I am glad that I don't need to use Windows anymore. When I did, the LTSC version (the one made for ATM and Kiosks) was the only one that was productivity-friendly.
Microsoft doesn't want to accept that no one cares about Windows, and the OS is the thing that gets you to the thing you want to do.
I saw 2 instances of people getting "updating windows" in their personal laptops when they tried to present something and lost everyone's time. I imagine this happens a lot of times every day. And now they are just breaking everyone's system by forcing updates as well.
If nobody cared about windows there wouldn't be any posts like this one everyday on HN. The problem is people do care and need to use windows which makes all these stupidity by Microsoft the recent years frustrating.
I am personally just a lurker. Windows used to be my only OS for a -very- long time (DOS 2.x, yes 2, was my first MS OS). Now I click on these just to see how far it has fallen. It is like that friend you drifted away from and now you look at their FB posts now and again to watch as they get crazier and crazier.
I think the point is that they don't care about Windows in particular as much as the my care about having something that works out of the box for them, and for years that was Windows. Not many people really want Windows to iterate with new features, and in practice it seems that they aren't really able to push those features without breaking the stability, which is the one feature people do actually want, and that leads to backlash like this. The best Windows is the one that gets out of the way and lets users not care about it.
It's more like "nobody cares about Windows" as in: no one is impressed that you added Copilot into Notepad, no one wants you to move the cheese, they just want to get on with their actual work without being interrupted by "good things coming your way" which is inevitably just more annoyance, more bugs, more Copilot buttons.
Most people would probably have preferred if Windows had zero feature updates* since Windows 7, just security patches.
* Well, OK, fine. Task Manager is better now, I'll grant them that one.
I'm not certain what point you are attempting to make, The size of Windows install has not smaller and therefore improving install time, but rather the hardware has gotten so much faster. Installing from a USB 3 key is so much faster than floppy or optical media, as well as NVMe drives are receiving the data vs old spinning rust drives.
You can find complaints about Windows Vista, but then find praise around Windows 7. Being better than a single point in the past doesn't imply a trend. The perceived quality varies between releases, and it's clear that Windows 11 has dipped in that regard.
Even windows 7 had complaints when released but it kept improving, on the other hand windows 11 is deteriorating in both stability and anything new added is either half baked or unnecessary borderline user hostile.
If for example you take a bus to work, and starting this month, the bus shows up only every hour (last year it was every 10 minutes), would you be frustrated?
But if you complained about this and someone said "Well in the 90's this bus showed up only every 4 hours!"...
LTSC is what mainstream Windows should be. It doesn't load up a bunch of apps you don't ask for or throw ads in your face all the time. Solid, dependable, reliable, and stable.
Msoft understands the position very well, that's precisely why updates are so bad. Windows is just an entrypoint. The actual critical parts are office suite, teams, visual studio & stuff - they are the cash cows and can't be easily replaced, hence windows will be picked even if it's hated
I always find this wording funny; the “limited” conveys no information but downplays the issue in a non-specific way. I wish we could have standardized writing guidelines for press reports, to call out such weasel words
I deployed it to a few machines here at my job and thankfully we've had zero issues. The outlook issue is for POP accounts and if you're using outlook, you're probably using Exchange. The RDP issue is for modern RDP clients like the Windows App (we use the the old RDP app since we're mostly on prem) and so far no one has experienced any boot issues. We use one OEM across a few models. I'm hoping it stays this smooth one it's fully deployed.
Last Thursday windows 11 forced this update on my Acer machine. It caused me BSOD: inaccessible boot device, so I had to reformat my machine to get Windows running again.
So I am now very wary of this Out of Band Update[0], especially when it's not mentioned whether the latest update solve my issue or not. I don't know the same problem is still there, or whether this update makes the problem any better or worse.
Ugh. I wondered what that was. I had to reformat due to inaccessible boot device as well, I thought the SSD had gone bad.
But I left it after the install, annoyed into abandoning the laptop to the shelf at the no-network first-login workaround to avoid a Microsoft account. I hate all the fresh laptop setup that's required afterwards to make Windows tolerable.
> so I had to reformat my machine to get Windows running again.
I can hear everyone in choir saying "but why would you do that?"
If Microsoft would ever do that to me in an update, I would install an immutable Linux distro on my machine and run windows as a VM (only if I had a strong requirement for it). That way you can do snapshots you can restore from easily.
The only reason I use Windows is probably the same reason a lot of people use Windows: the company I work for requires it. It's a small company and they don't want IT to have to support more than one OS, so I _get_ why, but man do I hate it.
Linux on my non-work machine tho. Windows 11 made me rip off the bandaid and get rid of the windows dual boot I very occasionally used for some old software.
In a job interview last, year a CEO told me he was personally a fan of Linux at home but hated Linux and MacOS as workstation in a corporate env because it was a pain in the ass to manage compliance.
Not sure if it is really the case or just lack of knowledge, I think you can do a long way with tools such as puppet and chief.
I switched to Macs almost completely for personal and devlopment use about 13 or 14 years ago. However, last year I started a 3d printing side hustle, and got an HP laptop for running the print studio since the amount of hardware I could get for less than $1000 was hard to ignore. However, things like this, and other weird issues (my fonts have gone all wonky a couple of times after random updates) make me want to switch it over to a Linux distro (even though the software support for what I need is much better in the Windows world, and in some cases, better than even on the Mac)
A number of the Autodesk tools and Solidworks, for modeling. Slicers can use APIs native to Windows to perform model repairs. Bambu Lab's farm manager only runs on Windows.
Not sure about Autodesk, but have you tried FreeCAD? I own a perpetual SolidWorks license but haven't even activated it. Used it quite lot on another license but I just prefer FreeCAD so much. It does choke on high primitive counts though. Probably has worse FEA (invokes external simulation tools) but that is an assumption, never did FEA. Mostly did parametric CAD, not much technical drawings either, can't say much about that.
For slicers I use PrusaSlicer on Linux (don't have a Prusa; it's really good for generic slicing). But I can see how Bambu stuff could be an issue if it's Win only and not Wineable.
Bambu (and other slicers in the same Prusa Slicer family) runs fine on Windows and Mac. It's the automatic model repair that gives it a leg up on Windows.
The Creality one runs decent on Mac and Windows, sadly on Linux its a nightmare, and technically why I ditched Ubuntu / popOS for Arch Linux, but I can't help but still feel it runs a little weirder + its out of date compared to Mac and Windows versions. My buddy used to use Orca slicer on my printer, that one iirc should run on Mac too, but I havent tried it.
SuperSlicer, PrusaSlicer and Creality Print work fine for me using Debian. Orca Slicer runs but reliably crashes when opening the preferences window, something which it has been doing for a long time according to the bug report. Cura also works fine om Debian for me. Which problems did you have running any of these?
Does Creality have special changes made to the slicer? If it's just the profilem, then running the PrusaSlicer app image might be the easiest. PrusaSlicer appimage has always worked perfectly on Ubuntu 22 LTS.
Not the person you replied to, but I’ll go. Try experimenting with ham radio on anything but Windows. As far as I can tell, they revoke your Apple developer’s license and confiscate your Linux install disks when you start selling radio hardware.
That’s not completely true. There’s good Linux and Mac software for lots of things. But approximately 100% of radio manufacturers ship Windows software. Far fewer support anything else.
I bought a new radio at Christmas. Before buying it, I ruled out alternatives that didn’t have 1st party or good 3rd party support. It’s like trying to buy a scanner in 2003.
> Just today I dumped Windows 11 and moved to Linux, lots to learn but wow, so nice not to be inside their walls.
Well, best of luck. I don’t regret switching from Windows to Linux decades ago, I learned a lot, but I can’t say the problems ever stopped. If anything, I ran into more issues than I did on Windows, many of them caused by things I did at the command line, and others due to quirks or bugs in open‑source software. Still, it was a long learning journey that ended up helping my career. I’m not sure you’ll have the same steep learning curve we did back then, but I hope the switch pays off for you.
I've used Linux (and FreeBSD) for decades. My first linux distribution was Yggdrasil Plug & Play Linux Fall 1994 (https://github.com/jtsagata/Yggdrasil-1994). Windows stuck around for gaming.
My experience may have been different as Linux was less mature back then, but ultimately i had a lot of "issues" that required Linux knowledge to fix, so while it was "fine" for me, i wouldn't push it to my family for day to day usage.
Since then i've moved pretty much everyone to Mac. My parents, my in-laws, wife, kids, all use Macs, and the number of "support" calls have fallen from weekly to "once or twice per year", and that's compared to when they ran Windows.
Linux on the desktop is certainly better than it was a decade ago (i still lurk and install new releases from time to time), but it's still a far cry from being optimized for the average user that just needs things to work. Not saying it won't ever get there, but it will take some effort to make it frictionless.
Yeah, just last year I had several issues with a Gigabyte board that refused to boot Linux regardless of the UEFI incantation, paritions being used, or distribution, yet it had no problems booting the very same M.2 SSD if plugged via an external case.
Eventually it gets tiring, I still remember Yggdrasil, my first distro was Slackware 2.0, bundled on Linux Unleashed first edition in 1995.
Fixed my son's computer by shredding all evidence of Microsoft off his computer and installing Linux Devuan OS. Fortunatly his files were all stored on his separate ssd dut to a previous issue.
This shouldn't have happened, but my advice is to have a backup of your PCs that can be easily restored, regardless of the OS. I've had boot device hardware failures, file systems corrupted,etc.. with Linux and Windows alike (not yet with little mac though, I assume it's just a matter of time).
Microsoft needs to go back to basics and keep the OS dead simple. No AI cruft. AI is good only for certain categories and specific ways of integration. It falls apart quickly if you do not know how to glue things together properly and just use it in anything and everything (for example: adding AI to Notepad was the stupidest thing Microsoft could do).
Contributing to AI fatigue among consumers is not the way to retain shareholder value. Tastefully integrated AI is what will bring enthusiasm among consumers, which will generate REAL revenues (not inflated valuations) and have a direct impact on the bottom line. It is ridiculous to destroy existing user base just to satisfy some vanity metrics on AI usage.
Windows is so big and dominant, the only way that they can lose market share is to shoot themselves in the foot. And that's exactly what they are doing every now and then. But the question is, when will real Windows apocalypse begin?
You mean the one I just downloaded and updated my laptop with? It installed OK.
I usually use MacOS and Linux, it's just that some software is Windows only, and I run MacOS on Apple Silicon - the windows program I needed only uses x86-64 architecture, so I can't use parallels (AFAIK).
I'm kind of hoping I get an update that bricks my laptop so I can install Debian over this MS Windows hellscape and run windows on a VM when needed. I may do it anyways after I get fed up with nagging MS messages and workarounds.
And noone asks why Windows looks, feels and operates the way it is. Isn't it strange that a megacorp creates these watermelon headed monstrosities and it gets worse after each iteration?
Back when I used Windows, there were plenty of boot looping updates in Windows Vista, 7 and 10. You had three options. Either you disable Windows Updates, reinstall Windows or find a way to delete or prevent the specific patch that breaks your Windows installation.
On Windows 10 I was forced to disable Windows Updates altogether, because the updates never finished even after running overnight. I have stopped using Windows since 2018.
You don't really need Windows for gaming anymore unless you're playing the games that absolutely insist on kernel-level anti-cheat. Proton is extremely good on Linux these days.
> unless you're playing the games that absolutely insist on kernel-level anti-cheat
Sadly, I do :( Valorant is the main one that keeps my Windows partition around, for better or worse. Also sadly still there's some performance overhead for Linux gaming today, I hope that goes away in the future (for Intel/Nvidia cards especially)
Not being an incompetent or inexperienced Windows user, I'm vanishingly unlikely to be infected by a bot network trojan... and if that does happen, rest assured, I'll notice it.
Windows Update, on the other hand, is part of my threat model.
What is "Tay Bridge syndrome"? There are no Google hits. If you're going to use an obscure term (or make one up) then please define it.
Is it a reference to the Tay Bridge disaster? Looking at the Wikipedia article [1], it didn't seem to have anything to do with losing organisational knowledge due to retirement.
Microsoft doesn't want to accept that no one cares about Windows, and the OS is the thing that gets you to the thing you want to do.
I saw 2 instances of people getting "updating windows" in their personal laptops when they tried to present something and lost everyone's time. I imagine this happens a lot of times every day. And now they are just breaking everyone's system by forcing updates as well.
Most people would probably have preferred if Windows had zero feature updates* since Windows 7, just security patches.
* Well, OK, fine. Task Manager is better now, I'll grant them that one.
Reinstalling Windows used to take an entire afternoon. Now I can do it in an hour.
Basically Windows and computers in general have always been frustrating.
It was always bad. It is now easier to fix it. We are making progress lol.
If for example you take a bus to work, and starting this month, the bus shows up only every hour (last year it was every 10 minutes), would you be frustrated?
But if you complained about this and someone said "Well in the 90's this bus showed up only every 4 hours!"...
Windows LTSC is meant for organisations favoring stability over new features.
Funnily enough, Windows IoT also has an LTSC version.
I always find this wording funny; the “limited” conveys no information but downplays the issue in a non-specific way. I wish we could have standardized writing guidelines for press reports, to call out such weasel words
So I am now very wary of this Out of Band Update[0], especially when it's not mentioned whether the latest update solve my issue or not. I don't know the same problem is still there, or whether this update makes the problem any better or worse.
0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750358
But I left it after the install, annoyed into abandoning the laptop to the shelf at the no-network first-login workaround to avoid a Microsoft account. I hate all the fresh laptop setup that's required afterwards to make Windows tolerable.
I can hear everyone in choir saying "but why would you do that?"
If Microsoft would ever do that to me in an update, I would install an immutable Linux distro on my machine and run windows as a VM (only if I had a strong requirement for it). That way you can do snapshots you can restore from easily.
My bread and butter is Windows WPF cum AutoCAD-like application. My users are all on Windows. So I have to develop on Windows.
Linux on my non-work machine tho. Windows 11 made me rip off the bandaid and get rid of the windows dual boot I very occasionally used for some old software.
Not sure if it is really the case or just lack of knowledge, I think you can do a long way with tools such as puppet and chief.
Please elaborate; can you name a few tools and what you use them for? Just curious.
For slicers I use PrusaSlicer on Linux (don't have a Prusa; it's really good for generic slicing). But I can see how Bambu stuff could be an issue if it's Win only and not Wineable.
That’s not completely true. There’s good Linux and Mac software for lots of things. But approximately 100% of radio manufacturers ship Windows software. Far fewer support anything else.
I bought a new radio at Christmas. Before buying it, I ruled out alternatives that didn’t have 1st party or good 3rd party support. It’s like trying to buy a scanner in 2003.
Well, best of luck. I don’t regret switching from Windows to Linux decades ago, I learned a lot, but I can’t say the problems ever stopped. If anything, I ran into more issues than I did on Windows, many of them caused by things I did at the command line, and others due to quirks or bugs in open‑source software. Still, it was a long learning journey that ended up helping my career. I’m not sure you’ll have the same steep learning curve we did back then, but I hope the switch pays off for you.
My experience may have been different as Linux was less mature back then, but ultimately i had a lot of "issues" that required Linux knowledge to fix, so while it was "fine" for me, i wouldn't push it to my family for day to day usage.
Since then i've moved pretty much everyone to Mac. My parents, my in-laws, wife, kids, all use Macs, and the number of "support" calls have fallen from weekly to "once or twice per year", and that's compared to when they ran Windows.
Linux on the desktop is certainly better than it was a decade ago (i still lurk and install new releases from time to time), but it's still a far cry from being optimized for the average user that just needs things to work. Not saying it won't ever get there, but it will take some effort to make it frictionless.
Eventually it gets tiring, I still remember Yggdrasil, my first distro was Slackware 2.0, bundled on Linux Unleashed first edition in 1995.
Except I think the problem happened just before Jan 13
But symptoms were almost exactly what TFA says
Can't believe how low Microsoft have sunk and how fast in the last few years
Windows 11 update KB5074109 is breaking systems – Microsoft says uninstall it (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46725053)
I usually use MacOS and Linux, it's just that some software is Windows only, and I run MacOS on Apple Silicon - the windows program I needed only uses x86-64 architecture, so I can't use parallels (AFAIK).
I'm kind of hoping I get an update that bricks my laptop so I can install Debian over this MS Windows hellscape and run windows on a VM when needed. I may do it anyways after I get fed up with nagging MS messages and workarounds.
Now, where's the Louis Rossman video on this?
On Windows 10 I was forced to disable Windows Updates altogether, because the updates never finished even after running overnight. I have stopped using Windows since 2018.
it's great
my only remaining windows PC is for games, and it's on its own vlan with its own external IP
if it gets hacked: I simply don't care
Sadly, I do :( Valorant is the main one that keeps my Windows partition around, for better or worse. Also sadly still there's some performance overhead for Linux gaming today, I hope that goes away in the future (for Intel/Nvidia cards especially)
not quite there for me yet I'm afraid!
it's an OS with constant built-in ads and spyware
it would have been considered malware in the 2000s
Windows Update, on the other hand, is part of my threat model.
Is it a reference to the Tay Bridge disaster? Looking at the Wikipedia article [1], it didn't seem to have anything to do with losing organisational knowledge due to retirement.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_Bridge_disaster