Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:46 Sponsor: TuxCare Radar
02:23 Windows 11 is failing right now
05:20 What’s the job of an OS?
06:51 Updates break systems. Often.
10:53 You have to adapt to it
15:14 It’s highly intrusive
17:44 Debloating tools don’t make it good
20:19 Windows fails at being an OS
21:33 Alternatives are better, but not perfect
27:23 Windows is a sales platform, not an OS
It’s a nice circle jerk, but it has way more market share than Linux (at least on desktop, which y’know it’s a desktop OS), so by that measure it is a “success”.
You have to really stretch to some abstract definition of success to call it a failure.
It’s a market success and a performance failure. Not much of a stretch of any definition.
Why would people running Linux even care about the success/failure of Windows 11?
WINDOWS 11 IS GREAT IF YOU DONT VALUE YOUR TIME
Even with that caveat I wouldn’t agree.
But there’s something to it.
For me, a decade of Linux user, having been forced to work with a bunch of Windows laptops recently, even the difference between 10 and 11 was palpable. Not only in resource usage but also in just getting around the system, running updates, trying to disable the stock ticker (?WTF?) etc.
Lately I often reminesce on the time SSD has become available. My previous laptop would take 5 minutes to fully open the system, and suddenly BAM! SSD and it was 30 seconds. I remember being blown away. How the fuck did we end up back here. How is it 5+ minutes to start a stupid OS again.
Windows is great! Unless you value privacy…or RAM… or Bandwidth efficiency…or easy networking… or owning your system
I find it pretty good, very stable, no viruses (I think)
I have to use it for work, and the difference between how my work laptop and my personal laptop (Debian 43) handles basic tasks is stark.
The stuff like “will my headphones work?” has been solved for years at this point. I’m talking even more basic, like rendering the UI and loading menus.
“will my headphones work?”
It was Linux the one you had to check if basic peripherals would work.
Now it is windows the one that gives issues with headphones, the one in charge of the equipment is fed up with all of the complaints related to windows and headphones (the ones provided by the enployer and the personal ones).
Last Friday windows decided to stop working with the laptop’s webcam, and it was stuck as in use despite even turning off the camera in setttings.
What is the future like? knowing the slow cadence of debian you must be from the very far future.
you know what’s funny, is that my noise cancelling headphones started to have serious problems when I ‘upgraded’ to windows 11. it would pick up the noise cancelling mics and decide they were the primary, not my standalone dedicated microphone.
in the process, it would also downgrade the sound quality for some fucking reason. no matter how many ways I disabled them, it would either re-enable them or I’d find a new way to try.
with Linux? just works.
100%. I’m not quite as ardently anti-Windows as most on this community from a UI/UX standpoint, but both Bluetooth and audio device switching are genuinely terrible experiences in Windows. I find myself pairing audio devices from scratch all the time on my work laptop, and it’s painful every time.
Ehh their UI sucks moving copy and paste from the right click menu to the top of the right click menu as icons sucks.
I use a focusrite scarlet 2i2 2nd gen audio interface for my microphone. The driver hasn’t been updated for a few years now but even when it was recent, I had issues with my mic quality randomly breaking, making me sound like a robot to my friends. I have had zero issues since switching to linux without even installing any special software for it.
The only thing I kind of miss is that windows allowed me to mix down both mic inputs to a single mono channel whereas on linux both inputs are presented as separate mono channels. I suppose I could fix it with some 3rd party tools but I did not miss it too much so far.
Glad I don’t use Win11
It’s a little less terrible if you can use the LTSC IoT version.
Yep, been over a year now on Linux, I’ll never go back.
About a year and a half ago I got a laptop to prepare for moving countries. Figured “I’ll probably distro hop a bit see what I like so let’s start pretty plain with Arch”. I’ve uh never distro hopped, Arch my beloved, great daily driver does exactly what I tell it to
My issue with Arch is all the other stuff it installs when installing packages. It is annoying.
It really is.
I’ve been a Unix maximalist since I can remember, but I’ve never convinced my peers to follow.
Since windows 11 has dropped, every single one of them now has a Linux machine for one purpose or another. Some are now considering a complete purge of MS products, as I have.
It’s happening.
Only thing I’m having a little trouble getting away from is are some office products and email hosting.
Once Gmail has the equivalent of shared inboxes, I’ll switch to them for my business hosting.
In case people here are not aware, I can create free email address with my domain name for receiving only.
This is great because I don’t really need to send mail for each account I receive mail at, but with Gmail you have to pay for each one as far as I know.
You can set up a catch-all for your domain, didn’t cost extra last time I checked. Granted, it’s been 15 years or so…
In case people here are not aware, I can create free email address with my domain name for receiving only.
You should be able in gmail, under the Accounts tab in Settings, to add accounts to “Send mail as”. Not sure how much of your problem that solves, though, if any.
Friend!
It’s been a long road, getting from there to here.
It’s glorious, isn’t it?
They’re isn’t one positive thing to say about it at all. Not even one.
It’s not Millennium Edition?
Of course there is. It’s compatible with almost any software and hardware (if you ignore their arbitrary W11 “requirements” which you can in most cases) that you can get your hands on. Microsoft and Windows deserve most of the flack they’re getting, but we should be honest.
Take Linux as a comparison. Compatibility is pretty good nowadays and is only getting better, especially with all the work going into Proton from both Valve and the community. But certain things are simply not supported which can make it either difficult or straight up impossible to get to work. Not that Linux is to blame for that, of course, but it is reality.
Almost any software or hardware? Better to phrase it as almost all desktop software
Well yes, but this whole thread is about Windows 11 which is a desktop OS, so I thought that went without saying.
Sure there is. Sometimes it doesn’t boot. And nobody can deny that it’s been great for driving linux adoption!
There’s one thing Windows does that I miss. The big preview pane in file explorer.
Dolphin seems to have that feature. Menu (the three lines button in the top right) > Show Panels > Information
Yep don’t believe me see what kids on windows are doing(fixing what should have been already fixed years back)
windows in general has always been a failure. I love how now I can solve most problems
