Windows also used to show me the ugly face of Trump in the start menu even if I didn't ask for it. That was more than 4 years ago. Recently was accidentally hovering over some 'copilot' button in Edge of a friend. And again - pop-up with Trump. So yes: fuck Windows, fuck Microsoft
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I recently had a spare machine sitting around doing nothing and was feeling a bit masochistic, so I decided to install Windows 11 on it just to see what it was like. I've used Windows 10 a tiny bit but essentially haven't touched Windows in years. A couple of the fun things I noticed:
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After installing, I was going to set a new wallpaper. I double-clicked on a jpeg file and instead of opening it, it popped up with a window asking me what I wanted to do with this apparently unknown file type. I literally said out loud, "what do you mean, it's a fucking jpeg." Then it did the same thing for a .zip.
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I also made a restore point once I had all the basics installed, so I could roll back when Windows inevitably fucked up doing an update. I then did the first big update and it fucked it up. "No worries" I thought, "I made a restore point!" I went to restore it, and discovered that for some unknown reason Windows only saves one restore point. This wouldn't have been a problem, except that Windows had decided to fuck itself up, and then automatically overwrite the manual save point with it's own save point from immediately after it fucked itself up, leaving that as the only thing to restore to.
I then quite sensibly formatted the drive and went back to using Linux.
I'm assuming the windows machine is a work PC and the Linux is yours right?
Because what you describe doesn't sound like a "windows" issue but rather an IT management issue.
You can put off updates and reboots a very long time. And always be able yo postpone them.
Applying updates on boot daily sounds dumb to me. But I'm also figuring your IT dept has poor (or no) sense in managing their inventory well. Most updates can be applied silently at a scheduled time.
Also, your machine sounds old and/or poorly maintained the way you describe it. If its more than 5 years old your company is just cheap.
I'm all for griping about Windows but this seems off to me.
I agree.
I find the Teams app works great on Ubuntu. The Microsoft apps work OK in browser, until you have a lot of collaborators.
I rarely need to switch to windows, so when I do switch I expect to spend an hour doing updates.
Our work is the opposite. As soon as a new machine arrives we go straight to BIOS at boot, switch the settings and install Linux immediately. Windows never sees the light of day. I do feel for you as we do do sales calls and in the middle of sales calls the people that we are calling have their computers reboot on them, do an update, or I've just got to restart and on restart it does an update and huge amounts of time are wasted on those people.
Windows probably costs the world millions a day in wasted, for time for shit like that.
How do you manage your fleet? How big is your network?
I‘d love to push for Linux at work, but have yet to see a solution with similar management capabilities than a Windows domain. And I don’t want to manage individual clients, as sysadmin I want to push templates like GPOs and the like.
Can see it work for smaller environments, but not in a company with a couple hundred machines.
I work in a higher ed org that uses a mix of (mostly) Red Hat servers and Windows & Mac endpoints; the Linux-focused admins use Ansible for things I’d do with either GPOs (if it’s something tried & true) or Intune (if it’s some half-baked newness and campus IT would actually give my group the permissions) in Windows.
Oh, Ansible is an interesting starting point. Would not thought of it for that purpose, I always „only“ link it mentally to automated deployment.
Will look into it out of curiosity.
my boss told me today if we moved to literally any non-microsoft platform or software, i'd be out of a job.
and he's right. most of us only have careers because microsoft can't push out a software that's more than barebone functional - and everyone use them even if there are far superior alternatives out there literally only because of familiarity.
i'm not planning to stop giving microsoft shit of course. they should be criminally prosecuted over their exchange service even and how it's blacklisting competitors to force businesses onto the platform a la microsoft classic tactics. but eh.
I’m no Windows fanboy but I have to use it quite a lot, at home and at work. I don’t know what versions or settings you guys have set up but I’ve never had a Windows update I can’t postpone, ever.
In corporate managed fleet of PCs updates are pushed by the company internal management systems. Some companies give you a 24hours option, some others (ahem, power tripping sysadmins, I know, I was one) say "fuck you and your work, you install when I say so". It's not strictly a Windows thing, it's a company policy.
because it takes a like 3 or 4 minutes to boot
What kind of PC is this? Does it have an SSD?
My one year old Dell Latitude with a fast SSD needs about 8 minutes every morning to boot windows and start all that security crap that company IT has put on there.