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Comment by socalgal2 | Hacker News Reader

It's felt bloated for a while. Everytime I setup a new Mac I have to remove all of the icons from the doc. A new Dell isn't that bloated.

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This is my shining moment! I just happened to setup a new Dell. It was far more cumbersome than dealing with a new Mac.

Here's some of the stuff I had to do on my new Dell, from memory:

- Uninstall all the bloatware apps that come installed with Windows 11. They nag and beg you not to uninstall them, but after several prompts, they mostly seem uninstalled?

- Remove the trial offers from the Start menu.

- Remove the third-party stub apps from the Start menu (eg. TikTok).

- Remove the O365 stub apps.

- Remove the McAfee antivirus payware.

- Remove Dell SupportAssist from the laptop.

- Then, just reinstall Windows 11 from scratch, because of all the remaining detritus left after performing the above steps. And uninstalling SupportAssist caused some instability and weird errors upon login.

- Uninstall all the bloatware apps the come installed with Windows 11 again.

- Remove the trial offers from the Start menu.

- Remove the third-party stub apps from the Start menu (eg. TikTok).

- Remove the O365 stub apps.

Compared to on my Mac:

- Remove apps from the Dock

- Go into /Applications and uninstall about 6 Apple apps I don't use.

> Here's some of the stuff I had to do on my new Dell, from memory:

Or, you know, just format the disk and install Linux.

If it were my choice…

How is it you could reinstall Windows, but not Linux? Or is it just mandatory to run Windows, but nobody cares if you reinstall it? My wife’s Windows laptop won’t allow me to even run Logitech Connect Utility, to reconnect some devices (pair a keyboard to the mouse). It surely won’t allow the full reinstall, it’s locked entirely. Hence, I’m curious what’s up with your work (I assume) laptop.

Mandatory to run Windows for this device as it was going to a C-level person.

I haven't used Windows in years, but surely a clean install addresses some of that? I don't think I've ever used whatever default OS was preinstalled on a laptop or PC that I bought.

Or is the default Windows 11 just that full of shite?

Home edition comes with a few offers.

> Remove the third-party stub apps from the Start menu (eg. TikTok).

It comes with... TikTok?!?

> a new Dell isn’t that bloated.

At least a new Mac doesn’t try to serve you ads in the app launcher.

what about iCloud and News?

I was specifically referring to ads for third party applications in the start menu, so you’re technically correct and I should have been more specific. I’d argue that those are upsells for the OS to enhance existing apps and systems. Not my favorite, but preferable to windows telling me to install candy crush in the start menu.

A new ${computer_brand} with Linux doesn't show you any ads, doesn't add more bloat than you let it, doesn't insist on you creating any iCloudy or Microsofty accounts, doesn't try to police what software you run on the thing, doesn't try to upsell you to some ${precious_metal} plan, doesn't insist your 5 year new computer is obsolete, doesn't spy on you, etcetera.

What are you waiting for?

Proper sleep.

Works fine for me, on Fruit Factory hardware even. Close the thing, it goes to sleep. Open it, it wakes up. Leave it closed for a very very long time and it hibernates. Open it again and it comes back to life. Your experience may vary depending on what hardware you run it on but for me it works fine on the mentioned machines, on a HP Spectre 360, another HP Elitebook and on a really ancient Toshiba Satellite. I've had problems with sleep on a Thinkpad P50 with a discrete NVidia Quattro GPU, it goes to sleep but won't wake up so I have that machine set to hibernate as soon as the lid is closed. This takes a bit longer (but not that long, SSD is fast) but it would have been more pleasant to use if normal sleep worked as intended.

If your computer fails to sleep, or fails to wake up correctly after sleeping, when running Linux then the problem is almost always the hardware manufacturer’s fault. Many motherboards come with frankly broken ACPI tables that should never have made it out of QA. Remember this (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45271484>) recent story? This is just the tip of the iceberg. For every well–researched story we have about ACPI problems there are a dozen more that are quietly fixed by Linux kernel developers (who instruct the kernel to simply ignore the broken ACPI tables and write a custom kernel driver to do the work instead) and an unknown but presumably large number that never come to the attention of a kernel developer.

It's not that Linux is "bad" when the hardware is incompatible, it's not "Linux's fault". It's that, at a certain age, I don't want to spend my precious few hours of free time working _on_ my computer, I just want it to work.

(big fan of MacOS, and esp. third-party Mac software, the quality of which simply does not exist on any other platform)

(Also, I have huge affection for Linux. I used Linux exclusively for years personally, and any place I could sneak it into my work environment)

Sure. But if it doesn’t work then _return the hardware_. It’s the manufacturer’s fault.

It's funny that you say that, given that since S3 was effectively killed, I can't say I experienced proper sleep in Windows or macOS either. Linux so far is closest to my expectations.

Same. Windows just stopped going to sleep across multiple laptops. I gave up and run "shutdown /h" when I really want to guarantee it doesn't drain the battery. MacOS in theory sleeps, but I can't get rid of the periodic wakeups that drain a lot over a longer time.

It's a weird time when Linux has the best sleep support overall.

Last time I looked at it on macOS, you had to disable keeping the TCP connections or something like in the network stack. Which incidentally disables Find My, sadly.

My recent experience switching from Windows to Linux (NixOS) suggests otherwise.

I use a ThinkPad P1 Gen 3. My dGPU actually died due to overheating caused by Windows failing to sleep properly. On Windows, the fans were always noisy and temperatures stayed above 60°C.

Since switching to Linux, the fans are very quiet and temperatures sit between 40–50°C. What surprised me most is that sleep mode works much better on Linux than on Windows, where the frequent failures eventually killed my GPU.

Oh I 100% agree, but what consumer-grade Dell comes with Linux out of the box?

Well, they do have a couple, in theory (if they were in stock)...

https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/sr/all-products...

They often seem to go out of stock over the holidays - sometimes it's worth checking other countries to see what's normally available.

Generally, it's the Precision workstation and laptop lines, the Pro Max desktops & laptops, and the XPS laptops. They've recently started to offer RHEL on the Precisions, too.

(And all their servers, too, of course)

Hm, I see a fruit factory fanboi has been downvoting my recent posts again. Tiring but that's the price you pay for daring to speak up here. This place would be so much more tolerable if that down-vote arrow came with some price, e.g. 'you have X down-votes left for this week, use them wisely' or if the down-voter had to give a reason (visible to all) for the downvote in combination with a meta-moderation system like Slashdot of old (and maybe of today, no idea since I left that place aeons ago). The way it currently works it is far too easy to do the Wikipedia thing here, i.e. downvote into oblivion any voice outside of some accepted narrative. In combination with the virtual ban on discussing downvotes - the first rule of the Lumber Cartel is 'never discuss the Lumber Cartel' [1] - this makes HN more welcoming to knee-jerk downvoters and less welcome to free and open discussion. A shame, really, the place would be more interesting with more of the latter and fewer of the former.

[1] http://www.catb.org/esr/jargon/html/L/Lumber-Cartel.html

Every macOS update I have installed this year is followed by a full-screen intrusive advertisement for Apple "Intelligence" which has to be dismissed before I am granted access to my own computer and files.

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