I was a poor young man, I refused to pay $100 to put windows on a hard drive I had installed into a hand-me-down desktop.
I found linux and made it work, through thick and thin. As a lazy jackass i somehow got skyrim to work through wine via copied and pasted terminal commands. wintetricks and all, i found it wildly difficult. Playing was almost as thrilling as seeing it work.
I have only ever attempted to make a linux ISO bootable drive through windows that one time, more than ten years ago. My wife was given a laptop with windows 11 installed and I wanted to install firefox.
what, the actual fuck, is “S” mode?
ctrl-alt-t “install that shit”!
A computer should not come with a subscription baked in. That’s trash. The issues i get through linux come from my failure to understand it and/or the walled gardens it hasn’t found its way into yet. The issues I experienced this evening on windows were there by design.
Thank you to all of the homies that make the weird and sometimes uncomfortable linux/ open-source community work. You guys are the shit.
Goated
Yo just for the record you made your life so much more difficult installing skyrim that way and not through steam\proton, even if you were pirating.
i have 15 years of experience and do infinite free linux troubleshooting on matrix if you want some help
I am not sure proton was a thing yet and if it was I was certainly not aware haha nowadays I’m all tapped into that. also, even beyond steam, lutris and bottles have made it kind of a walk in the park. my goodness. I wickedly appreciate that offer and If I’m ever so stumped that i need a lifeline I may take you up on it. Lately my whole goal is to git gud and make it work myself. It’s a journey and I’m getting way more confident in my ability to admin my own systems (and potentially anyone I can get to convert lol)
Playing was almost as thrilling as seeing it work.
This is GOLD!
I love your comparison of where issues come from on Linux vs Windows. That’s so apt (heh). Even after 10 years of using Linux, I never really thought of it that way.
It’s frustrating when any computer doesn’t do what you want; but you’re right, it’s infuriating when the problems are engineered to manipulate you into parting with your money, attention, or privacy.
(( insert anti-capitalist rant here ))
Any system that I own I want root on. If I can’t get root, then I don’t truly own it.
preach it, the capture of people into software ecosystems is getting so out of hand. I was thinking about microsoft vs apple, and while they do the same shit at least it seems to work well lol
The issues I experienced this evening on windows were there by design.
That’s exactly what has kept me loyal to Linux. When I do have an issue, at least no one designed the issue on purpose to abuse me.
Flatpaks have entered the chat.
/s
Top level shitposting
In windows defense (no means sticking up for them now) It was a pretty unobtrusive OS in Windows 7 and arguably in Windows 8 (but don’t get me started with the UI/UX choices). Windows 10 was decent and for the first year or two felt good running it. But after that yikes…… Then windows 11 comes to the scene and I lost the plot. Looking forward to October though when people throw out their 7th Gen Processor rigs. I got no issues rocking an I7-6700K that is not AI ready
I model all of my UI choices off of old(er) school windows. I have a bar, the menu is left. I was a pirate before anything and I learned on windows. There was a point where it made sense that the world used it, I think that time has passed. I really am such a pleb that hardware issues only effect me if it doesn’t work. In this I guess I am saying that the freedom to abuse and break my hardware is important. I don’t want to sell my soul or be told “no”. install the program, I know it was written for windows. I don’t want a microsoft account.
Edit: my drunk ass had said older(er)
I model all of my UI choices off of old(er) school windows
Same lol. The casual observer wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between Windows XP and my Debian install, bar for the fact that I have a search bar in the start menu.
Are people going to throw them out? With tarrifs especially i think a lot of people will just use unsecure hardware.
Large corporations with any semblance of a security policy will be dumping theirs for sure. Even if everyone in the organisation needed one, the cost of a new(er) laptop is a drop in the bucket compared to other expenses, especially when compared to outages caused by cybersecurity issues.
Most of them already did. My own laptop is a latitude 7400 i got after a business replaced it for cheap. They update their lineups regularly anyway usually. So most will be windows 11 ready. I think this laptop would be able to run windows 11 too altho idk cuz i use debian and have never tried it.
The issues i get through linux come from my failure to understand it
I’d argue that’s true of any user’s experience with any OS, including what you just experienced with Windows.
Getting out of S mode is actually very trivial, certainly moreso than many of the changes one might be expected to make in Linux. There’s a certain type of user that “S Mode” is intended for. You’re not that user, and Linux is likely to be a negative experience for that user.
Never heard of that mode, what is it?
Imagine turning Windows into an even shittier version of itself, and you’ve got S mode.
Can’t install shit unless it’s from the MS Store. Can’t use a browser unless it’s Edge. Not sure what other stupid shit it enforces. It’s supposed to harden the system, but I find that hard to believe.
S is operationally analogous to using a Chromebook.
There are people who will never need more than that.
We are not these people…
Nobody should be those people. Those people are constantly giving the industry a reason to water everything down and make things as overpriced and limited as possible.
Ah, like a “stable” mode? Honestly it makes sense from a user support perspective. More locked down, more predictable, easier to secure. In the same way that you can’t hack a brick, and similarly useful.
I was thinking a “shit” mode but “stable” does sound nicer lol.
Heh, I’m probably in the minority, but I like the idea of different windows “modes”. I’ve long wanted msft to make versions of windows for different users rather than a one-size-fits-all product. I just wanted it because I’m a power user who wanted something more stripped down and configurable, not a boomer who wants something that won’t act as a conduit between my ignorance and scammers.
But it’s cool, they can do whatever they want with windows now, they’ve made it clear they don’t want me as a user.
I hadn’t either until last night. From what I gathered it disables the installation of any softwares that don’t come from the microsoft store i.e. .EXE files for programs that were downloaded from the browser. Getting out of S mode is as easy as creating a microsoft account. I had no interest in that for a variety of reasons.
You can disable it and run windows like normal.
Except they use a bunch of dark patterns to discourge any user from doing it by calling it ‘Developer mode’ and throwing a bunch of scary sounding warning screens at you when all you’re doing is disabling the forced use of the Microsoft store.
It’s a super scummy move that will be very effective. Many people will just use the Microsoft store and Microsoft will, once again, have used their monopoly to manipulate the market by forcing their own product to be used (like they got in trouble for in the IE vs Netscape Navigator case)
This is exactly what Google did on Android.
Did they? Installing APKs doesn’t require an account afaik, just a settings toggle (not even in developer mode, just the regular settings).
Okay, so it’s just similar to what Google did on Android.
I guess I just didn’t have the patience enough to even get that far with it haha All I could think of was the Netscape thing. It was sooo obvious when i opened edge and got halfway into typing “google chrome” when a giant banner pops up and says “you don’t have to install another browser! please bro! Don’t do it!”
Oh yeah, Microsoft has really leaned into the dark patterns.
You don’t ever need to launch edge, you can just use winget now:
winget install Mozilla.Firefoxor
winget install Google.Chromewell man, I was scrambling looking for a terminal to actually do something and It was disabled in S mode O.o I will keep that in mind though should I ever be called to mess with another windows machine.
Oh yeah, you gotta get rid of S mode before you can do essentially anything.
I’ve only dealt with one laptop that came with that ‘feature’ so I just ignored all of the warnings that they’ve posted around the official way of disabling it (I mean “Enabling Developer Mode”, i.e. regular Windows)
Limits app installations to those on the Microsoft Store and also disables Terminal / Powershell.
Makes for a super simple tamper-proof system that is similar to a Chromebook but a little more versatile. It’s a good solution for users who are all-in on the Microsoft ecosystem - think those who live their lives in Edge, Word, Excel. The restrictions keep them out of hot water.
Those restrictions are obviously annoying to those who want to install regular x86_64 apps from an .exe / .msi file or use Powershell / Terminal / CMD.
Switching out of S mode is very easy: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/switching-out-of-s-mode-in-windows-4f56d9be-99ec-6983-119f-031bfb28a307
Its amazing now a days. I still have a windows machine because im to lazy about moving over a small use case. I can’t believe how much better my browsers which is like 90% of my usage and other programs run in linux and its hard to even pinpoint but some ways the programs react feel better but I can’t put my finger on exactly what it is.
I also have a single Windows machine remaining but it’s specifically because I have tons of services and stuff on there and it’s fine. It’s Windows 7 Pro and does its job. No need to fix what ain’t broke. All my other systems I changed over to Linux many years ago.
Nowadays when I see someone have trouble in Windows I just shake my head and express sadness. What a shame you gotta be using that sewage.
Linux still sometimes brings me back to the C64 and Amiga days and and nights of fiddling and figuring things out. Learning experiences and fun times.
