Useless Windows 10 Features
howtogeek.com
howtogeek.com
They changed how default programs are set in Windows 10 so that malware can't change default file associations by itself anymore. That required moving away from using the Win32 API for that, and that is kind of the whole purpose of UWP-style apps and The New Settings pages within Windows 10.
MOST of Windows 10 has been thought out.
Because how many fucking times is it going to ask me "ARE YOU SURE YOU DONT WANT TO TRY EDGE?" "EDGE IS SAFEST" "EDGE IS MADE FOR WINDOWS 10, ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO SWITCH?" You literally have to click no 3 times just to get your default to something else.
None of the other "default apps" do the same thing. And still nothing stopping the file extensions from getting remapped. So that's kinda not thought out.
I really think, even if this isn't happening at scale, that this would be a great way to pwn even some of the biggest firms.
ChrEdge Beta can hide the news feed if you choose Focused view, but currently all they do is put it after the page fold, so you see it if you merely scroll down. I've sent a Feedback request saying that's something that might keep me using Firefox as my default, and supposedly that's a feature they're working on.
I shouldn't have to turn off whatever spam they build into a paid for product. It should also be in the browser settings, not a confusingly placed and easy to miss hieroglyph. For me I don't even get those options, it's just a toggle to turn the news feed on or off, off leaves you with just a search bar, and bing is the only option builtin.
On the same computer, on the default start page ("Top Sites and suggested content"), the hieroglyph cog referenced above is conveniently place at the top right, and even has a label, too. It's called "Hide Feed".
edit: I’m agreeing with you guys here. I’d spend more on an “ad-free” Windows license if I had a choice, but that doesn’t exist unless you’re a volume license customer (LTSC) I wish they’d find some way to let people avoid the ads, like having them in Home and disabling them in Pro, as most laptops (even my Dell XPS) ship with Home. (They did try “Windows 8.1 with Bing” once. I guess it didn’t work out?)
Another thing to consider is volume licenses weren’t able to take up the offer - the company had to pay for their Windows 10 upgrade. Enterprise licensing is the Microsoft money maker.
So to be fair to Microsoft, at least some, if not all of the blame must go to web developers.
I wish they would just kill it already...
1 second is still too much time, and 30 seconds is indicative of either an exaggeration or a somewhat severe problem.
http://www.classicshell.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8147
... which is a huge shame, as that single app alone made Windows 10 a significantly less frustrating experience.
I was venting to a friend. He told me he'd deactivated autoupdates some years ago. The foresight, i'm envious. But it's too late now and I think I can never have that.
I also remember some time there was an anti trust proceeding against Microsoft for shipping IE with windows as default. WTF happened to that and how is all this not a 1000x worse.
I definitely don't >want< to put up with this.
They don't. [0] Ordinary people install Chrome, and FOSS-aware people install Firefox or one of its variants. Not many use IE/Edge.
I second the parent comment to yours: it's a pity Microsoft vandalise solid technology. Perhaps something could've become of Edge, had they done otherwise.
There's a certain irony in the way we avoid Edge to avoid its insufferable ads, given that they only make ad money if we decide to use it.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Su...
It's not just "junk news" though. People can and have been caught out by things like Microsoft tech support scams, fake virus alarms and prominently displayed on the Microsoft news feed. I've reported to Microsoft before direct links to ransomware advertised on their news feed.
Crazy.
It's certainly not exactly a "premium" look.
By the way, it should be easy enough to change the home page with a group policy or something if anybody actually cared about that. Companies usually change the homepage of all desktops to the intranet homepage.
I have one windows 7 machine for playing WoW and it will stay on 7 until I can get the LTSB release of Windows 10 and the ability to turn off 100% of the telemetry, for real. If Blizzard would build an unsupported 64 bit ELF binary for WoW, then I would not even have windows. I'm not using wine.
Instructions on how to activate your installation of LTSC here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19420337
In a word: no. KMSpico is kind of perfect. The process happens entirely locally, and is quite technically "clean".
If you want to skip straight to the piracy, here's an open source package for you, complete with keys, hosted ironically on Microsoft servers, that uses vlmcsd: https://github.com/ekistece/vlmcsd-autokms
It's a pretty clever hack. It runs the KMS emulator locally and fakes the network connection with a TAP device from OpenVPN. Works perfectly.
I tried using wine or even using Steam directly on Linux, but playing any game with 30-40% less performance is ridiculous.
If you really like games, Linux is unusable for anything big.
I've had to dual boot Windows for the last 10 years just to play a game without stuttering, lag, huge FPS drops, etc.
Nothing would make me happier than being able to only use Linux, but until the community takes gaming seriously, people are forced to use Windows.
I'd argue if it was the issue, even Windows wouldn't let me play any of these games with reasonable performance.
When playing CS:GO (a relatively old game) I have stuttering, drastic FPS drops and more :(
It's a shame, because it literally can't be anything but the software. It's the same hardware with different OSes. Might even be windows specific optimizations on the games part, but in the end it doesn't matter.
The bottom line unfortunately is: it's significantly worse.
The complexity of setting this up would be a good point to address. Linux Mint for example has a tool to do this for you. This is logically a workaround for nvidia actually contributing an open source driver that doesn't suck.
There is a supposedly much better supported open source driver for new AMD hardware as well. Another thing the community is doing.
If the problem is with the closed source driver there isn't much the community can do. It's very hard to reverse engineer a complex device like a gpu. If the problem isn't games in general but that particular game there again isn't much the community can do.
Personally, I don't have that kind of problem, and I suspect I'm not alone. Of the games I play that don't have Linux ports, they run well enough under wine, even on my (recent) laptop with Intel graphics. But I'm a pretty casual gamer, and honestly find it rare that I just must play the type of games that require a high-end Windows rig.
Nobody would call that theft.
I cobbled together a post last year on acquiring it:
https://tinyapps.org/blog/201811300700_windows_10_ltsc.html
However, it does require a willingness to enter into a VL agreement with Microsoft.
According to people who have purchased from there, they're VL keys that can be used many times (e.g. 2500 times), so they just sell the same key over and over to multiple people:
> ...sellers on eBay are probably people that work for companies that get GVLK and MAK Product Keys from MSDN/Microsoft and then just sell 'em off because the companies they work for more than likely would never even notice? I mean, with MAK Product Keys having from 2500 to 5000 activations per key, at least if they still work the same way they did in Vista/7 days, most companies that pay for volume licensing never ever actually use anywhere near that many. [0]
> after about 3 hours I got a mail with a key and a link to download "LTSCX64.2019.ENU.JAN2019.iso" from googledrive. I did not download the ISO, so I cannot comment on that, but I typed the key into VAMT and its description is "Win 10 RTM EnterpriseS Volume:MAK" and the key had 50 activations left. I tried it on one of my LTSC 2019 installations and it worked fine. I assume that the remaining activation count will decrease over time, even when I do not use the key on my other installations, as I suspect that the seller sells the same key to more than one buyer.. [0]
> so, after about a week all 50 activations of the key I got are gone. since I only used 8 activations, one can be sure that the key was sold to multiple buyers. business as usual on ebay.. [0]
It's probably against some contract somewhere, but IANAL.
[0] https://forums.mydigitallife.net/threads/windows-10-enterpri...
They are also participating in a commercial piracy endeavor that the company who was issued the key AND Microsoft have an interest in shutting down. Ms because such endeavors attract customers who could otherwise trivially be converted into buyers. Companies because they could get audited and fined.
This is as illegal and higher risk than torrent sites.
Even if you can resell a key as part of selling a copy of windows you paid for you can't sell your employers property, can't sell part of a contract, can't sell more than you actually paid for.
If the company purchased the right to have n machines at their company run windows and each key can be activated n * x times nobody sold you the right to sell n * x copies of windows to everyone on the internet.
Like it or not those agreements aren't sales and the keys aren't a physical item you have purchased they are just a technical measure to constrain users from sharing a single ISO file to their million closest friends.
Erm, no - that's not how Microsoft's volume licensing works. Volume keys are issued to enterprises that buy them, and only that organisation is licensed to use them.
Unscrupulous employees have been known to sell the keys.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/p/windows-10-pro-for-worksta...
I can tolerate some bloatware (like games), but what about the telemetry? Are you OK with that or did you find a way to disable all telemetry?
That's just fixing the symptoms rather than the cause.
The real solution is for Microsoft to treat its customers with a bit more respect.
This company (like most other companies) operates out of greed, and that doesn't go well with respect. They're just trying to milk as much as they can from you.
Once you're a huge corporation with tons of stakeholders, it seems inevitable that you will compromise customers in favor of profits sooner or later.
But if you follow the logical path from capitalism, it is most definitely inevitable. There is no way to maximize profits without hurting the users.
If one company does the right thing, another will take it's place because it will generate more profit.
Can you imagine a CEO constantly telling it's shareholders that they will not increase profits because they want to "treat customers more fairly"? He'd be sacked in the first opportunity.
Microsoft has embraced the modern development model and its culture as well. In other words, customers are cattle.
WoW classic also works perfectly, if that's your thing.
Look at the software your company makes and I bet you can quickly find an example of this. It’s everywhere and it’s shameful.
See recent versions of Gnome and KDE Plasma
Competition can only work for things that are componentised and un-bundled. Since both profitability and security work against this, we end up with competing monoliths where you have to take the entire bundle of features and anti-features.
Okay now you're exaggerating... oh wait, that's literally the Bixby button on my phone.
Most annoying is that there are a large number of little bits of functionality that phone home or send information out into the ether: Windows Defender and its submitting of samples, searching via the Windows button, Task Scheduled telemetry items, a plethora of Control Panel privacy settings, etc. etc. etc.
Also annoying on Windows 10 Pro is that the same windows builds have slightly different functionality --- even if the machines have the exact same hardware.
For example, the Search History and Permissions is sometimes named Change the permissions and history of search, even for the same Windows 10 build. It's bizarre.
Also, don't get me started on the intellisense typing when the windows menu is open. (Really Windows, when I press the Start button and then type in Update, you search the web and show me Wikipedia information? And it takes like 5 seconds?)
Don't forget the lame This PC icon...
Sorry, this turned into a cathartic listing of Win 10 grievances. :)
I don't remember seeing web results in my start menu, is that a Cortana thing?
I suspect that there are also regional differences, more crap being pushed to US consumers
My guess is that decision making in large companies is so slow, so bureaucratic, that everyone has given up on shipping anything else than a mediocre product, even if people individually would design it very differently if they could.
Or maybe they're trying to kill the Control Panel all together and switch everyone to the new Settings app, but are aware that doing so immediately would lead to a lot of complaints? So they have both, while slowly nudging you towards using the Settings app so you wouldn't be too angry when you wake up one day in the future and find the Control Panel completely gone.
No, every installation of Windows 10 Pro I've seen had a start menu that was mostly ads (links to Candy Crush, Spotify, Office etc.) - I've also had the OS nag me about giving Edge a second chance.
This is in Germany, in case the region matters, and I always deny all spyware as far as possible using the GUI.
Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers | Remove-AppxPackage
Removes all the junk in the Start menu in one command.
get-appxpackage -allusers | fl name
and curate the list first and pipe that through remove-appxpackage. Quite a few appx thingies refused to uninstall due to being important! On the other hand so far this VM is working fine and by following a few of the other suggestions from howtogeek eg remove Bing from your start menu, it seems almost usable.
I would not do what he suggests as that will remove every app.
To uninstall 3D Builder:
get-appxpackage *3dbuilder* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Alarms & Clock:
get-appxpackage *alarms* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall App Connector:
get-appxpackage *appconnector* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall App Installer:
get-appxpackage *appinstaller* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Calendar and Mail apps together:
get-appxpackage *communicationsapps* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Calculator:
get-appxpackage *calculator* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Camera:
get-appxpackage *camera* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Feedback Hub:
get-appxpackage *feedback* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Get Office:
get-appxpackage *officehub* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Get Started or Tips:
get-appxpackage *getstarted* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Get Skype:
get-appxpackage *skypeapp* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Groove Music:
get-appxpackage *zunemusic* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Groove Music and Movies & TV apps together:
get-appxpackage *zune* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Maps:
get-appxpackage *maps* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Messaging and Skype Video apps together:
get-appxpackage *messaging* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Microsoft Solitaire Collection:
get-appxpackage *solitaire* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Microsoft Wallet:
get-appxpackage *wallet* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Microsoft Wi-Fi:
get-appxpackage *connectivitystore* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Money:
get-appxpackage *bingfinance* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Money, News, Sports and Weather apps together:
get-appxpackage *bing* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Movies & TV:
get-appxpackage *zunevideo* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall News:
get-appxpackage *bingnews* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall OneNote:
get-appxpackage *onenote* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Paid Wi-Fi & Cellular:
get-appxpackage *oneconnect* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Paint 3D:
get-appxpackage *mspaint* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall People:
get-appxpackage *people* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Phone:
get-appxpackage *commsphone* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Phone Companion:
get-appxpackage *windowsphone* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Phone and Phone Companion apps together:
get-appxpackage *phone* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Photos:
get-appxpackage *photos* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Sports:
get-appxpackage *bingsports* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Sticky Notes:
get-appxpackage *sticky* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Sway:
get-appxpackage *sway* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall View 3D:
get-appxpackage *3d* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Voice Recorder:
get-appxpackage *soundrecorder* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Weather:
get-appxpackage *bingweather* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Windows Holographic:
get-appxpackage *holographic* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Windows Store: (Be very careful!)
get-appxpackage *windowsstore* | remove-appxpackage
To uninstall Xbox:
get-appxpackage *xbox* | remove-appxpackagehttps://www.tenforums.com/software-apps/8930-windows-photo-v...
I've been running three systems with all APPX junk removed since Windows 10 was first released. Not a single problem on any of them.
I am fumbling in windows 10. I have lost so much muscle memory due to this upgrade. While i know i’ll build it back I’m frustrated that I have to relearn things I was doing with my eyes closed.
All of the installs were made on OEM machines (HP, Lenovo) that already came with a Pro license or upgrade option. This was done in a home environment so no AD/enterprise options, and never logging on with MS account. So I wonder if there's the possibility that specific OEMs, models, license keys get the treatment while others do not. I'm not sure if the behavior was tied to particular machines or not since I didn't follow the scientific method while doing installations (will do in the future).
I wonder if Microsoft engages in some kind of personification of OS settings...
> MS sees no practical reason to keep those games free.
It's a removed feature that essentially all users expect to be present. Charging for something like that is a good way to make unhappy customers.
I doubt they'll get more from the game sales than they lost in bad PR. But maybe I'm wrong, I don't do marketing.
I don't mean to sound snobby but I have the feeling that people who are emotionally invested in playing solitaire on a PC are the ones who are least likely to uninstall windows on favour of Linux or equivalent
I do always turn off every possible telemetry setting.
I've never ever seen them at my work too - we use pro version of windows10 for most PCs.
Maybe it works for other people to continually futz around with the registry, changing values they don't really know what they are good for. But I don't want to feel like I have to fight the OS every time, just to do they same things I get hassle free from other OSes.
That's fine, take them out of the OS. I'm not sure an OS should come preinstalled with games anyway.
But don't remove the games and then show me ads for them.
As a developer I would settle for accurate and comprehensive documentation.
You can quickly access your user folder by going to the address bar and starting to type your user’s display name.
Most Windows users don't really have much clue about the filesystem like everyone here does.
When I open a command prompt (yes, I'm not the average user), I'm in my home directory, and if I create any files or folders, they'll be there by default. To access those files/folders, I used to go through the root of the filesystem (Users -> <username>), but I eventually just made a link in the file explorer to my home directory. Why doesn't that link at least exist by default? I've used enough GUI tools that default to that directory (i.e. WinSCP IIRC) that getting to it should be easy.
I think the reason that "most Windows users don't have a clue" is because Microsoft wants it that way for some reason. People were able to figure out DOS, yet these days giving them a link to their home directory is "too complicated"?
Do you feel the same about cars? Are we dumbing things too much down by making driving as simple as pressing a pedal and moving a steering wheel?
I still hate developing GUI apps on Web technology. Most of the stuff I program would best be used on a CLI. It would be simpler to program and would provide much more productivity benefits to an experienced user. However, it's not really an option, when most users don't even know how to make a bookmark or have little notion of what files are, much less how to use a terminal.
I call those sorts of devs "bad developers".
It's not what we want, it's an appreciation for reality. You can want all kinds of things, like people to read documentation, not install malware toolbars, not click reply-all, not answer "I don't know" to product questions on Amazon, use their turn signals, I could go on for hours if not days.
It's complicated to you (and me, and probably literally every single reader of HN) because we understand that it's an indirection and the reality is hidden. We are accustomed to that reality and virtual folders without a "physical" root are, to us, an obfuscation.
But step into the shoes of someone who doesn't understand what a file even is. Someone that would be more at home on a tablet, without a filesystem at all. Home folder? What's that? For that user, just having a Documents folder is great. They don't need to know, nor do they care, where it is.
You've apparently never had to support someone whose desktop is clogged with all their files. They know a file by its location on the desktop, not by its name. If it moves for whatever reason, they are screwed. It is for these people, who are surely now the majority of users, that removing the link from "Documents" to some actual location in the filesystem, is a win. To those of us who know better, it took all of 5s to figure it out the first time you encountered it.
Because we'd complain ourselves if using a hammer required knowledge about metallurgy.
I just don't use the folders at all, and create my own directories off of the root, instead. It's much more convenient and has never caused me a problem.
In macOS, the Music folder is literally ~/Music, and the Downloads folder is literally ~/Downloads. While your home folder isn't listed in Finder's sidebar by default, it can be enabled very easily in Finder's preferences.
My dad rang me once said that when playing solitaire it kept playing ads. I said he can buy it so the ads go away or find another app that doesn’t have ads. He’s like “ah what ever I’ll watch the ads”. He’s happy and content. Just wants solitaire.
Would he not be happier without the ads, then?
I mean, if I gave you a script that would patch up Solitaire executable to remove any and all ads and telemetry with a single click, wouldn't your dad want it if you offered?
It is as content as they'll get unless they spend $$ to remove the ads. Clearly it isn't worth the upgrade so they must be okay with their decision.
Hell if push came to shove you could probably get GNOME's solitaire running which at least has the advantage of supporting something like 100 different solitaire games.
Lastly I was curious how much the Microsoft solitaire costs and OMG. They want you to pay an ongoing subscription for it. Wow.
Seriously, though, I don't think you can avoid a lot of complexity if you build a product such as VS.
It's not so much as a hidden agenda as sacrificing their primary product to be advertising for a different product and concept that consumers soundly rejected, and Microsoft's been trying to clean up the mess ever since. Ads and telemetry were just things that their new features supported, but weren't the driving force behind those features.
Wind the clock back to 2011. Desktop and laptop PC sales are declining and tablets are the new consumer hit. People are buying iPads (and to a lesser extent Android tablets) at an alarming rate, and this might be the end of a reliable revenue stream for Microsoft if people are replacing their old desktops and laptops with said iPads.
So, Microsoft comes up with the vision that their products will do more than an iPad can. Instead of having a standalone tablet as the home's primary computer, you'll buy a Microsoft tablet- which will not only be Just As Good as the iPad, but it'll also function as your main computer when you need it to. They even went so far as to create their own brand of tablet, but the extra hardware that needed to be provided for Windows to run smoothly (and the keyboard) meant that it would cost twice as much as the iPad (there was a neutered version that was comparable, but had no applications and outside of Office wasn't a suitable desktop replacement).
But there's another problem. Windows isn't a good tablet OS- the interface has been designed for a mouse and keyboard. So they come up with Metro and the brand new WinRT API with which to create applications, and spend a lot of time getting it ready.
Of course, since the entire vision of the future is "one Windows for everything", it made perfect sense for any system running this new version of Windows to use Metro. After all, they had just spent millions of dollars developing it and didn't want it to turn into another dead product.
So they made the fateful decision to deprecate the (already very much existing) desktop UI support in favor of Metro. It didn't matter that the interface was wholly unacceptable for desktop use, though it was Good Enough for the majority of the userbase- because people would be using Windows tablets and touchscreens in the near future anyway, in addition to their new Windows Phones (which would get quick application support because WinRT was a cross-platform solution).
That didn't turn out so well (Windows Phone is no more, UWP won't see further support as far as exclusive features go, and the only noteworthy Windows convertible tablet remains the Surface Pro) but it took a few years for that to become apparent- cue Windows 8.1 and later Windows 10 (the return of the Start Menu being a token gesture, since it lacked most of the functionality of the old Menu out of the box). There have been no major UI redesigns since, and everyone there's probably just trying to pick up the pieces until the next version arrives, if it indeed ever does.
Tribe A thinks Windows should appeal to people who use and love open source software. Tribe B thinks Windows’ ubiquity makes it a great platform to run ads on. So instead of what most companies would do, which would be to figure out how these goals line up against a broader strategic vision of what Windows should be, at Microsoft they just let both tribes do their thing simultaneously until the leader of one tribe rises up high enough in the org chart to raze the other tribe’s villages and scatter its people to the four winds via a reorg.
This of course results in a deeply schizophrenic product, but that only matters to customers, and Microsoft gave up customers as a false god long ago. Now the only god that matters in Redmond is the God of Battle, and every PM sees his peers as obstacles that need to be cleared away for him to meet his destiny in Valhalla.
About the camps and their goals, the open source one is to some extent present, obviously, but the ad one I don't really see because I run Pro. There is a third camp that unquestionably won, though:
The "UX/UI designer" camp. I assume all the garbage running in the background behind obscure registry toggles (because real configurability is bad for UX) that's meant to make it easier for grandmas and end up making it worse for everyone else, like your computer isn't really fully yours (neither the resources of it or the freedom to decide to not run these daemons) comes from misguided UX designers who think they know better than you how a computer should be used and that they can earmark a fifth of your CPU at any time to do whatever they want.
The UI designers also won. Everything is a soulless black or white with one contrasting color. They managed to make this "There are two places you can modify settings with two disparate styles" because somehow that's better than one older looking but consistent place.
The whole thing feels like a beta version. In fact, even Whistler betas were more polished than this.
OS cannot afford to break things, which apparently is MS modus operandi now.
It takes about 5 minutes of playing in settings to hit broken functionality. Bonus points if the breakage is forced by unchangeable domain policy in company.
I mean, it's obvious when I write it like that, but I think we have this platonic ideal of a company (or a government, or the military) somehow being this omniscient creature when instead it is filled with flawed humans who are seeing the world through various soda straws pointed in different directions.
There's also the issue with power users generally turning off as much telemetry as possible. To Microsoft we're much less visible than the average person who leaves everything on the default setting.
I upgradet one Notebook at home to from Win7 to Win10. Besides of other things I couldn't believe the added Candy Crash in my Start Menu. In a home edition maybe .. but on Win Pro, serious?
I played back on the Win7 image pretty quick.
I'm anyway mostly Linux, but I don't think I'll ever move any machine to Win10.
If your viewpoint is that of a power user who thinks everyone else should be one too, then it'd be fair to say they're orthogonal.
If your viewpoint is that of a product manager trying to give the most people the best experience you can, they're not orthogonal at all. You're trading a bit of scorn from a very small percentage of users for a larger number of very different users keeping their computers secure. Reducing the number of compromised windows installations is not silly at all.
Are you surprised? The file search on Windows XP Professional used an animated cartoon dog. This is just what Microsoft does.
As Steve Jobs once said, "The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste."
What MS should do is do a Google search (or a Bing search in their case) and filter out just the app results. Then find the download link, and get you that.
And that way the store becomes a storefront for not just "store" apps, but also non store apps, and therefore a comprehensive directory.
MS can still provide certain benefits to devs who store-ify their apps, such as updates, easy payments, slightly better placement, etc.
But the store needs to be a comprehensive directory for all apps.
- Firefox - office suite (Libre Office for me, Office for my wife) - games (Steam) - backup software - video chat - image/video editing
Some of these could work just fine with WinRt, others don't. If most of my frequently used programs aren't available through a store, I'll complain about the store. If most are and a couple aren't, I'll complain about those apps.
Most apps people want don't currently use WinRT (AFAIK), and many apps probably will never use it (heavy software like games, maya/blender, photoshop/gimp, etc). It's really telling that Microsoft's motivations are when they prioritize the least used platform (and the most beneficial to Microsoft) in a new app store.
Maybe. But personally, if the store was successful then it would make Windows even more painful than it is now, because inevitably applications would just release to the store and not supply standalone installers. And I really, really want standalone installers.
Windows has similar tooling for the OS, but it doesn't have an answer for everything else other than a ton of hand-rolled scripts. If the store doesn't make that easier, the enterprise won't use it. This seems like a huge missed opportunity. It should be trivial for an enterprise to curate the store like they can on Linux.
Also, nobody wants to give Microsoft a cut of the software price if they can help it.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/30/18645609/microsofts-unive...
I think the Windows Store is incredibly important. Worked as a technician for a while, and the amount of garbage people installed from random sites is mind-boggling. Or programs that hadn't been updated in five years. Non-tech people need a safe source for installing software (that also automatically updates it) and as long as the store wasn't providing a significant amount of useful software (all of which is Win32), it wasn't ever a viable solution. It might be soon.
Like if I want a desktop shortcut to Notepad in W7 I open the Start menu, begin typing Notepad, and when it shows up in the search results I drag the icon onto the desktop or right click on it and hit "send to desktop". Neither of those work in Windows 10. Clicking and dragging does nothing, and right clicking doesn't let you make a desktop shortcut either. You have to add it to the Start menu, then drag it to to the desktop, then delete it off the Start menu.
It's still hard to believe that after paying a few hundreds of dollars for a new OS you will be treated with advertisements, as if it were freeware.. I'll never buy that shit.
I haven't checked, but are the ads in the enterprise versions? Otherwise, I'd guess that the vast majority of home consumers have an OEM key that came with their laptop or PC (or upgraded from Win7), and they didn't pay hundreds of dollars for. While the price of Win10 is included in some way in the price of the device, it wouldn't be nearly as much. Also, from what I remember, 1903 has gotten rid of most of the ads on a fresh installation, so it seems to be improving.
edit: Actually, I didn't realize there were actual ad notifications at all in Win10. Never seen them before. Maybe region/setting dependent? I only meant the games and other third party stuff that show up in the start menu.
As a freelancer, however, I cannot get the enterprise version of Windows 10 unless I buy at least n instances of it. I'd rather use that money to buy a real business laptop like a Mac Book Pro. No ads. No work ruining updates. Professionally maintainable without having a Windows Server sitting next to it. Backups that work. Real UNIX underneath.
I also was very happy with a Thinkpad plus Ubuntu LTS. Professionally maintainable, UNIX like underneath, smooth updates. I set up backups myself, but at least I had full control over it.
I had to settle on the Mac because of the availability of MS Office. I got tired of having to run that using a VM inside which I, yet again, had to maintain a Windows.
I tried Windows 10 for a while. At first I was pleasantly surprised, but then all the problems piled up. Fighting shitty drivers just to get sound working properly, constant updates, ads popping up again and again in the start menu and even on the lock screen, fighting to get at least a semblance of a usable command line.
They do pay for it, as you acknowledge in your next sentence. Most OEMs explicitly include the price of Windows in their device pricing (which is made clear if the product is customizable to the point of choosing Linux or no OS - that pretty much always drops the price).
My point being that the price is far lower than what you'd pay in a store. Still no excuse for all the ads and tracking, but if you're going to impale Microsoft, at least be honest about what the context is. Their behaviour is abhorrent enough that you don't need to make shit up.
Desktop OS != Mobile OS
Desktop OS != some f website
Few days ago I did `npm install` on a project and saw literal ads spamming my console, asking to maybe support some library's author on Patreon and notifying me (a dozen times) that said author "is looking for a good job".
I used to pay for Windows (have never pirated), but since I use Linux mostly full-time, I don't see why I should if they're going to give me the option to not pay and still get updates. I got a license for my wife and my laptop has one, but I just don't bother for my desktop partition and VMs.
Updates keep failing on my machine, which means it just tried again the next day and forces a restart, closing everything I have. Fails day after day after day. I'm not sure why, I frankly don't care. Just ridiculous how impossible it is to disable.
There are a few scripts around which will clear all the cache files and allow you to attempt the update from scratch.
By any chance did you run some script or random "de-bloat" tool someone linked? Half of those break Windows Update and cause it to keep failing (either via setting permissions, host file changes, or registry alterations).
1) Geek Uninstaller [0] 2) O&O Shutup10 [1]
Both are free. Maybe there's better options now, but... They helped tremendously a short time ago.
[0] https://geekuninstaller.com/ [1] https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10
Any further suggestion? I will definitely try your recommended programs.
All they do is check email, watch Netflix, and do some word documents sometimes. I had to initially show them where to find LibreOffice but other than that, they've been happy since.
Ubuntu has reached that soft spot where its perfect for anyone who is in need of a simple, easy to use computer that does not do work using some specialized software.
Huh?
[0] https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-t-ser...
On the other hand, they ended up learning some Python and shell scripting as a result, and will probably switch to Arch Linux when the computer is eventually replaced (soon). So while your S.O. might handle Linux just fine, you also run the risk of turning them into an OS nerd. ;-)
It doesn’t hurt to scan with Trend Micro’s Housecall scanner.
[0] https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/uninstall-restore-windows...
1. Suggestions to use other paid microsoft products like onedrive and office 365. Apple does something similar with icloud, apple music, but microsoft is more annoying about it because they'll pop up those suggestions all over the place whereas apple will typically put this in more logical places. Overall this makes sense though, and sometimes I've used this to quickly get to one of these services (because I use all of them anyway).
2. Promoted apps from the windows store that they push in the start menu. I find this quite annoying, and I'm not aware of another OS that does it. I'm also doubtful it actually makes them that much money. It probably harms their bottom line more than it helps, which is why nobody else is doing it.
Every Windows encounter feels dreadful in comparison. It can't get the simplest tasks right.
It's called qbittorrent.
It gets me every time I want to open the control panel or a setting page - it's just... awful!
And why does it still search the web when I've disabled Cortana?! If I want to search the web, I'll use a browser!
It really doesn't seem like it would be difficult to fix - I just can't understand how it's still so bad.
It replaces native Start menu with Win7/8 lookalike that's highly customizable and much faster. Search works better, too.
"Hi, I'm Cortana. A little sign in here, touch of wifi there..."
Not now. Not ever.
https://www.reddit.com/r/iiiiiiitttttttttttt/comments/a36m6j...
What I mean is, in Arch or Manjaro, how often are there already packages available for things that people normally want to do, versus needing to compile something manually or work around broken dependencies?
This extends to some closed source projects other distros don't include on principle, like Steam [1].
Additionally, the AUR is basically a wrapper around "manually compiling" where users can submit scripts to do it for you. If you install a helper like `yay`, it's as seamless as installing from the official repo and extends coverage to things like the OpenTTD modpack I play [2] and its latest git commit [3]. That said, the AUR is still ultimately running user provided scripts so do make sure to take the offer to read the install script beforehand, most are maybe 5-10 lines.
[1]: https://www.archlinux.org/packages/multilib/x86_64/steam/
Switched this year to Bodhi Linux, wont look back. It is based on Ubuntu.
Not really. It uses barely more memory than Xfce.
Depending on your needs, Fedora is also quite usable. It leans more in the FOSS direction, and while it is fairly bleeding edge with regards to Linux specific tooling, it is somewhat more hesitant to include non-free software, which may include device drivers and firmware. Last I checked, Ubuntu still had a higher degree of Just Works(tm) than Fedora for this reason. Fedora is very similar to RedHat and CentOS, so if you're looking for a business-focused distribution, this is a strong contender. Might not be as useful as a casual desktop install though.
Linux Mint is also wildly popular. It's Ubuntu-based, but it leans much less in the pure-FOSS direction, and is willing to include more grey area tools like video codecs and non-free device drivers. It also uses the Cinnamon desktop environment, which may feel a bit more familiar if you're coming from Windows. Some of my colleagues swear by it, so I think it's worth checking out.
Of course, take this with a grain of salt. I run Arch Linux and am perfectly happy to tinker around with the deepest guts of my system when needed. I wouldn't actually recommend that to a new user though, while I enjoy the absolute freedom to dive that deep, it can occasionally be quite frustrating.
I do use Debian (sometimes) and Ubuntu on my VPSs and on my Virtual Box in Windows.
I was just asking because its easy to get out of touch.
+1 to Cinnamon - AFAICT it's the best way to preserve a classic desktop-style desktop, rather than having a desktop which is trying to be a giant mobile phone.
(Tangent: though likeable in many ways, Fedora was still too much fart-arsing about for me & after a few months I went back to Windows. I don't like it, but then the sad state 2019 has brought us to is that all desktop OSs are rubbish, so 'not liking it' is an unusable choice criterion).
I'm on Fedora since v.28 gradually upgrading packages and disto versions. I've seen no problems whatsoever.
Anyway, the upshot is that at least based on my experience (limited as I'm not a big media consumer), media playing does just work OOB with current Fedora.
Most importantly, I’ve had the least driver issues with Manjaro. (Especially with NVIDIA gpus, which I’ve had nightmares with it on Ubuntu.) It also comes with a nice GUI program in which you can change between kernel versions and GPU drivers (open source or proprietary)
It's weird to me that the author thinks of these problems as mere annoyances. To me it's utterly ridiculous to have any of these features be part of an OS.
It's like I bought a big advertisement machine.
Tried it out recently and was greeted with the usual endless automatic updates and messing up my dual boot.
What's with the "people" tab? This is the kind of half-drunk idea I've come to expect from Microsoft. When I want to talk to people on Skype, I open Skype. It might be a nice abstraction at a very high level mentally (these are apps I use to talk to "people"), but it seems pointless to have this in software.
I wish the hardware drivers weren't so restricted as for my latest laptop no driver exists for Windows 7 so had to be forced to install Win 10 nightmare.
One tip for you guys is that if you want to get rid of most bloat that comes bundled with Win 10, I found this freeware software to be pretty effective:
https://www.thewindowsclub.com/10appsmanager-windows-10?&...
So far I haven't witnessed any issues in terms of stability after removing almost all bundled crap.
The hardware drivers are there. It just takes some time to find them, and then some time to integrate into Win7 ISO so the installer doesn't fail.
I liked Win7 very much for the first couple of days. However I've reverted to Win10. Too many things are broken on Win7 in comparison: high DPI support, usability features like Win+arrow keys, no MS Edge.
One thing pisses me off to no end: When you drag a window and accidentally make a small "left-right-left" movement, everything on your screen is minimized to the tray. There is no button to restore this.
f*cking retarded features.
"Minimize all other windows except this one" is a function that is rarely used and definitely not something a small movement of the mouse should trigger.
EDIT: Ah, of course, Win+Shift+M :)
> You literally click and drag the mouse upward to get the login screen.
Yeah, you can, but hitting a space bar before typing in your password is so much easier. I think any "normal" key (as in letters, numbers, space) would work, but I'm not near a system to check.
I have to say, I am surprisingly happy with it. It has native SSH, WSL, performance is decent, and our admin no longer installs 3rd party AV software on Windows 10.
Now if only Microsoft could get their act together when it comes to updates - it has been a mess a for a long time, but I got the feeling it has gotten much worse ever since they decided to bundle all their updates into single large packages, and especially with Windows 10.
People who want a tablet experience. Surface Go is tablet first, it can be used as a laptop substitute, but only a substitute. I can imagine there are many people who would be satisfied with a Windows S only device, using only the Microsoft Store apps.
Apparently the Android versions of Office apps are nicer than the Windows Phone ones, which is kind of baffling.
Previously it would just evenly split the existing windows into equal sized ones spread across the width of the screen. It worked beautifully! If there were two windows they would neatly fit into each half of the screen, fully sized respectively.
Now it does this strange quarter-stacking of the said windows on top of each other, squeezed into ONE HALF of the screen and leaves the other HALF EMPTY (exposing the destop) !! This absolutely drives me nuts. There are Chrome extensions ("Tab resize") to cure this but its a pointless added series of steps where you individually tweak each open window to the size you want. Its bonkers.
I don't get who in the right mind would come up with this as an enhancement when the previous one worked just fine !!
Please reverse this.
I. Never. Look. At. Their. Albums.
Writing this makes me wonder if there's a way to turn it off and why I've never thought to look...
I get a workstation that has sensible defaults and gets out of my way 99.999% of the time. I get why others prefer Linux systems in development but within my ecosystem I am simply happy I don't have to configure my fan speed and install fourth party drivers to get WLAN to connect after the machine sleeps.
The only things that Windows really excels in are gaming and office. Open source office suites are simply many levels below MS Office, and no I won't use LaTex at work although writing my thesis with it was indeed amazing. The macOS office variants (by Microsoft) are also severely lacking in comparison...
But other than that if you're not tinkering with .NET stuff...
I actually don't hate Windows, I used it for decades and still switch over to it as needed. But I really love macOS. I just wish they'd fix some of their hardware lately.
Can I ask why anyone is paying for this pile of crap?
There are literally no improvements from Windows 7 vs. Windows 10, that could convince me this level of built-in telemetry, and, God forbid, built-in advertising is worth an 'upgrade'.
For God's sake, they are in the freaking start menu, and slow down several of my friends older computers who were force-upgraded.
And before you tell me what I already know, that you can 'opt out' - we should not have to opt out of advertising on an operating system we pay for, especially one that did not have advertising before.
As far as I'm concerned, for all the talk about Apple's 'walled garden,' folks are so addicted to Windows x86 and x64 apps, and so locked into that walled garden, they are now willing to accept being tracked, and to literally have a slower OS due to the baked in advertising.
The failure, and massive financial deficit, that occurred from Windows RT should be more than enough evidence of this. Without its history of apps, Windows isn't Windows.
Knowing that, Microsoft can pack whatever bullshit it wants, including, but not limited to, tracking and advertising, and we still buy.
The only inherently worse-for-the-user OS out there is Android. I will no longer use Google services, even by request. I'm literally trying to ween myself off YouTube, reporting a post on HN yesterday that was merely a YouTube link to a guy talking about how his wife left him that had somehow snuck it's way onto the front page.
I pray one year, we will have that 'year of Linux,' and Microsoft can go back to creating a quality product, instead of focusing on new ways to get information out of users.
Edit: I also pray for, and would even contribute code to, a meaningful third party mobile OS solution. I'm worried Apple will realize they are the last company to respect user privacy to even a reasonable degree, and get greedy.
However, there are so, so many issues with a new mobile OS, between devices, carriers, a bootloader compatible with said devices, licensing, and such, that at the moment, I am not seeing any of the projects in the works as feasible. To be honest - the world of commercial operating systems has never looked so grim.
Because for certain areas of programming, Visual Studio is still king and if you want to develop for Playstation/Xbox then Windows is the only choice.
And of course playing video games in general requires Windows - it's less true than it was few years ago, but there's still plenty of games which give you very poor experience on anything but Windows.
Even as a game developer, for home brew like the Sega Saturn, as well as various Unity projects, I use a Windows XP VM maybe once a month for some obscure utility.
I never play games on PC's. I buy a console, it's good for ten or more years. I still play my Saturn and Dreamcast, whose emulation leaves much still to be desired.
If I want to purchase a game, I don't have to worry about if my video card is compatible, or if I have enough RAM, or, even if my OS will run it! I just play it.
You are part of a niche developer system, that, granted, you require Windows 10 for your very, very specific case.
Similarly, I am required to use a 2017 MacBook Pro with a touch bar at work, as I am an iOS developer. I would never, on principle alone, purchase such a unit. I use a Mac at home, but I use a 2012 model I have chosen to stick with for a number of reasons. I'm running the newest MacOS because it's actually offered me reasons to upgrade.
This has nothing to do with my personal preferences, or my point.
I'm not talking about the use of Windows itself, when I say 'why would anyone pay for this crap' - I'm talking about the "upgrade".
Windows 7 still more than meets my needs and the needs of most consumers.
Windows XP still more than meets my needs and the needs of most consumers, though it has security issues that make Windows 7 a better general option.
Windows 10 has added nothing, as far as I can see, beyond leaving behind some of the UI/UX disaster of Windows 8, the result being a slightly less usable Windows 7 (especially to the average Jane or Joe) - with baked in advertising and tracking that they know Jane or Joe, who got the OS pre-installed on the Asus they bought from Best Buy, is not going to disable.
In fact, they're counting on that.
When we pay for services, we expect no advertising, especially on services that did not contain it before. Cable television is an exception to this - what we pay for in that instance is more selection.
But can you imagine if Apple Music just suddenly started shoving ads in their stream? They'd lose two million subscribers overnight.
It baffles me that people have Stockholm Syndrome enough with Windows to stick with it through such obvious distaste for the users themselves.
Since 98SE, we've got a pattern of every other Windows release simply being an unmitigated disaster -
98SE - good / ME - awful / XP - good / Vista - awful / 7 - great / 8 - awful / 10 - at least not as shit as 8
What this shows me, is that Microsoft seems to not learn from mistakes until an entire version number later.
There have only been a handful of releases in MacOS/OS X's brilliant history since OSX came about in 2001 that have been shit. Since Tiger, we've praised virtually every release - and they are still adding meaningful and impactful features like dark mode. Now it's their laughable hardware options that is the issue.
But games aren't interchangable like some other media is. If a game that I want to play is only available on Windows, then I will put up with whatever bullshit Microsoft throws at me to play that game, I won't go "oh well, I'll just play something else on the PS4 instead".
And yes, Win10 is a disaster - but you can't use certain things like the latest GamePass subscription without it, or adjust your settings for the Xbox Elite controller without Windows 10.....sticking with Windows 7 forever is not the solution(as much as I would like it to be).
I'm both a consumer and a developer, and use windows for both - it's just the right choice for what I need at the moment. If those needs change then the operating system will change as well.
IMHO the selection of games for consoles is much broader, and, overall, seem to generally have less initial issues. Furthermore, we don't get the awful DRM that causes us to go find a crack on launch day anyway, just because of the annoyance.
Microsoft's attempt to lock me into an OS I would never allow within ten feet of any of my computers, or any developer's, just means I won't use their software. No game title is worth having an awful experience with the rest of my OS, that's what dual booting is for.
Furthermore, Microsoft even offers its own console! If I want to use GamePass or an xBox controller, why am I not just using an xBox One (Pro?) - the lifespan of consoles and the length of time games will still work and be released for them, is far greater than the upgrade paths I had to suffer through with my PC growing up.
Microsoft is removing its own reason to use Windows as a gaming platform. I'd happily buy an xBox, but if I can't play a title on Windows 7, I'm just not going to purchase it.
If the developer doesn't care, and isn't willing to support it, sucks for them.
With tools like Unity and Unreal Engine, we have very, very little reason for anything but the biggest AAA games, which require seriously custom engines, which will have console versions anyway - to be Windows-exclusive.
Could you, off the top of your head, name five, significant PC-exclusive titles from the past five years that did not have a console equivalent? Not a rhetorical question, just genuinely curious. I've not heard of a single, standout Windows-exclusive title on any of the tech or gaming blogs I obsessively follow.
In fact, I've seen Microsoft make it even easier to directly port your games to xBox.
I've tried making WSL work for me, but I just find Windows gets in my way more than it actually helps. I'm a little sad that I can't use Visual Studio (the number of times I've had to hack together a CMake build to make small change is way too high), but it's not worth the pain of using Windows. How to do X on Linux is usually much easier to remember and faster than the equivalent on Windows, and I spent enough time on WSL/git bash that I just stopped bothering.
Now, if I can get a hackintosh VM going, my life will be complete.
After that? Either pure Debian KDE if I can stand to jump the gap from RPM-based to Apt-based linux, or Fedora Lxqt if not. (IMO -> if 'Linux' could just not be split down the middle between the two big families of Debian/XLUbuntu/Peppermint and RHEL/Fedora/CentOS/Manjaro we could get more grannies as it were)
I am the master of my computing fate, not Microsoft.
having been successively into Linux and macOS these last 7 years, I find the amount of junks produced by Windows staggering.
There are clones, but I find this really to be a dick move.
Have their revenues been tanking?
[1]: https://www.geekwire.com/2019/microsoft-trumpets-record-year...
Resize a window and drag it to the top will increase total height of screen.
Drag a window to the top and it maximizes.
Drag to left to dock to left side. (repeat for right side)
Drag to top left to dock to top left corner. (repeat for all corners)
Win+Arrow (Up) to full screen.
Win+Arrow (Down) to un-full screen. Down again to minimum.
Win+Shift+Arrow (left/right) to change screen.
Win+Arrow (left/right) to move between docking left/right.
On a mac you cannot even maximum a window properly, and works differently in different apps. Window management is terrible on a mac. The only window management it does right is the way it handles the virtual desktops. Cos that still sucks on Windows.
Indeed, to actually maximize a window on macOS, you have to purchase a third party app (BetterSnapTool). I think it's hilarious.
("fairly new" in this case meaning over five years but still)
Got a lot of keyboard shortcuts for moving windows around.
It goes from annoying to very frustrating when I am trying to click at the top left of the window on my 2nd screen, but someone at MS decided the mouse will get stuck on the X and close my current window instead. I have very good mouse accuracy from years of computing (and video games), so I can click very accurately and this would always catch me off guard until I slowed down my own actions to double check where the pointer is.
(Seems to be targeted for people with disabilities, but heck... if that's what it takes to disable this crap.)
Win 10 will likely have something equivalent.
That one seems to be pretty specific, and for me is very useful.
KDE has a similar thing, which can also be disabled. Only thing I haven't figured out with KDE (yet) is how to disable automatically maximising a window after dragging it from the non-primary display to the primary one. That's pretty annoying too. :/
With ad networks you cannot use the nature of the site to judge the respectability of the ad. Essentially individual sites rent a chunk of space out to the networks that auction that space to the highest bidder in real time. Even respected sites have from time to time even been used as vectors to infect visitors computers with malware. The only reason Linus Tech Tips isn't serving ads for the virtues of combining zoophilia and narcotics is there isn't much money in it.
The fact that you paid to pirate windows doesn't make your purchase any more legitimate because you paid someone who themselves never paid for it.There simply isn't a credible means for someone to have obtained the rights to sell such thousands of times over AND be able to sell it for a few bucks.
It's like when you see a crackhead selling valuables worth thousands of dollars for 50 bucks. The logical conclusion is that he broke into someone's house and stole it. Enjoy your Rolex for $50 but it's either fake or stolen.
Seems odd to see complaints of many Ads in an OS--analogous to buying a car and having advertisements show up in the instrument cluster when stopped or not being able to exit the vehicle until watching an Ad.
Haven't used Windows in recent memory (probably since these Ads appeared or I just didn't notice them).
Is it as bad as the article describes?
Gaming ads will be seen in the start menu.
Ads for Onedrive will be seen in file explorer.
If you ever start skype, don't be expected to be able to log off or even shut the app down unless you kill the process or uninstall it entirely.
With every update, it will ask you again to put tracking on, making the ads be more vigilant.
Just a few of the stuff I find incredible annoying with ads in Windows 10.
I run Windows 10 Pro (English, region: Bulgaria), so I don't know if that's the reason, but I don't have any popups (notifications or otherwise) and I have 4 static gaming tiles that are essentially ads since I never asked for these games at all and they're 3rd party products. I assume those come with some bloatware deal that Microsoft made with King.