By: Lennie
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/139987/is-2024-the-year-of-windows-on-the-desktop/#comment-10440889">Artem S. Tashkinov</a>.
"Microsoft certification program, i.e. decent ISVs sign their applications, so you know there are safe."
euh... I think you are mistaken.
I can go to a website to order a code singing cert, they check if the company exists and there it stops.
I can sign any software I want with it. Nothing is checked as far as I can see. Only thing we do know: it's the time of the signature and signed by the organization with this name. Which also doesn't add much, the reason for the Extended Validation certificates in browsers aka 'green bar' went away is because the certificate issuing organizations would validate any organization, you can create the same company in an other state or country with the same name and they'll gladly issue a certificate for it. This is why browsers removed most if not all EV cert user interface elements.
By: Lennie
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/139987/is-2024-the-year-of-windows-on-the-desktop/#comment-10440873">kurkosdr</a>.
"I understand why Microsoft should keep Disk Management, Device Manager, and Windows Media Player unmolested"
Thought I had read somewhere Windows 12 would try and remove such things...?
By: Lennie
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/139987/is-2024-the-year-of-windows-on-the-desktop/#comment-10440866">Kochise</a>.
It does warn you.
Windows can do the same thing, at least on server, it's called Windows Server Core and you can go from regular Windows Server with desktop to Windows Server Core with a graphical command line online.
By: Lennie
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/139987/is-2024-the-year-of-windows-on-the-desktop/#comment-10440853">Alfman</a>.
> XML formats with binary structure
I don't look into this often, but last time I looked it seemed to have been XML, XML and XML.
Can you give an example ?
By: Milo_Hoffman
Yes for WINDOWS 10. I am advising everyone I know and family to IMMEDIATELY re-install Windows 10 if there system was upgraded to 11 and how to keep it from being auto-upgraded. Windows 11 is a PRIVACY HORROR SHOW.
By: If your immutable Linux desktop uses Flatpak, I’m going to have a bad time – OSAlert
[…] I’m currently testing out the latest GNOME release on my workstation (the one that I used to conclude Windows is simply not ready for the desktop), using Fedora of course, and on GNOME I use the Mastodon application Tuba. While I mostly write in […]
By: Alfman
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/139987/is-2024-the-year-of-windows-on-the-desktop/#comment-10441044">bert64</a>.
bert64,
<blockquote>This is what you get when development is in the open, every stage is visible including the buggiest ones.
...
Windows development happens behind closed doors, so you don’t get to see the worst bugs except when an internal build occasionally leaks. Install one of those leaked internal builds and you can encounter all kinds of crazy bugs including core functionality that completely fails to work, noone judges the released product based on the instability of a beta.
</blockquote>
+1
I think that's a good point. FOSS projects may air a lot more dirty laundry when they operate in the open, but it is realistic to expect that it also happens at commercial companies, they're just less exposed because most of the internal drama is hidden behind closed doors and non-disclosure agreements.
By: bert64
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/139987/is-2024-the-year-of-windows-on-the-desktop/#comment-10440954">Artem S. Tashkinov</a>.
This is what you get when development is in the open, every stage is visible including the buggiest ones.
The kernel is an ongoing development tree, intended for use by developers and people who know what they're doing. End users are expected to use the kernel versions supplied by the major distributions, which don't have these problems.
Windows development happens behind closed doors, so you don't get to see the worst bugs except when an internal build occasionally leaks. Install one of those leaked internal builds and you can encounter all kinds of crazy bugs including core functionality that completely fails to work, noone judges the released product based on the instability of a beta.
By: grimpanda
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/139987/is-2024-the-year-of-windows-on-the-desktop/#comment-10440959">sukru</a>.
WingetUI is a fantastic GUI meta-package manager, I can't even imagine using Windows these days without it - https://github.com/marticliment/WingetUI
By: Windows 11 is now automatically enabling OneDrive folder backup without asking permission – OSAlert
[…] Just further confirmation that Windows 11 is not ready for the desktop. […]
By: Alfman
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/139987/is-2024-the-year-of-windows-on-the-desktop/#comment-10440999">enryfox</a>.
enryfox,
<blockquote>I would never take LInux as an example of consistent UI – but no other OS comes to mind as an example of consistency: most projects starts with UI guidelines, but they are then ignored by third party developers and often even from UI developers themselves</blockquote>
Yeah, win2k had good guidelines and microsoft practiced what they preached, but for better or worse it would only be for a limited time. The problem with consistency is that it doesn't sell. People start wondering what they're paying for if it's not visibly different.
<blockquote>As for apps, I rarely encountered an app that would not install on windows, you get a mix and match of installers, but typically i had no big problem installing windows XP app on Windows 10. In linux, if you step out of the distro package manager, it is a jungle of incompatible libraries and requirements.</blockquote>
I concur. While the repos typically beat windows on ease of use, they only contain curated FOSS software, and maybe not the version you need. If you never need to leave the repos then life is good, but when you do dependency hell will be waiting for you :(
On a similar note, compiling from source is no walk in the park either. There are so many different standards there may as well be none. Auto make/conf tools often rope you into time consuming debug sessions, which shouldn't be. Usability-wise it's a failure. Even replacements like cmake, often produce version incompatibilities. We should fix this, but in practice we seem to be stuck with a mashup of incompatible solutions and it's been a huge headache for software development. Maybe someone will invent a meta-builder that doesn't create yet another incompatible standard but instead offers an easy abstraction around everyone else's custom standards to try and provide some degree of unity.
Does everyone remember when old software just worked after being extracted with no install process/system changes/registry settings or any of that crap? It was the epitome of the "Keep It Simple Stupid" principal. Uninstalling was just as simple. It was so much better than scattered mess operating systems have become today. Go back to the basics!
By: enryfox
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/139987/is-2024-the-year-of-windows-on-the-desktop/#comment-10440969">bert64</a>.
@bert64
I think you misunderstood my comment; linux UI is equally inconsistent to Windows. I would never take LInux as an example of consistent UI - but no other OS comes to mind as an example of consistency: most projects starts with UI guidelines, but they are then ignored by third party developers and often even from UI developers themselves
As for apps, I rarely encountered an app that would not install on windows, you get a mix and match of installers, but typically i had no big problem installing windows XP app on Windows 10. In linux, if you step out of the distro package manager, it is a jungle of incompatible libraries and requirements.
By: Kochise
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/139987/is-2024-the-year-of-windows-on-the-desktop/#comment-10440966">bert64</a>.
"then you have Gnome, KDE, Android or others – and these generally do offer a fairly consistent experience"
I understand what Linux is, but the average Office user don't and don't give a fuck, they just want their computer to be usable without having to worry much about where his files are, the permissions, the console, etc. And also be IT manageable. All what "Linux" isn't. Nice for a coder, not for a user pov. You have to now too much to use it effectively.
By: freehacker
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/139987/is-2024-the-year-of-windows-on-the-desktop/#comment-10440971">ssokolow (Hey, OSAlert, U2F/WebAuthn is broken on Firefox!)</a>.
Such a long paragraph to describe what GNU is about.
By: Alfman
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/139987/is-2024-the-year-of-windows-on-the-desktop/#comment-10440957">Alfman</a>.
Edit: portal -> portrayal
By: Alfman
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/139987/is-2024-the-year-of-windows-on-the-desktop/#comment-10440957">Alfman</a>.
Artem S. Tashkinov,
<blockquote>Thom hasn’t said a word about how Linux is buggy/crappy/regression-prone out of the box, and how it features no highly coveted software compatibility which is a staple of decent OS.</blockquote>
You are entitled to your own opinion, just like everyone else is.
<blockquote>Meanwhile I pointed out at how a f-cking core OS feature was broken and you just glossed over it. LMAO. Imagine Microsoft broke CIFS in Windows. The entire f-cking world would start talking about it. Linux kernel developers breaking the NFS server, whelp, “unrelated criticism of linux” and “Use whatever OS works for you”. It doesn’t work, dude, do you understand it? Basic f-cking features get broken left and right all the time.</blockquote>
I'm not going to tell you there are no linux issues, but you keep pretending this doesn't also happen on windows. The truth is you look at windows support forums and there are tons of people experiencing issues there too. For decades now some of my most consistent jobs have been fixing windows problems, seriously. Just because this is true doesn't mean I go harassing people who prefer windows for their preferences. Some people prefer windows despite it's problems just like some people prefer linux despite it's problems. You are entitled to your own opinions, but just know that your portal of linux isn't strictly representative of the experiences of typical linux users. Some users prefer linux in spite of all your cherry picked nitpicks.