I realize this is a Linux community, but I was wondering why you still hate Windows. I mean, I love Linux, but I will not argue that it’s more convenient to the average person in most use cases to use Windows, I recently had to switch back to Windows and I realized how convenient it all was and how I was missing so many things because of my love for Linux. But at this point, Linux is a part of my personality and my self-image and I will not leave it, but I gotta be honest, it’s pretty convenient being on Windows. So, why have you guys chosen to still stay on Linux? Some reasons I can appreciate include
- The terrible privacy policies of Microsoft. It sometimes makes you feel like your computer is not owned by you but lent to you by Big Tech.
- The community and the spirit of sharing
- The joy of “figuring it out” and customizing everything you want to the minutest details
- FREEDOM!!!
sudo suKinda ties into the previous points, but still one of the best selling points, the freedom to do whatever you want is liberating. You can run a server on it or you can create a script while knowing you have control over almost every FOSS app there is or just destroy your whole system with one command. Idk, feels good man!
These are the big ones, but one must realize you are sacrificing many things while not using windows too, productivity can be much greater there if you are a normie, it’s really convenient! So yeah! Give me your reasons! Also, how many of you dual boot?
Back when I first used a computer we were told if it has ads and pop ups constantly then you have installed a virus. Try using a fresh install of windows…
Warning, no technical stuff, only creed:
I don’t hate Windows in and off itself. For me it represents my first contact with a computer and influences my choice of UI to this day.
I hate what it stands for, which for me is something I call “gated computing”; a restriction of access to computational power and abilities. It turns a machine with near limitless potential, like watching cat videos, sharing how to best build bridges or calculating the bygone cycles of the moon, to a machine that maliciously distracts people while giving a selected few the power of watching over them with ever changing objectives as to why they watch them.
Windows, like few others, eased people into thinking that that was the right way to use a computer all along.
That is why I hate it.
Poor workflow. Switching applications is horrible if you have 4 windows open in one desktop. Even gnome is far better at that.
Can confirm, productivity tools like, “Pin on Top”, “Always on Top” are absent Tiling was recently introduced And yes GNOME is better while Switching applications!
Because it makes doing the things I want to do with a computer difficult and annoying.
sudo suis a bad idea.sudo -iuis better for ACLs and avoids the potential security gap.I don’t think the ability to destroy your entire system by one command is a good thing for a desktop operating system. On Linux random program with root rights can bring down your entire system by one poorly written script, but Windows at least has multiple mechanisms in place to prevent that.
The “we know better than you” attitude Microsoft has. They’ve very slowly removed more and more power user functionality. Almost every customization has to be hacked in with a group policy or registry edit now, or by outright replacing explorer.exe
More or less applies to Apple and most companies.
I still rank OSX higher, simply because it’s at least consistent. Windows is a fucking mess.
Plus, it’s unix-like and comes when an ssh client.
Although to be fair, WSL fixes that issue to a big degree. Maybe even better than OSX, since you get a real Linux with real userspace. WSL(2) might be the only really cool feature Microsoft added to Windows, that actually brings value for the user.
I genuinely don’t find Windows easier to use. And troubleshooting Windows problems is a friggin’ nightmare compared to Linux.
The Microsoft support forums are pitifully hilarious, too.
“Hi, I need help with N. I’ve tried X, Y, and, Z.”
“Hello, sorry to hear that you’re having trouble with N. Have you tried X, Y, or Z?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry to hear that it’s still not working. Please refer to this thread, and feel free to contact Microsoft Support with any future questions. Have a nice day.”
“But my problem still isn’t solved. Hello?”
Where one of X, Y or Z is “update your system” and “ensure you’re using the latest drivers.”
OK, but seriously, X, Y and Z are these:
-
Reboot
-
DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth -
sfc /scannow
The only answers you’ll get.
I’ve genuinely seen a post asking for help because DISM wouldn’t run, where the recommended answer was to run DISM 🙈
-
And the other one is either use a third party registry cleaner or run this esoteric powershell command as admin.
And if it doesn’t work, just reinstall your entire computer. Fuck your entire day.
“Thread closed due to inactivity.”
It seems to be populated exclusively by people (or these days LLMs?) who have had MS customer interaction training, but simultaneously have no grasp of reading compression.
Because I don’t sit down at my Linux destop and feel like the product. There’s no ads or suggestions or popups or apps installing themselves or shit copying my files around in ways I didn’t really want or AI bullshit or anything even remotely suggesting I buy more shit, just… whatever the fuck it is I was intending to do.
The value in not having my computer act like a damn slot machine trying to get me to insert more quarters is, frankly, immense.
I like being in control of my computer.
Windows and Android have this attitude where they decide how you want to use your device and block customisation. And the fact that they feel entitled to be able to change how your device looks and feels without warning or permission is something that’s deeply uncomfortable to me. There’s also this feeling of not knowing what my device is actually doing, and how much of my data it is actually collecting.
With Windows, there’s also a lot of small papercuts that make it annoying to use (and that my Windows friends don’t seem to understand):
- Lack of middle click paste.
- Lack of the ability to drag windows using “alt”.
- You can’t turn off the window previews in the task bar.
- You can’t disconnect from a wired network connection from the connections list.
- Sometimes the computer just restarts on its own for fun.
- Finding settings is a pain because they keep adding new settings menus.
- Whatever garbage the start menu is doing nowadays.
- Installing software and drivers is a pain.
- The attitude that you have to download (or buy!) third party software for core features that should be included in the OS.
- It doesn’t support my keyboard layout, and the editor for making new layouts is terrible.
- The bitlocker password entry doesn’t respect your keyboard layout. Or clear the entry when you get it wrong.
- Windows licenses are a pain to manage.
- Managing the bootloader just sucks.
- The registry just kinda sucks compared to dconf and/or text config files.
- Font rendering is ugly, imo.
- I don’t care about edge, fuck off with that shit.
- I can’t change the volume by using the scroll wheel.
- Launching a pinned app on the task bar causes all the other pinned apps to shift around so I misclick.
- Device letters are not stable if you add or remove devices.
- It just resets settings sometimes, because why not?
- It can’t be installed to a partition that isn’t the first partition on the disk. This is not mentioned anywhere, nor is the error useful.
- It’s just bad for developing on, due to lack of tooling.
… Whew I ranted for a while there, didn’t I? Yeah, I dual boot Windows for the games that either don’t run under protonwine or the devs want to add a rootkit to.
- Lack of middle click paste.
- Lack of the ability to drag windows using “alt”.
- I can’t change the volume by using the scroll wheel.
These feel like DE specific complaints rather than Windows complaints. I wish I could use windowkey to switch applications for example.
Changing sliders with mouse wheel does sound cool, I want that.
Thats a pretty impressive list
Just this weekend I had the pleasure of installing Win 10 on a blank disk. The install went ok, but then it bothered me logging into the MS Account. After cursing for a while and since it wasn’t my PC, I gave in. I know I can fight it, but it’s not worth it here. Then it continued trying to get me to consent to all kinds of shit. NO, I DON’T WANT FUCKING OFFICE AND I DON’T WANT MY FILES IN ONEDRIVE you assholes!
Then it forces me to choose a PIN for “secure login”. DUDE! That motherfucking PC is used for a bit of office work and gaming. Just let these poor people boot up the machine and use it! 0000? Too simple. 1234 too. Fuck you, MS. Ok, random PIN and a sticky note it is, asshats.
Anyway, after getting it to fuck off, I continue to the desktop. Oh wow, 10 updates and a ton of missing drivers? It’s a fresh install! What the fuck did it install?! Of course the installation of all these updates takes an hour and countless restarts… AFTER A FRESH INSTALL! Not even my overblown super slow Ubuntu server takes that long for updates; and that runs on a HDD not a SSD like that PC I set up.
But wait. One update failed. Why? Ah, the rescue partition is too small… THE ONE THAT DUMB SON-OF-BITCH CREATED ON ITS OWN AS PART OF THE INSTALL! How to fix? Ah, execute a bunch of commandline foo with
diskpartand other tools. Wait, isn’t that exactly the kind of shit that Windows fans laugh about when looking down on us Linux nerds?!So … ugh … just one simple anecdote of why Windows can fuck off.
But wait. One update failed. Why? Ah, the rescue partition is too small… THE ONE THAT DUMB SON-OF-BITCH CREATED ON ITS OWN AS PART OF THE INSTALL!
Shit, I forgot about this bug! Such a weird design choice to make the installer fuck up its own partitions.
Heh, yeah. I had to fix that earlier this year on another machine, but that one was ooold and went through a bunch of upgrades so I figured it was due to its age (even though I still didn’t get how they could be so lazy to not automate this process as part of the update or … well… slim down the rescue tools again). But then they apparently didn’t even care enough to release a new installer that prevents the issue. So they either don’t give a crap or even do it deliberately to break Win 10 in favor of Win 11. Either case: that’s not what I pay for.
You can move Windows Recovery to C: drive but I don’t recall the exact commands. Maybe I moved the recovery image to C: partition. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/reagentc-command-line-options?view=windows-11
eh…i installed windows 10 for someone last month and it went pretty smoothly. just say you don’t want to connect an account, “you wont be able to use one-drive” , ok whatever . reject all “send us optional data” prompts. update to the latest version, and done.
the shittiest part of the install was trying to download the ISO… apparently windows doesn’t want Linux users to download their system or something, had to get it from a windows laptop.
Offlive account during install works only when you are not connected to the internet from that PC. Maybe also only with Win Pro, not Home.
The crap you have to disable are all dark patterns and I hope the EU rips them a few more holes.
“Just update”… I think I went into enough details about what pissed me off in my initial comment.
Almost every Linux distro would have been: boot the installer, select disk, select meta packages, username, password, done. 10 mins later you have an up to date system with no shady online crap.
I updated my family members pc to windows 11 a few weeks ago and it wouldn’t let me login without a Microsoft account. That was insane to me.
The PIN is stored locally on the machine only. It doesn’t get synced with anything anywhere. It’s actually much safer to use a PIN for authentication because it’s four digits that you (well, maybe not you) don’t have to write down, and the only time it works is on the physical machine. The user account password can be long and/or complex, but if you’re only ever authenticating at the keyboard, all you have to remember is the PIN.
I know. My point was that I don’t wanted any local auth at all. It should boot right to desktop, no PIN or password asked. The linked MS account is completely worthless and only used to satisfy the installer.
It’s also possible to have Windows log in as a specific user at boot, without user input. Regardless of operating system, your logged on session is in the context of some user account, whether you interactively log in or the system does it for you.
And that’s exactly what I said: the installer didn’t give me that choice. I had to use a MS account and I had to set up a PIN. Everything else required completely nonintuitive changes (plural!) afterwards.
I honest to god find Linux easier to use. Though it’s maybe because the most used programs on my laptop are neovim, gcc and rust compiler and Firefox . And I shit you not, Microsoft purposefully slowed down the Firefox browser I installed from their store.
Plus I like using a tiling window manager when coding, now in Linux I have 500 options. On windows I get a middle finger and a dedicated nsa/fbi agent. Whats not to hate?
Same, basically Windows became progressively harder to use for me. It’s so slow, for one.
Aside from all the usual points that everyone else has already made: automation. Scripting stuff on Linux is relatively simple, trying to fuck about with powershell or work around a tool that’s GUI-only is infuriating.
So. Fucking. True. oh my god.
I want to turn Bluetooth on in a script!
Linux? Two or three commands.
Powershell? Here, run this monster or download an application to do it for you and call that via the command line.Last time I used Windows, the only way to suspend the machine was either poking some random ass .dll from System32 or downloading PsSuspend by Sysinternals ffs!
Scripting stuff on Linux is relatively simple, trying to fuck about with powershell
that is the fucking best thing about Linux, I have so many scripts and customizations, I can’t even tell you!
I don’t know if I “hate” Windows but more like “I’m done dealing it.” I might come and use it time to time, but only when absolutely necessary, and the mental capacity to remove things I don’t need and make sure its removed.
.” I might come and use it time to time, but only when absolutely necessary
I get that!
Because every time I’m reminded the underlying OS exists it’s always something negative.
On windows: Forced restarts and updates that take over 5x as long as my Linux (or FreeBSD build), ui that constantly undoes what I customized, ads and preinstalled malware essentially like candy crush even on builds from Microsoft directly, worse performance with a much higher number of crashes under load on my current box, and no auto login/name any simple customization without screwing around with registry editor to name just the simple things. More advanced problems include no hypervisor built in to the home version, everything is pay to unlock features my Linux install does for free, no zfs software raid for storage safekeeping, most fixes when I do have errors involve googleing cryptic hex codes and being told to run fsck/chdsk as the only solution for often times hours of searching before finally finding the actual answer - not to mention most other fixes being to download a library/binary of the sketchiest sounding website ever that i can’t verify isn’t a virus.
On linux or even FreeBSD which took a bit to get installed to my liking i may have put work in up front but its like 3 hours at most of my time for 6+ years of stability and proper functioning to avoid all of the above plus no microsoft telemetry etc. I switched when i first tried Vista and even today every time i have to use Microsoft’s horrific excuse for an OS it is heartburn inducing.
