As someone forced to use a Windows laptop for work with the new job, I've stopped complaining about my Mac. It's so much worse on the other side of the fence...
Working on Windows makes me appreciate the Mac ecosystem so, so, so very much.
Linux is better than Windows on most counts for sure, but I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to use it full-time without making significant concessions on preferences about how desktop environment stuff works. If you’re someone who grew up on Macs there’s almost nothing in the Linux desktop space that tries to replicate that set of patterns… it’s all Win9X-type taskbar setups, mobile-type setups (GNOME, Pantheon), old niche *nix setups (e.g. WindowMaker), and of course minimal tiling WMs. There’s no clones of Mac OS of any flavor.
I’m proficient with more or less every modern desktop and can get by on any of any of them if I have to, but being happy doing so is another matter.
> If you’re someone who grew up on Macs there’s almost nothing in the Linux desktop space that tries to replicate that set of patterns… it’s all Win9X-type taskbar setups, mobile-type setups (GNOME, Pantheon), old niche *nix setups (e.g. WindowMaker), and of course minimal tiling WMs. There’s no clones of Mac OS of any flavor.
I know of it but haven’t tried it. It looks kin to minimal tiling WMs like i3, but with a lot of polish applied. It’s nice I’m sure, but it’s not all that Mac-like.
Part of the issue is that people who don’t use Mac’s think it’s only about the looks. The looks are secondary and it’s about all the little pieces of functionality that have been a part of macOS for decades at this point.
Yep. Their tweaked GNOME variant isn’t too bad, but it doesn’t fit the bill much more than vanilla GNOME does. Not that enthusiastic about what I’ve seen of COSMIC so far.
It's the other way around for me, it's all the concessions I have to make on Mac that make it so annoying. All the defaults I don't like, and the inability to change them or find alternatives like I can on Linux.
I "grew up" (from college, before then didn't use computer much) on Linux and I use a Mac at work, it's pretty easy to switch back and forth for me. Just need my tiling WM, my always on screen. I do miss that you could close the laptop lid on Linux without it sleeping. But otherwise, not much complaints either way.
My Mac only sleeps on closing if it’s not plugged in and connected to external monitors. That’s how I would want it to work. How are you wanting it to work? Closing it keeps it on no matter whether it’s plugged in or not?
I want it to stay awake when I close the lid and go with it from my desk to meeting rooms. You can set Linux to basically always ignore the laptop lid close signal, which is what I want.
> preferences about how desktop environment stuff works
Having used KDE plasma, I am convinced that there is no other DE that has more knobs to make things exactly how you want it. Though I never liked the global constantly changing bar on the top in Macs anyway so can't comment on whether KDE can be made to do that.
I’ve spent time using KDE and it indeed has a lot of knobs. The options are nice but it’s still a struggle to get it configured the way I like, partially because there are no knobs for some things while some of the existing knobs control things that don’t make that much of a difference to me.
As mentioned elsewhere in the thread the issue with its global menu bar is the sheer number of apps that don’t populate it. Even the same exact Electron apps that populate the menubar on macOS don’t bother under Linux. Over half the time it sits up there empty.
Unfortunately those are all so far from replicating a macOS experience that the work needed to fill the gaps is about as much as would be needed starting from scratch. Resemblances in all three are surface level at best, and are far from complete even in that aspect.
Such a project is something I’ve daydreamed about on many occasions, but the scope is quite daunting, especially if one wants to do it right and e.g. make sure that all core utilities adhere to the HIG and actually populate the global menubar for example.
Gnome is not that different from Mac. You have your Mac-style status bar at the top, dock for apps which you can float or hide, typical window management, etc.
I use GNOME daily on one of my laptops and I don’t agree at all. It has some surface-level similarities, but overall is more comparable to something like iPadOS or Samsung DeX when connected to an external screen+KB+mouse.
The global menubar is the biggest difference, but there’s also a pervasive difference in philosophy throughout the desktop; where macOS will have power user functionality tucked away in a menu or hidden behind a modifier key (progressive disclosure), GNOME will just remove the function altogether.
Pantheon is very similar, except dressed up in an (admittedly pretty) skeumorphic theme that reminds me of OS X 10.9 Mavericks.
That’s not to say it doesn’t have its charms, I use it after all, but it’s not a Mac OS analogue in any way.
The funniest thing for me is that on a Mac you can use EMacs-style motion commands (^A, ^E, ^K, etc) just about anywhere you enter text. No suck luck on Linux which requires using Windows's braindead Home/End buttons outside of the terminal.
> No suck luck on Linux which requires using Windows's braindead Home/End buttons outside of the terminal.
Not really; I have it set up on my box so that I can press Alt + U as a shortcut for home and Alt + O as a shortcut for End (and many other such shortcuts; it's fully customizable), and this works system-wide in every application and even on the raw Linux console without X11/Wayland running.
I agree, but my M1 MacBook work laptop is by far the fastest dev machine I've ever laid hands on. It struggles a bit from the UX standpoint, two things:
1. I have the same desktop layout every time, from left to right: slack desktop app, a two column wide emacs window, a 90col wide terminal. I also have two chrome windows--1 which is the same width as the slack window and overlays it, and another the same width as the emacs window which overlays that one. The problem is every single time I wake my laptop from sleep the terminal window has shrunk to fewer columns and I have to drag it back to full width.
2. Sometimes the external monitor support bugs out. I don't know if that's my hub ("pluggable" something or other) or the OS or both.
Then of course there's all the warts of homebrew, and the fact that it's not easy to build some software..
However, the performance of the Apple silicon is nothing short of astonishing. I'm curious about the AMD chips that ship in the new Framework as I look towards an upgrade to my personal laptop, but it's basically between that and a new M4 Max Macbook. Never thought I'd see the day.. will probably wait a year or so before deciding but it's interesting that Apple is even a contender.
For the 1st point, I struggled with the same, then a short applescript thanks to claude, attached to a keyboard shortcut on karabiner solved the painpoint. There's also an app called Stay which should do something similar with a ui, but my solution is good enough for me at this point.
Reading back I see I came across as kind of an asshole, I'm sorry for that. I genuinely thought at the time you might be kidding but I wasn't sure--pretty sure I got it wrong. I've grown (probably too) cynical about ux tweak over the years, in the past I did it a lot (even ran stumpwm and i3wm for a while) but over time I kept getting burned by the effort it takes to maintain nonstandard stuff and gave up. I appreciate it's fun, I'll try to remember that.
Thanks for your 2nd reply :)
I'd also prefer everything worked out-of-the-box, but where the world fails, you unfortunately need to patch it. If it would have taken me more than 30 minutes I'd probably skip and learn to live with it, but it was kind of easy and i find it useful every day.. for the cynical part, i think you can't beat me on that, I'm in my late 40s and seen too much :)
No, it's just that I don't customize systems anymore. It's not worth the hassle of maintaining a bunch of extra stuff just to fix issues that shouldn't be there in the first place. All those extra ux tweak programs just end up costing time to keep them working across updates, etc. because they're not part of the system.
That would've been a much better comment in the first place. I do understand where you're coming from, though. In my case, however, a single Brewfile is enough.
My favorite is how when I close my macbook with an external display plugged in, the laptop screen remains on (and lit up!) with seemingly no way to configure this behavior. Sometimes a window will end up on that (non-visible) screen which can be very confusing.
That seems like a misconfig or a broken lid sensor or something. I’ve been using MacBooks with a single external monitor as my only display (MacBook closed) for over a decade and I’ve never had the laptop display stay on when closed with an external display. Maybe time to visit the Genius Bar?
I'm curious about your dock/hub. There's a good chance I just ordered the same one as I try to build a more sophisticated home station. Which one and how does it bug out?
Pluggable TBT3-UDC3, input freezes and screen goes all pschedelic with greens and violets and then patterns and lines as everything melts to white noise. Flipping the lid open and closed and/or unplugging the thunderbolt cable and plugging it back in again repeatedly seems to cool the vibes
Got my workchats and email in one virtual desktop, a checkpoint of what I was previously working on in another, YouTube playing music in another. All controllable with hotkeys, with a UI customized down exactly how I want it. And with no fear of an "update" breaking my setup.
NixOS, for me. I deal with a lot of wild development environments, so flakes + direnv has probably saved me hundreds of hours and a few system reinstalls.
Nix is also availible for Mac, but I'll warn you that it may ruin Macports and brew for you forever.
Really? I always found Ubuntu to be fantastic. All the third party packages you want just existed for it, loads of bundled stuff, PPAs, plus all the stuff from Debian. And you could pay them not a lot of cash to give you support for it too.
it's fantastic if you're on an LTS version about 2 years after it's released. Again, if you're a email & ebay user you won't notice, because even the in-between non-LTS releases work fine for that.
When you start wanting to replicate experiments, or run software you find on github, then you will learn the pain of ubuntu 20.04. or 22.04. Otherwise you can have the fun experience of most linuxes in the mid to late 90s where you are compiling arbitrary libraries to bootstrap some other library so you can find out where the package you actually want to compile's make file fails at.
Give me a rolling release distro or a source based distro any day.
ninja: all of this should be read as me saying:
"Why yes, i do in fact have several machines and VMs of ubuntu server installs, ranging all the way from 16.04 to 24.04; because that's the only way i can guarantee i can run any software posted on the internet."
I have a windows for work, Mac as a laptop and Linux on my workstation desktop. Windows is by far the worst, I don’t think Linux is vastly superior to Mac, they both have some things they do better than the other. My main issue is arm vs x86.
A couple of my M1 machines were purchased on the day of launch at the Apple Store so they’re the 8GB RAM models. They’re still very good running Apple software (even Final Cut Pro) but I find myself running out of RAM with a few web browsers running at the same time. The base model of the M4 mini now has 16GB by default which I’m sure would be just fine for me.
Mine has 64GB. I usually max RAM, and get about double the SSD I think I need. Knowing that at a minimum, I will use my latest laptop, and 2-3 older models around the house and my quick-carry bag for convenience, at any given time.
Beyond convenience, the old laptops are continually synced, as multiple onsite backups. So I get great long term value from consistently choosing higher end RAM/SSD specs.
But in this case good specs for the M1 has saved me money via an unprecedentedly long upgrade schedule.
I am feeling more pressure to update two old x86 laptops to M1, than any pressure to upgrade my M1. Never had this upside-down problem before. Apple did just a great job with that M1.
You have to pay me to run Windows bare metal. The user experience is terrible and of the lowest quality compared to Mac OS and Linux. Even Windows OS 11 IoT LTSC requires work around to not create a Microsoft account, and this is their embedded solution.
Last week I spent a whole day trying to resurrect a Windows 10 IoT LTSC because of a corrupt WMI repository. It crashed out software and to the client it looks like our software is bad where it is the OS that is bad. Client's automation was down until a replacement was sent out and installed.
I've had to implement number of software changes because of buggy Windows drivers. From Intel NICs to touch screen HID messaging. Microsoft talks about backwards capability but it is subjective and only truly bound to the most used applications. Enabling tablet mode on Windows will break their API.
There has never been a Linux system I couldn't resurrect and keep working. With Windows, it is always re-install the OS and all applications. Even the laptop I'm writing this on is the same OS installation that has passed between 4 different computers. You cannot get that quality of OS installation from Microsoft.
Took me a month to convince IT to reinstall Windows on my work laptop. Microsoft's update broke the QA VM environment and would freeze with an infinite loop. Uninstalling the update nor repairing the OS did anything to fix their issues.
Even today I experienced Ctrl+X is broken and does not work in Visual Studio for the git comment text box entry.
I doubt it’s a target unless someone was actively profiling the company in question, building out a plan, and seeking to actively exploit the company’s network from that machine. Even then, how many attackers know IRIX well enough to pull it off?
If we were talking about a networked DOS machine, Windows XP, or even classic MacOS this lack of updates would be more serious… but niche UNIX workstations? Not as certain they’re still targets.
It definitely wasn't! I remember the irix 5.x and earlier days. By default, it shipped without any X11 authentication enabled. This meant everyone on the network could keylog your machine.
There are many issues with using Linux for a corporate workstation. For instance, if the organization uses a proxy, setting it up is a PITA, as many Linux applications don't respect the http[s]_proxy environment variables. Some only accept upper-case, others only lower-case, while many have their own configuration settings for using a proxy.
Additionally, in certain industries Linux support is non-existent, with many applications developed exclusively for Windows and no viable alternatives available. Running a VM is another PITA due to driver issues. Wine ditto.
In the end, I found that running WSL2 provided a more manageable experience. I feel that Microsoft really hit the nail with WSL for productivity. Apparently, you can even run graphical applications from WSL although I don't have a lot of experience with that.
For me the biggest gripe is that I cannot configure it as I want and that it assumes I'm computer-illiterate. On top of that a lot of the approaches chosen by Apple regarding e.g. the UI are simply counterintuitive to me.
I still prefer it to Windows but (at least for me) it is inferior to a properly setup Linux box with stuff like a titling WM. But if I would to recommend someone a computer just for browsing, email, etc. then a Mac would be my top choice.
Linux makes you use the terminal and read manuals and edit configs to accomplish the most basic tasks. At least neither Windows nor macOS need that. Linux is fine for servers, but I can't fathom using that on my actual computer.
I prefer config files a lot to settings GUIs. Two most important points that come to mind:
1. I can manage them in Git
2. GUIs change all the time. With configs you have a much higher probability that some solution you googled will still work even when it is a couple of years old.
But GUIs show you all available options without having to read the docs. They only change when you install updates. You can simply not install updates that you don't like.
Linux fanboys are completely delusional, if we listened to them, we would design an airliner cockpit with a keyboard and a single display to run a terminal and input everything as commands.
They have just invested too much of their ego into knowing the arcane commands (and typing them well and fast) when it doesn't have much value, so they try to get dividends on that poor investment any way they can.
There is no reason to not make a proper GUI for pretty much everything, unless the devs are lazy or trying to save time/money.
> There is no reason to not make a proper GUI for pretty much everything
Until you realize there are like 10 competing "standards" for settings, from config files in various incompatible formats in random places (not even obeying the XDG standard paths), to GSettings which is a Windows registry knockoff (and I bet KDE has its own - incompatible - equivalent), etc.
And don't you dare try to centralize all that into a common system - last time someone tried something similar by centralizing system service management with systemd, people lost their shit. Orders of magnitude more effort has been wasted ranting and arguing about it than fixing its issues (if they were real in the first place, and not just theoretical or outright made up).
Well I understand what you mean. At an individual developer level, it may look like it's not worth the trouble and just go with a simple terminal-based interface and a simple text file configuration.
But that's basically giving up because things look too hard. And this is why, even when there is a GUI, it tends to be pretty bad on Linux. There is an incentive problem.
As for the various competing standard and other nonsense (how many goddam distros are there in the first place?) its just inherent to the Marxist type of organisation, where there is no process to decide who has power and everyone is given equal weight in decision power regardless of their qualities (or lack thereof).
Linux as a thing just works because there is a benevolent dictator for the core part (paid by the "nasty" corporation the Linux zealots keep complaining about) and they get a lots or "second-hand" use of tools that were developed for other reasons.
The GUI problems just highlight the inherent weakness of this type of organisation/way of working, and makes you appreciate capitalism/meritocracy and commercial OS a lot more.
To be fair, the situation has improved for some specific distros but the only way to significantly change things would be to make it a commercial operation.
This is what was tried with Ubuntu, and all the zealots are fighting everything tooth and nail; complaining about any meaningful improvement (recently, "snaps").
So, yes, I realize, but in my opinion it's still not a valid reason to not make a GUI. There are options. Or you can just forget Linux and make the tool with a GUI for an OS where it will be appreciated.
I mean I know how to use a unix system through the terminal, it's a basic skill for a software engineer, but I'm not enjoying any of that. Most CLI software is ridiculously user-hostile too. Oh you don't remember whether it's "update" or "upgrade"? Or which order the parameters need to be? Or whether it's one dash or two? Well fuck you, go read some manuals and come back when you're ready.
And it's not just discoverability. A well-designed GUI is impossible to get into an invalid state. A CLI, on the other hand, offers infinite possibilities for invalid commands.
Using commands is nothing special and can barely be considered a "skill" (you are just typing stuff instead of pushing buttons, no significant difference).
But since it's obtuse and need a large investment (memory for command retention, typing proficiency and other tricks), people who had to suffer through that associate their ego with it and declare it superior so they can shame other people into compliance (even though they would be wasting time).
As you said, a command interface allows you to shoot yourself in the foot in about a million ways, therefor it is a terrible tool.
It is like having to handle a knife that is extremely to avoid cutting yourself with because it has no handle and has an edge on both sides. Makes absolutely no sense, someone who doesn't complain about such a "tool", is an idiot.
As someone who works on both I don't notice a difference. Mac sucks just as much as Windows (or visa versa). There's things each does better and things each does worse.
Once people start saying "forced to use [...] for work" you've got to analyse platforms from a different angle.
Namely: How good is this platform after Corporate IT cheaps out on hardware, and loads as much 'security' crapware as possible?
On Windows, there are incredibly cheap laptops available, and corporate IT has loads of crapware like antivirus and crowdstrike and profiles and enterprise endpoint management to slow it down.
On Mac, there aren't any cheap hardware options, and there's a medium amount of "security" crapware.
On Linux, corporate IT let you manage it yourself, because they don't know how to. They can't develop the skills either, because anyone who can manage Linux gets promoted out the set-up-new-users-laptops department.
Great point. I use both Mac and windows. Love my windows pc, but I have certainly used corporate windows laptops that make me want to throw them out the window - minutes to boot, minutes to open anything, etc. between Mac and windows, they've each got their pros and cons but nothing that would make me choose one over the other.
The answer with any discussion of this nature is to immediately disregard any and all answer that doesn't come in, unprompted, with an explanation.
Which is about 90% of the comments here. Not a joke. I have counted 18 and see only 2 with specific gripes. Worthless comment section. (Sorry, but I did include yours too)
I was 16 when I first met the first big "Mac is better than Windows" argument in person. I asked why, and they mentioned a number of things that didn't feel relevant to the people at the table, but the one that stood out was a particular feature that was indeed quite useful. Well, I didn't know how to respond at the time, but as soon as I got home, I checked with windows and the feature was right there.
I don't think they were wrong for their preference. In fact, back then there was a lot of major differences in the workflow for these OS that isn't as big nowadays, specially if you're someone who can actually use google for more than 20 seconds. But the interaction proved to me the importance of being able to back your stance, because, if you don't, you may as well be just another 16 year old idiot with 0 technical or practical knowledge of the stuff that dictated your preference. They don't learn how to resolve their problems with them either, if they hide the reasons from others. So, again, worthless - take up screen space that could have better comments, while informing nothing and helping no one.
You alluded to this but I wanted to emphasize that a lot of this is just legacy baggage in terms of reputation that windows will have to carry for a long time
I think that when people talk about how shitty windows is compared to Mac/apple they are talking about stuff that was probably true at some point
For many, memories of using windows include blue screens of death, programs crashing often and windows itself crashing often. On top of that, windows was a cesspool for a hot minute while Microsoft got its act together and put better security in place to address malware as the internet got popular.
These are obviously not the same, not nearly as bad as they were back then
I mostly enjoyed windows, and to a lesser degree Linux until a few years ago when an employer made me switch to Mac - which for the sake of my brain’s plasticity I readily embraced
The main differences I noticed at the time were: a much better window manager, a much saner way of installing applications, an overall hard to explain smoothness along with the ability to bring over some of my favorite little Linux tools
Fast forward to today and it’s really just a matter of preference. Mac helped Linux a ton, but nowadays they are all so customizable that you can more or less achieve what you’re trying to do most of the time on any of them
Today, I use all three out of necessity - Mac and Linux for work, windows for gaming, but I can surely tell you that overall my best decision was to just not get involved in holy wars lol
What did it for me was a period of: “I see you are delivering an important presentation. Let me force install an update and reboot three times. Right now.” I’ve spent too long watching reboots to have Windows in my life for my limited time on the planet.
Yeah one wart about Windows is that you always have to lookup these weird registry hacks after getting a fresh install. Disabling this automatic reboot was one of them. Otherwise that would make your computer completely useless for things like
- gaming
- watching movies
- presentations
- anything where you want to let some calculation run unattended for a few hours
- anything where you really don't want your PC to shut down unexpectedly while you’re working…
Well that covers pretty much everything I guess.
And to add insult to injury, Windows 10 for a while took away the ability to Update & shut down. It’d go into some sort of hybrid sleep so you’d keep getting a reboot prompt right after starting up again.
Damn you're worked up. Some of my gripes with Windows come down to peripherals, where I'll spend a lot of time troubleshooting why my bluetooth device or speakers or mic don't work. There also seems to be no way to bypass using a password or PIN on startup without changing the registry. I'd like my computer to just stay on at all times so I can remotely connect to it, but what do you know, a forced update caused it to restart, and because it requires a passeord to get to the desktop I have no way of getting Parsec to connect. Yeah I tried to disable automatic updates but nothing seems to stick. Why is the mic on my PS5 controller connecting and disconnecting ten times a second. Ok let me just try to unpair the controller, oh it just... won't unpair.
Are the ps5 controllers supported without having to buy software? If not, then I sarcastically say "I'm shocked that a competitor's peripheral works poorly on their product"
Macs come working. When something breaks, it is impossible to fix, because they didn’t include a button to fix it. But it comes working!
Windows PCs come broken out of the box, but the user adapts and eventually gains a pile of workarounds, which is sort of like the windows equivalent of a UX.
Until fairly recently, I would have agreed, but Microsoft is actively enshittifying Windows now by pushing things like cloud-only logins and ads in Start while simultaneously removing configurability (e.g. vertical taskbar was removed in Win11). I'm not a fan of macOS, but at least Apple is not all in on ads the way Microsoft seems to be these days.
Everything that I described above, I observed personally. The no-vertical-taskbar thing has been an open issue in the tracker for many years; if it works now, I'm glad to hear it.
Regarding local accounts, it is supported by Windows, but the installer will straight up refuse to let you create such an account now (so you have to install using a cloud account and log into it at least once to create a local account). Previously, there used to be workarounds like installing without Internet, or certain incantations you could do in the "recovery" terminal during installation, but they have been killed off one by one. If you haven't seen this yourself, it just means that you haven't installed Windows 11 recently.
Just to let you know i am booting a VM to install windows 11 while recording with OBS studio. Check this space for updates. I'll admit if i am wrong.
looks like this is correct. I didn't have to do this before, so there's some software switch in the iso i have that triggered a "must update" - which makes sense.
Not to shift the goalposts, but you can disable the microsoft login after you set it up. I'm 99% sure that apple and google both require you to give them a username and password, as well.
I am getting the 24H2 disk image now. The one i was using is `Win11_22H2_English_x64v2.iso` - which is real old. It makes sense to me that microsoft wouldn't want you to use an old installer without being connected to the internet.
The download is probably going to take longer than my edit timeout, if so and anything changes about my comment i'll make a reply
> I'm 99% sure that apple and google both require you to give them a username and password, as well.
I have no idea about Google, but with Apple, they require you to create a local account when installing. After that, the Settings app will pester you to link it to your Apple ID, but this can be ignored, and only shows up when you are in Settings on your user account page.
i installed windows 11 without a cloud login. Without a CD key. I actually ran the windows installer 3 times since you commented and i first replied. So i kinda lost track of what it was doing this time - i didn't notice it said it was going to reboot before the screen went black, i missed that it was waiting for input with the language selection. But i didn't edit the video at all, so you can scrub around and make sure. Ignore my dig at the end, like i said, i installed windows 3 times.
https://github.com/memstechtips/UnattendedWinstall
you put the XML file in the iso. well, that's what i did. they have an automated thing that makes a bootable USB stick but i don't need that. I actually have a microsoft account because i use the xbox for windows and copilot. I don't use it to log in to windows - and even if i reinstalled i'd use the regular ISO and log in and then dis-associate my account with my windows install after it finished installing, as microsoft says you can do inside the installer
I gotta say i completely understand microsoft doing this, and had i been in the voting meeting where this was decided i probably would have voted to have the default be "cloud login" - the average person isn't going to be able to do anything if the forget their password, short of taking the computer to best buy to have it wiped and reinstalled (or whatever). in the video link, you can see it ask me security questions, which we all probably know are a poor way to ensure continuous access.
So this "drop an xml file on the iso" is proof positive that i take full responsibility for the data on this operating system - if i forget my password and my security questions, i'm locked out. period. Microsoft can't help because i told them i was smarter than the average user.
The question isn't the default but rather the ability to opt out. And no, "drop XML on your ISO image" is not an acceptable bar for that.
But, more importantly, it's not a given that this will continue working onwards. As things are, there have already been three different ways to force the installer into letting you use a local account, the most recent one of which involved using the recovery terminal when booted from ISO - that's already way past most users. And yet Microsoft methodically killed each and every method every time, so I fully expect your suggested workaround to stop working. They seem to be very determined to ensure that no "non-enterprise" version of Windows lets people do that.
what do you reckon it costs microsoft to support people that "opted out"? what amount of legal boilerplate would indemnify Microsoft against lawsuits over lost data because someone chose to opt out?
If the only option is to modify the installer the only people who are going to opt out are the sort of people that understand that microsoft has no responsibility to our data, and pretending they do is silly. It's pure CYA from Microsoft.
If you personally don't like it, then use their automated thumb-drive creation tool (at that same link) to make a new bootable USB stick that installs with the "opt out". I modified the ISO because i was installing on a Virtual Machine. If i was gunna do it on metal i'd use a USB stick because all my optical drives are USB and not that fast.
I don't think we disagree, i think we're coming at this from different sides. I don't expect microsoft to spend more money than they have to.
I need to remind here that the very notion of a cloud account didn't exist for literally decades in the past, and I don't recall anyone suing Microsoft about losing a password etc. The legal angle for such things is firmly covered by EULAs, anyway - I worked for Microsoft for 15 years, and I can assure you that the lawyers there are very adept at such things. And then, of course, Apple clearly doesn't have any legal issues despite only having local accounts on macOS even today. Nor are cloud accounts free of legal issues themselves, what with GDPR etc. In fact, I'm pretty sure that cloud accounts are more "legal heavy" on the whole.
I would believe that it was purely about costs if they simply removed the checkbox from the installer but still left the command line workaround - that is plenty sufficient to ensure that the user "understands that Microsoft has no responsibility", and generally to prevent the clueless from shooting themselves in the foot. But given that even such advanced techniques were removed shortly after they were discovered, I'm certain at this point that it is a concerted effort to drive all non-enterprise users towards cloud accounts. And given that Microsoft is heavily investing into ads, and generally has a Google envy for a very long time now, I think that it any product decision that clearly correlates with more ability to track users and collect their data is likely to be at least partially motivated by that, just as it is in case of Google.
This is exactly what happens to me. I get the company laptop, think "maybe Linux isn't that great anymore... how is modern FAANG handling things?"
Then the ads come in, and any of my doubts evaporate instantly. The home PC runs NixOS, it's been that way for 6 years now and it will probably remain that way until the advertising glut is satiated. Even then, it won't be easy getting me to switch away from desktop Linux.
Linux is nice if, like nixos users, you want to spend hundreds of hours over several years writing every QoL feature totally custom for your unique use case.
For me, Mac is 99% of what I liked about Linux, and there is ALWAYS an existing QoL solution—usually reasonably polished—for everything it lacks.
Windows has none of the benefits ofLinux, none of Homebrew or even the AUR, a tiny fraction of the QoL third party features from Mac (usually unpolished)—to say nothing of the first party QoL features—plus the hardware is comically bad. Diving board trackpads are normal on $3k windows machines in 2025, 500nits displays, whistling fans on about 17 high-end laptops I tried in the past 6 months. Truly the worst experience imaginable. Abominable, even.
Windows can at least open a Linux shell without running a VM. It's far from my first choice, but I will always reach for a Windows device over a Mac for software development.
I don't really butt heads with people that demand good defaults. I just hate on-device advertising with such a passion that I could never personally support Apple or Microsoft. Not having to deal with first-party services, nag notifications and constant advertising is well worth the week or two it takes to set up NixOS.
I use my mac as a on the go computer for work (it's really light, and proprietary software works always), but I have a linux VM that I sync the needed project on it before I go out. If I have to use containers for extra services (DB,...) I may as well use a VM I can configure as I like.
With official linux support on Windows, I really love developing on Windows, it's the best of both worlds. Mac on the other hand feels like a second hand citizen to both linux and windows depending on what you're doing.
I've had the same experience. MacOS had lots of features intended to make it friendly for casual users, which made it a pain when you wanted to modify it, but if you wanted to modify something, you generally could; it just took some extra steps compared to Windows 7. By contrast, I spent an hour figuring out how to uninstall Edge on Windows 10 this afternoon, and I suspect it's going to reinstall after the next update like all of the other bloatware did.
Compare the median sale price of a Windows laptop vs Mac. The qualify bar should be significantly higher for anything with an Apple logo on it just to justify the price tag.
Any system you have deep knowledge and experience with makes all the others look like garbage, because you don't know the right menus, can't intuit what you are trying to do and don't know the right workarounds/what the designers intended. As someone who uses MacOS, Windows and Linux on the regular, let me just say, uh... man, Solaris is pretty bad!
I helped my little brother put together a gaming PC a few years ago. Before that, I hadn’t even touched a windows computer in a very long time.
I was blown away by how difficult and opaque everything was. I’m sure a lot of it was just unfamiliarity, but a lot of it definitely was not. I actually could not believe how hard of a time I had
The built-in bloatware (LinkedIn, TikTok, Clipchamp, etc.), the constant nagging (like full-screen reminders to buy Office 365 to "protect" your PC), Edge is basically forced on you. MSVC has insane licensing terms — you can’t use it outside of Visual Studio or VS Code, not to mention it's lacking support for C. Windows seems actively user and developer hostile.
Beyond that, Windows' architecture is a mess, I hate it (There's a reason Microsoft has to ship WSL2). macOS runs all of my tools fine, just like Linux does.
I hate Win11. It is horrible, but the first few points don't really make sense. I use it in 2 environments.
- enterprise version: no bloatware, no ads, and edge is there but never has to be used for anything
- professional version: bloatware is uninstalled in like 2min after OS install, another 2min later all ads are disabled. And it usually stays like that after updates too. Edge is never used at all.
Windows architecture is great. the WinAPI is better documented and more comprehensive than anything on Linux or Mac.
There are so many other issues.
- The file explorer gets slower and more broken with each update. context menus randomly don't show, or take literally 30 seconds to load.
- The renderer crashes randomly once a week (it's not a huge issue, but the screen goes black for 10 seconds or so)
- the settings dialog is bad. goes through like 5 different layers of Windows generations and recently makes the old dialogs hard to find but doesn't offer adequate replacements (looking at network and sound)
- and much more...
I uploaded a video because no one can show me this alleged slowness or context menu stuff, it's all "vibes" and it is getting ridiculous on hackernews.
I have a huge problem with windows - some api uses "@" for something, so all my folders with @ in the name(it sorts alphabetically before everything and is easy to type - on macos it's option-8 for similar, Linux I use @ as well) and because of that Windows API most applications crasb if you last saved into a path with @ in it and do file->open. Notepad++, notepad.exe, handbrake, VLC, mplayer, and so on.
Its a frustration, but it is my fault for developing a stupid habit back before metadata or changing colors of folers or what ever exists now to force an arbitrary sort order.
With every Windows release since 8, it feels more and more like the OS is actively antagonistic towards the user. This has come to a peak with Windows 11.
Not too long ago I booted up an old laptop and put a fresh install of Windows 7 on it for kicks. Amazing how much of a breath of fresh air that was.
Not the OP, but one thing I've run into is that I've had three or four Windows installs (both Windows 11 and Windows 10) just fail to upgrade - one of them new upgrades just stopped showing up, I had to install an 'enablement package' and that fixed it but there was literally no warning or instructions of what to do, I just had to Google it when I noticed I wasn't getting updates.
The others just failed with random hexadecimal error codes, again I had to Google to try and work out what was going on.
With one of them I had to use the command line and diskpart etc. to expand the recovery partition because apparently the default size when I'd made that Windows 10 install was no longer big enough, and Windows Update couldn't work this out (the error code from the failure was nondescript, took ages to find out what was actually wrong) and couldn't fix it. Had to do it manually in Powershell.
Another one I think might have fixed by running sfc and dism recovery commands in the command line, again it would be nice if Windows could work this out itself!
To be fair, macOS isn't much better in this regard, the error codes can be quite cryptic, for example what is a -2003F.
For some reason, a game I play called DCS can be buggy and I've been told by the support to sfc /scannow and dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth. For some reason on every install of Windows 11 I've ever done, it always picks up tons of broken files. This is installing using the latest at the time Microsoft ISO. I've had this issue on multiple different systems, a modern gaming pc, a Mac with bootcamp, an older Lenovo M93p and when installing inside VMWare or KVM.
I do get less application and operating system crashes on a Mac though.
Linux package managers are an abomination and a failed model. As evidenced by Docker being required both to reliable build and reliably run modern software.
glibc is an abomination of bad design ideas from the 80s. Compilers relying on whatever random ass version of a .so you have is broken AF. The fact that you can’t target an arbitrarily version of glibc or runtime environment is an embarrassment.
Once upon a time I shipped a popular-ish game with Linux support. 1% of Linux users represented 50% of bug reports. And no it’s not because Linux players were more reliable at reporting Linux issues. It has been a few years, but supporting more than SteamDeck is likely similar. At least for non-proton builds.
I like Portage when it works. When it doesn't, I don't like portage very much.
I'm not sure if you can "alternatives" glibc in Gentoo, but the "whatever .so you have" isn't a thing there, you can slot different versions if you need to.
If I want to test some software I'll use Ubuntu with docker or whatever, but to deploy to production I will make it run on Gentoo. Hell or high water.
Windows software still ships every .dll it needs, unless it is a Microsoft one. Do a search for msvc.dll or whatever sometime and marvel at the pagination.
That's not a platform issue, that's a "these companies simply don't ship Linux versions".
> Linux package managers are an abomination and a failed model.
Ironic then that some Windows tools (Chocolatey) model them and Windows has WSL because tons of devs find that model easier.
> As evidenced by Docker being required both to reliable build and reliably run modern software.
Docker doesn't do away with that model, it just allows you to isolate specific versions of libraries and tools you need in a namespace/container.
The standard model for shipping Windows software is to ship all the libraries needed with the software. Which isn't much different than what Docker is doing.
> glibc is an abomination of bad design ideas from the 80s. Compilers relying on whatever random ass version of a .so you have is broken AF. The fact that you can’t target an arbitrarily version of glibc or runtime environment is an embarrassment.
Maybe it's a bad model, can't speak to that. But you can statically link a C/C++ runtime with your software if you want, or ship alternative glibc versions.
Also, if we're talking about shipping games on Steam, you can simply target the Steam runtime. It'll work on Steam deck + any Linux system.
I am so glad that I'm not the only one thinking package managers are complete nonsense. Even on macOS I have always found Homebrew or MacPorts to be rather dumb (at least the latter is saner in some ways).
Package managers have so many fundamental problems it's hard to even get started.
But they appeal to the Linux type of person because it's a very communist type approach to things, authoritarian and panopticon like way.
At least nowadays they are trying to allow installing software in some more convenient way but I'm not holding my breath considering there are competing implementations.
Does shutup10 allow you to decide which updates (if any) you want to install, uninstall the Microsoft Store (and keep it uninstalled), uninstall Edge (and keep it uninstalled), remove other unwanted bloatware (and keep it removed), control all group policy settings (without having them reverted every time MS feels like it), and receive security update support for several years longer than the retail version?
No?
Well, then, it might be "perfectly fine", but it's not "great."
I mean, respect is what it's about, isn't it? Respect for the user. LTSC still upholds that, while the conventional retail and corporate installations don't. No third-party add-ons can repair a closed-source OS that has been intentionally corrupted and degraded by its manufacturer. I desperately wish they could, but they can't.
Conway's Law applies ("A product reflects its producer's org chart"), as does Gresham's Law ("The bad drives out the good.") A pressing question for Apple users is whether the same corrosion is at work at their own vendor of choice.
Counter-Argument: Win11 Pro with Shutup is actually pretty great. I’m actually not totally sure if Shutup is even needed but I’ve used it for so long I don’t really care to A/B test.
The complaints are more philosophical than practical imho.
For many years, Windows has had WSL and now it's the second generation WSL2 and you can run graphical Linux even without a VM. It has a decent package manager out of the box, a great open-source terminal. Containers and VMs are also available out of the box. Windows also has a developers' hub, which allows you to install toolchains easily, including IDEs such as VS Code.
Meanwhile, macOS comes with its own version of CLI tools such as find, which have quite different parameters than Linux, it doesn't have a package manager, when I install an app on my iPhone, it somehow decides that I want to install it on my macOS, too, etc. And I won't even mention how poor the menubar is! I have at least 10 apps I need to install to make macOS usable - PopClip, Moom, Bartender, etc., while the Windows equivalent for things like Dock and menubar are working pretty well, including notifications - I've accidentally have clicked so many times on notification banners, covering my scroll bar or window controls. Not to mention that so many times I'm typing something in window, which has my input focus, then another window pops up, steals my input focus, and I end up trying parts of my password in the wrong window due to that!
There are so many things wrong with macOS, Apple doesn't really care to improve it, and the System Settings is growing out of control! Windows' settings are much better organized!
And, yes, macOS freezes and crashes not less frequently than Windows. In fact, I haven't had any such issues with a heavily constrained Windows 11, running in VMware Fusion!
Also, Windows now has a free equivalent of the paid CleanMyMac app, and it works pretty well. Not to mention the free security software. But even with CleanMyMac, uninstalling software leads to tons of junk all over the place.
I installed windows 11 in a VM on my Linux machine for some testing recently. You still have to agree to allow MS to sell your information about 5 times during setup, and you're rewarded with Candy Crush and Xbox apps in your startup menu. I don't know how people put up with it, honestly.
Professionals don't use the "designed to be cheap for OEMs to license" Windows versions.
A lot of comments are either using home or edu or whatever, or are running in restrictive environments like on a corporate network where your IT department controls everything.
I like Linux. I use mostly Gentoo. I also like BSD but I can never think of anything to use it for. It's so good it's boring, which is great for production, not my favorite to mess around on.
I never really liked Mac OS X. I liked OS7-9, though, even though there was no real multitasking no multi-user.
But my main desktop is Windows on the metal. I ran Windows in a GPU accelerated VM for four years or so, and that was fine too.
One can get Windows Pro licenses for peanuts on eBay. I've never understood those running Home! I've always been using Windows Insider, and it is way more stable than macOS beta releases, which are notoriously broken!
windows pro legitimate licenses (as opposed to leaked volume licensing keys like you get on ebay or the facebook ads) are $120-$180 in my experience, and realistically, if you don't want to be "the product" that's a fair price.
But even with all that being said, there's other ways to get Pro versions, if the home user experience is that frustrating. and it is, i know!
if you ever do buy a license key on ebay, do a web search for the key you get. If it comes back with any results, immediately email the seller and say "it didn't work, says it's in use" or whatever. Keep doing this till they give you one that doesn't come up on a search. Usually they'll just refund your money after 2 keys, sometimes with a nasty message. What they're doing is unethical, IMO; so if all you want is a potentially valid key, you might get it for free.
Those are legit volume licenses from reputable sellers. You don't get media; you don't get anything but a license code. Plus, I only use those at home, of course - I would never use such licenses for business!
I mean.. at least system settings are in one place on OSX instead of scattered between the control panel, new system settings thing, and a few other spots.
Working on Windows makes me appreciate the Mac ecosystem so, so, so very much.