Also, me trying to use a mac.
I’m a lifelong Windows user. I was using DOS and Windows 3.1 back in the 90’s. I learned how to set up and manage windows servers in college. I manage an active directory domain at work.
I did not like Windows 8 or 10. I think removing the start menu was stupid. Changing the right-click context menu was even more stupid. It seems every iteration of Windows up until Windows 7 focused on adding new features and improving the UI, where as every iteration after has stripped features away and made the UI worse.
Windows 11 was the last straw. I built a new PC earlier this year and run Nobara Linux on it. It’s not perfect, but it’s been fantastic and it works much better than Windows 10 or 11. Thanks to AI chatbots like Gemini I’ve been able to get help when it comes to learning terminal commands and configuring my OS just the way I want it. It plays all my games from Steam, GOG, itch.io, and even my ROM library. I’ve even been able to install Amethyst mod manager to install mods for Elder Scrolls Oblivion, which has been great fun. Amethyst also supports other Bethesda titles like Skyrim, Fallout, and Starfield. I’m very happy with it. It feels like I haven’t had to sacrifice anything. All my games work, but now I have total control over my UI, when my OS installs updates, and I have privacy again. No tracking BS reporting back to Microsoft.
Also at work we used to have over a thousand windows workstations. We’ve been switching our users over to chromebooks and now there are less than 100 windows workstations in our domain. Microsoft has lost me as a home customer, and over 90% of our business customers. I think they’ve shot themselves in the foot because I don’t see how cloud computing is going to carry them for much longer. I think almost half of microsoft’s cloud runs office 365 and onedrive, which home and office users don’t actually need. Libre Office exists and people can use dropbox instead, if they even need it. Many people can just use a USB drive like the old days. Microsoft Azure makes up just over half of microsoft’s cloud infrastructure, and a significant portion of their azure market is running AI clusters. I do think there is an AI bubble, and that won’t continue for long either.
I think Microsoft is going to have a comeuppance, and it will be well deserved. They brought this upon themselves.
I am so pleased i got out of IT at the peak of Windows 7. I have seen all i want to see about 10 and 11. Hard pass from me.
i never really even got in, now i dont even want to anymore
In corporate environment, add Crowdstrike, Zscaler, windows instrumentation, and then some digital experience management solution to report on why apps are so slow, battery life is still only a few hours while it heats the room while sitting ‘idle’, or trying to render a file explorer window with 20 cores and 32 GB of RAM. Did I mention there are updates and you MUST REBOOT NOW, forget that you are presenting to a client.
Almost as offensive as Dell laptop keyboards on their corpo laptops. Ugh.
Sounds like your IT doesn’t know how to properly orchestrate updates.
Best way to do it in a Windows enterprise environment that I’ve seen so far:
- 1 Week: Install in the background silently and finish when the machine reboots.
- After the week, 2 Days: Warn once that the machine will automatically reboot in 48 hours.
- 12 hours before forced reboot: Pop up a warning in the corner with the countdown before reboot. Options are reboot now or warn me again in X hours. If you dismiss it without selecting, it pops up again in an hour.
If your Windows machine hasn’t rebooted in a week and a half, of course you’re going to have performance issues. What, you expect devs to avoid memory leaks?
That all said, the amount of Windows sysadmins who haven’t entirely given up on wrestling Microsoft’s update bullshittery is shrinking every day.
It is about reasonable defaults. Why would anyone want to stop their presentation for Windows update reboot? It should be much more friendly how it handles this. Like always check what the user is doing and when is a reasonable time to do it? Maybe at the end of the day.
Personally, I think they need to work on the whole concept. Make it as transparent as possible or less likely need a full reboot - containers or put more things in like wsl? Make the reboot only do reboot and not 20min installing updates… The user cant even chat on teams or browse the web while waiting. Think if it worked like like live cd that Linux can do.
I was the same when I switched from W10 to W11. Now I’m mostly on Linux, except for work, audio and the occassional game unfortunately. The latter 2 I’m still using W10 for.
This isn’t even a joke or hyperbolic.
I mean, my first 30 seconds of experiencing Windows 11 was watching a coworker wait for the file manager to open + render its toolbar, so I don’t think I could’ve really come to a different conclusion…
He should be glitching and stuttering for the full Windows experience
I remember seeing a video about if the matrix was run on windows. it was hilarious
edit: found it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yX8yrOAjfKM
The last straw for me was when Windows kept overwriting my boot loader. Fixed it by blowing away the Windows partition. Thanks for playing, we have a lovely parting gift for you!
Fixed it by blowing away the Windows partition.
That’s how my dual booting experiment ended, as well.
Gotta tell you, it felt better than I expected. I was like, “Yeah! Suck it, Microsoft!” lol.
I felt that too!
I was a bit nervous, but mostly relieved not to worry that every boot into Windows could cost me my whole setup.
Now I’m going through a trying-not-to-preach phase. I just want my friends to feel as free of Microsoft’s bullshit as I do.
It’s funny that they have been doing the exact same for decades at this point.
Windows already fucked with the booloader when lilo was the default in every distro. They have no reason to learn, it’s all part of the way.
i very much prefer separate boxes, but i do have one dual boot system, and i let windows do it instead of grub. it sucks, basically booting windows up just to get the boot menu to switch to linux, but hey. it works. even survived an 8->11 ‘upgrade’ intact.
If I had to dual boot, I’d be doing it with hot-swappable drives in enclosure bays. The Linux system drive would never be physically attached to the computer when Windows was running. Windows would have no way to even know it was being dual booted.
my ideal setup at one time was a huge case with lots of drive bays and a switch or switches on front to choose which drives to have connected and powered-up.
i only ever got so far as to have the case and a few drives. i did ‘dual boot’ it for years, though, by simply swapping cables internally. lateral bays put the connectors close to the side panel, which itself was easy to slide on and off. it wasn’t very often, so i never got ‘motivated enough’ to get the switch for it.
i never have had an opportunity to pull or salvage a functional hot-swappable bay or enclosure and sleds. i did run across one once, but internally it was usb 2 so it got tossed on the recycle pile like the old junk it came in.
You don’t have to find any. Hot swappable bays aren’t terribly expensive.
yea, i know they can be relatively inexpensive. but i saw them as a waste of money–which was and still is in short supply.
nearly everything i have as far as pc stuff was salvaged or given to me. the last things i bought myself was 24tb of hdds for media storage (when they were still ‘cheap’), replacing a literal laundry basket of small (160gb-2tb) 2.5in, 3.5in and externals that was getting to be an unmanageable mess.
Another idea could be to connect both disks normally but have a switch on the power line of both (if you are willing to make circuits yourself)
Edit: I come up with a circuit that probably explains better what i want to do
i had thought of that, but my setup would have had more drives than ports so i needed a switch that did power and signal.
instead of all that now, i just have a literal stack of old pizzabox form factor sff and switch between entire systems.
If it works, it works XD
But Microsoft removed the “start Linux” option from their bootloader in windows 10 and higher when booting in EFI mode. Maybe you’re still booting in CSM mode and you patched w11 to allow this? (W11 doesn’t support csm mode)
it is very much a ‘legacy’ system that has no clue what uefi is. but it has plenty of ram, decent-enough gpu, and the cpu is still faster than some of the cheap shit sold today by the major oems.
You must have missed that the Windows version/implementation of SecureBoot … and/or BitLocker… have had various NSA backdoors for years.
Thats why shit seems to keep breaking in new crazy ways: Whoops, that backdoor got found out, time to rollout a new one, via a Windows update, that can overwrite your bootsector, on its own, whenever it wants to.
They keep fucking with the bootloader and breaking most dual boot configs because they don’t like the idea that they will not always be able to tap your computer via a secret warrant issued by a secret court.
You can’t build in a backdoor as a reliable method of spying on people, because people who aren’t supposed to know its there will figure it out in… not actually very much time.
There are very good reasons why huge chunks of the EU has their government agencies throwing out Windows.
Google locking down Android is the same thing.
Yes. It’s pretty funny reading someone so confident in all the extra security they’re getting from Windows messing with their boot sequence, earlier in this thread.
Corporate OS is going to corporate. End users and private files are rarely winners when corporate needs to corporate hard.
Its really wild.
Like, a few years ago, I could have at least held my nose and said ‘well, Windows has so many business oriented tools and services, that do at least 90% work for what any particular business could need, that… sure, fine, makes sense as a business OS, not a personal use OS, but enterprise sure fine whatever.’
Now? Now after CoPilot/GitHub/vibe
codingdestroying half of Windows… the insane CVEs in the last few years, every tech CEO developing AI Psychosis? US gov policy just literally being: ‘Our software spying is extremely legitimate, everyone elses makes them a terrrorist, and also you’re a terrorist if you don’t like our spying’?Fucking no way, you’d have to be ignorant, insane or an idiot to want to use Windows, for literally anything.
They could at least be… subtle, or clever, or have some kind of even slightly convincing rhetorical position/explanation.
But nope, just balls to the wall ‘This PC = OUR PC’
I’ve had the same dual boot configuration since around 2018 and this never happens to me, yet I keep reading that it happens to others. I really wonder what I did differently.
I’ve had the same dual boot configuration since around 2018 and this never happens to me, yet I keep reading that it happens to others. I really wonder what I did differently.
We have very long memories.
In my defense, an OS that I paid for breaking my boot settings was such a virus thing to do, it was really memorable.
I’ve never ran a dual boot setup but from what I read having windows and Linux on separate physical drives is what makes sure windows won’t Bork the Linux boot partition
That’s not it, I have both operating system partitions on my Samsung 970 Evo, and they both share a 100MB EFI System Partition, on that same disk.
Microsoft does different things in different regions and different things in different versions of Windows. Even for the same version in the same region, they may be running an A/B test on you.
(It also may depend on exactly how you’ve set up your bootloader – EFI or MBR, whether it’s on the same physical drive as the Windows partition or not, etc.)
But just because it hasn’t happened to you doesn’t mean that it hasn’t happened to others.
It overwrote my luks master keys and that was the last straw. The bootloader installed to multiple data drives was just icing on the cake.
Was it BIOS or UEFI?
Literally tried to install windows 11 for our office machines last week.
- installed
- extremely slow and laggy
- check process manager
- just takes 3.7GB to boot up
- Uninstall and install win10 IoT LTSC and debloat it immediately
unfortunately Linux isn’t yet an option because of microsoft office.
I have been managing with winboat for my office requirements.
Is there no hiccups? Because if I want to roll it out in our organization and switch to linux, I really need it to be perfect and fool proof (people that dont know what an OS is will be using it of course)
I’d say it works such that any mildly technically competent person can use it.
The problem is that I know The absolute surface level nature of most people’s technical ability.
The dual file system nature of winboat would probably cause you issues. All you have to do is save your work to the folder that you have shared between both os’s, but equally, I know full well the majority of computer users don’t know what a file or directory structure is.
I don’t expect the office apps to continue supporting ltsc tbh, so hopefully it lasts long enough for you.
Windows does aggressive caching now but will clear that if the memory is needed so I often find the in use value to not be as useful of an indicator now.
I will say if that was a 4gb machine I don’t expect it will run 11 that well, we now will only ok 16gb computers. Not just for windows, but chrome et al all have ridiculous memory usage now.
Interestingly, the web 365 apps seem to work on Linux Mint, but I’ve not used them extensively, or on another distro. I did a migration from Win10 to LM last autumn, and I was genuinely shocked to find that web Outlook and OneDrive work on Firefox on LM. Confirmed that web Excel and Word worked enough to allow display and editing of documents - not an extensive test, but definitely worth a look. Obviously, there are still differences between the web and desktop versions, but it might even be possible to run them under Wine, but I have not tried that, and woudn’t expect it to go too well tbh.
Yes, the office web apps all work fine inside of Firefox on Linux.
The web versions aren’t really professional enough for office usage afaik (and we don’t really “buy” microsoft products. And the web version doesn’t work that way afaik)
Everyone who uses O365 is pushed to use the web versions by the O365 ecosystem. When you click on Word/Excel/Outlook/whatever from your menu, it opens the web version; to use the locally installed app, you have to go to File/Open in Desktop or similar. The Open and Save dialogs default to using OneDrive - saving to local filesystem requires extra steps. The locally installed ones are becoming increasingly hard to use, by design, and the new features seem to be going into the web versions first and the local versions “eventually”. For example, the new excel “matrix” functions did not work in local excel the last time I tried to use them, though they might now, but there were a few features (special formatting I think) that only worked on the local version. Templates for word do not work on the web version.
We’re more than 125 000 employees globally using M$ Office 365. It’s cheaper, more secure, far superior for collaboration than the locally installed apps IMO. Works on and Linux distro with a JavaScript capable browser. Google suite is even better but the people calling the shots have a fetish for M$. Saying the web versions are not professional is odd. Maybe we just don’t share the definition of professional
You missed the part where we don’t buy microsoft products.
I use a debloated Win11 image for the situations I can’t get around it. Still much more resource intensive than Linux, but it’s something.
Windows has a lot more security than Linux (which lags). Every time Windows comes out with a new technology like secure boot, Linux users will scoff and down-play it until they catch up. And this happens with more than just security.
Also, Linux has way too many toolkits. If you want all the best apps; you need to add many whole toolkits which dramatically change the footprint. All new icons, dependencies, fonts, etc. Initial installs make a great first impression, and the rest is blamed on ‘your fault’, ‘pebkac’, ‘skill issue’. -Because it’s a religion.
I would love it if you back your claim “windows has lot more security than linux” with facts and evidence.
I would love it if LiGNUts could use a search engine. -But nah, they’ll wait hours and lean on others for an answer they could obtain in seconds. “cite your source” -Is the internet not at your fingertips?
You never learned how arguments work, huh? Here, let me help you.
Oh, so you know how to source something and still refuse to back your claim that Linux is more secure.
yeah, you made the claim that windows is more secure. the onus is on you to provide proof.
Windows security has alwaya been laughably bad, and usually just a scam to try to make it harder for users to use other operating systems.
Compared to what? You cannot honestly argue that Linux has better security. It’s not even a priority of Torvalds and he gets angry about too much security infringing on userspace. Everyone also knows BSD is more secure by default. We’re also talking just the kernel with Linux. Add all the ‘hobby’ type garbage that comes with DEs and you’re no longer using a kernel as your propaganda. Windows has improved vastly since the 90s when people just played mild pranks and no one was banking online.
Your brain lags
It’s the smell.
Me at work every frickin day
Could be worse. This summer IT replaced all of our desktop mini PCs with Chromeboxes and ChromeOS. I don’t even have privileges. Any software I would want to install would have to come from google play store and requires admin level privileges. I normally download the desktop app to play Spotify on my computer, but can’t even do that. I can’t even change the fucking desktop background. The ONLY software freedom I have is chrome extensions and even that is a walled garden of Google’s making. Manifest v3 is going to make using my desktop nearly impossible compared to the freedom I have at home.
Honestly they could probably just take the damn thing out of my office at this point. I really only use it for documentation or continuing education so I could just use my personal laptop or go back to pen and paper for that. Anything else I would have done in my downtime at work can just wait until I get home.
Me too, fam :(
5pm signals the end of my working day serving capitalism, but also i can go back to using FOSS
Double relief
Besides solidworks, there isn’t anything I do that requires mf’ing windows. I could spin up a vm for solidworks. I hate it.
same. but no solidwork. Just oracle databases being migrated into MS fabric.
fuck, we hate oracle’s frying pan, so let’s jump into the nearest (slightly cheaper) fire.
The best joke is when you install Edge on your friends Linux computer when they are not looking and they lose their shit. Like a war vet when fireworks go off.
People still out here not locking their screens?
Installing programs without needing a password?
Flatpak
User level stuff wouldn’t ordinarily need a password
I don’t just automatically lock my screen unless there age little people around.
I lock my screen when I’m home alone.
Only reason I don’t is when my computer falls asleep the only way to wake it recently has been to reboot (pop OS)
Nvidia GPU? I have a similar problem on Bazzite, though mine never seems to enter proper suspend (fan lights still on etc.)
I haven’t worked in the office in ages but I was good about hitting Windows + L to lock when I got up.
Gotta teach em to lock their rig when they’re not using it somehow.
Though I’m still a fan of the ‘take a screen shot of the desktop and then remove the actual dekstop’ approach.
… hrm… it probably wouldn’t be that hard to make a version of ‘hollywood’ thats augmented by something like a cron job that just checks to see if its open or not, and reopens it if it isnt.
… the matrix has you …
“… It’s the smell !”
No thats 45 min. 30 sec is way before you finally get the usb to boot on the 3rd time flashing it. Then you find out you need to look up the latest hacky shit needed to make an offline account
