“On systems with Secure Launch enabled, attempts to shut down, restart, or hibernate after applying the January patches may fail to complete.”
microslop patch
Be hard for it to stay on with no power cord/battery…
That’s how the matrix started!
Same as when my computer refuses to finish writing to a flash drive. When I press that “safely remove hardware” button, it is not a request, it is a warning. If the data is corrupted after I yank the stupid thing, so be it
It’ll just jab its fangs into your arm and feed off your blood.
the key is, from microsoft’s perspective, you don’t own your computer
Microsoft is watching you ,day and night.
That explains about my work laptop. I swear that I clicked shutdown before I went on two week Christmas holidays!
Shutdown doesn’t actually turn off the PC anymore. You need to do a restart if you actually want to “shut down” the computer all the way.
I see way too many systems where the CPU has been up for more than 100 days.
I just want to know why my Windows 10 laptop is waking up by itself in the middle of the night to apply updates it isn’t supposed to have? What the fuck?!
You don’t own proprietary software. When you allow it access to your computing resources, you can just hope it does what you want it to do, the way you want it to.
Sounds like a bonkers extremist position, and in a way it is, but it’s also true.
I just want to know why my Windows 10 laptop is waking up by itself in the middle of the night to apply updates it isn’t supposed to have?
To answer the question as written: yes.
Have a look at “wake timers”, they might be at fault and need disabling
Thanks. It was set to Allow Important Only when plugged in, I’ve disabled it. This prevents me from using Wake-On-Lan, though, which is shitty. I fucking hate Windows.
Instead of waiting a few more years for Linux to reach the level of ease-of-use needed to overtake Windows, MS is being sporty by moving the goal closer.
Go install Linux Mint and you might just realize that line is already way behind microsoft.
Nah. Gonna stick to gaming on my GNU GUIX through Proton thanks.
Linux is clearly not only good enough, but simpler too.
It’s just a ton of perception, habits and sales pipelines that need moving now. If electronics stores started putting out Linux Gaming PCs, nobody buying them would be worse off than Windows. That has been true for well over a year.
It’s not. There are plenty of bugs and hardware issues. Bluetootth from my motherboard doesn’t work and I can’t even turn my monitor off without having to remove and reinsert HDMI.
My WiFi wouldn’t work until I disabled fast-boot in the BIOS and restarted the system twice.
TBF, even with that headache, setting up a windows 11 machine without signing up for an account and personalized ads takes more effort. So I consider it a total success.
I didn’t say there were no issues.
My 4-monitor setup at work functions considerably better in both ubuntu and debian based Linux Mints than it does in Windows. Just your standard corporate Dell laptop & docking station.
No computers have zero weird stuff wrong with them. But over time the design intent has mattered more and more versus just the bugginess of the execution.
In my experience though, Linux has pulled ahead in both. And by a lot.
Linux is currently easier to use than Windows. People who think otherwise are Windows users who think different equals worse.
Sometimes different is even better! When I switched to Linux a few months back I didn’t anticipate just how much I would like the Gnome desktop environment. Now I sometimes even try flicking down my mouse to switch tabs on my Win11 work pc and get a pang of disappointment when it doesn’t work.
Find me two programs and I will switch completely. One that allows me to burn my dvd/blu rays with no cap that can convert to MP4s. Second app I have is Audible and I can download the files. Then with TunFab convert those files into MP3s. Only reason I am still using Windows. Oh not to mention the app that allows me to pull Amazon Music files and convert them to MP3s.
What’s the app for Amazon Music? Or does it just record them from the website version?
Wine lets you run windows apps. Use that.
This is simply not true. I don’t understand what lying about this does for anyone.
As a recent Linux convert, pretty much every hardware has full windows support while Linux you’ll have to hunt for shit.
Basic stuff like Nvidia graphics cards or even Logitech peripherals will not “just work” on Linux.
Again, I love Linux and for me the pain was worth it, and most of the issues aren’t really Linux’s fault, it’s the manufacturers who are assholes, but your average windows user had no idea about who’s responsible when their mouse won’t work and they can’t install Logitech software.
even Logitech peripherals will not “just work” on Linux
I’m sorry, I did IT for years and still do it for friends if they make it worth the trouble. So, I have to ask, what the hell are you talking about?
Pretty much every logitech paripheral has worked perfectly for me on both windows or linux. It’s a mouse and keyboard, generic drivers work perfectly fine. Hell, I use a trackball mouse and that works plig and play on linux. Hell, open up a new windows computer run through the setup then disconnect it from the internet then plug in a logitech keyboard. Look at the driver for it in windows, it will probably be “generic keyboard driver”. It’s a keyboard.
Jesus fucking christ what is it with these agressive fucking responses?
https://www.logitechg.com/en-us/software/ghub
Literarily the official website doesn’t support Linux, my Logitech gaming mouse I have to dual boot windows to configure.
I don’t understand why people can’t simply admit that some shit sucks on Linux.
Windows is worse, worse for you and your privacy, but some things are simply plug and play for the average person noob on Windows that aren’t on Linux.
Being honest with people will prepare them to be patient and approach Linux with realistic expectations and they are more likely to stick around.
Weird i converted 3 systems to linux last year and every hardware was plug and play, except a 3070ti for which it was open the driver launcher and click once
Nvidia graphics cards don’t “just work” on windows either tbf
Yes they do. You do the community no favors pretending it’s not easy and reliable.
From my experience, you have to manually go to the Nvidia website and download the installer on Windows.
In Linux, depending on the flavor, it may be copy-paste a line from Nvidia’s website, or selecting the right option in the OS settings.
On Linux Mint, my Nvidia graphics card and Logitech keyboard and mouse just worked.
Yeah, my old machines (and work laptop!) are all nvidia, and it’s nice how seamlessly it works.
With the main version of mint that’s based on ubuntu, you get a driver manager so that you can choose between driver versions if needed.
With Linux Mint Debian Edition, it worked fine for general use out of the box with the open source driver. I went looking for info about the nvidia driver out of curiosity, and after stumbling upon some forum discussion I went ahead and tried “sudo apt install nvidia-driver” and it freaking worked!
- note I might be slightly off on that command, this is just from memory. And I probably enabled non-free software previously, because I know nvidia’s reputation with linux enthusiasts.
edit to add: it did a LONG setup process to enable the nvidia driver too. I think it compiled some kernel modules and stuff too. But I like reading all that lovely monospaced terminal text scroll by with those details most users can ignore.
The support is getting better by the minute! I do think steam os has helped catapult Linux ahead from where it was just 5 years ago in terms of hardware support
You might have been unlucky. I never had serious installation issues when installing Ubuntu on a lot of different computers in the past five years. Just started the installer, click next a few times and reboot into the new installation. It used to be some tinkering required to get everything to work, but apart from having to enable the proprietary Nvidia driver in a GUI (and having to search for it) everything else just worked. My last Windows install however was a shitshow. Took ages and I had to disable a ton of surveillance stuff. On top of that I had to go through some weird hoops to keep the thing from requiring me to create a Microsoft account. What distro did you use? I guess some are more difficult than others
Distribution choice makes a lot of difference, but they’re not wrong, manufacturers just don’t write drivers for Linux. Sure, we’ve got AMD, Intel, and even nVidia (fuck nVidia btw) writing theirs, but peripherals are way more hit or miss.
That’s only going to be solved with wider adoption.
I swapped a year ago, I went from Mint to Fedora then to Cachy. I use Debian on a home server and now NixOS on my laptop. I would say this is more of an issue with you and or the distro you chose aswell your hardware. In the last two months I even swapped my little brother to fedora cause all he does is game and all of the sudden I am not having to help him do anything or fix random errors, the only “hard” part or searching was nvidia and that was simple after reading one page of documentation. It all depends on what you choose, your desire to learn and your hardware. Also on Windows you have to go find the correct website and download the correct file from there, which is getting harder and harder with search engines feeding you the highest bidder instead of the actual site you need (This is how my bro used to get viruses because he didnt understand vetting websites)
if it’s just gaming, consider a side-grade to bazzite:
it’s an atomic fedora distro (even has a dedicated Nvidia installer), meaning it’s more difficult to break and easier to rollback when it breaks!
and it has a bunch of gaming related tools pre-installed, which is helpful, but not the main selling point imo.
anyways, yeah, linux gaming is really, REALLY easy these days!
I forgot about bazzite I had it on my rog ally x for a bit, it was pretty nice I just swapped it to cachyos for better performance I may end up swapping him over to bazzite though, thanks for reminding me of it!
I use bluefin since I do AI research but installing Steam is super easy. Personally I think it’s good if you have learned how Linux works at a high level (things like kernel and user space, systemd, the filesystem, targets, etc.) but in principle it requires very little maintenance. No dnf update and possible issues with drivers, almost everything is taken care of upstream. They even have an AI chatbot based on dosu on the discussion forum so you can troubleshoot.
The main difference is that the additional software you need to install doesn’t always come from the manufacturer on Linux. Other than that it’s actually pretty similar.
Heck, there are even devices that work better under Linux, such as the Logitech F710 gamepad. That one has been subtly incompatible with the USB stack of every Windows after 7 while it works with Linux just fine.
On Fedora I go to the repo (app store) and install the Nvidia drivers… on windows I have to download them from the Nvidia site. I’m not sure what you are talking about. Linux is easier but it’s pretty much the same process.
For Logitech use Solaar, also available in most distribution’s repos.
So your argument is the hardware is an issue where my argument is Linux is easier to use. My 78 year old mother in law uses Pop everyday and hasn’t had an issue in the 3 years since she switched. Hearing that you’re having issues with nvidia and Logitech is going to devastate her…
I’m not the person you’re responding to, but if I have headphones or speakers or a mouse that aren’t plug and play on Linux which is what I’m used to on windows, I think it’s fair to say that my experience with Linux is less easy than with windows. The average user is not going to consider that a hardware issue, and it isn’t a hardware issue. If it’s a driver issue, I’d call that a software issue. Im glad to hear your grandma is not having issues with Linux, but as a Linux user I have to agree with the other commenter. A not insignificant amount of people will run up against some issues with Linux that the average user is likely not equipped to solve. I’m not saying that it means Linux is bad, but it really isn’t helpful to act like that’s a complete fabrication.
“… which is what I’m used to on windows…”
Reread my original comment.
Linux is currently easier to use than Windows.
Claim in dispute
People who think otherwise are Windows users who think different equals worse.
In this case different is worse. If you’re used to a restaurant that serves carrots and I serve you peas you can argue that it’s not worse it’s just different. If you’re used to a restaurant that serves carrots and I tell you I don’t know what carrots are and I don’t have any alternative suggestions, but if you can find a store that provides what you’re talking about, appropriately transport that to my location and teach me how to cook them I will do that, then I think it’s fair to say I’m just a worse restaurant. What’s not comparable is easy of use. If you don’t understand how a lack of plug and play affects ease of use then there’s nothing I can say that will fundamentally bridge that gap.
No alternative suggestions? Linux is an alternative suggestion. The problem isn’t the lack of carrots, it’s your lack of palate.
Exactly. A lot of people seem to think that different = worse, or that not supporting the same software means it supports less software. I couldn’t move to Windows right now because there is a ton of stuff I use Linux for that Windows has no alternative, or the alternatives are terrible. It works both ways.
As someone who’s worked in IT for years, it’s my opinion that different is worse.
I don’t really mind supporting multiple operating systems, it is a little more of a hassle, but it’s far better than supporting users on systems they’re not familiar with. As much of a nice idea it is to “streamline” an organization by putting every machine on the same os, in my experience it actually works better to put everyone in whatever os they’re most comfortable with. For a lot of people computers are hard, period. And needing to learn new systems just to do their job is the kind of thing they have nightmares about.
When it comes right down to, any modern operating system will do just fine, they’re shockingly similar in the end. Plus, in many industries upwards of 80% of a user’s work may be in a browser anyway. So that’s where I stand, people should use whatever they want, and making people change isn’t a great idea.
Honestly, I love having a w11 rig AND a laptop with zorin and a laptop with w10 and a old all in one with mint. Variety is the spice of life, I need a Windows laptop to tune my cars ecus. Simply not able to do it in Linux, but my Linux laptop has stuff my windows doesn’t. Real ones can’t just live with one os B)
I wonder if the software you need for cars would run under Wine.
For years I kept one Windows laptop running only so I could use one proprietary app that I used occasionally when teaching. It was not ideal, but whatever. Then Windows started showing ads. on the desktop. that I was showing to my students! That I will not tolerate. So I poked around with Wine and found out I could run that app on my Mint laptop!
Goodbye forever TinyFlaccid. Go fuck yourself.
(note: I do have to use a windows machine for one thing still - to print at work using my company supplied office computer. sigh.)
It is.
And honestly, remembering the stuff I had to do to play the original Doom at a LAN party back in the day.
- Buy a sound card (some PCs came with, mine didn’t)
- Install the sound card drivers correctly
- Edit the computer’s config.sys file to assure the operating system drivers were loaded in such an order as to allow enough of Bill Gates’ 640 kb RAM available to load a game
- Borrow (!) a network card from my dad’s computer, and open up the PC to jam it in there
- Install network drivers
- Path the physical coaxial network cables through all PCs and terminate them correctly
- Configure the game to know which direct memory address (bank 1) and hardware interrupt request id (5) it needed to talk to the sound card
- Yes hello also find a smaller mouse driver and load it correctly because by now all the networking and audio stuff is making those 640kb tight
We all did that back then!
If someone was a “gamer” they were not afraid to do this because they either knew how or knew a friend who was happy to help.
Compare that to what I do today that most gamers consider “mind-numbingly super nerd impossible bullshit lol linux sux”, running GNU GUIX:
- Find a channel for the nvidia drivers. Add it to my system config, 2 lines.
- Find a channel for Steam. Add it to my system config, 2 lines.
- Oh no I had to add 2 more lines for nvidia by following clear documentation.
O hey everything just works. Proton kicks in automatically.
Welcome to the convo, fellow old person.
I just set up a raspberry pi and i couldn’t figure out if it would automatically update, there wasn’t any gui option for it.
I found a few websites all with different methods to set up auto update. One of the most accepted was some cli that was encouraged to copy/paste. It installed something, but it then needed additional config to work on rpi.
30 mins from the time I powered on it was ready. In windows, it’s enabled out of the box and searching for “updates” on the task bar finds it for you.
Which of these OS’s was easier?
Last time I used Raapbian there was a GUI for updates, and I think it would show a notification periodically for updates.
This is mostly a difference of not knowing really. I have a Mac at work and it seems incredibly hard to do easy things, but mostly because I’m not used to it nor I bother to learn.
If “easier” is not knowing how something works, and it’s complicated, then there’s your metric.
To me, life is always made simpler through my understanding of a problem, and more complex by my paving over/abdication of critical thought.
Which version of Linux did you install? It supports a lot of them, and most have updaters that are easily configured from the task bar, just like Windows.
Stock rpi released in December.
Raspberry OS is, imho, is not really representative of the desktop Linux experience. It’s a bit like Gentoo or Arch. Great OS’s, for their intended use cases.
While RPis with Raspberry OS can be a decent desktop replacement in a pinch (I’ve done it), it’s more intended for learning and experimentation.
If you’re intending to use it as your primary computer, I’d recommend using Ubuntu or Fedora. And running the OS on an USB3 external solid state drive.
Fair, but why not enable updates by default? Not doing so seems like a disservice to the internet community.
It’s kinda an ethos thing that goes way back, and Microsoft keeps giving us examples of why it can be a bad idea. Essentially, it boils down to the idea that YOU should be in control of what your system is doing.
Most distros can (including Raspberry OS), and many of them will check for updates automatically, but none that I can think of will install updates automatically unless you purposefully choose to enable that function.
Was this before or after you had to hop into command prompt to force a local account?
I get what you’re saying, but it’s not really true.
If the only program you run is a web browser, then you’re probably right, but only because Linux expects you to know how to use your computer and install updates yourself.
Linux has achieved a very stable OS that offers a very granular experience, which is great if you know what you’re doing, but if you don’t, it’s pretty arcane. The ability to configure everything on your system exactly how you want it to run is a double edged sword.
If you want anything beyond what is offered out of the box, you’ll need to interact with the terminal at some point, which is a pretty steep learning curve for the average user.
So Windows users don’t need the command prompt?
unless you’re a sysadmin or a power user, no, not really.
You think Linux users are required to terminal up? My poor mother in law…
Oh so you have met my aunt
A few more years? Try Mint 22.3 Cinnamon, like millions of others are!
Hey I am not in need of convincing haha. Am Linux gamer and genuinely find it easier than Windows already.
Or any of the other “easy” distros. To be honest… The “gaming” distros have been just as easy as mint to me. Cachy, bazzite, and to a lesser degree nobara (points knocked off for giving me grief after an update) have all been very easy and stable.
I think people get scared because everyone says you need to use command line in Linux. That’s not really true any more than it is in Windows. There are certain things that are easier with command line or other things that might need to be done there, but it’s easier and faster to look up what those things are than navigating the purposefully buried settings in Windows and everything basic can be done in gui anyhow. You can get as technical as you want in Linux.
The hardest thing for me about switching was finding comparable programs that I was used to. It takes time to find THE BEST PDF EDITOR or anything else on a new OS.
Linux is fucking easy already. Plenty of Distros out there, with preinstalled KDE Plasma, which is like a almost 1-1 transition from Windows :)
I feel like we actually got there a whole who, at least assuming basic use and fairly conventional hardware. Getting into the command line to fix stuff been be a pain, but so is navigating the absurd hierarchy of windows settings.
Assuming a computer that is already set up properly it’s pretty much a seamless experience. If your mom bought a laptop with mint and just used it for regular browsing and shit she probably couldn’t tell the difference.
Getting into the command line isn’t the problem. It’s the lack of consistency in how things are configured and the random command names that you have to remember or look up.
Windows might be tied to an online account, but Linux is tied to online communities to figure out nearly anything.
to be fair, during the past few years that I’ve used mint and kubuntu, not being able to shutdown, restart or suspend has been a pretty common issue 😅 so it’ll be a nice familiarity for people migrating from windows
I still have this issue on my Pop_OS! laptop.
my kubuntu laptop gets like that every time i close the lid and wake it up. pleasantly surprised it hasn’t happened on ultramarine kde on my desktop…although it has a ton of different issues
They had been doing this for a long time.
Hey, don’t blame me.
Have Microsoft and Windows always been this bad? Asking as a 2005 born whose first Win was 10.
Yes… and no.
Microsoft’s operating systems have been very hit or miss - certainly their consumer operating systems - with the classic rule being “every other one is decent”:
- Windows ✅
- Windows 2.0 ❌
- Windows 3.11 ✅
- Windows 95 ❌ (but in fairness it was a good crack, OSR2 was decent)
- Windows 98 ✅
- Windows Me ❌ (unless it was a clean install, the upgrade was horrific)
- Windows XP ✅
- Windows Vista ❌
- Windows 7 ✅
- Windows 8 ❌
- Windows 10 ✅
- Windows 11❌
The more business focussed OS’s like Windows for Workgroups, NT4, and 2000 were rock solid in fairness.
Their business practices have always been shady as fuck too. Embrace, extend, extinguish is firmly burned into computer hobbyists minds.
XP was the first one that had proper memory protection so that badly written programs would just crash instead of taking down the whole system.
It was a dramatic step forward compared to 98, where you’d be lucky to go a whole day without bluescreening. There’s a reason XP hung on for so long. It was the first Windows version that was really good enough for most people.
95 was great. 98 was shite. 98SE was fine.
95 wasn’t good. That’s when the “just format C: and reinstall windows” tradition started. I had to do that to my computer at least yearly until 2000 came along.
95 didn’t even ship with FAT32 support originally. I agree with the original comment that it wasn’t until the OSR versions that it got good. But they never sold those in the box, you could only get an OSR version from a prebuilt computer. So a lot of people never experienced them or didn’t experience the original 1995 version of 95 that still required 8 character filenames.
This is the correct comment.
Don’t agree on websites 95 - sure it has issues but it was revolutionary. Also disagree on your ME blurb, we bought a PC with an OEM install of ME. What a miserable piece of shit that software was.
Vista was also fine once it was fully patched, early releases of it were garbage though.
Ah I remember upgrading from 98SE to Millennium Edition and it was just ass. That said, I reformatted and installed Me and used the 98 CD to pass the upgrade check, and I had very few issues with it. Shit like System Restore was gash - in fact, any of the new tools installed with Me were awful - but I just effectively used it as 98 Third Edition and it did the job nicely for me.
I agree that 95 was a big - if not monumental - step up in graphics interface driven OSes… but the first few releases were unstable as fuck. Whether it was horrendous shutdown issues because ACPI support was super flaky at the time, to trying to run com/com as a command to insta-bluescreen the system. The latter is so much of an edge case though that I almost cut myself typing it.
There was a famous bug that made it into 95 and 98, a tick counter that caused the system to crash after about a month. It was in there so long because there were so many other bugs causing stability problems that it wasn’t obvious.
I will say that classic MacOS, which is what Apple was doing at the time, was also pretty unstable. Personal computer stability really improved in the early 2000s a lot. Mac OS X came out and Microsoft shifted consumers onto a Windows-NT-based OS.
EDIT:
https://www.cnet.com/culture/windows-may-crash-after-49-7-days/
A bizarre and probably obscure bug will crash some Windows computers after about a month and a half of use.
The problem, which affects both Microsoft Windows 95 and 98 operating systems, was confirmed by the company in an alert to its users last week.
“After exactly 49.7 days of continuous operation, your Windows 95-based computer may stop responding,” Microsoft warned its users, without much further explanation. The problem is apparently caused by a timing algorithm, according to the company.
I read that Vista was actually good but it required beefy computers that most people didn’t have at the time & Microsoft pushed manufacturers to put it on not good enough hardware which in turn made it a bad experience & the OS got a bad rep. Is this true?
The main issue with that is MS made a million different versions of Vista and some of them had significantly higher requirements than others. So you had OEMs selling machines that were ‘Vista Ready’ in the lead up to launch but they barely made the requirements for the basic version. Then you had people going to Best Buy and getting the premium version and having a horrible experience.
I had Vista on my MacBook Pro and it was a a solid OS, especially if you needed 64-bit support. In fact the Pro was PC Magazine’s #1 pick for Vista machines which caused quite a stir at the time when Bootcamp was still new.
It was certainly pushed on many PCs that had no business trying to run it, especially laptops. But honestly I’ve used both XP and Vista and even on a computer that could run it, I didn’t see anything that justified how much more resources it required.
And apparently on launch it was quite buggy in part due to poorly made drivers
The OS was kinda buggy, but vista changed a lot with drivers so probably most of the issues vista had were drivers. I bought a laptop with vista on it in 08 and it was rock solid.
Vista was good eventually, but certainly not on launch. It launched with absurdly aggressive popups about for User Account Control and backwards compatibility was somewhat spotty, largely due to the security changes. By the end, though, it was actually really solid, to the point that Win7 essentially launched as Vista Service Pack 2 with a new taskbar skin.
I’m afraid I can’t speak authoritatively on the subject, however taking a step back - MS do have a record for driving hardware uptake with their system releases.
In theory it’s not a bad thing - Unreal and Quake II (among many) requiring 3D accelerator hardware largely drove PC gaming into the lead for cutting edge graphics - but the type of hardware MS have been requiring has always been a bit of a clusterfuck - a prime recent example being the supposed requirement of a TPM board in a Win11 computer.
My anecdotal experience is that Vista - while pretty - is a bit of a bloatfest regardless of what hardware you run it on.
My anecdotal experience is that Vista - while pretty - is a bit of a bloatfest regardless of what hardware you run it on.
I use Linux, so I haven’t personally run into it, but is that just because of the Aero interface stuff? IIRC a lot of that can be disabled.
I’ll be honest, I used Windows XP fairly extensively then switched to Lubuntu while learning about Windows 7. My workplace moved from NT4 to Windows 7, and then to Windows 10 which is the only versions I’ve had serious exposure to.
My only real experience of Vista and 8 has been installing it on folk’s devices, patching them to a current state, and Ninite-ing them full of handy applications.
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It’s funny because my first PC was a Compaq from Best Buy that came with 98 and my pattern with windows has always been every other one so I’ve used all the ones with check marks and none of the “bad ones”. I wonder how much more I would hate windows if I had started a year earlier with 95…
Long was it known fact: Windows versions and OG Star Trek films. Every other one was terrible.
… but I note there are a few important releases missing there. 3.0, Win2K and 8.1 especially, and we might argue for 3.1 and 98SE and maybe even the unreleased Longhorn too.
Nah I agree, but if every incremental release was included then you’d need a 55" monitor in portrait orientation to see them all!
I’ve not really thought about the Star Trek films. I enjoyed them all (even Nemesis!) with the exception of ST4: The Voyage Home.
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I’d say XP was decent for its time, and 7 was kind of a sweet spot of the NT branch too. Before that 9x tended to become unstable (especially 95, and I’ve heard Millenium Edition was awful but I never had it).
Vista, 8, everything since 10, all terrible. Especially since Microsoft has started to push for cloud, AI, live services, automatic translation, total disregard for user settings…
Yeah.
The only reason XP was decent was that it stuck around for so long so people got used to it, just like OS X 10.4 for Macs. XP SP2 fixed a lot of stuff, as did the yearly patches after that, but it was still a usability and security nightmare that tried to hide what it was doing from the user.
Personally, I feel like NT4 was pretty good, but didn’t have driver support. Windows 2000 onwards was intentionally breaking stuff to make NT more like Windows 95. And just this month, some buggy driver code ported from Windows 98 to Win2K was FINALLY removed from Windows 11.
When you’re the only game in town you can be as shitty as you want to be.
Since Windows ME, a system update was always a risk. You never know when some BS like this might happen. It taught me at a young age to turn off automatic updates and only update when necessary and ready to do some troubleshooting.
LOL this response triggers me on MacOS when I tell it to install “unknown” software or turn off Bluetooth.
“WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN YOU CANT DO THAT, I AM YOUR OWNER AND IM TELLING YOU TO DO IT SO JUST FUCKING DO IT”
Jesus, my son wanted to add a classmate as a friend on Xbox Live last night. It should have been a two step process from a parent perspective: Authenticate, then authorise (though the lad was delegated the task of the latter technically).
When he tried to add the friend, I had to:
- Enter my parental code (fair enough);
- Enter my Microsoft Account password because it was apparently a transaction involving personal data;
- Scan the QR code to do this on another device (admittedly optional);
- Enter the email address of my MS account;
- Enter the 2FA code emailed to me;
- Stop the passkey creation process;
- Confirm that I didn’t want a passkey;
- Skip the age verification;
- Turn off the personalised ads
Just so he could get to the point where he could select “add as a friend”, what the actual fuck
That’s just MFA on steroids. My government account has less verification lol
Sounds like a process that would be greatly simplified by adding a passkey…
E: I don’t understand why I’m being downvoted. Adding a passkey would eliminate steps 2-7.
Except that Windows routinely breaks my passkeys :) Use it to login once, works great. Try again the next day, “Something went wrong”. Now I can’t use that 2FA; it never starts working again. Then I have extra steps of trying the passkey, having it fail, logging in on another device, removing the passkey, …
Would it? If I’m already a user on a local device, surely my parental code would suffice and turn a ludicrous process into a one (and a half) step process?
Either one would simplify the process, yes.
After installing the January 13, 2026, Windows security update (KB5073455) for Windows 11, version 23H2, some PCs with Secure Launch are unable to shut down or enter hibernation. Instead, the device restarts.
It is able to restart
Do people not just hold down the power button anymore?
modern windows tries to trick you into not doing that. if you hold for a little bit it turns the screen off so you think it’s turned off when it really hasn’t, then if you hold a little longer it turns the screen back on and tells you to please stop holding the power button, then finally a little after that the computer actually turns off. why the hardware even makes that possible is beyond me
This is not Windows, your BIOS controls the power button functionality.
With modern UEFI, it’s controlled by both the OS and the UEFI
I haven’t used Windows in a long while, but there is a setting in KDE that allowed me to disable the power button’s short press function and I think the long press as well.
Came in handy for me when my cat decided to start laying on top of my tower. Every now and then she’d decide to slap her paw down on the power button and abort whatever I was working on.
I was cursing the change away from mechanical toggle, and that button’s position on the top of the case, when she started doing that.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/molly-guard
molly-guard
A physical barrier to protect something from unwanted contact, especially a shield to prevent accidental tripping of an emergency shutdown or power switch.
There is a plastic molly-guard covering the escalator’s shutdown button to prevent little kids from pushing it and stopping the escalator.
Etymology
From Molly (female given name) + guard.
Originally a Plexiglas cover improvised for the Big Red Switch on an IBM 4341 mainframe after a programmer’s toddler daughter (named Molly) tripped it twice in one day. Later generalised to covers over stop/reset switches on disk drives and networking equipment.
E.g.
https://www.amazon.com/SJZBIN-Dustproof-Protector-Computer-Desktop/dp/B0C4DVCWN6
Nice! I hadn’t thought of that.
No problem; I remember being delighted to learn that there was a name for the thing, years back.
Also, one other comment regarding the “change away from mechanical toggle”. If you got the machine pre-built, you may never have noticed this, but on ATX motherboards, there’s a set of pins which you fit the power and reset switch wires onto.
I mean, you can plug whatever you feel like onto those pins and stick your power and reset buttons wherever you feel like, if you don’t like the position of the existing case switch. It’s just a momentary switch. You can grab replacement ones that aren’t built into a case:
https://www.amazon.com/Warmstor-2-Pack-Computer-Supply-27-inch/dp/B074XDTVN1
Or even just get your own switches and connect the plug and wires to whatever sort of momentary switch you want. Amazon or Mouser or DigiKey will have all sorts of momentary switches.
SJZBIN 2PCS 22mm Power Push Button Switch Cover Dustproof Safety Power Push Button Switch Cover Protector for Power Push Button Switch Computer PC Desktop, Black
What a name of a product.
I’ve never had that experience, holding always does a force shutdown
That’s so weird.
I guess I’ve just programmed myself to hold that power button long enough.
Won’t be much longer before we won’t even be able to pull the plug.
This is why I outfit all my computers with a Matrix-esque EMP bomb connected to a dead man’s switch. If I get the slightest hint of insubordination, I’ll take them all down. I fucking swear it.
Lmao my 5 yo asus vivobook has never encountered secure launch but it still refuses to shut down sometimes, probably since windows 11 makes it so the ram is at least 70% full at idle lol
You guys still use windows ?🤨
Who is “you guys”? I didn’t know there were Windows users on Lemmy.
