I realize this is a Linux community, but I was wondering why you still hate Windows. I mean, I love Linux, but I will not argue that it’s more convenient to the average person in most use cases to use Windows, I recently had to switch back to Windows and I realized how convenient it all was and how I was missing so many things because of my love for Linux. But at this point, Linux is a part of my personality and my self-image and I will not leave it, but I gotta be honest, it’s pretty convenient being on Windows. So, why have you guys chosen to still stay on Linux? Some reasons I can appreciate include
- The terrible privacy policies of Microsoft. It sometimes makes you feel like your computer is not owned by you but lent to you by Big Tech.
- The community and the spirit of sharing
- The joy of “figuring it out” and customizing everything you want to the minutest details
- FREEDOM!!!
sudo suKinda ties into the previous points, but still one of the best selling points, the freedom to do whatever you want is liberating. You can run a server on it or you can create a script while knowing you have control over almost every FOSS app there is or just destroy your whole system with one command. Idk, feels good man!
These are the big ones, but one must realize you are sacrificing many things while not using windows too, productivity can be much greater there if you are a normie, it’s really convenient! So yeah! Give me your reasons! Also, how many of you dual boot?
The “we know better than you” attitude Microsoft has. They’ve very slowly removed more and more power user functionality. Almost every customization has to be hacked in with a group policy or registry edit now, or by outright replacing explorer.exe
More or less applies to Apple and most companies.
I still rank OSX higher, simply because it’s at least consistent. Windows is a fucking mess.
Plus, it’s unix-like and comes when an ssh client.
Although to be fair, WSL fixes that issue to a big degree. Maybe even better than OSX, since you get a real Linux with real userspace. WSL(2) might be the only really cool feature Microsoft added to Windows, that actually brings value for the user.
I genuinely don’t find Windows easier to use. And troubleshooting Windows problems is a friggin’ nightmare compared to Linux.
The Microsoft support forums are pitifully hilarious, too.
“Hi, I need help with N. I’ve tried X, Y, and, Z.”
“Hello, sorry to hear that you’re having trouble with N. Have you tried X, Y, or Z?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry to hear that it’s still not working. Please refer to this thread, and feel free to contact Microsoft Support with any future questions. Have a nice day.”
“But my problem still isn’t solved. Hello?”
Where one of X, Y or Z is “update your system” and “ensure you’re using the latest drivers.”
OK, but seriously, X, Y and Z are these:
-
Reboot
-
DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth -
sfc /scannow
The only answers you’ll get.
I’ve genuinely seen a post asking for help because DISM wouldn’t run, where the recommended answer was to run DISM 🙈
-
And the other one is either use a third party registry cleaner or run this esoteric powershell command as admin.
And if it doesn’t work, just reinstall your entire computer. Fuck your entire day.
“Thread closed due to inactivity.”
It seems to be populated exclusively by people (or these days LLMs?) who have had MS customer interaction training, but simultaneously have no grasp of reading compression.
Because I don’t sit down at my Linux destop and feel like the product. There’s no ads or suggestions or popups or apps installing themselves or shit copying my files around in ways I didn’t really want or AI bullshit or anything even remotely suggesting I buy more shit, just… whatever the fuck it is I was intending to do.
The value in not having my computer act like a damn slot machine trying to get me to insert more quarters is, frankly, immense.
I like being in control of my computer.
Windows and Android have this attitude where they decide how you want to use your device and block customisation. And the fact that they feel entitled to be able to change how your device looks and feels without warning or permission is something that’s deeply uncomfortable to me. There’s also this feeling of not knowing what my device is actually doing, and how much of my data it is actually collecting.
With Windows, there’s also a lot of small papercuts that make it annoying to use (and that my Windows friends don’t seem to understand):
- Lack of middle click paste.
- Lack of the ability to drag windows using “alt”.
- You can’t turn off the window previews in the task bar.
- You can’t disconnect from a wired network connection from the connections list.
- Sometimes the computer just restarts on its own for fun.
- Finding settings is a pain because they keep adding new settings menus.
- Whatever garbage the start menu is doing nowadays.
- Installing software and drivers is a pain.
- The attitude that you have to download (or buy!) third party software for core features that should be included in the OS.
- It doesn’t support my keyboard layout, and the editor for making new layouts is terrible.
- The bitlocker password entry doesn’t respect your keyboard layout. Or clear the entry when you get it wrong.
- Windows licenses are a pain to manage.
- Managing the bootloader just sucks.
- The registry just kinda sucks compared to dconf and/or text config files.
- Font rendering is ugly, imo.
- I don’t care about edge, fuck off with that shit.
- I can’t change the volume by using the scroll wheel.
- Launching a pinned app on the task bar causes all the other pinned apps to shift around so I misclick.
- Device letters are not stable if you add or remove devices.
- It just resets settings sometimes, because why not?
- It can’t be installed to a partition that isn’t the first partition on the disk. This is not mentioned anywhere, nor is the error useful.
- It’s just bad for developing on, due to lack of tooling.
… Whew I ranted for a while there, didn’t I? Yeah, I dual boot Windows for the games that either don’t run under protonwine or the devs want to add a rootkit to.
Thats a pretty impressive list
- Lack of middle click paste.
- Lack of the ability to drag windows using “alt”.
- I can’t change the volume by using the scroll wheel.
These feel like DE specific complaints rather than Windows complaints. I wish I could use windowkey to switch applications for example.
Changing sliders with mouse wheel does sound cool, I want that.
Just this weekend I had the pleasure of installing Win 10 on a blank disk. The install went ok, but then it bothered me logging into the MS Account. After cursing for a while and since it wasn’t my PC, I gave in. I know I can fight it, but it’s not worth it here. Then it continued trying to get me to consent to all kinds of shit. NO, I DON’T WANT FUCKING OFFICE AND I DON’T WANT MY FILES IN ONEDRIVE you assholes!
Then it forces me to choose a PIN for “secure login”. DUDE! That motherfucking PC is used for a bit of office work and gaming. Just let these poor people boot up the machine and use it! 0000? Too simple. 1234 too. Fuck you, MS. Ok, random PIN and a sticky note it is, asshats.
Anyway, after getting it to fuck off, I continue to the desktop. Oh wow, 10 updates and a ton of missing drivers? It’s a fresh install! What the fuck did it install?! Of course the installation of all these updates takes an hour and countless restarts… AFTER A FRESH INSTALL! Not even my overblown super slow Ubuntu server takes that long for updates; and that runs on a HDD not a SSD like that PC I set up.
But wait. One update failed. Why? Ah, the rescue partition is too small… THE ONE THAT DUMB SON-OF-BITCH CREATED ON ITS OWN AS PART OF THE INSTALL! How to fix? Ah, execute a bunch of commandline foo with
diskpartand other tools. Wait, isn’t that exactly the kind of shit that Windows fans laugh about when looking down on us Linux nerds?!So … ugh … just one simple anecdote of why Windows can fuck off.
But wait. One update failed. Why? Ah, the rescue partition is too small… THE ONE THAT DUMB SON-OF-BITCH CREATED ON ITS OWN AS PART OF THE INSTALL!
Shit, I forgot about this bug! Such a weird design choice to make the installer fuck up its own partitions.
Heh, yeah. I had to fix that earlier this year on another machine, but that one was ooold and went through a bunch of upgrades so I figured it was due to its age (even though I still didn’t get how they could be so lazy to not automate this process as part of the update or … well… slim down the rescue tools again). But then they apparently didn’t even care enough to release a new installer that prevents the issue. So they either don’t give a crap or even do it deliberately to break Win 10 in favor of Win 11. Either case: that’s not what I pay for.
eh…i installed windows 10 for someone last month and it went pretty smoothly. just say you don’t want to connect an account, “you wont be able to use one-drive” , ok whatever . reject all “send us optional data” prompts. update to the latest version, and done.
the shittiest part of the install was trying to download the ISO… apparently windows doesn’t want Linux users to download their system or something, had to get it from a windows laptop.
Offlive account during install works only when you are not connected to the internet from that PC. Maybe also only with Win Pro, not Home.
The crap you have to disable are all dark patterns and I hope the EU rips them a few more holes.
“Just update”… I think I went into enough details about what pissed me off in my initial comment.
Almost every Linux distro would have been: boot the installer, select disk, select meta packages, username, password, done. 10 mins later you have an up to date system with no shady online crap.
I updated my family members pc to windows 11 a few weeks ago and it wouldn’t let me login without a Microsoft account. That was insane to me.
You can move Windows Recovery to C: drive but I don’t recall the exact commands. Maybe I moved the recovery image to C: partition. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/reagentc-command-line-options?view=windows-11
The PIN is stored locally on the machine only. It doesn’t get synced with anything anywhere. It’s actually much safer to use a PIN for authentication because it’s four digits that you (well, maybe not you) don’t have to write down, and the only time it works is on the physical machine. The user account password can be long and/or complex, but if you’re only ever authenticating at the keyboard, all you have to remember is the PIN.
I know. My point was that I don’t wanted any local auth at all. It should boot right to desktop, no PIN or password asked. The linked MS account is completely worthless and only used to satisfy the installer.
It’s also possible to have Windows log in as a specific user at boot, without user input. Regardless of operating system, your logged on session is in the context of some user account, whether you interactively log in or the system does it for you.
And that’s exactly what I said: the installer didn’t give me that choice. I had to use a MS account and I had to set up a PIN. Everything else required completely nonintuitive changes (plural!) afterwards.
I honest to god find Linux easier to use. Though it’s maybe because the most used programs on my laptop are neovim, gcc and rust compiler and Firefox . And I shit you not, Microsoft purposefully slowed down the Firefox browser I installed from their store.
Plus I like using a tiling window manager when coding, now in Linux I have 500 options. On windows I get a middle finger and a dedicated nsa/fbi agent. Whats not to hate?
Same, basically Windows became progressively harder to use for me. It’s so slow, for one.
Aside from all the usual points that everyone else has already made: automation. Scripting stuff on Linux is relatively simple, trying to fuck about with powershell or work around a tool that’s GUI-only is infuriating.
So. Fucking. True. oh my god.
I want to turn Bluetooth on in a script!
Linux? Two or three commands.
Powershell? Here, run this monster or download an application to do it for you and call that via the command line.Last time I used Windows, the only way to suspend the machine was either poking some random ass .dll from System32 or downloading PsSuspend by Sysinternals ffs!
Scripting stuff on Linux is relatively simple, trying to fuck about with powershell
that is the fucking best thing about Linux, I have so many scripts and customizations, I can’t even tell you!
I don’t know if I “hate” Windows but more like “I’m done dealing it.” I might come and use it time to time, but only when absolutely necessary, and the mental capacity to remove things I don’t need and make sure its removed.
.” I might come and use it time to time, but only when absolutely necessary
I get that!
Because every time I’m reminded the underlying OS exists it’s always something negative.
On windows: Forced restarts and updates that take over 5x as long as my Linux (or FreeBSD build), ui that constantly undoes what I customized, ads and preinstalled malware essentially like candy crush even on builds from Microsoft directly, worse performance with a much higher number of crashes under load on my current box, and no auto login/name any simple customization without screwing around with registry editor to name just the simple things. More advanced problems include no hypervisor built in to the home version, everything is pay to unlock features my Linux install does for free, no zfs software raid for storage safekeeping, most fixes when I do have errors involve googleing cryptic hex codes and being told to run fsck/chdsk as the only solution for often times hours of searching before finally finding the actual answer - not to mention most other fixes being to download a library/binary of the sketchiest sounding website ever that i can’t verify isn’t a virus.
On linux or even FreeBSD which took a bit to get installed to my liking i may have put work in up front but its like 3 hours at most of my time for 6+ years of stability and proper functioning to avoid all of the above plus no microsoft telemetry etc. I switched when i first tried Vista and even today every time i have to use Microsoft’s horrific excuse for an OS it is heartburn inducing.
I think I need like 2 weeks to tell all the reasons I hate it.
Every micro-angstrom and so on.
I swapped away from Windows about a year and a half ago. The last straw was them sticking ads in the OS. And from everything I’ve heard, they continue to boil the frog; they continue to add more and more telemetry and unasked for “features” and bloat the system more and more and more with every update. Even my own parents are growing tired of Windows; it’s a clunky, poorly optimized operating system that’s positively frustrating to use.
I will concede that not everything that runs on Windows will run on Linux. It’s true. But I severely disagree that Windows is “easier to use.” Of course, when you grow up on Windows, Linux has a learning curve. It’s different OS. But once I got past that? Nah, Linux is far easier and more intuitive in most cases.
Installing programs? Open your software manager and click a button.
Playing video games? Open Steam or Lutris and click a button. Occasionally you might need to tweak things, but you have to do the same on Windows sometimes, especially for older games!
I could go on but those are the biggest two examples that come to mind immediately.
As to another point you made, I personally gave up almost nothing. Destiny 2 and League of Legends don’t work, but I quit league before fgsh added Vanguard and neither of these games want me. That isn’t my fault, and it isn’t a short coming in Linux’s fault, it’s the devs being assholes.
In spite of this, I do acknowledge some people would have to give up more than me, and for some people that’s too much, and that’s valid! I hope one day they truly get a choice.
bloat the system more and more and more with every update.
Kinda why I call Windows the “Fat Man”
Of course, when you grow up on Windows, Linux has a learning curve. It’s different OS.
tbch, it’s not that. I haven’t used Windows in 7 years, never touched it, but gotta admit, the new Windows 11 is pretty cool
I don’t mean superficially. Linux Mint was very similar in feel to the Windows 7 days. Just thinking about it makes me nostalgic.
I mean in the way that sometimes you gotta run something in WINE, or trying to mod a game only to run into how different the file structure is. Back end things that make you go “Oh, this really isn’t Windows.”
And it’s not. But that’s okay. It doesn’t need to be. It shouldn’t be. We moved to Linux before it’s not Windows. It’s a little frustrating at first, but taking the time to learn how it works was worth it. I’ve never looked back.
You write like one can do stuff on Linux with one command.
However, Linux enthusiasts simultaneously tell the user to spend time troubleshooting problems on their own, and say that’s a given.
It’s a double standard I see on the web.
You write like you just came here to be angry at people who’ve made a personal decision to leave Windows like it affects you, and that’s gonna help neither you nor us.
At no point in my comment did I say you “write a single command.” I’m saying basic, every day things that I do are point and click. I want a new program? I open my distro’s app store, which is a GUI, and click download on the app I want. I want to play a game I have? I click play on Steam or Lutris. You know. With a mouse. No typing involved, my guy.
It also sounds to me like you’ve run into some real fucking assholes when you needed help. And unfortunately, they’re out there. But that isn’t all of us. I hope one day your negative first impression of our community changes, but it never will if you keep engaging in bad faith like this. So please stop.
I find Windows significantly less convenient than Linux. It took a few years for my mindset to flip but there’s just no going back. Whenever something requires me to use Windows, I reach for a Windows virtual machine. Whenever I’ve been forced to use a Windows or a Mac machine for work, I’ve reached for a Linux virtual machine.
It just… lacks features? I couldn’t use ZFS or Btrfs, FDE requires third-party software (veracrypt) and lots of other things that I see as standard system utilities (think ssh, git etc.) are not available on a fresh install. And then you’re supposed to download and install .exe files from the internet? Since microsoft controls what goes in the windows store, that could provide the same experience as your distro’s repositories. But again, most things you want aren’t there, and you can’t even trust the things that are there. For some reason, a billion dollar company cannot curate a software repository of the same quality as the ones maintained by unpaid volunteers in the Linux world.
So yeah, I think it’s just not there yet. Maybe in a few years windows will be a viable alternative for desktop systems.
FDE requires third-party software (veracrypt)
There’s bitlocker, I think it was added in 7 or Vista. What do you mean?
But other than that, I would rather use VC too.standard system utilities (think ssh, git etc.) are not available on a fresh install
Hmm, depends. It has a built in openssh client and server, but the “feature” (automatically installing package) is off by default. It can be enabled at install time with the use of the standard windows image modification tools (DISM I think?)
And then you’re supposed to download and install .exe files from the internet? Since microsoft controls what goes in the windows store
I think it’s better that Microsoft does not have that much control over software distribution.
But again, most things you want aren’t there, and you can’t even trust the things that are there.
Of course you can’t, nobody can tell by looking at the store page if it was modified by anyone, including Microsoft.
The amazon app store for android explicitely tells that they are adding tracking code to every uploaded app, and to make this possible they replace the digital signature of apps uploaded. Google with the play store does not tell anything like this afaik, but for a few years now it also basically compromised the digital signatures of developers, by requiring the private keys to be mandatorily handed in for continued app updates.
I don’t trust that these companies that already rely on mass surveillance as a revenue stream, they won’t add tracking code to apps unauthorized by the devs. If not right now, it will happen in the future.For some reason, a billion dollar company cannot curate a software repository of the same quality as the ones maintained by unpaid volunteers in the Linux world.
Besides quality, I think open source distro’s repository and it’s packagers are largely more trustable. They are not motivated financially to modify the packages in unwanted (by the user) ways, and they are transparent.
So yeah, I think it’s just not there yet. Maybe in a few years windows will be a viable alternative for desktop systems.
I think they are drifting farther and farther away.
It was an option. But the shitshow of 11… thanks that’s too much. I’m not installing that for anyone. And 10 is soon end of life…
Each time I tell this story, I try to make it shorter and more terse.
Circa 2012 or 2013 I bought a Raspberry Pi as part of my ham radio hobby. With that I learned a little bit of Python and Bash, learned to type sudo etc, and kinda liked what I saw. Meanwhile, my Win 7 laptop died right as I was going back to school, so I bought a new laptop. This new laptop had two problems: 1. it came with Windows 8.1 and 2. it was a lemon. For most of the first semester going back to school I had no reliable laptop. The only modern supported computer I had was that Raspberry Pi. And for most of a semester that’s what I did school assignments and email on until I finally bullied Dell into replacing that lemon Inspiron they sold me outright.
So by the time I got a reliable x86 laptop in hand, Linux felt more normal to me than Win 8.1 did. So I fully switched.
That was 10 years ago now, and for the last decade I’ve heard Windows users do nothing but piss and moan about the new holes Microsoft has found to fuck them in.
So by the time I got a reliable x86 laptop in hand, Linux felt more normal to me than Win 8.
Know and respect this feeling, I am using MX Linux and have a very customized panel, settings and shortcuts. It’s home, even if it were to be wiped out, I would still put in all the effort to reinstall it.
But, I gotta admit, when Windows works as intended, it’s good for being productive and I technically should be learning how to use Windows properly as my work requires me to :')
My computers at work are on win 11 and good god, almost every time I log in I have to reset all my Taskbar setting (left instead of goddam CENTER, minimize the search bar, unpin the bullshit, only combine when full) and the most egregious issue of all is win11 doesn’t let you reposition the task bar anymore!
Installing updates… Do not turn off your computer
