This was a decent OS, came about in BeOS 5 when they started to run on intel. Just lacked apps. at least OS/4 Warp could run Windows apps, this was just a brand new OS with nothing yet. Shame it died out, but you can run an inspired version of it called Haiku.
Yep. I ran it on my 450MHz Pentium III back in the day - was incredibly fast and felt so ahead of it's time, especially it's multimedia and multitasking performance, as well as the fast boot speeds. It was my second favorite OS back then.
As it was explained to me, it could do full-motion video almost 30 years ago, it could switch around analog signals like cable TV and put them on screen in an app, it had ports for hardware hacking that you could control more low-level and directly. It was just better, by quite a lot. And Microsoft and network effects conspired to kill it before it got rooted and so it got thrown out with the trash.
Not only could it do full motion video, but it could, on a 200Mhz Pentium MMX CPU, rotate an OpenGL cube on any axis with a different video running on all six sides, and do so smoothly and without any lag or video stuttering. It was incredible what they were able to do back then. Hell I'm not entirely convinced Windows could pull that off now!
For me it is so weird, that you have to use extra tools to disable telemetry and unwanted features in windows systems. Why is windows not giving me a central option to decide on those things? Is it maybe because they do not want me to decide for myself and therefore splitting the places where I need to disable all that unwanted stuff as opaque as possible? Can they be more obvious that they do not value your opinion on how you want your OS to behave?
Quit Windows. It is a dead end and get worst with every release.
If you tolerate this, then your children will be next.
I used to have a power shell script that a coworker gave me that would uninstall a huge number of services and apps on windows, change a bunch of config settings etc.
I've always wished there were a way to roll out a stripped windows release as an open source project without getting sued.
Because they're the ones that constantly make a fuss and are overall holding back the computing world by supporting a malicious organization that has a choke hold.
The people saying to switch to Linux are half-joking, half-serious. Sometimes we can be a little too pushy by bringing up "just switch to Linux" too often, but usually we have good intentions for at least trying to encourage the switch, and it often-times does come from a place of care.
People aren't going to move on. Some of you really live in a bubble when it comes to this stuff. Users complained about ads on Facebook, reddit, Twitter, YouTube and everything else and no matter how many times you guys declare those services dead the reality is that they are still the default for most. Even in the unlikely scenario that a large amount of users do permanently leave, they won't migrate to the privacy respecting service you want them to.
In my company they legitimately try to convince us that our users love ads.
I conducted user research on one of our websites, which showed complaints about the amount of ad placements we have been throwing at them. The execs responded by telling me "but we are actually HELPING them, we're showing them products that will improve their productivity and processes". Then, they came up with ideas for new ways we can place MORE ads on top of the ones already there. I'm sure our users are loving it!
It’s more like the execs know that ad revenue is a significant chunk of the revenue stream and cost very little to implement so they’ll keep growing that until it starts measurably impacting other revenue centers in the org
You should tell them that if users love ads so much, you should add a slider to let people control how many ads they get. Surely they'll only increase the ad count, right?
On a related note, YouTube just gave me a pop-up advertising premium again, only this time the cancel button was "No, I like ads."
I was gonna sit back and watch an hour of YT (with ads) but that pop-up rubbed me the wrong way and I didn't watch anything so that I might skew the A/B test in favor of no dark patterns.
After trying Windows 11 for a while, I just gave up and installed Kubuntu on my computer. I still use a Windows VM for some things, but I make sure to firewall the shit out of it lol
I switched to Nobara. I still got to dual boot 10 for a few games but I'm in no rush to get the install set up. I tried 11 and its just pure ensitifacation.
Wndow's will constantly change it's self to be first on the boot order both in EFI and on the BIOS. It's a pain in the ass to override it every time and it will switch back every time. I haven't had it blow up recently but have had issues with older versions.
It also hangs my BIOS every time it switches the boot order without consent :/
I haven't switched or started dual-booting yet because I haven't had time, but I've read the recommendation that the best way to do dual or even multiple boot is to have separate physical OS drives and select which one to boot from with the BIOS boot selector. Smaller SSD drives are pretty cheap these days, especially if you get them used on ebay or whatever. I picked up a Samsung 240 with 0% wearout for like $20 bucks.
Man windows sounds complicated. All these scripts and programs you've gotta hunt the web for, opening the command prompt or doing a load of registry edits to not see ads everywhere.
I've been a hardcore Linux gamer for 15+ years, but there's some games that just don't work on Linux, unfortunately. Sim racing was something I wanted to get into so I could get familiarity with some tracks before I actually go drive them, so putting up with windows long enough to launch the games is something I can deal with.
If M$ starts sending me ads mid game, then I might start looking for other solutions.
That's absolutely untrue. The debloat tools have a GUI and presets where it's basically a single click to run them.
I seriously tried gaming on Linux with like 5 different distros, and it was a struggle to get things running not completely awfully. Windows doesn't have those issues.
You find all kinds of crap when you search for things like that, you need to do your research on what's trustworthy.
I see a lot of Windows users say "oh you can make windows not terrible, you just need to install this random modified Windows ISO that there's no way of knowing if it contains malware"
Windows 95 - revolutionary UI changes for its time
Windows 98 - hot garbage update
Windows 98SE - fixed hot garbage and was ok
Windows ME - hot garbage
Windows XP - Windows 95 for grown ups
Windows 7 - This is where it breaks down, since from what I hear 7 was actually pretty good (been a linux user since the ME days) - but if you're counting Windows XP was Windows 5 so maybe they worked on 6 and just didn't release it to break the curse
Windows 8 - Everybody should have just moved to linux at this point
Windows 10 - Who knows. You should have been using linux
Windows 11 - If you're not using linux now you shouldn't have a computer
it was so bad. didnt help that it had higher hardware requirements than win7, and we didnt really have affordable ssd's then so everything was so slow - or, that's what my memory says, I havent used a spinner disk in a long time.
It wasn't so much the lack of SSDs. Vista had much higher memory requirements than XP. At the time, OEMs were still regularly shipping systems with sub-1GB RAM installed. Those OEMs put pressure on Microsoft to change the Vista- Ready certification requirements to include their shitty builds that couldn't really run Vista.
In addition, dual core machines were only just coming to market, so there were a ton of systems with single core CPUs. Plus, with the changes to several driver models and some of the verification requirements (sound, graphics, needing to provide x64 drivers to get verified) from XP to Vista many vendors decided to EOL their products instead of write new drivers. I know many sound cards were EOL that were literally still on store shelves.
You forgot Vista before 7. The list didn't "break down" because Vista was the steaming pile of shit in between.
8 sucked, 8.1 was good at least in my opinion. 10 was when I fucked off to Linux land permanently after using it on and off for 15 years and have never been happier.
I admit that I am a bit biased. During the 8-10 years I tanked my startup by going all-in on Microsoft Store apps because I absolutely loved my Windows Phones and was convinced that they were the future, especially when Continuum was announced (and it actually worked!).
The disenchantment started when Microsoft forced developers to rewrite their apps for Windows 10 after already having forced the mobile devs to do it from 7 to 8. The hatred ramped up when they killed support for the Lumia 950XL 6 months after launch. I freaking loved that phone.
It pissed me off so much that I went to Apple lmao talk about cutting off my nose to spite my face.
"Peak Windows" is a fun one to ponder. I'd probably pick XP for fairly high reliability and fairly low bloat. Or 2000 if taking business oriented versions in to consideration.
widdows 2000 was the pinnacle for me, beat XP until i wanted to go to 64 bit.
Apart from having 64-bit, XP was a step back; even if I don't count the fucking dog thing.
XP was a fair bit harder to de-bloat than win 2000 and they were hell-bent on forcing internet exploder on the world.
XP was also at a time when Linux was becoming pretty easily usable and mac osx was impressive too - I remember using those imac coloured egg things at university in 2000. They were good apart from the mouse, and ran MS office pretty well.
StarOffice was already better than MS-Word at dealing with .doc format across versions.
and ancient version of Wordperfect were miles better for WP anyway ("reveal codes").
windows XP was already down to gaming, adobe and CAD/other specialist apps, plus maybe MS Excel that just weren't as good or not available on linux.
I heard it’s pretty good with the bloat stripped. Honestly, if I’m going to start modifying my system I decided I’d rather have an OS that supports it properly.
Starting to think MSFT are no longer targeting users that care about that stuff. They’re going after the ignorant/complacent/corporate. I think they realized the rest of us were a lost cause as soon as Linux was remotely an option.
I’m from Eastern EU but work in Germany in English. As I grew up with my native language’s keyboard, I always set that up, but turn the display language to English.
Worked fine in 10, but with the new 11 work laptops most things are indeed English, some apps are in my native language, and some in German. And a few days ago, lock screen stock photos started appearing (instead of the company’s logo as before), with quotes in my native language. All because I want to use a specific keyboard.
Based on searching, this is a known problem, win 11 languages are a mess, and no way to fix without resetting settings and reinstalling some things, for which I would need to leave my computer with corpo IT.
American software is terrible at handling multi lingual users, aka people outside the US. Web browsers and Google services suffer from similar problems, but the random quotes in the lock screen are certainly something new to me.
I have windows 11, and with startallback and directory opus both of which I had on 10) it's indistinguishable from 10. No benefits, no drawbacks. Honestly should have saved the trouble and not installed.
I honestly don't even distinguish 10 from 11. For me, both are not acceptable on my machine, both have to be fought during daily use. Most problems of 11 originated in 10 and were already too severe.
I switched from 10 to 11 about a year or two ago and haven’t really had much issue with it. It was mostly a seamless switch, much less trouble than any other Windows transition, apart from something with the taskbar I remember being stupid, but I found some third party software that fixed it. I’d love to hate on MS, but I’m just sort of mildly ok with it. Even Copilot being added in to the sidebar is whatever, I’ve found some random needs for it here and there. As long as it doesn’t go snooping through my computer and report my mountain of illicit mighty morphin power ranger hentai, I should be ok.
Microsoft's own incompetence has made Windows 11 a failure. The system requirements really made it a flop (possibly an intentional part of their plan to boost hardware sales but create a ton of e-waste as a result). I'm running Windows 11 as my PC meets the specs, it's not a bad OS persay as it works for my day to day needs. However, if I didn't game on PC I would probably switch completely to Linux. I stay on Windows as it is for the time being convenient to do so. If the next version of Windows has a dire increase in regards to specifications...I would likely go back to Ubuntu!
You should check protondb and see if your games of choice are supported, if you've not done so already.
I completely jumped ship from Windows the better part of a year ago now and haven't encountered a single game that didn't run, at the least, reasonably well. And usually just fine OOB. Though ymmv of course.
It's a big YMMV experience with Linux, it just boiled down to mental load in comparison to Windows; Remembering all manner of commands and how to do certain things, along with that subset of hostile Linux users on help forums has made it an OS that I will use only in a dire situation. Linux is mostly for those who aren't afraid to tinker with the OS and have time to figure out what the hell is wrong with their PC in case of a strange situation occurring. Ubuntu worked really well for me for years (except the times it didn't, and I Googled my way to a solution each time). I did miss the ease of installing games and just having them work without extra steps (a common issue for most games). I also expanded my console games library so that the game variety is not lacking.
Windows is admittedly easier to maintain, and I never have any encountered any major concerns since the Windows 7 days and once while on Windows 10. As far as compatibility goes, I know most of my Steam and GOG libraries are compatible with Linux, since I've a tendency to buy games which are supported on Linux. I made sure to give myself a decent library as a result in case Microsoft screwed the pooch enough that I needed to go back to a Linux distro.
And even on hardware that does theoretically support Windows 11, budget hardware will make the most basic of tasks take forever and lower midrange hardware will feel slow. On most Linux distros and ChromeOS, budget hardware will feel slow (mostly due to bloated websites), and lower midrange hardware will feel quite snappy for the most part.
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