You’re right about the hassle of doing it manually, and I wish there were a global “Windows 2k mode” that ran the OS as lean as possible.
You can pay a similar amount to what your company pays for similar numbers of licenses across many OS's. Last I checked it was about ~500 USD a year. Sure, that's excessive for a single OS install, but if your company is footing the bill they usually don't care if you install on personal machines.
That's a pretty big understatement to be honest. I don't use Windows anymore, but I still occasionally set up Windows for other people and there's so many annoyances that it's difficult to even enumerate all of them.
Off the top of my head:
- MSEdgeRedirect to stop Windows from opening Edge even when it's not your defualt browser.
- Shutup10++ to quickly disable a bunch of crapware/unwanted features. (Some of these break things, too, so there is literally no way to make things "perfect".)
- Have to remove a horde of advertising-ridden crapware too. Groove Music, Maps, etc.
- Stopping the start menu from sending everything you type to Bing seems to be hard, too. I'm pretty sure there are multiple group policy items that sound like they would impact this, but I never seem to get the right one first try. It's kind of hard to find on Google too because it changes.
- I do not know what the current best way to get Windows to stop trying to wake up computers for Windows Update at random hours (and often failing to do so.) I think there is a group policy option, but I think there's also a power options configuration (also in the registry obviously) that you need to change to maximally disable wakelocks. This one isn't necessarily Windows 11 specific, but it seems to have gotten worse over time.
- A number of things are really hard to change: There are third party mods for the start menu and task bar, but they are not perfect at all; hacks that load the actual old start menu and task bar are limited and break with updates, unsurprisingly. You need to patch DWM to remove the window rounding behavior.
And honestly, that still doesn't duplicate Windows 7 for me, and worse, the further you stray away the more likely things are to break during updates. The best I've found is Windows 10 LTSC but 1. I don't think consumers can legally license it (lol) 2. It doesn't work with a lot of software, e.g. Creative Suite has stopped supporting it I believe. So this solution sounds good on paper but it's also not always applicable.
Lest you think paying extra for Windows 11 Pro for Workstations, just don't. It's nearly as heavy in crapware last I checked. It's kind of unbelievable that they still do that pre-installed app crap even if you pay them over $300 for the OS as if I fucking want it, but that's modern software for you. They literally won't sell you what you want at any price.
(I also strongly believe that you should try to install Windows Firewall Control or some similar firewall before allowing the machine to reach the Internet. There's an amazing amount of non-sense that gets sent to the Internet regardless of whether you consent to it. Not sure that all of it is actually a huge privacy concern, but I don't really care anymore; at this point it's out of spite.)
I'm a screen reader user, and I would regularly unplug my headphones when not using the computer, especially if it was stored in a bag. Of course, that meant everybody around me could hear my screen reader when Windows decided to do its thing. This woke me up at night multiple times and disrupted a few activities I was a part of. There was nothing to be done.
The trouble is keeping it up to date between Windows updates because they auto-install the bloatware.
Just run the script again after a major update. Only takes a minute. And don't let Windows update automatically. I have used this script and it works well.
Also found this in the other comments https://atlasos.net
Another big problem with a lot of these things is you run them, then later Photoshop or Winget or VS isn't working suddenly and you have to try to figure out what service or component needs to be re-enabled. At one point I just re-installed over this...
MS needs to make a profit on Windows. Apple can give away MacOS for free and make up the costs on hardware margins.
Windows can make money by charging consumers, by licensing to OEMs, by upselling other MS products, or by selling ads & content.
The only way MS will stop ads would be if consumers pay for Windows directly.
Or perhaps it will just turn into a self running slot machine powered by tokens earned though full screen always on top porn adverts while AI guesses what kind of work you would otherwise be trying to get done. No more subscriptions or products to purchase: Unlock 3 extra days of Excel by buying something on Amazon! Maybe workers will have to defeat n levels of candy crush to unlock Word processing for the day. Perhaps always-on PC's will become the norm and Bing will watch and guide us 24/7 - into the future!
Disabling SIP is needed for a myriad of things that aren't really that advanced, like for example, it is needed for some reason by some of the macOS "tiling WM" toys, and it's needed to even use any kexts. No joke: Discord will direct you to disable SIP if you want to .. capture audio during screenshares. It's also needed for macFUSE.
macOS also has no equivalent to WSL2. "But it's POSIX!" I can hear you say. Very fair point, but there are a lot of uses for lightweight Linux VMs, like, well, testing Linux things. Docker Desktop tries but it's slow. I really wanted to like Podman Desktop but it's similarly slow, and I had trouble with networking in a difficult-to-debug way. I strongly recommend Orb Stack here: it basically brings the WSL2 experience to macOS, except maybe even a bit better, vastly prefer it to Docker Desktop. That said, it's a monthly cost, which is definitely not ideal. There's also Colima but I have to say I don't love it either; no IPv6 support isn't a killer but it was annoying to find out the hard way.
I could probably make do with macOS if forced, but I wouldn't enjoy it. That said, I can't really take having to deal with the rest of the Apple ecosystem, so I am stuck very deep into Linux. To be fair, this is nothing new for me: Linux has been my primary desktop OS since high school. But I wouldn't say it's a good desktop OS. I mostly use it because I don't really feel like I have any other options and I already paid the cost to get deep into it anyway.
(I don't hate everything about Apple obviously, but to be honest, my desire to use Apple Silicon devices was mostly tied to high hopes for Asahi Linux)
This is untrue, there's a difference between disabling SIP and changing your security policy to "reduced."
Disabling SIP lets you modify files on the system volume along with a few other things, like a way to run executables that require private entitlements that aren't signed by Apple. The reduced security policy lets you run older Mac OS versions (there's no online signature check during installs) as well as kernel extensions from authorized developers.
Discord relies on the latter, as it uses the ACE extension for audio capture, the same one that powers Rogue Amoeba's excellent apps. There are APIs to do this natively now, introduced in Ventura I believe, but Discord hasn't yet switched over to them.
I admit I glossed over the details of SIP partly because I forgot, but the point is that to get audio capture working on Discord ~~right now~~ (Apparently according to neighboring comment this is fixed, but the point does still stand anyways since this literally was the situation for users since Apple Silicon arrived afaik), you have to go into recovery and run some esoteric commands to lower the security level of the machine, and it's 100% Apple's fault because they didn't offer APIs for things that people were using kexts for before shutting off third-party kexts.
(And this whole thing feels a bit rushed, as can be seen by the issues that have occurred with the newer usermode network filtering APIs... It's always especially bad when you fuck up in a way that messes with privacy software for only your own services, even if it's truly accidental.)
As of a few days ago, they have: https://twitter.com/advaithj1/status/1723926917286371818
This is a strange thing to complain about, you have to do it literally once and it takes less than 5 seconds and 5 clicks. And I would rather have a nice settings panel showing what apps have access to what, rather than the mess that is Windows privacy settings.
> I'll try to set a keyboard shortcut (not a global one mind you)
(I will admit that the phrase "keyboard shortcut" instead of something like "key binding" likely lead to this confusion, but by the time this occurred to me, the edit window was already closed.)
This hit me just recently when trying to map Command+P to Control+P. I don't know if Command+P is somehow special, but if you want to try it for yourself, feel free.
Secondly, though, accessibility permission is a really large hammer. Typically that's a high level of privileges as it usually means being able to read and interact with just about everything on-screen. Granted, this is the reality of many desktop OSes today anyways, but that's the other thing. If I have to switch all of these permissions on for many apps anyways, is this really a good design? No, of course not.
I tried to keep my rant relatively contained, because the truth is I hate macOS a lot worse. A software I used to like a lot, SnagIt, has become progressively less usable as macOS has updated over time, presumably because apps that handle screenshots and video capture have had to get increasingly tricky to function. Just about every time SnagIt starts, it gives me a laundry list of permissions I need to grant it. I mean literally it has to be like 7 things. Most of them seem to stick, but apparently after the software updates some of them need to be done again.
This security model sucks in other ways too. Like for example, you have to give your terminal emulator full disk access. If you don't, really stupid things will happen. I accidentally ran brew update in a VS Code terminal. It worked! And promptly wiped out all of the granted permissions on all of the casks it updated, because VS Code (of course) doesn't have full disk access, and as part of the security model you can't just update an app without full disk access. I really wish that wasn't the default behavior, because it was genuinely just a mistake to use the VS Code terminal for that. But even worse, I really want to grant this permission to Brew and not literally everything I run in that terminal emulator, so this is pretty damn unideal.
I haven't even gotten into Gatekeeper, OCSP stapling, and all of the trouble I have gone through trying to sign apps for macOS and have it not need to phone home to check the signature. (I was also hit by that funny bug where programs were taking forever to execute because the exec syscall was hanging waiting for Apple's servers. Reminds me that I am on a "privacy friendly" OS.)
But seriously, I'm really only scratching the surface here. Don't get me wrong, I hate other OSes too. I have an ongoing rant right next to this one about how much I hate Windows 11, and I don't think I really need to express how bad desktop Linux is from a usability standpoint.
Maybe this could be more clear in iTerm's UI, but the reason it needs accessibility access is in scenarios where it's stomping on Mac OS' system shortcut keys. I would expect Windows or Linux would need special privileges to do the same.
That alone makes me forget all of the Windows’s quirks and appreciate all the basic things my Windows machine offers.
It’s been like that for the Mac’s entire existence. For someone who’s used Macs all their life, the Windows way is weird.
This behavior can easily be overridden by application developers but they choose not to go against expected behavior.
Power users press Command + Q to quit an application.
I've literally never struggled with what you're describing.
You might close all windows, but still have a background task running. That's nicely represented by the app remaining on, which can ask about interrupting the background task if you try to close it. It removes the need for most systray usage.
Yes, you can install a dozen little extra utilities to customize your way out of most of these things... but I'm not going to. I use systems usually quite-close to stock because of how often I'm using not-my-system or how often the system is reimaged or whatever. Also it's a corporate machine and I can't be bothered to see if each and every bodge-app is permitted by security policy.
The hardware is very nice, however. I would totally buy a MBP personally if I could run Windows or Fedora on it, and swap the keyboard for something sensible.
This is actually on third party app devs, not apple. Note that double-clicking the titlebar works the same in stock apps, as well as in most mac-only native apps.
Cross-platform apps like Slack often hide the native titlebar and draw their own which doesn’t implement all the native behaviors or even try to mimic them. Papercuts like this are part of why Mac users are more likely to be discontent with cross-platform apps.
For many Electron apps a decent work around is to install them as PWAs, which can be done with both Safari (File > Add to Dock…) or your preferred Chrome-cousin. Those draw proper titlebars.
Kb shortcuts are standard - for a Mac ;). Heck in most apps you can even use standard readline shortcuts like ctrl-e for end of line, ctrl-a for start of line , ctrl-n and -p for next and previous etc. Same as in emacs or in a terminal window.
One of the first things I install on a new MBP.
I am baffled by whoever thought having icons leap in the toolbar as a default behaviour was an OK thing to do. Drives me crazy when I use a Mac other than mine. I have lots of little issues with the UX. Play button opening Apple Music -- ahh! Running unsigned apps is easy but I always get caught out by the right click thing.
> you can install a dozen little extra utilities to customize your way out of most of these things
Usually paid for too. Using mouse on Mac feels absolutely awful to me without Smooze.
I wish there was a better laptop on the market, but despite the compromises my MBP is the best laptop I've ever owned it's not even close. Just like my iPhone, I think it's a brilliant device despite Apple being, well, Apple.
Doesn't help for those who need a mouse device (cad/design/photo-editing, etc), but for what I use it for (software dev/ops work), it's great. Trackpads in a windows ecosystem feel absolutely horrendous to me, so I just use mice there lol.
Using a regular mouse does feel like trying to push a string through sand.
Thumbs up for Smooze if you're looking to try and have a somewhat usable mouse experience. It's 20 bucks because of course it is, why wouldn't a tool to allow a need that basic cost money? It does have a trial. Maybe another commenter can recommend something free but when I was looking a couple years ago it was the only thing that did it right.
i use linux and everyone is expected to be a freeloader and yet people constantly keep on churning our good/bad software for free because its the whole idea of "you scratch my back, i will scratch yours" and "i am doing this for fun. how about you have a problem so you fix this yourself and help everyone" type camaraderie which is opposite in osx where the idea is "you are rich enough, why wont you pay"
I think you may grow to like them, especially if you routinely type in languages other than your layout.
For example, I use a physical QWERTY layout, but often type in French (the latter is an abomination for programming and similar). I can very easily use dead keys to create the accents. I type as quickly in French on a Mac QWERTY as I used to on a regular AZERTY (it still requires dead keys for some characters).
If you use terminals, now your copy/paste shortcuts stay the same across apps. Trying to copy something without paying attention won't quit your running program / return you to the end of the history.
At first, I also found it a bit weird, but it has grown on me so much that now that I don't use a mac anymore, I try to bring it with me. One of the reasons why I hate using Windows at work, is that I can't get it to have a fully mac-like keyboard. I'm pretty close, but it insists on having the right alt as AltGr, which is a PITA, especially since it can't be moved. On Linux, the Mac layout works perfectly, at least on X11.
I like the macOS keyboard handling so much I even swap Control and Meta on Windows machines. Not the same, but a bit less annoying.
There is no OS where this approach solves UI hate, installing those extra utilities is the only way out
> how often the system is reimaged or whatever
there is another utility that restores your apps/configs, but of course, a no-utility policy breaks that
Windows, especially after Windows 10, has been actively hostile and repeatedly ignores the clear will of its users.
At boot time, it regularly takes the computer hostage in an attempt to coerce me to mass-enable its many spywares. After disabling then one by one, I can login to my desktop only to find that it has changed my default browser again. So I have to change that back, which is kind of futile because various parts of the OS now ignores the default browser settings anyway. After that, I have to dismiss the relentless ads and remove the crapware that keeps getting installed at every turn and corner.
This is a very, very far cry from "everything is easy to accomplish, my personal use software just works and I don't have to struggle with extra clicks and movements for everything." Both things can't be true at the same time. I have to click, click, click, go through all sorts of hoops, and finally give up and throw my computer out the window in frustration to try to achieve what I want in Windows. And what for? Out of pure corporate greed.
I feel same way about Mac users. Can't understand how people accept that turd of OS that comes with poor defaults (Window Management/Finder/keyboard), weaker customization and tonnes of bloat (Music/Notes/Messages/Mail/...) and then they pay a premium for it.
Also the fact that you chose window management as a major problem on Macs tells me that you have a strong dislike for things that's unfamiliar to you. There are some annoyances with Macs, especially if you're a dev, but window management isn't one of them. Macs have the best touchpad gestures and virtual desktop management UX. GNOME comes close these days, but Macs still feel a bit smoother.
As for your problem with "bloat," most of those are just stock utility apps. Any major desktop OS have had those since ages. You do have a point with Apple Music, but Notes, Messages, and Mail? Are you serious?
Whenever there is a major update, they put a big button for me to enable Bing and a smaller button for me to not do that, and I just need to click on the smaller button. They sometimes enable brand new features I don't want by default, but they do that to make features discoverable; in years of Windows use, all I needed to do is disable the things I didn't want.
I'm not a Windows fanboy. It's just an operating system, not a way of life. While it does have some things I don't like, I'm quite productive using it and I'm a satisfied user.
If it wasn't trivial to disable/reject these things, Bing would have a 50%+ desktop market share and that's not what we see. People aren't going in mass from Windows to Linux/Mac, what is happening instead is that desktop OSs are becoming less and less useful as people who used to be desktop users do everything they need on mobile platforms.
> Whenever there is a major update, they put a big button for me to enable Bing and a smaller button for me to not do that, and I just need to click on the smaller button.
This is not true. They're making it progressively harder to opt out of unwanted features. It's even impossible in some cases. Anyways, I clearly remember Windows booting into an unskippable full screen nag. The option to mass-accept various violations of my privacy was shown as a big blue button. The other option was concealed in a wall of text as a link, barely recognizable. After clicking on the link, you're greeted with a bunch of options which you have to toggle off, one by one. This isn't normal or acceptable. It's evil and manipulative, and the fact that they chose to do this at boot, when people need their computers the most, is beyond infuriating.
Here's just a little taste of the Windows experience:
# Privacy Violations
Windows 11 Update 23H2 is stealing users' IMAP credentials - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38212453
I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9976298
Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10053352
# User Interference and Coercion
Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21103683
Microsoft intercepting Firefox, Chrome installation on Windows 10 Insider build - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17967243
Outlook now ignores Windows' Default Browser and opens links in Edge by default - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36492329
Microsoft blocks EdgeDeflector to force Windows 11 users into Edge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29251210
Microsoft has not stopped forcing Edge on Windows 11 users - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37461449
Windows 11 Officially Shuts Down Firefox’s Default Browser Workaround - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29579994
Last Windows 11 update changed all default browser settings to Edge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30055222
Microsoft tests Windows account menu error badge when Microsoft Account not used - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35443361
Removing “Annoying” Windows 10 Features Is a DMCA Violation, Microsoft Says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23486887
# Ads
Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11167964
Why can an ad break the Windows 11 desktop and taskbar? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28404332
Windows 10 nagging users with Bing advertisements - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27337382
Microsoft begins showing an anti-Firefox ad in the Windows 10 start menu - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22288599
Windows 10 Tip: Turn Off File Explorer Advertising - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13835733
# Unwanted Features
Windows needs to stop showing tabloid news - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35323121
Accidentally press the play button? Apple Music. Charge your iphone through your computer? Apple Music.
I find it pretty annoying, but it is also easy to eliminate the default behavior
I discovered the fingers on my right hand barely brush the bottomed edge of it when I make certain multi-key keystrokes. Right where the play “button” was by default. Took me forever to figure out why Music was opening “randomly”.
I ended up setting the touchbar to static, not per-program customizable, and replacing most of it with a “spacer” element. Fixed the problem.
Luckily they’ve realized they were a bad idea and my newer ones don’t have a touchbar.
Disclaimer: I have never used it, one of my colleagues mentioned it a while ago.
When it’s good it’s really, really good. That old laptop had a better LCD panel than you could get in any Macbook of that era, and that tower ran circles around any real contemporary Mac.
The problem is that no matter how hard you try, there’s always little glitches that are downright impossible to eliminate unless you have the chops to tinker with DSDTs and kernel extension development.
I wish macos moved to the same model and it could be just an app on a linux or windows machine. Apple is already shifting their weight to service revenue for growth, this could be a realistic direction to take.
In windows you just mash the key until the thing you want comes up.
Also the in application file picker makes it difficult to go up and down directories.
Macs have had a feature like that since the 90s called spring loaded folders. Pick up the file you want to move, then hold it over the base level destination folder for a moment until it “blinks” and it’ll open the folder in a new window. Rinse and repeat as you’re drilling down to the folder you want, then drop.
Back/forward buttons in Finder windows can also be hovered over with a dragged file to trigger those.
You can use Command up or down keys.
Thankfully I work for a company who happily allows me to continue this practice with my work laptop. My last and current work laptops have run NixOS and it's been great.
[1] https://www.thespec.com/news/canada/he-says-he-works-securit...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Nationalist_Party
As a fan of DBAN and as a Canadian, I am doubly disappointed.
Bored, belligerent 14 year old me would have loved to get his hands on this...
I'm just surprised it took them this long tbh. Windows used to set the standard for enshittification. Now that they're chasing cloud-based windows, I see they're returning to form.
there is vm you can do but yeah, there are options
I've been a Windows user since version 3.0. Maybe even earlier versions since I was using DOS initially.
It's sad to see into what they've turned it. Well, they'd just have to stop the spying and it would be somewhat tolerable, but that's not an option for them.
Now that so many apps have a browser version and prioritize the mobile version, the isolation caused by being on Linux keeps decreasing.
Between your phone and your browser, that’s not quite 100% coverage, but it’s very good and improving all the time.
You use your phone when you need a work app you can’t get on Linux, and if you can, the browser version of the app. And of course if it natively supports Linux there’s no problem at all.
A decade ago, being all Linux was basically untenable. Now I barely have to mention it to people. It’s been a dramatic change in a short time span.
- Multiplayer games: Steam Proton largely solves compatibility for a lot of games now, but the included DRM and anti-cheat for some multiplayer games made them unplayable.
- Certain specialist tools like Photoshop, some CAD software, etc. Open source in this space is better in compatibility.
For the rest of the time I'd do the same as you say: stick to web apps, use the mobile version, etc.
I switched to Mac this year because the M1+ battery life is best-in-class for the price, and I sorely needed a cheaper solution for work than an inverter + batteries to survive South Africa's loadshedding. That, and that some Laravel tooling is smoother on macOS than anywhere else these days.
Linux is amazing , but for a everyday machine. I've given up on Linux, I don't have time to configure it. Also every desktop ui Ive used on it isn't quite as polished as windows.
I don't get the old games part. This is something where Linux absolutely shines, a lot of old Win9x games run perfectly fine on Wine, but fail on modern Windows for weird reasons. The biggest hurdle is usually DRM and Anti-Cheat, but I guess I'm lucky here because I don't play any competitive multiplayer games but more casual stuff. Also I don't use Nvidia. ;)
I just switched completely about a decade ago. Don't even remember what the final straw was. I guess what "helped" was that at the time I was very busy with life and really only had the most basic demands for my computing needs outside of work, so any shortcomings in areas like gaming didn't matter. Basically needed a browser and a text editor. When things got better two or three years down the line, well, it has already been a while since I used Windows, so any shortcomings were just part of life I guess, but also I just figured more and more stuff out over the years. I guess, and that comes down to personal preference, another thing that greatly helped was that I'm just not focused on convenience and somewhat of a minimalist, so I use i3 as the window manager and no further desktop environment. I don't use any file manager but just the terminal. No gvfs, every USB drive gets mounted and unmounted via terminal. I do use NetworkManager but only via nmcli. I guess having grown up on DOS left some impact. It just means less moving parts, so no stupid surprises after an update like "my KDE/gnome file manager suddenly doesn't show any thumb drive I plug in anymore".
I don't pretend Linux is ready for the average Joe. More and more people seem to think so, but I wouldn't even give it to my mom even though her only use case really is browsing the web and writing a letter about twice a year.
Ironically, I've had problems with things like Sublime Text crashing. But Windows games from Steam (I don't run the ones that require anti-cheat root-kits), work fairly well.
The issues she's encountered that I know of are:
- Couldn't install some specific printer drivers
- Couldn't interoperate with docx files that everyone else seems to expect
And that's it from what she's told me.
YMMV. My run-of-the-mill corporate hp-recommends-windows laptop's webcam was unsupported under Windows for approx. a year after I bought it. Worked OOB on Linux since day one.
Ditto for my other run-of-the-mill corporate hp-recommends-windows laptop's intel iGPU: it had a tough time outputting 4k@60Hz over the hp dock. Had to do a weird dance of unplugging and replugging the monitor at just the right time to make it work. Fixed after some Windows update half a year in. 0 issues since day one on Linux. Also, on this particular machine, you better have an external mouse for installing Windows, since it doesn't recognize the touchpad. Ditto for the integrated intel wifi card. Bonus points for Windows insisting on connecting to the internet (the pc doesn't have any onboard wired network). Last I tried, it was win11 22h2. The computer is a 2020 model.
I agree it's not for everyone day-to-day, since I feel like inevitably you have to dive into the CLI to fix things with trying to get more obscure programs working.
As for desktop UI, IMO the tradeoff is that Linux DEs have no added cruft. I'd take that over Windows which to me seems filled with bloatware from MS before even the hardware manufacturer gets their hands on it. I've tried many DEs in my time with Linux, and I think GNOME in the last year or two is one of the best as a good mix of good visuals and highly customisable. KDE was closer to Windows but I've just never had luck with it being stable on various machines (seems to be surviving on my Steam Deck though).
Consumer device support is better I agree, though again IMO/IME that's more for certain niche hardware pieces or anything that has its own control app. Bluetooth is also something that I've still struggled with, especially when it comes to headsets.
Old games I can't agree with you on, but maybe that depends on your definition of old. I've had about the same experience getting old games (say from 2000 onwards) working, either with emulation or Wine supporting old software fairly seamlessly. And things have improved too. For example when I started using Linux around 2017, I recall Wine basically couldn't run The Sims 2 in a stable manner. Over the years since however, Lutris, Crossplay and Proton have taken the mantle and made games from that era work very nicely.
I’m not sure where the problem is, it could be anywhere between my window manager to the extensions I have installed, but it is too much of a pain to explore all that. Instead I switched to Pandora and then buy albums if I really like them, which works fine.
Mac has an efficient memory compression and dynamic swap system, Windows also has one, but a little bit less efficient in my personal experience, and on Linux you have to configure zRAM or zSwap and they don’t work as well. You can’t keep memory pages as compressed data in RAM what you can do in Mac and Windows. The out of memory behavior is also very bad on Linux, where it will just lock your system. On Mac it will spill swap to disk as much as you have disk space.
That is one anecdote for how Linux has a bit an inferior user experience.
Don't modern distributions come with the OOM killer? On my Arch system I didn't have to do anything to have the one from systemd.
I had a Ubuntu 20.04 VM from university with 64 GB memory and my process needed 70 GB and it did lock my system.
And the anecdote continues: I ran a 55 GB process on a 16 GB Mac and it finished without a problem and without me having to configure anything.
Also, as a curiosity, do you know how much swap there was? Usually, distros only create a limited amount of it. But I agree, as a user, you shouldn't have to worry about that.
Independently of the operating system , your 70g process might have an actual working set of 70 g, while the 55g might have had a working set of 1 gig.
Furthermore your Vm was running most likely in a shared environment, your swap partition running on shared not super fast io, etc - you may not even have had 64g of ram ( despite your Vm claiming the contrary ). Your Mac on the contrary, has what is says it has.
This is the difference. Linux has a swap partition. You fill up the dedicated swap partition (which you decide when you partition your drive and is unusable for anything else, so you want to keep it small) and boom you're out of memory, OOM starts killing random stuff.
macOS uses a dynamic swap file (technically its multiple files) on your boot drive that starts at 0 bytes that grows until your main partition runs out of space.
I wrote a small program to do some image processing, I had a memory leak that leaked uncompressed bitmaps, after a couple minutes browsing HN "why is that process so slow?", I go check, it turns out it had burned up like 200 GB of RAM on my 16 GB Mac without me even noticing. But it did actually complete without me bothering to fix the bug, so problem solved.
This also means macOS has a lot more leeway to, say, swap out background tabs you haven't touched in a week in favor of live data since it can grow that swapfile full of stale garbage.
I ´m an hpc engineer , specialize in performance work, have been using Linux since 1996, and also have a Mac. I like both. I understand these are not technical arguments, but my point is there are no easy answers when it comes to performance work. You need to measure, know exactly what’s going on, compare apples with apples, and then you can draw conclusions. In that particular case, there simply isn’t enough details to prove anything.
If the normal case is that the OOM killer just kills the out-of-control process, then I forfeit my argument.
Theory and practice unfortunately…
Isn't there a Sun Tzu saying about not interfering when your enemies are shooting themselves in the foot?
No way in hell.
If my employer wants to reduce my productivity (by enforcing Windows), so be it, he'll have to deal with the consequences.
But using Windows is from a data-privacy and security standpoint (ironically, the same reason I'm supposed to use Windows at work) an absolute no-go.
Just look at how the new outlook handles your email credentials.
Absolutely. No. Way.
I agree but the real reason they use Windows is not security, but security theater. 99% of the companies only care about the checklists in their auditing and compliance forms not for the real security. The market of said checklists and compliance forms is cornered by Windows Consultancy groups. The only real OS actor here was RedHat and this is the main reason why they became successful imo.
It's been some month and I now start emojis with "(" instead of ":" ...
... also I am surprised what a shitstorm "finding a place to save a file" is. I was amused by a former student of mine who claimed that she "only had the files in Excel!", but now I can understand that the file dialogs in Windows literally have "folders" for different programs.
With OneDrive folders, other OneDrive Folders, local folders, Application folders, Network drives I completely understand how people get confused ...
it talks to the mothership behind the scenes, it forces updates, and although the package manager should be your friend, they have sort of weaponized it so you can't uninstall their packages easily.
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1434512/how-to-get-rid-of-ub...
https://askubuntu.com/questions/135540/what-is-the-whoopsie-...
Then one day WSL wasn't enough due to dumb compatibility reasons so I decided to dual boot Ubuntu.
Then very shortly after I just... stopped booting in to Windows for anything other than gaming. It was very strange. I've shitposted about year of the Linux desktop since I was a teenager but I never thought it would actually happen to me. It's not a buttery smooth transition - not by a long shot, but I'll take dumb Discord updating behaviour over random updates which make me panic that I downloaded malware from a Google ad. The time I spend on what I would consider dumb bullshit where I'm fighting the OS is about the same.
I was very pleasantly surprised how smooth gaming on Linux is. I maintain a Windows 10 install and will for the foreseeable future, just for the odd cases where I need it. But I rarely boot into it any more.
But even though most people are not happy with the recent evolution of Windows, most people will complain and then use it anyway. And Microsoft will get away with it and will take another step with the next release…
But I am not sure if I will be able to do that.
I moved to Linux Mint with a Windows VM at work for the couple of required things (Office) and while I wouldn’t say it’s painless in any way. I’m personally ready for it. I tried 10 years ago and was not.
So, I think if you can handle it, Linux, then OSX, but Windows is becoming a no go for anyone serious about privacy or security.
It doesn't require too much effort to tame the beast. Until the shit is gone, sure it's not nice - and you still benefit from taking the installer offline mid-way so that you can choose your own username and such, which is a pita.
But once sorted, it's a great and very responsive ui.
And at least with Windows 11, as opposed to Win 10, I can tell the different windows apart, with a certain level of border consistency. Win10 made it all an atrocious blur, it really did my head in (eg Teams/VSCode all blending into one black canvas of hell).
I use WSL2 (Ubuntu 22.04) for most of my work, have a beastly, latest generation PC that I built myself with 4 monitors + a stream deck all profile mounted - and am very happy with it.
I care much more about that than the telemetry stuff, but I completely appreciate that others care equally or more about the latter.
Once the crap is gone, the experience is awesome. It's such a shame they have to push it this way. I'd bloody pay extra for a lean edition.
Its also cool to have a kind of descendant of VMS being here as an alternative to a unix monoculture
If what you are doing with a computer involves the need to "know all command line switches", then you will also have to know command line switches on Windows.
A linux for the most part nowadays can be used without command line. When you jave to use it, it would be customization or installation of certain experimental software that isn't in the software center (and that is usually copy paste).
I purchased a thinkpad without any operating system on it and installed openBSD. I would not recommend this to someone coming from Windows land, but once you’ve been around the linux side for a while, you should come check openBSD out. It’s really really nice.
I was eyeing at the options available to dual-boot a recentish Surface Pro, and it was a grand total of 0. Now, it's not a big issue since WSL2, but it would still have been nice.
I own Apple products too. But for real work, I use Linux.
If I hadn't switched to Linux, I would absolutely be staying on Windows 10 until such time as Microsoft stops making a user hostile OS. The rather low threat of my machine getting owned because I can't get security patches any more is far less onerous to me than what Microsoft is doing these days.
As ex-UNIX zealot, those that during university days used M$ on the email signature (most likely still visible in some online archives), Windows is for me still the lesser problematic.
I like Apple's hardware, however I am not paying their tax, when PC gaming laptops offer me more, rather have them as work issued laptops, and in what concerns GNU/Linux I no longer have tinkering needs, been using it via VMs instead of dual boot, since VMWare became good enough for such purpose.
On laptops, even those sold with Linux pre-installed there is always something missing, or one needs to be stuck with the custom OEM distribution, possibly without major kernel updates.
But in the name of progress and security, you can't stay on Windows 10. So for me it's this weird middle ground right now .. waiting for either Windows to U-turn, die out, or for more work apps to port to OS X.