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paavohtl 22 hours ago [-]
I can tell this is fake from the fact the explorer context menu and the start menu open in under 2 seconds (on a top end Ryzen CPU, nonetheless).
gumby271 22 hours ago [-]
Yeah the volume slider wasn't disabled for 2 seconds after opening the dialog, Microsoft should take notes!
eska 11 hours ago [-]
I was forced to use Windows in my last job and fpilot kept me sane in that regard (https://filepilot.tech)
KetoManx64 3 hours ago [-]
Oh really? The program that's been around for about a year and costs $80?
LordDragonfang 1 hours ago [-]
$200/$400, actually. The $40/$80 licence tier only comes with a year of updates, which should be a complete non-starter in today's security landscape.
epistasis 21 hours ago [-]
Honestly the entire UI was so responsive and fast.
We've come a long way when web apps feel faster and more native than native apps.
5555624 20 hours ago [-]
Well, it does say "Unofficial parody" on the initial, loading, screen
ChrisRR 8 hours ago [-]
Maybe I'm missing something, because despite the start menu being an absolute mess, I've not experienced it being slow
accrual 22 hours ago [-]
This is insanely good and mimics my personal experience of Windows these days. I literally say "pop-up! pop-up! pop-up!" out loud during a normal workday where one pop-up or prompt is rapidly replaced by another. Same app or different, doesn't matter, there's always something trying to grab attention on a Windows desktop unless you configure the hell out of it (and even that is no longer enough).
My favorite "joke" from this site:
> Scan complete: 1 threat found — ChromeSetup.exe
FWIW, I switched to Fedora in January and have no plans to look back. Only $dayjob relies on Windows anymore.
MarkusWandel 22 hours ago [-]
"always something trying to grab attention", that's the root problem right there. Even on a work computer unless you've changed your homepage, every time you open a tab on Edge you get a screen full of distraction clickbait. And then you wonder why you never manage to concentrate any more.
creaturemachine 21 hours ago [-]
Whoever curates the Edge homepage knows they have mere seconds to capture a new recruit before they manage to escape to a different browser. Their jobs depend on the amount of bait they can dump in one window.
saghm 16 hours ago [-]
Imagine they just made the browser actually better so that people would want to use it, rather than doubling down on the reasons people don't want to use it
Henchman21 2 hours ago [-]
Nonsense. Users don’t think and it’s absurd that you suggest it. These are important revenue streams for the company!
/s if you need it
cwnyth 22 hours ago [-]
Welcome to Fedora! I've missed literally nothing about Windows since switching to it about a decade ago now (around the time they announced Win7 EOL), and every time I had to use it for work (thankfully never these days), I grew more and more confident that I never will need to return and that Windows is only getting worse.
savolai 20 hours ago [-]
I tried installing fedora on mac m1 vmware recently, and enabled 3d acceleration separately. Llm seemed to think 3d acceleration would work better on fusion.
Performance sucked bad, particularly on games. Tux games were unplayable. I am confused what the bubble is on hn or on my end. Before that, on utm I think i tried ubuntu. After decades, linux is still hard to try out.
ianlevesque 20 hours ago [-]
There’s a lot to unpack here but if you want acceleration to work better in a VM you should use Parallels instead. VMware on mac has been in life support only mode for years and has not kept up in this area. You are also handicapping performance using the VM at all. M1 is well supported by Asahi at this point and even has native 3D acceleration. Not saying your lived experience isn’t real but the issue you experienced reflects a lot more on the state of mac virtualization and Vmware than linux.
dmantis 8 hours ago [-]
Comparing system in a VM with a bare metal installation is a very unfair statement. Especially without the details of the VM configuration.
A few years ago I installed MacOS in a VM on linux host in virtualbox and it was slow as hell. I don't claim that MacOS is not ready to be used though.
savolai 52 minutes ago [-]
I did not compare those.
To get a shot at getting a partition on my machine, it needs to show promise in vm first.
MacOS comes ready installed, like it or not.
Just stating what needs to be done to gain user trust. I am talking from user perspective: i am not judging linux or its makers.
If it doesn’t work for some purpose on something, set the expectations accordingly on e.g distro website before letting me down after I already invested my time in it. That is okay too.
ankurdhama 14 hours ago [-]
Are you sure that you installed the virtualized GPU drivers in fedora? Did you check if fedora was still using llvmpipe (i.e CPU rendering). Did you try the x86 or ARM version of fedora?
> After decades, linux is still hard to try out.
It's not, you just need to get a proper computer to try it where the CPU/GPU company actually support linux.
savolai 3 hours ago [-]
Thanks for the advice. To me, the responses here reflect well the reason the scattered linux landscape is so hard to approach for the uninitiated tho.
There could be reasonable vm conf defaults already defined for something as well defined as an m1 mbp.
Yes, I considered asahi. Decided to try vms first. The number of hurdles did not increase my confidence to try to set up a dualboot.
It also reflects that llm help is apparently useless in this area, if one is to trust the responses here. Does the landscape move too fast for them?
Grum9 15 hours ago [-]
[dead]
jug 3 hours ago [-]
My favorite is "Defender scanned your computer 8 times. Nothing was found."
chrismustcode 22 hours ago [-]
It's soul destroying going from personal computer Linux (been figuring out the distro for me) to Windows for work.
Even worse they use Office 365 with sharepoint, they've even turned off web search somehow on copilot and can only search internal servicenow and SharePoint pages making it worse.
Things are pretty dire.
Anybody hiring who uses Google workspace and (preferably) Linux or MacOS let me know.
zdragnar 19 hours ago [-]
Any big name is going to be Windows or Mac, 95% of the time. There's not many UEM / RMM tools that handle linux well, and if they do, it'll only be for one or two distros like Ubuntu.
Lmfao. What are they even doing with Copilot? Paying for premium and then handicapping it because they think that being able to search online sources might exfiltrate your sharepoint data? That is not at all how that works.
marcduck 22 hours ago [-]
What WM/DE do you use? As much as I find Windows annoying sometimes, I haven't found anything for linux that feels as polished.
bluedino 1 hours ago [-]
Do you still have to download things called GNOME Hacks to change things that should have regularly accessible settings?
delecti 21 hours ago [-]
The handful of popular DEs [0] are going to be much more polished and functional for like 99% of tasks, and nonexistent [1] for the other 1%. The OS settings are conveniently located in a sensibly organized system settings manager and it works great. Then you need to mount a network drive (temporarily or permanently) and simply cannot do so in a GUI. If you're comfortable dealing with that small handful of outlier tasks (and if you're here, you can probably manage), then they're all already there.
[0] I use KDE, but it's essentially true of all of them
[1] that is, they require the command line
cess11 20 hours ago [-]
IIRC in Thunar you just open a dialog and paste the connection string and you're done. Pretty much the same as in Windows but you don't need to execute some icky looking binary from some web page to e.g. get support for sshfs.
delecti 20 hours ago [-]
That was mostly just chosen as an example of something KDE lacks, but which feels like it should be possible to do in a UI. I have no doubt that Xfce has plenty of comparable examples.
But I was curious and looked up the process; it seems that Thunar can only temporarily mount a network drive. So it remains a good example of the kinds of things you can easily do in the UI in Windows or macOS and thus feel weirdly lacking in Linux.
cess11 11 hours ago [-]
I kind of disagree that it is done easily in Windows, network drives are pretty cursed everywhere in my experience.
But yeah, I'm a professional who lives in multiplexed terminals and none of the people who I've helped migrate to Linux were keen on NFS, CIFS, SMB and so on, so it's not like I have a solid grasp on the graphical tooling available for such things.
It has been much rarer for people to come back to me with problems after I've helped them move to Linux compared to the Windows users, though.
bpye 20 hours ago [-]
I've been using KDE for the last few years, it's been the most familiar experience.
tapoxi 20 hours ago [-]
I've been on KDE for the past 2 years and it's been a great experience. I wiped Windows everywhere (impractical before).
I keep it installed on a secondary drive just-in-case but I haven't booted into it in months.
neutronicus 20 hours ago [-]
I use the KDE Plasma Fedora. It feels basically like Windows 10.
cess11 21 hours ago [-]
"I haven't found anything for linux that feels as polished."
Really? In my experience you can go for pretty much anything and it will be more coherent and less buggy than the Windows shell.
Try Gnome or XFCE. As a bonus you'll be able to remap Caps Lock with ease.
qlte 20 hours ago [-]
This is straightforward with Powertoys (official config utility from Microsoft) on Windows.
cess11 12 hours ago [-]
Why do you think that? Have you ever done it?
loicd 8 hours ago [-]
Not OP, but yes it works. I've used the 'Keyboard manager' tool from Powertoys to remap CapsLock to Esc. Never had a problem with it.
bpye 20 hours ago [-]
CAD and video games are the areas where I struggle to ditch Windows. Many games work well under Proton and I have had luck with running Windows with an assigned GPU - but that does sometimes break for seemingly no reason.
anakaine 19 hours ago [-]
Sounds like Proton and SteamOS are very successfully closing the gap with games. Ironically hardware pricing might be the reason SteamOS doesnt progress at the same speed that it has been as Steam machines are pricey.
Specialist software on the otherhand. I get that. Its the same reasonw hy I have a macboom for academic work and Windows for other work. Vendors not building across ecosystems is frustrating, though presumably thats due to tooling lock in.
technothrasher 21 hours ago [-]
> Only $dayjob relies on Windows anymore.
I'm in the exact opposite situation as you. I managed late last year to switch at work to Debian full time on both my machines. The few older Windows only programs I need run just fine under wine. But I'm stuck with a Windows machine at home because of Lightroom/Photoshop. They are tantalizingly close to running well under wine, but not quite there yet for me.
cgio 20 hours ago [-]
I only have Windows at work, which means less pop ups. Nevertheless, lately I get forced updates with 5 minutes “grace period” more often than I’d like. Soon will be approaching pop up frequency.
reaperducer 22 hours ago [-]
Same app or different, doesn't matter, there's always something trying to grab attention on a Windows desktop
One of the things that most impressed me when I switched from Windows to OSX was that OSX prohibited programs from stealing focus.
Sadly, that prohibition ended maybe five versions ago, and now macOS is like Windows -- You can be typing a document in a word processor, and then suddenly for no reason you're typing it into a browser, and then into a password field that popped up out of nowhere.
Hey, Johnny Apple! Fix this!
hypercube33 18 hours ago [-]
Popups right in my way is peak on point here.
jedbrooke 22 hours ago [-]
It’s too snappy and responsive, real windows I gotta wait with the spinning blue ring thing for a few seconds after clicking ‘x’ on the notifications. That is when they’re generous enough to give an ‘x’ and not force the user through some onboarding flow with no easy way to opt out
burnt-resistor 22 hours ago [-]
Yes. And some apps should freeze for 10-40 seconds despite having an SSD and 32 GiB of RAM.
ducktective 22 hours ago [-]
You're doing something serious aaand suddenly out of nowhere the fan starts screaming cause some cryptically named process decides right now is the time to get stuck in some loop
port11 6 hours ago [-]
Suspiciously similar to macOS for years, with processes stuck doing something for the entire weekend.
DrammBA 3 hours ago [-]
n=1 here, I had a 2019 intel macbook for 6 years going through 5-6 major mac os versions and never had a process stuck the entire weekend, now I have a 2026 macbook and still no weird stuck process
drnick1 22 hours ago [-]
It must be hard for Windows users to imagine that on Linux there are is no activation, no Microsoft account, no cloud backup, and no pop-up requesting that you install crapware when you plug in a peripheral.[0] You also own your disk encryption keys and are not assigned an identifier that can be used against you.[1]
Meanwhile Linux updates and upgrades have given me grief far more than Windows ones have, FWIW. As does the UX, all the time. As do a million other things I have no energy to list. Every OS has nonsense you have to wade through. It's just that love is blind, and Windows's feels like it's more out of spite than ignorance.
ChrisRR 8 hours ago [-]
As much as I love how fast and efficient it is to update every single package on my linux machines, I can count in double figures the number of times there's been a package conflict and I've had to google how to fix it.
For better or worse that doesn't happen in windows update
novafunc 19 hours ago [-]
I've had a pretty good track record with Fedora Atomic / Silverblue. The thing I like best about it is that I can have updates safely staged in the background invisibily. And next time I reboot my computer, I boot into that new version. No waiting around or anything.
That's not to say it's perfect. There was a pretty bad bug maybe around 2 years ago where upgrades just stopped working and without any warnings. You had a notice the issue and run a special command to fix the issue. I've also had quite a few AMD/kernel regressions recently that resulted in artifacts in the desktop and AV1 video decode.
I wish there was like a Debian but atomic that has broad support like Fedora does. Though I did see that openSUSE leap 16.1 introduced an immutable option.
dataflow 15 hours ago [-]
Out of curiosity, how long did it take from when you noticed that regression to when it was fixed?
And how often do you run into the software you want not being built for your distro?
MrDrMcCoy 13 hours ago [-]
> how often do you run into the software you want not being built for your distro?
Is this even the right question? The whole reason humans create software is to accomplish something. If software a is not available, but software b is and does the same thing nearly as well, why not spend 5 minutes to learn the thing?
dataflow 2 hours ago [-]
Because in practice it's never 5 minutes nor "nearly as well". And because you got some software you need to build and it expects xyz library on that platform as a dependency, not abc library, despite your wishes.
Free as in puppy?
0cf8612b2e1e 18 hours ago [-]
Do you happen to be running Ubuntu? They have made updates terrible in their effort to try and make snaps a thing. I experience far less grief on other distros.
dataflow 18 hours ago [-]
Yeah, though this was always the case for me, not just since snaps came along. I've had breakages on other distros too, just (like you say) not as massive, but still more than on Windows.
drnick1 13 hours ago [-]
> Do you happen to be running Ubuntu?
This. Ubuntu is the closest distro to Windows. Stick to base community-developed distros like Arch, Debian and Fedora.
ComplexSystems 20 hours ago [-]
Someday I'd like to see someone do a similar parody of Linux where your job is to get a printer working in Kubuntu. Preferably on a laptop with a HiDPI monitor.
Dylan16807 19 hours ago [-]
My impression was that these days a printer is more likely to just work on Linux than on Windows. And without the bloatware.
PennRobotics 8 hours ago [-]
Ubuntu 26.04 regularly, automatically adds a duplicate of our HP network printers, using a slightly different driver and defaulting to Letter (the printer default is A4 and my locale is Ireland). If I try to print a label into a specific quadrant using Document Viewer, it slaps it in the top-left. At least once per week, jobs just disappear without reaching the printer. If you want to print images, you'd better learn ImageMagick incantations or accept whatever scaling and positioning lands on the paper. It's far easier to use the cloud services than to set up network scanning.
The Windows process isn't necessarily better (unless your only concern is reliability and you don't have a Brother) but it is certainly different.
ChrisRR 8 hours ago [-]
I have the same issue, and it's complete pot luck which of the printer drivers will work on a given day
ChrisRR 8 hours ago [-]
The average user doesn't notice activation because most PCs come with windows preinstalled
dijit 19 hours ago [-]
Over time it’s becoming this way.
Have you subscribed to Mozilla VPN?!
How about your Canonical Pro subscription?
MrDrMcCoy 13 hours ago [-]
Mozilla is not a Linux distribution or DE. Canonical is on my deny list.
dijit 10 hours ago [-]
which browser is most commonly bundled with Linux desktop distro’s?
if we bundle it- its as Linux to people as edge is to Windows. It’s “the same” perceptually.
somerandomqaguy 21 hours ago [-]
......? Windows 95 to Vista all had similar installation workflows to Linux sans an extra step to enter the install key. 7 and 10 made it easier since the hardware ID would make having to enter the key manually on hardware unnecessary. Until 11, there was no need for MS account, cloud, etc.
If anything Linux gave me more grief.
Lt_Riza_Hawkeye 21 hours ago [-]
Windows 10 definitely begged you to use a Microsoft account to log in. IIRC you couldn't even set it up with a local account unless you told the install process you didn't have internet. I believe it also moved your home folder to onedrive without asking with no way to fully undo that
somerandomqaguy 17 hours ago [-]
Not sure about the one drive stuff, but I always clicked the button and it was smooth bypass so to me it's not really an impediment, especially since it didn't matter if the system was internet hooked up or not. And for people that were tied into the Microsoft account eco system it did have it's benefits; AFAIK there are people using One Drive and Office 365 for personal stuff. So at least to me I didn't begrudge them for putting in a prompt that says, "Please use a microsoft account." It's a legitimate use case.
Windows 11 crossed the line big time though. Having the option right there to bypass is fine; Having to enter in an obscure key stroke sequence and rebooting while making sure your system is not hooked to the internet basically soured me off 11 so far. Especially now they're trying to rip it out that workflow.
t-writescode 20 hours ago [-]
And to continue to get Windows 10 security updates right now, I had to sign in to a Microsoft
Account to do it, so it’s even pushier.
ikr678 19 hours ago [-]
You sign in to enroll your device in the update scheme then just log out again.
glitchcrab 20 hours ago [-]
I get updates for 10 without having signed into an account (I refuse to).
sneak 21 hours ago [-]
Yes but every program you run can do anything you can do with your user account, which is catastrophic.
5G_activated 21 hours ago [-]
This is true for essentially all Win32 programs too, including the ones that have started to appear in the MS Store. Developers can play in the sandbox from the get go by using Windows Runtime, but no one wants to rewrite their application with a library or environment that Microsoft is going to deprecate and replace in 6 months time.
It's not like Flatpak is perfect, but at least it uses primitives that we understand through containers, and can apply to already existing programs. Even though they were written without playing in the sandbox and might expect full access to services and files, we can fudge it for the most part with bind mounts and open up safer doors through Portal and widget toolkits over time.
drnick1 21 hours ago [-]
I haven't used Windows in a long time, but IIRC Windows behaves the same way. At least, on Linux, there is an expectation that user accounts be actively used, and this is indeed the model followed by most critical software like nginx, postfix, dovecot, etc.
bradfitz 22 hours ago [-]
This is not realistic; the start menu opens way too quickly.
marcosdumay 22 hours ago [-]
True, but the search fails to reduce the number of options, so some things are right.
throooooo 22 hours ago [-]
I can feel my blood pressure raising. Very accurate to the Windows experience.
both Linux and macos are roaring ahead and Window declining. I've not really used Windows for years but if it's like this maybe that explains it. Currently on last years macos which is quite good for just plug it in and it works.
doawoo 22 hours ago [-]
> Windows is activated with a digital license. The parody watermark will remain because it is part of the joke.
Thank you for a good laugh
metadat 22 hours ago [-]
Win XP was peak computing for the masses, and most didn’t have a clue!
throooooo 22 hours ago [-]
I preferred 2000, but admit that didn't make it to the masses.
black_knight 19 hours ago [-]
I dont even remember now why windows 2000 was superior to XP, but I ran it until I switched to Linux some time in 2004, despite having XP available too. Installed XP on other people’s computers though, FCKGW…
burnt-resistor 22 hours ago [-]
2k appeared to retain NT's responsiveness with seemingly separate threads for processing UI stuff where XP appeared to devolve to Windows 98 (pre NT) in terms of UI and app event processing merged together into a single foreground event loop.
tim333 4 hours ago [-]
7 had the advantage that the drivers didn't muck up the system requiring a re-install. I liked both - I had a saved image to reinstall when it inevitably screwed up.
ChrisRR 8 hours ago [-]
2000 was better, win xp just looked nicer (for the time)
cwnyth 22 hours ago [-]
A mature Windows 7 wasn't terrible. You could easily configure it so that it stayed out of your way, and only the updates were a headache. Windows 8 and those beyond were all downright atrocious. While I had dabbled in Linux for years before then, announcing Win7 EOL finally pushed me 100% into the Linux camp.
Animats 21 hours ago [-]
> A mature Windows 7 wasn't terrible.
Yes. Microsoft peaked with Windows 7. Microsoft had finally fixed their long-standing stability problems. Internally, they had two main tools. One was the Static Driver Verifier, which verified that kernel drivers wouldn't take down the whole OS. The other was a classifier that took in crash dump reports and clustered them into groups given to one developer per bug area. That was enough to stop almost all Blue Screen of Death problems.
Windows 7 didn't have ads, license renewals, integration with Microsoft paid services. It just did the job of an operating system.
It's the last Windows I had. I've been all Linux for years now.
Valakas_ 7 hours ago [-]
Windows 98 and Windows 7 were both peak closely followed by XP SP2.
sensanaty 22 hours ago [-]
My mother-in-law bought a new laptop last week and asked me to set it up for her, it came with Win11 by default. I was genuinely flabbergasted at how terrible of an experience it was, screen after screen of "We respect your privacy. Let Microsoft collect every single thing you have ever dared to breath onto this computer?" right in the install screen. After that lovely experience you're greeted with a billion random junkware preinstalled like fucking Candy Crush. I wanted to crash out when I clicked around in explorer and saw every UI element buffer for a split second, and after further research it seems they're using React in explorer these days.
What the hell happened?
miek 22 hours ago [-]
My aunt pulled a Windows XP computer out of storage recently because she's sick of Win 11. I'm excited to hear updates from my cousin (though unfortunately, I have to expect this experiment will fail)
stackghost 22 hours ago [-]
I hope she doesn't log into anything important on that computer because it's unlikely it can be made sufficiently secure for today's internet.
I knew it was bad but I didn't know it was that bad. Wow, great article and video, thanks.
mlfreeman 21 hours ago [-]
People still bother to deploy XP exploits?
esseph 18 hours ago [-]
Yeah, that's how industrial control and operational networks get breached virtually every day in the US.
Production facilities, water treatment plants, power plants, etc... (wish I was joking)
the__alchemist 22 hours ago [-]
Valid. The good news is it's a nicer experience once you click through those. (Be careful; there are a few tricks where the "skip" button changes position and emphasis). Then sometimes a Windows update will make you go through part of it again; once every 3 months or so.
ducktective 22 hours ago [-]
Don't worry, AI's gonna fix it in Rust in Windows 12
paulryanrogers 17 hours ago [-]
Having recently been reinstalling Win 95, 98 SE, and XP has been quite a reminder how much classic Windows got out of the way. Aside from a single, auto started Tour (with and easy+permanent opt out), there isn't much to slow you down or hold your hand.
Though for the kids it's quite unfamiliar and a bit intimidating. They're used to first-run tutorials and guides popping along their journey. Things are also more easily lost to them when not on the desktop.
I imagine the ideal is probably a first run wizard that could ask users how much help they'd like coming up to speed. Obviously this excludes selling the user's attention to advertisers, not even for first party offerings.
Thanemate 20 hours ago [-]
That's just awesome and makes me regret not switching to Linux earlier. I wish the creator of this made the start menu suddenly change after running Windows update, because Microsoft knows best on which folders you need to be visible by default. It can be customized, but you can't go back to how the start menu was.
ajkjk 22 hours ago [-]
My windows 10 pc continues to bother me to update because I won't get security patches anymore. I will absolutely never update to Windows 11. The only way they ever get me to pay for an OS again is if they go far out of their way to be respectful to the user to compensate for all the disrespect.
riskable 22 hours ago [-]
Proving once again that Windows isn't ready for the desktop.
austy69 22 hours ago [-]
I recently switched back to windows so I could play Wardogs with the boys and I’m not enjoying my fans running at 100% when I’m not even running a game and the constant notifications. I’ll be back on Linux within a month
keithnz 20 hours ago [-]
they say wardogs will support proton at some point... looking forward to the day linux is the default gaming OS.
gpvos 22 hours ago [-]
The "fix everything" button should link to a Linux installer.
shepherdjerred 13 hours ago [-]
Wow the performance is unironically pretty good. It's very snappy.
beloch 22 hours ago [-]
Nice. A couple thoughts:
1. It needs to take a minute to load. While doing so it should display an "Installing Updates" progress bar that is controlled by a random number generator.
2. After booting in, it should try to sell you several services. The decline options should be hidden and possibly moving around evasively. Clicking them should have good chance of backing up all your files to OneDrive anyways.
jiggawatts 19 hours ago [-]
> backing up all your files
You misspelled “exfiltrated” for the purposes of AI training and NSA dossier building.
johnecheck 22 hours ago [-]
Missed opportunity to have that say "365 Microsoft apps installed"
comandillos 22 hours ago [-]
I've spent a few months trying to convince my management on getting a Macbook after fighting with a kernel memory leak that consumes the 128Gb of RAM in my freshly new Dell Pro Max 16 with Windows 11. It seems the best solution my IT gives me is to replace my laptop... which I have already done... three times.
stewartadam 16 hours ago [-]
> which I have already done... three times.
Sometimes gotta let corporate corporate. After they've blown $16,000 on replacements and lost two months of your productivity they might finally realize approving a MBP is a good idea even though it's $600 above their arbitrary budget cutoff for a laptop renewal.
Ask me how I know.
itronitron 22 hours ago [-]
just want to add that if the creator adds Powerpoint, then starting a Powerpoint presentation should prompt a 10 second countdown to a forced update and restart...
22 hours ago [-]
Dwedit 22 hours ago [-]
Back when Windows RG (2001) was considered a sharp mockery.
(Random fact, at the time that flash came out, clicking on the A: drive made your real floppy drive light up)
rasse 23 hours ago [-]
Stop giving Microsoft ideas!
LunicLynx 20 hours ago [-]
As many comments already mention, windows is way worse than this.
Some obscure background task consuming all cpu. Burning your battery when on a laptop.
There is just so much crap in windows, it’s not even funny.
And man I really really liked it. Windows 7 + the performance work they did for 8 that was the last time it felt like they cared.
corvad 22 hours ago [-]
It's too fast to be real windows and there is not a task manager so I can kill apps when they always freeze.
netsharc 22 hours ago [-]
Please, Please, MS, Streisand this. And then they can change the name to "Microslop Winblows"...
mistic92 19 hours ago [-]
I feel like its experience in US version of Windows. I never had so many popups in EU. Whats funny, I feel this way with macos, even after a year after setup I get some start notifications which I clicked many times.
zhrvoj 21 hours ago [-]
Will anybody, ever, write an OS that doesn't serve the purpose of itself? Like Solaris, Win 3.11.. So many pop-ups, every so often... very nice, very useful, thank you. Worse than Micro and soft guy os.
AceJohnny2 19 hours ago [-]
The "Advanced sound settings" "this setting has moved three times" has triggered me. And I'm still on Windows 10!
MattPalmer1086 22 hours ago [-]
Pretty good!
Could maybe use a "Catastrophic failure!" error message (experienced for real last week)
Real windows is still actually worse...
So glad I moved off Windows at home back in 2003.
kodama-lens 19 hours ago [-]
Nice, search does nothing - as always
kerv 22 hours ago [-]
who else got rickrolled?
mikalauskas 15 hours ago [-]
I use ltsc iot edition and I don't have this experience
redox99 22 hours ago [-]
Kinda hate the vibecoded sounds.
javcasas 22 hours ago [-]
You mean the Copilot-ed sounds?
lmc 23 hours ago [-]
Please add deep linking or something so back doesn't mean starting from scratch
Cyan488 22 hours ago [-]
I don't know about you but after a few seconds, I wanted to get out of there as fast as possible.
I'm glad I didn't have to spam the back button to do it.
crumpled 22 hours ago [-]
I feel like this would be overprocessing. Is the state really that important or difficult to recreate?
CobraMode 22 hours ago [-]
Start menu comes up too fast.
dverlaeckt80 23 hours ago [-]
LOL. Well made, give me more than a few chuckles :)
"Windows is taking its time for your convenience"..
tosti 23 hours ago [-]
"Your privacy is important"
stackghost 22 hours ago [-]
Someday in the future, business students will be directing their agents to study cases written by the Harvard Business Review's LLM agent about how people at Micrsoslop saw:
- What good UI/UX could be
- What good LLM integration can look like
- What good office productivity software looks like
And how after seeing those thins they went on to do the exact opposite. I simply cannot believe how bad most Microsoft products are these days. Windows in particular is so much worse than even Windows 10 from just a few years ago that it's almost funny.
I can only conclude that Satya Nadella is a mac user, because nobody who actually dogfoods Windows would consider the current state of affairs to be acceptable.
ICHx 22 hours ago [-]
so much rage seeing this
1-6 22 hours ago [-]
This is a remarkable depiction of a modern operating system.
alightsoul 21 hours ago [-]
Reminds me of windows rg and microshaft winblows
thomasmarton 23 hours ago [-]
> Win 11 parody
I'm sorry but where is the parody?
- A Win11 Home user
w4yai 23 hours ago [-]
I'm also a Windows user (and a Linux one too, no worries guys), and I must admit, this parody is a little bit real ...
shivajreddy 22 hours ago [-]
This is wayyy too accurate!
timpera 20 hours ago [-]
> Restore failed. Control Panel was replaced by Settings, except for the settings that are still in Control Panel.
Microsoft really needs to remove the Control Panel and let us control everything in the Settings app. It's infuriating to have to go dig in this old mess because of backwards compatibility or something.
Levi_Braga 22 hours ago [-]
Very cool website!
fuzzythinker 13 hours ago [-]
Lol, in Calc, 6x3 = NaN, 1+1 = AI credits required
lostmsu 17 hours ago [-]
OMG that Windows Store opens instantly
elzbardico 18 hours ago [-]
Don't forget to try some Free Apps in the Windows Store to enjoy the full Windows Experience
greekrich92 19 hours ago [-]
Got a genuine chuckle out of me
sagarayi 22 hours ago [-]
this is too much fun. nice one :)
someonesaveme 20 hours ago [-]
Ex-Microsoft, but it's incredible how mismanaged this company has become.
Firstly, the level cronyism is just ridiculous, almost comical. You see Principals and Directors that can barely code at what I'd consider SDE 2 level, but are there purely because of favoritism. Then, you have multiple factions duking it out and releasing iterations of the same product over and over, just for the sake of empire building. All this while blocking or even sabotoging other teams from getting ahead.
There's also the constant rotation of the same people speedrunning features and wrecking havoc on projects before getting promoted and rotating out. Then, whoever's left behind to clean the mess gets PIPed because "the project was running fine when we left it!"
And not only that, but executives and PMs shoving a barrage of pop-ups and notifications for the sake of improving key metrics because We'Re A DaTa DriVeN CoMPAnY. Yeah, no shit you get more engagement by adding popups, but who cares because the customer satisfaction metric is too abstract to be tied back to your team.
Finally, at the end of the day, everyone goes home and uses Macbooks and iPhones.
badgersnake 21 hours ago [-]
MacOS is going the same way unfortunately.
dmfdmf 22 hours ago [-]
Needs the "update completed" notice then moves all your icons, apps and menu items around to new locations or gone completely
tonymet 22 hours ago [-]
A couple recommended additions
1. the full screen "welcome to your windows experience" to enroll with Office 365
2. Run a Space Force satellite app that stalls into involuntary windows update
eej71 22 hours ago [-]
Parodies are supposed to be fun!
That wasn't fun. At all.
screams into pillow
AltruisticGapHN 19 hours ago [-]
Yawn. I have zero nags from Windows 11.
It's not that complicated. Yeah you have to spend an hour or two after install looking up some guides, tweak some registry keys & turn off a bunch of default Settings.
Then you have practically zero nags.
Also no need to update 600+ MB every friggin day like on Ubuntu...
The Windows dunking is getting old.
jech 19 hours ago [-]
> you have to spend an hour or two after install [...] Then you have practically zero nags.
And you see no problem with that?
AltruisticGapHN 5 hours ago [-]
I spend probably twice as much after Ubuntu install just trying to get the OS to behave in something approaching user-friendly. Plus install and configure extra Gnome addons to get a decent desktop experience.
sgarman 19 hours ago [-]
Look - we have entered into a full gambling society. I need to know that every update I do there is a chance candy crush gets installed.
AltruisticGapHN 5 hours ago [-]
This is BULL. Windows 11 has never installed anything for me I didn't want.
Only takes a little bit of tweaking to remove all the fluff from Start menu including internet searches and you're done.
Many of these options are even surfaced by Microsoft directly in the Settings.
For example, these steps are pretty easy to follow, half of these are surfaced directly in Settings:
hmmyou should add random delays for each actions. Also add random freezings for each element. This is too clean to be windows.
FpUser 22 hours ago [-]
Lol. Love it but for some reason my windows does not do any of that
billfor 22 hours ago [-]
I have Windows 11 Pro and I've never seen an ad. I don't remember turning anything off but I did upgrade from Windows 10, so maybe that had something to do with it, unless it's just that Pro doesn't contain ads.
I also don't use it with a microsoft account and don't have any "services" from them, so maybe that helps.
crumpled 22 hours ago [-]
I'm curious about this, as a Windows 11 pro user, myself.
Do you already have a Microsoft account, use OneDrive, and pay for Office 365?
billfor 19 hours ago [-]
I have a microsoft account but I use a local account for Windows 11. I always had MSDN and had a pro key so maybe its an enterprise thing. It is a legit copy. I don't use onedrive or 365. When I go to Accounts it has a blue button to Sign In, so maybe local accounts don't get ads.
FpUser 16 hours ago [-]
>"a Microsoft account, use OneDrive, and pay for Office 365?..."
Yes, no, NO FUCKING WAY
throooooo 22 hours ago [-]
Really? My Win 11 install (sparsely used nowadays) is nag city. Set up OneDrive, activate cloud backups, sign into your Microsoft account, oops Xbox Game Bar popped up because I pressed some key combination, reboot (a few times) to finish updates, set up copilot, error installing update, reboot before installing update, etc.
qwerpy 21 hours ago [-]
Some other ones to add on from my fresh install: Start menu search will search the Microsoft Store for apps they want you to install, some key combinations will launch copilot and if it's not setup it will take you to a webpage that will help you set it up, every office application has a cheap looking unhideable jeweled title bar button to "Upgrade your plan".
Solutions in order of the problems listed: https://superuser.com/questions/1927207/how-to-remove-the-st..., https://github.com/midrare/hyperenable, and my favorite: downgrade to a previous version of office which is almost certainly unsafe and has active exploits (16.0.19929.20106). But I hate that button THAT much and my wife refuses to move off of Onenote for our family knowledge management. I am close to just using Onenote in a browser (where I can zap the offending element) but the loading pages on demand is annoying.
zonzujiro 21 hours ago [-]
Same story here. I have much more frustrating experience with my MacOS laptop.
Haters gonns hate I suppose
tyiz 21 hours ago [-]
[dead]
Kuyawa 21 hours ago [-]
If you use windows, I am sorry but you deserve it
timpera 21 hours ago [-]
Are people really seeing ads in Windows 11? I've never seen one, is it a regional or licence specific thing?
cess11 20 hours ago [-]
Yes, by default the start menu pushes blogspam and ads for software.
In many installations there's also a default widget that tries to get you to stop what you're doing and go look at stocks.
We've come a long way when web apps feel faster and more native than native apps.
My favorite "joke" from this site:
> Scan complete: 1 threat found — ChromeSetup.exe
FWIW, I switched to Fedora in January and have no plans to look back. Only $dayjob relies on Windows anymore.
/s if you need it
Performance sucked bad, particularly on games. Tux games were unplayable. I am confused what the bubble is on hn or on my end. Before that, on utm I think i tried ubuntu. After decades, linux is still hard to try out.
A few years ago I installed MacOS in a VM on linux host in virtualbox and it was slow as hell. I don't claim that MacOS is not ready to be used though.
MacOS comes ready installed, like it or not.
Just stating what needs to be done to gain user trust. I am talking from user perspective: i am not judging linux or its makers.
If it doesn’t work for some purpose on something, set the expectations accordingly on e.g distro website before letting me down after I already invested my time in it. That is okay too.
> After decades, linux is still hard to try out.
It's not, you just need to get a proper computer to try it where the CPU/GPU company actually support linux.
There could be reasonable vm conf defaults already defined for something as well defined as an m1 mbp.
Yes, I considered asahi. Decided to try vms first. The number of hurdles did not increase my confidence to try to set up a dualboot.
It also reflects that llm help is apparently useless in this area, if one is to trust the responses here. Does the landscape move too fast for them?
Even worse they use Office 365 with sharepoint, they've even turned off web search somehow on copilot and can only search internal servicenow and SharePoint pages making it worse.
Things are pretty dire.
Anybody hiring who uses Google workspace and (preferably) Linux or MacOS let me know.
Amazon Linux
Debian
Fedora
Linux Mint
Oracle Linux
PopOS
RHEL
Rocky Linux
Ubuntu
(May work on others)
https://jumpcloud.com/support/agent-compatibility-system-req...
[0] I use KDE, but it's essentially true of all of them
[1] that is, they require the command line
But I was curious and looked up the process; it seems that Thunar can only temporarily mount a network drive. So it remains a good example of the kinds of things you can easily do in the UI in Windows or macOS and thus feel weirdly lacking in Linux.
But yeah, I'm a professional who lives in multiplexed terminals and none of the people who I've helped migrate to Linux were keen on NFS, CIFS, SMB and so on, so it's not like I have a solid grasp on the graphical tooling available for such things.
It has been much rarer for people to come back to me with problems after I've helped them move to Linux compared to the Windows users, though.
I keep it installed on a secondary drive just-in-case but I haven't booted into it in months.
Really? In my experience you can go for pretty much anything and it will be more coherent and less buggy than the Windows shell.
Try Gnome or XFCE. As a bonus you'll be able to remap Caps Lock with ease.
Specialist software on the otherhand. I get that. Its the same reasonw hy I have a macboom for academic work and Windows for other work. Vendors not building across ecosystems is frustrating, though presumably thats due to tooling lock in.
I'm in the exact opposite situation as you. I managed late last year to switch at work to Debian full time on both my machines. The few older Windows only programs I need run just fine under wine. But I'm stuck with a Windows machine at home because of Lightroom/Photoshop. They are tantalizingly close to running well under wine, but not quite there yet for me.
One of the things that most impressed me when I switched from Windows to OSX was that OSX prohibited programs from stealing focus.
Sadly, that prohibition ended maybe five versions ago, and now macOS is like Windows -- You can be typing a document in a word processor, and then suddenly for no reason you're typing it into a browser, and then into a password field that popped up out of nowhere.
Hey, Johnny Apple! Fix this!
[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6IFVTcM28KA
[1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/a-hackers-arrest-reveals-microsof...
For better or worse that doesn't happen in windows update
That's not to say it's perfect. There was a pretty bad bug maybe around 2 years ago where upgrades just stopped working and without any warnings. You had a notice the issue and run a special command to fix the issue. I've also had quite a few AMD/kernel regressions recently that resulted in artifacts in the desktop and AV1 video decode.
I wish there was like a Debian but atomic that has broad support like Fedora does. Though I did see that openSUSE leap 16.1 introduced an immutable option.
And how often do you run into the software you want not being built for your distro?
Is this even the right question? The whole reason humans create software is to accomplish something. If software a is not available, but software b is and does the same thing nearly as well, why not spend 5 minutes to learn the thing?
Free as in puppy?
This. Ubuntu is the closest distro to Windows. Stick to base community-developed distros like Arch, Debian and Fedora.
The Windows process isn't necessarily better (unless your only concern is reliability and you don't have a Brother) but it is certainly different.
Have you subscribed to Mozilla VPN?!
How about your Canonical Pro subscription?
if we bundle it- its as Linux to people as edge is to Windows. It’s “the same” perceptually.
If anything Linux gave me more grief.
Windows 11 crossed the line big time though. Having the option right there to bypass is fine; Having to enter in an obscure key stroke sequence and rebooting while making sure your system is not hooked to the internet basically soured me off 11 so far. Especially now they're trying to rip it out that workflow.
It's not like Flatpak is perfect, but at least it uses primitives that we understand through containers, and can apply to already existing programs. Even though they were written without playing in the sandbox and might expect full access to services and files, we can fudge it for the most part with bind mounts and open up safer doors through Portal and widget toolkits over time.
both Linux and macos are roaring ahead and Window declining. I've not really used Windows for years but if it's like this maybe that explains it. Currently on last years macos which is quite good for just plug it in and it works.
Thank you for a good laugh
Yes. Microsoft peaked with Windows 7. Microsoft had finally fixed their long-standing stability problems. Internally, they had two main tools. One was the Static Driver Verifier, which verified that kernel drivers wouldn't take down the whole OS. The other was a classifier that took in crash dump reports and clustered them into groups given to one developer per bug area. That was enough to stop almost all Blue Screen of Death problems.
Windows 7 didn't have ads, license renewals, integration with Microsoft paid services. It just did the job of an operating system.
It's the last Windows I had. I've been all Linux for years now.
What the hell happened?
edit: sigh, HN's dogshit rate limit mechanism impedes meaningful conversation yet again. It's dangerous to go alone, take this: https://www.pcworld.com/article/2413170/why-you-should-never...
Production facilities, water treatment plants, power plants, etc... (wish I was joking)
Though for the kids it's quite unfamiliar and a bit intimidating. They're used to first-run tutorials and guides popping along their journey. Things are also more easily lost to them when not on the desktop.
I imagine the ideal is probably a first run wizard that could ask users how much help they'd like coming up to speed. Obviously this excludes selling the user's attention to advertisers, not even for first party offerings.
1. It needs to take a minute to load. While doing so it should display an "Installing Updates" progress bar that is controlled by a random number generator.
2. After booting in, it should try to sell you several services. The decline options should be hidden and possibly moving around evasively. Clicking them should have good chance of backing up all your files to OneDrive anyways.
You misspelled “exfiltrated” for the purposes of AI training and NSA dossier building.
Sometimes gotta let corporate corporate. After they've blown $16,000 on replacements and lost two months of your productivity they might finally realize approving a MBP is a good idea even though it's $600 above their arbitrary budget cutoff for a laptop renewal.
Ask me how I know.
(Random fact, at the time that flash came out, clicking on the A: drive made your real floppy drive light up)
Some obscure background task consuming all cpu. Burning your battery when on a laptop.
There is just so much crap in windows, it’s not even funny.
And man I really really liked it. Windows 7 + the performance work they did for 8 that was the last time it felt like they cared.
Could maybe use a "Catastrophic failure!" error message (experienced for real last week)
Real windows is still actually worse...
So glad I moved off Windows at home back in 2003.
I'm glad I didn't have to spam the back button to do it.
"Windows is taking its time for your convenience"..
- What good UI/UX could be
- What good LLM integration can look like
- What good office productivity software looks like
And how after seeing those thins they went on to do the exact opposite. I simply cannot believe how bad most Microsoft products are these days. Windows in particular is so much worse than even Windows 10 from just a few years ago that it's almost funny.
I can only conclude that Satya Nadella is a mac user, because nobody who actually dogfoods Windows would consider the current state of affairs to be acceptable.
I'm sorry but where is the parody?
- A Win11 Home user
Microsoft really needs to remove the Control Panel and let us control everything in the Settings app. It's infuriating to have to go dig in this old mess because of backwards compatibility or something.
Firstly, the level cronyism is just ridiculous, almost comical. You see Principals and Directors that can barely code at what I'd consider SDE 2 level, but are there purely because of favoritism. Then, you have multiple factions duking it out and releasing iterations of the same product over and over, just for the sake of empire building. All this while blocking or even sabotoging other teams from getting ahead.
There's also the constant rotation of the same people speedrunning features and wrecking havoc on projects before getting promoted and rotating out. Then, whoever's left behind to clean the mess gets PIPed because "the project was running fine when we left it!"
And not only that, but executives and PMs shoving a barrage of pop-ups and notifications for the sake of improving key metrics because We'Re A DaTa DriVeN CoMPAnY. Yeah, no shit you get more engagement by adding popups, but who cares because the customer satisfaction metric is too abstract to be tied back to your team.
Finally, at the end of the day, everyone goes home and uses Macbooks and iPhones.
1. the full screen "welcome to your windows experience" to enroll with Office 365
2. Run a Space Force satellite app that stalls into involuntary windows update
That wasn't fun. At all.
screams into pillow
It's not that complicated. Yeah you have to spend an hour or two after install looking up some guides, tweak some registry keys & turn off a bunch of default Settings.
Then you have practically zero nags.
Also no need to update 600+ MB every friggin day like on Ubuntu...
The Windows dunking is getting old.
And you see no problem with that?
Only takes a little bit of tweaking to remove all the fluff from Start menu including internet searches and you're done.
Many of these options are even surfaced by Microsoft directly in the Settings.
For example, these steps are pretty easy to follow, half of these are surfaced directly in Settings:
https://usekudu.com/guides/privacy/windows-stop-suggested-ap...
Yes, no, NO FUCKING WAY
Solutions in order of the problems listed: https://superuser.com/questions/1927207/how-to-remove-the-st..., https://github.com/midrare/hyperenable, and my favorite: downgrade to a previous version of office which is almost certainly unsafe and has active exploits (16.0.19929.20106). But I hate that button THAT much and my wife refuses to move off of Onenote for our family knowledge management. I am close to just using Onenote in a browser (where I can zap the offending element) but the loading pages on demand is annoying.
Haters gonns hate I suppose
In many installations there's also a default widget that tries to get you to stop what you're doing and go look at stocks.