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Separately from that, it drives me mad how warped the idea of “consent” is in Windows (and in tech in general). “Later” is not the opposite of “Yes” goddammit!
Imagine sexual consent was similarly warped: Hey Becky, you wanna have sex? You can only answer “Yes, right now!” or “Maybe later,” and I’ll keep asking you FOREVER. So, what will it be?
Maybe later
Windows does give off the vibes of the type of person who does that tbh. See: “I see you’ve been interacting with me in the ways you generally have to, have you considered interacting with me in these ways? Oh you know that competitor isn’t nearly as good as I am, look at all the ways I copied them”
Windows SP (Sex Pest edition)
Even teenagers know that no means no
Why doesn’t Microsoft?
- A meme I saw on /g/
Unfortunately the tech literate of us are in the minority.
Almost all consumer tech is targeted to the lowest common denominator which is either Dorris, the 68 year old lady from you legal department who prints off emails to read them. Or Jessylyn the Zoomer thats only ever used an iPhone and cant learn anything that take longer than 10 seconds to teach.
This has me wondering, are young people actually getting LESS pc literate? I’m sure there’s studies about that? It’s never occurred to me that growing up with computers but without smartphones was peak conditions for becoming tech literate.
Yes. They don’t even know where to find files during their college classes
Can confirm this. I teach a programming class and about two years ago my brain exploded when I was helping a student debug a problem said “o, you tried to reference the file but it’s actually up one directory and inside another one so you’ll need to include the full (relative) path”
The blank look of “what the hell are you talking about” threw me for a loop. So, then we talked about file systems for awhile…
I’ve done support for sysadmins and I’ve run into a lot of them who don’t understand the concept of relative or absolute paths. A couple weeks ago I had to explain how password hashing works to people working for a huge aerospace company.
I think most people learn to use computers like they learn to use a car, in that they understand the rituals they need to perform to get it to do the thing they want. They lack understanding of what’s going on under the hood so when something goes wrong they can’t fall back on knowledge and figure out what went wrong, they have to learn an entirely new routine to fix it instead of learning the principles and thinking critically.
Adeptus Mechanicus Intensifies
I’ve been catching myself calling it the activation rune instead of the power button.
I’ve worked as a sysadmin for 4 years and was recently offered a position as IT security consultant, and I don’t know how password hashing works. (Don’t worry, I rejected the position)
Thank you for not becoming yet another turtle on a post.
Plus it wasn’t even how the hashing works, just explaining how a system can check if a password is correct without decrypting the password. They’re getting millions of my tax dollars to build this IT system for the military and they don’t even understand that one-way hashes exist.
Are we sure this is zoomers being less tech literate, and not just being a common issue, but used in a way to shit on the next generation? I dealt with the same shit in highschool with other millennials, so this feels so much like those “Millennials are killing X” articles by out of touch boomers writing clickbait.
Working IT for close to 2 decades , I’m not convinced the users are getting dumber, as they’ve always been dumb af about technology. Maybe it’s because I’m out of end user support and don’t have to deal with modern stupidity, but talking to my support staff I don’t hear anything that I haven’t facepalms through my skull about before.
The rank-and-file “I’m not a computer person” users are more or less unchanged and you won’t see much difference there.
What’s happening is that you have this huge swathe of people who are technically “familiar with computers” but still have no idea how they work because the details are obfuscated or hidden in most modern systems.
You won’t see the difference in support. You’re most likely to see the difference in teaching, especially in areas that attract people who have an interest in technology.
Meanwhile, my interns at work, who are a couple years younger than me, though we all are gen z, who had the chance of using AI at college whereas I graduated before chatgpt was a thing four years ago:
-
Uh, sir, there’s no internet. How am I supposed to complete the Jupiter notebook if I can’t even remember how to code on my own.
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Hey chatgpt, how do I use X formula in excel…
-
Where’s copilot?
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…index? Isn’t that one of the fingers? Oh, database index? Dunno, ask chatgpt.
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etc, etc
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Tbf this happens to me sometimes when i have to use windows haha
But it makes sense. The more intuitive UIs became, the less incentive you have to understand what the PC actually does.
But like, is there studies about it? I didn’t find anything on a cursory DuckDuckGo search, just anecdotal articles
I had a class with a group of ~18 year olds a few years ago and more than half of them did not know how to use a desktop operating system. That gave me quite the reality check.
What’s weird about this is 18 years old a few years ago is roughly my age. I’m 26. But thinking of it, the first iPhone came out when I was about 11, but parents were super wary of letting their child use a mobile, let alone smart phone.
They’ve been shown to be super susceptible to scams even. I probably support as many young users in my company as I do older ones, but virtually no one in the age range of ~25-35.
My opinion: yes but also no.
The proportion of the population that is has genuine, full command of any computer at their disposal probably isn’t all that much bigger than it was a few decades ago. Meanwhile, commodification of computing technology has put a gobsmacking amount of firepower in the hands of millions of people that have no earthly idea how it actually works, or how crippled their experience is. So by raw headcount, the experts and tech literate are proportionally a smaller group amongst all computer users. But as a percentage of the general population, probably not.
If I could provide one crucial takeaway from all this, it’s to not conflate technology use with literacy.
Ive heard rumors that a portion of smartphone native youth cant figure out how to use a folder/directory
I personally believe interests plays a large role, tech evolved where 90% of things CAN be done on a phone so there is nothing really pushing people to learn about “older” tech.
The general enshitification of technology also plays a large role, almost everything is designed to manage your data while limiting users control. The my documents folder got replaced by a “recent” tab and a search box.
Absolutely. So many of the young new hires have no idea what a file is, how to find, edit, copy/paste/move a file, any of it. All they know is how to use is apps that vomit data to them in a “feed” type delivery style. Want them to analyze business trends? You need an app that shows them pre-made charts in a feed, they don’t know and will not learn how to collect data sources and build those charts themselves though
It was awhile ago but there was an article saying that newer generations are PC illiterate because they grow up using smartphones.
ApparentlySmartphones and PCs are different skill sets.Apparently Smartphones and PCs are different skill sets.
Why is this ‘Apparently’. 99.99% of Smart Phone Users have no ability to access the cryptic file system.
It’s very different.
If you can’t find an app that ‘does it for you’. You just don’t do it on a smart phone. That’s not how a PC can work.
True. It was a poor choice of words because it’s definitely different skill sets.
The first android device I ever worked with was a tablet I got for college and I hated how convoluted it seemed to access the file system. There were many things I tried to do that I knew how to do on Windows and Linux but struggled to get done on the tablet. I have the same problems now that I’ve finally gotten a smartphone.
This is why my phone is basically a phone/mp3 player/youtube player for me. Ive customized it to be as not convoluted as possible and I only use it for a handful of things. I also look at porn on it because why not.
That’s the issue here, we techies are not the target audience anymore. Back when we started using Windows it was aimed at us because you had to understand it to use it. It’s dumbed down because it’s not made for people who care how it works or who want customisation.
Windows 7 was peak. Everything after that has been getting worse and worse every iteration.
It may have been a little slow at times, but it just worked. It wasn’t constantly trying to advertise to you, trying to get you to download apps, trying to force AI onto you, trying to harvest your data, forcing you to use online services, it was just an operating system and a good one at that
Did it even have any online component? I can’t seem to remember. Right after installation it would present you with a desktop. No bs about setting up onedrive or anything.
Microsoft.com accounts made their debut in W8.
But even Vista already had some nasty features like IE Smartscreen which to this day is on by default and which sends every website URL you visit to Microsoft. Vista was also the first Windows version to include telemetry throughout the OS. However, in Vista and W7 you could still disable telemetry on normal editions of Windows.
From a privacy standpoint, the last good-by-default OS was XP. The only bigger issues iirc were the Media Player which downloaded album art and DRM licenses and Active Desktop which Microsoft tried to use to advertise to you. Oh, and (edit): Windows license activation was online for the first time and in some cases you had to reactivate after changing hardware.
I was an XP fan. 7 was cool, too, though.
That’s not true. Windows 10 is better than Windows 8. But windows 11 is so bad I’m switching to Linux when it’s time to update
Same here. I don’t understand people who tell me Windows 11 is alright. I use Windows 11 at work, and it’s everything I hated about 10 magnified, with fewer or no ways to fix it. Every time it has an update, it’s even worse.
The only reason I haven’t migrated to Linux on my main rig is I’ve got years of regedits investing into Windows 10, but when it loses support, I’m out. I’ve already installed Linux on my laptop and the mini PC we use for streaming.
So 11 is the new ME/Vista/8?
Just on schedule, we will know if it’s so bad that they need to change naming to something different on version 12.
So 11 is the new ME/Vista/8
I don’t think it’s that. I think it’s designed for the Facebook demographic, if that makes sense – and there are a lot of people on Facebook.
But if you want to have any level of control over your device or any real choice, it’s not for you.
I loved windows 8.1 on my surface pro. It was a great touchscreen OS.
Windows peaked with Windows 2000.
My favorite was when my new Windows 11 laptop started automatically backing up my files to OneDrive without telling me, then STOPPED LETTING ME SEND AND RECEIVE EMAILS because my OneDrive was full. Full of stuff that I never wanted to back up.
So one of my main email accounts, which I’ve used within the free tier limits for 20ish years, suddenly went dark because I signed into Windows.
Of course while investigating, the UI offered helpful options like:
- Pay for more cloud storage
(Not depicted: “Free up some space,” “Disable backups”)
Epilogue: After several rounds of disabling backups, then deleting the stuff in OneDrive, then Windows deciding that I couldn’t have wanted that and backing all my stuff up again anyway, I finally fixed it by deleting some key directories so the backup would just fail.
You can fix it by never logging on with an email address.
Thing is, installing win11 without linking a Microsoft account is still a rather large pain in the ass. 1000% worth it minf you, but they really don’t want you to.
I just did it this morning, when you burn the ISO to a usb drive using Rufus you get a nice little menu that allows you to pre-set a local account, disable the TPM check and more.
The biggest pain is downloading the windows 11 iso in the first place. You can only do that when the site believes you’re not already using windows.
Bypassing the online check on setup is basically required on new hardware anyways, since most 2.5g/wifi6+ networking drivers aren’t included in the installer.
this is a feature of rufus, not of windows, while it’s really cool, go rep rufus, not windows. Especially for the linux users who don’t use windows and have to suffer through what is sometimes arbitrarily confusing. I will say, there is a script out there that works great for flashing windows isos under linux. Uses a grub intermediary layer to ensure consistent behavior i think? Idk, i used it once.
If you’re in a situation where you absolutely must use Windows, at the out-of-box screen ,Enter a fake email address and a fake password a few times, and once it fails to sign in it will give you the option of creating a local account. Sneaky, deceitful, and underhanded, sure, but at least it’s still possible.
i’ve already commented this, but just to get my point across properly here, it’s these kinds of comments that bother me. They reek of “too occupied with whether we could do it, rather than whether we should do it.”
It’s a neat trick, but completely fucking ignores the problem. It’s like a car shipping from the factory with a bunged transmission but everyone going “well you can just not use first gear” or “well, doing a swap is easy” and my favorite “just re-gear it with third party parts, these ones don’t explode” Like, yeah, you could. Nobody would be buying that car though. For some reason tech nerds have a masochistic relationship to this shit and i dont understand why.
I don’t use Windows. I remember this from tech support days though.
I am repping Rufus here, not windows. Painful as it may sound, truth is that most people creating windows usbs would do so from windows.
The tool you’re talking about might be Ventoy. Which is indeed a great way to make any type of bootable usb stick. Once installed you can just throw all sorts of isos (and more) to your usb drive and it’ll generate nice grub menu to pick from.
You’ll just have to use the classic oobe\bypassnro method instead to install windows. (The fact that you have to use a workaround to create a local account at all is still BS, there’s no denying that.)
i get it. It just pisses me off to no end when people bring up genuine issues and people go “oh but you can just unplug the fuckin ethernet” yeah and why do we need to fucking unplug it again?
I mean yeah i could just not install a shitty piece of software like windows, given my linux user nature, i should do that, but here i am trying to be reasonable, and people keep yelling at me, because apparently i dont know that “well uhm ackshually”
like the guy who responded to my comment with “well just use a fake email if you REALLY have to” like yeah, that’s cool, im sure there are other ways of doing that too. That was not the point of my comment though.
Ventoy is pretty cool, not what i was talking about though, woeusb iirc, really slick little script. Used it for a win 7 iso ages ago.
People having to work with Microsoft stuff (not just windows) have gotten so used to needing to find workarounds for everything that those genuine issues have become the baseline expectation.
Only having to fill in a wrong email/password a few times sounds like peak user experience compared to the shit I have to pull in Azure/Power BI/AD at times. My genuine first reaction when reading that post was “ah of course, that makes sense”.
Personally I use Linux for server/container stuff wherever possible. With the occasional excursion into Manjaro to see what’s happening on the desktop side.
You can also fix windows by installing a real operating system.
Don’t cut yourself on that edge brah
This is not a helpful recommendation.
Indeed. Helpful would be, “try Mint bc that is likely to be the easiest for Windows faniliar users to assimilate to, all it costs is your soul.”
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This is not as true as it once was. Not a gamer, so i cant direct you in the best direction, but im aware that people are running the steam deck, or gog, or installing Windows on a VM on their Linux.
The worst thing Linux has going for it, is that it involves taking a leap of faith that, evidently, most are not willing to take. Theres been 20 years of “Linux complicated, not for the average joe” that most of us have had ingrained in us for a while. My initial comment was more of a joke trying to poke fun of that very notion. Its more of an option than its ever been, to the extent that even running games isnt a dealbreaker anymore. In my experience, i started dual booting Mint and Windows sometime between 5-10 yrs ago and very quickly realized that theres very little I truly need Windows for. Im not that tech savvy, i cant code, the linux terminal is daunting and i dont use it for installing all my software. Just before the plunge, i didnt know about partitions; today, i still dont understand what "kernel* fully means, regardless of how many times ive heard it explained.
Somehow someway, it turned out that after everything i always heard, there was a hardly a learning curve in using Mint bc it was so similar to what i already knew. Before id spend hrs cleaning things that refused to delete off of Windows, or learning to deal with viruses, or just getting past the babyproofing Microsoft intentionally includes in their OS. That meant that i hsd the time and spare brain power to look up the (usually simple) solutions to anything that was new and unexpected about Mint. In the case of a gamer, the time u lose on Windows bs (even tho u typically dont notice until u try a less greedy OS) is more than enough to learn how to game on Linux. And if thats not enough, i still would recommend dual booting due to the lightweight nature of Linux and how much more enjoyable simply internet or file browsing is on Mint.
/endrant
i get it if its still not the time for u, but maybe it will be for somebody else reading.
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i had the same shit with google drive recently, legitimately had to CTRL A and delete everything. It should genuinely be criminal to not have “delete all button” Though to be fair, i think it kind of did tangentially a little bit? It was hidden behind like three menus, and didn’t properly update, and i still dont think i have everything deleted from there, i have no idea what google is doing honestly.
Delete some key directories
My grandfather is in need of a new computer, im not gonna try to Linux pill him, which leaves me with a windows 10 machine that will be EOL this year, and just hope nothing breaks with time. I think he would stop using technology if he saw the constant nags and popups in 11.
I dunno, Linux Mint Cinnamon is pretty dang close to the standard Windows 7 experience. He’ll have an adjustment period of about 2 weeks running into minor differences and then not have any issues.
Oh I am sure of that, thats how I got into Linux :p
But now convince a 70 year old man that the one thing he has been consistently using for almost a decade and a half is in need of a change.
But really I may push him on it again, I’ve assured him he can get to his excel documents and all that but it doesnt seem like enough and is now irate with the ads in solitare
Can you get away with just installing it and telling him it’s the new windows?
You know, if there’s a real nice solitare applet just maybe
You have a choice. Kpatience is pretty good.
But now convince a 70 year old man that the one thing he has been consistently using for almost a decade and a half is in need of a change.
You mean like installing Windows 11 when he’s used to Windows 10 or even older? 😁
He’s on 10 now, with some gripes that I likely could regedit, it really depends how harsh w10 EOL goes and how hard they try to fill some landfills
Worked with my 76 year old dad. He happily does all of his stuff on Manjaro. Vivaldi looks like on Windows. And Kodi is even better than the satellite TV crap he had on Windows.
This is lemmy and I live in a country which gives 0 fucks about copyright, so allow me to speak very freely
PIRACY PIRACY PIRACY!
PIRATE a copy of Windows 10 LTSC and let Microsoft choke on your cock and balls!
DMCA My Ass M$IT lawyers
Older folks normally do just fine if you set up some desktop shortcuts and bookmarks. He’s likely gone through a few Windows versions and figured it out, after all.
If all he needs is a browser, get him a Chromebook. Sure it’s Google, which is arguably as bad as Microsoft, but you’re getting a simple machine which is hard to break, and Google is doing the tech support rather than you.
Or, if you don’t want to waste perfectly good hardware, install ChromeOS Flex on the existing machine.
Obligatory “switch to Linux” comment.
I had that problem and that solution did resolve it.
Unfortunately it made me the weird lady at the bar recommending people try operating systems
“What’ll you have to drink?”
“I use arch, btw”Just give me the hops, yeast, and water and I’ll compile it myself.
Yes I use arch, how did you know
Hey weird lady, what would you recommend?
I like Garuda but you should probably try something more stable. Plasma 6 is nice though.
Do your research and focus on your priorities. That said I think neon is probably what I’d recommend to my wife
Thanks for the suggestions, would those be good for gaming?
@MeDuViNoX @captainlezbian Hello, other weird person heard you from across the bar and decided to interject.
For gaming it’s really 2-3 operating systems that are probably going to have the best results.
Ubuntu, for all Canonical’s faults, has the widest array of online resources for finding problems.
Pop_OS! is similar to Ubuntu but maintained by System76 and I’ve seen sometimes said to be better.
SteamOS 3.0 (the OS on the Steam Deck) has two desktop derivatives in HoloISO & Chimera OS.
Nice, I’ve got a Steam deck already, but I haven’t messed with it in desktop mode too much. I think I might start with the last 2 OS you mentioned and see how it goes. Thank you!
Garuda is built for gaming and it’s as beginner friendly as an arch based rolling release can be which is medium? It definitely isn’t super stable but I like it.
I’m not super knowledgeable about neon but I believe it can handle gaming fairly well. It looked to be much closer to the modern windows than any of the other distros I’ve seen.
I will recommend KDE as a desktop environment because you can easily change it.
I also hear good things about Pop OS which is a very beginner friendly distro that’s good for gaming but I don’t like GNOME and it doesn’t like my Dvorak
Right on, I’ll check some of them out. I need to find something before Windows 10 stops getting security updates in October 2025; thanks again!
Microsoft onedrive, 365 integration, teams and all of that is the most frustrating experience I’ve had with a computer in a very very very long time.
It’s infuriating to try and save something. I have no fucking clue where it’s going to go. There’s like a one drive directory structure that’s exactly the same as the local one, but also sometimes it just saves it in some temp directory or weird onedrive area??
No worries, I’ll just open file explorer and it will be in the “recent files list”, right? Just kidding." Fuck yourself, I’m windows and that file doesn’t count as a recent file for some reason. Good luck finding it!"
You want to just save locally? Just change a setting buried deep in the menus. But fun surprise, this turns off cloud sync for all files–even ones that were shared to you for review. You have to manually pull updates and push yours. Can you guess what happens next? Overwrite party! Those figures Janet added to the doc just got over written when you synced your edits to a paragraph 4 pages away.
Oh and teams is another variable in the mix with a weird SharePoint backend (I think, who fucking knows anymore). It defaults to opening in a dumb teams WebView which is like the browser view of the stuff but somehow worse than that. You can change it to default to opening in the actual application, but see the syncing issues above(all because you want new docs saved locally and never on fucking one drive)
I’m like a god damned boomer with MS software these days. I hate every second working with it. Its always in the way.
The whole experience is user hostile.
I 100% agree with you. On my windows 11 machine, the forced integration is incredibly frustrating. When I’m on my mac, though, OneDrive and all of the other Microsoft applications actually work almost flawlessly. There is no forced integration, only what I choose to integrate.
Microsoft shoving integration down our throats is awful. Having the ability to integrate when we choose to is fantastic.
There is a reason why I don’t use Windows on devices I own.
This. This is the reason.
I remember there was a folder for a Windows marketplace game that I spent a good couple of days trying to get rights to access so I could mod the single player game contained inside. But no, Microsoft had a folder on MY OWN computer locked down tougher than Fort Knox. That was Windows 10 iirc, I can’t imagine how much worse it’s gotten, I switched to Linux completely a couple years back.
I got write access once to that folder, but I never found a way to do it without breaking EVERYTHING connected to the Windows store lol Photos app - borked, fucking Calculator - borked, random settings panels - borked, Game Pass - borked
I was eventually able to put Humpty back together again without reinstalling windows, but it never was quite right until I did. It was not a pleasant experience lmfao
From my understanding, it’s heavily obfuscated*
*Sigh
Yeah AppX is a different kind of application platform that was built to be secure. Breaking that security breaks functionality. What’s lame is that they don’t have mechanisms to allow you to change permissions at a granular level and then change them back to defaults. You have to hack it and deal with the consequences which is just bad design.
Appx is locked down tight on purpose. It’s built to be a more secure application platform than exe.
Not saying it’s right and you should have to deal, but that’s why.
Editing to say I also went Linux last year and I love it far too much to ever go back to Windows. Flatpaks are similar to AppX but at least you can customize the permissions for them. Still I find them to be a bit of a pain to use for some apps.
I just feel there is a glaring flaw in Appx, in that if you ever need to try and troubleshoot a piece of software or need to access the application folder in anyway for any reason, it’s effectively blackwalls it. Or at least, it’s not worth the amount of effort and compromise required to bypass it.
Flatpaks are way better than Snaps, but I feel AppImage’s do a much better job of modularizing executables and their libraries into an easy to run package. I just wish there was a decent piece of software for management of installation of them.
I use Pop_os on my main computer and recently have been getting back into NixOS and been working on writing a full configuration file for it.
I hear a lot about those distros around here. I recently settled on openSUSE Tumbleweed after having used Fedora and ZorinOS for a while. It’s so good, I haven’t thought about switching to anything else. Manjaro, Pop_os, and NixOS are on my list if that ever changes.
I like AppImage a lot and I wonder why that didn’t take off like Flatpak did. A timing issue, perhaps?
Buying technology used to be like plucking a ripe apple from a tree. You see, you take, you enjoy.
Lately, I liken the process to gutting a fish. You now have to skillfully dispose of the unwanted bits, and it always comes with unwanted bits.
Edit: okay, you have to pay extra for the “professional” version to go back to a less encumbered experience. It’s still bad though.
And that’s just computers. Cars and phones, man, holy crap.
To take your fish analogy, it’s like “Well maybe 5% of your catch is NOT laden with innumerable parasites, but they’re the only thing that lives here and we gotta eat so…”
Edit: “But I heard there’s a new breed that not full of parasites!”
“Yeah but those don’t seem to migrate here and if they do they either don’t thrive or get eaten by these bloated monstrosities.”
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Or choose open-source, which is either plucking the apple, or planting the whole orchard from seeds and tending it for years. Coin toss.
Pfft! Don’t like it? The code to the DNA is right there in the treepo.
The pro version is still pretty encumbered, pirate the LTSC version if you want unencumbered.
Bought new laptop recently as in the op picture and OneDrive ‘integration’ was the final straw for me. I used windows since 3.11 and whilst there’s some stuff I don’t like about Linux I had enough reasons to make a switch after few hours of worrying where the fuck my files went.
Just curious, what don’t you like about it? What can we fix? As in, what things can actually be changed in the experience and not, “I don’t like that Photoshop isn’t there.”
I suspect it’s issue on the hardware / software line. Example, I am yet to find the music player that can 100% reliable can play flac over Bluetooth without skipping. I’ve tried plenty, looked into the whole pipewire rubbish and so on, no joy. Sometimes it skips, sometimes not, no clue how to resolve this.
Before I moved to kubuntu (which solved the following issue) I used pop os and sometimes simply viewing Google maps fucked up the whole display, just scrambled everything only solved by hard reset. This kinda stuff.
I haven’t bought a new car since 2004. How fucked am I when I need a new one?
Very
Well, you wouldn’t buy a 10 year old used laptop, but I drive my second 06 Forester, almost 20 years old.
But for a new car, fucked.
Well, you wouldn’t buy a 10 year old used laptop,
IBM thinkpads and Linux bros disagree.
MacBook Pro + Linux as well.
Also purchased with: … striped socks?
My Thinkpad collection scoffs at your presumptions.
I didn’t buy my i5-5xxx Thinkpad, it was a gift lol
RIP your head gasket
I miss our Forester
Haha I gota new head gasket in 2021. It was a $2K job. Still cheaper than getting a new car.
First one rusted out around 210k, never had gasket trouble. This one’s been burning a quart of oil every 500 miles since I got it at 105k. I just keep it topped off.
2012 Chevy sonic reporting in, you’re fucked
You have to hunt really, really, hard to find a model without all the shit. I picked up my teenager an outlander Sport last summer.
All the reviews said: the infotainment is dated and older. The engine and transmission hasn’t changed in 5 years with no major issues… Perfect.
Lots of physical buttons and the infotainment center is not critical for the car to function. No climate control settings on it etc. Carplay and AndroidAuto only play through the USB. No OnStar, wifi, or cellphone connectivity.
I do most of my own maintenance after having some clusterfucks at mechanics. I simply follow the manual and check things off. It’s the easiest car I have maintained since the 80’s. An oil change on it takes 5 minutes. On my wife’s Ford escape it takes 5 minutes to get the fucking cover off to get to the oil plug.
I will probably buy another one for my other son in a year when he starts driving.
Let me put it this way: don’t. Or consider buying a newer used car.
$0.02: If you can keep your 2004 on the road for less than a new car payment, and can suffer the downtime for repair, just don’t. The price of new vehicles is way more out-of-whack with inflation and wages than ever before. Also, it looks like manufacturers have become more crafty at steering you back to the dealership for repairs.
My recent new car experience, after retiring a 17 year old vehicle, left me floored with how normalized “spending the day at the dealership” had become. They almost fought me to drop the car off for a recall at a scheduled appointment time, instead of just using the key drop. No thanks, I won’t be watching bad cable, drinking bad coffee, all while huffing new tire and brake cleaner fumes all day. This is not the great service you think it is, thank you.
Well for starters. You’re in for a shock when you see prices.
No longer can you buy a car for under 10k that just works.
Prices have gone berserk. New tech and safety features you get are great, if implemented well. Going for a more reliable and conservative car brand might be better for you, and don’t ever buy anything that has capacitative buttons instead of physical ones. Hopefully, safety agencies will downright outlaw this shitty trend soon.
All new cars still do the normal car functions, they just also do more stuff that you don’t have to use. Turning off lane assist was one of the first things I did in line since my state refuses to paint lines more than once a decade and refuses to spray off the temp lines from construction projects so it freaked out and tried steering me all the time because it couldn’t read lanes well.
Don’t listen to people saying you’re screwed, spend 30 minutes going through settings, the dealer should help with this if asked, and then drive like every other car in the last 30 years
Your wallet is pretty fucked but I got a 2023 Honda Odyssey and I never loved an automobile like this in my life. It’s a perfect vehicle by my measure.
Gosh trying to find the Open PDFs by default using anything other than Edge was a HUGE pain at work where I have to use Microsoft Shit…
It’s nowhere in the settings, Edge straight up ignores the fact you set up a different PDF viewer app as a default, which takes way longer to load files than my other installed PDF readers.
You have to right click and have this option checked, smdh.
i uninstalled edge. that solved most of my edge related problems.
Dude, please explain how, because I cannot on Windows 10 as far as I’m aware.
Shipping five separate executables to avoid CLI arguments is the most Windowsy thing ever.
When I made a fresh install of windows 11 a few months ago I used this tool. The readme says it works on windows 10 but I’ve never tried it myself on 10. https://github.com/LeDragoX/Win-Debloat-Tools
When I got rid of edge on windows 10 a few years ago I think I booted into a live linux USB stick and deleted or renamed the edge directory. Maybe that doesn’t quite fit the definition of uninstall but the end result was edge couldn’t run afterward which is what I wanted.
I don’t remember if disabling edge updates is part of the debloat tools or if I did this myself, but the tasks starting with MicrosoftEdgeUpdateTask in Task Scheduler are disabled now on my system. Method 3 of this guide shows how to find those tasks. https://www.askvg.com/how-to-disable-or-remove-microsoftedgeupdate-exe-process-running-in-task-manager/
well last time i tried doing that all pdf files got borked with no way to fix the issue, on windows 11.
there used to be a semi official way to do it in win10 from 2021-2024, they broke it in January and reinstalled edge tho
Heard about that yesterday from some folks, that it had uploaded all their documents and desktop files and replaced those folder paths with OneDrive paths. Without their knowledge.
Just what the fuck? They were from the US, so that probably isn’t illegal there, but why even build such a “”“feature”“”, if you’d get sued to hell and back for it in any self-respecting country?
Recently reinstalled my Windows partition, made the switch from 10 to 11 with it. If you’re not careful Microsoft will happily replace your local Documents folder with the OneDrive Documents folder. Local one? No trace. Very VERY frustrating to untangle.
Lol wtf‽ “Well obviously the standard user wants to use our cloud storage service! It’s so reasonably priced”
I’m alright with OneDrive cause they gave me 1tb of free storage hahah, but not enough to give up my local Documents folder 😬
On my work laptop with windows 10 I find this feature quite useful. Every time the damn thing decide to not boot again (happened twice in 3 years) I can just waste half a work day formatting and reinstalling the OS and then all my files are where I left them.
There is absolutely a use case for it, but it should be an opt-in system with explicit permission required, rather than the default or an opt-out system that you need to jump through hoops to accomplish.
Obviously. OBVIOUSLY.
What the ever living capital F Fuck Redmond? They’re blatantly stealing your files, literally! I realize I’m being hyperbolic but Jesus Henry Christ does it get more dystopian than this?
You have a perfectly fine setup with your personal files stored somewhere, happily trucking along and then Microsoft decides to upload YOUR SHIT to THEIR SHIT without even fucking asking? And I’ll bet my left nut that they’ll go ‘oops, your OneDrive is full, better hand over your credit card!’ once it’s done!
Totally agree
It does actually ask you if you want to sync those files if you’re installing it on W10. It’s a bit opaque in explaining the consequences in the simple wizard that allows you to enable or disable it by slider, but that’s why it’s a wizard.
People who say it doesn’t probably just clicked next, next, next… Had a user complain about it too. Than a month later when we replaced his laptop with a W11 he was quite happy with it.
It definitely has a very positive use case for the large majority of users.
The thing to me is that under EU legislation, you need consent from a user to process their personal data.
If the user did not even know about it, then by definition, you did not get consent.I (and judges) know that this is easier said than done. Even if you’re purely working in the interest of the user, you might not always succeed.
But it still means that the onus is on Microsoft here. They need to credibly ensure that they actually tried to get consent, for example this should be opt-in in the wizard, not opt-out.
I love it for work too, I just wish it didn’t create a shitload of “copy of” files if you sync the folders required by GPO (I have no control over the GPOs).
but why even build such a “”“feature”“”, if you’d get sued to hell and back for it in any self-respecting country?
Just don’t activate it in self-respecting countries. And in America, wow, look at all this free data that is being stored on our servers! Surely we can parse that for something interesting and sell it or train an AI on it. Once users get used to it we can even charge them for the privelege.
When you find any business decision that makes no sense and you ask “why the fuck would they do that??” just follow the money trail and you’ll find your answer. It’s always about money. Every time.
But don’t you dare suggest Linux or else you’ll be an obnoxious zealot. Better to just keep your head down and let Microsoft maintain their monopoly and steadily make the lives of everyone who uses a computer worse.
Win11 got me to finally get off my ass and switch to Linux… it’s just so invasive, and the way it eats up resources is flat out irresponsible.
Same here. I think my friends have been expecting me to come crawling back to Windows but not only have I since used the SSD for other Linux projects, I have had no desire to go back to Windows. OpenSUSE Tumbleweed with KDE has been a true delight to use and learn Linux with. I smile every time the desktop loads. I use three monitors and KDE handles windows better than Windows ever could. It does it with far more customization options and its features just make sense and feel really useful, all without being forced.
Oh, and all my games run with higher FPS than they did with Windows 11.
I have had to reinstall it twice due to my learning process, but the last reinstall was a while ago and I’ve since learned how to fix problems that I create or the very rare update issues. It’s a very different beast when you’re coming from a lifelong use of Windows.
Windows 7 was really the last good windows.
Windows 10 was when I switched fully to Linux in my personal life. Windows 11 is far, far worse.
In a work setting, when the admins give it a short leash…it’s bearable. But aside from proprietary software i don’t understand why people choose to use windows.
I don’t think I’m being patronizing here. If anything, it’s the computer that’s being patronizing.
I recently had to spin up a Fedora VM and a Win 11 VM, simultaneously, from ISO. Guess which one required more interaction. Guess which one was quicker from “Boot from CD” to “functional web browser”. Whatever metric you want…clicks, words on the screen (even excluding EULAs to be fairer), pages, time, whatever. Fedora was a much smoother and faster experience
Maybe 4 years ago I would’ve thought that last line was an exaggeration about win10, but ohhh boy if thats not their goal now I don’t know what is.
Problem with average users its either be fucked in ways that arent apparent until you have to buy a new PC even though your last one was perfect fine, or you fuck yourself up and don’t know how to fix it, let alone to approach the thought of that.
To who I have suggested Linux to, usually they are already familiar but not using it as a daily, I’ve said how installation was smooth and easy, most of the software I need is available or has a nice alternative, some games need light config but there are some that won’t, but it isnt for everyone. If they’re modifying reg keys to make it less annoying, they deserve a less annoying OS, if they don’t give a shit… their loss lol
but it isnt for everyone
Downgrade them to Windows 10 Enterprise and activate with MAS.
MAS
Thank you, most likely what I’ll end up doing
Don’t forget O&OShutup, should be run regularly as well to catch the things Windows Update resets.
The desktop was feature complete in 1998. Everything after that was unnecessary complication. I use xfce desktops and it hasn’t changed a bit and I love it.
False. We didn’t have wobbly windows in 1998.
You may not have had them but I sure remember the plastic sheeting keeping the wind at bay!
There’s nothing quite like starting the configuration of a linux distro on top of shiny new hardware.
Just click next next until Ubuntu is installed
And that is absolutely fine. Everyone can hop into Linux with Ubuntu and be up and running and is finally free from Microshit.
But it’s super fun to have all the config files for e.g. hyprland and what not open while adjusting every single microscopic little screw to make your system exactly the way you want.
We are in the minority of minorities my friend lol
Life pro tip: Setup your computer as if you were from a European country, it solves most of the annoying issues.
And how do I do that without first having a VPN installed?
Just whisper into it, “I’m in Germany, actually?”
probably by not connecting it to the internet
Is this still the way to get a windows installation done without linking your device to a microsoft account?
Last I did it you have to press a key combination to open a terminal and run a couple of commands at the right stage of the wizard to do so
It’s easy to do so but it’s a fatal mistake if you foolishly put in your email.
Doesn’t matter, I’m in Canada, all our computers (four of them) are setup as if we were in the UK
In the hope MS doesn’t go full Apple, with geolocking and grace period and all.
