I’m hearing a lotta bitchin’ about Windows and not enough uninstalling.
survivorship bias - those who have uninstalled, are not bitching about windows anymore
Can personally confirm, linux has been such a blissful experience all the frustration just evaporated, no need for such reckless hate.
I typed “add or remove programs” which is verbatim the name of the shortcut, clicked enter, and it searched Bing for the phrase.
Windows search bar is useless.
What dont people just disable that?
Certainly it looks like your trying to post a meme on Lemmy 👍🔥 Do you need help with that? Here’s my top memes brought to you by Raid Of Warfare get the new frog togs skin only $4.99.
Would you like to open this in edge? 💪🤔
Would you like to open this in edge? 💪🤔
I spent time over the holidays setting up edge on a relative’s laptop.
One where I could’t enable the play store.
Long story short, he has to run two bash scripts and can use it through a VM with debian 12 with KDE, because I tried to install wine on there last year.
jfc thats stupid
why did they want edge in linux? (if im understanding correctly)
Because he is the star of the hit IRL game “Boomers & Banks”
Someone told him to buy a Chromebook, and then he got a mail from his bank that he had to stop using Microsoft explorer and start using edge instead, so he wanted me to install edge on his Chromebook.
Can’t log in to admin menu, had to launch Linux VM in Chromebook.
DNS kept resetting so i made a script to update DNS and one to launch KDE
wow thats stupid its literally in the name of the device
… Edge is in Chromebook’s name?
If anyone wants a fix for this, yes I know Windows sucks etc, I have to use it for my job:
Press Win + R, type gpedit.msc, and hit Enter.
Navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Search.
Double-click Do not allow web search and set it to Enabled.
Double-click Don’t search the web or display web results in Search and set it to Enabled.
Click Apply and OK.
Why do people still suggest using Group Policy for this?
It’s complicated for the average user, it’s non-existent for the vast majority (Windows Home doesn’t give access to
gpedit.msc).Just go Search -> Settings -> turn off Web Search, like a normal person. Job done.
In many if not most cases, you can just add the registry entry for the setting, even in home versions, though to your point, it’s harder than it needs to be.
Really, it shouldn’t be an issue in the first place, but here we are.
Really, it shouldn’t be an issue in the first place, but here we are.
The average user utilises this feature quite a bit (as exemplified by the fact that the feature still exists - the dreaded telemetry is what would tell Microsoft if it was a dead feature). The average user would have no clue how to turn it on (or even that it’s a possibility). The “power user” has no problem turning the feature off.
Which is why the feature is on by default.
I’m skeptical. The average user is an office worker or creator that wants to get their task done and uses search engines of their choice in the browser of their choice for searching, not the start menu, because the start menu opens their query in edge instead of the browser they use.
I’m not convinced.
You know how every now and again the “pro user” community is pissed off because a useful feature gets axed?
That’s because the “pro user” community goes out of their way to fully disable telemetry, which means - according to the data Microsoft receives - nobody is using said features. No point in maintaining something that nobody uses, so it gets the axe.
Web search is not only still around, it’s being developed, and will get extra features in the upcoming updates.
That can get reverted when windows updates, the group policy doesn’t
No one on Lemmy should be running Windows Home lol
That can get reverted when windows updates, the group policy doesn’t
I set mine through settings 7 years ago on my laptop. It went from Windows 10 (with all updates) to Windows 11 (and all updates) and it didn’t change.
No one on Lemmy should be running Windows Home lol
Huh? Why not? Is this some sort of elitist cabal where we look down upon people who can’t dish out the extra money for features 99% of the population don’t need? Or are we somehow advocating for piracy for… clout?
Setting can revert, look at this thread. I regret replying, I was mostly joking about Windows Home but he main reason is because it requires a MS account though. Calm down.
Setting can revert, look at this thread
Like, I said:
I set mine through settings 7 years ago on my laptop. It went from Windows 10 (with all updates) to Windows 11 (and all updates) and it didn’t change.
It was around 10 years for my PC, although that didn’t go up to Win11.
No settings changes observed. I don’t know, maybe it’s a regional thing - I’m in the EU.
I regret replying, I was mostly joking about Windows Home but he main reason is because it requires a MS account though.
Well, when your joke sounds exactly like what a lot of people are actually saying, and you don’t add the infamous
/stag, don’t be surprised when someone doesn’t interpret it as a joke.
I wish to run linux but dad doesn’t understand shit about it so I’m not allowed to linux mint (chill im a noob) his laptop but he does want me to flash 11 on it because it’s been used a decade no resets and storage is full. the forced update actually deleted a summary i needed for a book project for school lol
when i get my computer to work, ill linux the thing, whatever i find most comfortable with as a safe distro, multibooted with whatever i’m experimenting with. all i need is a power supply, a case, and an on button
It’s complicated for the average user,
The irony that M$ does this to its users
Group Policy is not intended to be used by average users, it’s for system admins.
Average users have Settings, in which you need to click five times to get the same result as going through GP gives you.
Not sure what’s ironic about that.
Windows: where you enable to disable.
… Until the next update enables it again
Job security for the it admin <3 windows cares!
If this comment was suggesting a Linux command to fix an issue on Reddit, rather than Windows aerobics on Lemmy, it’d have a thousand comments about how Linux is not ready for end users because nobody wants to browse obscure options to fix usability problems.
But we all know that Windows isn’t ready for end users…
They still didn’t open a command line
True. They opened a dialogue box that uses a 2007 UI, changed one specific obscure policy, “enabled” the policy to “disable” the feature (how intuitive!) and are now praying it doesn’t reset after a system update. All of that to be able to use search, a feature computers had mastered in 2002. Let’s also hope Group Policy Editor is enabled on their version of Windows.
How user friendly! So lucky he didn’t have to use a command line interface!
I’m not your enemy here, I’m using cachyOS right now, I’m just saying how the layman thinks, and they are deeply afraid of a black screen to type commands.
Win + r and running gpedit.exe is simply a terminal command with extra steps.
I thought gpedit was a command line?
someone please correct me, I’m kinda confused
… Until the next update enables it again
that sort of thing on my work computer pissed me off so much that I finally swapped to Linux on two of my computers at home
lol yeah, but to be fair group policy usually doesn’t reset… Until it does. If it were a managed device the domain controller or MDM (Intune) would be resetting it every time you log in so it would stay off but with local group policy you don’t have that kind of guarantee. Strangely to me Intune doesn’t use grop policy and instead uses a separate configuration API that it calls “Configuration Service Providers” that can lock these settings too.
One of the reasons I run linux at home is that I don’t need to do this for my own computer that has been pretty stable on Debian with XFCE going on 20 years (different hardware too, just migrated home).
new linux user here (or trying to be, when i get a power supply, case, power button for frankenstein)
tips? also which distros, de, wm, etc would you recommend (yes im this new, i installed mint twice and grandma thinks its windows, so we’re good. also its just on her 1 computer she almost never touches)
So, we moving to Linux?
I like debian, cause its old and boring like me.
I like Devuan, because Debian went to the dark side.
Holy shit. Mac user here, that is wild.
Spotlight isn’t much better, ads creeping in, and in App Store, Apple TV, and tons of popups for apple subscriptions now
I guess I’m not running the latest macOS right now so I’m not seeing this stuff.
I have disabled everything except calculator, calendar and settings in results from apps and it’s somehow usable. Can’t disable stupid buttons.
Just Install Linux
Stop trying to use your computer and get back to consuming damn it. Why are users so difficult!
Seriously, has no one thought of the shareholders!??!
“someone died because the cpr tutorial had 5 unskippable minute long ads”
<joke> you all are worrying about your small problems, but what about John the shareholder? why isn’t anyone thinking of John the shareholder? </joke>
yeah I use tone indicators like html tags, no, you can’t stop me
I said show me the true terminal!
I just finished converting the last computer in my house to Linux. I do have a couple laptops that dual boot with Win 10 LTSC, but only use it for some niche things that absolutely require it.
I remember how the startmenu didnt suck on windows 7 and just worked. Good times. That was also the last time where you could find most of the options in one place.
Like in 2015 i was weirded out how a multibillion dollar company wasnt able to just make a new app for settings with feature parity to the old thing for their major new OS release. 10 years later: lmao.
Even the windows 10 startmenu didn’t suck if you took the time to customize it - The Metro tiles were nice, with grouping and folders making everything pretty neat and reducing the need for the standard program list to a minimum; I made mine 3 columns wide, which made pretty much every app i regularly needed available on the fly, using horizontal space that’s much more available than vertical one.
From memory I think it was 8.1 that introduced the right click menu. Everything you ever want to do with the start menu in one right click menu. No apps, just shortcuts to the terminal, shutdown/sleep, settings, etc. I never used the start menu again except by accident (or when hitting the windows key to search).
I just use OpenShell to make all of my Windows 10 machines’ Start menus into Windows 7 start menus hahaha. It even fixes search!
I haven’t any windows machines left (at least physical), and i’m pretty comfortable with KDE Plasma, although i’m sure i could make my start menu nicer. Damn, now i have to look into it lol
haha tell me how it goes (if you do, im curious cuz im a newbie)
I have to use a Win 11 machine for work.
If any of you are able to install software on the Win10/Win11 you’re using, install Microsoft PowerToys (Run). It adds a Spotlight-like run/search dialog with a hotkey press that works as you would expect an indexed search to work. I never use the windows start menu anymore due to the enshittification of it.
Unrelated to that exact image but I’m gonna rant about other windows shit because I feel like it.
Windows decided my page file needed to be 80 GB. I do not want it to be 90 GB. I go to the start menu and search up “page file” to see if there’s a settings menu. First result is a random file in an application’s directory that can’t be opened/displayed by any program on my PC, then a list of other unrelated files.
So I open Control Panel, hoping to find it where I did before, and I click on
System. What do you know, that menu no longer exists, and redirects to Windows Settings. Where do I go from here? Maybe the giantInstalled RAMsection because the page file is just a (overly simplified) method of extending your memory to your disk? No, of course not, that menu’s not actually a menu, it’s just a stat counter.Instead, I have to go to Device Specifications, then the section titled
Related links, then clickAdvanced system settings. Oh whaddaya know? Now I’m in the settings menu that used to be behind the originalSystemoption in Control Panel!Now I’m in the Advanced tab of that menu. But where do I go from here? That’s right,
Performance Options, and then anotherAdvancedtab!!!Then I have to click the
Changebutton, where Windows has… conveniently enabledSystem managed sizeso it could choose to set my page file to 80 GB.I edit, it, hit
Ok, have to hitApplyin the other menu too, have to close out the no-longer-needed Settings and Control Panel windows that only served as a maze to get me here in the first place, and THEN I can restart my computer to reduce the size of the page file, even though it is currently not in use by any program, and all data is in RAM, and the file could reasonably be shrunk by the system at any time.After the restart, this process begins all over again, because this is my third attempt, and Windows automatically reverts back to managing the size itself, and sets it to 80 GB. I have 5 GB of storage space left on my disk.
at this point arch linux is more user-friendly
unironically this
maybe even… what’s that one harder than arch? forgot what its called, think its artix?
copilot fuck off I’m already outsourcing some memory to google (don’t have to remember everything) I’m not outsourcing creativity to you.
The descent into advanced Advanced menus really is the cherry on top of this shit muffin.
That’s how you know that what you’re doing is real hacker shit. The secret
Bill GatesSatya Nadella doesn’t want you to know!
As I say, when you’re hunting around for something in Windows and you come across a dialog box that came straight from Windows XP… you’re getting close.
Had to go through this the other day. At the third consecutive “advanced settings” menu I wondered if this was some kind of sick joke
I empathize with this slightly non-ideal situation.
But can you imagine how insane it would be if you were told to do something like copy/paste
swapoff /swap && truncate -s 8G /swap && swapon /swapinto a terminal? TEXT? Like a caveman? The horror! The heresy! How can anyone be expected to do something so complicated! This is entirely unreasonable UX and the reason why Linux is straight up unusable.Btw here’s 15 bazillion commands in a
.psto perhaps disable some of the ads in your start menu until the next time your computer reboots.I agree with the sentiment, and it would definitely make a lot of troubleshooting easier, but you do gotta remember that 99% of people are so non-technical they won’t read anything going into their terminal, or if they do, they won’t know what it means.
You could just as easily replace that with
sudo rm -rf /*and they’d run it just as quickly, and that’s my worry.IMO we should just have settings menus alongside commands for most things any normal user might have to encounter, since that’s just a more user-friendly interface in terms of preventing accidental bad command execution and also just letting people find things on their own without having to look up a command every time if they don’t want to learn a short book’s worth of terminal commands.
remember that 99% of people are so non-technical they won’t read anything going into their terminal
That’s a bit ambitious. People don’t like to read anything on their computer. I’ve had people call me over to help with a “computer error” when Word is asking them if they’d like to save their document.
The kind of person who blindly runs commands also blindly runs any .exe or .bat they download from github which is not any better.
Of course in an ideal world there’d be a perfect GUI for everything, and we’ve gotten a lot better at that in the last few years. But it’s not like windows is lacking in things that are only configurable through CLI or the registry (which is even more opaque). I’m not saying Linux is perfect, just pointing out the hypocrisy.
While true, copying and pasting is much easier to exploit, especially since websites can alter your clipboard. Not to mention that people are already more wary of downloadable executables, but less so for commands.
For example, I’m not sure if you saw the newer attack vector a lot of scammers are using, but essentially they’ll have a 3-step process saying “Press Win + R” and “Press Ctrl + V” then “Hit Enter”, as a fake captcha, and the site automatically copies a malicious command to their clipboard, which then gets run when they paste.
A similar attack vector could take place where a user copies a command that looks legitimate, hits paste and enter, and only then is it clear that the site copied a new command to their clipboard that isn’t the one on the site they thought they checked.
I do agree that Windows is still pretty shit in this regard though. I just think we should seek to not emulate that as a requirement for users to edit certain settings if we can help it :)
The attack vector of convincing users to do stuff exists regardless of whether a niche GUI exists somewhere to do <the thing>. The only proper defense against social engineering is a) training and b) following the least privilege principle (which neither Windows or traditional Linux desktop’s permission model properly, as the current user in either case has full permissions to retrieve extremely sensitive credentials such as browser cookies without interaction).
Trying to defend against this from the perspective of de-normalizing the CLI is like defending against drunk driving by adding a bittering agent to Guiness beer exclusively.
As for clipboard highjacking, I am well aware, which is why any decent modern terminal emulator should a) strip escape codes by default and b) support bracketed-paste, to prevent immediate execution of a pasted command. If yours does not, please consider switching to a safer alternative (such as kitty).
IMO we should just have settings menus alongside commands for most things
There are - PowerShell.
Changing the size:
$pagefileset = Get-WmiObject Win32_pagefilesetting $pagefileset.InitialSize = 1024 $pagefileset.MaximumSize = 2048 $pagefileset.Put() | Out-NullDisabling automatic sizing:
$pagefile = Get-WmiObject Win32_ComputerSystem -EnableAllPrivileges $pagefile.AutomaticManagedPagefile = $false $pagefile.put() | Out-Nullwe do, but better ones would be nice…
yeah this is why i want to never touch windows again
Hmm… Not sure how Linux’ terminal is any better than this, tbh.
Even ignoring all the wacky command names - you have a billion different commands, each doing everything in its own way.
PowerShell is uniform and standardised. This makes learning things super easy. Like, you can’t tell me that you don’t know what’s going on by just looking at the code I posted.
i meant on graphical versions like the settings app could be a lot better
command line/terminal depends on what youre used to and whatnot
It’s not that bad in the GUI as well, as long as you don’t try to angrily fight against change, like OP did.
Go to Settings -> System -> Advanced -> Advanced Settings. You’re already on the old-style dialogue known from the Control Panel days. Two more clicks and you’re in the spot where you can change the page file settings.
People love to shit on Settings, but that’s just weird dudes being angry at change. Control Panel was a chaotic mess. As a guy who worked as first line IT support at the time when Win10 came out, I could not be happier when Settings happened. Everything had a super neat, super easy to follow “route” I could describe to the user over the phone. No need to start describing the difference between the side-bar links, and tabs, and having to click “OK” six times to ACTUALLY save the change you made, because the setting you changed was buried six pop-up windows deep…
IMO we should just have settings menus alongside commands for most things any normal user might have to encounter, since that’s just a more user-friendly interface in terms of preventing accidental bad command execution and also just letting people find things on their own without having to look up a command every time if they don’t want to learn a short book’s worth of terminal commands.
THIS. As a lifelong Windows user I’d rather deal with layers of shitty GUI, than having to memorise terminal commands and always pay attention not to mistype them lest I fuck my system up.
I can’t switch to Linux yet due to lack of support from my essential programs, but even if it wasn’t for those, I’d still be annoyed if I had to use a terminal to change settings in my system.
IMO we should just have settings menus alongside commands for most things
So like KDE
All this yes. If you’re actually looking for help, you have to also click “set” after changing the page file settings.
Would you recommend MS make it easy for idiots to fuck with the page file?
Yes?
If my page file is set to 80 GB by default but isn’t being used by applications because my actual RAM utilization is always under 80%, and they have a dedicated settings menu for it, you’d think they could make getting to that settings menu not take a minimum of 8 separate clicks (assuming you have memorized exactly where to go from the start, and never click the wrong button or link), 4 separate menus, 2 nested “Advanced” menus, and multiple fields and checkboxes to tick off and edit after all of that, just to say “Use less of my disk for the page file”. This could literally be a slider in Settings.
The page file doesn’t cause major system instability if you adjust its size, unless you’re constantly using much more RAM than your system has, and the page file is manually set extremely small.
It just helps keep your system more stable by offloading excess data that can’t be stored in RAM to your disk. My entire computer, even under heavy load, never needs more then 2-5 GB of space on top of my RAM, and that’s when I’m running games at max settings, my browser with 40 tabs open, and multiple instances of 3D design software in the background, hardly a common enough occurrence for Windows to justify going “eh, maybe they’ll actually need 80 GB, you never know”, and never letting me change it even after I restart.
just looked up a page file. that thing should never be 80gb except under extreme circumstances. I wonder if that’s part of why dad’s laptop (what im using right now) has at max 14ish gb of free space, if you’re lucky
I wonder if that’s part of why dad’s laptop (what im using right now) has at max 14ish gb of free space
Well if you want to find out if it is, you can just follow the extremely convoluted set of steps from my original comment to try and find out where the menu is that’ll tell you… 😅
Swap is also used to offload data in RAM that’s used infrequently to instead prioritise caching data that doesn’t need to be in RAM but is nevertheless used more frequently.
If you’re playing Dark Souls and have a web browser open in the background, each time you die the game may need to re-load some level data or assets from disk (e.g. they relate to the area you respawn in, but not where you keep dying). If the computer can instead keep those in RAM, you can respawn faster. If it has to put Chrome on disk that may be a worthwhile tradeoff.
They can do whatever they want, it’ll be without me.
I’m not saying that my Linux installation was super easy to set up, but once set up, I’ve had fewer problems than Windows.
I for one do miss my system restarting in the middle of some work to apply an update.
You can do that in Linux too! Just put an entry in crontab to reboot the system sometime during your working hours.
thanks, i’ve been missing that feauture.
I just installed Linux the other week and it WAS super easy to set up for me. I was really surprised but everything just worked
The hardest part was getting my Windows-only games to play properly in Linux. Rocket League was relatively easy, but Skyrim was a real pain to get working. But now that Skyrim is working, it strangely feels either the same or slightly better than it does in Windows.
Easier than installing and setting up Windows in my experience
That’s been my experience too. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to game on Linux. There have been some games where I had some issues, but the same could be said for Windows too. I think the gaming specific aspect is roughly equal between the two operating systems.
The nice thing about Linux though is that when it does go wrong, I am better equipped with the information and tools to be able to effectively troubleshoot and fix the problem. At least, in theory — I am still learning, so I often find myself wading through logs that I don’t understand, with little progress. It does at least feel more empowering though, to have the abstract option of being able to fix my problem, even if I am not able to grasp that opportunity in practice.
as a linux user (so, genetically superior in every way) i do not have this issue. hahaha…ah.
… sudo app install … a friend?
You forgot to mention that you use Arch BTW.
then it would be
sudo pacman friendor something like that. im not that fluent in arch, but i’m pretty sure
As a Windows user - same. I have no clue where people are getting these screenshots from, I haven’t seen anything like that, ever. Maybe a regional thing, I’m in the EU.
pov you just confessed that you’re a windows user
Extremist fundamentalism of any kind should be considered a mental illness.
sarcasm, however, is a sign of intelligence, as is the ability to recognize it.
sudo app install … a friend?
sudo apt install fortune
just run that once in a while for jokes. feed it into espeak if you want it to talk to you
EDIT : ‘fortune | tee /dev/tty | espeak’
flatpak install companion.app 🥲
fuck flatpak
also how do i get it to stop gaslighting me into “i installed it in location” btw it says the place it installed it is real but i can’t find it I think flatpack is lying
sudo apt install friendaww it didn’t work :(
