I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're refering to as Windows, is in fact, GNU/Windows, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Windows.

Gurfaild@feddit.de to Lemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world – 329 points –
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I have 3 windows machines in my house that are over 50 days running right now

It's also an unimportant stat considering that any modern, well configured Windows machine should have reboot times of under a minute.

Thing is there are so few things to count against Windows compared to MacOS or Linux, they need to make the most minor of inconveniences seem astronomical by comparison. "Haha you have to install a security update you can delay for 5 weeks that takes 4 seconds to install"

It's the "you can delay" bit. It's MY machine. If I don't want the update so be it. I get the windows os is a liscence not a purchase, so they have every right. That doesn't mean I have to like it, and I'm happy there are alternatives. That permeates through the whole OS. If theres software I don't want, just because I don't like the name, I can remove it.

That might not matter to you, but it matters to a lot of people. Enough, in fact, to build an maintain multiple operating systems, as it turns out.

If your fine want updates you can literally just... Duane them through group policy. But that's not a good idea. What they are forcing are security updates. You really want those. They don't take very long at all and their effectiveness increases based on how many people are up to date. The more people who are up to date the more difficult and expensive it is to create malicious software, it also becomes more difficult to spread malicious software to begin with.

That sounds very much more convoluted than what I'm doing now, which also allows me to not have polls on what my favorite BBQ side dish is in my menu options. So again, happy it works for you, but I'll stick to linux thanks.

What?

What what? Do you mean about how windows is putting surveys around that random cooking channel type stuff in the search bar? In in US I can promise yes that happens. And in regards to what you mentioned about disabling updates, I can't do that a usual usuer.

So again I say: Cool. All within your rights. But I'm out.

What? We were talking about updates and now something completely different? I have like 7 windows 11 machines none are making me fill out polls. What search bar are you even talking about?

I get random stuff in my windows search bar trying to drag me into bing. Maybe you didn't get one but I absolutely got something among my list of programs after hitting start. Not a "tile" or what ever it's called, literally interspersed among the list of programs.

And my broader point is: I'm glad it works for you, but again, there's enough people that don't like it that they made their own. It's not a superiority thing, it's just the fact that if there's enough people to build and maintain multiple OS, then there must be features that they want that Windows wasn't offering.

Again, the best OS is the one that works for you, but Linux distros don't exist just for the fun of it (except weird ones like Hannah Montana I guess...) or to just be a re-skinned windows.

Search bar? You disable that on install. You don't really use the start bar anymore either. Everyone I know just hits the windows key and types the first couple letters and hits enter I don't really look at what's on the start bar

Glad you found something that worked! I solved the problem by not installing. That works better for me.

Windows updates are particularly under-tested

In January of last year MS put out a kb that would repeatedly reboot your machine if it was an active directory controller, or if it was a hyper-v host it would refuse to turn on VMs, if you were running 2012 R2.

Not only this is bullshit for a production os (like this is 5 minutes of testing, come on), it took them several months to put out a corrective KB. In the mean time, all you could do was not install it and try to uninstall it on hosts that would reboot repeatedly. It's windows server so it doesn't nag you for updates but still.

Nowadays especially so. It’s like Android vs iOS. Both OSes are good and now so are Windows, Linux and macOS. Use whatever you prefer, just know how to use it so you don’t blow up non-issues.