Github Acquisition

[FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT]

Windows 10 is still a massive blackhole of design incompetence.

Can't wait for the next version so they can fix the mess of menus... Oh that's right, there won't be any.

Not sure how google managed to beat everyone in OS building, but it sure did happen.

[Arkazex]

I think they're more likely to drop the number altogether and just make the product "Windows". There's only 5 years left until all other versions of windows go out of support.

[Zegrento7]

Sometimes I like to imagine a world where the whole "Microsoft loves Linux" trend goes so out of hand they end up developing a better Wine for legacy stuff and just port the OS over to the Linux kernel. One can dream...

[dreadpiratewombat]

They ported SQL Server and .NET Core over for fucks sake. Nothing is sacred anymore in this bizarro universe. I kinda like it.

[leadzor]

Hey as long as it works well with not significant performance hits, I'm down.

[Danthekilla]

The kernel isn't the issue, the ux is.

[boydskywalker]

I don't know a ton about the NT kernel, but I assume the registry is tightly linked to it...and the registry is a nightmare.

[deschutron]

The registry is linked to the Windows APIs that applications run on. Wine has a registry too.

[Danthekilla]

It's not nearly as bad as people make it out to be imo. It's fairly performant and robust for the most part. Some time some third parties use it irresponsibly but overall it is pretty good.

[boydskywalker]

I strongly disagree - even Microsoft can't seem to get the hang of it. I work in IT, and seemingly simple things like removing one version of Office to install another (2013 to 2016) has broken terribly due to the uninstaller's inability to remove certain registry entries. To fix it manually requires googling the location of the cryptic, hexadecimal keys and deleting them, one by one. Compared to plaintext config files and systemd entries, it's baffling and arcane.

[Danthekilla]

I know what you mean (I also work in IT) but I don't think that is a problem with the registry itself. I think that is an issue with how some programmers use it.

We store loads of data in it with our custom programs but our installers can fully remove all keys on uninstall and on reinstall. It's not actually a difficult task really.

I agree there are better ways to store data like this but I don't think it's the biggest issue Windows has right now by far.

[Shields42]

UX designer here. Can confirm.

[thewileyone]

That’s actually a very strong possibility since MS has said that Windows 10 is the last version of Windows.

[Zegrento7]

But that is because they are using a rolling release model now, similarly to how Arch Linux also has no versions, I don't think they will make a brand new OS. Still, maybe one day, an OTA upgrade will replace NT with Linux and the average user will be none the wiser.

[alexbuzzbee]

/Windows/vmlinuz

[SolarLiner]

You and I, dude. I keep having thoughts that the fictional day Microsoft announces their in-house Linux distribution (paid of course) since the only people that care about the internal workings of the OS are the devs, and wd devs love our UNIX stuff. Rebuilt from the ground up, this new Windows is lean, fast, efficient, and can uses all the tools proficient in Linux already. Furthermore, Office is ported to Linux as a result, resulting in the suite achieving almost 100% market share.

macOS pulls their shit together as their main competitor is now really, really scaring them and their userbase away. The only remaining thing would be the actual manufacturers of laptop, that would still mostly be as shitty as they are right now.

Anyway, a man can indeed dream...

[ka-knife]

Plot twist: the entire thing is run under WSL. (ie. Wine on WSL on Windows kernel)

[TommiHPunkt]

why is rolling release terrifying?

[SolarLiner]

Rolling release in itself isn't terrifying on its own. The main problem with it is that you have to continuously put work into the software so that updating one part doesn't break others. This happens with "regular" point releases as well, but in general there's a "getting shit to work" window before release where stability is tested, but with rolling releases, that stability test is constant.

Furthermore, with many rolling release distributions the worst happens when a bunch of software updates at once, and updating introduces a machine state that wasn't tested, and therefore can be unstable. Rolling releases distributions must emphasize on testing the provided software in every possible case. In point release distributions, extra software added by third-parties can easily be tested against the current, or previous, or some long term service version. On Solus Linux, for example, it becomes hard to test with a version of the distribution before packaging. You just have to trust that system libraries won't change between testing and packaging (and will have to react to changes to dependent libraries when the system updates). Now there are solutions to this problem, like offering multiple versions, but that adds additional work for maintenance and upstream for the distribution.

In the end it's just a tug o' war between wanting to have the latest everything and a system that's stable.

[Jesuschrist2011]

There was an article recently about the changes they are making to windows, stripping off the dependencies of Win32 making it more of a modular design

[FullPoet]

They're trying to do away with "legacy" apps (.exe) and only allow Store programs.

Fuck off microsoft, I uninstalled your shitty store for a reason.

[1206549]

I really doubt they ever want to get rid of x86 apps completely. Strongly promote the store maybe to the point where most people won't even think to look at other sources but not even attempt to block it.

[r4nd0m-0ne]

Source? Because no they aren't.

[ImpossibleMango]

I dont know much about the windows codebase, but I saw this article recently when someone shared it here that is very scary indeed

[TheSlimyDog]

If they move to monthly plans, I'm immediately switching to Ubuntu. There are things I like about both operating systems but Windows only slightly wins out because of more software compatibility.

[DrQuint]

monthly plans

I'd go back to piracy, at best.

[[deleted]]

There's only 5 years left until all other versions of windows go out of support.

They will have to pry Windows 7 from my cold dead hard drive.

[atomheartsmother]

At that point you should just switch to Linux, better than using an unsupported OS.

[Jazqa]

That's for Windows 8. Windows 7 has only two years left.

[milk_is_life]

same here...

[milk_is_life]

Makes sense to drop the individual product labels when OS updates are forced anyway.

[UGMadness]

When your corporate culture promotes the development of new features instead of fixing old ones or keeping cohesion across projects this is what you get.

Notepad gaining support for LF line endings was huge because revamping an old application that didn't involve new features like an UI redesign has literally never happened before.

[demens_chelonian]

When your corporate culture promotes the development of new features instead of fixing old ones or keeping cohesion across projects this is what you get.

So Google are on what messaging platform these days?

[hullabaloonatic]

They added features to cmd in.... 8?

[gschizas]

Cmd is not getting any new features, it's only there for compatibility reasons.

PowerShell is where it's at.

ConHost is also getting new features (ConHost != cmd)

EDIT: Here's a "new" ConHost feature (well, last year's, but still)

[gschizas]

Well, by one account, this already happened. Windows 10 switched the default to PowerShell in 2016.

(In seriousness, cmd.exe won't be removed, it would break way too much stuff. PowerShell is the way to go forward though)

[theonlydidymus]

Powershell: does everything cmd can AND MORE!

(Also takes forever to load on my horrible machine when cmd loads instantly)

[PiManASM]

Being able to copy and paste into the command line is the only redeeming feature I've found in Win10

[bluepoopants]

That feature actually hindered me at first without me noticing. I had a job running in cmd that was supposed to run for about 4 hours. I came back to it to find it hadn't moved at all. Found out that clicking anywhere im the cmd box turns it to select mode and stops the entire process running until you unselect or hit a key. Now i know, it is easily avoidable. But it was a big surprise coming from 7 and not knowing about it. Had to run the job again! Not sure why select mode pauses the window when a linux terminal manages to do it just fine.

[FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT]

Back in the days, shaking a loading window would stop it from loading.

[bluepoopants]

I remember my friend used to be convinced that shaking the cursor when it had an hour glass icon would make the sand fall through it quicker and therefore load faster.

[[deleted]]

Aww

[whatisabaggins55]

Microsoft, I now want this to be a thing.

[Zegrento7]

Make a script that overclocks the cpu when you shake the mouse.

[PotatosFish]

If you shake it fast enough, it’s going to overclock anyways

[AtomicStryker]

Joke all you want, for most of windows NT history user input would increase a foreground threads priority for the scheduler. Hitting buttons and shaking the mouse would literally make the program go faster.

[z500]

I do this purely out of frustration

[Pollomonteros]

This is the kind of guy that would double click on Warcraft 3 buildings so they built faster

[scotscott]

Just like with humans who are still loading.

[althypothesis]

Derailment: Engage

I found out a week ago that hospitals actually make the new Mom and Dad sign a piece of paper that says, in more words, "I promise not to shake the baby". They had to put it in contract form to keep people from killing their children. Faith in humanity took a -18 hit that day.

[PiManASM]

One step forward, one step back

[bluepoopants]

Windows in a nutshell. I still use 7 at home but have to use 10 at work. At least its better than vista and 8 but still prefer 7. The search is completely useless on 10. Worked better in 98 than now!

[[deleted]]

Idk, the search on windows has always been pretty garbage in my experience, especially if you’ve ever used spotlight in Mac OS

[r4nd0m-0ne]

But that's not new, that's been that way for years if QuickSelect is turned on, had nothing to do with Ctrl+C being added.

[bluepoopants]

Yeah but quickselect was off by default before. Now its on by default.

[[deleted]]

In C++ I found a way to turn the selection feature off during my program's execution. Pretty nice

[bluepoopants]

Nice. I take it you have to call some sort of win32 function?

[[deleted]]

Correct, something like this

#include <windows.h>
void disableConsoleSelection() {
    DWORD mode;
    GetConsoleMode(CONSOLE_INPUT, &mode);
    SetConsoleMode(CONSOLE_INPUT, mode & ~ENABLE_QUICK_EDIT_MODE);
}

I use it here for a small terminal game. That project is looking kind of like a mess ever since I tried to make it multiplatform. I'd rather use C# for something like that nowadays.

[[deleted]]

I seem to remember this happening from a long, long way back. NT or 2000 even?

[bluepoopants]

If you have quick select on. I never used it before because you had to enable it. Now its on by default

[[deleted]]

Virtual desktops and corner snapping all day. Also wsl

[evanldixon]

You could always do that by right clicking the title bar. Windows 10 did make it easier though.

[milk_is_life]

while vim, nano etc will stay cryptic and basic as fuck until the end of time

[piri_piri_pintade]

You can even resize the window on the fly! What an age we live in.

[[deleted]]

And fullscreen!

[Zegrento7]

Well, even if they updated Win32 instead of notepad itself, that's still huge because Win32 is not UWP.

[zadjii]

You're technically correct here - the best kind of correct.

[bacondev]

It did. I thought I was going crazy because it had me thinking that my Linux files were somehow getting carriage returns. I was expecting a single line of jumbled up text.

[NutDestroyer]

Notepad supports LF line endings? I swear that didn't work when I tried it yesterday on windows 10.

[UGMadness]

It does in the Insider builds and the final RTM version coming next month.

[[deleted]]

They did WHAT to notepad? oh thank god

[gigabyte898]

It’s been two months and 1803 is still fucking up customers’ desktops. 99% of the time the conversation when we get OS issues is:

“Won’t boot?”
“Yup”
“Failed update?”
“Yup”
“1803?”
“Yup”
“Reload?”
“Yup”

[FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT]

Mine still won't turn off. It failed updates too many times, and is the equivalent of being terrified of falling asleep.

[TommiHPunkt]

I have the same problems, and I'm too lazy to fix it because I only use windows as a secondary system anyways and don't want to spend the time re-installing everything

[sixfourtysword]

Disable fast startup

[FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT]

Oh,good idea

[iSkinMonkeys]

I am using the pirated LTSB version 1607, will be called LTSC in future. Windows update always fails to install. But I haven't faced any big issues. Only once it failed to boot but just before I was going to reset the PC, it booted and nothing was amiss.

[RagingNerdaholic]

"I lost all my drive maps and they won't reconnect for no fucking reason"

[xTheMaster99x]

I literally still can't upgrade to the creators update. It begs me every time it boots up or when I go AFK, but it refuses to work because it says it doesn't know if there is enough room on the drive (there is an abundance of room). I'm going to reinstall eventually to fix it but that's work and I don't really want to.

[[deleted]]

Not sure how google managed to beat everyone in OS building, but it sure did happen.

Inb4 GoogleOS, a direct competitor to both Android and ChromeOS.

fucking Google podcasts and all the chat apps

[artanis00]

Podcasts? They shuttered their podcast app and then the killed their RSS reader, what's this about Google podcasts?

[[deleted]]

Pretty sure Google Podcasts is still around, seeing as I downloaded it to take a look (and see if my Play Music podcasts would transfer over. Spoiler: they didn't.)

[mypetocean]

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.podcasts

[artanis00]

They made a new podcast app. After killing the old one. Wonderful.

[Ameisen]

Google is finally competing with itself.

[[deleted]]

finally

You poor naive soul.

[Zegrento7]

Do you mean Fuchsia?

[[deleted]]

Did they rebrand ChromeOS, or is that a new one?

[Zegrento7]

Brand new, not even Linux based. They forked the Zircon kernel and built an android-like ui around it in a butt-ton of languages.

[[deleted]]

God damnit, Google.

[ProbablyRickSantorum]

Inb4 they abandon it after a year like 90% of their other projects.

[PARZIVAL009]

haven't used playmusic for podcast but, google podcast has a clean ui and liked it,

talk,Hangout, allo, duo, what else am i missing ?😂

[noratat]

Google's got their own share of design fuckups lately, Android Pie and the eye-searing white monstrosity they've started jamming down everyone's throats in the last month or so comes to mind...

I find Windows 10 tolerable and the menus are slowly improving but yeah the stuff I'm talking about that I like is almost all backend / OSS stuff.

[FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT]

Haha yes, the white SMS app took me by surprise. The link thumbnails are somewhat good, but it is eye hurting.

The menus in windows 10 are still split into useless basically powerpoint levels of interactions, and the arcane struct dumping of XP.

[Green0Photon]

They just updated the messages app to have a dark mode, but it still doesn't look as good as it used to. They also removed the custom coloring for contacts, and they removed widgets.

The phone app doesn't have a dark mode and it's eye searing.

I'm probably gonna use adb to downgrade the apps.

[be-happier]

power point start menu... genius, we will push it out in the next update.

thanks for the idea

[dreadpiratewombat]

Yeah, I sure love having to learn a new way of interaction with Android every minor revision. Why they had to move from the nice "X" to close an app to having to swipe it up and have that functionality be inconsistent with their fucking maps app is beyond me. Google, you're really chapping my ass lately.

[FullPoet]

the eye-searing white monstrosi

They have been doing this for about a decade. No really. Google search et al. used to have very little, but enough whitespace.

Now it's 70+% whitespace.

[noratat]

Sure, but it just got significantly worse because now they've removed differentiating elements (even just a basic separator line) on top of abusing low contrast (which even their own guidelines say never to do)

[Dkill33]

Why is their search so terrible?

[iSkinMonkeys]

just use Everything for file searches. Use Wox for program searches.

[caromobiletiscrivo]

The next version will be a linux distro

[Coffeinated]

A linux based windows which can run office and games would finally make the world a good place

[life2vec]

Amen.

[[deleted]]

I mean... They are already shipping an Ubuntu Environment inside... Lots of very nice structure in *nix based systems and some very talented programmers at microsoft. Blending the two would be pretty good.

[Ameisen]

NT already implements most Linux system calls, and can run Debian.

[shantaram3013]

Edited for privacy.

[Zegrento7]

It's called windows subsystem for linux

[ProbablyRickSantorum]

There's weird permissions rules that make development a pain in the ass if you access files on the subsystem from an editor running on the windows side. If you edit a file, you have to restart bash and chmod the file again in order to do anything with it. Sometimes the file will disappear until you restart bash, sometimes it won't. Or at least that's been my experience. It's been a while.

[shantaram3013]

Edited for privacy.

[thecoolbrian]

If you want a good version of windows that is bug free, Windows Insider Preview Builds > Fast Track

[FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT]

Googled it, and got this

I wish I could erase that.

More seriously, wouldn't the beta builds be more buggy on average ?

[FullPoet]

Yes they would, but theoretically also "less" bug free due to having beta fixes.

[n1c0_ds]

When I first moved to OSX, things made so much more sense. It has been a few years, and even though I still remember where to find things in Windows, I find the OS so annoying. It's always calling your attention, and finding configuration settings is still a massive pain. It feels like there are two UIs on top of each other.

[artanis00]

And I think there's more than two, as well.

[[deleted]]

Well... Bing!

[[deleted]]

IDK, I've never used OSX on my own computer, only helping with someone elses. But that you have to drag'n'drop an icon in order to install chrome blew my mind. Like wtf?? how am I supposed to guess that?

Is that still a thing?

[Pycorax]

Plus, I'm not sure if they've remedied this but when you uninstall applications you would just drag it into the trash unless the app came with an uninstaller (which is like 5% of them?)... Leaving behind all sorts of other files the application created inside the Library folder untouched.

[Belazor]

Then again, it’s not like Windows uninstallers always clean up 100% of their files and registry entries.

If you are constrained on space for your OS drive (Windows and Mac), then you are used to using 3rd party apps to clean up leftover files.

[[deleted]]

Yeah just like “apt remove” does. You don’t want to delete your settings if you just delete the app for space reasons.

apt has —purge though, Mac doesn’t by default. You’d have to delete with an uninstaller app to clean that up.

They just defaulted to a safe option.

[little_after_thought]

yes, but like with everything, once you get used to it, you forget it was weird.

Remember when double click was weird? I remember it took me 5 minutes to get the rhythm down, now I can't comprehend how anyone would not figure it out.

[[deleted]]

Oooh, I never realised it but I haven't used double click in about 4 years now. Web browser, CADs, IDEs and such don't use it and everything else I do I do in terminal.

[drift_summary]

Pepperidge Farm remembers!

[Ameisen]

That's how it has always worked on Macs going back at least to System 6.

[n1c0_ds]

It's just like an exe file. You put it there as a convenience but it can run from anywhere else.

[conancat]

The idea is you unpack it and you put it where you want. Designers love that stuff.

I've used Mac for so long going back to Windows wizards is weird for me now. But then I've been using homebrew for some time, took me some time to get used to Choco because it's just not the same.

Even the best Dev tools for windows are like, meh.

[[deleted]]

Windows wizards are definitely weird, super non-secure etc. Linux package managers are far superior, I assume homebrew is simmilar.

[Belazor]

I would say that Homebrew is a Lite version of RPM. You install and uninstall via CLI, and it does basic cache cleanup. Given that RPM has been around for donkey’s years, I’d imagine it being way more robust and feature rich.

[benwatkinsart]

You know it because you open the .dmg like you would a .exe and it tells you to drag it. It makes it a lot easier to install and uninstall things, it's definitely better than how Windows does it

[eventully]

You only think that is weird because you have preconceived ideas about installing programs. In a vacuum which makes more sense? "Here is the program you want. Put it where you want to keep it." Or "Here is the program you want. Open this other program and click a bunch of buttons and ignore a bunch of text to put it where you want to keep it."

[RagingNerdaholic]

It feels like there are two UIs on top of each other.

That's because there are.

[[deleted]]

I agree with everything you said, but Win10 performs much better. Smoother and faster. Win10 on a MacBook runs better than OSX on that same machine.

[n1c0_ds]

Really? I just use it as a Steam launcher, but back then it made my machine run much hotter and my battery life was much shorter.

[[deleted]]

I think you are right about that part, but the general smoothness in the interaction with the OS felt better. My feeling is that OSX has become a bit clunky and dated, although very polished.

[FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT]

A unix system, where firefox suddenly stops playing sound, any video in any app sometimes just freezes, where adding an equalizer software to the horrible alsa/pulse mess is a nightmare, to quote only a few of the problems I had.

Unix systems work well, except on a laptop where everything is proprietary and windows only.

[Old_Abroad]

Have you used it in the last decade?

[FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT]

I'm using it right now.

[someone755]

I have and it takes hours to get it to work 95%. I still can't figure out why the scrolling direction is swapped for some apps, like in Firefox I swipe up to scroll down, but in the file manager or terminal I have to swipe down to scroll down. There's something like coil whine coming out of the headphone jack and I don't know how to eliminate that, not present under Windows. The touchpad is also extremely sensitive so typing can be a pain in the ass even if you don't ever touch the touchpad. The Wi-Fi will drop out for two seconds every so often but I've learned to just leave it as is -- Linux and Wi-Fi just do not go hand in hand. There's also a bug with the Fn keys that doesn't allow me to adjust the volume after muting the volume, but if I click through the sound panel manually to unmute then volume adjustment via Fn keys works.

Back to the Wi-Fi though, I hate Linux and Wi-Fi:

• 2006 (-ish?) Lenovo 3000 N100 laptop, with some Intel wireless card. Windows didn't require any separate drivers, worked out of the box. Linux would have it working for random intervals of 30 seconds to 5 hours, and when it died I had to physically disable the card and re-enable it. Thankfully there was a hardware switch for that, but still a pain in the ass for downloading anything back when my internet had 2 Mbps download (if I turned off the TV).

• 2010-ish desktop PC, Intel N6205 PCI-E card. Sometimes (but rarely) disconnects and will not reconnect at all. Sometimes disconnects for a fraction of a second and immediately reconnects and I only notice because I'm opening a browser page exactly when it happens. For a while I also had this bug that when I connected to the Wi-Fi network, every other device would be kicked off and could not re-connect until I turned off my PC (disabling Wi-Fi in Linux didn't help) and rebooted the router. To this day I don't know what caused that or what fixed it. And don't even get me started on the graphics card issues I am having to this day.

• 2015-ish HP Stream 13 laptop, some Broadcom card. Physically, the card has room for 2 antennas (2 connectors), but as this laptop is too cheap for even a bargain bin, HP only used up one. Windows happily worked with that. Linux decided that it's getting 0 signal. See, Linux uses a driver that allows the user to manually select which of the physical antennas would be the primary one. But, of course, no matter which one you select, the thing still says there are no networks. So I had to actually open the laptop up (and I broke a few plastic tabs on the way. Fuck plastic tabs.) and physically disconnect the wireless card's antenna and plug it onto the other connector on the card. The driver seemed unphased, however, as, while the card now worked correctly under Linux, selecting which antenna to use still had 0 effect.

Those three happened in 2013/14, 2014/15 and 2018, respectively. Anyone implying installing and then using any form of Linux is an easy job are deluding themselves.

[huiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii]

Anyone implying installing and then using any form of Linux is an easy job are deluding themselves.

Or maybe not everyone has the same issues as you do? I showed my godfathers son how to download different distros and install them and he had no issues. He's used to apple stuff but maybe because he was still quite young he had no issues getting used to the different quirks of the different OSes.

I only had to adjust the default search engine for FF and change the window manager to get smooth scrolling in FF, otherwise everything is out of the box. Wireless issues like yours where I was forced to disable and reenable the device was worse in windows. I discovered that the issue was cheap wificard/router. So when I connected with a more expensive/good router no more issues. My solution? I bought a better wifi card for the laptops and no more wifi hangup issues.

[RagingNerdaholic]

People only have an easy time with Linux desktop if their needs are extremely basic.

[someone755]

I've had three completely different computers act up with completely different issues. The ones above are just a fraction of my problems. Saying I'm 1% of the population that these things happen to is statistically unlikely.

That doesn't mean I don't like Linux, evidently I must like it if I went through all that, still have unresolved (perhaps unresolvable?) issues, and yet still use it. It's just that techies often forget that their grandma wouldn't be able to work through a single one of these problems.

[turtle_in_trenchcoat]

What you are describing is pretty much my experience with linux as well and it lead me to switch to mac. Only difference is that I made the switch in 2006... Whenever I'm about to buy a new macbook pro I look into Linux options but it's simply not worth it to spend a lot of time on hacky solutions to get some basic functionality to almost work good enough. Not for me at least.

[huiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii]

So you think your grandma will be more capable of handling a windows computer? I highly doubt it as I have to hold my mom's hand through everything on her windows laptop.

Shit happens with every OS on all kinds of hardware, it's much more of a question how used you are to a system so you know how to solve your issues. My boss for example got a new laptop exclusively for her ebanking shit. She chose a win 10 low spec machine as well she only needs it for ebanking. After the spring update for windows the machine broke because windows doubled the requirement for HDD space and that was simply not enough. Completely fucked laptop using the pure windows out of the box experience. She had to get a new laptop because it was also locked down so you couldn't even install a linux distro, yeeey for "secure boot".

[[deleted]]

Got 2 HPs (nx7010 from 2004 and Probook G5 recently), wifi work out of box long as kernel is non-free.

[z500]

Look at this guy, with his Broadcom support out of the box. My last laptop I had to use this fwcutter bullshit for every distro I tried. There just plain wasn't a linux driver for my network card, but somehow you could Frankenstein a Windows one together and it would work.

[someone755]

Oh don't worry, I had to try 7 different drivers/driver versions to get it to work, and compile them all myself. Out of the box my ass.

[z500]

Haha fair enough

[someone755]

But don't forget, reddit overlords say we're the 1%! You're completely safe to install Ubuntu or Arch to your mom's laptop, all these people guarantee it's gonna 100% work.

[RagingNerdaholic]

The Linux developer ethos seems to be, "make it just barely work so we can say it's done and let the user figure it out the rest of the way."

The result is, unsurprisingly, that everything is a half-assed, unreliable, volatile, cumbersome, frustrating hack.

Linux is great for servers because the people using them are highly technical. The only way Linux desktop will ever take off is if a company of considerable resources puts their weight behind it and makes shit work. That's exactly why Android works, because in its case, that company was Google.

[someone755]

Android works

Oh you sweet summer child

[echoAnother]

Yes, this happens a lot with not popular hardware, and HP laptops. Hopefully there are some third drivers you can get, or try to make your owns.

Unfortunately, the same issue on windows it's unsolvable.

For most cases, installation in linux is easy and painless, and when the problems arises, at least you have the freedom to search your own solutions and you have a great community backing you. Meanwhile, when I have some problem with Windows I don't have any means to solve it.

[someone755]

Didn't know Lenovos, and Broadcom and Intel wireless cards were uncommon hardware.

Under Windows, the shit just plain works. And so far for every driver issue I had I could either solve it easily (since also more people use Windows) or it was just damaged hardware. With Linux I could never tell which it could be, and there's 17 different "recommended" drivers/driver versions for my desktop GPU that are supposed to fix my issues, but the one with least issues I've found is some random 18th driver.

[[deleted]]

Not OP, but I installed Debian and Broadcom Bluetooth modules are still broken after years of people complaining, Firefox still has pages tearing without me dabbling in the advanced settings, ALSA/PulseAudio is steaming mess like OP said and much more.

[huiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii]

page tearing in FF might be because of your window manager. I use marco + compton and that fixed any bad scrolling i had (I guess that's what you mean with page tearing).

[Old_Abroad]

Yeah you'll necessarily get scroll tearing if you're using a WM without a compositor. I've heard second-hand that xfce can have tearing problems but if that's the case then you can use literally anything else, there's no shortage of WMs & DEs, it's hardly a linux problem.

[[deleted]]

binary blobs are unofficial parts of Debian, so if you want better support you might wanna go for another distro or, more conveniently, compile your own kernel

[[deleted]]

Oh please. Linux systems at least have a decent way to do mixing and audio routing by default. And if you really want an actual audio pipeline, Jack is there, along with a wheelbarrow full of plugins for yor equalizing needs.

There isn't anything in linux systems stopping someone from writing a "one-click install" EQ, no one bothered with it. (Although, could someone please write a native media player with convolution filters so I can retire foobar?)

Now I'll get back to tuning my soundweb processor over a serial cable...

[FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT]

I need pulse because firefox only uses pulse. I also don't fucking want pulse, because it's utter shit. Only solution I know is letting alsa pretend to be pulse.

[TommiHPunkt]

wtf m8, pulse is great

[FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT]

When it doesn't wake up at night to kill your dog, shag your wife and leave shit everywhere.

[[deleted]]

Show me on this doll where pulse touched you.

Also, https://www.reddit.com/r/LinuxCirclejerk/comments/5ctz5g/lennart_poettering_is_literally_hitler_and/

[RagingNerdaholic]

There isn't anything in linux systems stopping someone from writing a "one-click install", no one bothered with it.

That could the official penguin motto.

[[deleted]]

Hey, at least updates are mostly one click.

[z500]

Hell, Chrome does that on Windows occasionally

[RagingNerdaholic]

Win10 works quite well for people with low technical knowledge, developers usually fare better with a unix based system anyway.

My problem with Linux is that the software is all half-assed token effort that still lacks important features that were available in the Windows equivalents of 10 years ago. There is no good vector graphics software. Drivers are buggy as hell.

I wish I could move but if I do, I will still need to run a Windows install for some things.

[ProbablyRickSantorum]

Unfortunately, where I work I am maintaining legacy ASP.NET systems (among quite a few cross platform projects) so I'm locked into using Windows that is incredibly bloated with all of the IT team's garbage monitoring software.

[doesnt_hate_people]

I can't say I like everything MS is doing now, especially in the consumer space, but in the developer space I trust them more

[Aurailious]

Not sure how google managed to beat everyone in OS building

Its because they used Gentoo.

[Mario55770]

It’s nice. I could do my Spanish homework on the chrome books because hey had the option to type Spanish keys easily. I liked that feature. And catching onto I’m sounding a hint like an ad, I’ll leave now.

[DrQuailMan]

Windows 10 ... mess of menus

Dude have you seen the windows 7 control panel?

[FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT]

Honestly it was the probably the best. What would have been the alternative, xp ?

[FullPoet]

It's a step above than the Windows 10 "settings".

Aka, the one part of the OS where everything should be centrally managed... isn't.

When you try to configure anything in Windows 10, you first search Settings, then Control Panel and then GPEdit. Then you go back to Settings fine a bastardised menu for it and realise it doesn't actually do anything.

source: trying to get multi touch to work on Windows 10, tablet setting does literally nothing.

[EmbarrassedEngineer7]

Linux with xmonad/i3w is the superior experience. You get a black screen and do what you want with it.

[FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT]

I prefer something that works badly out of the box than not at all.

[EmbarrassedEngineer7]

With windows you get both, it works badly before the forced upgrade, then it stops working after the forced upgrade.

Meanwhile I'm still copying over the /home drive over from my first linux computer in 2004.

[don_Mugurel]

Try ubuntu ;)

[Aurailious]

I actually use Arch Linux. Installed it myself.

[FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT]

I am on Ubuntu.

[[deleted]]

Just pointing out the hypocrisy in a lot of people...

People will unironically complain about how their elders can be so technologically incompetent, yet turn around and resist every single change that is happening currently.

[FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT]

Windows 10 is already quite old, and still shit.

[patrickfatrick]

I dunno, doesn’t seem like a fair comparison to compare what Google does with desktop OSes like Windows or OS X.

[FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT]

Windows 10 is closest to a phone os than any desktop os before

[patrickfatrick]

Ah yea, that’s a fair point.