I’ve been using Linux exclusively for ~15 yrs. I’ve recently started a fantastic new job – the only wrinkle was that it came with a Windows 10 laptop.
This is my first time using Windows after a 15-year break. This is how it’s been going.
Hint: not well.
The author doesn’t seem to be aware of the Winkey + V clipboard manager, its turned off by default.
Yes, it’s a somewhat bizarre rant.
I like to test these sorts of OS discussions by flipping the labels about, if you can swap the OS names about and the article remains mostly valid you know the article is mostly bogus.
It probably says more about the authors mindset than the software, it’s really a complaint about change / differences, and reminds me of trying to get someone who learnt secretarial on a typewriter to turn off CAPS Lock!
Because of my day a to day role, I’m forced to use pretty much every OS under the sun, even Sun back in the day, they all have ways of achieving the same task that are not functionally the same.
Love diversity, it stops boring from achieving global domination.
cpcf,
I think “bogus” is too strong a word, it’s just a different perspective. I’m never really surprised when windows users don’t like linux and visa versa because people tend to favor what they know and are familiar with.
I have experience with both windows and linux. I’ve had a couple jobs where I was placed on MacOS and it honestly wasn’t a great experience. It’s not necessarily that there was a problem with the OS but an acknowledgement that change is hard. The lack of familiarity presented a high learning curve for things that I normally wouldn’t even have to think about. Does this make MacOS unproductive for everyone? Of course not…but when someone isn’t familiar with something they don’t have the benefit of muscle memory to be able to hit the ground running.
So I think it’s quite natural for users to feel that their operating system is more intuitive relative to others. And given that windows makes up the majority of the market, it’s natural that most users will be most comfortable using it.
Thank god there’s another long-term Linux user whining about how Windows is not like Linux! I was afraid the internet might be running low on them.
friedchicken,
Haha, yeah experiencing linux first is relatively rare. it’s usually the other way around due to the shear volume of windows.
My first experience with Linux wasn’t great but neither was Windows for that matter. I basically complained about how Windows wasn’t AmigaOS, and later how Linux was Windows. Then I figured it out. 🙂
friedchicken,
It wasn’t an easy transition for me either and if I’m being honest it had as much to do with being repulsed by microsoft than just being attracted to linux. Microsoft has a big problem respecting it’s users. To date end users have remained fairly loyal, but it’s cost them far more of the developer market share. Almost all embeded, HPC, server, infrastructure projects are running linux. So much so that microsoft has to provide linux on windows in the form of WSL.
Despite Balmer being vocal about “developers, developers, developers, developers”, microsoft let it’s own selfishness push developers away from it’s own platform. That’s mindshare they’ll probably never get back.
I use Linux, Windows, and OSX. I’ve been a software developer in industry for about 20 years. I ran slackware on my PC in 2000. I ran arch on my pc until 2008. I’ve written software for linux servers, iPhone,Android, Blackberry, Windows, and the web. I think Windows has been improving for developers and Microsoft (msft) as a whole continues to make moves that support developers. As for Windows, the addition of WSL has made all linux tooling accessible, including GUI apps on X11 and Wayland. That’s pretty powerful. I don’t think of it as “so much so microsoft has to provide” rather that they finally recognize that linux isn’t the enemy and there are many, many good things it provides. I don’t hold it against them that they offer WSL – I celebrate that it is available and that they are embracing it.
Departments in msft working on vscode and .net core are _definitely_ thinking about developers – and I think it is working. As an experiment I built a side project in aspnet core / dotnetcore6 on OSX, using vscode, deploying to a RaspberryPI 2B+, without issue. I think this story alone could lead a developer to think twice before dismissing msft. To me, that’s a powerful message msft cares about developers – including those on different operating systems _and_ platforms.
Do I have some issues with Windows ? Yes. Definitely. I think they are making **user hostile** moves pushing Edge, installing many apps by default, and generally making it difficult for a power user to be a power user by having more control over what is installed. I shouldn’t have to scour the internet to find out what registry settings and administration templates/policies need to be changed. I want more from Windows Developer Mode.
tech.bill,
I get the impression that behind closed doors microsoft didn’t want to do it. They did it because they couldn’t deny that mass migrations migrations over to linux technologies were taking place for HPC/servers/IOT/etc. Maybe some day someone who was involved with the executive decisions inside of microsoft will reveal the full story. We probably have to wait for that generation to retire first.
Well, good, but I think this is a reaction to the many developers including myself who’ve left windows technology behind. For me personally they aren’t earning my trust back with windows 8, 10, and 11. I’m not dismissing MS, they’re still a giant corporation with a huge desktop monopoly, but I don’t know that they can ever make up the ground they’ve already lost outside the desktop market. I guess we’ll see.
Indeed. I don’t think it’s all that difficult to come up with ways to make windows better for users & developers. When you introduce things like ads that everyone hates, well that makes windows worse. But they’re not making decisions to serve us, they’re making decisions to serve shareholders. That’s their job.
i think he missed some obvious issues – advertising in the os itself.
and extreme naggging when you switch the default browser. and then resetting it to microsoft’s choice anyway.
My main issue with Windows are the updates, which are painfully slow and usually requires at least one reboot to apply them. Oh, and the fact that the OS is nagging you to install them, but I managed to disable that so it’s no longer an issue.
Apart from that, I just find Windows a decent OS, maybe excepting the weird notifications advertising all kind of Microsoft services. I’m not using it for power-user stuff, just gaming and software which don’t work through Wine. I’m feeling like I’m getting too old for that “Windows vs Linux” thing.
I loved it!
It’s the same kind of rant that long time Windows uses does when they attempt MacOS or Ubuntu/Mint/Fedora.
But he made some good points in some areas:
– lots of Windows users complain about the path scheme of Linux. But… Windows is a total mess all the same.
– Microsoft can’t shell. This is a fact. All attempts made by them is a true disaster. And remote shell on Windows is a afterthought.
– It’s simple baffling that installing software on Windows is still the same as of Windows 3.11 released at 1990.
– Sleep and restore is just as finicky as in Linux. Looks like that is a Russian roulette in any platform… for some people it works just fine, but there’s always THAT guy with the just right hardware combo to break it in a way or another.
– Customization really is limited and only got even more limited over time. Current Windows 11 is worse than Windows 95 in that, and has a less consistent UI as well.
The final conclusion is: people just don’t like to shift from what he is used to, and learn everything again.
Everyone got so used with the dirt and quirks of his favorite system that they may even assume these are actually FEATURES and want them on other systems as well.
CapEnt,
So true.
Agree on both counts. I dislike the linux hierarchy, but windows has made a mess of itself. Things like the registry were already a mess but they keep making things worse with virtual paths adding complexity and hiding the truth hierarchy: system32=64bit, syswow64=32 bit, and the completely unnecessary program files segregation. It really is a bunch of hacks.
Well, given that you can now run linux shells on windows it’s not a big dealbreaker. But you have to remember that the windows school of thought was terminals were bad and they took pride in GUI over terminals. Of course it really depends on what you need; for scripting and automation I’ll take a terminal over GUI any day.
Executable installers were always a terrible approach, but at least there are alternative solutions like MSI files. I still prefer installing 3rd party applications on windows than on linux though, which was painfully difficult due to the reliance on centralized repos at least until recently. Centralized repos can work well in some cases but it should not be considered a complete solution at the expense of 3rd parties and commercial software.
Yeah, it’s very unfortunate that we are so dependent on proprietary drivers and firmware to do this. It would be really nice to have a reliable standard that doesn’t depend on adding thousands of model specific quirks in the OS to make things work. It’s a nightmare!
That’s what I’ve been saying too 🙂
“Sleep and restore is just as finicky as in Linux. Looks like that is a Russian roulette in any platform… for some people it works just fine, but there’s always THAT guy with the just right hardware combo to break it in a way or another.”
This one is brought up a lot horrible reality is true and false. You want to see sleep and restore hell put windows 10 or 11 on steamdeck or other totally design for Linux hardware. Those sleep and restore works perfectly for Linux.. Yes there are laptops out there that are designed from factory to be Linux only and yes if you put windows on those you are in hell.
There are companies who have properly designed laptops for Windows with all the right drivers and sleep and restore on those laptop work perfectly yet a lot of those laptops Linux sleep and restore don’t work right.
Then there are the we make laptops cost effective as possible cut out quality control testing those are do you fee lucky punk under Windows or Linux if sleep or restore.
Is this truly Russian roulette no. If you have enough knowledge in what you are buying you can buy laptops for either Windows or Linux or both were sleep and restore works perfectly because you have checked out what the vendor does support and that they truly do test that functionality. Do your general sales staff of computers have this knowledge no they don’t. This is like the difference between giving a untrained person a loaded firearm and a trained person a loaded firearm without valid instruction and the untrained person has no access to any information to know how todo this right in most cases.
Yes this is a horrible problem. Does not help that ODM like Dell, Hp, Acer and so on make all grades of tested so its not in their best interest for sales to be saying X model laptops were not tested properly for suspend or restore and its not in their best interest to say these laptops will not be getting driver updates from us when Windows or Linux… changes.
Yes it true that suspend and restore can be finicky for any OS but the reason why its finicky 99% time ODM(original device maker) lack of proper support for running the chosen OS on that hardware. What makes makes it seam like Russian roulette to end users is how hard it for end users to find out if something has proper support by the ODM or not. This is kind of like the right to repair and the information on repair ability is hidden.
Shake window to minimize all other windows… the feature no one ever asked for!
TL;DR: the author is whining that Windows 10 isn’t exactly like Linux, including some complaints about things that are already available or easily fixable with a 5-minutes search (clipboard history, moving windows between desktops), and a link to a grossly outdated post about winget (yes, it can indeed upgrade and uninstall software).
I used Linux exclusively on my personal computers for about 15 years. Then I wanted some software that required Windows, so I reinstalled Windows 10 on my laptop, as a dual boot with Linux. After a while, I realized that I was booting Linux only to keep itself updated. Now I use just Windows 10 (with Ubuntu on WSL) and feel comfortably at home. I also waste *way* less time fiddling, and configuring, and fixing version incompatibilities, and compiling, and trying to make that piece of software that isn’t in the official repos to work, and using suboptimal apps because the good ones are Windows-only and don’t run in Wine, and carefully researching if that piece of hardware that I want to buy is going to function at all or just partially.
Sure, it took a bit of time to get accustomed to Windows, to configure it, to fix some quirks, and to find some of the solutions for my needs (like wsltty, PowerToys, SyphyHorns, WinCompose), but it’s nothing compared to the amount of time I spent learning my way on Linux 20 years ago (and then again and again, for every distro and wm and stuff I endlessly tried, seeking my non-existent perfect setup).
I also realize that there are some common complaints that just don’t apply to me: I don’t care a bit about cosmetic consistency, I check for updates every evening (so it never happened to me that Windows wanted to update without asking, *I*’m the one asking), and I close my windows and properly shut down my laptop almost every night.
Windows 10 isn’t perfect. But neither are Linux and macOS (which I must use at work). Every OS has its own strengths and weaknesses.
OK. Every OS has it’s own strengths and weaknesses, and there are some “Windows doesn’t do it the same way as *nix”-isms here.
But there are also some REALLY good points that have to do with the places where Windows is an outlier among consumer-focused OSs (like user-focused linux distributions and MacOS):
1) The absence of system-wide software management.
2) Automatically updating and restarting the OS mid-process (e.g. during an SSH session).
3) Treating sleeping external displays as though they have been disconnected (and moving their applications to a different display).
4) Changing environment variables requires a restart.
(1) is the killer here. There’s no reason an end-user should ever download and install software from e.g. a developer’s or third party’s website, and it’s inexcusable that for some items (e.g. laptop drivers) that they have to.
Is Windows the outlier, though?
> 1) The absence of system-wide software management.
macOS doesn’t have one, either. I use brew, which is third-party just as scoop and chocolatey on Windows. And with winget covering more and more software, I’d say Windows has surpassed macOS by a wide margin in this regard.
> 2) Automatically updating and restarting the OS mid-process (e.g. during an SSH session).
As I said, I’m probably the weird one, having the habit of forcing an update check almost daily, at my most convenient time. But you can set working hours, during which the automatic updates will leave you alone. Windows – in my experience – always asks before a reboot. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a countdown, either. Unlike macOS, the downtime during the reboot is short, maybe a couple of minutes, instead of the 20 minutes or more required by my iMac when installing a security update.
emarsk,
Setting “working hours” is totally insufficient. I’ve been bitten by undesirable interruptions caused by windows updates as well. An operating system needs to obey the owner rather than the other way around.