What sends noobs running back to Windows?

[rambo919]

Absolute, unmittigated nonsense.

I'm out of this thread.

Quite fickle arn't you?

[michael louwe]

@ thx-1138, .......

ZenBook Pro 2018 with ScreenPad: lol...now that's what i call definition of gimmick.
Wouldn't "touch" such a..."touch-screen-pad" not even with a ten feet pole -
what is this & why the heck would I open my wallet for such?
It's like a traditional laptop met a smartphone in the backyard, and had an illegitimate child...
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? It's...ASuS-perman!

...Either the keyboard is 'virtualized', ie. becomes 'touchscreen', or not -
same way traditional 'cellphones' had keys to press while modern 'smartphones' don't.

.
Smartphone UI replicated on the desktop/laptop; ...

Different from the screenpad of the Asus Zenbook Pro, what I had in mind for the desktop/laptop is to have the touchscreen on the trackpad/mousepad, instead of on the monitor of the desktop/laptop - thus completely doing away with the keyboard and mouse. When the users tap or scroll or swipe or type with their fingers on the touchscreenpad, their actions will be translated to the non-touchscreen monitor of the desktop/laptop, just like what a traditional mouse and keyboard used to do.

[gm10]

There is no way you're selling me on this argument. I'll admit I've not used Windows lately. Last time I did it was no where near consistent. Microsoft's own desktop apps had a mix of ribbon and non ribbon style UI's. Third party apps were all over the place. In addition to that, you had the weird fullscreen apps that you could get from the Windows store. In fact, as far as consistency, Microsoft is probably the worst.

Fair enough, I can't argue against that. It's true the different evolutions of the Microsoft UI are still all around to various extents, and in particular the UWP tablet/smartphone-oriented style breaks with previous iterations. But then both the latter and originally the ribbons did cause a lot of negative sentiment, too, so I think the point still holds that people prefer a consistent design.

[Portreve]

The so-called "ribbon UI" of course initially started with M$ Office 2007, and I remember it well.

I was working at Home Depot at the time, and one of the folks in HR called me into the office to see if I could guide her through some basic things after they'd pushed out that release to everyone.

I couldn't even figure out basic things like how to open or save files, much less anything more exotic like changing settings. I just looked at her after about five minutes and told her she was going to have to call the IT department on this one.

Subsequently, when I went to college, I had to go through an introductory course on Microsoft products, and honestly I got used to Office 2007. I still think it was stupid to have not just changed the UI but also completely eliminated any and all backwards compatibility. The direction they were heading in only in hindsight makes any real sense, but frankly it was still a stupid path with a stupid end goal.

The "leap" from Windows XP's Luna interface to that of Vista/7 was of the same essential nature that Office 2003 -> 2007 took. I wasn't a fan. Yes, objectively, they were trying to change the aesthetic design of the thing, but as far as I'm concerned, the jury's still out on whether it was an improvement or not.

For a great many, the leap then to Win 8.x really was the straw that broke the camel's back. That they relented (somewhat) with Windows 10 shows just how god-awful it was perceived as being by most folks. 10 lives somewhere between Vista/7 and 8.x, and while some might consider it a sweet spot, I do not. Besides, just look at all the people here who've said the totality of Win10 and Microsoft's business policy changes are what finally forced their hand in looking for and deciding upon alternatives. I'm certain Apple has enjoyed a similar influx for largely the same reason.

[rambo919]

Yeah.... you know M$ did something stupid when they cause a partial migration to Mac of all things.

[michael louwe]

@ Portreve, .......

The "leap" from Windows XP's Luna interface to that of Vista/7 was of the same essential nature that Office 2003 -> 2007 took. I wasn't a fan.

There was a reason for that.

For money sake, M$ came out with new versions of her software, ie Windows and Office, about every 3 years = M$ got recurrent revenue from users who upgraded accordingly, ie through the purchase of new Windows/Office licenses every 3 years. M$ hated it when users stayed on a version for about 10 years, ie until EOL, eg used Win XP from 2001 until 2014 = less ca$h for M$.
....... So, more often than not, M$ just changed things for the sake of change when she came out with a new version of Windows/Office every 3 years, eg the Ribbon feature.

Hence, for Win 10 Ent licenses, users could no longer stay on it for about 10 years unless they have paid their dues to M$, eg paid for annual subscriptions, Software Assurance/Insurance "premiums" or paid double for the LTSC version.

Imagine car manufacturers doing the same thing to get car-owners to buy new cars every 3 years or charging owners more money if they want to use the cars for about 10 years.

[rui no onna]

For money sake, M$ came out with new versions of her software, ie Windows and Office, about every 3 years = M$ got recurrent revenue from users who upgraded accordingly, ie through the purchase of new Windows/Office licenses every 3 years. M$ hated it when users stayed on a version for about 10 years, ie until EOL, eg used Win XP from 2001 until 2014 = less ca$h for M$.
....... So, more often than not, M$ just changed things for the sake of change when she came out with a new version of Windows/Office every 3 years, eg the Ribbon feature.

Hence, for Win 10 Ent licenses, users could no longer stay on it for about 10 years unless they have paid their dues to M$, eg paid for annual subscriptions, Software Assurance/Insurance "premiums" or paid double for the LTSC version.

Imagine car manufacturers doing the same thing to get car-owners to buy new cars every 3 years or charging owners more money if they want to use the cars for about 10 years.

How many people actually update whenever MS releases a new version? I know I only update when my hardware fails or is too slow to run software I use and I need to get a new PC. Same goes for majority of my acquaintances.

That's actually the reason I'm actively researching Linux now. One of the computers (9-10 years old?) suffered a mobo failure. I was pretty horrified to learn that Windows 7 support on current hardware (e.g. Kaby Lake) was extremely iffy and that going forward, intrusive Windows 10 (and whatever successor it might have) is the only option on the Windows side. If not for needing to replace that computer, I probably wouldn't be looking at OSes until 2020.

[KBD47]

Firefox. If you really need to use Firefox it seems to have zero issues on Windows, but always some sort of drama on Linux from extensions broke, not working right, missing buttons, crashing. Chrome is the only browser on Linux that has felt dependable and I hate that because I'd use Firefox every time if it wasn't such a mess on Linux.

[jimallyn]

Firefox. If you really need to use Firefox it seems to have zero issues on Windows, but always some sort of drama on Linux from extensions broke, not working right, missing buttons, crashing.

Hmmm. I've never had any problems like that with Firefox. Is it common for Linux users to have problems like that? I don't remember seeing any great number of Firefox issues posted here.

[all41]

Hmmm. I've never had any problems like that with Firefox.

Same here
Is there a browser with better support?

[KBD47]

Same here
Is there a browser with better support?

Chrome has been much more problem free for me on Linux. What I'm seeing with Firefox is Firefox-Esr will not break if you hit it with a stick, but regular Firefox updates come fairly quickly and I inevitably run into issues. On Mint 19 Firefox 61 update turned it into the speed of molasses on two of my laptops. On MX 17 my close/minimize/maximize buttons disappeared after an update. Those were the most recent but just two in a string of issues I've had with Firefox. Forgot, my last issue was Ublock Origin would not work, which is a deal breaker. I generally have fewer issues on Debian base than Ubuntu base, and as I said, ESR is generally solid.

[jimallyn]

Is there a browser with better support?

Not that I know of.

[whm1974]

Adding my own thoughts in here, some folks don't really want to learn anything different or even read a small amount of documentation no matter how little or easy it is to actually read even to learn how to do basic tasks.

Another issue is a lot of new users assume Linux does things as the same way Windows does them.

[BG405]

Firefox. If you really need to use Firefox it seems to have zero issues on Windows, but always some sort of drama on Linux from extensions broke, not working right, missing buttons, crashing.

I had the opposite experience. Firefox used to be pretty solid on Windows 7 .. before they started their rapid release programme. Then add-ons started to break .. regularly .. and stability crumbled away.

Mozilla changed their model from a regular production line to a flow-line .. bang it out, whack it out .. new Full Version every 6 weeks, no time for more than a couple of bugfix updates now .. and all you "volunteers" writing add-ons, well you are required to keep up with the production schedule (i.e. rewrite your add-on(s) every 6 weeks too) or clear off. Many did the latter. Many FF users did, too.

Towards the end of my time with Windows, it became practically unusable - crashing on a daily basis (or worse) and so slllloooooooooowwwww opening web pages. Switching to Linux I could run it for weeks on end with no issues, it was a pleasure to have this back; unfortunately it also seems that the Linux versions have gone downhill in the past year or so. Waterfox is better (for me) in that I can use all my essential add-ons.


MS Office & Gaming seem to be the biggest draw for Windows as far as I can tell. In my case, I was already using OpenOffice & GIMP (plus other open-source software) some time before the switch from Windows. For people still using the proprietary stuff up until the switch, it's likely to be more of a "shock to the system". I also have a few games which probably won't run on Linux (at least natively) but then again I doubt my current hardware is up to the job either. Those with gaming rigs might fare differently.

[whm1974]

I'm using FF with no problem at all. Ever since Quantum I had no issues.

[Zulu95]

I have never liked either MS or Windows. I stuck with the DR DOS shell until MS bought them out and forced me to use their product. I went with Win 3 because it ran on the IBM clone MB systems I built and sold at the time. I jumped into Linux Mint (15?) about eight years ago when I was running an ASUS server MB with dual AMD Athlons on the board.
I hit a big snag because I could not get both of the CPU's to be recognized and what little assistance came my way required you to be a Linux power user to understand. Not much good when you looking at a screen that shows you a list of errors and nothing else. After two weeks of banging my head against the wall i bought the latest Windows Professional edition, installed it and it ran. No errors, easy support and is still running if I booted the old girl today.
I came back to LM17 and booted the server board from a stick. It ran. No errors. No problems. I liked it so I dumped LM17 onto one of my LT's and it has been there ever since. (Using it now.) I have been through two different inkjet makes, last one being a HP AIO. No driver problems and up and printing in minutes. I changed to a Canon color laser no problems then upgraded that to the latest (then) Laser Color Laser AIO no problems printing .
Upgraded my wife's LT to LM18 and hit a few printing problems but by 18.3 they seem to be finally ironed out. I upgraded to a newer LT and in the process decided to try LM19. Printing problems galore, kernal update required a role back because it would not boot, touch pad and wi-fi are marginal. I thought it was a hardware problem but dual booting now with LM18.3 the LT works great except with LM19.
So if I had jumped in again now I would have formed the opinion the Linux is for geeks who want to spend most of their day sorting out conflicts to get their system working. Most likely I would not have come back. However I have used LM17 for years now without any real problems so I know what it can do.
The only reasons I will have any Windows around machines because I have some vehicle specific programming software that only runs under Windows.

[Portreve]

@ Portreve, .......

The "leap" from Windows XP's Luna interface to that of Vista/7 was of the same essential nature that Office 2003 -> 2007 took. I wasn't a fan.

There was a reason for that.

For money sake, M$ came out with new versions of her software, ie Windows and Office, about every 3 years = M$ got recurrent revenue from users who upgraded accordingly, ie through the purchase of new Windows/Office licenses every 3 years. M$ hated it when users stayed on a version for about 10 years, ie until EOL, eg used Win XP from 2001 until 2014 = less ca$h for M$.
....... So, more often than not, M$ just changed things for the sake of change when she came out with a new version of Windows/Office every 3 years, eg the Ribbon feature.

Microsoft has been feeling a loss of relevance and absolute dominance for a number of years now. Everything they're doing (just like in the past) has been strategic. Windows Mobile withered on the vine and has never become a significant player in the mobile space, which then caused them to have to re-think their strategy. It's forced them to make themselves appear to "play nice" because they presumably believe that will garner points with various communities of users which will help keep them relevant going forward.

Beyond that, because of the entire malware and botnet scandal that Microsoft's been the A#1 front-and-center player in, they went to the remotely-upgradable model with their OS with probably Win 7 (don't know if it's present in Vista) so when their users, who mostly haven't the tech savvy to be trusted with the sort of technology that's in their care and distributed around the world, don't upgrade, they can make the boxes upgrade.

The flip side of this is: who in the world is so incompetent that they design and maintain an OS architecture which can be used as a world-wide botnet infrastructure? But, blame of course gets shifted to the wrong party, and we don't see government pushback here because likely they've been bought off by Microsoft in one way or another, or are just so unsavvy about such matters that they really don't know any better themselves.

Imagine car manufacturers doing the same thing to get car-owners to buy new cars every 3 years or charging owners more money if they want to use the cars for about 10 years.

My best guess is that hasn't happened only because the auto industry hasn't yet found a way to make it happen.

I have never liked either MS or Windows.

Me neither. I saw other computers back in the early-to-mid 80s, including the Apple IIc systems my middle school bought, and when I saw a Macintosh at a local technology expo, I knew right then and there that that was the future of computing. I've owned a Macintosh since 1986, and I've used nearly every single version of Mac OS that Apple put out, from System 3.2/Finder 4.1 on my Macintosh Plus through System 9.1, and from Mac OS X 10.0 through 10.6, and briefly 10.7 and 10.8 in the course of having to use certain software which required those later versions to complete the process of liberating the last of my data files. (Side note: I will never allow my own data to be stored in a proprietary format ever again.)

I stuck with the DR DOS shell until MS bought them out and forced me to use their product. I went with Win 3 because it ran on the IBM clone MB systems I built and sold at the time. I jumped into Linux Mint (15?) about eight years ago when I was running an ASUS server MB with dual AMD Athlons on the board.

My forray into GNU+Linux back in the day was with RedHat 4.2. A friend of mine who was already into the scene told me about it, and burned my a set of ISOs. Around that time (1997) I had been building towers for myself and a couple friends (I am many things, both professionally and personally, but I have always been a technology enthusiast) and so one of those systems was decent enough to try out RedHat. OMG, that was interesting but it was many hundreds of kilometers away from being ready for prime time as a desktop OS.

Eventually, having gone through the various iterations of Fedora (when it was spun off) and a few other distros, I kind of put it on the back burner. The first time I tried LinuxMint was before the Gnome Project had decided to go the direction they did with Gnome 3, so I was used to running Gnome 2.x (forget the version) on LM. Once the Gnome Project did what they did and there was the massive schizm in the GNU+Linux world (and you think init vs systemd is contentious) Clem and Co. decided to roll their sleeves up and create what would become Cinnamon. At the time, I was still a Mac OS X user, but I was helping refurbish machines for resale and got to play around with MATE, which is someone else's take on a modernized Gnome 2, and I liked what I saw. I was slowly getting really tired of Apple and a bunch of the crap that was going on at the time, so once I had a chance to play around with Cinnamon, I knew that's where I wanted to be. (Shout-out to Nixie Pixel, who showed the world Cinnamon back when she actively ran a YouTube channel.)

So if I had jumped in again now I would have formed the opinion the Linux is for geeks who want to spend most of their day sorting out conflicts to get their system working. Most likely I would not have come back. However I have used LM17 for years now without any real problems so I know what it can do.

In principle, if computers today were sold such that people had to install Windows on their own, get the drivers and so forth, there would without a doubt be as many problems getting Windows to work as GNU+Linux, and quite possibly more. At least, that's how users would perceive it in my opinion.

[rui no onna]

In principle, if computers today were sold such that people had to install Windows on their own, get the drivers and so forth, there would without a doubt be as many problems getting Windows to work as GNU+Linux, and quite possibly more. At least, that's how users would perceive it in my opinion.

Maybe, maybe not. Windows 7 on new hardware (chipsets/CPU, USB3, NVMe) would definitely be difficult as those weren't around when 7 was first released and MS is trying hard to avoid another XP scenario. However, the only thing Windows does have going for it is support from hardware manufacturers. I've built a few computers and all the parts I've bought included CDs with Windows drivers. There might be newer versions on the manufacturers' websites but the included drivers are functional.

As has been frequently mentioned in this thread, hardware support is one of the trickier things in Linux. Not at all Linux's fault that there are manufacturers who don't support Linux but it's friction for would-be Linux converts nonetheless.

Mind, if that were the actual scenario for PCs, I'm sure most folks would just ditch the PC and use their smartphones and tablets exclusively (aside from work).

P.S. I believe the remote updates didn't come with Windows 7. It's even possible to disable automatic updates completely in Windows 7. I'm not quite sure about Windows 8 but I think it might still be optional there, too. I think it's possible that Windows 10 is when MS started forcing updates.

[Zulu95]

I doubt many of today's users would be so keen if they had the problems encountered with DOS, DOS Drivers, conflicts and the general pass the buck played by Tech Support when you called. No matter who you called it was always the hardware from some other company to blame. At least that started to diminish by the time NT and subsequent versions came out. And that was how MS grabbed the software market. The mistake Apple made was to keep their product in-house. Had they allowed a clone marker as IBM did there would not be a MS.
I am still very much a novice with LM but I love the product. I'm sure LM19.1 should help solve a lot of the issues and I'm tempted to try this LMDE just for the experience. I might drop and iso to a stick and boot from that one of these days. Heck, I think i have a spare SSD lying around so one of the old LT's might be getting a new OS.
Now if I could just find a good Linux book that did not make me feel I had missed a chapter somewhere along the line because things do not turn out as they are in the book.

[Pierre]

that forced upgrade to Win-10 did cause a lot of anguish for some folks, at least,
and I'm still surprised, that here were *not* more lawsuits, that the few that were in the media,
yet it's still surprising, just how many folks are still putting up with the six monthly super update,
that always does seem to change things,, when folks had become used to the way their machine works,
- only to have it changed, yet again.

we see this, on this forum, as yet another windows refugee appears in our midst.