• @[email protected]
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    15216 days ago

    The fact that they won’t allow users to uninstall it should suggest some things about their motives.

    • don
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      16 days ago

      It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.

      Twice. At point blank range. To the back of the head. With an elephant gun.

      • @msage
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        716 days ago

        Or a mortar. Point blank.

      • @MacStache
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        1016 days ago

        Well, since the fish are just laying there, at the bottom, motionless and dead it’s pretty easy.

  • @[email protected]
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    8516 days ago

    it’s not for the end user, it’s for the end user’s boss who wants to monitor all their worker drones’ productivity

    • kbal
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      6416 days ago

      It’s not for the end user’s boss, it’s there to collect data for the future Microsoft user behaviour analysis tools that will be sold to the end user’s boss’s boss.

      • @[email protected]
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        4416 days ago

        it can be for 2 things

        but it’s definitely not for the benefit of anyone who’s forced to use it

    • @[email protected]
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      5216 days ago

      Why measure performance metrics in terms of output when we can just 1984 everyone’s workstation.

      • @[email protected]
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        216 days ago

        Because that would, at one point, imply a full process audit, which will inevitably lead to some shit-stirring, especially in terms of management’s contribution to said output, making it much easier for the worker to see just how underpaid they are and probably hurting some manager’s feewings. We can’t have the truth! Better to Love Big Brother and blame the Drone!

    • @[email protected]
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      16 days ago

      not until Linux bros find a way to appeal to newcomers. being curious about Linux is the worst user experience anyone will ever have about any tech related issue.

      • @[email protected]
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        2116 days ago

        You aren’t trying to suggest that experienced Linux users are a bunch of arrogant fart-sniffing a-holes who expressly enjoy gate-keeping inexperienced users by being as condescending and unhelpful as possible?

        • @[email protected]
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          15 days ago

          I tried talking about how absolutely horrendous their behaviour was recently, pointing out how completely unhinged and self-defeating it is, and someone actually literally said that this was a good thing because Linux is hard work and they should keep away people that aren’t experts.

          And first of all, if that’s right it’s an admission that linux will never succeed, and secondly I agree that’s the effect but I think that’s bad actually.

          I honestly think there must be at least some amount of psyops in the community poisoning the discourse for everyone.

            • @[email protected]
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              15 days ago

              Omg it really feels like that sometimes.

              The youtubers who paint Linux as extremely unstable/not appropriate for gaming almost come across as sponsored by Microsoft. (Not to mention the overemphasis of the ubiquity of adobe suite users i.e. confirmation bias)

              • @slowcakes
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                315 days ago

                Mostly first Linux users will download Ubuntu, latest release, and I’ve not used a more bug ridden OS in my life. Everyday there was a new bug that made me have to hard reset my computer (mind you this is 24.0.4 noble). Display was grey after login, didn’t want to login, laptop screen doesn’t wake up, Wayland crashes and doesn’t start backup. And that is the bugs that forced me to hard reset my laptop, then we have a whole slew of other bugs.

                I mean some new getting recommend Ubuntu will have a horrible experience, and most of them do

                • @[email protected]
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                  415 days ago

                  It almost seems like Linux Mint is the default recommend now which is better. I had a kind of buggy time with Pop OS, due to the amount of unsupported extensions you need to run to have some customisability.

                  OpenSUSE TW with KDE has been the best experience for me in the end.

            • @[email protected]
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              15 days ago

              Unironically I think it must happen to some extent, and that doesn’t mean every toxic person is an op. It wouldn’t take a lot of manpower to create a toxic environment. Just hassle the devs with annoying questions, suggestions and bad “contributions” until they’re sick of everyone’s shit and start to become toxic themselves. If they’re dealing with all the noise of bad actors, they get overzealous in moderating it, and it’s hard to tell the difference between a troll who’s trying to waste your time, and an honest newbie who doesn’t know what questions to ask or what information to share, so they all get blasted to some extent, and the devs lose any interest in catering to the newbies.

              Edit: actually I remember asking a question on stackoverflow about PuTTY one time, it was answered and I moved on with my life. Then five fucking years later some dickhead shows up in the comments and says, “aw… putty… windows…” So I’m like, “Listen, I don’t care if you think I’m sad for using windows, I don’t use linux because it’s too much work” Then they start lecturing me about how linux is for experts and if I don’t know what I’m doing it’s not for me, and I’m like “Ok? Then leave me alone. This question is five years old, why are you here? Just to hassle a rando because they use windows?” Then a mod bumped the comments into a private chat and off the question page, then this person starts offering to “help” me learn Linux. I told them if I wanted help they’d be the last person I would ask, then blocked them, but the bad taste of that interaction has stayed with me for a long time and I think about it a lot whenever I want to put effort into switching myself over. Was that an op? Being a troll is easy, and it would’ve been maybe 20 minutes of work for whoever was doing it. Like, maybe that was just some kid who thought they were helping further the linux cause by going around windows-shaming people, but maybe not.

          • @[email protected]
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            215 days ago

            I’ll counter your anectdote with my own. Every single Linux community member I have encountered on my journey to use this as a daily driver (arch BTW) has been incredibly helpful.

            • @[email protected]
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              215 days ago

              Where? Is this paradise oasis of helpfulness on the internet? Or is it offline somewhere?

        • @[email protected]
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          415 days ago

          I just came from another post where the user said they would love to switch from Windows and just needed someone to explain how to do it with a list of features and programs they always use and asking what the Linux equivalent would be.

          They made the mistake of saying they needed Outlook for work and there was a commenter that basically said that that person was never going to like Linux and they needed to stay far away from it because the user “painted themselves into a corner.” The commenter even took the time to call it “Micro$oft” lol

          • @[email protected]
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            15 days ago

            Micro$oft

            I dislike Microsoft and basically everything they’ve done with Windows post-7. Every machine I own that isn’t expressly for gaming is running Linux, and one of the two that are for gaming is also running Linux. When I build a new gaming tower to replace my current Windows one it will also run Linux, I just can’t be bothered to switch OSes mid-way.

            And yet people using childish denigrating nicknames like this immediately makes me disinclined to engage with the conversation. I don’t understand how anyone expects to be taken seriously while throwing around schoolyard-grade name-calling like this.

            • @[email protected]
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              015 days ago

              Yeah, I love Linux and would use it on everything if I could, but the bottom line is, it’s cheaper to pay Microsoft for something that “just works” with the literal decades old software businesses have used without major issue than it would be to help fund development for a Linux based version.

              It’s not fair, it’s not right, and you could probably make an argument that it’s not ethical, but the fact of the matter is, Windows does work. It’s got a whole boatload of quirks and every day I wonder why I hate myself so much that I chose a career that involves working on Windows so much, but it does do its job.

              Plus, I know Canonical isn’t the most popular company either, but do people think them, Redhat, SUSE, and whatever other company isn’t out to make money?

      • @[email protected]
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        15 days ago

        Need to pair it with a stable, easy to use distribution and some good marketing and hardware too. At the end of the day, most people don’t want to spend their weekends scouring forums to understand how to fix some OS issue with a series of terminal commands.

      • @[email protected]
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        615 days ago

        This is my life right now.

        I put Linux on my HP laptop…

        Speakers give weird sound Media keys don’t work Worst of all: ever since I updated the laptop somehow crashes my router? Like, I don’t even know how this is possible, but it’s happening.

        I’m not an idiot but all the solutions to getting these seemingly basic things to work as intended are extremely contrived.

        • @[email protected]
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          615 days ago

          The problem is that HP writes drivers and software for those things for Windows, but not for Linux, so Linux depends on random people to write software for those things for free (which often involves complex reverse-engineering). With Linux you need to make sure you use widely-used hardware that someone has already written support for (this is mostly applicable to laptops and peripherals, which often use custom non-standard hardware). There may be a way to fix your problems, but you’ll have to search forums or issue trackers for the solutions, and they’re probably pretty involved to get working correctly. The router crashing thing is probably just a coincidence though, or the laptop is using a feature that’s broken on your router.

          • @[email protected]
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            515 days ago

            Yes I completely understand that. But it also undermines the “give your older laptop a new life with Linux” narrative that’s out there at times. It’s actually not that easy. I’m happy running Linux but I wouldn’t put it on my moms old laptop…

            • @[email protected]
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              114 days ago

              Tbf, this is more HP failing to support their hardware than a failure in Linux to be more flexible and performant.

            • @[email protected]
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              114 days ago

              Everything depends on hardware.

              I had the completely opposite experience of installing Ubuntu on HP laptop and giving it to my father. It connected without any problems to his work wifi while his friends brand new windows laptop couldn’t.

        • @[email protected]
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          114 days ago

          Yeah as others have said, HP does not have a great reputation for laptops and stuff.

          Grab a cheap ThinkPad, they usually work very well.

      • @[email protected]
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        014 days ago

        I started on Linux as a kid and let me tell you, being curious about windows, welp that’s been horrific.

        Curious in this case is a strong term, quite a few of my students are on Windows and that OS is a mess. I don’t care much for apple but at least MacBooks work.

        • @[email protected]
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          014 days ago

          people who grew up before tv use windows and Mac computers now. i doubt they could operate a Linux, since i find it daunting even as somewhat of a power user. idk what kind of comparison you’re trying to make here but you’re absolutely wrong. also i don’t remember the last time my windows computer crashed, was infected or anything like that. i keep hearing this from Linux users and it feels like the last time they interacted with a windows computer was in the last millennium.

          • @[email protected]
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            214 days ago

            Well, I can only offer my experience.

            I teach programming and Mathematics full-time and I’ve been doing so for the last few years. I must use 20 different machines every semester.

            Every single time, windows users cannot install python, they cannot install latex, SQL etc. And of course every single time the machine is riddled with garbage and just opening the start menu takes seconds. It’s probably more correlation than causation, but students on Linux always perform better In the course.

            Mac Users certainly have it better but installing basic software (git, fish, ripgrep, neovim etc. ) is still quite challenging.

            Much of the teaching staff have been using Linux for the past 5 to 20 years and probably have not relied on Windows since maybe 95/xp/2000 (my old supervisor started on Solaris apparently 🤷)

            We sit there amazed that anybody would use this. It runs like shit, It’s riddled with ads, installing software is painful, most software isn’t packaged for it (exceptions being subscription-based software like Adobe), it’s a privacy nightmare and of course you have to pay for the bloody thing.

            I guess my point is, maybe you find Linux more difficult than Windows because you’ve been using Windows for the past 20 years and so you’re approaching it from a different perspective.

            From our perspective, we could go back to Windows and wouldn’t struggle with the technical side of things too much, but there is no doubt that it’s an inferior experience.

      • @[email protected]
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        -715 days ago

        I don’t think Linux Bros will ever find a way to appeal to women newcomers. I think it will take a company that can afford to hire UI/UX designers, marketing people, etc.

        But, that’s hard because there’s a chicken / egg situation. Selling a Linux-based computer to the general public is going to be very difficult because of the network effects around Mac and Windows machines. Everyone else uses them and so there are people you can ask for help, there are software vendors who make stuff for the platform (also with nice UIs meant for normal people). I can only see someone spending money to make a mass-market friendly Linux in some limited circumstances.

        One situation where a company might make a truly user-friendly Linux distribution is if a company like Valve decided to make a game console. They already have the Steam Deck which is doing really well, but nobody’s going to be doing their taxes on a Steam Deck (although they could). But, if they made a desktop-replacement game console that could both play games and also act as a normal home PC, they could afford to spend the money needed to sand the rough edges off the experience.

        Another situation might be if a big country mandated Linux for something, either for government computers or for kids in schools. They’d probably have to have a support contract for that, and whoever was supporting those systems would want them to be as user-friendly as possible so they didn’t have to deal with as many support issues. So, if say Brazil mandated that all government employees switch to Linux, that could result in some company making a Linux desktop experience that was comparable to Windows.

        • @[email protected]
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          215 days ago

          Agree with you that gov and education should really be using open source software and hardware. Having said that, a normie friendly UI is what killed android and windows for me. Gnome does a good job being easy to use but I prefer KDE because I want configurability more than out of the box simplicity. I do agree with you though that having hardware paired with Linux software like System76 does would increase adoption. Just don’t take away my ability to configure things how I like them.

          • @[email protected]
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            214 days ago

            Most of the time the fact there’s a beginner-friendly option doesn’t mean that there aren’t also options for more advanced users. This is especially true with Linux.

            On phones both Apple and Google lock things down so much that your options are limited. That’s mostly an issue with monopolies not with phones. Macs have a bit more freedom than phones by default, Windows has a bit more than that, then you can go back to Mac if you’re willing to hack around and run QT apps and so on. But, I can’t imagine a Linux distro that didn’t let you ditch a beginner-friendly UI for something more powerful.

            I’m still hoping that the success of the Steam Deck will get the ball rolling. Steam Deck success might lead to more games that work really well under Linux. That means less of a reason to keep using Windows. More people using Linux might lead to more software being fully available for Linux, which might get more people to use it. I still think eventually you’re going to need non-hobbyists to come in and smooth a lot of the rough edges. But, stage 1 in that whole process is getting more people using Linux, and maybe that’s actually happening now.

            (It also doesn’t hurt that Microsoft keeps shooting themselves in the foot with things like the Cloudstrike bug, and the Windows Recall snoopware failure. Long may that continue.)

            • @[email protected]
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              From the sound of it, we’re well along the road to better Linux gaming. You have to pay attention to a few things like distro choice, setting up software like wine, and certain tweaks and adjustments, but my understanding is that you can play a lot of good games on GNU/Linux now! If Windows Recall can’t be disabled, I may be diving into Steam, Proton, etc. all over again as I ditch Windows for the last thing I use it for.

              You save it for last, but I think your last point should not be overlooked. Linux’s recent successes have been augmented by Windows recent missteps and failures. Considering how bad those are, I think we should credit at least a portion of Linux’s use to Microsoft’s inadequacy in customization and/overreach in privacy.

    • Moah
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      1715 days ago

      And has been for the last 30 years

  • @[email protected]
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    6316 days ago

    That’s okay, I hit the Windows uninstall button back in April. It’s been quite nice ever since!

  • @[email protected]
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    5516 days ago

    Is called “Windows” because they are always looking in at you. I have been on Linux since they announced recall, and their fucking one drive kept secretly uploading my desktop files! (Kept seeing sync icons, even with all that disabled). Since then I now have my wife, uncle, dad, friends, etc all running Linux now.

    • @RandomVideos
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      1616 days ago

      How? I have been trying to switch people to linux for over a year and failing

      • @[email protected]
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        15 days ago

        I gave them laptops, Linux mint pre-installed. I used to buy auction lots of broken laptops, so I got them for like $10 each. Threw in an SSD. It works as fast as a new machine for browsing the web and watching YouTube. I also pre-installed some common programs to get them started.

          • @[email protected]
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            515 days ago

            It was a thrift store auction website, when they first started there was almost no one bidding, so I won TONS of awesome things for cheap. Eventually more and more people joined and the auctions are not as easy to find deals.

      • @[email protected]
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        716 days ago

        My reason was being that I couldn’t get HDR to work properly in KDE 6 plasma. Also 90% of the features from my graphics card that I use on a daily basis are missing in Linux.

        If I didn’t have cutting-edge hardware paired with an Nvidia GPU, I would have already switched by now. I build a new PC once every decade, so I’ll check back in about 3-5 years once my hardware has aged enough that people are writing proper drivers for it that goes beyond the bare-bones featureset.

      • @[email protected]
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        116 days ago

        Just give up on any productivity software. And any specialty software unrelated to programming. And games.

        Source: programmer that uses Linux daily.

        • @[email protected]
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          1316 days ago

          Gaming on Linux is pretty good nowadays. I’ve only run into one or two games I couldn’t get working. The vast majority of games work with Proton right out of the box

        • @[email protected]
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          115 days ago

          Office on the Web can work for many people. I don’t know how many people actually use speciality softwares outside of Office, they must not be many. Games are pretty much click and play now, only some pesky anti-cheat that demands kernel access remains, but not every gamer plays those games.

          • @[email protected]
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            15 days ago

            Adobe suite is another big one. I know folks who have to use windows for Premier, Photoshop, illustrator ect. If Adobe ported their stuff to Linux, that would be a huge shift in the market

            • @[email protected]
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              115 days ago

              Let’s hope Adobe continues to extract ever more money out of its clients, so that the libre alternatives can get a chance for chipping it away at the edges, since there are many sectors where they are more in parity than libreoffice with microsoft office.

        • @RandomVideos
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          016 days ago

          Still doesnt work, even when the person is only using a web browser

  • @[email protected]
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    3916 days ago

    But… But they got the good press of “at least you can uninstall”. I hope whoever said that starts a bigger shit storm now.

  • @[email protected]
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    3116 days ago

    Microsoft says it remains on track to preview Recall with Windows Insiders on Copilot Plus PCs in October, after the company has had more time to make major changes to Recall.

    Just in time for Halloween. That’ll be sure to give people a good scare.

  • @0x0
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    3016 days ago

    OF course they had to do it in reverse: it’s not a feature, it’s a bug.

  • Destide
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    2416 days ago

    Altogether now children “It’s a bug until…it’s a feature!”

  • @[email protected]
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    2215 days ago

    How will this work at an enterprise level? I can absolutely say that the company I work for cannot allow that kind of information to be harvested. Our clients would have a conniption. I also can’t see our cyber security insurance covering that.

    • @[email protected]
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      915 days ago

      Don’t worry, Microsoft will hide it in an obscure group policy so domain admins can disallow the “feature”. That ensures that mom and pop shops who can’t afford a full time security team still get targeted by their software.

      • @[email protected]
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        314 days ago

        Man, even with updating the Adxm* or what ever the GP definitions are Windows 11 is already painfully under customizable. Like by a wide margin.

    • @[email protected]
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      3016 days ago

      I’m still on windows ten. Currently trying to switch to Linux. What are your plans when end of life /support comes to Windows ten?

      • TWeaK
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        2216 days ago

        What are your plans when end of life /support comes to Windows ten?

        Switch to Linux and run virtual machines when I need to use Windows.

        Right now I don’t quite have the drive to do it, but an end to support for Windows 10 would push me over the edge. I just can’t stand Windows 11, not even because of all the bullshit but just the way it mandates the UI structure - last time I tried it my dealbreaker was that you can’t just have it always display all taskbar icons, you have to manually force each one to show. If a new icon comes up, it will be hidden.

        • @[email protected]
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          16 days ago

          this one drove me nuts.

          let me use the damn computer the way i want to. its mine, i paid for it. let me use small taskbar icons. let me remove the ads.

            • TWeaK
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              115 days ago

              Microsoft are unlike Facebook and Google in that they make you pay for the software they use to steal your data.

        • @[email protected]
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          716 days ago

          If you don’t have prior experience with Linux, I’d advise making the switch before the end of win10 support. I made the switch a couple of months ago with no experience in Linux, and while it wasn’t a horrible experience it also wasn’t the easiest thing to do. Having the safety net of a Windows partition was really useful during the month or two as I got used to Linux, which I wouldn’t have wanted to do with Windows not in support anymore.

          • @[email protected]
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            516 days ago

            I went all in so I wouldn’t change my mind but the first year I was pretty nuch entirely problem free. I have had issues since, however. But compared to the work I put in on Windows unfucking things I think its been trivial.

          • TWeaK
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            215 days ago

            My experience is limited, but not no experience. In any case, it’s not like Windows 10 will be immediately unusable when support ends.

        • Final Remix
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          416 days ago

          That doesn’t even make sense… that’s actively antagonistic UI design right there. Goddamn.

      • @[email protected]
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        916 days ago

        Im in the same boat, I’ll either move to some cracked version of windows without the recall bs, or more likely some linux distro.

        • @[email protected]
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          16 days ago

          There’s no reason to trust any homebrew or cracked Windows ISO. Just go with Win 10 LTSC. All the bullshit is removed and it has support until 2027. MAS flawlessly activates it. Linux is indeed the better option, and I’ll be heading that way soon enough.

      • @[email protected]
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        I might try to setup Win 10 LTSC which has support until 2027, but I mostly use Mint these days. Would still like to avoid Win 11, even if I only use it for gaming.

      • TWeaK
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        1116 days ago

        I’m sure I’ll be there with you soon enough.

    • @[email protected]
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      1516 days ago

      It is so strange to see people flexing $PREVIOUS_WINDOWS when $PREVIOUS_WINDOWS itself brought in egregious anti-features that are now normalized and accepted by average users as “not malware”.

      • Final Remix
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        416 days ago

        Yeah, but most if not all of those antifeatures can be removed very easily.

        • @[email protected]
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          1216 days ago

          I find it much easier to start with a minimal canvas, and then to add only the things I want or need. Than to try to tear down aggressive features until something sane begins to appear from beneath.

          • Final Remix
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            I got too many games and programs installed in my current copy of Win10 to ditch it now, sadly. Too afraid of outright losing shit, or savegames, etc.

            Besides O&O (or whatever it’s called) installs via Chocolatey, and you just uncheck the stuff you don’t want. Windows is stripped to bones in like 10 minutes.

            • BombOmOm
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              You might be surprised at how many games just work on Linux. Have been running it on my laptop for a bit now and it hasn’t presented an issue. Check out https://www.protondb.com/.

              Had a friend recently ask me to benchmark my PC as he was buying one and wanted a baseline number to compare against. Asked him what he wanted me to benchmark, (it was Mass Effect). The process was: install on steam, hit play on steam. The only annoying part was I had to wait for the new game cinematic to finish before I could get a FPS reading.


              O&O Shutup10 is pretty nice though.