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Switched Back to Windows After over 10 Years on Linux

35 points| thunderbong | 1 year ago |old.reddit.com

98 comments

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[+] dmonitor|1 year ago|reply
Use whatever operating system you want, but I can't imagine being a Windows "fan". It's like being a fan of traffic and billboards. Linux has community ownership and MacOS has the weird Apple design quirks that you can learn to love. Windows is something you trudge through just to get it to do what you want without shoving ads in your face. It was not created with love.
[+] tyleo|1 year ago|reply
Agreed. I feel like every OS has its flaws. My sense of Windows is that installations deteriorate.

My cursor currently doesn’t show in VSCode after an update. My ‘Downloads’ folder also disappeared recently and everything now downloads to my desktop.

I’ve learned to reinstall the OS from scratch every year or so on Windows and that resolves my issues.

[+] phendrenad2|1 year ago|reply
Hi. I'm a Windows fan. I use Windows 11. I experience no "traffic and billboards" or "trudging" or "ads in my face".

I get it - it's "common knowledge" that Windows is full of "spyware" and "ads" and "popups" but I expected better from Hacker News posters. At least do your own research! Spinning up a Windows VM and letting it run for a week costs nothing. I'm sure HN users can handle that.

[+] runjake|1 year ago|reply
I think Windows is created with a lot of love. I know several past and present Windows engineers and they are passionate about the product.

But there’s a whole lot of MBAs forcing user-hostile “features” (eg. Ads and crapware) on top of it. Then there’s the backwards compatibility thing, which is a double-edged sword.

[+] pandemic_region|1 year ago|reply
Early windows versions were actually very well designed to not get in your way and be both minimalistic and usable. Things went south after win2k, any OS 'feature' added after that is considered bloat in my book.
[+] aagha|1 year ago|reply
Just buy a copy of Pro for $89 and nearly all these complaints go away.
[+] thefz|1 year ago|reply
Disclaimer: Linux on all my personal machines, Windows on work ones.

I feel the most attrition using MacOS for working. The UI is cumbersome with too many animations and things that get in the way; Finder is nowadays idiotic making accessing the file system a chore. Windows in a corporate setting is OK. It does not get in the way, at least.

[+] forrestthewoods|1 year ago|reply
Weird comment. Who said anything about being a fan?

I wouldn’t say I’m a “fan” of windows. But I definitely hate my life when I’m forced to use Linux.

[+] scrollop|1 year ago|reply
but I can't imagine being a Windows "fan"

S/he specifically writes "Although I’m not a big Wind7ows fan, it does what it needs to, and that’s a relief."

[+] 7e|1 year ago|reply
I mean, the Microsoft logo is a bunch of squares. That says it all.
[+] seltzered_|1 year ago|reply
A counter example by Ed Zitron, buying a popular cheap laptop off of amazon running windows ( https://www.wheresyoured.at/never-forgive-them/ Dec. 2024 - scroll down):

  > "When I opened the start bar — ostensibly a place where you have apps you’d use — I saw some things that felt familiar, like Outlook, an email client that is not actually installed and requires you to download it, and an option for travel website Booking.com, along with a link to LinkedIn. One app, ClipChamp, was installed but immediately needed to be updated, which did not work when I hit “update,” forcing me to go to find the updates page, which showed me at least 40 different apps called things like “SweetLabs Inc.” I have no idea what any of this stuff is. 

   I type “sweetlabs” into the search bar, and it jankily interrupts into a menu that takes up a third of the screen, with half of that dedicated to “Mark Twain’s birthday,” two Mark Twain-related links, a “quiz of the day,” and four different games available for download.             The computer pauses slightly every time I type a letter. Every animation shudders. Even moving windows around feels painful. It is clunky, slow, it feels cheap, and the operating system — previously something I’d considered to be “the thing that operates the computer system” — is actively rotten, strewn with ads, sponsored content, suggested apps, and intrusive design choices that make the system slower and actively upset the user.
   [...] 
   The reason I’m explaining this in such agonizing detail is that this experience is more indicative of the average person’s experience using a computer than anybody realizes. Though it’s tough to gauge how many of these things sold to make it a bestseller on Amazon, laptops in this pricepoint, with this specific version of Windows (Windows 11 Home in “S Mode” as discussed above), happen to dominate Amazon’s bestsellers along with Apple’s significantly-more-expensive MacBook Air and Pro series. It is reasonable to believe that a large amount of the laptops sold in America match this price point and spec"
[+] don-code|1 year ago|reply
It's telling that - as the family IT person who buys the computers - any time I buy someone a new computer, I need to spend _at least_ a few hours hammering out the rough edges. There's software that needs to be installed, software that needs to be _uninstalled_, drivers that need to be updated (I once bought a laptop that was shipped with a non-working mic; driver update available), software that needs to be bought ("what do you mean Office isn't included?!"), and so on. Most users aren't able to navigate that themselves.

Moving someone across ecosystems isn't always possible, either. While I've made some Linux migrations, and might consider Mac in some others, there are use cases where Windows is a must. Of the Windows installs I'm theoretically in charge of, there's Windows printing to a 20-year-old ribbon printer, Windows "because I need, specifically, QuickBooks Pro 2016", Windows on a cash register (!) that the vendor no longer supports, Windows for an autistic girl who I wouldn't ask to adapt, and so forth.

[+] pkulak|1 year ago|reply
I don't know why folks think Windows is easier to maintain than Linux. Sure, if you're running Gentoo maybe, but Bluefin is the most hands-off and stable operating system I've ever encountered; and I've used ChromeOS. I've never seen a Windows install over a year old that didn't have ad popups, corrupted drivers, 100 apps starting and running in the background at startup, or was just slow as all hell.

Every one of these posts boils down to "I wanted to play Fortnite, now I can, that makes me happy." Sure, you've now given some random company access to your machine at the kernel level, but if you wanted to make that tradeoff, good for you. It's not a terribly interesting take though.

[+] legitster|1 year ago|reply
> Although I’m not a big Windows fan, it does what it needs to, and that’s a relief.

Ironically, Windows has become the "It just works" platform.

Apple is so afraid to change their OS that it's forever locked into worship of itself. And desktop Linux refuses to make any choices for you.

To everyone's point, it doesn't mean you have to pledge allegiance to Microsoft. But I also take umbrage with the Linux community's idea that you are personally supposed to endure suffering to build character or for the greater good.

[+] bachmeier|1 year ago|reply
> Windows has become the "It just works" platform.

This makes me cringe every time I see it. Seriously. Maybe if you ignored the security issues and drivers that didn't work with new releases and performance issues, old versions of Windows worked well.

Windows 11 is an endless battle with things that don't work. Number one on the list is laptops that don't sleep. It's to the point that when I hear "that sound" I start looking for the laptop with the closed lid that didn't sleep. My son had to disable his mousepad because it would randomly move the cursor and click while he was typing. My wife couldn't get the camera on hers to work. The list could go on...

[+] MrMcCall|1 year ago|reply
> But I also take umbrage with the Linux community's idea that you are personally supposed to endure suffering to build character or for the greater good.

I gladly take the pain of freedom in lieu of suffering under penny-squeezers.

[+] exe34|1 year ago|reply
> And desktop Linux refuses to make any choices for you.

hah, you haven't used gnome in 20 years.

[+] cosmic_cheese|1 year ago|reply
> Apple is so afraid to change their OS that it's forever locked into worship of itself.

Don’t agree with this, there’ve been changes made over the years, mostly to make the platform more palatable to users who were brought into the Apple fold by way of iPhones/iPads. The parts that haven’t changed aren't out of worshipping itself but more out of trying to not alienate its existing userbase - much as longtime Windows users don’t like longstanding conventions thrown out, neither do longtime Mac users. The conventions just happen to differ from those popular on the Win9X-desktop-paradigm side of the fence.

[+] Someone1234|1 year ago|reply
I don't feel like with Windows 11 in particular "everything works seamlessly."

Windows has a lot of technical debt, heck, arguably that's Windows' USP: Backwards compatibility via technical debt. However, Microsoft has had a lot of the originals retire out in the last few years with a huge number during 2020 for obvious reasons; taking a lot of institutional knowledge with them.

So what we have now is a bunch of younger engineers at Microsoft who don't REALLY understand why a lot of things within Windows are the way they are, and therefore are afraid to improve core functionality. So we get almost all of Microsoft's efforts go into front end improvement, and gimmicks. Places where people can make a mark without needing to deep dive into the mysteries below.

Let's look at Windows 11's timeline:

- 21H2/2021 initial release: With a Start Menu/Taskbar that was half-baked and lost tons of functionality.

- 22H2/2021: Fixed the Start Menu/Taskbar to what 21H2 should have been.

- 23H2/2023: Half-baked "AI" stuff. Touch Gesture improvements.

- 24H2/2024: Tries to make the horrible search basically functional (and fails). Windows Recall (privacy issues). HDR backgrounds.

[+] Brian_K_White|1 year ago|reply
After (well) over 10 years on Linux, relief is not what I ever feel when I have to use Windows.

I still get regular exposure. I know what I'm "missing".

It does not just "do what it needs to", and is not a relief.

One individual opinion exactly negated by another. Result: null.

[+] samsk|1 year ago|reply
I left windows 7 (with payed updates) for linux last year.

The reason: I want my system to just work, to not switch UI every other year or month, to not require ultra total upgrades twice a year, to not hog cpu to download and install some multigigabyte upgrade, to not start updating when I immediatelly need to fix my crashed webserver, to not hide basic settings from me etc...

I've win10/win11 on other mostly browsing only laptops, where I can ignore that OS is actively preventing me from using my device, but I can't have this on my 'prod' machine.

[+] pandemic_region|1 year ago|reply
I can imagine Windows being an ok-ish work OS once you manage to switch off all the assistants, ad pop-ups, cloud logins, password savers, home pages etc. But then, what's the difference still with a normal user focused Linux distro?
[+] cynicalsecurity|1 year ago|reply
That's a really nice way to trick people into subscribing to a subreddit. Create a controversial post and watch angy bystanders join and participate.
[+] dnel|1 year ago|reply
What a time to switch to Windows. It seems like walking into a burning building. My views softened on Windows after years of exclusive Linux use but after getting Windows 11 on a laptop I can't not see the end of the road and want to switch everything back away again. Linux has several solid distros that "just work" in my view but Windows 11 does not meet that criteria.
[+] random42_|1 year ago|reply
I must be the luckiest person alive to use Linux because I keep reading people writing about issues with Linux, issues with Fedora, and meanwhile I have been using Fedora since version 16 and I had virtually zero issues. I'm on my second laptop since then, now running Fedora 41, and still, zero issues.

Sure, I had limitations back then using an external monitor (HiDPI) but all that went away once Wayland got stable. My new laptop has a GeForce and I needed a few commands to make it work nice.

I'm glad I have never had to resort to going back to windows except for gaming since I started using Linux as my main driver in... 2006 I guess?

[+] bsder|1 year ago|reply
Anybody who sings the praises of Windows 11 is going to be immediately suspect.

If you sit someone down with both Windows 11 and Windows 10, the suck of Windows 11 is completely obvious to even a rank beginner. Windows 11 doesn't "just work"--Windows 10 is actually better at that.

I presume the issue is that so many people are used to interacting with the Internet solely from their phone that they don't feel the layers and layers of jank anymore. Consequently, shitty laptops with Windows 11 actually feel "better" to them.

[+] phendrenad2|1 year ago|reply
The post doesn't even mention a specific version of Windows, so I don't know who your comment is supposed to be addressed to.
[+] bsnnkv|1 year ago|reply
Not a "fan" by any means, but I am a full time Windows + NixOS in WSL user and for me it's really hard to beat this level of general "it just works" plus an officially supported Rust crate covering pretty much the entire Win32 API surface to make the DE do (mostly) whatever I want[1].

[1]: https://youtu.be/5XVG9dL5XY0?si=yBJZ7ANzYMnUi7B8

[+] TekMol|1 year ago|reply
I wouldn't even know how to go about using Windows.

On Debian, there is a universe of software in the repos. I can install anything I need with just a

    apt install <something>
and use all these programs in concert with pipes like

   dothis somefile | dothat | thendothat
I was wondering how all that works on Windows these days and typed "How do I apt install ffmpeg on Windows" into Perplexity. It gave me this drama:

    Download FFmpeg from the official website
    or a trusted source
    Extract the downloaded file to a folder,
    such as C:\FFmpeg
    Add the FFmpeg bin directory (C:\FFmpeg\bin)
    to the Windows PATH environment variable
Holy moly. I can't imagine going through this "hunt it down, make sure it is from a trusted source, manually tie it into your system" for every little tool I want to quickly use.

UPDATE: Thanks for the replies. Looks like Windows has a repository and now too and you can install stuff from it via a program called winget.

[+] tokinonagare|1 year ago|reply
Just use winget if you can a command line style install. It's strange (to not use a stronger word) to expect apt to work on Windows instead of the native alternative. It's like if someone complained explorer.exe does not work on a GNU/Linux distribution.
[+] phendrenad2|1 year ago|reply
On Windows, if you want to use open-source command-line tools, it's best to use Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), which gives you a full Linux environment running in a VM that's tightly-coupled with the Windows OS (you can run windows .exe files from a linux terminal and they magically work).

However, the Windows Way is to typically avoid CLI tools and use a GUI program. For instance, you might use Handbrake instead of using ffmpeg directly.

These two rules solve the following problem:

> Holy moly. I can't imagine going through this "hunt it down, make sure it is from a trusted source, manually tie it into your system" for every little tool I want to quickly use

[+] dgrin91|1 year ago|reply
I don't know what perplexity is, but there are 2 easy solutions to what you want to do -

1. winget. Probably has ffmpeg, but I haven't checked. 2. You can just download it from their site. Google ffmpeg windows and first link gets me here: https://www.ffmpeg.org/download.html. You can install from source or you can just get exes.

Installing stuff is the easy part.

[+] ruthmarx|1 year ago|reply
> I was wondering how all that works on Windows these days and typed "How do I apt install ffmpeg on Windows" i

Well, that's a pretty way to weird the question. If you searched on Google how to install ffmpeg on windows you'd just get the homepage which would link you to an executable installer.

Did you honestly never use Windows in your life?

[+] wumeow|1 year ago|reply

  winget install ffmpeg
[+] ruthmarx|1 year ago|reply
Huh. I switched away from Windows to Linux about 2 years ago.

I actively like Windows. Not so much these days, but it was a substantially better user experience than MacOS for those of us that liked to tinker/didn't want to be nannied and for a long time a better experience for anyone that wanted to game or needed some apps that Linux had no equivalent for. Plus, as an OS hobbyist, it often had some very interesting and well designed aspects, even if the flaws took the limelight most of the time.

Windows has gotten so bad though. First with W10 taking away the security-only updates channel as well as allowing users to select which updates they ant to install.

The telemetry. The bloat. Bloody cortanna and spotify trials and zune and just garbage I have no interest in and can't even completely disable. I haven't really used W11 yet but it seems so much worse with the MacOS/dock cloned startbar and just some of the limitations they've imposed in attempting to modernize.

Not to mention the absolute mass of different GUI APIs...you have the old style, the 'metro' or whatever it is style, and I think the W7 aero style maybe? You still need to use classic control panel for some things but now you have to wade through a bs metro app to get there.

It's just become a mess and a real chore to use.

Now I use Alpine as a desktop with a heavily patched awesomewm. I have a perfect W7 like desktop that takes about 20mb of resources and is perfectly tailored to my needs, no third party utilities needed.

I have all the software I need, A W10 VM and Wine if I need to run a Windows app, complete control and peace of mind, and perfect stability and security.

I'll need to find a solution to run GTA6 natively maybe, but I have years until I have to deal with that problem.

[+] _blk|1 year ago|reply
My wife got a new laptop that came with a windows 11 pro license, so I let her pick. She wanted to try Windows after about 10y or being on Ubuntu. It's only been a few weeks, so time will tell her side but for me, the setup was a hassle. On the system end, it came with 22H2 and didn't want to self-update to its newer self without manual update package downloads. Some KB number is all you get. Log wasn't helpful either. Not just that the system doesn't come with a package manager is a pain but also tweaking Windows to stop showing ads ("suggestions") on every corner and disabling all sorts of telemetry. I do occasionally manage windows terminal servers, so it's not like I'm unfamiliar with the windows platform, but I wasn't expecting a "pro" license being this riddled with ** that's obviously not in the interest of the user. The enterprise edition seems much more professional in that sense.
[+] PKop|1 year ago|reply
For every new laptop it's best to just install the latest stock Windows iso downloaded from their website, not OEM versions which often have unnecessary bloatware added or old versions.
[+] voidr|1 year ago|reply
> I’ve realized that in my current phase of life, everything needs to work seamlessly

I have an almost 10 years old MacBook Pro, that I can turn on at any time and I would be able to do modern software development on it easily.

I have a similarly aged high end gaming laptop, I turn it on it spends two hours fiddling with software updates, turns on the anti-virus that I never asked for, installs random software that I would never in a million years install, maybe breaks a driver or two on bigger updates and to top it all off, even with WSL2 I can't even get Docker to run things reliably on it.

For gaming I find the Steam Deck to be the superior experience.

[+] isthatafact|1 year ago|reply
I suspect this is just an ad. To me, the post is indistinguishable from an advertisement and contains very little information--fairly typical of reddit.
[+] nottorp|1 year ago|reply
TFA says: "I’ve realized that in my current phase of life, everything needs to work seamlessly."

Humm. I realized that a while ago, but I switched to Mac OS not Windows. I regularly work with Windows (and Linux for that matter) boxes as well and I don't understand how you can use "seamlessly" in that context.

[+] SebFender|1 year ago|reply
Haven't been a Windows user in decades, but lately was helping a friend with his laptop and it was an immediate indication it hadn't taken a turn to lure me back in for sure. Decent global interface, but a pure mishmash of elements that just doesn't work for the user...