not with proprietary software.
The way they reset settings after forced upgrades should be criminal.
The way the user has no control over certain Microsoft processes unless they have been lucky enough to be allowed to pay for a Group Policy Editor license should also be criminal.
The ads, the nags, the surveillance.
It is not an operating system I can use anymore. They have lost me for life. I'll be switching to Mac and Linux from here on out.