At this point, I have lost count of the number of times that I’ve left my perfectly working Windows computer at the end of my work day, only to return to a completely broken computer that won’t boot the next morning.
I find this to either be a lie or self inflicted. I manage a small fleet of a few hundred windows systems and all updates have been fine for years.
In the windows admin user groups there are more than a few that are deploying updates within 24hrs of release to thousands of servers and workstations and have not reported issues.
Lastly I think that tech bloggers say things like this to get clicks, so they can get ad revenue. Then they also tell you how to disable updates so they can get more clicks and ad revenue.
It’s disingenuous and probably harmful to be telling people to disable updates that lead them to be exposed to vulnerabilities.
I hate Windows for all the monetisation and privacy issues but I never really had problems with it killing my computer.
The primary issues that I faced with Windows (Win10 nearly a decade ago) are
- very slow updates
- constant 100% disk usage after boot
- high background process usage
- [Rare] messing with my dual partition setup
- The final error which caused me to format my PC -> After logging in, the desktop froze, no icons showing up, no task manager.
If I had never used Linux, these wouldn’t even seem like problem; just normal Windows shenanigans. But after using Linux, I can never go back. I don’t know how much worse/better Win11 is now but can’t be bothered to try.
I LOVE Linux and I am still to lazy to use it on my gaming PC… normal folks don’t want anything to do with it. Effort is an allergen.
My biggest issue with Windows (at least on my desktop) is with my GPU driver for my Intel Arc A770 LE. Windows Update will not stop automatically “updating” my driver to a driver that was made about a year and a half ago. It’s too old that Intel Arc Control doesn’t even work with it. It doesn’t matter how I install the latest driver from Intel, I can DDU the old one, install the driver and wipe all custom configurations or just install it normally. Nothing works, upon the next reboot, it automatically says “there’s an update” and installs regardless if I want it or not. The driver installation also has a 50/50 chance of blue screening my whole system when installing, both the installation from Windows update, and from Intel. The Window driver “updates” for my driver have also just happened randomly with no notice, they’ve occurred during hour long Blender renders, crashing it and wasting hours of my time redoing work. (This is all on Windows 10). It is frustrating to deal with
Meanwhile, my Linux install on the same computer just runs mesa and I’ve had no issues at all with my GPU. (Or any issues with drivers really, it all just works).
Although it didn’t “kill” my computer. Whenever I still used Windows, it would spontaneously install this outdated driver which would either blue screen or crash whatever I was in the middle of doing such as working in Blender, playing a game, etc.
It’s kind of disingenuous of you to proudly say, “I don’t use the same version of Windows that this person likely does and I don’t have the same issues that this person does so they must be full of shit”.
There aren’t many versions of windows since 10 and 2016. They are all very similar now.
There are vast differences between Windows home and Windows pro and Windows Enterprise editions as far as how easy it is to control and block off the annoyance ware that Microsoft builds into it.
If you use deployment software to roll out your images after standardizing them and have a set image that you can deploy to a thousand computers as easily as one then it’s very simple to sign in with a local domain account and disable the windows things through a group policy and just start rocking and rolling whereas your average Windows home user is not going to even have access to GPO and we’ll have to tediously for each and every single computer every single time they reset it redo all of the things to disable all of Microsoft’s crap activation.
They are not entirely different but definitely distinct versions of Windows and dismissing the home and non-enterprise users that their experience is inferior to your experience on the Enterprise side is what I’m saying is disingenuous
It’s kind of a wide disparity for something that’s so locked down, though. It’s not as though one person is saying they get occasional issues and the other is they often have issues… it’s one person basically saying their own personal computer is nigh unusable and the other providing an example of a large number of examples of that being extremely unlikely…
It’s far more likely this individual is fucking up their computer on a regular basis, or has a very high bar of usability that is broken any time there is even the slightest hiccup or inconvenience.
That’s the difference between the Home and Pro versions though. The things that generally break on the Home versions are all the things not generally enabled on a domain controlled Pro version. Thisbis more about Microsoft just being bad at small updates versus these giant roundup packages they like to ship.
The interesting thing for me is that I own two different surface pro 7 tablets. I have one for work and one for home (now that work doesn’t require me to bring my own device anymore). The work surface has windows 10 pro on it. My home one doesn’t, The difference is very interesting. The IT team have disabled a lot of stuff on my work surface that I don’t even have access to on my home unit. I don’t often have bugs from updates breaking things at work. I do at home though which is enough for me to perhaps upgrade the windows key on my home unit someday. If I don’t install linux first which is a possibility.
I find this to either be a lie or self inflicted.
“I’ve never experienced what you describe, so it must be either imagined or your own fault.”
I’ve seen this nonsense over and over again in communities of all kinds, most often in tech forums (where there are always a few participants suffering from a big-fish-little-pond effect). It’s a very rude and foolish bit of human behavior.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
My two cents, I could say the same as the author. My Windows work laptop most of the times cannot wake up from sleep (you know, opening the lid after it’s closed) so I have to force a restart. There’s a 50% or less chance that Bluetooth and WiFi won’t work at all (they won’t be displayed on Windows, like it’s not even a feature) after I turn the laptop on, so most of my pre-work morning is restarting the laptop until it’s working as intended. It’s the third laptop I got from them, they’re different models but they’re all HP, and they all had problems. The Macs and the same HP laptops running Linux have none of these issues.
There have been two distinct Windows updates in recent memory that have broken things.
-
The one that stopped network printers from working, and you had to change a specific GPO setting which was not available in Intune at the time, meaning I had to do it manually on each computer.
-
The one that removed all shortcuts to Office 365 apps from the desktop and start menu, necessitating a repair… manually on each affected machine.
So it does happen on occasion. It’s not as bad as in the XP days, but it still can be a little sketchy at times
I had an update completely and permanently bricked my webcam, and another that fucked up my audio (but that eventually got fixed months later).
Odd, i didn’t need to address either of these.
I would have scripted it for Intune.
This was before proactive remediations were a thing. Script probably would’ve worked, although I find them a bit vague as to how they work
I can kind of feel the author on this. I’m in charge of a lot of “special projects” at work that basically come down to, “figure out a way to replicate this extremely expensive technology or software using low cost or free alternatives”. It ends up being an unholy mix of programs and hardware that is held together with duct tape and super glue and any minor perturbation means something breaks.
Sounds like less of a Windows problem than an individual problem, though.
Blaming Windows cause your Frankenstein machine breaks often is disingenuous.
I‘ve had several faulty Windows updates in recent years and my machine is pre-built. And going by the threads I sifted through in search of solutions I am far from the only one. It‘s perfectly fine to not have the newest update at all times so as long as you update once a month when you can afford a potential faulty update. Having an older than most recent version is far from your biggest concern regarding security. I would even say it‘s a non-issue compared to good old fishing mails.
Seriously, anytime people make complaints like these about windows, it just tells me they are either
- Tweaking their system in ways far beyond what the OS is designed for (which is fine, but then don’t blame Microsoft when updates break your system)
- Doesn’t know how to use a computer
- Knows how to use a computer but is willfully ignorant so they can rant at MS and get clicks
- Incredibly unlucky and not representative of the general population
Tweaking their system in ways far beyond what the OS is designed for
That’s the issue: the way microshit is taking windows is not acceptable for an increasing number of people.
Why would I allow Satya the creep to control my PC that I paid money for.
Also, why are they putting ads into it.
Updates rolling back privacy settings, although this stopped now.
Forced online accounts.
At what point is it too much for you? I bet over next few years microshit will get to you too lol
While I agree with most of what you’re saying, it’s also stupid to blame Microsoft for breaking your computer if you forcefully uninstall the Windows store, despite the fact that it’s needed for parts of certain updates.
A lot of the “debloaters” have no fucking idea what they’re actually doing and are uninstalling/disabling critical parts of the OS so the task manager shows less RAM usage (because God forbid you actually use your damn RAM).
#1 is by and far the cause I see when people ask me ‘why did thing break?!’
There’s a lot of ‘Well, I edited the registry and then deleted these two files and installed this 3rd party software so that it looks like it did in Windows XP!’ floating in my circles, which almost entirely correlates to the people who are mad that their install is, yet again, broken/not working as expected/having weird problems.
Of course, people are doing this because Microsoft can’t stop shitting up Windows in a way that annoys people, and thus leading them to do things that maybe aren’t the best idea.
So, in summary: it’s a land of contrasts, but stop adding bullshit nobody wants Microsoft.
Yet further proof that all anyone really wants is Windows xp with modern support.
I just got a new laptop and was genuinely gonna try windows 11 and wsl for my coding needs. But in first boot, it demands internet to do updates. Ok, I connect to coffee shop wifi. Nope, won’t do it because it can’t handle the click through screen to accept wifi ToS. Fine. I take it home, where my Internet is great but has a glitch where it drops out for a few seconds now and then. Turns out that windows will literally cancel updating and demand I reconnect and restart for the kind of drop that I barely notice day to day. So I gave up, plugged in my ArchLinux thumb drive, and mkfs.ext4 before rsyncing my entire old computer to it
The fact that it’s a requirement - and moreover automatically creates and integrates with MS cloud services - is what people don’t like.
Nobody is arguing that it’s a bad idea to let your chosen distro installer automatically pull the most up-to-date packages.
Let’s be honest, very few people who talk about how much they hate Microsoft will even consider alternatives
It’s not a failure to consider the alternatives that slows adoption, it is the very real material problems with those alternatives.
It’s not fair that a multinational corporation gets to wield virtually limitless power to starve the alternatives of oxygen and create as much friction as possible in the process of switching, but it is a very real problem, and blaming the users won’t solve anything.
Can you provide a citation for your claims about the process of switching?
The comment I replied to didn’t source their claim that it’s the users’ fault, but I notice you didn’t ask them to source their claims.
Perhaps you could explain why your skepticism is so selective before I answer your question.
And perhaps you could be more specific about what claim you want “sourced”. That the switch to linux has a lot of friction? That it’s difficult? That Microsoft has deliberately cultivated that friction? That users aren’t simply failing to consider it? That blaming the users isn’t the solution?
What exactly do you want me to source?
Yes, because I need Adobe to do my meh wage part-time job in developing country from my one and only working laptop and I don’t have the luxury of surplus money, time, and mental energy to do anything about it.
But I get your point. If I have the means, I will fix my broken Thinkpad and definitely install Linux there the first chance I get. Either that or Adobe finally release Linux version, which will probably be released after Half-Life 3.
I can’t wait to try Endeavor (so I can finally be an obnoxious person who say “I used Arch-based distro, btw”)
Either that or Adobe finally release Linux version, which will probably be released after Half-Life 3.
Yeah, I’ve seen what Adobe’s support looks like. I remember the Linux version of Flash Player. The guy in charge of it whined on the official Adobe blog on the subject that he had to support “minority browsers” which at the time was everything but Internet Explorer on Windows.
Adobe, you mean photoshop? https://github.com/MisconceivedSec/photoshop-22-linux
Adobe products barely work correctly on Windows, I wouldn’t want to try to run them in an environment that was even less supported
Most people believe they will start seeing problems where there were none before. They need to invest time into research about their use-cases, which is a cost even before switching.
The typical user used Windows since before they became scared of change, so that’s what they’ll stick with.
The pain of using Windows still can and will be higher without the majority of people switching to anything.
The typical user used Windows since before they became scared of change, so that’s what they’ll stick with.
In some ways this was me, then win 11 came around and I really didn’t like it, and it was pretty unstable for me, so I was stuck between two options for change, neither being what I would call “comfortable” (I had to, win 10 was blue screening literally every other day) which was when I saw the steam deck announcement, (also the LTT Linux Challenge) and I haven’t given win 11 a serious try sense
I don’t want to point fingers/cast shade or anything. Hell, I myself resist change where I can.
It costs incredible amounts of energy and time to change, and that change might even be counter productive to some or most of the things you do.
Gratulations on starting Linux, I hope it does everything you need it to do. Even if you should end up using it only for a short amount of time, I hope the experience enriches you.
I used to help maintain a Linux distro, and there is a level of polish Windows has that I feel cannot be reached by the FOSS ecosystem due the resources dumped into hiring dedicated teams at MS. Microsoft has tons of money. I’m sad about the direction of windows, but it generally works pretty well for how it’s designed (which is in some cases awful).
I agree with your point, but I never would have thought of describing Windows as “polished”.
A good amount of Linux distros don’t seem to want to get the basics down. Constant churn vs stable but way out of date is more how is describe the choice, while windows at it’s core is actually a pretty stable platform. I don’t have to, for example, get annoyed at Firefox middle mouse scroll not working because I forgot this distro still defaults to x11 even though it installs Wayland too blah blah blah.
Firefox middle mouse scroll works fine in X11. I use it all the time. But I guess that’s beside the point; I’m sure we could come up with a different example.
Lol, when I do summaries from now on, I’m going to have to start them with “Blorf blarf, I’m a human” or something. I’ve been accused of using GPT for things I’ve written myself. No, no GPT (not now or ever). I just know how to use words when I want to.
very obviously yes. Twice as many bullet points as a human would put in a summary, passive voice, and “the author xxx” are all telltale signs
The author hopes for a future version of Windows that offers more user control and less interference from Microsoft’s software-as-a-service products.
Currently there is zero incentive for Microsoft to do this, and only upside potential to keep doing what they’re doing.
You’d need thousands of companies to abandon their dependency on Windows, Office, and the entire Microsoft ecosystem for them to change course now.
Microsoft is constantly experimenting with how far they can push users into a corner and get away with it. There might be a day when Microsoft caves and releases a Windows that is more like what we wanted, but I imagine it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets any better. We have not yet seen the worst MS has to offer force upon us.
There might be a day when Microsoft caves and releases a Windows that is more like what we wanted, but I imagine it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets any better.
I thought that was going to be with Windows 10’s forced updates and telemetry, but people just stopped caring. I’m pretty much assuming that’ll be the same for the current batch of nonsense. I can’t imagine how bad it would have to get for the general public to say “enough is enough”.
Every bullshit move just creates more Linux users.
Best marketing Linux ever got lol
It WOULD if someone could create something that’s essentially Android on PC.
