this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2025
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Windows isn't an OS, it's a bad habit bordering on addiction (www.theregister.com)
submitted 2 days ago by sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al to c/tech@programming.dev
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[–] FizzyOrange@programming.dev 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Windows 11 IoT LTSC is the best answer at the moment. I've had no ads, no AI nonsense, the only setting I've had to change is to restore the sane position of the start menu. Oh also I did use the default options in Rufus which I think disables some annoyances. Despite all the moaning about it, Windows 11 itself is actually a small improvement on Windows 10 so I'm happy to upgrade.

Overall it's is a lot nicer than dealing with Linux's downsides (I have enough of that at work).

I'll stick with this until Microsoft forces my hand.

[–] polle 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

To be honest, dealing with all the ltsc stuff is way more hassle than just installing linux.

[–] FizzyOrange@programming.dev 1 points 16 hours ago

Really? I found it completely uneventful. The only thing that I needed to learn was that you have to make the installable USB drive using Rufus which I had never heard of (think I last installed Windows about 10 years ago...).

[–] sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What downsides?

[–] FizzyOrange@programming.dev 7 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Hardware not working as well. Poor battery life. Worse game compatibility. Worse stability (yeah really). More bugs (yeah really; at this point Windows is quite a bit less buggy than Linux in my experience). More annoying to configure things / set things up usually.

Those are all only on average. Obviously there are times when Windows has bugs or sends you to the command line or fails to connect to WiFi or whatever... But by this point they're pretty rare.

I use Windows and Linux regularly and for Windows my complaints are:

  • If I leave my playstation controller plugged in the PC never sleeps. Took me a while to figure that out! Probably a driver bug.
  • That's actually it. I can't remember the last time the OS crashed.

For Linux:

  • Until I enabled a huge swap file whenever it ran out of physical ram it would hard reboot. This is just Linux's shitty memory management.
  • I recently installed a kernel update and now it hard freezes every week or two. I'm guessing a driver bug. Impossible to debug though.
  • Sometimes when I unplug the laptop while it's sleeping it gets confused and the only thing it responds to is the power button (it does a clean shutdown but that's still annoying).
  • Quite often the login screen freezes for a few seconds when I try to put my password in.
  • It asks me every time I plug my headphones in if they are headphones. Take a hint! Windows never asked that.
  • I set up a network to auto-connect to a VPN, then deleted that VPN. This confused the absolute bejesus out of it so it wouldn't even connect to WiFi. No error messages. Even dmesg only had some vague deauth message. Took me a long time to figure that out!

There's definitely more that I've forgotten.

In fairness this is Linux running on a shitty Dell laptop vs Windows running on a normal desktop. Still...

[–] kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 day ago

Its completely reasonable to not like that and I wouldn't blame you for writing off Linux entirely

[–] sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What distro are you using?

[–] FizzyOrange@programming.dev 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

RHEL 8. Unfortunately I don't have a choice about that.

[–] sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You have no choice about which distro you use at home?

[–] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 1 points 17 hours ago

They explained pretty clearly that they use Linux exclusively for work.

[–] firelizzard@programming.dev 2 points 1 day ago

That does sound unpleasant and I can understand why you prefer Windows. Personally, I rarely have problems with Linux that aren't self inflicted and IMO Windows is an absolute garbage fire of an OS so there's no way I'd ever daily drive it.

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 15 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Some have burned out and live on riverboats with solar panels writing retro 6502 games on an original Commodore 64.

Now that sounds like a life worth having

[–] codexarcanum@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Do you know about 100 Rabbits? I've been occasionally following them online for a few years now. They're an art collective, living on a boat, writing code and sailing the world.

It is both my "living the dream" and my antidote to being overly romantic about what such a life entails.

[–] briggsyj@programming.dev 3 points 1 day ago

Same here! Their Discord is very interesting

[–] miguel@fedia.io 6 points 2 days ago

This is the goal. I just need a lot of money, it's not cheap to live light in this country

[–] TwinTitans@lemmy.world 13 points 2 days ago (2 children)

While it may not be the most popular move - I left windows for macOS over a decade ago and haven’t looked back once.

[–] trevor@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 23 hours ago

Yeah. For every person out there that says "but muh dogshit software that hates me doesn't work on Linux!", they should just use macOS. It's compatible with a ton of proprietary and abusive software (Adobe, DAWs, etc.), and you at least get an OS that works.

I don't know how people can stand using Windows. I use a 50-50 split of macOS and Linux, and it's nice to not have to fight my computer to do even the most trivial of things.

[–] 01011@monero.town 1 points 1 day ago

If I was forced to pick between the two macOS would win in a landslide. I just hate that the Apple hardware is so much worse than it used to be.