I stopped using Windows over a decade ago and Padme is right. My windows using friends are always mad about some change or another and I’m just chill as a cucumber.
I feel a sense of ownership over my OS. I tinker, I experiment, I break things and sometimes I fix them.
I still get mad, but it’s our problem. We got here together and I know that we can do better.
Windows feels like renting. The landlord only shows up when I’m not ready, fixes stuff that wasn’t broken, doesn’t fix any of the things that I need fixed, keeps raising the rent and installing hidden cameras. If I want to fix anything, it costs way more, is way harder because the landlord won’t tell me where anything is, gets un-fixed every time the landlord visits, and after all that it’s just fixing someone else’s house.I like that comparison a lot. Thanks for sharing.
This is the first time I’ve ever wanted a reward system on any social media platform. Sure, I’ve used Steam rewards and such because they’re there. I put emojis on chat messages, etc.
…but this comparison you made is pure gold.
I have never heard a more apt description of Windows. You have a way with words.
In my last job I had colleagues using Windows, and they were super chill. When they turned on their computer in the morning, it took 20 minutes to boot, install the latest updates and log on. I had to start working right away, while they were having their third coffee and second cigarette, waiting for their computer to get ready. I’m sure it wasn’t healthy, but relaxing.
That sounds like poor IT policies to me. In previous office jobs I’ve had, our computers were configured with our working hours and we wouldn’t shut them down at the end of the day, so that any updates could happen off the clock and minimize that sort of disruption.
Depends on your perspective, I’m sure the guys who got a 30 minute on the clock break weren’t complaining about poor IT policies lol
I’ve done something similar, “Oh shit, gotta take a break boss, computer decided it wanted to update, fuckin windows amirite?”
Fair enough. I was speaking towards the perspective of op. We were encouraged, not required, so there were definitely some folks who would do that.
did they ever start actually doing anything useful?
between sharepoint and microflop dynamics-CRM, azure and windows (whatever the fuck version)
and mother-fucking oracle, I can often go days after booting up before I can do anything useful.Sometimes I think the only people who can do any work are the procurement team and the only work they can do is issue MS purchase orders.
They were developing software for Windows Phone, so: No, in retrospect they didn’t do anything useful.
😀
Padme is right. My windows using friends are always mad about some change or another and I’m just chill as a cucumber.
I’m very much not-chill for a variety of reasons. Mainly because it’s a prime example of what’s been made abundantly clear the last couple of years: once you get users on your platform, they will never leave, regardless of how much abuse you throw at them.
For another, there’s a stupid idiom that goes around all the time that goes something along the lines of “if you don’t like it, don’t buy/use/do it!” as if their decisions don’t affect your personal choices. A prime example is headphone jacks on phones. Linux has the potential to be so much more useful with even a miniscule fraction of the funding (like 0.001%) that companies like MS and Apple have.
It’s incredibly frustrating asking people to consider doing something in their own best interests and being mocked and ridiculed in return or even listening to them excuse and defend their abusers.
I used to evangelize for Linux. It sucked and I was frustrated often. Now I happily use Linux and contribute to it without trying to convert anyone. Much more emotionally peaceful.
Actually you still absolutely do, since Microsoft has in the past, and probably still, actively sabotaged the ability to run other operating systems on gener computation devices.
Back in the 90s, before the DOJ v Microsoft antitrust trial, Microsoft’s licensing terms with OEMs required them to pay MS for every unit sold — even units that did not come with Windows. This meant that if Dell or HP or whoever wanted to offer Linux as an option, they’d still need to pay Microsoft for Windows or else lose the ability to sell Windows at all. It made no sense to offer Linux PCs at that point.
Just one of many many examples of Microsoft’s illegal anti-competitive behaviors.
Groklaw still around? It has tons of anti trust details archived.
It’s still there (apparently archived at Ibiblio) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groklaw -> http://groklaw.net
They do in more quiet ways nowadays. Microsoft Office and GamePass, for example, can only be used on Windows (unless you count the cloud versions that work through the browser).
Then there’s workplaces which most workplaces use Windows. You cannot escape it there.
My workplace is in the process of locking down remote work to where you can’t use Linux for anything anymore. I was looking for a way to remote in using Linux so I could ditch my Windows devices but even that is not going to be an option for me. Defender is enabling that type of stuff more easily in the name of security.
I used to be angry at Microsoft. Now I’m angry at Microsoft, Red Hat and Canonical.
Red Hat
No, you’re angry at IBM. When news of the IBM acquisition broke, sector veteran colleagues I’m close with moaned and groaned that IBM was sure to do something to piss everyone off again, which was apparently their habit a couple decades back. Sure enough, they could not have been more accurate in their assessment.
Turns out IBM is three hot messes in a trenchcoat and always has been. Hence why they have already lost the Quantum wars and likely the GenAI wars as well. One AI vet I know says they’re posed to even lose the AI war altogether, which is pathetic given the groundwork provided by Watson alone.
Turns out IBM is three hot messes in a trenchcoat and always has been.
International, business, and machines?
And amazon, apple, meta, nvidia, half the gaming industry, …
I blame the Linux gatekeepers, keeping people on Windows. By pushing out misinformation to Linux newbies who ask a question online, and scaring them away.
There are no Linux gatekeepers. There are assholes everywhere, that’s the human condition. I came across these assholes and I learnt that I should take advice and consider it myself.
If you close your brain and listen to random online people without thought, you’ll have a bad time, Linux or no Linux.
This stereotype of people in Linux or open source as assholes is FUD spread by people who have a vested interest in spreading it.
I’ve found people mostly very helpful and courteous.
idk I think that only the Chosen should be allowed to use Linux
Annointed with the holy kernel, untainted by binary blobs.
holy kernel
not templeos
worshipping false idols now, are we?
Looking forward to see someone creating a TempleOS fork with a Linux Libre kernel in their spare time.
And wear sackcloth and ashes while scourging ourselves while reading error logs.
Blessed with the knowledge of r/nofap, he can finally install Linux Mint.
Not only misinformation, but straight up condescending unhelpful answers, sometimes.
You’re talking about Arch and Gentoo users, aren’t you?
New user: which distro should I use?
Arch users: definitely Arch, it’s so easy and stable!i mean tbh ive never had issues with arch i couldnt solve without a quick google(neither has a update ever broken anything) and manjaro sets everything up 4 u
That’s fine for tech literate people willing to spend time on that. But non tech newbies don’t want to open a console. Recommending Arch to them is a shit move.
Perhaps it’s changed in the years since I ditched Windows, but at least for a good while, just knowing what Linux was as a concept already represented a certain degree of awareness of tech that would have me surprised if they were unable to do any sort of troubleshooting. Whether or not they decide it’s worth their time to do so was a different matter, of course.
That said, while being too hostile to new users is detrimental to broader adoption, the level of handholding that many users want just isn’t reasonable to expect from a free OS being supported by volunteers. There’s only so many times I’m going to put up with something like:
“My computer says it has an error.”
“What’s the error?”
“I don’t know, it doesn’t work.”
on and on for a dozen messages or more only to realize the message is literally right in front of them the whole time and they’re just deliberately being helpless, rather than put in any modicum of effort. After a while, I’m looking up if anyone has found a method to throttle someone via the internet the next time I see one.
Yes, you do need a certain level of independence to run Linux. I’m not sure why we make so many excuses for self-sabotage with computers, though. These are ubiquitous devices, and they’ve been around for a fair bit. I could understand someone who retired in the early 90s never having gotten into them, but it’s absurd otherwise. So many people have an attitude with computers that would be like someone who’s never looked at a cookbook, a youtube cooking channel or even done a cursory google search for a recipe coming to a stranger and saying, “Hey, I’m bad at cooking, so I don’t get all this cooking stuff, but could you teach me to make beef bourguignon? Oh, and I need you to do it for free. What do you mean, ‘chop the onions’? I told you I’m not a culinary person, I don’t know this stuff. What, I need a knife for this? Oh my god, this is so complicated, can’t you just show me an easy way?”
Even the person with the best of intentions will burn out helping with this sort of stuff, day after day, in their spare time. When it comes to tech support, many non-tech people have an absolutely insane sense of entitlement to the time and effort of strangers volunteering on the internet. Unless someone whips up an absolutely idiot-proof UI for Linux that is entirely self-explanatory, users will need to choose between putting in some amount of effort in the form of educating themselves even the slightest bit, or paying for the privilege of having someone else manage their computing and be at the mercy of that third-party whenever it makes a decision they dislike enough, or just ceases providing support altogether.
i feel like using a computer makes you part of the tech people and im sure theres an arch clone out there with a gui for tha aur also typing in like 2 lines aint gonna kill anyone people who google do it on the daily
You also know all of the terminology, what a console is, what you’re searching for when something goes wrong, what sites are likely to have his answers, and how to search for it in a way that works.
you can’t say that about all of them. it’s just a small fraction
Unfortunately, they are the loud minority and other arch users don’t tell them to spout such nonsense. Recommending the distro to linux newbies is not helpful. The minority will be willing to open a console in order to get stuff done. When I started, all I wanted was it to work and never see a console. Recommendations like gentoo and arch might’ve turned me a way from linux altogether.
I don’t care what Microsoft does any more it’s their OS. What really grinds my gears is the fact that people are so complacent and just down right fuckin submissive to a corporate entity
I’m a sub
So am I but windows isn’t a good domme
Safety words are ignored as a matter of policy.
I used to be cynical about the findom stuff, but I guess some people really get off on being forced to subscribe to their own machine.
It’s the support angle, for me. I seriously don’t have to worry at all whether a piece of software supports Windows or not. And in my special case, my school doesn’t help with troubleshooting unless you’re using Windows or Mac because “of the many variations of Linux,” they said.
But that’s kinda typical of everything, how’s tech support going to help you troubleshoot something that has a million variables? I can fix things, but can the typical user? Definitely not.
This is the same with everything. Twitter, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, Apple etc. They all shit on their users, people complain but then they just accept it. As long as people just keep sucking it up they’ll continue to do what they want.
Yeah it pisses me off the way people are like “tech bros ruined the internet”. No, users ruined it! There was no reason to stop self-hosting webpages, forums and IRC servers. Users switched to Facebook instead because they preferred it and didn’t care about the downsides. There’s an alternative to every website and app which respects privacy, serves no ads, and has no algorithm to farm your outrage. Users refuse to use them because they aren’t cool enough.
Users switched to Facebook instead
It’s more like: those who couldn’t be bothered to make and maintain their own site, went to normie platforms.
You still have stuff like http://geekring.net/
Yeah it pisses me off the way people are like “tech bros ruined the internet”. No, users ruined it! There was no reason to stop self-hosting webpages, forums and IRC servers. Users switched to Facebook instead because they preferred it and didn’t care about the downsides. There’s an alternative to every website and app which respects privacy, serves no ads, and has no algorithm to farm your outrage. Users refuse to use them because they aren’t cool enough.
You got a point there, though I think it’s users and corporations who both ruined it. And why ? Because users were not well informed and did choose for easy solutions without caring about privacy. At the last Tw(X)tter Exodus to Mastodon you could see several vocal new Mastodon users complain about not having a quote option. And probably several of them stopped using Mastodon for that. People have strong opinions and when they can choose to communicate with most of them friends with things like Facebook they go for that rather than having to spend time on exploring more privacy friendly options. And why ? Because there is so little time and because technology is scary for a lot of “normies”. I believe that is the success of Apple : shiny looking white design and easy of use. No plug & pray but easy peasy communication. Never mind the high prizes and walled pay garden. Ease of use and design is top priority for some. Does it makes sense to re-educate people and inform them ? I believe yes, but only if they are interested and have some spare time.
Yes :( Self inclined vendor lock-in ™. I hope for more new Linux users (unless it does not fit their use case very well) who are willing to learn and spread the word!
Linux mint and Fedora 40 user here!
I am still trying linux out, so far, everything is great! I mostly just use my PC for web surfing and games though,
Yep. Change requires actual change.
And it also generally requires more energy than working with the current system, unless and until it becomes the default.
You want free-range grass-fed beef that is slaughtered with reasonably low suffering? Pay more for that, until it becomes the system.
You want an operating system that isn’t screwing you over at every opportunity? Use a Linux distro, and pay for ease or pay with learning how to make it do the things you think I should.
I’m happily using Linux as my daily driver, and have been for ages. I’ve gotten over the need to tinker as much - I just use it, report bugs when they matter to me, and live life.
the worse windows gets, the funnier it is to me
I use Mac OSX btw…
😁
osx is the unix equivalent of a tip terminal at a restaurant
Sick burns.
It’s more complicated than anger for me. There’s the disappointment that they’ve sunk so far, worry that other programs that I use could follow, but also some relief that I switched when I did.
Now I use linux and I’m still mad at what microsoft is doing!
I feel bad for the people who still use windows
Really. I’ve been watching the shitshow in windows and apple get worse and worse, and am glad for the availability of Linux.
I feel bad for people that even spend one moment thinking about what operating system someone else prefers
Does anyone genuinely prefer Windows for a reason that makes sense? Or are they just a captive audience?
This is same as feeling bad for people who think others shouldn’t be getting caught in MLM schemes.
These things are not the same
I don’t use Windows at home but I still have to deal with it and their ‘features’ when I work with my spouse’s desktop and at my workplace. God I hate it.
I have it at work, it makesme feel young again, feeling the OS speed like in the year 2000.
Half the time I have the circle of waiting, and right clicks can take up to 40 seconds before it shows the contextual menu, like wtf.
merely slightly less angry
This made me laugh so hard I down voted five times before I could hit the up vote button
This reminds me of a college rivalry. People from College A (mine) hated College B. People from College B didn’t care at all.
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