Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login
De-crufted Windows 11 coming to Europe soon (arstechnica.com)
316 points by thunderbong on Nov 17, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 340 comments



I remember the first time I used a Windows system last year after tens of years on Linux/OSX, and it was really a somewhat strange experience: the moment I connected the ethernet cable I was instantly looking at random flashy news articles from another part of the world. Not in the browser, not in some kind of "News" app, but right in my taskbar! The most amazing part is that I did not even have to click on it – the system carefully opened it for me to delight me with some low-quality not-even-local news. I was not astonished then to see it resisting the Chrome browser download - something I had seen and laughed at many years before. What also caught my eye so much is the amount of branding around – there are Spotify, TikTok, Amazon Prime, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger icons right in your menu bar before you ever need them or attempt to download and discover these apps for yourself. I mean that is too much. It feels like you don't really own this system but use it in some kind of public library.


> "the system carefully opened it for me to delight me with some low-quality not-even-local news"

To be fair, Apple does this exact same thing on their operating system. On a freshly installed iPhone, swipe right at the home screen. It takes you to the widget screen which is loaded by default with Apple News showing random junk.

Microsoft deserves the flak for turning Windows 11 into a billboard, but Apple isn't immune to this either.


While Apple is far from perfect, the difference in extent between the two is pretty dramatic. I switched back to MacOS from Windows this year because Windows 11 was annoying me to no end. Microsoft has gone much farther down the anti-user experience road.


>On a freshly installed iPhone, swipe right at the home screen

I've used iPhones for 15 years and never noticed that. There's a difference between having Apple apps available if you want them, compared to things in your face when you don't do anything and don't want them.


This is only true if you are in a country which is supported by Apple News. Mine isn't.


But it does indicate that Apple is following the same path.


But they don't do the exact same thing at all. One comes preloaded with apps you didn't choose and news or ads right on the task bar. Apple does none of that.


By default, Apple loads up the news widget in the macOS notification area.

Clicking on a story opens it in the Apple News app, which is also in your dock by default.


Do you want me to understand a news app or widget as the same thing as unwarranted ads in the start menu?


Here's what the OP described as happening on their new Windows install:

> I remember the first time I used a Windows system last year after tens of years on Linux/OSX, and it was really a somewhat strange experience: the moment I connected the ethernet cable I was instantly looking at random flashy news articles from another part of the world. Not in the browser, not in some kind of "News" app, but right in my taskbar! The most amazing part is that I did not even have to click on it – the system carefully opened it for me to delight me with some low-quality not-even-local news.

Same thing happens on new macOS installs.


macOS does not have a task bar and that paragraph specifically says that the flashing items did not even show in a news app. The criticism of Apple here says that they have a news app and that it shows news.

It is not the same thing and it won't be the same thing no matter how many times you say it. It simply isn't!


The iPhone home screen performs the same function as the Windows Start menu.

A news widget on one is the same as a news widget on the other.


Swiping away (to the right) from the Home Screen, will take you to the widget area from which you can immediately remove the news widget with two or so taps, and that setting will get preserved. So not really the same as pressing start to search for an app to launch. I think in your example the equivalent would be going to the iOS App Library list and then seeing ads and widgets there, which does not happen.


You have to open the widget board on Windows to be shown the news widget that the OP was talking about. There's separate Start and widget board buttons in the taskbar.


Smartphones are not desktop computers and they behave differently.

That a smartphone comes preloaded with some news app is not unexpected behavior. That a desktop operating system is not "clean" from first install is absolutely not acceptable.


Apple preloads the phone with commercial apps that I didn't ask for like Apple Music, and those apps will get automatically triggered for some content. They show news and other unsolicited content practically in the home screen (the widget screen is just a swipe away, every user will stumble there). What's the difference?

I think people are a bit blind to Apple's defaults. They compare a fresh Windows 11 install to their own customized iOS install with a decade of history, and conclude that Microsoft is so much worse. But the out of the box experience for a new user isn't all that different, IMHO. (MacOS is still better than Windows in many respects, but it's been steadily moving closer to iOS and comes with an ever-growing pile of Apple default apps loaded in the Dock and set as defaults.)


Yes, it does come with Apple Music (and whatever Apple News it - perhaps I've missed it?) And they do nag about using Apple Music a lot.

I dislike that they do this and Apple can be criticised for a million different things. 1) this is not it; 2) this is not what Microsoft is doing.

It has filled the Dock with (all) Apple apps the last 15+ years.

I don't quite understand why you're comparing a desktop OS to the phone OS, but I guess that can make some sense?


Let's compare apps from the article.

"Camera, Cortana/CoPilot, and Photos can now be uninstalled". Mac and iOS come with PhotoBooth/Camera, Siri and Photos preinstalled, I don't think can be removed.

"No Bing, no Edge, no upselling." You can't remove Safari, comes with upselling to Apple drive.

Apple also comes preinstalled with Maps, Music, BookReader, NewsClient, MailClient, TV app, Notes app. For all I have better alternatives so tonnes of bloat and at worse many of them can't be completely disabled. They keep popping at some unexpected places.

For that matter popular linux distros come with similar apps, though through some maze in installer you may have been able to skip them.


We’re talking passed each other, because the parent is complaining that “random third party ads” are in the task bar, nothing to do with Microsoft and not relevant to the context they’re in.

Apple News could be criticized for having a default list of news sources and I think that’s fair. But the news app is first party. Apple Music could be criticized for its upselling, and that’s justified as heck, but it’s still first party.

However; Safari and edge aren’t comparable. Safari seems to be perfectly content in being relegated to storage, never to hit memory or the CPU again, and I believe it is possible to remove it. Edge begs for its life when you even consider installing an alternative browser.

That’s not the topic being discussed in this branch of the thread as far as I understood it, but even if you were to take that point it’s a very large difference.


It absolutely is the same thing Microsoft does, just with different branding. In fact, Apple was doing it before MS. If anything, MS is just copying Apple there.

The only difference is that they have been doing it for 15+ years and during this time they convinced you that it is okay that they do it on a pocket computer, as if it was somehow magically different.


Then we don't understand the phrase "the same thing" the same way.

An Apple box comes with Apple software and services. It does not come with third party apps preinstalled and it does not show me ads. The one exception that I can think of is in the App Store and in their TV offer, but this is not what you are talking about.

I disagree with a thousand things that Apple does but this comparison is disingenuous.


> I think people are a bit blind to Apple's defaults.

I think there is some truth to this. But the reason people are blind to it is that, even if Apple and Microsoft are doing the same thing philosophically to a degree, Apple’s implementation of it feels less aggressive, less cheap, and more easily turned off than MS’s approach (two taps to permanently remove the news widget).

For what it’s worth, Apple News, even the free version, is actually a half decent news app if you’re in a supported area for local news.

> comes with an ever-growing pile of Apple default apps loaded in the Dock and set as defaults

Realistically, this is the direction consumer workstations are heading, and it’s the right direction. The average user is nontechnical, and less interested in customization than functionality. They want apps preloaded and preset as defaults. For those who don’t, there’s always Linux. But I think it would be a misrepresentation to suggest this is somehow a bad thing or that the masses don’t want or wouldn’t benefit from this.


Not that I like the way Apple does business, but these days, phones are really used for distraction. So, it is a bit more logical to put a news aggregator there. At least you have to swipe right, and it is not doing it for you. At least it is not pushing this widget down your throat. And there's nothing like that on the desktop system. When you first launch and go through some onboarding wizards, it just stands amazingly still and chill. No single pixel of the interface is moving away or appearing in front of your face out of nowhere without your interaction


> It feels like you don't really own this system but use it in some kind of public library.

You don't, commercial OS manufacturers want you to see and treat your computers as app consoles, similar to game consoles.

They successfully got you to view phones and tablets as app consoles, the rest of your computers are next.

> What also caught my eye so much is the amount of branding around – there are Spotify, TikTok, Amazon Prime, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger icons right in your menu bar before you ever need them or attempt to download and discover these apps for yourself

Microsoft desperately wants you to use their app store to run these apps on your app console instead of on the web or on their competitors' app consoles.


> They successfully got you to view phones and tablets as app consoles, the rest of your computers are next.

Yes. Because it’s only logical. Go and watch what any person outside of tech circles do with their computer. Office, Chrome, Spotify, Steam, Minecraft. That’s it.

Saying this as a hardcore Linux and FOSS user.

Plenty HN folks cannot wrap their minds around that the world is in fact, changing once again from what they accustomed to.


> Go and watch what any person outside of tech circles do with their computer. Office, Chrome, Spotify, Steam, Minecraft. That’s it.

This has always been the case.

What's new is how OS manufacturers are forcing profitable and restrictive paradigms upon users that will allow them to capture ~30% of every software sale and online payment ever made on any phone, tablet or computer.


[Apple app dev smugness stops]

People really jumped head-first into dystopia innit?


The really shocking part of this is that people actually pay money for this experience. This reminds me of the adblocker wars: those who play smart and cheap are better off than those who play dumb and expensive. Shouldn't it be the other way around?


No, it works as intended, it’s Economics 101: market discrimination.


I had the same experience, I used Mac exclusively for almost 20 years.

I use a Mac for 99% of my work also and I have an employer supplied neutered PC which is generally fine.

I purchased a personal PC laptop with Windows "Pro"... What a sh!t experience. Riddled with rubbish and distractions.


I'm glad I saw this coming over ten years ago and ditched Windows back then. I probably told people at the time and they laughed.

Imagine having advertising in your own home. Ugh!


> Imagine having advertising in your own home

That's why people continue to use Windows Home and if you want to get pro level of ads in your OS you would use Windows Pro /s


Maybe I'm overthinking this, but how on earth did the EU pass a regulation[0] with such far-reaching implications? First Apple opening up to third-party app stores and RCS, now Microsoft giving users a bit more leeway. How come none of the big tech lobby against it in the EU? If it survives the waves of appeals, the DMA will probably change the entire technology landscape in the near future.

Not that I'm complaining of course, but still, quite a surreal moment.

[0]: https://www.engadget.com/eu-confirms-the-six-tech-giants-sub...

The 6 companies are Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta, ByteDance, and Microsoft.


Because while corruption* is still rampant in the EU, it’s not at least directly protected by the constitution like in the USA, so occasionally some legislation that benefits normal folks over megacorporations manages to sneak through.

*also known as lobbying with so much money you can buy millions of times as much “free” speech as everyone else.


... sigh.

Lobbying isn't equivalent to corruption.

While the two can get very similar in the US because US elections have no campaign spending cap, therefore politicians (and even some civil servants) have a constant need for massive political donations, in general lobbying is a lot more complex than "spend money, get law you like". It usually involves a high amount of, you guessed it, waiting around in lobbies.

In the EU, the stereotypical industry lobbyist is a guy who will invite some commission members to a very fancy restaurant and tell them "About this regulation you're passing, we've prepared a full binder on it, with different policy options you could consider, case studies illustrating the trade-offs of each option, ideas for further research, etc".

Bureaucrats know that the content of the binder will be biased towards the interests of the companies that funded it, but they still read it because it's full of industry information and technical knowledge they don't have.

There's allegedly a bit of give and take, where they expect the info to be biased, but not too obviously biased otherwise they stop returning your calls.

Good bureaucrats will then cross-reference that info with info from competing interest groups, researchers, wikipedia, etc, and hope that they end up with a balanced view of the industry. Bad bureaucrats will just copy the biggest group's proposed laws verbatim.

But in any case, calling it "rampant corruption" is just ignorant. There's a lot of thought put into that process beyond "do what the corporations want".


Your post didn’t require the impolite sigh and reads much better without it.


That's fair, I could have worded my annoyance better (or skipped it altogether).

Too late to edit.


> Because while corruption* is still rampant in the EU

> *also known as lobbying with so much money you can buy millions of times as much “free” speech as everyone else.

Firstly, corruption is not "rampant" in the European Union, it is on average the least corrupt political organization on this planet: https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2022

Secondly, lobbying is not corruption, it is legalized, registered and regulated in most EU members and at the Union's level even more so.

If interest groups cannot communicate their interests to politicians, how do you expect politicians to inform their votes, make laws, and take decisions? Should they just guess or know everything about every topic they are solicited about? Should they "Google" the answers (the irony here should strike you in regards to the original post)?


IMO it's quite simple - lobbying works best at home. Most governments serve the interests of local industries more than they should, and Silicon Valley is quite obviously not in the EU. Apart from not employing many people and not paying a lot of taxes(!), some of SV companies' values are a little alien to Europeans.

Influencing a not completely corrupted government is not as simple as money in - laws out. That would work equally well everywhere.


And additionally, the large tech corporations are not from to EU and they contribute very little to the EU relative to their size with their tax reduction schemes as well.

The tech companies don't have much bargaining power in the EU because of that.


This always surprises me. While as an Indian I'm ashamed of the level of corruption we have in every government system of ours, at least it's still called corruption (and is illegal) what US calls lobbying (and is legal).


Sadly, electoral bonds make this less true. All the benefits of lobbying for businesses with none of the transparency that political donations have in the US.


I don’t think any sane reading of the constitution makes lobbying protected. It is the current judicial interpretation, but that could certainly change in the future (more so than many other aspects of the constitution IMO).


In the EU, really? I can see it in the US, but the amount of lobbying spend in EU must be 1-2 orders of magnitude less.

Also, all highly advanced democracies have some lobbying. It is not viewed widely by political scientists as corruption.


If you spend time in brussels it becomes quite difficult to avoid lobbyists. They are perfectly nice people but apparently everywhere, for every sector and very much full time there.


It's not about "benefits normal folks" at all, but about keeping foreign competition at arms length while fostering EU companies.


That must be why I have one-click filed my taxes on my phone for the last 15 years while TurboTax et.al. prevents the same thing in the US. Foreign competition.


I would imagine they did lobby against this, likely fighting tooth and nail legally. However I do not think the EU is as easily swayed, especially as EU regulators are generally skeptical of the business practices of large US multinationals. IMO, and possibly objectively, the EU is generally more pro-competition and pro-privacy, it is also much harder to buy out politicians due to the parties being really fragmented and it would appear more difficult to unilaterally impose the will of these corps on their citizens.


especially as EU regulators are generally skeptical of the business practices of large US multinationals

The singling out of US multinationals is a bit of a myth, it's just more visible to us tech people and since the revenues are larger, the fines also tend to be larger. But they also fined Daimler, Scania, DAF, Philips, Volvo, Deutsche Bank, etc.

http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/editorcharts/EU-GOOGLE-...


> and pro-privacy

Are we talking about the same EU that is currently attempting to ban encryption?


That's been put down by the EU parliament. But yes, the EU is definitely not a single entity with a single position on things.


"The" EU is not a monolithic thing, there are liberal and conservative factions. Depending on the topic the resulting consensus can move quite a bit on that spectrum...


Unfortunately, yes. Despite that, they haven't yet passed anything that undermines encryption and they've passed plenty that helps protect privacy.


It is called the Brussels Effect[0]

Put simply, given how large the EU market is, and how strong its regulation is, it is cheaper for companies to comply, even outside of the market.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect


This explains why they comply to the EU regulations even in the USA, but not why they don't try to lobby more in the EU to avoid those regulations in the first place.


One reason is that there are more hands in the cookie jar in the EU. Less so in the US.


> How come none of the big tech lobby against it in the EU?

Because lobbying isn't equivalent to corruption and doesn't automatically get you the laws you want.

The European Commission had a three months comment period in 2020 where various interest groups (FAANGs, non-profits, media groups, open-source giants like Mozilla, etc) all submitted their position (which IIRC usually boiled down to "yeah, regulating is awesome, please regulate everyone but me!"). It submitted its report in December 2020, at which point most of the key points were already decided.

No doubt interest groups sent a lot of people to lobbies in the following years to discuss details and push in one direction or another, but by then the commission and parliament had a pretty good idea what they wanted the final law to look like anyway.


> How come none of the big tech lobby against it in the EU?

Because believe it or not, corporations are legally people and are required to obey the law. Not above the law, like in the US.

Lobby all you want, but weigh the cost of having an entire market worth millions of people denied to your business. Comply or GTFO.


> how come?

eu seem to care about its citizens it seems. so, it might be dumbfounding for citizens of nations with government who give zero fucks about its own citizens.

> lobbying

in other countries, it is called bribery. most of the time, it's illegal.


Re: “not lobbying”: Google, Meta and Apple are in the top 10 by budget: https://www.lobbyfacts.eu/


It is also happening in EU. It just bit harder than in 2-party system.


Btw, Microsoft seems to be circumventing US/EU sanctions. While traveling to eastern Europe, the fresh installation of Edge has yandex (pootin-linked company) as the default search engine, and also proposes other similarly shady websites like mailru.


I don't think there is any EU sanction related to Yandex. I could always access it (with my default ISP settings, no VPN nor anything like that) and I don't know of anybody who couldn't, at least from inside the EU.


I mean the deal Microsoft has with yandex to have it as the default search engine.


Because the EU does not have a tech sector, so they can pass any tech regulations without any fear for blowback.


Dude, we don't live in the middle ages. We have a tech sector. ASML, SAP, Infineon, Nokia, Dassault Systèmes and so on.


If you're using a processor that was manufactured in the last decade, it was built using machines that the entire world depends upon that are only designed and produced in the EU.


Perhaps they agreed to overlook some tax evasion or something


> lobby

There is no such thing in the EU. You can't just waltz into the European parliament and lobby (read: bribe) your way into regulations that favor you like it's the case in the USA. Once the parliament votes on something, it's done.


> Once the parliament votes on something, it's done.

The Council and the Commission would like to have a word with you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_trilogue_meeting


Sarcasm?


> Microsoft's post notes that Windows uses the region picked during Windows install to offer the EEA-exclusive options. Only a PC reset can undo the options.

Looks like I will be telling Windows that I live in the EEA next time I install.


I predict that Microsoft will soon create something equivalent to Apple's "countryd", with the sole purpose of preventing people outside of the EU from having access to this.


I too will only install Windows in Ireland from now on.


Unless they changed something substantial, that is where you buy it from.


It's an interesting approach. I might be remembering incorrectly, but last time Microsoft created a "stripped down" version of Windows it was pretty much impossible to actually buy.


It already works to select "English (Europe)" as the region. The bloatware isn't defined for that region so it doesn't include it.

https://www.windowslatest.com/2023/08/06/you-can-install-win...


Pro Hint: due to licensing issues and EU regulations, "Windows Pro Education N" is pretty much the most bloatware free version, as it's also compliant with HIPAA.

- No media codecs

- No AI recording/transcription features due to missing media codecs

- No cortana

- No Teams upselling, no Office upselling, no Skype

- No self installing games


I installed the N version once, and the lack of media codecs was infuriating. Most programs assume they are always present, so the error messages they give are cryptic and the average user won't guess the problem lies in their Windows having been N(eutered). What's worse, Microsoft website provides several guides that explain how to install the codecs, and they all contradict each other. I think https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/media-feature-pa... is the correct link, but I might be mistaken.

And of course Microsoft bundles a lot of additional programs like Groove Music and Skype with the codecs in a single pack.


The fact that made me switch away from the N edition was the fact that the separately installable media codecs weren't available for weeks after my computer auto-updated to a new major Windows release. This basically made my computer unusable for many regular tasks I did, since as you noted most programs assume they're available.


I thought I would be clever and install the N edition of Windows 11, took me nearly two weeks to figure out what extra bits needed to be installed to allow a webcam to work.


Windows N(SA safe) :D

Jokes aside I am assuming if people are willing to go down the N route, they could probably also use tiny11 and just DIY install all drivers and codecs they need on that machine


Only when I started programming lambdas I realized how life-saving resource tests and error messages really are. You could say it was straightforward, when you think about it, but I definitely wasn't following it properly before. It turned to be a very important lesson, which I carried with me in all other environments as well "for fun and profit".


Speaking as a dev, I recently hit that. In N editions even the APIs to query installed codecs do not work with a generic E_CLASS_NOT_REG. The docs for the API never mention that they are not available in N editions.


We had issues at work because Support guys had installed the N version in their VMs that they use to connect to our customers. Apparently some of our client's VPN software wouldn't start due to the missing media codecs.

Didn't take long to figure out and then download and install the media pack. But for a while every time they set up a new VM I had to help them with this.


Fantastic! How do we get access to this "European" version of Windows 11? Asking for Europeans who don't live in Europe, and for non-Europeans everywhere who want less Bing, Edge, and upselling in their OS.


I know that this is hard. But the end solution is not installing European Windows versions, but fixing government, especially curtailing lobbying, campaign funding, etc. And break the narrative 'market is everything, government is the enemy' that is so common in the US. Some regulation is good, it makes the market fairer to everyone.


Hard, impractical, incredibly slow and high chance of failure. Sounds like maybe installing an EU version is reasonable in comparison.


All your adjectives apply to installing an EU version in the long term.


This. They don't want to get off the gravy train. So as long as it's not regulated, they'll try to infer your locale and enable features based on that. And since this is the OS, they can use WiFi AP MAC addresses, nearby Bluetooth devices' addresses, etc. to infer your location. After all, this world brought you

https://keith.github.io/xcode-man-pages/countryd.8.html


You can still have a debloated Windows 11 setup without the bloat by just selecting "English (World)" in the localisation option during installation. Add to that the "no@thankyou.com" trick while signing in to Microsoft account and you'll have an option of a fresh, clean locally-administered install.


Didn't they fix the English (World) trick at some point?

Regardless of that, supposedly for this you just need to set your region to somewhere in the EU during initial installation; Though that can't be changed post-install.


I installed Windows 11 just this month, the trick is still working.


What's the deal with no thankyou? Are you just giving access to your machine to the owner of thankyou.com?


A clever person got that account banned. When you try logging in with that email and a random password, it will fail, and Windows will allow you create a local account. (ref: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37179504, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33049235).


The European version is Linux, made in Finland!

(Ok, it's a joke and I know GNU is American too).


Same here, I look forward to the workarounds that will come.


When I still used Windows I remember there used to be a Windows "N" version. Some AIO ISOs will let you choose


Is the license the same between N and non-N versions?


No, they require different keys.


Thought so.


Irrelevant! See vlmcsd on github.


You can reinstall windows without bloat. Select the "World" region during the installation process. https://www.techradar.com/computing/windows/secret-trick-ins...


>> Camera, Cortana, and Photos can now be uninstalled

When a user would uninstall an app, would it actually be removed from the system, or just the icons and entries would be. Motivation for asking: Several built-in apps are listed in the Apps section of the settings as having just a few kB in size, which does not match how bloated in size apps typically are in the current times. I've seen mouse drivers occupy hundreds of MB. My guess is that the apps are much bigger than those kB values and the installed Apps settings section is set to let users believe otherwise.


I think for app uninstallation to be relevant it's not whether the app resides on disk that's important, it's whether it's interfering with how you use the system. E.g. for a browser it's just important that the browser isn't registered as the default browser everywhere, but you can install your own browser. Being able to "uninstall" an app in a relevant way means being able to make it appear as if you don't have it. Whether or not the files the app uses are still on disk is perhaps relevant for disk space, but from a legal standpoint that seems almost irrelevant.


What you are talking about is not uninstalling. It's disabling. Uninstalling should remove application.


What you are talking about doesn't really have a good definition. If a windows app consists of 10 files of which 9 are used by other apps too, does that mean removing the only unique file to the app? Should it remove any configuration related to the app etc


These are easy questions, and it's been a very common experience since forever:

Shared files stay until you uninstall all apps that use that

User config can be removed with an extra option


Can you cite your law where "legally" uninstall doesn't uninstall the app binaries???


What I’m saying is that the law here isn’t about removal but the ability to not use it (and use something else instead). It sounds extremely unlikely that legal texts would care about what particular method is used to ensure that.


No, the law is specifically about removal:

"To enable end user choice, gatekeepers should not prevent end users from un-installing any software applications on their operating system."

And

"3. The gatekeeper shall allow and technically enable end users to easily un-install any software applications on the operating system of the gatekeeper,"


Yes, but the idea of "removal" here I'm pretty sure isn't about disk space but about competition.


As with my iPhone that has none of Voice Memos at the moment has data shown as 4 GB. I remove the app, nothing changes, it frees some kilobytes for the app (which I doubt, that the app is in kilobytes) and leaves the data, while it claims it keeps the data only when I unload the app to the cloud.


Some Windows binaries are hard linked to run directly from the installation disk image copied during Windows install .

Those few kb are probably the size of the hard links to the image.


This is one of the marks of good product managers. Cut the cruft from the product. It's refreshing that in this case regulators are cutting things from the product rather than enforcing things to be added like cookie banners.


Regulators didn't enforce cookie banners. Cookie banners are a form of malicious compliance. When you complain about them, you are doing the lobbying work of ad companies for free. The correct solution is to just not spy on people, and the problem is that the EU didn't go far enough and just ban the behavior altogether.


The rules are really surprisingly encouraging about notification of cookies to the point it's quite easy to legitimately need to notify and gain consent about something non-spying related requires consent. E.g. if you have a UI customization cookie which sets the results density preference and you want to store that more than a session (i.e. it should still save for a month later) then the official EU analysis of this is you must notify this is a cookie and that setting this will set this cookie.

If the law didn't intend for users to be inundated with notification banners and consent checkboxes it sure is odd how much time they spent about writing how anything but the most basic connection cookies require said things.


> E.g. if you have a UI customization cookie which sets the results density preference and you want to store that more than a session

I'm not entirely sure that this is true. You can implement a "shopping cart" on your site, with a session cookie without needing to have a "cookie notification", so depending on circumstance I'd argue that settings might be allowed as well. Or you can just display the cookie information along with the settings it self, it doesn't actually need to be a popup.


"and you want to store that more than a session" -> "...with a session cookie without needing to have a "cookie notification"". Session cookies are fine, the example was for a preference beyond the session.

"Or you can just display the cookie information along with the settings it self, it doesn't actually need to be a popup." this is true, you can put the information for each cookie in every place that the UI interacts with the cookie or you can put it in a dedicated popup or however else you can figure out to do it. So long as you notify and require (informed) interaction with the associated interaction you're good.


It’s trivial to implement this in a legal and user friendly way, just make the save button make clear that it’ll persist, or even add a persistence checkbox. Demanding consent as an aggressive popup when it isn’t necessary for anything but ad tracking is not a good faith compliance effort, it’s an attempt to avoid real compliance by just having the user just sign off on whatever they were already doing.


Add the cookie popup/banner into the browser so that the user can make a choice for _all_ the websites used. But honestly, something like that is much harder to achieve with such regulations because it's kind of not the browser vendors problem. The ad network companies are parasitic in a way.


We've had that twenty years ago, in Internet Explorer no less [1]. It just never gained traction, likely because it was quite convoluted.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P3P


Last I read the law, any cookie used for the functioning of the site, and not for the tracking of the user, is perfectly fine without a cookie banner.


https://ec.europa.eu/justice/article-29/documentation/opinio...

3.6 UI customization cookies:

"These customization functionalities are thus explicitly enabled by the user of an information society service (e.g. by clicking on button or ticking a box) although in the absence of additional information the intention of the user could not be interpreted as a preference to remember that choice for longer than a browser session (or no more than a few additional hours). As such only session (or short term) cookies storing such information are exempted under CRITERION B. The addition of additional information in a prominent location (e.g. “uses cookies” written next to the flag) would constitute sufficient information for valid consent to remember the user’s preference for a longer duration, negating the requirement to apply an exemption in this case."

In particular, criterion A "functioning of the site" is a lot more narrow than your interpretation. It sounds like "oh, they need this to use the site's functions" but it really describes is functionality more like "you can't use the site at all without setting this cookie because you couldn't authenticate" and criterion B "for service explicitly requested" has more limitations (like lasting beyond session).


I was going to agree with you, but in researching this, it does seem that GP is right. This is the source that I found: https://gdpr.eu/cookies/

As far as I can see, this is a resource funded by the EU, so not quite authoritative, but good enough IMO. They say:

> To comply with the regulations governing cookies under the GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive you must: Receive users’ consent before you use any cookies except strictly necessary cookies. [...]

This sounds like what you're saying, but this verbiage is based on a classification of cookies further above where a distinction is made:

> Strictly necessary cookies — These cookies are essential for you to browse the website and use its features, such as accessing secure areas of the site. [...] > > Preferences cookies — Also known as “functionality cookies,” these cookies allow a website to remember choices you have made in the past, like what language you prefer, what region you would like weather reports for [...]

So "strictly necessary" really only means "the site breaks without this", e.g. a session cookie set by a login page or the shopping cart example that the quoted article explicitly calls out, too. Presentational settings like display density, font size, dark/light mode and such seem to require consent.


Ah, so the truth was more specific than I thought. Consider me educated!


Regulators are the ones accepting the malicious compliance as compliance! So they did enforce cookie banners. When you ignore that fact, you are doing the pro-gov propaganda for free.


> Regulators are the ones accepting the malicious compliance as compliance!

Yeah, I had to read the first version of "the cookie law". The intend was super clear, at least in the Danish version, it was pretty easy to implement and wouldn't really bother anyone... Then came the marketing/SEO/retargting assholes who had a nice thing going tracking the everlasting crap out of everyone and they did NOT want things to change. Some of these people then came up with the "hosted cookie banner" and things went to hell from there.

You are absolutely right that this should never in a million years be viewed as compliance. It mostly didn't, and still doesn't work. What should have happened is that the law should have been amended to prevent outsourcing responsibility.


What is the limit here?

If I own a store and you walk into my store am I required to forget that you came into my store?

Monday:

Bill: "Hey Jane (store owner), do you have any X45 hammers?"

Jane: "Sorry Bill, I'm out but might have some tomorrow"

Tuesday:

Bill "Did hammer come in I mentioned yesterday?"

Jane: "What hammer? Sorry I'm not allowed to remember anything about people in my shop because that would be spying so whatever you said to me yesterday has been deleted from my memory"

PS: I hate spying too. I'm just not sure how to design a law to prevent it that doesn't have unintended consequences.


Law isn't like software code. It doesn't have to be put to an exhaustive set of unit tests to 100% pass rate and then worry about anything it might not have covered. The law just needs to signal intent and scope clear enough the judicial system can work with interpreting it to new applications in a way most people can consider consistent.

In the case of cookies, they simply apply to computers and not people. Why? It's not about whether the two are operationally similar it's about whether the two are practically similar. Until every shopkeep meticulously tracks every detail of every customer interaction and starts efficiently sharing them with others, all manually, often enough and at a large enough scale that it becomes a similar privacy concern it's not really worth fretting the law be generic enough to cover the use cases. In such a case it probably even makes sense to just write a separate law which meets the domain's needs more succinctly.


Excellent post.

To hammer your point home even further, there's also the key point that in the digital world you also have entities like Meta that track you everywhere you go because they have their little tracker scripts running on almost every website.

To bring this back to the previous hypothetical, it's more like a single person following you around with a camera everywhere you go, which is already covered by existing laws.


A website run by a large corporation is very different from a store run by Jane. Jane does not have thousands or millions of people coming into her store, and she also is not selling CCTV footage from her store to advertising companies. We would be rightly outraged if she was. She also probably isn't sharing customer details or security footage with government authorities unless her store has been robbed or something.


This is a thing that these comparisons always miss.

These rules aren’t for your dream small business. It’s for a mega corp that would literally not care if you lived or died or if that hammer hit you on the head.


Probably?

* Using Quickbooks Online? they market/sell that data.

* using ADT for payroll? They market/sell employee salary information.

* Using Ring for security? they freely share video with LEO

* etc, etc. All these services that SMB's use already have their fingers in the pie.


Those big multinationals are abusing their position I agree. I’d like to see those practices banned, HN wouldn’t because half of HN relies of predatory activities to pay their rent


Yes. In fact, you already do this most of the time. The right to be forgotten is so fundamental to humanity that humans have to expend extra effort to violate it and remember stuff. Machines with perfect memory violate the right to be forgotten by default and we have to tell them to forget things. Hence the regulation.


I don't do this most of the time. It keep a diary. I keep records of all kinds of stuff.


I would be uncomfortable if I had found out your diary contained as much about my daily travel and grocery errands as I know can be bought by marketing firms, or anyone with the right relationships in the industry. For that matter, the friendly greengrocer doesn't know what I bought at the shoe store.


Do you... write down the name of every person that walks into your store, then cross-correlate so you have nice little lists of every time each person came in and what they bought and how they looked that day? Because doing the same thing online companies get away with is generally seen as stalking in the real world.


Jane is tracking you from store to store, remembering everything you saw, everything you interacted with, everything you did, and selling that to the highest bidder


The law says that you need consent for any cookies which aren't strictly necessary for the functioning of the site.

In your instance, I would have put a backordered hammer in my cart. I come back the next day to check and see if the hammer is in stock. The cookie that enables cart behavior is necessary to the functioning of an online store. No consent needed.

In the real world, this basically means that tracking and marketing cookies are what you are being asked about. They don't need to ask about much else.

The EU has a very good write-up: https://gdpr.eu/cookies/


Even tracking what items you had looked at purely for the purpose of showing you things you had previously considered is trivially justifiable if its used for that feature rather to sell info to advertisers.


Showing you your viewing history would be an "unnecessary to the core functionality of an online store" feature and require explicit consent to track.

I think it would actually be very difficult to demonstrate that this tracker is absolutely required for the online store to function.


Most stores suggest products to buyers


And yet it's still not a vital part of running a store.


> These cookies are essential for you to browse the website and use its features

It doesn't seem to directly require comporting with someone's limited view of how a particular app is supposed to work


Not a lawyer. My impression is that you’re in any case allowed to record things in order to fulfil explicit requests (preferences, ongoing orders—like in your example), legal requirements (limited-time order history—ugh), or functional necessities (free trial used up), no explicit consent needed. Notably the bar is “required to work at all”, not “required to be profitable” or “required to use common out-of-the-box solutions”. Cloudflare or reCAPTCHA 3 would probably make interesting test cases here (my burning hate for them from the several years I needed to use a self-hosted always-on VPN aside).

The way to do this (both in ePrivacy and in GDPR, despite the different legal mechanisms they use) looks to be to write a phrase like “legitimate interest” into the main text, give illustrative examples of what that’s supposed to mean in the recitals before that, and let the courts figure out the details.


> am I required to forget that you came into my store?

No. Your head is not covered by the GDPR. It requires you to not keep a record of all your clients' personal info without a legitimate interest.

There's a Seinfeld episode where Elaine goes to buy a fancy pen at a stationery store which isn't available atm. The clerk asks for her full name and number to notify her (that's a legitimate interest) but then uses it to hit on/stalk her (that would be a GDPR violation). Presumably he also doesn't get rid of the number after their business transaction.


> what is the limit here.

Common sense and consent. Laws are not theorems or malicious genies.


First: just look into your session store, which lists all people which are in your store (hah!).

Second: You can have analytics AND be GDPR compliant without a cookie banner. There are even companies built around this: https://plausible.io/


EU in 2035:

  All store owners and employees should get whacked in the head every day.
Don't give them ideas


Fun thought experiment: How would you disable access to your website after someone refuses your cookies? iow, you should always click NO.


By requiring a valid cookie be present and used when trying to actually use the functionality of the site. The law does not allow this kind of behaviour for any cookies that require consent though, so that's why you can get away with hitting no.


1.) In general, it's illegal to disable access to the website, if user rejects tracking cookies.

2.) You are allowed to save 'consent=given/rejected' cookie depending on user choice.


If they don’t send a cookie, pop up the banner. If they click No, redirect them to another site. If they click yes, save the cookie.


What if they visit the same site again? Can you just ask again and again?


Suppose you are buying a new laptop ... does anyone else feel sad that their operating system has effectively turned into some weird social media marketing tracking data harvesting hybrid of a thing?

But in the name of progress and security, you can't stay on Windows 10. So for me it's this weird middle ground right now .. waiting for either Windows to U-turn, die out, or for more work apps to port to OS X.


Surprisingly, I'm not sad at all. I've been using Windows for a long time and recently purchased a new computer with Windows 11. It's such an abomination that it forced me to try Linux for the very first time on my production machine, and I'm very pleased with the results. A thank you to Microsoft for giving me a reason to look somewhere else, and a sincere thank you to the open source community for all the work they've put into Linux on the desktop.


I'm currently in a phase where I'm deciding if I switch to Linux or MacOS. But it has become clear that staying on Windows is no longer an option.

I've been a Windows user since version 3.0. Maybe even earlier versions since I was using DOS initially.

It's sad to see into what they've turned it. Well, they'd just have to stop the spying and it would be somewhat tolerable, but that's not an option for them.


As someone who’s been on Linux on and off for close to a decade (full time last few years) I’ve noticed something interesting.

Now that so many apps have a browser version and prioritize the mobile version, the isolation caused by being on Linux keeps decreasing.

Between your phone and your browser, that’s not quite 100% coverage, but it’s very good and improving all the time.

You use your phone when you need a work app you can’t get on Linux, and if you can, the browser version of the app. And of course if it natively supports Linux there’s no problem at all.

A decade ago, being all Linux was basically untenable. Now I barely have to mention it to people. It’s been a dramatic change in a short time span.


I've been on linux for the better part of the last 6 years. Legitimately the only times I can recall _not_ being able to do something on Linux were a handful of use cases:

- Multiplayer games: Steam Proton largely solves compatibility for a lot of games now, but the included DRM and anti-cheat for some multiplayer games made them unplayable.

- Certain specialist tools like Photoshop, some CAD software, etc. Open source in this space is better in compatibility.

For the rest of the time I'd do the same as you say: stick to web apps, use the mobile version, etc.

I switched to Mac this year because the M1+ battery life is best-in-class for the price, and I sorely needed a cheaper solution for work than an inverter + batteries to survive South Africa's loadshedding. That, and that some Laravel tooling is smoother on macOS than anywhere else these days.


I tried multiple times to use Linux as primary desktop. I gave up. Windows hardware support for consumer devices is just better. And games, especially old games.

Linux is amazing , but for a everyday machine. I've given up on Linux, I don't have time to configure it. Also every desktop ui Ive used on it isn't quite as polished as windows.


Hardware is hit or miss. Had very good experience with ThinkPads.

I don't get the old games part. This is something where Linux absolutely shines, a lot of old Win9x games run perfectly fine on Wine, but fail on modern Windows for weird reasons. The biggest hurdle is usually DRM and Anti-Cheat, but I guess I'm lucky here because I don't play any competitive multiplayer games but more casual stuff. Also I don't use Nvidia. ;)

I just switched completely about a decade ago. Don't even remember what the final straw was. I guess what "helped" was that at the time I was very busy with life and really only had the most basic demands for my computing needs outside of work, so any shortcomings in areas like gaming didn't matter. Basically needed a browser and a text editor. When things got better two or three years down the line, well, it has already been a while since I used Windows, so any shortcomings were just part of life I guess, but also I just figured more and more stuff out over the years. I guess, and that comes down to personal preference, another thing that greatly helped was that I'm just not focused on convenience and somewhat of a minimalist, so I use i3 as the window manager and no further desktop environment. I don't use any file manager but just the terminal. No gvfs, every USB drive gets mounted and unmounted via terminal. I do use NetworkManager but only via nmcli. I guess having grown up on DOS left some impact. It just means less moving parts, so no stupid surprises after an update like "my KDE/gnome file manager suddenly doesn't show any thumb drive I plug in anymore".

I don't pretend Linux is ready for the average Joe. More and more people seem to think so, but I wouldn't even give it to my mom even though her only use case really is browsing the web and writing a letter about twice a year.


My sister isn't a technical person and doesn't care for technical stuff. She dailies an Ivy Bridge HP Laptop with Ubuntu and Google Chrome for the past 10 years.

The issues she's encountered that I know of are:

- Couldn't install some specific printer drivers

- Couldn't interoperate with docx files that everyone else seems to expect

And that's it from what she's told me.


I do use Nvidia in Linux, and I too get the "runs just fine experience."

Ironically, I've had problems with things like Sublime Text crashing. But Windows games from Steam (I don't run the ones that require anti-cheat root-kits), work fairly well.


> Windows hardware support for consumer devices is just better.

YMMV. My run-of-the-mill corporate hp-recommends-windows laptop's webcam was unsupported under Windows for approx. a year after I bought it. Worked OOB on Linux since day one.

Ditto for my other run-of-the-mill corporate hp-recommends-windows laptop's intel iGPU: it had a tough time outputting 4k@60Hz over the hp dock. Had to do a weird dance of unplugging and replugging the monitor at just the right time to make it work. Fixed after some Windows update half a year in. 0 issues since day one on Linux. Also, on this particular machine, you better have an external mouse for installing Windows, since it doesn't recognize the touchpad. Ditto for the integrated intel wifi card. Bonus points for Windows insisting on connecting to the internet (the pc doesn't have any onboard wired network). Last I tried, it was win11 22h2. The computer is a 2020 model.


I think iforgotpassword gave a good reply to this, but I wanted to add a bit.

I agree it's not for everyone day-to-day, since I feel like inevitably you have to dive into the CLI to fix things with trying to get more obscure programs working.

As for desktop UI, IMO the tradeoff is that Linux DEs have no added cruft. I'd take that over Windows which to me seems filled with bloatware from MS before even the hardware manufacturer gets their hands on it. I've tried many DEs in my time with Linux, and I think GNOME in the last year or two is one of the best as a good mix of good visuals and highly customisable. KDE was closer to Windows but I've just never had luck with it being stable on various machines (seems to be surviving on my Steam Deck though).

Consumer device support is better I agree, though again IMO/IME that's more for certain niche hardware pieces or anything that has its own control app. Bluetooth is also something that I've still struggled with, especially when it comes to headsets.

Old games I can't agree with you on, but maybe that depends on your definition of old. I've had about the same experience getting old games (say from 2000 onwards) working, either with emulation or Wine supporting old software fairly seamlessly. And things have improved too. For example when I started using Linux around 2017, I recall Wine basically couldn't run The Sims 2 in a stable manner. Over the years since however, Lutris, Crossplay and Proton have taken the mantle and made games from that era work very nicely.


Something occasionally seems to go wrong in web services even on Linux; for example the Amazon music web application is just so laggy in my combination of Linux and Firefox.

I’m not sure where the problem is, it could be anywhere between my window manager to the extensions I have installed, but it is too much of a pain to explore all that. Instead I switched to Pandora and then buy albums if I really like them, which works fine.


The memory management on Linux is worse than in Windows and Mac.

Mac has an efficient memory compression and dynamic swap system, Windows also has one, but a little bit less efficient in my personal experience, and on Linux you have to configure zRAM or zSwap and they don’t work as well. You can’t keep memory pages as compressed data in RAM what you can do in Mac and Windows. The out of memory behavior is also very bad on Linux, where it will just lock your system. On Mac it will spill swap to disk as much as you have disk space.

That is one anecdote for how Linux has a bit an inferior user experience.


> The out of memory behavior is also very bad on Linux, where it will just lock your system.

Don't modern distributions come with the OOM killer? On my Arch system I didn't have to do anything to have the one from systemd.


My anecdote is this:

I had a Ubuntu 20.04 VM from university with 64 GB memory and my process needed 70 GB and it did lock my system.

And the anecdote continues: I ran a 55 GB process on a 16 GB Mac and it finished without a problem and without me having to configure anything.


I don't think Ubuntu 20.04 is considered "modern" in this discussion, though macos did, at the time, already have ram compression.

Also, as a curiosity, do you know how much swap there was? Usually, distros only create a limited amount of it. But I agree, as a user, you shouldn't have to worry about that.


You’re comparing apples and oranges here.

Independently of the operating system , your 70g process might have an actual working set of 70 g, while the 55g might have had a working set of 1 gig.

Furthermore your Vm was running most likely in a shared environment, your swap partition running on shared not super fast io, etc - you may not even have had 64g of ram ( despite your Vm claiming the contrary ). Your Mac on the contrary, has what is says it has.


> swap partition

This is the difference. Linux has a swap partition. You fill up the dedicated swap partition (which you decide when you partition your drive and is unusable for anything else, so you want to keep it small) and boom you're out of memory, OOM starts killing random stuff.

macOS uses a dynamic swap file (technically its multiple files) on your boot drive that starts at 0 bytes that grows until your main partition runs out of space.

I wrote a small program to do some image processing, I had a memory leak that leaked uncompressed bitmaps, after a couple minutes browsing HN "why is that process so slow?", I go check, it turns out it had burned up like 200 GB of RAM on my 16 GB Mac without me even noticing. But it did actually complete without me bothering to fix the bug, so problem solved.

This also means macOS has a lot more leeway to, say, swap out background tabs you haven't touched in a week in favor of live data since it can grow that swapfile full of stale garbage.


That’s not what OP is saying. If your program gets shot by the oom killer your machine doesn’t lock up. OP is complaining that their machine locks up. What you’re describing is a reasonable scenario on Linux too that I’ve seen many times. On a mac things will go wrong when you run out of disk in general instead of running out of swap , but your process will fail eventually. Computing resources are finite. Sure there’s a bit more leeway ( assuming you’re not short on disk space … ) but given how the problem is described it’s very not clear that’s the issue.

I ´m an hpc engineer , specialize in performance work, have been using Linux since 1996, and also have a Mac. I like both. I understand these are not technical arguments, but my point is there are no easy answers when it comes to performance work. You need to measure, know exactly what’s going on, compare apples with apples, and then you can draw conclusions. In that particular case, there simply isn’t enough details to prove anything.


I guess I've just been unlucky because the OOM killer has always made bizarre decisions on my machines and killed something more critical than the runaway process (or just not worked at all, not sure what the deal was is that, I never get logs). Every time I looked it up online the replies were just "you need to enough RAM to run your process, idiot, you should never need swap, swap is bad"

If the normal case is that the OOM killer just kills the out-of-control process, then I forfeit my argument.


Yes that’s how it’s supposed to work. Supposed to, because as you’ve noticed there’s a long list of oom related patches in the kernel because it’s doesn’t always kill what it should kill !

Theory and practice unfortunately…


There are some downsides to Linux, though. For example if you are made to use Windows at work you will feel sad, having seen what else is possible.


Fair. I still have a Windows VM that I keep around; looking forward to the day that I can delete it.


Amber OS.. Unchanging, fossilized, windows 7, without internet, one restore point..


you can access windows rdp from linux so there is that. i have a work machine that is w10 but i have neon. i use krdc/remina to rdp into it and everything just works.

there is vm you can do but yeah, there are options


If you don't like the tools you're given at your job, look for a better job. Having to put up with a less-than-ideal work environment is part of the job, and it's your job to evaluate the job offer and how it compares to other offers (salary, benefits, location, work quality/type of work, work environment). I use Linux at work, and have for many years, but of course not everything is ideal: I'd like to have more control over the HVAC for instance. It's not enough to make me look for a new job, though, but perhaps for some people it could be. Having to use Windows for development, however, would be a hard no for me. But for some Windows haters, other factors might be enough to make them put up with it: high salary, convenient location, etc.


note that ubuntu is trending towards the bad behavior that windows and macos are trying to normalize.

it talks to the mothership behind the scenes, it forces updates, and although the package manager should be your friend, they have sort of weaponized it so you can't uninstall their packages easily.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1434512/how-to-get-rid-of-ub...

https://askubuntu.com/questions/135540/what-is-the-whoopsie-...


the problem is that many many companies have standardised on windows as desktop. you as an Employee do not really have a choice. At first you still try to use windows at work and linux at home but the little differences in muscle memory become too much so sooner or later you cave and use windows at home too.


> sooner or later you cave and use windows at home too

No way in hell.

If my employer wants to reduce my productivity (by enforcing Windows), so be it, he'll have to deal with the consequences.

But using Windows is from a data-privacy and security standpoint (ironically, the same reason I'm supposed to use Windows at work) an absolute no-go.

Just look at how the new outlook handles your email credentials.

Absolutely. No. Way.


> But using Windows is from a data-privacy and security standpoint (ironically, the same reason I'm supposed to use Windows at work) an absolute no-go.

I agree but the real reason they use Windows is not security, but security theater. 99% of the companies only care about the checklists in their auditing and compliance forms not for the real security. The market of said checklists and compliance forms is cornered by Windows Consultancy groups. The only real OS actor here was RedHat and this is the main reason why they became successful imo.


Not really. I've been using Windows for work and Linux on my home desktop for 2-3 years now, and there's no friction at all.


Having recently started a job and being forced to use Windows for the first time in ... 20 years, I wholeheartedly agree with that statement.

It's been some month and I now start emojis with "(" instead of ":" ...

... also I am surprised what a shitstorm "finding a place to save a file" is. I was amused by a former student of mine who claimed that she "only had the files in Excel!", but now I can understand that the file dialogs in Windows literally have "folders" for different programs.

With OneDrive folders, other OneDrive Folders, local folders, Application folders, Network drives I completely understand how people get confused ...


Exactly, and this is why I'm not really happy about this news from the EU. It's just going to help MS cement its position instead of pushing people to look for alternatives.

Isn't there a Sun Tzu saying about not interfering when your enemies are shooting themselves in the foot?


I got a mac for the first time this year. Honestly, it feels like taking a shower after getting home from the beach on a sunny day when you've been wearing sunscreen. Everything just works with no extra garbage, no constant intrusive updates, no hassle. The only issue I had was the lack of alt-tab, and that was solved by an app called alt-tab.


I got my first mac through work this year and I hate the UI. It's very nice that it doesn't come with as much bloat (but it does still come it, e.g., Apple news, music, etc). I absolutely hate the window management. Inconsistent behavior on double click of the title bar (Chrome maximizes and Slack doesn't) is annoying. Lack of snapping and tiling (a la super-arrow) drives me nuts. That command-tab will switch me to a different workspace completely defeats the purpose of having a workspace at all. And I also hate the nonstandard keyboard layout and shortcuts.

Yes, you can install a dozen little extra utilities to customize your way out of most of these things... but I'm not going to. I use systems usually quite-close to stock because of how often I'm using not-my-system or how often the system is reimaged or whatever. Also it's a corporate machine and I can't be bothered to see if each and every bodge-app is permitted by security policy.

The hardware is very nice, however. I would totally buy a MBP personally if I could run Windows or Fedora on it, and swap the keyboard for something sensible.


> I got my first mac through work this year and I hate the UI.

I am baffled by whoever thought having icons leap in the toolbar as a default behaviour was an OK thing to do. Drives me crazy when I use a Mac other than mine. I have lots of little issues with the UX. Play button opening Apple Music -- ahh! Running unsigned apps is easy but I always get caught out by the right click thing.

> you can install a dozen little extra utilities to customize your way out of most of these things

Usually paid for too. Using mouse on Mac feels absolutely awful to me without Smooze.

I wish there was a better laptop on the market, but despite the compromises my MBP is the best laptop I've ever owned it's not even close. Just like my iPhone, I think it's a brilliant device despite Apple being, well, Apple.


I gave up trying to use a mouse on OSX years ago (the acceleration curve causes physical pain for me) and leaned into what Apple did right: trackpads. I got an apple trackpad for my desk setup, and otherwise use the built in trackpad on the macbook.

Doesn't help for those who need a mouse device (cad/design/photo-editing, etc), but for what I use it for (software dev/ops work), it's great. Trackpads in a windows ecosystem feel absolutely horrendous to me, so I just use mice there lol.


God bless the trackpad on Macbooks. Some Windows laptops come close but none match it.

Thumbs up for Smooze if you're looking to try and have a somewhat usable mouse experience. It's 20 bucks because of course it is, why wouldn't a tool to allow a need that basic cost money? It does have a trial. Maybe another commenter can recommend something free but when I was looking a couple years ago it was the only thing that did it right.


> Maybe another commenter can recommend something free

https://linearmouse.app/


Excellent user experience using a Logitech MX Master 3S with Mos and ScrollReverser.

https://mos.caldis.me/

https://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/


YMMV, but I've found that using very high resolution (~3000 DPI) "gaming" mice works very well under MacOS. This works well with my tendency to not move my hand very much when mousing, but still expect the pointer to go to the other side of the screen. Plus, some of those mice have on-board memory which allows customizing their buttons without having some crappy app running in the background (Logitech G vs normal Logitech).

Using a regular mouse does feel like trying to push a string through sand.


So, that's why my mouse feels totally fine on macOS. Gaming peripherals the win


Trackpads are terrible for your wrist though.


i am not a mac guy, saw a friend use m1. why does everything have to be trial/paid?

i use linux and everyone is expected to be a freeloader and yet people constantly keep on churning our good/bad software for free because its the whole idea of "you scratch my back, i will scratch yours" and "i am doing this for fun. how about you have a problem so you fix this yourself and help everyone" type camaraderie which is opposite in osx where the idea is "you are rich enough, why wont you pay"


The major obvious factor is because the devs can earn money doing that unlike with Linux, but there are also things like: because it's usually not free to make those apps (mac's developer subscription, without which it makes harder for the users to install apps)


Try Rectangle: https://rectangleapp.com/

One of the first things I install on a new MBP.


> And I also hate the nonstandard keyboard layout and shortcuts.

I think you may grow to like them, especially if you routinely type in languages other than your layout.

For example, I use a physical QWERTY layout, but often type in French (the latter is an abomination for programming and similar). I can very easily use dead keys to create the accents. I type as quickly in French on a Mac QWERTY as I used to on a regular AZERTY (it still requires dead keys for some characters).

If you use terminals, now your copy/paste shortcuts stay the same across apps. Trying to copy something without paying attention won't quit your running program / return you to the end of the history.

At first, I also found it a bit weird, but it has grown on me so much that now that I don't use a mac anymore, I try to bring it with me. One of the reasons why I hate using Windows at work, is that I can't get it to have a fully mac-like keyboard. I'm pretty close, but it insists on having the right alt as AltGr, which is a PITA, especially since it can't be moved. On Linux, the Mac layout works perfectly, at least on X11.


I feel the same.

I like the macOS keyboard handling so much I even swap Control and Meta on Windows machines. Not the same, but a bit less annoying.


Why do you do that swap? I dislike tucking my thumb to copy and paste, but could imagine someone with different hand geometry having different preferences.


There’s a setting to enable/disable switching to a space with an app’s window when switching to an app. That should help with one of your issues.

Kb shortcuts are standard - for a Mac ;). Heck in most apps you can even use standard readline shortcuts like ctrl-e for end of line, ctrl-a for start of line , ctrl-n and -p for next and previous etc. Same as in emacs or in a terminal window.


> Inconsistent behavior on double click of the title bar (Chrome maximizes and Slack doesn't) is annoying.

This is actually on third party app devs, not apple. Note that double-clicking the titlebar works the same in stock apps, as well as in most mac-only native apps.

Cross-platform apps like Slack often hide the native titlebar and draw their own which doesn’t implement all the native behaviors or even try to mimic them. Papercuts like this are part of why Mac users are more likely to be discontent with cross-platform apps.

For many Electron apps a decent work around is to install them as PWAs, which can be done with both Safari (File > Add to Dock…) or your preferred Chrome-cousin. Those draw proper titlebars.


The UI is the single biggest reason why I will never own a Mac. I cannot stand having a single menu bar for the entire system, and I'm not about to use an OS which forces it on me. I do at least appreciate that Apple tries to make good products for their customers (even if they are overpriced), but I hate their GUI design and there's no real way around that.


> Yes, you can install a dozen little extra utilities to customize your way out of most of these things... but I'm not going to

There is no OS where this approach solves UI hate, installing those extra utilities is the only way out

> how often the system is reimaged or whatever

there is another utility that restores your apps/configs, but of course, a no-utility policy breaks that


I find macOS annoying no matter what I do. AltTab is nice, but the window management still sucks in my opinion. The security bandages used to work around traditional desktop security models makes it feel incredibly annoying to use; I'll try to set a keyboard shortcut (not a global one mind you) in iTerm2 and suddenly I need to enable iTerm2 to have accessibility access?

Disabling SIP is needed for a myriad of things that aren't really that advanced, like for example, it is needed for some reason by some of the macOS "tiling WM" toys, and it's needed to even use any kexts. No joke: Discord will direct you to disable SIP if you want to .. capture audio during screenshares. It's also needed for macFUSE.

macOS also has no equivalent to WSL2. "But it's POSIX!" I can hear you say. Very fair point, but there are a lot of uses for lightweight Linux VMs, like, well, testing Linux things. Docker Desktop tries but it's slow. I really wanted to like Podman Desktop but it's similarly slow, and I had trouble with networking in a difficult-to-debug way. I strongly recommend Orb Stack here: it basically brings the WSL2 experience to macOS, except maybe even a bit better, vastly prefer it to Docker Desktop. That said, it's a monthly cost, which is definitely not ideal. There's also Colima but I have to say I don't love it either; no IPv6 support isn't a killer but it was annoying to find out the hard way.

I could probably make do with macOS if forced, but I wouldn't enjoy it. That said, I can't really take having to deal with the rest of the Apple ecosystem, so I am stuck very deep into Linux. To be fair, this is nothing new for me: Linux has been my primary desktop OS since high school. But I wouldn't say it's a good desktop OS. I mostly use it because I don't really feel like I have any other options and I already paid the cost to get deep into it anyway.

(I don't hate everything about Apple obviously, but to be honest, my desire to use Apple Silicon devices was mostly tied to high hopes for Asahi Linux)


Also, pressing (x) close button doesn’t close the app. It continues hanging somewhere inside of this $1500 machine’s 8GB of RAM.

That alone makes me forget all of the Windows’s quirks and appreciate all the basic things my Windows machine offers.


Closing a window has never closed a Mac application. Like, since the first Macs. Applications can have multiple windows so it makes sense from a UX perspective to not terminate an application when a window closes, even if it is the last window.

This behavior can easily be overridden by application developers but they choose not to go against expected behavior.

Power users press Command + Q to quit an application.

I've literally never struggled with what you're describing.


It makes zero sense from a UX perspective to not terminate (most) processes when the last window closes. Exceptions do exist, but for example if I close all my word processor windows then the process does no good continuing to run. I think you make a fair point that Mac users are used to this behavior and so it should probably remain consistent. But if you were to redesign the OS from the ground up, it's horrible behavior that should in no way be the default.


It's not horrible at all.

You might close all windows, but still have a background task running. That's nicely represented by the app remaining on, which can ask about interrupting the background task if you try to close it. It removes the need for most systray usage.


That’s because on Mac OS, there isn’t a 1:1 mapping of windows to processes. Instead, multiple windows of any given app are hosted by a single process which stays open when all windows have been closed to facilitate opening documents or new windows without pointlessly disposing of the existing process only to start another.

It’s been like that for the Mac’s entire existence. For someone who’s used Macs all their life, the Windows way is weird.


> Discord will direct you to disable SIP if you want to .. capture audio during screenshares

This is untrue, there's a difference between disabling SIP and changing your security policy to "reduced."

Disabling SIP lets you modify files on the system volume along with a few other things, like a way to run executables that require private entitlements that aren't signed by Apple. The reduced security policy lets you run older Mac OS versions (there's no online signature check during installs) as well as kernel extensions from authorized developers.

Discord relies on the latter, as it uses the ACE extension for audio capture, the same one that powers Rogue Amoeba's excellent apps. There are APIs to do this natively now, introduced in Ventura I believe, but Discord hasn't yet switched over to them.


Yeah, I have an app that relies on the Rogue Amoeba kext. Probably Zoom or something.

I admit I glossed over the details of SIP partly because I forgot, but the point is that to get audio capture working on Discord ~~right now~~ (Apparently according to neighboring comment this is fixed, but the point does still stand anyways since this literally was the situation for users since Apple Silicon arrived afaik), you have to go into recovery and run some esoteric commands to lower the security level of the machine, and it's 100% Apple's fault because they didn't offer APIs for things that people were using kexts for before shutting off third-party kexts.

(And this whole thing feels a bit rushed, as can be seen by the issues that have occurred with the newer usermode network filtering APIs... It's always especially bad when you fuck up in a way that messes with privacy software for only your own services, even if it's truly accidental.)


> There are APIs to do this natively now, introduced in Ventura I believe, but Discord hasn't yet switched over to them.

As of a few days ago, they have: https://twitter.com/advaithj1/status/1723926917286371818


> I'll try to set a keyboard shortcut (not a global one mind you) in iTerm2 and suddenly I need to enable iTerm2 to have accessibility access?

Maybe this could be more clear in iTerm's UI, but the reason it needs accessibility access is in scenarios where it's stomping on Mac OS' system shortcut keys. I would expect Windows or Linux would need special privileges to do the same.


> and suddenly I need to enable iTerm2 to have accessibility access?

This is a strange thing to complain about, you have to do it literally once and it takes less than 5 seconds and 5 clicks. And I would rather have a nice settings panel showing what apps have access to what, rather than the mess that is Windows privacy settings.


Why is it strange to complain about randomly needing to grant applications access to apparently-unrelated permissions? This sounds exactly the same kind of weird handwaving Linux fanboys routinely get scolded for. And "It's better than Windows" doesn't make it good, but the fact is that you don't have to do this for any kind of keybinding in Windows, so it's neither here nor there.


It's strange because you have distorted the facts. iTerm doesn't "suddenly" ask for accessibility permissions. You, by your own description, have attempted to make global changes to the macOS GUI. That's a legitimate and expected situation for an accessibility permission dialog to show up.


Why does changing a keybind inside of iTerm 2 need global accessibility permissions? By my own words, it's not a global shortcut, because well, it wasn't.

> I'll try to set a keyboard shortcut (not a global one mind you)

(I will admit that the phrase "keyboard shortcut" instead of something like "key binding" likely lead to this confusion, but by the time this occurred to me, the edit window was already closed.)

This hit me just recently when trying to map Command+P to Control+P. I don't know if Command+P is somehow special, but if you want to try it for yourself, feel free.

Secondly, though, accessibility permission is a really large hammer. Typically that's a high level of privileges as it usually means being able to read and interact with just about everything on-screen. Granted, this is the reality of many desktop OSes today anyways, but that's the other thing. If I have to switch all of these permissions on for many apps anyways, is this really a good design? No, of course not.

I tried to keep my rant relatively contained, because the truth is I hate macOS a lot worse. A software I used to like a lot, SnagIt, has become progressively less usable as macOS has updated over time, presumably because apps that handle screenshots and video capture have had to get increasingly tricky to function. Just about every time SnagIt starts, it gives me a laundry list of permissions I need to grant it. I mean literally it has to be like 7 things. Most of them seem to stick, but apparently after the software updates some of them need to be done again.

This security model sucks in other ways too. Like for example, you have to give your terminal emulator full disk access. If you don't, really stupid things will happen. I accidentally ran brew update in a VS Code terminal. It worked! And promptly wiped out all of the granted permissions on all of the casks it updated, because VS Code (of course) doesn't have full disk access, and as part of the security model you can't just update an app without full disk access. I really wish that wasn't the default behavior, because it was genuinely just a mistake to use the VS Code terminal for that. But even worse, I really want to grant this permission to Brew and not literally everything I run in that terminal emulator, so this is pretty damn unideal.

I haven't even gotten into Gatekeeper, OCSP stapling, and all of the trouble I have gone through trying to sign apps for macOS and have it not need to phone home to check the signature. (I was also hit by that funny bug where programs were taking forever to execute because the exec syscall was hanging waiting for Apple's servers. Reminds me that I am on a "privacy friendly" OS.)

But seriously, I'm really only scratching the surface here. Don't get me wrong, I hate other OSes too. I have an ongoing rant right next to this one about how much I hate Windows 11, and I don't think I really need to express how bad desktop Linux is from a usability standpoint.


I take this refreshing shower at night, when I close my Mac work computer and go use my Windows personal computer. Everything is easy to accomplish, my personal use software just works and I don't have to struggle with extra clicks and movements for everything. It's incredible how different people are - and that's a good thing.


People are free to have their own opinions. But some things aren't matters of options, but hard cold facts.

Windows, especially after Windows 10, has been actively hostile and repeatedly ignores the clear will of its users.

At boot time, it regularly takes the computer hostage in an attempt to coerce me to mass-enable its many spywares. After disabling then one by one, I can login to my desktop only to find that it has changed my default browser again. So I have to change that back, which is kind of futile because various parts of the OS now ignores the default browser settings anyway. After that, I have to dismiss the relentless ads and remove the crapware that keeps getting installed at every turn and corner.

This is a very, very far cry from "everything is easy to accomplish, my personal use software just works and I don't have to struggle with extra clicks and movements for everything." Both things can't be true at the same time. I have to click, click, click, go through all sorts of hoops, and finally give up and throw my computer out the window in frustration to try to achieve what I want in Windows. And what for? Out of pure corporate greed.


> People are free to have their own opinions. But some things aren't matters of options, but hard cold facts.

I feel same way about Mac users. Can't understand how people accept that turd of OS that comes with poor defaults (Window Management/Finder/keyboard), weaker customization and tonnes of bloat (Music/Notes/Messages/Mail/...) and then they pay a premium for it.


That's literally your opinion about features. And a possibly outdated one too, because current model keyboards are fine.

Also the fact that you chose window management as a major problem on Macs tells me that you have a strong dislike for things that's unfamiliar to you. There are some annoyances with Macs, especially if you're a dev, but window management isn't one of them. Macs have the best touchpad gestures and virtual desktop management UX. GNOME comes close these days, but Macs still feel a bit smoother.

As for your problem with "bloat," most of those are just stock utility apps. Any major desktop OS have had those since ages. You do have a point with Apple Music, but Notes, Messages, and Mail? Are you serious?


I haven't experienced the "facts" you describe - which makes me think they are opinions, or personal perceptions on pretty standard product practices, rather than facts.

Whenever there is a major update, they put a big button for me to enable Bing and a smaller button for me to not do that, and I just need to click on the smaller button. They sometimes enable brand new features I don't want by default, but they do that to make features discoverable; in years of Windows use, all I needed to do is disable the things I didn't want.

I'm not a Windows fanboy. It's just an operating system, not a way of life. While it does have some things I don't like, I'm quite productive using it and I'm a satisfied user.

If it wasn't trivial to disable/reject these things, Bing would have a 50%+ desktop market share and that's not what we see. People aren't going in mass from Windows to Linux/Mac, what is happening instead is that desktop OSs are becoming less and less useful as people who used to be desktop users do everything they need on mobile platforms.


An opinion? Are you suggesting that all the abuse I've been subjected to by my Windows machine was just all in my head? Well, that's weird because instances of those abuse are well documented. The sheer number of those cases, the length Microsoft goes to, the level of contempt they show towards their users is unheard of in any other operating system in existence. I double checked, and I'm pretty sure my "perception" is in agreement with verifiable facts.

> Whenever there is a major update, they put a big button for me to enable Bing and a smaller button for me to not do that, and I just need to click on the smaller button.

This is not true. They're making it progressively harder to opt out of unwanted features. It's even impossible in some cases. Anyways, I clearly remember Windows booting into an unskippable full screen nag. The option to mass-accept various violations of my privacy was shown as a big blue button. The other option was concealed in a wall of text as a link, barely recognizable. After clicking on the link, I was greeted with a bunch of options that I had to toggle off, one by one. This isn't normal or acceptable. It's evil and manipulative, and the fact that they chose to do this at boot, when people need their computers the most, is beyond infuriating.

Here's just a little taste of the Windows experience:

# Privacy Violations

Windows 11 Update 23H2 is stealing users' IMAP credentials - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38212453

I noticed some disturbing privacy defaults in Windows 10 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9976298

Even when told not to, Windows 10 doesn't stop talking to Microsoft - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10053352

# User Interference and Coercion

Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21103683

Microsoft intercepting Firefox, Chrome installation on Windows 10 Insider build - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17967243

Outlook now ignores Windows' Default Browser and opens links in Edge by default - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36492329

Microsoft blocks EdgeDeflector to force Windows 11 users into Edge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29251210

Microsoft has not stopped forcing Edge on Windows 11 users - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37461449

Windows 11 Officially Shuts Down Firefox’s Default Browser Workaround - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29579994

Last Windows 11 update changed all default browser settings to Edge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30055222

Microsoft tests Windows account menu error badge when Microsoft Account not used - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35443361

Removing “Annoying” Windows 10 Features Is a DMCA Violation, Microsoft Says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23486887

# Ads

Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11167964

Why can an ad break the Windows 11 desktop and taskbar? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28404332

Windows 10 nagging users with Bing advertisements - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27337382

Microsoft begins showing an anti-Firefox ad in the Windows 10 start menu - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22288599

Windows 10 Tip: Turn Off File Explorer Advertising - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13835733

# Unwanted Features

Windows needs to stop showing tabloid news - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35323121


Having moved to mac 4 years ago I can't think of going back to windows. Only downside I find is you need to buy Apple hardware at premium to experience MacOS


It used to be that you could create a Hackintosh with cheap hardware. Had a really fast "mac" this way a few years back. Unfortunately since apple is moving away from Intel this may not be viable anymore.


I hackintoshed with an old laptop years ago, and more recently with a custom built tower.

When it’s good it’s really, really good. That old laptop had a better LCD panel than you could get in any Macbook of that era, and that tower ran circles around any real contemporary Mac.

The problem is that no matter how hard you try, there’s always little glitches that are downright impossible to eliminate unless you have the chops to tinker with DSDTs and kernel extension development.


Windows is apparently moving to a "we'll be an app on any platform you move to" model, and I kinda think it's the best of both worlds.

I wish macos moved to the same model and it could be just an app on a linux or windows machine. Apple is already shifting their weight to service revenue for growth, this could be a realistic direction to take.


I was also pretty pleased with my move to MacOS but one thing I really miss is the file navigation from Windows. Like when I want to drag a file somewhere a few difectories deep. I wish I could hold it over a folder and then have it open that next folder, and so on. Is there a way to enable this?

Also the in application file picker makes it difficult to go up and down directories.


> I was also pretty pleased with my move to MacOS but one thing I really miss is the file navigation from Windows. Like when I want to drag a file somewhere a few difectories deep. I wish I could hold it over a folder and then have it open that next folder and so on. Is there a way to enable this?

Macs have had a feature like that since the 90s called spring loaded folders. Pick up the file you want to move, then hold it over the base level destination folder for a moment until it “blinks” and it’ll open the folder in a new window. Rinse and repeat as you’re drilling down to the folder you want, then drop.

Back/forward buttons in Finder windows can also be hovered over with a dragged file to trigger those.


> Also the in application file picker makes it difficult to go up and down directories.

You can use Command up or down keys.


Except for apple music constantly popping up?


Got a touchbar?

I discovered the fingers on my right hand barely brush the bottomed edge of it when I make certain multi-key keystrokes. Right where the play “button” was by default. Took me forever to figure out why Music was opening “randomly”.

I ended up setting the touchbar to static, not per-program customizable, and replacing most of it with a “spacer” element. Fixed the problem.

Luckily they’ve realized they were a bad idea and my newer ones don’t have a touchbar.


Play/Pause press on a headphone will also do it. And there's just no way to disable that.


This has never happened to me. I exclusively listen to music on my phone, and work every day on my Mac. I have never had the Music app open itself up, not once. Nor I have I experienced anything that is even related to music, such as asking me to subscribe to a service.


It doesn't pop up on its own, but it is the default response to a lot of actions.

Accidentally press the play button? Apple Music. Charge your iphone through your computer? Apple Music.

I find it pretty annoying, but it is also easy to eliminate the default behavior


I've never had Apple Music open when I plugged in my iPhone


I leave Music running all the time. I have all the store and subscription features turned off. I just have the program loaded with all of my MP3s, something I've been doing since it was called SoundJam MP [1]. I have all my playlists in there and it works fine with the play/pause/prev/next buttons on the keyboard. I think they bug me about subscribing to Apple Music once every major OS update. I promptly say no and turn off any of the extra features they added.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoundJam_MP


Yea, that's annoying. You have to install the noTunes app and set it to run at log in:

https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes/releases


I know of this app which allows you to port that functionality: https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/

Disclaimer: I have never used it, one of my colleagues mentioned it a while ago.


It works well; I use it together with Karabiner such that shortcuts are closer to what I have on Linux and Windows


brah... control-tab or even better: control-tilde


The Windows approach of one button for cycling through windows is a bit less mental overhead than needing multiple keyboard shortcuts to first cycle through applications then windows in that application.

In windows you just mash the key until the thing you want comes up.


Neither does exactly what alt-tab does! Now command-tab does what I want.


My process for a new laptop for the last decade or so has just been to nuke Windows and immediately install Linux. The only machine I own that runs windows is my home gaming PC due to many online/competitive games not supporting proton or other tools.

Thankfully I work for a company who happily allows me to continue this practice with my work laptop. My last and current work laptops have run NixOS and it's been great.


I always deploy the DBAN when I get my hands on a new laptop.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darik's_Boot_and_Nuke


Somewhat off-topic, but fun fact about Darik of DBAN fame - he landed himself in hot water a few years ago when it was revealed he was a founding member of a white nationalist Canadian political party [1]. The party was later dissolved due to inactivity when its leader went to prison for antisemitic hate crimes [2]

[1] https://www.thespec.com/news/canada/he-says-he-works-securit...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Nationalist_Party


I had no idea.

As a fan of DBAN and as a Canadian, I am doubly disappointed.


>fun fact about Darik of DBAN fame - he landed himself in hot water a few years ago when it was revealed he was a founding member of a white nationalist Canadian political party [1].

Based! I appreciate his hard disk nuker even more now! :^)

Also, bringing that point up is as fallacious as an ad hominem in debate and is blatantly political. You are the establishment. Darik is not. I am not.


> DBAN can be configured to automatically wipe every hard disk that it sees on a system or entire network of systems, making it very useful for unattended data destruction scenarios.

Bored, belligerent 14 year old me would have loved to get his hands on this...


Bored 14 year old me basically had this, it was pretty booring. Destroying data mechanically with a sledge hammer was much more fun.


No man, it is a fantastic adventure! Like a video game you have to carefully move the mouse to not trigger popups, there are quests on how to disable things and you have to make choices with real consequences. The game is almost as good as HP printers. In the end, if we collectively press the wrong button often enough, things will get bad enough to intellectually enrage the law makers.

Or perhaps it will just turn into a self running slot machine powered by tokens earned though full screen always on top porn adverts while AI guesses what kind of work you would otherwise be trying to get done. No more subscriptions or products to purchase: Unlock 3 extra days of Excel by buying something on Amazon! Maybe workers will have to defeat n levels of candy crush to unlock Word processing for the day. Perhaps always-on PC's will become the norm and Bing will watch and guide us 24/7 - into the future!


Been using Debian Linux as my main os for over 20 years. And happy that there’s less and less of a need to run a Windows vm.

But even though most people are not happy with the recent evolution of Windows, most people will complain and then use it anyway. And Microsoft will get away with it and will take another step with the next release…


Microsoft is shooting themselves in the foot; Windows is dying and they are milking what's left. The new generation will not touch Windows with a 20 foot pole.


You are describing my sentiment perfectly: I amn not using it if I can avoid it.

But I am not sure if I will be able to do that.


Yeah, 1,3 billion more to go...


This frustrated me for years but I just grinned and borne with it because game compatibility and WSL meant I could do basically anything I wanted in Windows and it was what I knew.

Then one day WSL wasn't enough due to dumb compatibility reasons so I decided to dual boot Ubuntu.

Then very shortly after I just... stopped booting in to Windows for anything other than gaming. It was very strange. I've shitposted about year of the Linux desktop since I was a teenager but I never thought it would actually happen to me. It's not a buttery smooth transition - not by a long shot, but I'll take dumb Discord updating behaviour over random updates which make me panic that I downloaded malware from a Google ad. The time I spend on what I would consider dumb bullshit where I'm fighting the OS is about the same.


Honestly, you don't even need Windows for gaming for the most part. 90% or more of the games I play run on Proton without any tweaking needed. The few exceptions are games which use anti cheat rootkits, games which I want to stream to my friends in discord (which doesn't pick up audio on Linux), and CP2077 (which doesn't seem to like ray tracing in proton).

I was very pleasantly surprised how smooth gaming on Linux is. I maintain a Windows 10 install and will for the foreseeable future, just for the odd cases where I need it. But I rarely boot into it any more.


> Suppose you are buying a new laptop ... does anyone else feel sad that their operating system has effectively turned into some weird social media marketing tracking data harvesting hybrid of a thing?

I purchased a thinkpad without any operating system on it and installed openBSD. I would not recommend this to someone coming from Windows land, but once you’ve been around the linux side for a while, you should come check openBSD out. It’s really really nice.


Win11 Pro user here.

It doesn't require too much effort to tame the beast. Until the shit is gone, sure it's not nice - and you still benefit from taking the installer offline mid-way so that you can choose your own username and such, which is a pita.

But once sorted, it's a great and very responsive ui.

And at least with Windows 11, as opposed to Win 10, I can tell the different windows apart, with a certain level of border consistency. Win10 made it all an atrocious blur, it really did my head in (eg Teams/VSCode all blending into one black canvas of hell).

I use WSL2 (Ubuntu 22.04) for most of my work, have a beastly, latest generation PC that I built myself with 4 monitors + a stream deck all profile mounted - and am very happy with it.


It doesn't matter how much effort it is, though. It's unacceptable that one has to do it at all. I paid for Windows 10, I should get an experience that prioritizes my needs (or at least the needs of users generally). Not one which prioritizes Microsoft corporate profits.


I don't disagree at all. The (out of the box) cacophony of internet content jammed into every nook and cranny does my head in completely.

I care much more about that than the telemetry stuff, but I completely appreciate that others care equally or more about the latter.

Once the crap is gone, the experience is awesome. It's such a shame they have to push it this way. I'd bloody pay extra for a lean edition.


In a few minutes you can make Windows 11 look pretty close to Windows 7 (or 10) by disabling personalization, content , widgets, new tab content. In edge disable all of the new tools and bing integration.

You’re right about the hassle of doing it manually, and I wish there were a global “Windows 2k mode” that ran the OS as lean as possible.


Pay for Enterprise and a lot of it is pre disabled. Others can be configured via group policy.


How do you get access to enterprise? Last I looked, I believe you had to create a company-relationship with Microsoft to be allowed to do that and there was probably a lot more cruft to do.

Edit: and a quick scan of the Microsoft website says that you need to "Contact Sales" still.


For much of my career, I got free Enterprise licenses through an MSDN subscription through work.

You can pay a similar amount to what your company pays for similar numbers of licenses across many OS's. Last I checked it was about ~500 USD a year. Sure, that's excessive for a single OS install, but if your company is footing the bill they usually don't care if you install on personal machines.


Huh, we have the action pack and I just checked, there’s indeed 10 Enterprise keys included. I should try to remember to ask my boss the next time I reinstall if I can grab one of those :D


> In a few minutes

That's a pretty big understatement to be honest. I don't use Windows anymore, but I still occasionally set up Windows for other people and there's so many annoyances that it's difficult to even enumerate all of them.

Off the top of my head:

- MSEdgeRedirect to stop Windows from opening Edge even when it's not your defualt browser.

- Shutup10++ to quickly disable a bunch of crapware/unwanted features. (Some of these break things, too, so there is literally no way to make things "perfect".)

- Have to remove a horde of advertising-ridden crapware too. Groove Music, Maps, etc.

- Stopping the start menu from sending everything you type to Bing seems to be hard, too. I'm pretty sure there are multiple group policy items that sound like they would impact this, but I never seem to get the right one first try. It's kind of hard to find on Google too because it changes.

- I do not know what the current best way to get Windows to stop trying to wake up computers for Windows Update at random hours (and often failing to do so.) I think there is a group policy option, but I think there's also a power options configuration (also in the registry obviously) that you need to change to maximally disable wakelocks. This one isn't necessarily Windows 11 specific, but it seems to have gotten worse over time.

- A number of things are really hard to change: There are third party mods for the start menu and task bar, but they are not perfect at all; hacks that load the actual old start menu and task bar are limited and break with updates, unsurprisingly. You need to patch DWM to remove the window rounding behavior.

And honestly, that still doesn't duplicate Windows 7 for me, and worse, the further you stray away the more likely things are to break during updates. The best I've found is Windows 10 LTSC but 1. I don't think consumers can legally license it (lol) 2. It doesn't work with a lot of software, e.g. Creative Suite has stopped supporting it I believe. So this solution sounds good on paper but it's also not always applicable.

Lest you think paying extra for Windows 11 Pro for Workstations, just don't. It's nearly as heavy in crapware last I checked. It's kind of unbelievable that they still do that pre-installed app crap even if you pay them over $300 for the OS as if I fucking want it, but that's modern software for you. They literally won't sell you what you want at any price.

(I also strongly believe that you should try to install Windows Firewall Control or some similar firewall before allowing the machine to reach the Internet. There's an amazing amount of non-sense that gets sent to the Internet regardless of whether you consent to it. Not sure that all of it is actually a huge privacy concern, but I don't really care anymore; at this point it's out of spite.)


The randomly waking up at night part was one of the biggest annoyances for me before I switched over to the Mac.

I'm a screen reader user, and I would regularly unplug my headphones when not using the computer, especially if it was stored in a bag. Of course, that meant everybody around me could hear my screen reader when Windows decided to do its thing. This woke me up at night multiple times and disrupted a few activities I was a part of. There was nothing to be done.


I agree MS is moving in the wrong direction here. Hopefully with the telemetry data on people disabling these features, they will consider better transparency and control over the online features like personalization, content in start menu, edge , etc.

MS needs to make a profit on Windows. Apple can give away MacOS for free and make up the costs on hardware margins.

Windows can make money by charging consumers, by licensing to OEMs, by upselling other MS products, or by selling ads & content.

The only way MS will stop ads would be if consumers pay for Windows directly.


My tool here [1] does some of the work, but it's certainly not complete.

[1] https://github.com/0xDEADFED5/ps_tiny11


I appreciate the link, I might try this sometime. For something like a test VM where I don't necessarily care if its able to survive a lot of updates or whatever, I kind of want something like this, and there are a lot of options...


Takes less than a few minutes with this PowerShell script:

https://github.com/n1snt/Windows-Debloater


I've tried a number of these solutions, but if it needs constant babying it's not really useful for daily driving IMO. Still might be good for test VMs, but I want something that feels like it's actually supported if I'm going to run an actual desktop machine. "Just rerun this powershell script after shit breaks and hopefully the person maintaining it doesn't stop because it will need to be updated periodically to keep up with changes." That's not a solution. It's a collection of workarounds in a solution-shaped trenchcoat, and it's ready to tumble over at any moment.

Another big problem with a lot of these things is you run them, then later Photoshop or Winget or VS isn't working suddenly and you have to try to figure out what service or component needs to be re-enabled. At one point I just re-installed over this...


That's too bad. I only use Windows for games. Have not had issues with the script there. If you're forced to use Windows for work then it's worth finding the minimum set of crap you can remove while keeping things stable.


Fair enough. For me, I don't play enough video games to warrant using Windows, so I am mainly venting the frustrations of trying to help other people who I know are not going to want to use Linux or macOS. The video games I do play are on emulators, have native ports or run under Proton, so I'm covered personally. Absolutely would not work for people who are playing many of the latest AAA titles I know, but I suppose if you only boot into Windows for just that you probably don't have to worry too much about some other things breaking.


Or the ones that intentionally turn off Windows Update… because if I’m 14 just want to play games I guess I don’t care about security.


This is great, although my use-case is a bit different to your original use case. I would love a group policy version (xml or something) of this that can be centrally setup for any PCs we unbox. I think InTune itself can actually do most of this stuff if you can track down the right settings ...

The trouble is keeping it up to date between Windows updates because they auto-install the bloatware.


> The trouble is keeping it up to date between Windows updates

Just run the script again after a major update. Only takes a minute. And don't let Windows update automatically. I have used this script and it works well.

Also found this in the other comments https://atlasos.net


Atlas OS default setup seems a lot like Windows Server out of the box. Server 2022 (with gui) comes with Windows 10 look and feel and is very lightweight in terms of features, no search, no background tasks, etc. Most desktop apps are compatible with it.


It takes more time to find the proper script and even more to tweak it not to break stuff you need


By paying 300 bucks, but not having a sysadmin do the legwork, you send a strong signal that you’re an individual with a lot of disposable income. Guess what advertisers make of that…


Sure wish there were some kind of free and open source alternative written by human beings


Man, I would LOVE to recommend OSX, but can’t. It’s too much spying, erm telemetry. Apple monitors every app opening every time. I can’t give up a shitty big brother for only a slightly less shitty one.

I moved to Linux Mint with a Windows VM at work for the couple of required things (Office) and while I wouldn’t say it’s painless in any way. I’m personally ready for it. I tried 10 years ago and was not.

So, I think if you can handle it, Linux, then OSX, but Windows is becoming a no go for anyone serious about privacy or security.


We can stay on Windows 10 until 2025, and even that is kind of open to debate if there is too much business pressure.

As ex-UNIX zealot, those that during university days used M$ on the email signature (most likely still visible in some online archives), Windows is for me still the lesser problematic.

I like Apple's hardware, however I am not paying their tax, when PC gaming laptops offer me more, rather have them as work issued laptops, and in what concerns GNU/Linux I no longer have tinkering needs, been using it via VMs instead of dual boot, since VMWare became good enough for such purpose.

On laptops, even those sold with Linux pre-installed there is always something missing, or one needs to be stuck with the custom OEM distribution, possibly without major kernel updates.


It all makes sense once you know that Windows 11 actually started out as a tool to help medical schools train doctors to spot symptoms of stroke, Microsoft Stroke Simulator 2019.


I keep saying that Linux is now the best of the three major desktop OSes, and it's not because it's improved that much. We have regressed so far in UI and user abuse.


It has been the best OS for such a long time. Hardware support will just be miserable for the foreseeable future.

I was eyeing at the options available to dual-boot a recentish Surface Pro, and it was a grand total of 0. Now, it's not a big issue since WSL2, but it would still have been nice.


Xubuntu is excellent


> But in the name of progress and security, you can't stay on Windows 10.

If I hadn't switched to Linux, I would absolutely be staying on Windows 10 until such time as Microsoft stops making a user hostile OS. The rather low threat of my machine getting owned because I can't get security patches any more is far less onerous to me than what Microsoft is doing these days.


It makes me sad because I think there are some genuinely cool things in the windows ecosystem such as the debugging and dev experience (ETW) and as users we benefit a lot from the backwards compatibility.

Its also cool to have a kind of descendant of VMS being here as an alternative to a unix monoculture


I evaluated my choices. Getting rid of all Windows telemetry, cortana, bing etc = 5 minutes with w10privacy. Running Forsa 5 on Mac - in a few years, maybe. Learning all the command line switches of Linux - never in my lifetime. So I chose the shortest path.


A legitimate choice. Howevever whether it is truly a wise one depends a bit on what you are doing.

If what you are doing with a computer involves the need to "know all command line switches", then you will also have to know command line switches on Windows.

A linux for the most part nowadays can be used without command line. When you jave to use it, it would be customization or installation of certain experimental software that isn't in the software center (and that is usually copy paste).


I've been happily using Linux on the desktop for a decade.


No because I use Linux and every time I sit at my computer I say "thank you" to myself because of it.

I own Apple products too. But for real work, I use Linux.


Linux is pretty good. I use all three.


Throw Linux in the mix and give up on Windows. Most everything runs in WINE.


You didn't mention Linux by intention? Why?


Nothing against Linux but none of our line of business apps officially support it or even recognise that they may support it in the future.


I switched to Qubes OS as my daily driver way earlier this year and I absolutely love it! It has a couple pain points (it's difficult to get a GPU passed through without tweaks, performance for certain kinds of loads may be suboptimal). It feels really good that the DominationGPT malware will have to break out of Xen to pwn me!


> does anyone else feel sad that their operating system has effectively turned into some weird social media marketing tracking data harvesting hybrid of a thing?

I'm just surprised it took them this long tbh. Windows used to set the standard for enshittification. Now that they're chasing cloud-based windows, I see they're returning to form.


I can't wait to switch to the EEA version of Windows. Finally!


Tragic, we’ve finally reached a version of Windows that’s actually really good. Yet management has somehow decided it’s more important to push this crap as if it’s still the 2000’s and we dont have viable alternatives.

News flash, outside of work and gaming, Windows isn’t needed. And even those are questionable in the future of cloud. What happens when we can run photoshop in the browser using remote resources? What happens when the Netflix of gaming emerges, what’s MS’s foothold then?


>News flash, outside of work and gaming, Windows isn’t needed.

Sunken cost fallacy? I have some really expensive windows software that I'm not about to throw away, repurchase, as well as a new os/ machine. Windows fits my needs, though the constant telemetry fight etc is very annoying.


In the future won’t we just be able to run that software on a remote windows container?


I mean there already exists software for Linux to run windows apps using a VM but make it as if they are native


This reminded me of a similar event in 2004 when Windows Media Player was made verboten, and Windows "N" was born:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Media_Player#European_...


I have to wonder if there is a play here. Cave on basically all of the EU's demands, it doesn't matter that much too their bottom line. If the EU uses this as the blueprint to apply to iOS and Android, there is much more for Microsoft to gain on those platforms than what they lost on their own.


Leaked memos from Google show that they stand to gain from antitrust regulation which would help them increase their traffic on iOS and potentially become dominant on that platform.


oh yea, can we also patch Apple? This "Your icloud storage is low" and "Buy space" warnings are annoying. And you cannot do anything about them.

Oh, Apple products have such an amazing usability (they are not, apparently, in 2023, if they think advertising their cloud bundle is ok).


I can't count on one hand how many times I've pressed reject on the Apple Care advertisement in the System Settings on a MacBook Pro. It always had a message something along the lines of "You'll never be able to get this deal again..." a few days later it always popped up again.


Exactly. I disabled notifications completely because of this which makes the feature useless to me. I kinda miss the good old Growl days.


The EU just keeps winning on the big tech front, it seems. I'm honestly not sure how they keep doing it ; is the motivation to keep away influence from big tech ? Giving a bit of stick now so the carrot is more efficient later ?


They just care about EU citizens more than American tech companies. If they were European mega corporations, I'm sure it would be different.


Can't you see what happened in the US, where these big tech monkeys are roaming around, free, doing whatever they want?


Linux is much better than Windows 11.


Running Win10-IoT/Enterprise or even Win11-Enterprise is such a refreshing experience compared to the "consumer"-editions.

Why is microsoft making it so hard to buy enterprise editions as a private person?

I would happily pay 5$ a month...well no i dont, but IF i had to use windows i would.

BTW, two nice apps to cleanup and shutup your windows (deinstall everything you want):

-O&O ShutUp10++

-O&O AppBuster


Out of curiosity, why did the title here change sometime in the last couple hours? It was something like the "no Bing, No Edge, .." from the current Ars title. Did they change the article title after this was posted here? I know Ars does A-B titles for a period after publishing.


I don't see mention of removing news from the widgets bar. I could actually use the widgets bar for things, but it's pointless with more than half the bar dedicated to low-quality clickbait that I can't get rid of.


Can we not just implement this everywhere?!?


Is this going to apply to windows 10 too? They are still updating it, and pushing bing/edge a lot.


Just install LTSB or LTSC instead.


For 12- or 13-th generation Intel systems with non-homogeneous cores, the scheduler in Windows 11 is supposed to work much better than the one in Windows 10 (including the latest Windows LTSC release from 2021).


In that case, use AME wizard and uninstall the cruft. https://ameliorated.io/


As others have mentioned, the thread scheduler in Windows 10 isn't up to par with Intel >12th gen. Fear not though, Windows 11 LTSC is scheduled for release in 2024 and I'll be switching over my gaming rig.


Oh no! I hope the loss of key features reflects in heavily lowered pricing.


Kick them back into the stone age. Mongrels of the software world.



Windows 11 LTSC version when ?


DMA already paying off


First read that as Windows 3.11, the definition of decrufted.


Well, Windows 3.1 wasn’t an operating system, so it isn’t really a comparison.


Why does it need to be compared?


Windows will now "always use customers' configured app default settings for link and file types"

This is really the most disgusting thing they did, they really tried soo hard to make people you Edge that they open links from the windows search I think, no matter what default browser you have set. Strangely search is not working for me, might be because of Explorer Patcher because they are so fucking stupid the removed the ability to have the task bar on top in win11. It was a hidden setting that you can enable with a reg tweak then they completely remove it. Like WHY WTF?

I need my taskbar on top, it makes so much more sense. Window bars are top, closing windows is top, browser tabs are top ... Like how many mouse miles do you use more by going all the way to the button of your screen, I hate dumping things down, I do not mind the win11 task bar but I am forced to use a hacky windows 10 one just to move it top ...

Did I say I hate M$ already?


Idk about you, I like the bloatware. Makes me feel in a cozy setting, just like home.

No-one will like the new versions and Microsoft will say to EC: see? You dumb dumb.

Same with Meta's subscription for €9.99.

Same with cookie regulations which gave us cookie banners.

This malicious compliance, don't be mistaken.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: