Why I regret “upgrading" to Windows 10 from 7

[Pre-Raphaelite]

I may go back to Windows 7 after a few days experiencing the awful Windows 10.  Numerous reasons!

 

Rubbish interface, functionality and jumbled, convoluted Start menu system

Elements normally frequently used not straightforward to access

Difficult to disable many features you don't want

Bundled with spyware and tracking (what they call 'telemetry')

Hand-holding notifications that can be problematic to source and prevent/won't turn off

Enforced updates, taking away choice

Enforced updates often cause glitches

May use your bandwith invisibly in the background

Cannot uninstall some bundled software

“Action Centre”. Please either FO with that or do it properly

Masses of bloatware

Comes with unwanted advertising

Microsoft terminology deceptions

The entire mandatory and needless 'Apps' concept and configuration

May install apps without your knowledge

Potential uninstalling of user programs after an update

Problems accessing Safe Mode

Disk management issues

Still with Administrator rights issues (why FFS? It's my computer!!!)

 

Independent software is fortunately out there to disable Microsoft telemetry as well as re-configure or remove many default settings, but expect a long haul in doing so. No OS should be this over-complex bundle of stuff that in their 'wisdom' Microsoft thinks everyone needs, and with less user choice than ever.

 

 

[andy1033]

Yep microsoft peaked with windows 7

 

Expect windows to get worse and worse.

 

Windows 11, is just awful, and thats saying something as windows 10, is a downgrade from windows 7.

[Macnamara]

why not ditch microsoft altogether and use ubuntu?

[truepositive]

2 hours ago, andy1033 said:

Yep microsoft peaked with windows 7

 

Expect windows to get worse and worse.

 

Windows 11, is just awful, and thats saying something as windows 10, is a downgrade from windows 7.

Honestly the whole 'digital world' is slowly going down the shitter. Search engines, browsers, lots and lots of other software. Put that cloud storage where the sun dont shine already. Part of it is products 'innovating' when no change was needed at all, a different take on the 'replacement economies' of phones, cheap plastic shit and so on, part of it is pure malice in the form of taking away user control, more tracking/ data collection/ backdoors that you need to deal with if its even possible. I second Mac on this 100%, go Linux and never look back!

[sock muppet]

Stay with point and click Operating System if you want your computing experience done for you and your mind controlled by Microsoft, or take back your power and learn a computing experience that you control, Linux is the Kernel and you can tailor your computing experience as YOU see fit, it is open source and you have the right to do anything you want with the software, or just tag along, either way YOU are in control!

[truepositive]

Considering dualbooting popOS with something much more hands on at the other side of my disk. You can go almost as easy point and click as the newest windblows all the way to 're-write it yourself from scratch'. I think the general appeal will increase A LOT when people realise that unlike with the shitty MS products, Linux actually offers you dozens of options that are mostly free.

[Pre-Raphaelite]

The problem with installing an alternative OS is that a lot of my programs won't function. I suspect that goes for games too, and some peripherals may have issues. Thing is, Windows 7 was pretty stable and if it threw a wobbly now and then it wasn't too difficult to sort out.

 

Windows 10 is all over the place, and my Wi-fi just went down for no apparent reason (not the router) and informed me no connections were available. So I had to re-boot and then it asked for my router log-in details again. Any more of this nonsense and I'll be returning to 7 even sooner than anticipated.

 

In the US an individual has created a Windows 10 'Lite' by removing all the unnecessary trash and bloatware crap, which I'll be investigating.

Edited April 24, 2022 by Pre-Raphaelite

[Grumpy Owl]

1 hour ago, Pre-Raphaelite said:

The problem with installing an alternative OS is that a lot of my programs won't function. I suspect that goes for games too, and some peripherals may have issues. Thing is, Windows 7 was pretty stable and if it threw a wobbly now and then it wasn't too difficult to sort out.

 

Windows 10 is all over the place, and my Wi-fi just went down for no apparent reason (not the router) and informed me no connections were available. So I had to re-boot and then it asked for my router log-in details again. Any more of this nonsense and I'll be returning to 7 even sooner than anticipated.

 

In the US an individual has created a Windows 10 'Lite' by removing all the unnecessary trash and bloatware crap, which I'll be investigating.

 

I'm in a similar boat, as there are some programs that I use for work - which I need to use when I'm working from home - that either only run in Windows, or only work properly in Windows.

 

There are two Linux applications that I know of, Wine and PlayOnLinux, that purport to allow Windows-only software (including games) to run in a Linux environment, by providing a Windows 'compatibility layer'. I have tried these before in the past, with some limited success, but the applications and games I tried weren't as 'stable' as using them in an actual Windows environment.

 

I do actually have Windows 11 on my PC here, and to be honest I don't have any complaints really, the slightly modified user interface didn't take long to get used to, and I quite like it now. Besides stuff like Microsoft 365 (previously Office 365) which I need for work, I tend to avoid the Windows Store 'apps' and use the more traditional softwares, such as Firefox etc.

17 hours ago, Macnamara said:

why not ditch microsoft altogether and use ubuntu?

A few years ago, I used to champion Ubuntu, and during my 'alternative' Linux-embracing period it was my Linux distro of choice.

 

Ubuntu was created by a company/foundation called Canonical, and I started to get sceptical about how such a company/organisation could be providing high-quality open-source software 'for free' with a large number of developers and support staff. I remember reading something somewhere a while back about how well funded Canonical was, and one of the funders was... Microsoft!

 

Linux powers most web-hosting servers on the internet, and Ubuntu is rapidly overtaking other 'enterprise-level' distributions such as Red Hat, Fedora and CentOS. I just found it strange that Microsoft - with its own range of commercial Windows desktop and server operating systems - would be supporting and funding development of 'open-source' alternatives.

[Macnamara]

2 minutes ago, Grumpy Owl said:

Ubuntu was created by a company/foundation called Canonical, and I started to get sceptical about how such a company/organisation could be providing high-quality open-source software 'for free' with a large number of developers and support staff. I remember reading something somewhere a while back about how well funded Canonical was, and one of the funders was... Microsoft!

 

Linux powers most web-hosting servers on the internet, and Ubuntu is rapidly overtaking other 'enterprise-level' distributions such as Red Hat, Fedora and CentOS. I just found it strange that Microsoft - with its own range of commercial Windows desktop and server operating systems - would be supporting and funding development of 'open-source' alternatives.

 

so ubuntu could be a trojan horse for microsoft or that it was co-opted by them?

[Grumpy Owl]

8 minutes ago, Macnamara said:

 

so ubuntu could be a trojan horse for microsoft or that it was co-opted by them?

 

I don't know for certain, to be honest, it was one of those things I stumbled across a few years back, and just thought it to be 'odd'.

 

There have always been 'enterprise-level' versions of Linux, such as Red Hat and Fedora that I have previously mentioned, but it was always the case that while the software itself was 'open-source' and 'free', those companies made their money by charging clients for 'support'.

 

Perhaps Microsoft thought it "in their own interests" to support and fund a Linux distribution that remained 'free' to all customers, including corporate/enterprise clients. In order to 'kill off' demand for the commercial Linux distributions.

[Macnamara]

18 minutes ago, Grumpy Owl said:

Perhaps Microsoft thought it "in their own interests" to support and fund a Linux distribution that remained 'free' to all customers, including corporate/enterprise clients. In order to 'kill off' demand for the commercial Linux distributions.

 

so from a strategic perspective....if we (the people) want to lessen corporate power and the corporate hold over all of our infrastructure, food, water, culture, media and health what do you think would happen if people en masse dropped microsoft and adopted an alternative?

 

and what alternative do you think would be the best substitute?

[metak88]

2 hours ago, Grumpy Owl said:

A few years ago, I used to champion Ubuntu, and during my 'alternative' Linux-embracing period it was my Linux distro of choice.

 

Ubuntu was created by a company/foundation called Canonical, and I started to get sceptical about how such a company/organisation could be providing high-quality open-source software 'for free' with a large number of developers and support staff. I remember reading something somewhere a while back about how well funded Canonical was, and one of the funders was... Microsoft!

 

Linux powers most web-hosting servers on the internet, and Ubuntu is rapidly overtaking other 'enterprise-level' distributions such as Red Hat, Fedora and CentOS. I just found it strange that Microsoft - with its own range of commercial Windows desktop and server operating systems - would be supporting and funding development of 'open-source' alternatives.

 

For most part what Canonical/Ubuntu does is take what Debian produces ( a snapshot of their sid/unstable repository), add some of their patches and rebuild the packages from source into .deb files. Vast majority of the software is developed by others.

Regarding the Microsoft funding, they co-operate with MS on some projects mainly WSL ( Windows subsystem for linux ) where Windows users/developers/admins can get access to gnu/linux utilities via command line so they don't have to run linux on their machines. etc.

 

MS will support anything that brings then money and Ubuntu is the most used operating system on their Azure cloud platform. If I'm not mistaken even Ickonic streaming platform is hosted on azure?

Red Hat - Fedora - CentOS are basically one entity. (Owned by Red Hat) As of now, Red Hat bought community created CentOS (this distro just rebuilt Red Hat source rpms without the branding, hence the name) and it's now the upstream for Red Hat Enterprise. They beta test what subsequently lands in Red Hat E. Fedora is desktop/developer orientated and tends to push new technologies.

Ubuntu is more popular because it's way easier to start with. There's only on OS, Ubuntu. You can download it on their website. No account/license needed.

 

Anyway, to cut this story short, MS is actually making shitloads of money with Ubuntu, way more than Ubuntu gets, and they're not funding anything useful to destop users with Ubuntu. Not a competition at all.

Edited April 24, 2022 by metak88

[truepositive]

I agree that W7 was pretty decent and Wine can be unstable in my experience too. I dont really know enough about the Linux world yet to say anything about what the best distro in light of security, privacy, AND perhaps questionable commercial entanglements is, but will be looking into it this week since my SSD is being dodgy and i want to format it. Of course there is theoretically the 'build it yourself' option but spending the better part of a year on having my very own OS is not really on the cards at the moment.

[k_j_evans]

On 4/23/2022 at 10:42 PM, andy1033 said:

Yep microsoft peaked with windows 7

 

Expect windows to get worse and worse.

 

Windows 11, is just awful, and thats saying something as windows 10, is a downgrade from windows 7.

Nah, Windows 2000 interface plus XP USB features would have been the knees of bees. Sadly, I have to support MS products (and Adobe) so I'm stuck with it. Powershell and DISM will remove a lot of the Win10 crap.

[sock muppet]

4 minutes ago, k_j_evans said:

Nah, Windows 2000 interface plus XP USB features would have been the knees of bees. Sadly, I have to support MS products (and Adobe) so I'm stuck with it. Powershell and DISM will remove a lot of the Win10 crap.

 

You could also use a virtual environment like virtualbox and run more than one OS, this gives you great freedom to try other distros for personal/private use, it's a great way to get accustomed to a slightly different way of doing things with enhanced privacy that you can switch between instantaneously, horse power then becomes your limiting factor.

[gregory-peccary]

Your 'daily-driver' normal operating system should be linux or if you fancy a trip to geekland one of the BSDs.

If your job involves high-end audio or high-end video or heavy duty maths you may well find that you have no choice but to use Windoze or Mac OSX.

For everything else there are alternatives that run on linux and play nicely with the Windoze and Mac versions.

The BSDs aren't quite as well served in that respect.

 

First choice linux: debian.

If the evil that is systemd vexes you then use devuan, they rebuild debian to work without systemd. I use it for audio work.

 

My daily-driver is OpenBSD.

[k_j_evans]

3 hours ago, sock muppet said:

 

You could also use a virtual environment like virtualbox and run more than one OS, this gives you great freedom to try other distros for personal/private use, it's a great way to get accustomed to a slightly different way of doing things with enhanced privacy that you can switch between instantaneously, horse power then becomes your limiting factor.

I run multiple virtual box VMs so I can support multiple versions of Office, Adobe products etc. 

[Macnamara]

On 4/24/2022 at 7:57 PM, metak88 said:

Anyway, to cut this story short, MS is actually making shitloads of money with Ubuntu, way more than Ubuntu gets, and they're not funding anything useful to destop users with Ubuntu. Not a competition at all.

 

what is a good alternative to microsoft?

[metak88]

1 hour ago, Macnamara said:

what is a good alternative to microsoft?

 

Don't worry about it too much. If the tools you need run best on windows os then just use windows. If you have a more powerful system you can do what @k_j_evans has done and virtualize windows. Or have two hard drives, one for linux and the other for windows and you select at boot time which drive to boot from. (this approach avoids partition tinkering) What is a good alternative to MS depends on your needs and tools/software you're using. If MS Office or Adobe products are very important to you then it's best to run them on windows.

Nothing wrong with ubuntu as you mentioned above and if you don't need newest libraries and such then stick with LTS (long term support) releases.

[Mikhail Liebestein]

On 4/24/2022 at 12:22 AM, Macnamara said:

why not ditch microsoft altogether and use ubuntu?

 

Agee 100%

[k_j_evans]

On 4/24/2022 at 5:42 PM, Grumpy Owl said:

 

I'm in a similar boat, as there are some programs that I use for work - which I need to use when I'm working from home - that either only run in Windows, or only work properly in Windows.

 

There are two Linux applications that I know of, Wine and PlayOnLinux, that purport to allow Windows-only software (including games) to run in a Linux environment, by providing a Windows 'compatibility layer'. I have tried these before in the past, with some limited success, but the applications and games I tried weren't as 'stable' as using them in an actual Windows environment.

 

I do actually have Windows 11 on my PC here, and to be honest I don't have any complaints really, the slightly modified user interface didn't take long to get used to, and I quite like it now. Besides stuff like Microsoft 365 (previously Office 365) which I need for work, I tend to avoid the Windows Store 'apps' and use the more traditional softwares, such as Firefox etc.

A few years ago, I used to champion Ubuntu, and during my 'alternative' Linux-embracing period it was my Linux distro of choice.

 

Ubuntu was created by a company/foundation called Canonical, and I started to get sceptical about how such a company/organisation could be providing high-quality open-source software 'for free' with a large number of developers and support staff. I remember reading something somewhere a while back about how well funded Canonical was, and one of the funders was... Microsoft!

 

Linux powers most web-hosting servers on the internet, and Ubuntu is rapidly overtaking other 'enterprise-level' distributions such as Red Hat, Fedora and CentOS. I just found it strange that Microsoft - with its own range of commercial Windows desktop and server operating systems - would be supporting and funding development of 'open-source' alternatives.

Well, I'm old enough to remember the Microsoft version of Unix - called Xenix - which we used to use as a multi user platform for our financial services software. It was actually quite decent. You had to write your own printer drivers in order to get a GBP sign, but you had to do that on SCO Unix, too. Neither of those was free.

Edited May 20, 2022 by k_j_evans

[Macnamara]

On 4/26/2022 at 9:32 PM, metak88 said:

 

Don't worry about it too much. If the tools you need run best on windows os then just use windows.

 

i'm not talking about making a decision based on what works best for you

 

i'm talking about making strategic changes in your life even if it means making sacrifices

 

i'm talking about seeing microsoft as evil and something to be boycotted

[Mikhail Liebestein]

22 hours ago, k_j_evans said:

Well, I'm old enough to remember the Microsoft version of Unix - called Xenix - which we used to use as a multi user platform for our financial services software. It was actually quite decent. You had to write your own printer drivers in order to get a GBP sign, but you had to do that on SCO Unix, too. Neither of those was free.

 

 

Ah look up SCO and IBM, I remember that legal dispute well. SCO sending litigious letters to all and sundry. PS - I always thought Aix was a place in France.

 

BTW, life would still better for the majority if computers/tablets/phones/watches hadn't been turned into attention seeking devices.

If my wife had to go in over SSH and do keychain management the old fashioned way, life would be so much simpler.

[Mikhail Liebestein]

1 hour ago, Macnamara said:

 

i'm not talking about making a decision based on what works best for you

 

i'm talking about making strategic changes in your life even if it means making sacrifices

 

i'm talking about seeing microsoft as evil and something to be boycotted

 

 

100%. if you can use command line encryption tools and avoid the app stores life is better.  I don't have so much of an issue with https: , but ensure you are also using an encrypted DNS service or at lease a VPN you can rely on.

[k_j_evans]

1 hour ago, Mikhail Liebestein said:

 

 

Ah look up SCO and IBM, I remember that legal dispute well. SCO sending litigious letters to all and sundry. PS - I always thought Aix was a place in France.

 

BTW, life would still better for the majority if computers/tablets/phones/watches hadn't been turned into attention seeking devices.

If my wife had to go in over SSH and do keychain management the old fashioned way, life would be so much simpler.

Ah, we gave up on IBM and went with ICL (as Fujitsu were then) so used ICL NRX not AIX (but that's a few years on from my Xenix days) - instead of having nice easy to understand IP addresses we had give terminals addresses in binary using dip switches, and twiddles to printers drivers were done in octal - not even hex! The height of sophistication was amber text instead of green.