Reserved bandwidth??
Some sort of hidden, concealed, clandestine internal QoS implementation in Windows. Reserving a portion of network bandwidth for high priority traffic sounds like a good concept, but I don’t like the fact that this is so hidden (I’ve been working with computers for many years and I’ve never heard of it until now), and that the mechanism to determine the priority of a packet is unknown.
We know windows spyware traffic have the top priority.
I love shitting on Windows as much as anyone, but that is a completely baseless, fictitious accusation. And if not, give me a credible source.
If anything, I’d keep spyware traffic as low-profile as reasonable in Microsoft’s place.
I tend to agree.
Nevertheless, some unknown implementation can have bugs and things can go wrong and there’s nothing you can do about it, short of “rebooting” or d̷o̶w̸s̸i̷n̴g̸ ̴t̶h̸e̷ ̸h̵a̵r̵d̷ ̵d̷r̶i̴v̶e̷ ̵w̶i̴t̸h̷ ̸̞̺͠h̵̺͙̎̍o̸͔͠ͅḻ̷̀̇y̵͚͍̎ ̷͉̅̅w̸͎̔a̷̧̫̒́t̶̼̉̓ę̵̾͗r̶̫͑͑ ̴̣̿͒(̷͙̎a̸̬̺͝͝n̸̞̓̓d̴̬͌̍ ̸͇͕͌͝s̷̡̯̓͝u̸̡̳̇͝b̴̳͜͠s̷͍̘̽ë̵̜q̷̝͐̄ȕ̵̞̐e̷̲̠̐́ń̴̨̙͝t̸̛̬͝l̶̮̔͠y̴͕̪̑͝ ̵̖̆ḃ̴̪̟u̶̢͓͑̌y̵̜̤͌̏i̵̦̋ň̴̨͚̀g̸͓͑ ̴͍̬̽à̶͜ ̴͇͔̓n̴̬͂͜ì̷̢̛̯c̴̤̖̈́e̶̼̫̐̊ ̵̹̏͝f̸̙̀̑r̷̪̩͆͆e̸̤̫͛͋s̷̢̙̏h̷͇͔́ ̸̭̆͝N̷̰͗͛͜V̶͇͒̚M̸̟̍͜ě̷̛̟ ̸̢̞́͝a̷͙͔͒͒n̷̻͇͝d̸̘̥͌̾ ̴̜͓͑p̷̬͑͊ŭ̸̮̏t̸̲̀t̴̡͚̽í̶͎͓̑n̴͕̘̒̈́g̴͓̰̓͝ ̵͓̎a̴̻̼͗ ̷̦̍̈́s̷̥̅̈l̴̝̂e̴̞̅͊ḛ̴̊̅k̷͚̕ ̵̛̼̬͗D̴̻̾̽e̵̙͂̊b̷̝͘ī̵̢͇ą̵̂n̴͖̑ ̶̼̚h̴̼͂͑e̷̲͆̆a̵̡̋d̸̢͔̈l̶͕̍̍e̸̛͕̙̒s̶̞͔̀͠s̸̯͖̕ ̵͍̦̈́̉ ̸̨̨̓i̸̙͖͗̌ņ̶̯̍s̸̡̖͗̇ṯ̷́̒ä̵̦́̎l̶̼̄l̵̨͊̊ ̴̳͑͗ó̵͎̅ǹ̴͈̚ ̷͖͊͝i̷̠͇̊t̷̼̞͒͘)̵͎̤̔͌
Yeah, if I were Microsoft I would implement spyware in a way that is least intrusive to the user experience. Prioritizing the telemetry data using QoS would only incentivize users to find ways to disable the telemetry, while providing no benefit to Microsoft. What’s the use for them receiving the telemetry data slightly faster, it’s much more important to them that it arrives at all
Well not spyware per se but over the years they found over and over bugs which are really just highways left open in your system ready to be exploited. But to be honest that’s not limited to windows.
https://www.makeuseof.com/windows-limit-reservable-bandwidth/
It’s not as scary as it sounds.
It’s not, and in a vacuum I don’t think anyone would mind. It is the fact that it is concealed that is really shitty.
“It reserves bandwidth for high-priority tasks such as Windows Update over other tasks that compete for internet bandwidth, like streaming a movie”
As much as I’d like to keep my system up to date (and I really do), if I’m watching a movie then that is my priority. Any task I’m currently using the bandwidth on, should be considered my system’s priority. This is akin to rebooting the computer when it determines it is necessary, with the user having little control to stop it; it’s intend isn’t malicious, and it is meant to protect the user, but all it achieves is upsetting the user and make us find ways around it or turn it off completely.
It’s used for updates. I’m not sure if it works all the time.
I think that it used to be called
superfetchin the old days. https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/superfetch-service-disable-helps-to-increase-speed/3c4d5b4b-edef-4eb7-9456-52fd304e606cIf you’re using an “unofficial” license, it’s probably normal to disable updates and afferent services.
I remember from years ago when I was modding Windows XP installations with nLite to try to purge all the unnecessary bits and install some useful stuff. Superfetch was this annoying service that supposedly ruined online gaming due to lag. :)
Prefetch and superfecth are just obnoxious services that waste disk space. You can safely disable them, there is no downside to not using prefetch or superfect on modern SSDs. On regular spinning drives, yes, they did make loading programs a bit faster.
Superfetch was keeping an index of file relationships in RAM and pre-loading files you were probably going to use next. It didn’t ping your network at all, but it could easily eat up a ton of disk resources and RAM. It was really only an issue on old 5400rpm laptop HDDs from what I remember.
Might be thinking of windows search indexing.
Yes, disable Windows search indexing as well. No point in having that on an SSD, it’s pointless, it just wastes disk space.
I mean that only matters for people like us.
99.99% of the Windows user base doesn’t give the tiniest semblance of a shit about any of that. Hell I run Windows on my gaming pc still and have never had cause to do any of that.
what if you wanted to show a presentation but windows said 
I’m going to be honest with you, as often as this has been memed and for as long as I have been using Windows on my work computer, I have never once been forced to restart on the spot by an automatic update.
I’m sure those who have will be quick to reply but at this point I’m 90% confident it’s a loud minority.
I’ve seen an entire factory shut down for hours because two critical Win10 computers tried and failed to update. It’s never an issue until it becomes one.
Plus a failed update is the whole reason I nuked my C: drive and switched to Manjaro (now running Arch, put down the pitchforks).
Well, running Windows 10, a consumer user-oriented operating system, to control mission-critical machines is mistake number 1.
This wouldn’t have happened if they had used Windows Server or something actually designed for that task (like Linux!).
Neither of those options were available. It was written by a third-party for some old .NET Framework version, and the server and GUI components were written as a single application. Putting it on a server wasn’t an option either because the application’s GUI was constantly used for the management of assembly machines, and other applications were used for monitoring and administrative stuff.
If you had been there, you’d know why this was a low-priority risk. That place was bleeding from a thousand wounds. At least this had some redundancy, for all it was worth in the end…
(edit) I actually contributed to that software, even though it’s not open-source! I managed to nail down an issue where loading a project file using one locale would result in a crash, but not in others. The .NET stack trace was printed to an XHR response’s payload and I used that to locate a
float.ToString()call whereCurrentCulturewas passed as the cultureInfo instead ofInvariantCulture, so depending on the computer’s locale, it would try to parse CSV data either using a decimal dot or a decimal comma. I mailed this to the maintainer and the fix was released within the month.Windows Server is an option.
The operating system is called “Windows Server”. It doesn’t necessarily have to run on a mainframe. It has the regular Windows GUI (with a few differences, the first you’ll notice is “Cntr+Alt+Del to log in”) and can run regular Windows programs.
Well, running Windows 10, a consumer user-oriented operating system
Huh… I wonder why there’s versions of it called “Enterprise” then. You might want to talk with Microsoft about their clear mistake. I mean clearly https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/windows/windows-11-enterprise is in error since you’re correct right?
I work in IT. Windows 10/11 Enterprise is still a bad choice. If it’s a mission-critical system and you must choose Windows, pony up the cash for Windows Server.
The difference between Windows Enterprise and Pro/Home editions is that there are features on it that make my job easier, but it’s still the same shitty operating system under the hood. Windows Server is much more robust and reliable in my experience. Still shit, but slightly less so. It’s designed to run on machines with 24/7 uptime. Windows Enterprise still expects you to regularly restart it for updates and upgrades. That’s alright since we can just set Susan from Finance’s computer to update at 03:00. It’s not okay if that computer controls the entire factory.
I too work in IT… Just because I have some HR users that need to run Quickbooks, I don’t buy them Windows server 2022.
Or even just running the critical machines offline
Yes, because even once is too many.
In a corporate, I spent an hour and half every morning waiting for Windows to update. Then my coworker handed me Fedora DVD and I never looked back.
I’m saying it’s never happened to me. Not once. Zero times. Zero is less than one.
Normal Windows updates don’t take an hour long. Give me a break. The ones that do are the version upgrades. That’s like the equivalent of a distro upgrade.
Sure, your experience may be different.
That happened in 2013 with random laptop they gave me. I kid you not it took that long, could have been a bug somewhere in the OEM, never cared enough to find out.
But my experience is just as real as much as yours.
Normal Windows updates don’t take an hour
Correct. But who can tell the difference beforehand between a normal update and an abnormal one? The problem is Windows tends to hide those details. I’ve sat on support calls where a server needs to be rebooted for some configuration change, and Windows insists on applying updates because hey, you’re rebooting anyway, so what if it takes 1/2 hour to do this thing that should take 5 minutes…
Sure Windows gives you warning, but after a while it FORCES you to install, even if for whatever reason that new branch bricks your computer. I had a good 6 months of that where every time my computer got shut off, it would force the update and fail like 40 times before it finally let me revert and use my computer. There was no way to tell it to STOP UPDATING
I had almost the same thing for about 2 months before I gave up and switched to linux, only difference is I would get up to go to the bathroom, come back and it’s already trying to up date, that happened to me pretty regularly
Open services.msc, disable the windows update service, and set the start type to disabled. The go to C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution and delete the entire folder.
Ive not had “must update on the spot right this very second,” but ive had countless, “we will update the second u power off or attempt a restart. If you try and restart into ur linux partition, we will somehow ensure u fail to boot right up until u got thru with our forced update.” Which also sometimes goes hand in hand with, “oops, i was supposed to update, but i shit myself instead. Youre going to need to try again at least once or twice. Dont worry, whether the update goes thru or not, itll only take a maximum of 90 minutes.”
Windows can fuck its facehole thru its ass as far as its auto updates are concerned for all i care.
Use LTSC and this and never worry about Windows deleting shit in Home or updates breaking something, do it ONLY when YOU want to update.
Near 25 years Linux desktop user, only use Windows when for example helping out family, need to do crap on windows at work, that sort of thing. I’ve seen this so SO many times, especially when you want to shutdown or reboot now, but WAIT! THERE IS MORE! Windows is updating without asking for the next 30 minutes, don’t shut down, screw your planned date. This most have happened more than 30% of the small amount of times I touched windows and it taught me to stay the f away from that stuff, don’t want to touch it with a 10 feet pole
It’s more like when you shut the laptop down, then turn it on only to be greeted with such message. So, I also haven’t seen much of those back when, but only due to the unhealthy habit of maximizing uptime.
I am with you but it’s the wrong place to be discussing this.
That is on you for using a Home license and not a pro license.
20 years ago, a friend said “Windows does whatever you don’t tell it not to do”. It is as true now as it was then.
90% of configuring Windows is disabling shit.
To the reader that needs it and is too afraid to ask: https://github.com/LeDragoX/Win-Debloat-Tools
Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted -Scope CurrentUser -Force; ls -Recurse .ps1 | Unblock-File; ."WinDebloatTools.ps1"
Ugh, you need to use the terminal for the simplest tasks in Windows, it’s so hard, nobody will ever use it, cope Windows users!
That’s what most people in this thread sound like. But for Linux.
Look at that powershell nonsense. We had shit for this already Microsoft.
I am currently dual booting and trying to get feature parity in my Linux install as a reletave newbie.
So far the largest hurdle I’ve been able to solve was getting my RAID array recognized. That sent me down a rabbit hole.
To get it working in Linux I needed to:
- switch from LMDE to Mint proper
- add a PPA repository
- install the RAID driver
- manually edit my grub config file to ignore AHCI
- run a command to apply the change
- reboot
- format the volume
To get it working in Windows I needed to:
- format the volume(Windows gave me a popup with a single button to do this on login)
You’d normally use a software raid implementation these days, and Linux has a number of those. But yeah, dual booting can expose some quirks and filesystems and disk setup in general is one of the most prominent.
This. How an advanced use case is accomplished is not a point against a system’s usability.
The point I was trying to make is that if you ever want to do something that is not covered with an out of the box install, it’s typically far harder to do in Linux than in Windows (although my ~15 years as a windows sysadmin probably bias my opinion)
Windows is turning into a telemetry nightmare because about 10 years ago Microsoft figured out that they could sell ad space and monetize user data, so I’m trying to get off the platform before my LTSC install hits EOL. But I have to admit it’s a hard path.
Now do a raid like it’s typical for Linux and get it to work on Windows.
Oof, hoops you have to jump through to get two disks in a mirror on windows still haunt my dreams sometimes
(although my ~15 years as a windows sysadmin probably bias my opinion)
So basically: it’s not any harder in linux, but you have more than a decade of muscle memory in windows, so it’s harder for you.
That’s like saying “Japanese is a less efficient language than English, all of the words are different, and when I want to say a word, I have to learn it first, but in English I just know the words! English is so much better! (My 30 years speaking english probably bias my opinion)”
Things are certainly different, but its hard to compare which is “harder” for the advanced use cases.
There’s no shame in having long term experience with one platform and having that shape your expectation about how a solution should look.
But in your example raid controller driver was covered in an out of the box install in windows. If it wasn’t you’ll still need to do pretty much the same. Also there was a couple of weird steps in your linux list like switching DE to run a couple of CLI commands and disabling AHCI for some reason.
Congrats on taking the plunge. I suspect there are others like you.
I’m actually kind of envious. The joy and frustration and joy again of exploring something new was something I relished in my early Linux years. Back then you had to use a text editor to configure your video card before even getting started, so it was kind of insane haha. But totally worth it later, as all of those skills translated.
For advanced, power user stuff, I find Linux to be much friendlier and faster. Just being able to do everything in a Terminal instead of having to mess around with a mix of inconsistent GUI menus in the two different control panels, gpedit, regedit (which is an entire headache by itself), a mix of cmd and Powershell (and whatever Windows Terminal is) is just so much less of a headache.
Also I find things easier to script in Linux compared to Windows.
Not to mention the mess that is Windows Update, which doesn’t even upgrade third party software, and takes a long time to actually do the updates. Package management is a godsend. Windows has chocolatey and winget, but those are poor substitutes.
And I say all of this as someone who is technically proficient in both.
This is kind of the same situation I’m in, but I’m not quite as tech savvy and I’m more resistant to learning linux even though I’ll still probably want to migrate over at some point.
What I don’t really understand is, or, what I understand, but I suppose I find mildly amusing, or confusing, is how many criticisms I’ve seen of windows that kind of just don’t apply to LTSC as much, if at all? It’s kind of to the point where I wonder why anyone would really use any other version.
20 years ago it was PCMCIA wifi drivers.
Now it seems like it’s always some kind of disk boot filesystem issue.
Are you using hardware RAID? yeah, that doesn’t go too well with Linux… works perfectly in Windows though, cuz their softraid solutions are shit.
Server-level hardware RAID is fine on Linux. It has to, because manufacturers would cut out a huge chunk of their market if they didn’t. Servers are moving away from that, though, and using filesystems with their own software RAID, like zfs.
Cheapo built-in consumer motherboard RAID doesn’t work great on Linux, but it’s also hot garbage that’s software RAID with worse performance than the OS implementation could give you. I guess if you’re dual booting, you’d have to do it that way since I don’t think you can share software RAID between Windows and Linux. It’s still not great.
Cheapo built-in consumer motherboard RAID doesn’t work great on Linux
That is what I actually meant.
I guess if you’re dual booting, you’d have to do it that way since I don’t think you can share software RAID between Windows and Linux. It’s still not great.
That’s why you don’t do RAID at all on a daily driver. You make/buy a NAS for that kind of thing. Maybe just RAID1 in hardware, cuz that’s easy to set up and generally just works, even with low end hardware solutions.
It’s called FakeRAID for a reason.
Why have I never thought about this? Dual boot and bit by bit work on feature parity while still having an OS that’s my daily driver.
Beware of the W̷̞̬̍̌͘͜ĭ̴̬̹̟͕̒̆̈́n̸̢̧̙̈́̅̂̆̕͜ͅd̵̟̟̪͎̀̀ő̴̼̺̺́̐̂͘w̵̨͊̀s̵̡͎̭̊ ̸͔̬͔̜̊́̈́̌̈́ͅŬ̴͉͚̳̌̉͘͝p̸̼̅̆͐̃̑d̸̜͂ǎ̵̛̯̏͝ť̷̰é̸͇͝ as it can screw up/overwrite your other bootloader completely.
Kinda sucks, when you’ve got a meeting/work and you find out that forced update made your system unbootable/partially unbootable and you now get to live boot in and go fixing the EFI partition manually, in the CLI.
That happened to me once and that’s when I decided feature parity was less important than a reliable system that “just works” for getting things done on a schedule. (I removed windows completely, in case that wasn’t clear)
Anyhow, make sure you install windows to a separate drive that can’t see any others during the windows install, then will keep the bootloader separate.
I ran into similar issues before. My plan was to install Linux on a separate M.2 so Windows won’t interfere and manually boot the OS I want to manually.
Proprietary RAID in linux is a shit show. That’s why everyone uses software RAID.
After a while, you’ll hit a point where parity is impossible going the other way.
I’m running a striped partition and a mirrored partition with only two drives, and using an SSD to bcache the whole thing. I’ve even got snapshotting set up so I can take live backups.
I have no idea where to start with that setup on Windows.
I had a hell of a time just trying to get Mint to write to an external drive, including unmounting and remounting the drive countless times trying to get it to mount as rewritable (adding it as a mount option wouldn’t work in terminal or in “Disks”), it would just refuse to let me write to it, I could still read everything fine. I finally quit, got a second drive, backed all my stuff up and reformatted the first one, which Mint now sees and writes to just fine despite being configured exactly the same way it was before.
That is a massively condensed story, and if I ever have to look at fstab again I might just have an aneurysm. Y’know how hard it is to write things to an external drive in Windows? You plug it the fuck in.
Anyone who says Linux is ready for the masses is deluding themselves. It’s fine for nerds, people who like to work on their computer, but it is absolutely not ready for people who like to do work on their computer. Not when something as simple as “yes I’d like to save this to an external drive please” turns into a days-long rabbithole of bullshit that culminates in me buying an extra 8TB drive off Amazon.
I’ve been using Linux for too long because that list of steps sounded completely reasonable to me.
I mean, you don’t HAVE to do any of that stuff in Windows, it’s just helps a bit.
I’m sure there are plenty of windows horror stories. But almost every Windows computer I’ve had in the last decade, both custom and OEM, has worked pretty well out of the box. And almost every Ubuntu computer I’ve had over the last decade has had problems that weren’t trivial to fix.
I like Linux, but when people compare these problems like they’re the same just are missing the point.
The reality is, for 98% plus of windows users, NONE of that matters. MS could give a shit about tech. nerds that want to de-bloat, reduce resources, install crazy niche thingyawidget…
Pretty much everyone in this community is not their target.
Car analogy! You are car guys running custom block modified street racers shitting on electric cars…
Reminder that Group Policy settings are disabled in home versions, and even some of the registry entries for updates are missing. To get a full package of windows with all the options you have to pay like $400 to $600 for their LTSC or maybe some of their Enterprise versions. Honestly, if anybody pirates Windows, then definitely pirate the LTSC.
I don’t think many dual booters actually pay for Windows licenses.
Yarrrrr that be true
Though, yes, I do recommend LTSC as well (high seas and all that, since they cost a small fortune) vs. a Pro license. It’s basically what Windows users were used to, a Windows install that’s stuck in time, no new features, only security updates.
Oh, and no store and all that app crap, the only app installed is the settings app and there is no way to install any other store app (well, there is, but it’s complicated and I would do it only of there is absolutely no other way).
I don’t think many dual booters actually pay for Windows licenses.
You probably got a license when you bought that laptop you got in 2010. And carried it forward. Just because Microsoft didn’t charge for the upgrade path to get to windows 11 doesn’t mean you didn’t pay something for the license.
No, I actually haven’t bought a single laptop in my entire life. All my laptops are give/throw aways. The newest I have is a 3rd gen i7.
Did someone actually pay for a Windows license when he/she bought the laptop? Can’t say for sure, but yes, most probably. For a Win7 license most likely since that was what was sood back then. Now I have LTSC and Linux on all of my PCs.
But me personally? No, I have never paid for a Windows license. All of the installs I have ever done for myself were pirated. From Win98 and XP onward.
All my laptops are give/throw aways.
Cool then you have licenses. Whether you utilized them or not is up to you. But you have licenses.
Utilize what. They’re most probably Win7 Home licenses that could be exchanged for a Win10 Home license at a certain point in time, but not any more… and I wouldn’t use a Home license anyway, it’s crippled AF.
Isn’t gpedit not even in pro anymore?
It definitely is in pro.
Why did I go through the hassle of installing enterprise and doing a bunch of PowerShell crap to put the Ms store and Xbox interface in months later when friends pressured me into playing unmodded Minecraft bedrock?
Edit: I remembered I think. It’s the telemetry flag that can’t be set to 0 in pro even with gpe but can in enterprise, but the stuff to make xbl gaming work probably undermines whatever it does, if it did anything in the first place.
Huh? You only need the Pro version for Group Policy and all the registry settings, and you can get licenses for ~$20 if you buy an OEM license through an authorized reseller.
There’s some limitations to the OEM licenses, but I’ve never run into them.
As far as I’m aware, LTSC just effects the update channel that Windows Update pulls from, with LTSC getting non-critical updates later and for longer after support “ends”. Usually you can switch that in the registry.
Huh? Huuuuuhhhh?
I don’t pretend to know the ins and outs of every windows version, but OEM versions are made to order by manufacturers and that comes with it’s own special place in hell that I’m not even going to go into. LTSC has everything with no downsides, Home has Group Policy disabled, that was my comment. Despite your standoffish comment you didn’t argue against any of that.
Or just get it for like $4 from a reseller
https://www.allkeyshop.com/blog/buy-windows-11-enterprise-cd-key-compare-prices/
It’s not a legal license anyway.
This is just speculation, but I’m pretty sure Microsoft stopped caring about people pirating windows and using licences they shouldn’t have. They would rather you use windows as a pirate than not use windows at all.
To anyone downvoting the comment above, you can use windows indefinitely without a key. The only thing that happens is you get some text on the screen (that sometimes goes away for no reason) and you can’t change the background. They don’t give two f’s. They could easily block keys / stop them from working if misused, but they don’t care. Same reason why every laptop comes with a license. They put it there because it costs them nothing. They’d rather have market share, than get money upfront. They probably make bank on other things (i.e. the analytics, ads, etc)
Been like that since the 90s really. Microsoft’s “secret sauce” is that they never gave a shit about the end users.
They make bank by courting enterprise users: Big companies with hundreds of employees, OEMs, governments, schools, etc.
In recent times they found a way to double-dip by putting in telemetry/data collection/ads/adware – But before that they just didn’t care.
It does help that windows makes the user develop learned helplessness and so by the time they are getting their own computer, they’ll want to stay in the windows environment. So they also get the inflated marketshare, which feeds back into their pitch when they are courting those enterprises.
It’s true. But why would anyone buy an illegal key if they can activate Windows for free?
No they are legal. It is just an upgraded Windows 7 or 8 license.
They were throwing those away by the boatload
Look at the answer on Microsoft forum. What does “legitimate” mean to you? The fact that the system will work with this key does not mean that you have the right to use Windows legally.
Microsoft allowed those licences to upgrade. They are most definitely legitimate.
No matter what a volunteer moderator says.
“Windows Reserved Bandwidth” is just a QoS Packet Scheduler. The Linux Kernel has this too. Equally difficult to disable on any system, because its assumed you will want to be able to download a file and surf the web at the same time. You can turn it off I guess, if quality of service isn’t your vibe.
Windows: Cannot print because error.
User: What error?
Windows: What error?
Windows and Linux are both easy to use… Provided that everything works out of the box.
Once you have to actually start solving problems, Windows really starts to fall down because you have to spend ages looking through settings and perhaps installing tools like bcd editors. Like seriously, the number of places you can manage your microphone settings are insane.
At this point, I think the only people that say Windows is easier are those that have never had to reinstall it or who have been using it since the XP days and haven’t realised that it is all learned knowledge.
I certainly think Linux tooling could be improved (a graphical fstab editor would be nice), but I struggle to see how troubleshooting in Windows is any easier than Linux.
Linux applications often give you some descriptive error that you can paste into an internet search and usually find someone who had the same problem.
Windows applications just stop working and say “UNEXPECTED ERROR” or smth. Like thanks you literally didn’t help at all.
That’s potentially my biggest issue woth Windows. You aren’t actually made to understand what went wrong. Linux will give you lots of information. It can be overwhelming if you’re just used to seeing “This app stopped working, wait or close it?”, but once you’re used to it, you realize that info usually give you all the tools you need to fix your problem.
but once you’re used to it, you realize that info usually give you all the tools you need to fix your problem.
That’s the thing right? I’m very much a non-tech person. But Linux error messages are nice and informative to the point that, even if I don’t personally know what the fuck they are saying –
– I can just copy them to my browser search bar. Oh look, someone else had the same issue. And someone who knew what they were talking about presented a solution. Nice, now I can get back to work!
And even when I am forced to troubleshoot on my own, the error messages and terminal logs often give enough of a clue that I can trial-and-error my way into making shit work.
What… you don’t like the smiley face and QR code that leads you to a dead link on a rando microsoft website? You sure you need more information other than “Critical Process Died”?
The memory dump it does is useless… like anyone is ever gonna take a look at that memory dump. Disable it, it just wastes disk space.
The first time I saw a sadface bsod I legitimately said out-loud “Are you JOKING?”
My cousin had an old Dell that had an HDD with that “optane” crap, you know a 16GB NVMe “cache” that allegedly did anything. I was going to pull that out, put in a proper NVMe drive, leave the old hard drive in there as additional space, and install Windows 10.
There are apparently BIOS settings that need to be altered for this to work, and Windows would throw "UNEXPECTED ERROR 0x1C4B332AFE943CE2C4 or something to that effect and wouldn’t finish installing. Mind you, you don’t get a usable Windows environment, so you have to copy that long string of text by hand into another device to find…nothing. Nearly no results out there.
After awhile of trying to get a functioning Windows install media (which is difficult to do from a Linux machine. Way to go burning that bridge, Microsoft) I eventually decided to put Mint on this thing, which also gave an error. This error read something like “Unable to install, probably because there’s a problem with the NVMe storage settings, you may need to disable TLVRQ (or whatever the generic term for Optane was) and try again. See this page in the Wiki for more information.” And it gave a link to that page, because of course we’re booted into a fully functioning live environment with internet access and a web browser, and it also gave a QR code link to that same wiki page so you could view it on mobile.
Microsoft isn’t even trying anymore.
Never ever buy combo shit. Remember the DVD reader/CD burner combo crap back in the day? They were good at neither reading or burning anything. Thank god the fully featured DVD burners went down in price and these things died.
Unexpected error, let’s hope that the application writes into eventmgr or has some other logging system.
(and in most cases it doesn’t. It just dies and leaves you in the dark as to what the fuck happened :3c)
Windows 7 was usable. The ten different places to hide settings started with 8 iirc. But I haven’t used Windows in almost a decade, so I might be wrong.
No, you’re on the money here. 7 at least had a consistent UI. It wasn’t super pretty if we’re all being honest with ourselves (the control panel is an ugly and clunky way of doing things compared to KDE’s settings menu, for example), but it was all very functional, fairly well organized, and generally there was one setting for everything, in one place. And to be fair, KDE and Gnome were a lot clunker back then too.
The problems started with 8, because they had the idea to rework this old, ugly UI, but completely half-assed it, so rather than totally replacing every old UI element they just built new ones and ran them in parallel with the old ones, and any settings that didn’t seem super important or useful to most people got ignored because hey, it’s still in the old UI, people can just go there. And this problem has persisted right through into 11, albeit with gradual improvements.
My guess is, they had to run it in parallel. So many things relied on the old UI, not to mention run/cmd commands (
printui,netplwizto name a few), that simply just putting modern replacements for those things would have broken every single printer share, user credentials manager, etc., there is out there. So, they decided to run them in parallel. Smart choice if you ask me, since they own most of the desktop market share, if they decided to make a 180 turn on this, that would have cut a significant portion of their user market share… not to mention companies that heavily rely on MS products being pissed AF.
They were transitioning to the new Metro look, that’s why the 10 different places for the same setting.
And seeing how slowly Control Panel is being transitioned to the new Metro Settings app, I’d have to guess that that thing is so deeply intertwined in the OS and so many things rely on it, that moving to something new is painfully slow.
Agreed. Linux troubleshooting is easier for sure, assuming you know your way around a terminal. Many beginners tremble in fear when they see it. In windows nearly everything is labeled and clickable… removing the need to memorize commands.
And that is why I use fish. Well, one of the many reasons, lol 😂.
Learning Linux is learning how to use a computer.
Learning Windows is learning how to avoid big companies will when you want to use your computer.Me: Can you please just not change the UI?
Microsoft: now you need to expand the right click menu to access your most used actions.
Me: what?
Microsoft: and we replaced all the cpl and msc files, so now you can’t use the old settings interfaces.
Me: wait!
Microsoft: and ALL the new settings uses edge webviewer, so if you manage to remove edge you’ve fucked your install up
Me: sounds terrible, surely I can just reinstall edge
Microsoft: you can try but all links to edge on our website are just links that launches edge, because you can’t remove it - so why provide an installer?
Me: do you expect me to die?
Microsoft: no Mr User, we expect you to cry! MuwhahahahaMeme’s not wrong and I daily Linux, but how we got here is all that crap on the bottom has a pretty low chance of leaving you bricked and getting back from bricking windows is usually marginally trivial. The same people get lost in Linux, don’t read warnings, do stupid shit without thinking then spend forever trying to muddle through how to fix it. Mr. LTT did it himself.
Windows is easy to use if you don’t care about privacy.
To be real with you, I find windows more complicated, the syntax…
Ah, a man of culture I see 😌.
