this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
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I’m a teacher and our division just “upgraded” to W11 with a new version of outlook that is basically a web app on desktop. Several times a day my laptop comes to a complete crawl while Teams decides to open itself. Can’t open or close programs, Firefox won’t register mouse clicks, nothing. Graphical glitches appear al the time with menu bars and task bars disappearing regularly, requiring force quitting the app or logging out of the desktop.

When I first switched to Linux I assumed my experience would be like this. But now it’s the other way around.

Rant over.

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[–] [email protected] 130 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (7 children)

What a big pile of shit software, I swear I'm just gonna quit because of this ass smelling garbage.

Today I discovered that C:/Users/MyUser was silently an alias of C:/Users/OneDriveBullshit/MyUser only in the explorer. So I just figured out why some documents were often disappearing for months, I'm just working on a multiverse were depending on the application the same path don't lead to the same folder.

Earlier this week I unzipped a file and couldn't remove resulting files without administrator privileges.

I've never lost so much time for any fucking software, let alone a paid one. And don't even get me starting on the fucking ads they put everywhere even if you unchecked the 154 options in 42 different menus.

[–] [email protected] 61 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Also, I don't get how people just accept that any input they perform will require an average of 1s for feedback.

But at least now I understand why macs are so popular...

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 month ago

This is the thing I hate most about windows. Did it register the thing I clicked? Is something happening? If I click again will it do the task twice? Complete opposite of how my Mac works.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I also experienced less "hiccups" since switching to Linux with KDE but I'd like to know on what combination of hardware and Windows you experienced anywhere close to an average of 1s response time to "any input".

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

My current company just got bought out earlier this year, we are in the process of rolling all our stuff into their IT infrastructure.

I was lucky enough to get to use Debian as my OS on my old company laptop because I was the only IT at this company. Last week they finally issued me my new corporate laptop, which of course is Windows because the company that bought us out is a 100% Microsoft house.

One of their sys admins was on a call with me to get the laptop set up and working on their VPN, MFA enrollment, it was supposed to be a "quick 15 minute call."

I watched him as he fought remotely with my machine for almost an hour. The VPN wouldn't work no matter what he tried, then the GUI started acting up, then RDP wasn't working right, then MFA wasn't working. This was a brand new installation from their golden image too on a brand new high end laptop.

After about 20 minutes, I told him I was gunna stay on the call muted and to just let me know when everything was working properly. Then I hopped back onto my Linux laptop and spent the rest of the call getting actual work done while their new Windows machine was pooping the bed.

He didn't actually even get it working at the end of the hour lol. He had to remote in later that evening to finish doing a bunch of registry fixes and file purges to finally get the VPN to connect.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

Wow thank you I needed that.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I just dealt with my directories secretly being in one drive. It actually was only found because the system was buggy and I couldn’t find the desktop directory in Explorer.

I had to edit the registry to fully resolve the issue.

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[–] [email protected] 73 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Software neutrality in the entire public sector should be a law. Leverage of proprietary software and media like professor published book scams are criminal extortion.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Yeah they transferred all of our network files held on our own private servers over to Teams. I didn’t even know that teams did file storage. I guess through one drive.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago

Everything is through OneDrive. Even stuff that doesn't need to be. Desktop shortcuts...really?

Also - I hate Teams, refuse to use it. The one time I did use it for some irrelevant confirmation message, it stuck and now not only does it load every time I log on (to get closed immediately), it also has the history of that one message. That I've tried to delete, and it keeps coming back.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

It doesn't do storage. It puts it in SharePoint somewhere. Where? Nobody knows. You may find it someday and bookmark it. It will also show up in OneDrive and maybe even Outlook! Because Microsoft doesn't believe in your concepts of "location" man.

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[–] [email protected] 55 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

My experience exactly. My current company is rolling out new W11 laptops as the old ones age out.

I'm consistently amazed at how poorly Windows 11 runs on these brand new, $1500 enterprise grade machines. They all have the latest Intel i7 chips, 16GB of DDR5 memory, Nvme 1TB drives, 1440p beautiful screens, and they perform like ass.

Constant lockups, stuttering, slow to wake up, slow to open programs, the fans constantly spin up super loud with almost nothing running in the foreground.

I see frequent GUI glitches and bugs, literally had the WiFi stop working on one yesterday, just wouldn't connect to anything and the tray app wouldn't pop up when clicked. Had to restart the whole computer and log in again to get it to connect.

Meanwhile, the 11 year old retired desktops that I repurposed for internal company resources like Open Project, Uptime Kuma, and Ansible are running plain old Debian with KDE Plasma and are rock solid. They never crash, never freeze up, are always super responsive, and are fast to update. The longest one of them has taken to update was maybe 3 minutes?

Windows on the other hand... Lets just say there's a reason I push updates at the end of the day.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (6 children)
[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago

Worse, Vista you could wrestle into submission, Windows11 is so deeply embedded with ads, spyware, bloat, and spaghetti code, it's almost impossible to get it clean.

And even when you do, you have to constantly fight to keep it that way. The fact that Windows will change your settings for default apps and privacy preferences without your permission after a major update is absolutely insane and disgusting.

I shouldn't have to constantly be on guard for my OS Which I paid $200 for professional licensing to just sneak its own preferences and settings back to what it wants.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 month ago (3 children)

You can control what programs open on boot in the task manager. Teams was one of the first things I disabled.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 month ago (3 children)

That is, if the laptop isn't totally locked down by IT. But knowing school's IT budget that probably isn't the case.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago (1 children)

IT "locking down" Laptops often means they just give all power to Microsoft I assume

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (4 children)

For us you get a popup that sends a ticket to IT and you have to fill out a reason why you need to do whatever it is you are trying to do. Then you wait like 10 minutes and try again to see if it was approved. If it asks for permission again then you need to assume they rejected it

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago

I can’t even change the length of time before the screen locks.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Hate to say but in our office it's the other way around. Teams HAS to start automatically before outlook can be opened manually otherwise the addin for meetings won't load. Every morning I log in, make some coffee and then go talk to colleagues.. Thanks Microsoft for the slow morning, other see this as luxury!

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

No, I can’t.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 month ago

Yeah no, the experience really is ass.
We use Lenovo IdeaPads at work, a model with an i7 and a Nvidia GPU, and Windows constantly chugs and has weird UI issues, even though the machines are not running heavy software and are on a pretty fresh install.

  • Sometimes when I wake the laptop from sleep, it sits and the lock screen showing my wallpaper and NOTHING else.
    Clicking, typing does nothing, I just have to sit there and wait like 2 minutes until it finally decides to show the input field and let me login again.

  • The Network/Sound/Battery tray flyout frequently stops responding. Only goes back to normal after restarting explorer.exe

  • The internal display has scaling while the external doesn't. So every time you drag a window across it "snags" in between them while the application flickers and struggles to switch the scaling.

  • Switching between virtual desktops is so sloooow, if you use a different wallpaper on each you can literally see Windows struggling to swap the wallpapers in time.
    It's impressive how a native OS feature feels like a third-party kludge.

Great work Microsoft.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 month ago (1 children)

We have Linux workstations at work.....and these can only be used to access a remote desktop of a Windows 10 virtual machine. 👍

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

My boss told me to get a laptop and I'd be reimbursed, so I got a System76 with Fedora. "How are you going to use (company proprietary software that only works on Windows)?" I told him I could run it on wine (and I have). But he ended up assigning me a Windows 365 cloud, so now I have a very nice laptop that just works, and I only fire up the cloud crap if I really need to.

Suffice it to say that I'm the only upper management member that barely interacts with the IT department, I don't need to 🤣🤣

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago (1 children)

As an admin who manages windows devices, it’s not only a pain for the end users. I will readily admit that the management tools are quite extensive and somewhat easy to use, but they’re damn near impossible to debug when they don’t work, and that’s quite often. Gpo’s often refuse to apply without reason, those ads on the Lock Screen? You can remove those if you pay for enterprise or education edition. Running pro? Nope you get ads.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago (1 children)

@maxprime same lol. Somehow the whole os feels like one gigantic advertisement... That is trying it's best to not let you use your computer

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago (8 children)

TL; DR
My experience between Windows and Linux is not much different with how often I have issues. But given the choice I much more prefer my Linux experience.

I hate Windows just as much as the next guy, but this comment section smells a little of confirmation bias.

From my experiece (web dev in a mainly MS branded stack) Windows mostly just works. Yes there are horrendous design, UX choices forced upon me, but I can usually force the OS to do what I need and how I need it.

Now comparing it to my home Pop setup it also mostly just works. There are occasional freezes that require a restart and such, but I wouldn't say it's much more different from Windows.

Now what does differ a lot is that I don't need to fight the OS to do shit. It's way better productivitywise, when I know what I'm doing. Which is deffinetly not the case everytime.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

My main gripe with windows is that it's gradually turning to adware/spyware after MS decided to go for that sweet data collection revenue. That also means a shift in the focus of the development of the OS, as it's not being developed for the benefit of the users anymore.

That, and software development processed are more tedious. Although today I'm sure I could find a workflow that works with WSL or vcpkg.

Edit: Oh, and everything turning to webapps on the desktop. Love staring at white canvas while it waits for a server response.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Gradually? By 10's launch, it was already adware/spyware. 11 is not even attempting to hide it, if you look at it objectively past the PR.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago (2 children)

As someone who has a good windows laptop at home, windows at work is actual garbage. We had a month where you just couldn't use the search function, because the act of typing in the search bar caused enough problems it would close the search bar.

Odds are your home computer is somewhat competent and your work one is a steaming pile of trash not fit for purpose.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

We’re being forced to move everyone to W11 by the end of the year. It’s gonna be hell.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I feel the same way about having to use Mac for work and going back to a Linux PC at the end of the day. God damn I hate Mac's UX. From the entire UI, to the CMD key, to the fact that END functions as PGDN and goes to and of page instead of end of line.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

It's bad enough when I have to use a keyboard that moves the pg up/pg dn/home/end keys around. That would absolutely kill my productivity so I'm glad I don't have to use macs.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I have to use SharePoint on a daily basis.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago

We pray for you

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

You're fucked.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

It is basically http://mail.office365.com in an electron shell. I'm pretty sure all the non 'classic' apps are this way now. I'm currently trying out Thunderbird to see if I like it.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

I requested a Windows machine at work a few years ago, because the specs were amazing, and I was getting frustrated with Mac OS. After using the Windows machine for a couple days I was reminded why I don't like Windows anymore, and returned the machine, despite its amazing specs. It just wasn't worth it.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I spend a lot of my workday looking at windows that have turned white and "not responding", or clicking on things and waiting a minute to see whether the click worked, or waiting for the Start menu to allow me to type, or waiting for the indexing service to spare me a little bit of my computer for my own use, etc. Then I come home to Linux and remember how computers can actually be fast and satisfying to use.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (3 children)

When teams is just doing chat things, it's fine. But the fact that it's the only program that doesn't remember which monitor it is supposed to be on, and never remembers the show on all desktop settings, drives me insane. Not to mention that it seems to restart itself multiple time per day and makes me fix its location each time.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (2 children)

When I started my new job I got a pretty unrestricted Windows machine, so I decided to try and use that. WSL is pretty impressive and I managed to work with Emacs and some other tools installed in it until Windows decided stuff should run way slower now. Magit got especially slow doing any git operation.

That weekend I installed Linux (with permission) and it's perfect now.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

Had the same issue with outlook last weeks. 60% CPU usage, doing nothing.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

I kinda wish more pcs shipped with linux.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

I thought outlook had been electron for a while

I've been using the outlook pwa on Linux for some time with no issues, maybe try that instead if it's causing problems for you on windows?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

My first job I was using Windows, thankfully I was able to use Linux my next 3 jobs in a row. It really helps justify Linux when our production servers are always running Linux.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Our production servers are all Linux and we have a fully Linux dev stack. My request for a Linux work machine was denied and we have to work in WSL.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

The funniest thing is it doesn't even have to be this way with Windows. I've unfortunately had to go back to dual booting lately but I'm using Win 10 LTSC and I have to say I'm surprised how tolerable it is. I'd still rather not use it but eeh it's fine.

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