KDE: Welcome to Linux. Do you like the UI of Windows? Well we have an excellent offering for you if that’s your choice. There’s also other DEs that you may select from if that’s your choice.
Windows: Here’s an ad bitch, fuck your choice.
I wish Microsoft kept Windows as a paid product, instead of making it effectively free (with things like free upgrades from older versions) and sticking ads all over the place.
Um Windows 11 Home costs 145€ from ms directly… Free updates yeah, but I’m guessing that’s so people aren’t stuck without updates eventually.
It’s because for Microsoft a user using Windows for free is better than a user using some other OS.
At least when the user uses Windows for free they still tell everyone at work and home that you have to run Windows because there’s just nothing else out there.
I doubt that is a reason most people switch. But I suppose it is a valid concern for Microsoft
Correct, but that’s cost is only if you buy windows 11 for a machine that has never had windows on it,
11 is free for any windows user that has 10. It also comes pre installed on most PCs you buy and very rarely is that cost of the license noted on the device your buying (unless you use the customize settings on an online store)
I’m also pretty sure there are still ways to upgrade to 10 from 7 and 8. Windows did this to make it harder for people to switch to a different OS because most people remember when they had to “pay” to upgrade to the latest version.
It also comes pre installed on most PCs you buy
That’s because you’re paying the manufacturer for the licence and yes they likely get a discount but it’s still a lot of money you could save.
The average consumer either doesn’t go to the manufacturer site or doesn’t care enough to look into alternatives. They want something that gets their school/work done.
As some in the IT field who regularly deals with people that have a 4+ year degree and then tell me they are “tech illiterate” is astounding.
In the past they were hand held so much that the previous techs had a password book of everyone’s password for multiple applications.
Luckily with a lot of pushback from our current members about how insecure and dangerous that is that has changed, but we still have users even after 3 years since the change message us through a depreciated system asking for their password.
The average consumer either doesn’t go to the manufacturer site
Where does the average consumer get their computer then? Also I do know a few people using lubuntu instead of windows on their laptops.
Knowing a few people running lubuntu doesn’t make it an average. That is just a personal bias.
From experience almost all the computers I serviced over the last few years were either bought at Walmart, Best buy or Amazon that could also be a bias, but it spans over multiple cities with a good hundred clients The only time I started to see computers that were consistently bought from the manufacturer is in a business environment. But the specific one I’m in doesn’t support Linux at all within production.
I believe they ended the free update from 7/8 to 10 when windows 11 was introduced. And I doubt ms is still selling windows 10 licenses.
Ah I just checked there used to be a loophole by going through a disability program or using an alternative authentication method provided by Microsoft that would activate the 10 license after the update. Looks like it was patched in September 2023 though.
yeah yeah windows bad. (i completely agree)
Windows serves ads? Where?
Edit: Why are people mad that I don’t see adverts on Windows?
Outside of EU.
Nono Win11 has sponsored apps automatically pinned to start menu (at the latest with the next update) and Win10 has weird things in the search bar promoting ms edge and other things. Also there’s some news thingy in the task bar that’s really annoying to disable (and I forget how to each time)
Shouldn’t you lose your linux membership card for something like this?
Linux police officers come into your house, and they take your membership!
And shave your neck
damn y’all don’t fuck around
And your pet penguin gets forcibly removed.
“This incident has been reported.”
Best
deleted by creator
In Soviet Russia, Arch BTW use you!
In Soviet Russia Astra BTW use you. Seeing how “import-replacement”(read as corpos GTFO with protectionism on top) law is (un)enforced, I lost hope that this will happen.
Chicken isn’t vegan?
Oh wow, I’m glad to see there’s other people who are reminded of Plasma by Win 11. As someone who never installed or used it the first time I saw someone using it I made a comment about them using Linux. Until I realized…
Microsoft even copied KDE’s motto “Simple by default, powerful when needed” in their Windows 11 announcement.
How is that legal?
eeh, right, MS’s lawier army vs. KDE dev team. Right by money.
Copying stuff that enhances the UI/UX is something that I’m personally not opposed to but stealing another foundation’s motto is just lame and shameless.
Yeah, Windows does really like to copy Plasma, don’t they?
This is hilarious. It really cut me deep. I don’t think I’ve seen Harold used in the Drake format like this either. The look of dejected shame is priceless.
Linux users realizing Windows is fine.
Windows is not “fine” aside from all the non-UI stuff, they’re UI is annoying and slow to me, they moved things behind extra clicks/commands to make it “clean”- stuff I actually use.
And then there’s the whole tracking usage to drop adds in your notification thing… which is a privacy nightmare.
+1
i have to use microshite crap every day.
It outdoes oracle at generating curse words.
and it gets worse. i’d take windows 2000 or nt4 over whatever shit they force on me at work.windows peaked at windows 7/xp then went down the drain
XP was a disaster, security-wise. Vista was better conceptually but the tech was undercooked and win7 was basically a re-skin of vista plus some extra maturity due to time.
Then, there’s the entirety of the situation around those releases. Microsoft was so mismanaged under Ballmer that even though Windows 7 was maybe their best OS, it completely missed the smartphone revolution and set them back about a decade until they could be re-spun as a cloud technologies company.
Imagine how huge they’d be if they had successfully leveraged their desktop and business dominance to force their way on top of the mobile world.
Tl:dr Win7 was both Microsoft’s best and worst product of all time.
I liked some earlier win10 versions too but that was also before I tried Linux.
I got a goddamn pop-up ad for an XBox controller. That really says all you need to know. When there are advertisements in the operating system, the operating system is fired.
I loved it when windows recently started giving me Xbox achievements (aka ads for Xbox) notifications just for playing any PC game on my computer. Like I’m trucking along, playing a steam game, and Xbox game bar shit, just has to wake up from its slumber to say: we randomly noticed you played something on this computer! Have you considered Xbox today?
It did something like that to me when I played Minecraft just not an Xbox ad. I think it was something about the game bar. (which I would absolutely love to disable if possible for just one user)
Eh, you only notice it when it’s bad, most of the time for most users it’s okay, though I generally argue they just make an unconscious decision to ignore most issues, even before trying out Linux I was flabbergasted at how people literally lose time and get flustered at a problem but then refuse to accept it as such.
Some say the stress helps you grow a long white wizard beard.
Ya’ll are nuts. I logged in to a windows 10 pc after ~1 year so that I could flash a SD card. Windows immediately updates and literally bricked an ssd. How is that “general computing”
Is most of the UI fine? Yes, absolutely. It’s just the rest of the OS that sucks.
Tbh, I thought Windows was fine too, until I had to use it last summer.
I installed it recently in a VM for something and my first thought was “what the fuck?”. My last proper Windows installation was 7 and W11 is barely recognizable. The amount of preinstalled garbage alone really shocked me. The system menus have become even more convoluted too and I actually seriously struggled to find various settings. I remember the first attempt at re-categorizing the system settings in I think it was Vista but this is even worse.
Really made me appreciate Plasma even more.
The number of times W11 menu has tried to convince me to install TikTok immediately destroys the OS’ legitimacy in my eyes.
And then there’s the lack of customization; the shovelware and bloat; the random crashes and hangs with only a blue screen with an emoticon frowny face; the constant advertising; and the tracking of everything you do with the OS to feed advertising; the forced integration of cloud services like OneDrive…
Fuck windows. I’m not a programmer but I’ve been running Manjaro (I know, I know) as a daily driver on three different devices for 7 years now. The only true problem I’ve ever had was theming grub2 and fucking up the config, which was entirely my own fault.
The privacy concerns were one of the main factors why I moved away from Windows. And when the “free” W10 upgrade killed itself, along with my system partition, I decided that it’s the point where I have to make the jump.
Manjaro isn’t as bad as its rep. I had way more issues with EndeavourOS, which also eventually nuked itself, which Manjaro never did in the (much longer) time I was using it.
I’ve started using endeavouros but haven’t had any problems, besides getting used to pacman and similar (also Nvidia drivers messing things up but that happened on my Ubuntu which recently killed itself too). Care to elaborate on which issues you had?
At first mostly smaller issues, but they started to pile up, with me not being able to find any solutions for them.
But then one of the updates in July killed grub, despite me always using the recommended commands after each update, causing me to lose access to the system. I was not skilled enough to recover it as all the guides didn’t really give me enough information for me to handle my encrypted setup, so I tried getting help from their forums, where I then got insulted, gaslighted and trolled by a few users, trying to put the blame on me for using grub instead of the default bootloader, completely ignoring the fact that grub very much was the default boot loader, to the point where a moderator ended up locking & hiding the thread, so that it wouldn’t leave a bad look on them, telling me I should probably create a new thread if I still need help. I decided this would be my last time with EOS.I think the default bootloader might depend on some config, because for me grub also wasn’t the default, I had to reinstall it once though too, but that was because I accidentally booted into windows and it instantly gave me an update which messed up the whole efi partition. No idea if I have an encrypted setup though. I’ve barely used the forum so I don’t know about that. Thanks for the info though.
deleted by creator
Depends. what version of Windows? 10? I can agree for the most part that yeah, it’s fine. Most users loved 7, I…never paid it much mind (mostly because it was good, i guess? Got nothing bad to say about it, at least) and 8 was…Windows 8.
Windows 11 tho? Eh…the UI’s ok. I like it better than 10’s, at least. Ish. But whose bright idea was it to limit the number of items in the context menu? Or to hide the ribbon that, again, shows you more options? Or basically force ya to make a Microsoft account to even use the thing? (there’s apparantly a way to revert some of these things via messing with the Registry) Like, Windows 10 was fine like you said, dunno why 11 needed such drastic changes. And that’s without mentioning ads or the habit Windows has of reverting some of the setting you set after an update (tho that was a thing since 10, tbf. Still annoying)
I think Windows 10 was peak Windows. Controversial for many, I used a start screen too. The only thing I like more about the aesthetics of 11 than 10 is the window outlining with the color of your choice.
I’m not logged into my Microsoft account on Windows, nor do I see adverts. When you boot Windows 11 for the first time there is a trick into getting it to offer the option of a local account. I’m not sure why I don’t see adverts. The only mod I’ve done is to turn off web searching in the start menu. Where do you see adverts?
I’m inclined to agree with ya there since I have no strong feelings towards Windows 7 in particular and I’ve never tried earlier versions. Yeah, I can live with Windows 10 if i had no other choice or say in the matter, and it wasn’t my old install (see the other parenthesis if you care to know)
The ads are on the Start menu search. They’re not that bad as far as I remember, but i can see for others why’d they’d be annoying–in particular, those who paid for the software liscene already. it’s the small little annoyances when it came to Microsoft’s decisions (and the fact i wanna believe my Windows was just messed up from the word go…seriously, that thing was laggy as it was slow and just…strange is the best word I can describe using it, compared to other machines running Windows 10. So yeah, I already had one foot out the door as it was) and the fact I realized I had a choice that was NOT apple that moved me to Linux and it’s been pretty good, considering 95% of my needs are met on Linux
It was fine on Windows 7. Now you can’t open the start menu without 5 ads jumping into your face or open any app without a popup promoting a Microsoft alternative (note for the whoosh people, this is hyperbole). It’s even worse than the pop-up/pop-under phase of web ads.
If Linux was fine, then I wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of looking for an alternative and taken the time to teach myself Linux. I don’t know anybody else who uses it so it’s not like somebody twisted my arm
This, why does every linux elitist think that an average person that probably struggles to keep their phone’s ram free (one of my family members does that, they have like 20 apps open on a phone with 3gb or ram) will be willing to learn a ton of terminal commands and learn all the other stuff like flashing the os on a usb stick or learning how to fix something they expect there to be working by default (ahem, like sound drivers for example, the classic)
My hot take, that’s why I think arch is just for the little group of people that are willing to possibly have to troubleshoot their computer every time they use it, hell I use linux (lubuntu xfce, my pc is a potato) and I’m probably never going to attempt to install arch since I don’t want to deal with the crappy responsibilities it comes, and the group that use it act like it’s the best thing ever and everyone should switch to it
TL;DL Linux would already have a lot more users if it was easy to install and use by non techy people, not everyone wants to tinker with everything or try to fix something they expect to work, and some people are toxic to others to scare them away, lowering the potential amount of people
Edit: I misspelled something
Something like Linux Mint is just as easy to install as Windows, if not easier. No tinkering, fixing, fussing with the terminal. It just works.
Also worth noting that modern smartphones manage RAM automatically. Having a bunch of apps “open” isn’t an issue.
honestly endeavouros and fedora (at least the i3 spin) are really easy too and you don’t even need a mouse… (yes windows does for some parts of the installer.)
Only the weirdly customized taskbar. Oh, wait, it isn’t customizable.
It’s very constricting and now with ads and forces updates upon the user that cause more problems than they solve (at least in my experience) but other than that I think it’s ok, just not for me.
Pirate images all the way man
They don’t get updates? Or how would that help, genuinely curious for the three times a year I use windows.
The pro versions of windows don’t get as disrupted as windows home (the version everyone complains about because they don’t know there’s a difference). And the pirate ones I’m mentioning usually are iso images that have been preemptively unshitified as to not have most of the unnecessary bullshit out of the box but still get the security updates.
Used to be you had to pick and choose updates or get your system gimped for not being a legal copy but Microsoft kinda gave up on that when they went freemium
Ooh sounds nice.
did something happen? is plasma just windows now?
Some people don’t like that Plasma is usually (depending on the distro) offered with an aesthetic that reminds to windows, so it’s easier for newbies.
For me that’s a plus. I like that layout, which Windows also slowly starts to move away from now.
I think Windows more and more looks like a Plasma desktop though, like visually. That process is not super new and somewhat gradual over the versions but it is noticeable. There’s also some desktop features that made its way into Linux that felt very close to some that are present in Linux for many years.Exactly! I think Nicco Loves Linux (from KDE) mentions it in some video
No, it isn’t. File explore is dog slow (though wiggling the scrollbar helps WTF), they don’t support no-brainer UI niceties such as being able to change volume with the scrollwheel when hovering over the task bar icon, middle click on scrollbars to jump to a location still doesn’t work, no focus follows mouse, double clicks everywhere, settings are… where? There’s like 20 different different UI interfaces to different settings in Windows, half of them dating back to Windows 3.0.
Oh and can you fucking let me set start menu favourites without trying to second-guess what I want there. “Recently used?” I never fucking used that shit you put there and stuff I used isn’t in there.
As to Windows 11: I heard that you can’t have the task bar at the top. Why. Seems like nowadays MS is breaking more stuff than they fix. I was kinda miffed at KDE disabling alt+left/right click move/resize… but then I googled and they moved it to meta. Which is actually sensible. I ceased to be miffed. I probably should read release notes on updates it’s all there.
you get ads in kde plasma?
Did KDE get a recent makeover? Last I saw, the window decoration still defaults to half rounded and half square. Devs can’t decide which one they like.
Next makeover is in February with Plasma 6.
Don’t worry, Plasma 6 will default to half square and hat rounded instead.
I assume the window decorations are like that because rounding the title bar is safe whereas rounding the bottom of the window has the potential to partly obscure content
The UI of Windows 11 is fine, at least visually. Windows 8-10 were mostly just ugly. When it comes to configuration options, they lose even against Plasma from a couple years ago.
I have a Mac like UI btw., there is no chance of confusing my Plasma with any Windows :P
deleted by creator
It just so happens that I also use Arch x)
UI is fine… UX is a few good steps backward
I feel like the windows 11 ui looks really nice and it seems like they could do a lot with it, but at least last time I actually tried it it just felt kind of unfinished and there were a lot of weird bits where the theming looked wrong
make it like windows 2000 and i won’t have a problem
And you can do that with kde.
How do you even not notice?
He though that new widget with all the advertisements was really nice, and was on the way to thank whoever cleaned his system removing 3/4 of the items on the start menu.
deleted by creator
Hum, no, there are no ads on the start menu. They are all on the search widget and at the one near to the notifications.
But yeah, you can remove them if you find the option. They are hidden enough to guarantee most people won’t.
They’re dropping them as notifications in the system tray, though.
Yeah, there’s ways of stopping it, it’s patently ridiculous.
deleted by creator
Unity DE
I’d say that’s where you took a wrong turn, but really it was installing Ubuntu in the first place. I’ve given nameless crackheads a dollar that I trust more than Canonical.
It is patently ridiculous one time.
You remove them and they will never return.
But the Linux community really likes to rave on about it as if it is the worst infraction since the holocaust. Just look at this comment section.
The fact remains that OP used Windows for 45 minutes without even noticing. So it is really not that bad as many of you claim it is.
You remove them and they will never return.
until they revert your settings in the next update. Which happens. And then there’s the privacy invasion and intrusion they represent. You get to use what you want. But this is linuxmemes… you’re going to find more people hostile to MS here than you will in other vague computing forums. MS definitely deserves the hate, though. “Embrace. Extend. Extinguish” is still their motto.
No that does not happen with the ads. Those only appear during a fresh install and can be clicked away in a matter of seconds.
The only thing that happens with is sometimes Edge and recently the search bar once.
MS deserves hate sure, but not the unwarranted hate some of you have here in the comments.
I think it’s pretty warranted. Why would you put ads in my OS in the first place? It’s not a free OS either so no excuse to put ads on it.
Uh huh.
Sure it doesn’t. Microsoft never turns off settings with major updates….
…. Never….
In fact it- that is the advertisement in notifications- happened again with the most recent major update.
But go ahead, ignore my anecdote. I’m sure that makes it more comforting for you. That’s it. I’m just totally incompetent and don’t know how to turn off “suggested” notifications.
I’ll shut up since I clearly don’t know how to use a computer.
Yeah but irrational anger because Micro$oft bad is easier and gets more upvotes
They say they use linux and yet they went 45 minutes without opening a terminal? /doubt
There’s themes to make your OS seem nearly identical to Windows. Maybe they have that.
Or maybe it’s a meme
Exactly, IRL you see the windows boot screen and think I fucked up my grub again
Sounds like the good old fucked bootloader after system update
I actually had that happen during my last update from 23.04 to 23.10 a few days ago.
Put https://sourceforge.net/projects/boot-repair-cd/files iso on Ventoy usb and fixed it with a few clicks.
Brilliant! rofl
*45 months later
deleted by creator
