My Windows Computer Just Doesn't Feel Like Mine Anymore

As much as I disliked Steve Jobs, the man was 100% correct when he talked about companies rotting from the inside. They get taken over by sales & marketing types and the product designers and user experience experts get kicked to the curb.
- Apple being the pinnacle of this. They were the first ones that made devices theirs, not yours.
  
  Yeah, exactly. I find the shilling for MacOS a bit concerning, already from the article and also the comments.
  A Mac feels more like yours than Windows? Just goes to shows how shitty Windows has become, not how MacOS is better.
  
  I used to use macOS and macOS used to have a true root user that you can enable. Sometimes after 2016 I think root was neutered and you can no longer do whatever you want. I don't like using macOS anymore.
- Steve Jobs was no different from the rest in Silicon Valley who would spout virtues out loud while simultaneously undermining them in practice.
  
  I'd even go as far as to say many of them today are just copying Jobs. He was a terrible person.
- But compost is good?
- They get taken over by sales & marketing types
  Like Steve Jobs lol.
  
  Yeah, he was a hypocrit and I despised the guy. Woz was the real hero of Apple. But Jobs did say that stuff, and he was correct in that moment. We see it over and over.
- What are you on about? Yes they made sure their gadgets were easy to use, but Apple and Jobs were the pinnacle of "locking you in" on their ecosystem for the profit of it. Sure they weren't as careless about users when compared to Microsoft but they weren't too favourable of you using anything else. They invented this stuff.
- From a company perspective, it's a common sentiment. Google and Amazon have mantras around trying to stay agile and relevant despite being behemoths, and both have arguably kept into boomer tech territory the second they made a poor CEO hire. Microsoft had their Ballmer era, and while Nadella did a lot of good at Microsoft they've had a lot of failures in established divisions to be soaked up by AI and sales.
  I think that all of big tech has struggled over the last 3 years. Sacrificing employee skill for shareholder value has ultimately moved them all into IBM territory, whereas the cool tech is happening at startups again. If AI is a bust, and another company comes along and eats their lunch in their established markets like consumer devices, web tooling, or cloud computing, they're in real danger of another huge set of layoffs and resetting their businesses to only core profit-making ventures. What I think we've seen companies shift towards death, Day 2, rotting from the inside, or whatever your business calls stagnation.
- Jobs was quite good at UX, right? Will we ever have such skilled ceos

Tux awaits your arrival friends. Join us.
- Join us
  
  join tux
- I 🎮 on Bazzite BTW.
  
  I installed Bazzite on a sibling's laptop. It's very good and super user friendly to install.
- Despite the huge advancements lately it's just still not as good for gaming. I have very limited time I don't want to waste it negotiating settings and forget games that use anti cheat. It's really a shame because for anything and everything else Tux wins
  
  I was the same. I tried Ubuntu once and went back after a day or two because i didn't want to bother tinkering after work when i just want to relax. A few weeks ago I was finally so annoyed by Microsoft's bs that i tried bazzite which gets recommended a lot here and it is great. I didn't have to open the terminal even once so far, everything just works right out of the box.
  So far I've tried Elden Ring (online as well with anti cheat), Age of Wonders 4, Talos Principle 2, Baldurs Gate 3 and a few others and they all just work and not in the Todd Howard way but actually. I also went through a bunch of the recent demo flood on steam and no issues.
  I'm gonna miss Valorant but I mostly played that one once in a few months. And i can always just make a little 300GB windows partition that i only boot for invasive anti cheat games.
  
  I just started dual booting to see what Linux could do nowadays. And yes, there's a few games I have trouble playing, but it's mostly games like Subnautica that gives me trouble. And in all honesty, that game barely works in Windows as it is.
  I haven't had problems with anti-cheats at all. Like, Helldivers 2 runs as well on Linux as in Windows.
  
  While anticheat is definitely a weak spot (though, it doesn't have to be...) - the Steam Deck and Proton demonstrate it's pretty mature for playing most games.
  
  As the other commenter suggested, try bazzite. Setup as easy as configuring a new smartphone and ready to game right off the bat
  
  I’ve never had an issue with settings stuff except for maybe a super old game like fallout 1, but I expect windows would have the same issue.
  But you are right about anti-cheat stuff. Luckily I don’t care about online gaming.
- Living my best life with Guix!

This dude is begging for an ad free windows at the end. Why? They're too far gone. Go make a new home in another OS. It will be okay.
- He’s addicted to the Microsoft flavored kool-aid.
  
  Honestly, it wouldn't have been a bad place to be if they hadn't destroyed it from the inside. Windows on ARM is super stable. You can still build your own computer, or at least buy one with user-swappable parts. Linux has become much easier and wasn't too bad to use even a decade ago, but it was nice being able to have a non-Apple computer running programs and getting work done that was just there to do the business. I'm speaking as one that attempted to use the kool-aid for a few years after Apple stopped using user-swappable batteries, memory, disk, their hardware upcharges are pure asshole insanity. I'm fully capable of using Linux, compiling my kernel, modifying driver source to work around problems, but, I don't want to when I'm just trying to pay my bills. Streaming media services come and go with Linux support, hardware support is often lacking until the work is done to make the hardware work correctly. Windows, for all it's .... windowsness .... worked. Until the last 8 months when they decided to put a molotov cocktail under the hood and see what happens.
  Apple is headed this way too, now that they don't have SJ to errantly blow up the current tech to try something new and random (although, had he survived his cancer, he'd have just gone Musky with age like a lot of that generation has, mmmm leaded gas!) Apple will hold on just a bit longer because iOS gave them one new platform reboot (ish) to live off of, while Microsoft is still kicking around technical debt until the end of time.
  Oh, edit though, I've been migrating my machines to Linux one by one now. Not going to bother sticking around to see that Windows train wreck continue.
- I'm too dumb to learn Linux and too poor for macs. What am I supposed to do?
  
  Your not too dumb to learn linux. I know it seems scary, and a lot of the autistic people that like it will try to convince you it's only for really smart people. But at the end of the day a lot of basic tasks are actually easier on linux. There are some that are harder gaming used to be very difficult for example. Although thanks to valve, and the steam deck for the most part if it's a steam game you can just click play and it's probably going to work.
  But as an example of a more basic thing, let's say you want to install an application.
  Windows: go to Google, type app name, make sure it's the real actual website officially for that app and not a sponsored result or some other fake website, find the download, pray it's not buried in a bunch of fake download buttons, double click the exe, be careful to make sure it's not installing any toolbars or other packaged bullshit, finally get your application.
  Linux: there are some variations (apt dnf pacman) but all of them work the same, for arch it's "pacman -Syu
  <name of app>
  " id argue thats WAY easier. If it's not in the main repos chances are high it's in the AUR (arch user repository) so you just yay -Syu
  <name of app>
  . It's not harder (imo) just different.
  I've actually had a number of pretty average computer user friends let me help them transition to Linux because of the crap Windows is doing lately. And after getting used to the differences they agree that Linux is not actually harder, it's just different, they grew up with windows, they are used to how things are done on windows, so it seemed difficult just because it wasn't the same. But once they got used to it they would actually agree that a lot of things are actually easier.
  Now whether or not you want to put in that time to learn those differences, and change how you use your computer, is an entirely different question that you have to ask yourself. But you are not too stupid to learn Linux because realistically it's not any more difficult than Windows is
  
  Come on, you are on lemmy. You are not quite dumb.
  
  If you can use windows, then you can use Linux. The effort of switching is not really any different than the effort of switching to Mac.
  
  You are not too dumb to learn Linux. If I learned how to use it then you can. Start with with something simple and easy to install such as Linux Mint or Ubuntu and you will inevitably learn more as you go on. If you can read, type, point, click and observe then you have all the skills required to install the aforementioned distros.
  
  Try a Linux variant that isn't arch.
  
  Most beginner friendly Linux distros have installers. You just need Rufus and a guide to making a bootable USB (its like 5 steps)
  
  If you've never had to dig into a registry file or obscure hidden folder path in Windows, you aren't enough of a power user to ever have to in a Linux distro either.

That's a perfect way to put it. I remember starting college and being really excited about the cloud, having my stuff accessible anywhere, changes automatically saved, etc etc. but now I don't want any of my shit anywhere near their servers, it's mine and mine alone and I'll manage it myself and buffer against losses the best I can. I'd rather have myself fuck up and break a hard drive rather than let microsoft or apple wipe my stuff over a bug or because I didn't pay them enough. Horrible, misleading bullshit.
- I think you'd like syncthing
  
  this.

I can't even remove the "Recommended" section from the Start menu
- That's disgusting
  
  i mean it's annoying but how is it disgusting?
  it just shows recently opened files/software mixed in with stuff you open frequently, it's not an ad section or anything.
  but yeah i have disabled it on all my machines, because I'm not using it + disabling it adds two extra rows of pinned apps...
- Windows 10 LTSC FTW!!! I just installed it and wow is it snappier and devoid of nearly all of those annoyances. I have no idea if productivity apps are affected by its stripped down nature but for Steam gaming it's perfect. I get less lag spikes on steamVR.
  I haven't trusted Windows in years. This is just for gaming. I have a physically separate hot swappable Optane SSDs for Linux and Windows Gaming.
  For those who will winge at me for not just switching to Linux. During this process I gave a concerted effort to give Linux a go and chose Manjaro KDE to try for steamVR gaming. It sucked. Once I had worked out that it was a permissions issue (It's always a fucking permissions issue under Linux) and just ran it under the root account, there was extremely high latency for the VR compositor to HMD display. Completely unusable as it made me sick and that's usually very hard. I tried X11 and Wayland. Direct and Non Direct output modes. No success.
  
  I was using Manjaro KDE and ended up switching to Pop OS because Manjaro would never work right with my GPU. Pop OS has worked very well out of the box though.
- EU should force a choice for all new PC. What OS do you want to run? Windows, Linux or Android? Then you would be able to see real competition in the OS market.
  Maybe something like the raspberry pi OS chooser. In the best of worlds you have everything installed and just choose in the boot menu what to run.
  
  Some manufacturers allow you to get a refund for pre installed windows if you feel like sitting on the phone for hours. Something about a lawsuit involving Microsoft and anticompetitive contracts with the manufacturer not allowing the distribution of other operating systems.
  I've seen a story about someone who got a refund for their dell laptop but it was slow, and the support staff was rude about it during the process. They stated things like the Microsoft software is free and why would you want to remove windows anyway, passing him from department to department. It's often $60-$80 depending on the version of windows etc.
  Edit: I should clarify it might only be a US thing, I've heard people in France having some luck.
- I'm using StartAllBack (paid software), it replace the start menu with a Windows 7 like one, and brings back the pre Windows 11 taskbar, it has no ads and good customization. There's also Open Shell that is free and Start11 that's also paid.
  
  I love openshell, so many options !
  Definitely switch search from tab to just the windows key however
- I think it's a registry modification, but, I've seen windows start to ignore modifications to the registry so idk.

I helped my parents migrate to linux mint and they are very happy with the transition. No more ads, dumb bing search suggestions, or MS edge.

The irony
- How is that ironic?
  You didn't purchase a "HowToGeek" licence, I imagine. Nor was one included with your PC.

My Windows Computer Just Doesn't Feel Like Mine Anymore.
Aww.
If you love it, set it free!
- I prefer to keep it locked in a cage and disable as much of it's bullshit as I can
  
  And yet, if you do that to your girlfriend, people have issues. Double standard here, people! Double standard!

There's a reason I run Linux, and root my Android
Because it actually feels like my device now
(And fixing issues is significantly easier, if you know where to look)

Buying windows is like self flagellation. You have to be a masochist to enjoy it,especially the apologetic users.
- Unfortunately for many, even in this day and age, there is not much choice. I main linux but also keep Windows on my PC as there are still tines when something will only work in Windows. Usually work related or gaming (VR in particular for me) and in fairness its increasingly rare.
  Many other users aren't motivated to change. For Microsoft, its a bit like boiling a frog - if you turn up the heat slowly the frog just puts up with it. That's what Microsoft is doing to its customers - a slow constant enshittification, seeing what it can get away with. Try something and it causes outrage? Don't worry, just undo it and just try again in a few years! Many are already used to no privacy and being sold as a commodity that they don't even question it happening on their own personal computer.
  
  You don't need Windows for gaming.
  Sure, some games only work on Windows but some only work on Switch or PS5 and you can still play video games without playing those in particular.

You pay how much to be told no?

it never been
- Windows 9x was low-bullshit.
  NT and 2000 were corporate enough to be no-nonsense. They belonged to the administrator, but the administrator can be you.
  ME was a mistake.
  XP was not yet online enough to be properly skeezy.
  But from Vista onward, yeah, it's been an escalating shit-show that's difficult to miss.
  
  Vista sucked for sure, but Windows 7 was pretty great IMO. I was dragged kicking and screaming into the shit that's Windows 10 because Steam stopped supporting 7.
  
  Win2k is peak windows

The thing that makes me laugh/cry/be happy I switched to Linux, is that it's in that state, but it's a paid product.
If the license was free it was somewhat okay, but it's not. People are still paying.

#RUNBSD

It's the year of the Linux desktop.
- For me, it's been the year of Linux since 2005. I do dual boot, though.

Are there different versions of Windows 11? Mine doesn't show ads at all.
- Same
  
  I'm curious about this. Do either of you run a custom dns for blocking ads, like adguard or pihole?
  Did you turn off a bunch of stuff when you first got the PC?
  Do you have corporate policies being applied in your registry?

Only now?
My Windows computer stopped felling mine when 10 came around

Always has(n’t) been.
- I disagree.
  XP felt like it was mine.
  7 felt like it was mine
  8 felt like they were trying to force something on me.
  10 felt like they were pushing bloatware like a cell phone. At least l could remove some of that?
  11 feels like they decided it's their computer, I'm just renting time in it by watching ads. You could remove half the programs by default and I would not miss any of them. Do I need a version of minesweeper with micro transactions? No!
  
  I'm sorry, there's microtransactions in minesweeper?
  
  7 felt like it was mine
  I remember that marketing campaign. Windows Vista had a shaky launch, because the hardware manufacturers hadn't polished the Vista-compatible drivers yet. 6 months later, they had caught up, but people still had a bad taste from it.
  So when service pack 1 came out, Microsoft made a reskinned version of it and started an ad campaign with "customers" claiming "Windows 7 was my idea!" and the public ate it up.
  
  I imagine, you guys might be measuring with two different scales. Early Windows versions were fine, but even back then, a switch to Linux would give you so much more customizability to actually make it yours.
  This is a dumb anecdote, but I switched to Linux from Windows 8, and pretty much the first thing I did, was to figure out how to hide the window titlebars. Mostly because I realized, I could, but they also just took screen space away on my laptop.
  
  XP wasn't yours when MS pushed an update without permission or announcement.
  
  Windows 2000 was the last Windows that I felt I could just slap on any old hardware.
  
  And a shortcut to open Microsoft® LinkedIn® at OS level, and what surprises me the most is that uses your default browser instead of always opening it in Edge.
- That's not true at all.

Seeing the windows 3.1 interface took me back to a much happier time.
- I definitely wasn't happier with my computer back then.

Never has been with windows on it.

Is BeOS still floating around?
- @ChickenLadyLovesLife @dvdnet62 Not as such. I mean it is but its drivers are 25 years out of date now. YellowTab Zeta is out there too which was updated a bit but is still ancient.
  But there is Haiku. Bigger, slower, more complicated, but it does a lot more.
  
  As I recall, Gasse was offered something like $440 million for BeOS by Apple and he turned them down. Not sure it would have made any difference in anything by this point, but at least Objective-C wouldn't have been littered with classes with the "NS" prefix.
- No but here is a open source branch of it called haiku and it works great!

M$ is terminal and most of the world is hooked up to a terminal entity; Most of the world is terminal.

Indeed, Linux and FLOSS more broadly was never about technology itself, it's about empowering. It "just" happens to be where software change could lead to a pragmatic difference for so many lives.
Own your computer, own your devices, value your life and don't interact with the numerical world through manipulative blinders.

Sounds like a personal problem. Windows works great for me.