Yesterday I prepared a few years old Windows laptop for my daughter to use in school.
It took me a few hours just to install updates, remove bloatware (my oh my, the amount is staggering!) and fix privacy settings. And this was for Windows 10 which I hear is a mild version of a mess that Windows 11 is.
I was instantly reminded why I appreciate Apple software more.
1. Yes first thing I run if I ever have to use a Windows PC is this little gem called Shutup 10 (1).
2. Then there is another software called 10AppsManager (2) to remove further bloatware like Onedrive, Skype, etc.
3. After that I visit ninite.com (3) to get the usual software without toolbars and spyware.
4. For other software like ffmpeg I use choco or chocolatey (4).
I am now a full time linux user but this was the least painful way to get my PC running before that. I'm sure things have changed or improved since, but this really worked for me 2 years ago.. hope this helps someone.
I am forced to use a Windows machine sometimes for work, and to me the unpardonable sin is that Windows seems to randomly reboot _without asking me_! I come to my office and all my open sessions are gone. How do you turn this off?! I try turning off the setting but it randomly turns itself back on.
Also, how do people set up a reasonable dev environment not built around Visual Studio? On my Mac I just use Terminal + MacVim (with my plugins), so I don't have particularly demanding needs. I tried WSL, but its just Linux side-by-side with Windows, not integrated with windows. If that's what I wanted I would just use Linux, but I need a command-line where I can still build Windows apps. Currently I use bash-for-git (so I can run `cmake --build ...`) but its so non-standard in lots of ways that it drives me a little nutty.
> I am forced to use a Windows machine sometimes for work, and to me the unpardonable sin is that Windows seems to randomly reboot _without asking me_! I come to my office and all my open sessions are gone. How do you turn this off?!
That's the neat part, you don't! Windows loves to revert those settings after every major update, even if you dig into the registry and scheduler and change the settings at the source. It is one of my biggest gripes.
One of the best things Apple added to macOS a while back was the reopen all windows on startup. I don't even think twice about rebooting my Mac any more. Windows could sorely use the equivalent.
One way I dramatically reduce the amount of random reboots is I have a thing that looks like a USB flash drive but it has a few switches on the side - one of them, when activated, randomly moves the mouse every 1-5 minutes (there is also a hardware wheel knob that lets you customize the duration). It was meant to be a practical joke thing - slip it onto the back of a friends PC and drive them nuts, but it works great at tricking Windows to think the computer is being actively used. It doesn't stop all reboots caused by Windows updates, but it dramatically reduces them.
I also use it to keep my work PC awake when attending online meetings, or especially when I'm presenting. We have mandatory screen saver timeouts and for some reason I can't convince the IT overlords to tweak group policy to allow non-admins the ability to enable presentation mode. Oh well. At least they haven't resorted to only allowing whitelisted USB devices to run so my little joke USB fob still does its thing. I got it from Think Geek in their heyday but there are tons of similar devices on Amazon.
I moved from Linux to Windows for less hassle with hardware and sleep. I stopped using windows because of the reboot issue (and hassle with sleep...laptops kept waking and burning out in my bag). I went to ridiculous lengths to avoid it rebooting when I had a bunch of VMs running doing long-running computations and it just kept biting me. Sometimes the VM disk would get corrupted from this.
Eventually I realized it hated me and wanted me to fail in life, or perhaps click on all the crappy games or whatever it insisted on installing from time to time.
I don't love everything about macOS, but it's the least bad option and to my mind and for my needs, it's not even close.
Reboots should be configurable via Windows Update settings if these aren't taken over by a group policy.
Last time I've dealt with random reboots turned out to be a hardware issue (bluescreen->autoreboot).
Note that Windows now has an official package manager called WinGet (https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli), which worked very well when I tried it a few months ago; Skype and OneDrive can now be uninstalled without an external tool; and disabling all telemetry also seems to weaken antivirus protection.
I like it far more than Ninite and it is a good way to find some open source software that you may not have heard about or used before, quickly install the programs, and keep them up to date with only a few clicks.
Late, but in looking at things it looks like there are a significant number of things that Ninite will install and Chocolatey does not. While one can re-run the Ninite installer later for updates I do prefer the less all-or-nothing model of Chocolatey.
In reality, you just don't realise how much bloatware osx has. Install a firewall and watch as studentd or 100 other services you never use contacts apple.
Edit: List of most recent and trying not to include things that may be useful to me
syncdefaultsd,
nsurlsessiond,
apsd,
cloudd,
transparencyd,
mapspushd,
cloudphotod,
akd,
parsec-fbf,
appstoreagent,
AddressBookSourceSync,
com.apple.iCloudHelper.xpc,
familycircled,
trustd,
AssetCacheLocatorService.xpc,
imagent,
indentyservicesd,
com.apple.sbd,
studentd,
airportd,
configd,
parsecd,
com.apple.geod.xpc,
com.apple.geod.xpc,
avconferenced,
rapportd,
trustd,
remindd,
helpd,
syspolicyd
Long list right.... that's from the previous 3 hours.
So basically in that list you’re suggesting disabling the ability to download web content, syncing of address books, getting updated security signatures, connecting to iCloud, downloading dynamic assets that many apps use to reduce initial size and provide non-binary updates, Siri keyword suggestions in Safari, Airdrop, Maps integration, push notifications for Messages, etc.
Most Apple users will definitively want those on, and will break your system in subtle ways if you disable them. I wouldn’t make such assumptions about whatever you use the service or not. If you don’t use a service, it typically will have very little traffic if any at all.
>If you don’t use a service, it typically will have very little traffic if any at all.
Like I said this was all from the last 3 hours and I haven't used any of those services listed. It's also missing the point a bit, I'm not bandwidth poor on a 3G connection trying to save my datacap.
I don't want apple turning my laptop into a thinclient for their cloud systems. I don't want telemetry and meta data going to them every ~30 seconds (the little snitch icon flashes a red X every time something is blocked, it's on a per minute basis).
Of all those services I use calendarsync. I miss having airdrop a little bit but everything else I don't need.
Also, the way you've phrased some of those, especially the notarisation
> getting updated security signatures
is a bit disingenuous when there's a massive privacy implication in that it allows apple to know every single application I run on my computer.
Most Apple users wouldn't agree to that if you stuck it in their face and the fact that it breaks the OS in subtle ways is a user hostile position to argue from. Hence why I'm giving up my Apple addicition.
What data is actually going over OCSP? I thought it was only ever checking for revocation and not actually sending app data, and I believe only ever happens when you want to take an app out of quarantine versus every app launch. You can always disable gatekeeper if you so please.
It does check for revocation. Using the developer's unique certificate ID, which, for the vast majority of developers, uniquely identifies an app. Over unencrypted HTTP.
OCSP over unencrypted http has not yet been replaced. I believe that the constellation of apps (identified by proxy by their developer IDs which are transmitted) can in a lot of cases uniquely identify a system, given a sufficient number of apps installed/used.
> Most Apple users will definitively want those on, and will break your system in subtle ways if you disable them.
What happened to the good old days of "ask for user consent before phoning home"?
I mean, Apple is miles ahead of Windows in that regard, but your average Linux or BSD setup won't phone home outside of repository downloads unless requested.
I think you have your target demographics mixed up for MacOS and Linux. Once you reframe it in that light, you've answered your question. One is a poweruser who wants complete control of their environment, the other is a much broader user who wants a convenience of experience and safe environment. Trade offs to both of them.
The only happy medium I would consider to your approach is that if MacOS had two set up routes, one defaulting as a power user turning everything off and then initiating things are you want and another as a general user. Maybe that would solve it (though would be a heavy lift I am sure).
This is the Little Snitch[0] problem. If you have ever used Little Snitch, you will soon realize that 1) there is so much crap phoning home and 2) most people do not want to deal with giving permission to each and every one of these services.
I have tried giving permission and at the end of the day, it's just not worth the time. For me, Little Snitch is great as a reporting tool but it's just too much work as a firewall.
> most people do not want to deal with giving permission to each and every one of these services.
It’s far worse than just annoying: if people have to give permission to a bunch of things they don’t understand, they will absolutely give permission to something they shouldn’t.
You want the user to make a few decisions as possible, and every single one should be an actual decision: where the user knows what the options are, has an actual stake, and might legitimately choose either option depending on their preferences and circumstance.
The more times they have to click “yes” without thinking, the more susceptible to malware they become.
I think this is a bit of an odd take, given that the alternative is that the computer just silently allows you to download content from anywhere. I don't think this makes someone any more susceptible to malware than they already were. Little Snitch is the sort of software that the average person wouldn't install, anyway.
I understand the point, though. Going to just about any major website you will be pummeled with prompts to allow for a dozen different domains just to view one page, and it doesn't really give any indication of what those are used for. They have a what seems to be infinitesimally small list of connections that they do recognize and explain their use, but ultimately it's pretty useless for the vast majority of prompts.
I'd like there to be a better way to deal with this, but I'm not really sure what the solution to it would look like. You can download blocklists and just silently allow other connections, but I don't think that's significantly better than just using a hosts file.
The most useful thing Little Snitch does is alert me when individual applications try to phone home. For browsing the web it feels more like a chore.
> the computer just silently allows you to download content from anywhere
How many times have you been asked to approve a download? How many of those times have you said "no"?
If the answer is "hundreds" and "zero," what's the point? If the answer "hundreds" and "ten just in the past week," then that's exactly the point, and it serves a valuable purpose.
My response was mostly to your last sentence, "The more times they have to click 'yes' without thinking, the more susceptible to malware they become." There exists a dichotomy of you click on a link, it loads the page or begins the download or alternatively, you click the link, Little Snitch checks its filters and if it doesn't have a rule set, it'll prompt you to set one. In no case is the second one going to make someone more susceptible to malware, because the worst case scenario, where someone approves every single download, results in exactly identical outcomes as the person who does not have Little Snitch installed.
I agree broadly with your point that prompt fatigue or decision fatigue is problematic and should be avoided when possible. I think this is a problem in particular with Little Snitch even, which doesn't do enough to provide. However, the point of Little Snitch is to allow someone to monitor and control the traffic at a granular level and the consequence of providing that utility is the frequent prompts whenever you're visiting a new site. To Obdev's credit, silent mode exists and you can set it to deny or allow all traffic without a prompt (and evaluate the traffic at your leisure).
Yep. I have a system tray CPU monitor running on both my Linux mint and mac computers. On mint when I don’t touch the computer it just sits at 0% basically all the time. On macos there’s always some junk flitting around doing who knows what. photoanalysisd, or sending telemetry for 3rd party apps, or iCloud syncing or something. It’s like the 2 E cores are there just to run apple’s bloaty crap. Shame those processes don’t limit themselves to E cores.
Jesus Christ, thank you. People act as if bullshit like TV and FaceTime are perfectly innocuous binaries without 6478 daemons molesting your memory irrespective of deliberate use & permissions.
I agree with the previous person that Windows has more bloat. I don't want the 3-5 3rd party games it pre-installs and several other things. I also agree with you though. For me, All the Apple software is stuff I don't use so when I get a new Mac the first thing is removing Mail, Maps, Contacts, Pages, Photos, Calendar, Facetime, Reminders, AppleTV, Music, Keynote, and more and then removing the bloat widgets like News, Stocks, etc...
> removing Mail, Maps, Contacts, Pages, Photos, Calendar, Facetime, Reminders, AppleTV, Music, Keynote, and more and then removing the bloat widgets like News, Stocks, etc
All of the things in your list are just apps that can be removed with one click. My partner’s PC comes pre-installed with masses of hidden spyware. I know the kneejerk reaction is to bash Apple for everything - but the two are totally not comparable.
Many of those are useful to me even if you don’t care about them…which proves your point: there’s no reasonable (and sometimes none at all) way to pick and choose.
Does it make a difference if you disable all of the iCloud stuff in settings? I let it sync most of my stuff so it moves between platforms, but I always assumed it wouldn't phone home for services where syncing is disabled. If it does this anyway, seems like a mistake.
Hey so I’ll be getting my first MacBook Pro in a couple weeks, so I’m still learning the details about OS X. I’m coming from a windows / Linux background.
I thought the OS shipped with its own firewall? Would you recommend using a third party firewall despite having its own?
Get little snitch. This is a firewall that dosen't care what apple thinks is useful.
There was some controversy in the previous year because apple tried to deprecate the firewall hooks and allow their junk passed the replacement they offered.
I'm leaving apple for linux as we speak for two reasons, privacy and they can't help but mess with shit every time they release an update.
The most recent, this week they released an update and now their airport service listens on port 5000 making a conflict with running a dev flask service locally.
> I'm leaving apple for linux as we speak for two reasons, privacy and they can't help but mess with shit every time they release an update.
"Mess with shit" was what drove me to Linux by around 2015. It seemed like every major MacOS upgrade torched my Eclipse-based Java dev environment, generally requiring a reinstall.
I mean, you can turn that off. Is changing a port such a showstopper?
I’ve flip flopped for years, (I was using freebsd more than 20 years ago, genuinely ran Solaris 10 with my own build of kde4 on a hp probook, etc) but last time I tried to use Linux for work I got defeated by a conference suite projector at a client and it cost us a big contract. The happy path (for me anyway) is doing all actual dev work on Linux vms and using macOS as your browser/im/terminal client — which it’s great at.
And it works with those stupid little projector dongles at clients when you’re trying to pitch them 6 figures of consulting ;)
> I’ve flip flopped for years, (I was using freebsd more than 20 years ago, genuinely ran Solaris 10 with my own build of kde4 on a hp probook, etc) but last time I tried to use Linux for work I got defeated by a conference suite projector at a client and it cost us a big contract. The happy path (for me anyway) is doing all actual dev work on Linux vms and using macOS as your browser/im/terminal client — which it’s great at.
It takes about one time of "this didn't work and it's your fault for using Linux" in a business context to break one of using Desktop Linux (or BSD, et c.), I think. I doubt similar stories are uncommon. I've got one, certainly.
At least if MacOS or Windows breaks, you're not the asshole. And it doesn't hurt that they in fact do break less often (well, Win10 with its abrupt, unexpected, and slow forced updates was a real problem for a while, but otherwise)
>There was some controversy in the previous year because apple tried to deprecate the firewall hooks and allow their junk passed the replacement they offered.
Funny how framing something that's true (allowing apple software to bypass firewalls) is seen as a controversy. See previous discussion on hn: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24838816
Windows and Linux user for 25 years [EDIT Windows for 25, Linux for 20, to be more precise], heavy macOS user (in addition to those) for the last 10 or so.
If it has a firewall of any kind, I've never noticed nor interacted with it. I've also never installed a third party firewall.
Firewalls can do two things, mainly. Block inbound connections, block outbound connections. The macOS firewall is mainly intended for the former. Many folks want to prevent the latter (e.g. blocking phone home connections).
Mac OS comes with pf installed. This can block inbound and outbound traffic. There is a utility called Murus that manages this with a GUI, https://www.murusfirewall.com
Thanks, forgot about pf! Murus seems the perfect middle-ground for when day-to-day management through commandline tools is too much (I lasted for about a week!), but GUI tools sometimes too restrictive.
Apple ships the pf fireball by default. It's a powerful firewall (same as OpenBSD AFAIK) but the way Apple configures it is very permissive. You can use a utility like Murus to configure it to your liking, although the configuration is rather complicated. It's also a network-level firewall, not an application-level firewall.
If you'd like an application-level firewall, you can check out Lulu or Little Snitch. Back when Little Snitch still(?) installed kernel extensions, it was found to be quite insecure—there were talks at DEFCON about it. Lulu is a lesser-known alternative.
There are multiple firewall options, but it's worth noting that Apple can circumvent them at a kernel-level if they want to phone home. You should think long and hard about how much you trust Apple before switching everything over.
As long as corporate banking is our value store that’s true.
I’d rather see humans themselves as our value store and motivate, teach, and mentor each other to do the logistics work to that end.
Letting banks gamble with our deposits when we’re all in the habit of doing these things daily anyway seems like pointless extra steps.
I think people are more willing to be a stable mesh network of agents for each other than history full of feudal warlords will let us believe, we don’t need to prop up ephemeral tent poles. That’s just old story.
Bonobo tribes have been observed killing alphas and then developing social harmony. Not saying we should behead billionaires, but austerity for elites would be a figurative death.
Yeah that sucks, but on OSX side I have to restart my computer every week or so because of forced updates.
Restarting really is a big deal for me as my workspace consists of several dozen open windows, some of them I have to login, navigate to a particular place, etc... also you lose your train of thought. It has gotten that bad for me, that I have to take screenshots before restarting every time, so I don't lose track of where I was.
I understand not everybody has my same use case but for me it truly is a PITA.
Of course, the alternative is to just click on "Install Later" every 8 hours for the rest of your life, and then the one time you miss that button for a few pixels and click on "Install Now" everything gets closed and obliterated in an instant. But yeah, at least now I have the latest version of Safari which I haven't used in 10 years.
But you don't have to update. The consequence is that every day you have to choose "Ask me later" on the notification that pops up once a day, but that's a lot easier than restoring everything I have open. I only update when I have to reboot for some reason.
The really weird thing is that I have an older iMac that seems to be powered on constantly (albeit with the screen off - I don't understand why) and also an M1 Macbook Air which does genuinely go to sleep with the lid closed. I seldom use either of them more than once every week or two. The iMac sporadically reboots itself without my consent, presumably to install updates. The Macbook Air has been running since the day it was delivered to my door without ever rebooting (100+ days uptime).
Definitely not defending windows here, but don't you find that macs come with bloatware as well? Safari, apple music, maps, etc - some of which you cannot uninstall as well.
The difference is that none of that stuff is running in the background when you aren't using it. Maps doesn't take up a global menu slot. Apple Music doesn't open unless you explicitly open it (unless you happen to hit an Apple Music URL on the web). You can ignore it and it doesn't bother you. Whereas on Windows, bloatware tends to add a Start menu icon, tray icon, background process, startup item, etc.
And Apple's built-in apps aren't harmful, they're just unnecessary. In the early 2000s, my parents got me a Mac that came with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. :-)
I never found a way of disabling the automatic starting of iTunes when you press the play/pause button on the keyboard. How do I choose my own music player app?
And my new Mac has things like (can't remember exactly) 'musiccreationd'.
If you're running a non-iTunes music app (including web pages, on newer versions of macOS), the play/pause button goes to whichever one last grabbed the audio. So if you start VLC (or whatever) first thing (or add it to the auto-start items), then the play/pause button will always go there.
It always worked as a pause/play for already playing media, my complaint was about its use as a launcher. Made muscle memory tricky as its behaviour depended on what was running at the time.
There's a great little utility called BetterTouchTool that will customize the default play button app. It can do a bunch of other little things, too. https://folivora.ai
I had a another look in "Keyboard Shortcuts". Lots of shortcuts, including a category called 'App shortcuts'. No mention of iTunes / Apple Music. I think it's just hard-coded in the OS.
Grab it with your mouse, drag it off the dock, done.
I guess I’m not really seeing what I’m supposed to be outraged about, here. Modifying the stuff in the dock on OSX isn’t difficult or unintuitive at all? Just grab the stuff you don’t want on there and drag it out, and grab the stuff you do want on there and drag it in? It’s just using the standard desktop metaphor and interface, and you’re in no danger of breaking fragile uninstall scripts like you would be if you manually removed a program’s entry from the start menu on Windows. It really isn’t comparable at all.
Sure, but Win 10/11 have had stuff like candy crush and other 3rd party apps installed by default for a bit. MacOS only has 1st party bloat, which may be a big difference for some.
Sounds like your PC vendor installed a whole bunch of crap. I put W10 on a fresh PC just a couple of months back and it was a painless process. It was a W10 Pro ISO from Microsoft.
What businesses want Xbox companion and xbox game bar running on all their work computers - seriously -> if you are on Microsoft search for xbox on your work computer.
Does Candy Crush Saga still come on the business pro ISO installs? That used to make the office laugh - who is paying $200/machine to get candy crush saga pre-installed.
In fact, the trick was they also had a separate app called app updater that would reload these things even if you uninstalled Candy Crush.
Too funny! The only way to get candy crush to go away was to uninstall it, then uninstall app updater - though people didn't date do that biz side because they didn't know what else app updater supported.
Every business should enable & demo Xbox Game bar. The video capture is awesome for helping debug things. Just record what's happening & send it over with your Help Desk ticket.
It's free, easy to use & comes with Windows.
Microsoft could & should also just load that as a stand alone tool like the snipping tool. But they haven't, so I encourage Xbox Game bar.
I don't have the same experience as you, sorry I am not sure why you're facing so many issues with an OS install. What does your IT department say? Any troubleshooting steps?
The last time I looked at Windows computers at Best Buy a year ago, anything mid-level and below was almost unusable because McAfee was using all the CPU.
I bought a Windows laptop (wanted to game with a modern-ish GPU). Step 1 was uninstall McAfee, and turn on Windows Defender for some modicum of protection. There are error popups for software I haven't installed when it boots. My parents have a new Windows computer which was showing popups advertising an extended warranty when I visited this weekend.
A fresh install of Win10 from the Microsoft ISO is very different from the typical factory configuration found on new hardware.
I did the same. I disagree. It required two rounds of reboots even though it was the latest iso and the Ethernet didn’t work (i219). Then whenever the thing goes to sleep all the windows move to the top left of the screen when it wakes up.
Sorry to hear you're facing issues with the install! I simply presented my own experience, I'm not saying anyone is right or wrong, so I am not sure what you're disagreeing with!
I put the boy on an old Dell Vostro running Fedora.
Installation and updates took about 30 minutes.
Updating the machine is a `sudo dnf update` and done.
Though I did get in trouble when I shelled into his machine did and update and rebooted without checking he was using it first - killing his call to his (not)girlfriend in the process.
He's just start secondary (high) school and they are using Google Classroom so all he really needs is a browser and a webcam/mic.
I am thinking of starting the young man with Ubuntu, rather than Windows or OSX. Since his (not) gf only uses iPhone tech, I won't be able to accidentally interrupt any calls.
Windows is horrible in this regard. And what's worse is that the users seem not to care such that this behavior proliferates. I have a windows machine that I take it offline and want it running at all times. No updates possible, Wi-Fi is turned of right? Wrong, windows does restart machine and enables Wi-Fi. It pisses me to no end how little control I have of this machine
Sounds like you're just using the basic toggle switch to "disable" Wi-Fi when that's not really the purpose of the switch. If you actually want the Wi-Fi disabled, you have to do it right. Do it in the UEFI menu, or disable it in Device Manager if that option isn't available. It won't get re-enabled if you do it right.
I'm no fan of Microsoft, but a vanilla Windows 10 install isn't very bloated imo. Did you perhaps start with an image provided by the laptop vendor? It's not Microsoft's fault that they're usually full of trash.
I think perhaps you are in the EU and were using the "N" version of windows 10. I realized that the normal windows 10 installs a LOT of bloatware (Like I don't need candy crush), while the N version did not do that.
Unfortunately it doesn’t really matter who’s fault it is from the perspective of the user.
All the windows computers at the computer shop ship with bloated 3rd party crap. Except the apple computers. It’s also not Google’s fault that most android vendors don’t support old devices for long. Or Linux’s fault that hardware vendors make linux drivers an afterthought.
As a consumer, I don’t care why any of this happens. I just want the things I buy to work properly.
Who decides what's bloat? macOS ships with Apple News, Podcasts, the App Store, Books, Garageband, Stocks, iMovie, Keynote, etc. A lot of their stuff is even pinned to the taskbar by default. Should be consider that bloat? I don't need any of those programs (or prefer alternatives), so it seems like it's bloat for me.
Yes it is bloat. But there is a difference in easy to get rid bloat (just delete them in Apple) vs needing to change registry settings, etc and jump over several hoops to remove the bloat that comes with windows
I’m not sure. The bloat meter in my mind certainly goes up when these programs start phoning home to update stocks or whatever. (Despite me never even opening that program).
I should definitely have the option to turn this crap off if I want to - without needing a 3rd party program like little snitch to do so.
Is this not true on Mac? Updates in particular take forever on MacOS. I find Windows updates take like 5 minutes usually. MacOS has been a half hour or more for some of the point updates I've done.
Bloatware is still there, iMovie, Garageband, iWork is IMO bloat. Slightly more quality bloat maybe but I don't need 20GB taken up by stuff I'll literally never use.
IMovie, GarageBand and iWork are not installed by default and you can remove them at any time.
Recent Mac OS updates are monolithic signed binaries that load into the protected disk partitions reserved for the OS. This is security feature to limit which processes can modify the OS. The downside is that it can’t do differential updates. I hope that, at some point, Apple will work out how to securely do differential updates and speed this up, but I’m satisfied with slower updates if it maintains security.
I just got a brand new Macbook Air M1 a few days ago. It probably took an hour to update to Monterey out of the box. It failed and I had to reboot a few times and re-install again.
Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Garage Band, and iMovie are pre-installed. I don't use these apps and they are easy to uninstall, but they definitely came pre-loaded.
Windows in the Ballmer Era, Vista to Windows 8, was a disaster. Windows 10 was released a year after Satya Nadella took over and was an improvement. Windows 11 of the Nadella era is a big improvement. It seems like Microsoft decided to spend the money to get it right to create something stable and pleasing. I've been running it for a month and highly recommend it. I think a big attraction to Mac OS is that the UI hasn't changed much over the years. Time will tell if Microsoft is on board with that. I don't listen to the Microsoft or Apple haters who are always on here telling me one or the other sucks.
I believe Windows 11 is that last desktop machine UI we'll see for awhile from Microsoft as they intend to refine and improve this one and stop irritating people with changes. I'm happy finding work arounds for things that don't work for me. For example, I can no longer read the time from the task bar from a distance, so I have a browser tab loaded with a time service that I like better. https://www.clocktab.com/
> I believe Windows 11 is that last desktop machine UI we'll see for awhile from Microsoft as they intend to refine and improve this one and stop irritating people with changes.
Yes, I believe that was their intent, but they said it too soon. 10 still had a lot of ugly artifacts that appear to be cleaned up in 11. Well, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'm right. I think it's what they should do.
Common refrain from the fanboys: You’re enjoying the things you like wrong.
Seriously, I am using Windows 11 since official release and I am getting to a point where things are just the way I like them. I was lucky enough to have a machine that just met the TPM/processor requirements cutoff.
There are a few annoyances: I would like to use the dashboard/widgets for weather, etc but they force their newsfeed on you.
There was a time when a fresh install of Windows required over a day to bring up to current, if you didn't have install media with the latest service pack already applied.
MacOS updates are fairly slow, though, so I don't know if it's a clear win. But I also don't think anything has gotten significantly worse in recent years; there have always been good parts & bad parts.
I wish we had more options though. Between Windows and Apple there's no other real competition. Linux is cool and all... but not user friendly (not even Ubuntu)
I don't understand this attitude. I spend countless hours trying to keep my wife's work computers working. Getting windows to connect to a printer is a frequent ordeal and fixes seem to always be ephemeral, things soon breaking again. Her Macs are not as bad but still have lots of hiccups.
Meanwhile I've been on Ubuntu for more than a decade and as far as I can remember, for example, printing consists of printer just magically appearing in my apps without me ever having to install anything and I press print and it prints. That's user friendliness to me. At least for my workflows (mostly web browsing, software dev and office stuff), there is vastly less fiddling and head scratching to keep things working on Ubuntu.
I too have had quite an awesome experience with Linux on older devices, everything just works, Many things are actually better than Windows, Unfortunately I feel like there is still a lack of software available on linux. Yes there are alternatives for everything usually, but things like microsoft office would make a great addition.
I would say in some instances driver support is actually better, I had this old logitech wireless keyboard and mouse lying around which worked quite well, unfortunately they came with this older version of unifying receiver which the current version of their official software refused to recognize (on windows, no official linux support). I was having trouble finding a older version of the software too. Somehow I ended up trying to use Solarr [1] (which is made for Linux) and it worked first try.
My work Linux laptop frequently (several times daily) breaks Bluetooth, breaks audio, does not wake from sleep, wakes from sleep but only shows the mouse pointer on a black screen, stops throttling the CPU down, resets the DHCP-specified DNS server to 0.0.0.0, sends stuff to printers that cause them to just spit out endless blank sheets of paper. The "solutions" to all of these are multi-step manual disasters... uninstall pulse audio, restart cinnamon, reinstall blueman, upgrade Jack, manually create config files from copying some file on a GitHub repo, downgrade to some specific version of CUPS, mess about with apt-get repos to not get the latest version of whatever...wtf?! That is not user friendly.
My personal Windows laptop has never had a single one of those problems. It has been faultless from day 1 without a single issue.
Sounds like a truly broken install. What's the maintenance history of the machine? Have you been patching it from third party repos? Why are you running Jack on a work computer anyway?
Back up your documents and do a fresh install. It'll take you an hour and you'll regain stability.
I mean, I admit you do have to start with known supported hardware. I have no patience for having to install drivers but like I said, for the last decade, it has been easy to find a computer where most everything worked out of the box (Bluetooth maybe the exception but it doesn't seem to work half of the time on any pair of devices/cars regardless or software being open source or not). System76 laptops are great when you want something specifically designed and tested for Linux. Before that, I used to bring a live Ubuntu CD to Bestbuy, pop it in computers to see which one would run everything out of the box. I would say success rate was higher than 50%.
That's annoying. Honestly it sounds like your IT dept is missing some expertise, and maybe tried to be too clever by installing some hacky add-ons, which destabilized things. It seems like something of a ridiculous stretch on their part, for example, to think that Jack would be required for bluetooth.
That said, as long as they're willing to be hacky: bluetooth audio worked reasonably well for me _until_ I got a headset with its own dongle. At that point the original bluetooth dongle stopped pairing reliably with the speakers I was using. That prompted me to switch to pipewire and it's been rock solid since. You might suggest to IT that they experiment with pipewire (since it's the new hotness, they may actually take you up on it.)
I remember feeling like it was a full time job - always some issue or inconvenience. Struggled with basic multimedia stuff and of course the biggest issue, almost no apps.
You could say the real issue is not Ubuntu itself but the ecosystem.
I set up Ubuntu with KDE (Kubuntu?) on an old laptop for my wife. Win 10 on the laptop was so slow that the machine was unusable. She uses Firefox, Google Docs, and she uses a printer. She's had zero problems in two years and I've updated the machine twice for her. Of course how usable the machine is will be dependent on what software you need.
For a fair comparison you have to use an equivalent priced device sold by Microsoft itself (so a premium Surface), and that has none of the problems you described.
Yesterday I finally made the decision to ditch Windows 10 and move to Elementary OS on my desktop computer (my laptop is a Pixelbook).
I was attempting to edit videos. I plug in an external hard drive with my footage, and... nothing. Well, not nothing. It's there in Devices & Printers. It's able to be ejected safely. Troubleshooter has no problems.
But nothing in Explorer or any other obvious place you'd think. Panicking, I plugged the same drive into Chrome OS. Literally three seconds later I was browsing my footage.
That's the point I got up from my desk and said, "I'm done." I'm so over Windows.
They spend how much time and effort shoving a Linux environment into things when they apparently can't even support widely-used filesystems. The fact my external drive is mountable by both Chrome OS (where the code for mounting is open source) and macOS (a closed-source OS used by a minority of the populace) but not Windows is an utter joke. I shouldn't have to spend all this time trying to access my files in 2021. This is something that should Just Work.
This was just the straw that broke the camel's back. I've had several minor and major annoyances with Microsoft's treatment of Windows ever since Windows 8, and none of them have gotten better.
- WTF is "3D Objects" and why does it always bubble up from the pits of hell even when I delete it? Microsoft is very opinionated about the User folder in general, while I think they should be as hands-off as possible. Stop adding folders I didn't ask for and stop resurrecting them after they're deleted. Why is this so hard?
- Obscuring local account creation to a ridiculous degree in Windows 10 (you need to literally disable Wi-Fi or unplug Ethernet to even see the option) has gotten even WORSE in Windows 11. Now you can't even set up a local account at all unless you shell out extra for Windows 11 Pro! They've learned nothing from the Xbox One always-online debacle, and honestly looking back, this should have been the dealbreaker. But I thought, "hey, I don't create accounts that often, this is something I can live with." No longer.
- The amount of analytics and data-gathering in Windows is the worst it's ever been, and worse than any comparable OS. "You can turn it off though." Well, maybe. Until Windows Update decides it knows better and turns it back on.
- This is purely aesthetic, but Windows 8 and 10 looked utterly horrible if you did anything more than look at the desktop and open the Start Menu. Clashing styles and UX edicts from decades of past releases, in very visible places. It gives the impression Microsoft just doesn't give a shit. And don't tell me "it's too hard to update everything in time for release." It's not everything, and Microsoft is a big boy with lots of money and developers. They decided they just don't care.
It's not getting better or even staying the same. Microsoft is actively making Windows worse for their own ends. Thankfully I have the choice and ability to install an alternative, but my heart goes out to those with no choice. It's Orwellian.
Not only that but a huge portion of people will simply not swap away from the OS they know under any circumstances.
Windows 12 could require all users to get punched in the face to log in and most people would say, "Yeah, it sucks but it's better than spending $1,800 on a Mac. Plus my video games..."
What are the Windows use cases that Linux doesn’t do?
General web browsing type tasks are solid, text editing/note taking works. Videos and audio (including Spotify) work. Steam and games generally work (even most windows games through Proton).
What else does ones daughter need for school? She’s not video editing or creating music (two use cases where you may need windows or OSX; art is more or less covered through blender/Inkscape/krita)
Mint or Manjaro are easy to install and setup and come with good defaults that should be pretty easy to navigate for someone new to Linux.
Dunno what you mean by peripherals, at least ones that don't work on Linux, but the other two categories work just fine. Gaming has come a long way thanks to Valve and their work on Proton.
I'm guessing you're not someone who would describe themselves as a "gamer"?
EDIT: (I don't mean this in a mean way, just to say that people who care a lot about being able to play specific games probably still won't be satisfied without a Windows box).
I play plenty of games and have a Steam library of ~400 or so games. I haven't had a Windows install in a few years. The only issues I've had with Windows games on Linux, using Proton on Steam, is that it doesn't work in Wayland (but every game I've tried works fine under X, of course I do check ProtonDB.com before buying games that don't have official Linux support).
I personally don’t play many, but generally you won’t see any performance difference. Do check ProtonDB to see if the ones you have in mind work as expected. Typically games that are rated platinum work as well as on Windows, Gold typically works well but some people had some issues (Check the comments, sometimes the issues are unrelated things like the launcher not working but the game works fine) while anything else expect headaches. Some multiplayer shooters have issues with anti cheat for example.
Yeah, I don't either, mostly just curious since that seems like it'd be the most demanding category. I've actually mostly been missing Battle Brothers which is... not latency sensitive. And it looks like ProtonDB gives it a platinum! Thanks for the pointer to that.
Sadly looks like a lot of the top 10 are in "Borked" status, though.
> Sadly looks like a lot of the top 10 are in "Borked" status, though.
50% of them, but 2 of the 5 broken games are known to be buggy in general (New Worlds anyway, PUBG was years ago, no idea how it fares nowadays so maybe I'm wrong) so dunno how much of that is Proton's fault. The two gold ones seem hit or miss: many people report they work, but some people have issues.
Still, a lot of AAA games work perfectly (eg Sekiro) and many games I play even have native Linux versions (Crusader Kings 3 being the main one, I'm hoping with the steam deck more devs will release Linux versions but maybe that's too optimistic) and most of the indie games I play work well, so for me, I've been pretty happy and haven't looked back.
I feel like running linux is like voting for a 3rd party candidate in the US. FWIW linux is great I just can't convert all the people who aren't developers to linux without an unnecessarily steep learning curve.
It took me a few hours just to install updates, remove bloatware (my oh my, the amount is staggering!) and fix privacy settings. And this was for Windows 10 which I hear is a mild version of a mess that Windows 11 is.
I was instantly reminded why I appreciate Apple software more.