When you say 'I wrote a program that crashed Windows,' people just stare at you
blankly and say 'Hey, I got those with the system, for free.'
If I think back of the days that I was using Linux and I saw friends and family using Windows95 that had just launched (with a massive hype, and using a Rolling Stones song to promote it) the Blue Screen of Death was fairly normal for folks. And they lived with it, and they continued to live with it because they thought that they had no choice, and they were incredibly happy to not having to use DOS anymore.
Later some of the folks I knew after having their Windows computer flocked with Windows viruses they bought a Mac, and as a matter of saying, lived happily ever after.
Not everyone can afford Macs though.And not every "normie" is ready to use Linux.
Nobody who enjoys freedom or has principles uses apple products, and nobody building a decent computer and knowing what they're talking about then installs iOs. Know what you're paying for lol, don't buy marked up fascist crap, and stop masturbating in public about it. It's disgusting to glorify them in that way, like eating a shit pie and telling everyone it's delicious.
Mac did have a better OS than Win 95 -Win98 It was smoother and crashed less.
The difference was that Windows still ran DOS programs, 5.25" floppy disks etc... They made the decision to maintain backwards compatibility.
Mac decided to drop support regularly for what they considered "outdated software and technology." For example: when USB drives came out they canceled support for 3.5" floppies in their OS. Machines that had a 3.5" drive installed could no longer use it. Put a floppy drive in and nothing happened.
Although Mac was a smoother more stable OS, windows had more functionality and greater compatability. Windows was a far superior product because of it. Even with the regular apearance of the blue screen of death.
Linux at the time also suffered from being a terminal based OS. Too much like DOS for way too long. I used it for specific tasks where it excelled at.
I just switched to Kubuntu for my ThinkPad (not my first choice but hardware incompatabilities) over the last few days, and it still very much is a terminal-based system. It took me ~4 days to set everything up, and nearly every step aside from "change things in the settings UI" was "in a terminal, type..."
I dipped my toes into Linux... 19 years ago? As someone who likes windows up until 10, and heard all of the 'it's so amazing' gospel from Linux users, two decades later I'm like: "it's still not ready"
Shit, I wanted to install Debian 12(.5) with KDE on this TP. It has a snapdragon X55, that I need working, and previous attempts at getting it working (year+ ago) failed. I read docs, did more research, I was ready. Made a live USB, install it in the live environment, restart, and... it hangs during boot. Research, 'use the option presented at the boot menu'. Okay. "no network" errors, that's fine, it's not a net installer. Done, restart. Hangs. Research. "use rufus, it solved my problem". Rinse, repeat, hang. Isn't Debian supposed to be super reliable? And Kubuntu booted fine, like what the hell?
Then cue the 4 days of setup. This machine is a very light use box, mostly to be a hotspot. Browser, email, password manager. Btrfs for snapshots (WHY IS THERE NO SNAPSHOT UI IN ANY DISTRO I TRIED?!). I'm far from a novice, been trying to switch for two decades. This will be easy.
deep breath
WHY IS GRUB NOT TAKING MY UPDATED SETTINGS (it's a known bug in Ubuntu since 20.04?!)? WHY CAN'T I GET HOWDY TO INSTALL? WHY AM I GETTING APT ERRORS ON A FRESH INSTALL? WHY IS BITWARDEN FAILING TO SYNC? WHAT IS THE NEW-NEW-NEW METHOD OF SETTING UP NEXTDNS? WHY CAN'T I RESIZE A PARTITION (/) LIVE? WHY DOESN'T MY HOTSPOT WORK WHEN I USE WPA3 (still broken, actually, and WPA2 isn't an acceptable solution imo)? WHY DON'T I GET ANY ERROR MESSAGES WHEN THIS HAPPENS (a recurring theme)? WHY DO I HAVE TO SIFT THROUGH 3 DIFFERENT LOGS? WHY IS SEVERAL HUGELY-POPULAR PROGRAMS NOT IN THE DEFAULT REPO (omfg - Librewolf, Telegram, Element, Signal, Discord, Bitwarden...)? WHY DO THESE ALL TAKE DIFFERENT STEPS TO INSTALL ON MY SYSTEM WHAT THE FUCK WE HAVE A SYSTEM FOR THIS SCREAMS
E: WHY DOES KDE CONNECT JUST DECIDE THAT IT'S NOT GOING TO CONNECT TODAY UNTIL I TROUBLESHOOT FOR 3 HOURS, CHANGE NOTHING, THEN WORK?
And then, the 5G modem. Why in the shit doesn't the fcc unlock tool just fucking detect, and unlock, automatically. Why. WHY. This is simple, the installer is already detecting hardware. It's right there. This could be easy. Instead I had to dig through pages of solutions that didn't work, until I landed on a page for my laptop (but seemingly a different architecture?) for Debian 13 (unstable) talking about needing to edit the installer with commands (omfg what) or the screen will just show nothing on boot, that you need to change wifi and bt stuff or they don't work, etc etc... But in this heap of "I should just revert", there was one line, the line I needed, to run this stupid fucking fcc unlock tool - and how to find the hardware address. Enter both, nothing (a 'success' message would be nice...). No further instructions in the doc. Luckily, I am persistent and went into the networkmanager anyway, tell it to connect to mobile broadband. Fill in my apn. Save. It works.
There's a ton of stuff I glossed over, but it should not take FOUR DAYS with the terminal essentially living on my screen, with my browser having a dozen tabs at any given time for troubleshooting, for someone who has done all this shit before (minus the modem) many times in the past. It's done, I'm setup, but there isn't a soul alive who would switch their generic Dell machine running windows, spend several hours a day for several days, just to get their base system running. And the second they see "open the terminal", which is still very much a necessity, they'll be running to the hills.
I have a friend asking me questions about Linux since I've been harping on this the last few days, and I'm like... it's not the easy path everyone says it is. I don't want to push them away, but fuck they use many of the same programs that aren't one-click installs, and I haven't even touched gaming, multiple sound cards, gpu drivers; they use their machine for gaming, and mine is on W10 for a reason. It would be a nightmare guiding them through the minefield I just emerged from. Not to mention games that aren't handled by steam/proton and don't have guides, old games like Midtown Madness/2, Midnight Club 2, Insane/2...
I always viewed the think pad line as more of a business line of products. I know it isn't owned by IBM anymore, but considering how much involvement they had with Redhat, you might have better luck trying a fedora based distro. I'm running fedora Fedora 40 beta plasma and it was basically install and start working.
At the time (a couple of years ago), I tried a Dell... Precision? laptop, but it had a different cell modem in it (I was just starting my interest in cellular computers) and my provider AT&T locked it to an utter shit plan where I could pay like $45 for 15gb of data with overage fees per month, fuuuuuck that. I was searching for one that would be bound to their 'tablet' plans, as they got unlimited data for $20 (this is a business account, not consumer). AT&T offered the TP X13 Gen 2 Intel from them, that was guaranteed tied to the unlimited plan, with 0% financing, so I jumped. It is my first TP, but an ex has an older TP and had mostly positive things to say about it. And the modem (and antenna?) gets blazing fast speeds, like 400-500Mb/s. But that's why I have the TP, it's a "business" line for my (families) business.
I tried Fedora last year but again couldn't get the X55 modem to work, which was frustrating. Information about it in the X13 is scarce since it wasn't offered with Linux officially afaik, and you either got it early and Ubu or something 'just worked' with it out of the box, or you had to compile the driver from source for some reason (I don't remember but they yanked the driver from newer releases I think). I guess at some point it was re-added but again nobody talks about this machine and it's WWAN card so I got super lucky to find that one Debian 13 info page.
While I've played with Fedora briefly when I was distros hopping to see what worked last year (and before that), and the ex had it on his TP, I don't actually know what the difference is vs Debian-based systems, since I try to stick with that as it's what I started on and know/am comfortable with. All I know is its based (?) on RHEL. Care to give me a tl;dr major differences?
Haha I just spent this weekend getting my ThinkPad set up with Arch and KDE Plasma. Two weeks ago was my final straw with W11, and I used this weekend for the plunge.
Now, I know I have an unusual setup; ThinkPad X1 laptop, eGPU w/ Nvidia 4070 (BIG mistake, I bought it to play games and do 3D rendering since the onboard graphics on my laptop are non-existent, didn't do my homework and should've bought an AMD), and two external monitors. It's has been an adventure to say the least, and my wife popped in every now and again asking if I'm having fun playing with my computer (she has Mac everything and not an absolute clue lol) while pulling my hair troubleshooting shit I haven't even thought about in a long time.
It's been probably 4-5 years since I've worked with a Linux desktop, and I forgot what it takes to get a system set up from more or less scratch. Of course I could have gone with a more complete, out-of-the-box distro, but where's the fun in that? My home server runs Debian and I almost never have to touch it outside biweekly logins to make sure everything is kosher and up to date, otherwise it just chugs along and it's been going strong for probably 5-6 years at this point. But I still had fun doing it, and I also have more confidence that my current setup isn't doing nefarious shit while I'm not paying attention. My W11 install liked to wake up from sleep and I'd walk in to hear the fans on my eGPU case cranking, so I'm a bit suspect. I'm near positive I don't have an malware or viruses on my machine, but I dunno what the deal is, and I may have let my paranoia get the best of me.
But to your point, it will probably be a while before Linux is ready for the mainstream. Especially until we get a native port of the MS Office suite. Like it or not, MS Office is the gold standard in business, and while different FOSS suites are pretty good, they still lack full compatibility which won't fly in the business world. That, and you can't expect your average Joe to spend and hour or two scraping forums to fix a printer issue.
Second big paragraph: I usually have ethernet ports that just decide to wake the system up, almost all my machines in the last 15 years do this. Disabling the ability to wake from sleep (from the ethernet port) has always resolved this. Just something to look at.
Third: yeah, and it's fine to not be ready - I'd rather it not be and everyone accept that. Problem is (and what I was alluding to) is that many don't. I've got attacked here, reddit, and elsewhere because "er mah gerd I found the perfect build guide and didn't care about the distros so I followed everything to a T and you too should have no creativity or desire for exploration so that you can be as much of a sheep as I am" and it's like... I like the hardware I selected, I like the distro and want to see it improve because of [feature], etc but god damn some people if you step out of their mental line, they lose their shit. Tell them that X doesn't work because of Y and they want to rip you to shreds for breaking their perfect bubble they've built. Spend any time in a Linux-heavy gaming community and their holy penguin can do no harm.
I dunno if my venting above comes off as it, but I want this project to succeed. It's just, every time it's been a wall of issues, every time "oh it's better now" but 'better' is 'we fixed the old issues' and doesn't touch on 'and we added some new ones, too'. That's the catch. Two steps forward, one step back - but it's progress.
I have gotten flamed a few times for telling the Linux fanboys the hard truth.
If I have to hit Terminal even once with an average setup the OS is not ready for mainstream use. No exceptions. It has to work out of the box on the newest systems.
I use Linux the same way that you have: for a few applications that need a rock solid stable system. Once you get the damn thing setup, it truly is wonderful. Stable, reliable, easy to use. But getting there... Fuck that.
I think I had one clean distro install where everything worked. The PC was 7 years old when I installed it.
It was happening on wifi. I'll admit I didn't really do much troubleshooting on it outside of basic poking around. Ethernet is only available through the dock, but I didn't have it plugged in until I started my Linux install.
Dude I feel ya. I think what everyone forgets is that anyone that has any form of Linux knowledge is already somewhat tech savvy. Hell, anyone on Lemmy is usually pretty tech savvy, if not to have the basics just to wrap their heads around the concept of federation. Most people would have no clue where to start to even install a fresh copy of windows, because they see the hardware and OS as a singular monolithic unit.
I think the only way Linux would get into the mainstream is to have a dedicated hardware company built desktops and laptops that ship with a barney-basic distro preinstalled, and have a dedicated support staff. I don't think most see computers as a separation of hardware, OS, and software, but as a screenbox that runs their favorite apps.
If love to see popular adoption of Linux as well, especially since it will further accelerate improvements in its development. But I think it's a pipedream that the majority of people will jump ship. I do think that many just want to see MS's demise, but that isn't going to happen, anytime soon anyway.
Yes, they think their users will be confused by and accidentally remove extensions. To be fair that might happen sometimes but it's nowhere near worth it
They already have a confirmation box when you try to change the extension. And could just as easily move it into another column where it's harder to change (explorer was like this once, a long time ago).
And yet, they keep hiding the on the rationale that it confuses the users. The most common thing on explorer is some user being confused because they can't understand what clicking on a file is supposed to do, but that's not an argument for showing them...
So, yeah, that's the surface-level explanation. But there's a deeper reason.
You seriously underestimate the stupidity of 80% of windows users. They could put multiple warnings and people would still click past them without reading then bitch to their IT team when they break something.
They already have a confirmation box when you try to change the extension
I think you overestimate the average users willingness to read anything. Only thing they know is how to bitch about things not working even when they were told exactly why it's not working/what they did (wrong)
Classic ticket.
"It's broken, it doesn't work",
"what happened?",
"I ran it like the instructions said, and it didn't do anything",
"was there an error message?",
"I don't know. Something popped up, but it was in the way so I closed it",
"Do it again, don't close the error message, and tell me what it says"
That would be accurate. But it would fuck with your ability to open it by just double clicking it, which less savvy users would see as fucking the file.
worry about users not being able to open files after renaming them since you can also edit those extensions via text, and people aren't taught about file association.
Anyone who has to use Windows and suffers this, PowerToys is your friend. Locksmith identifies what's locking your file and allows you to free it up. Dunno why PowerToys isn't bundled by default tbh.
I always thought it wasn’t included by default to mitigate malware damage to a system. Malware needs to be just a little bit more advanced if it can’t hijack Powertools to do what it wants
Any self-respecting malware writer will download and decompile the Powertools to find out what API calls are being used. Especially if they're calls to an undocumented API.
Having Powertools on your computer is thus not the security hole it might appear to be.
The fact they exist at all - well that's not really a security hole either. Their existence just more quickly dissolves any security-by-obscurity that might have existed. Someone would have found those calls another way.
One might suppose that they contain something special that's not in the stock OS, but then we're back to the malware writer's reverse engineering which would lead them to learn and implement their own versions of whatever it is that Powertools does.
This is the code that determines which processes are holding on to the specified files (or any files in the specified folders):https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/blob/a89f9f69768ace73de21dbf6020bd7fa2460bf4a/src/modules/FileLocksmith/FileLocksmithLibInterop/FileLocksmith.cpp#L18
any self-respecting malware writer will download [powertools] and…
I’m not as familiar with mass-market malware, but APT-level gear generally doesn’t try to make use of such easily observed events. The more network traffic malware appropriates, the greater the probability that it’s caught.
Simply put, Powertools puts several functions within arms reach for malware looking to stay under the radar. Without it, malware needs to bring more of its own code which increases footprint. Living off the land exploits in particular love the presence of these kinds of programs
Shut up. I also think power toys that feature basic functionality and have been around for decades should be included in Windows. I can’t always install this on a computer that needs it.
Psexec can be pretty dangerous. Psexec.exe -i -s gives you access to the NTAUTHORITY/SYSTEM account, which is higher than Administrator. One time at work I was trying to do something and was getting permission denied so I decided to use that to get around the problem, I got to spend the afternoon talking to our security administrator because he got a bunch of alerts from our antivirus.
Never thought about that, but since these tools just work, when you copy them to your PC.... how does psexec do that? It'd either need you to be an administrator (and then it's not really a privilege escalation as you could have registered any program into the task scheduler or as a service to run as SYSTEM) or it'd need a delegate service, that should only be available when you use an installer - which again wasn't was has been done when just copying the tool.
You need Administrative permissions for psexec. It uploads a file to the target computer's \admin$ share (just C:\Windows) and starts a service to execute it. Services run as SYSTEM so that's why you get those privileges.
(Hah, I forgot your message while typing mine and just copied you :)
I found a blog post outlining exactly that. If you use it locally, it will install and start a service temporarily. That service runs as SYSTEM and invokes your command. To succeed, you need to be a local administrator.
If you try the same remote, it tries to access \\remote-server-ip\$admin and installs the service with that. To succeed your current account on your local machine must exist on the remote machine and must be an administrator there.
So in short: It only works, if you've already the privilege to do so and the tool itself is not (ab)using a privilege escalation or something like that. Any hacker and virus may do the very same and doesn't need psexec - it's just easier for them to use that tool.
I just dont get it, you pay for the OS, they monitor you like a hawk and sell that shit. Now they are like we need to make sure they get all these ads too, also we are going to ruin any app that you use, like search or notepad. We will milk this mother dry then claim users dont understand how much it costs to run the company.
In Windows 11 it saves every text file you open as a new tab, so every time you open a text file you’ll have tabs upon tabs of every previous text file you’ve ever opened.
Here’s a Reddit post with some people talking about how to disable it, how frustrating it is, and even how it’s causing problems by straight up opening the wrong file if it’s named the same as a text file you’ve opened in the past.
Not only that. Opening the same file again, opens it in a new tab ffs. I noticed this, when my ssh-config file (which has no file extension and is thus not linked to a program) had like 10 tabs open... Why would someone do that?
Wow finally. I remember when I moved to Notepad++ a decade ago when I still used Windows, to get that behaviour. Being able to close it without losing all the open tabs was a game changer.
Yeah, I noticed it in the new Notepad. Nifty feature. Notepad++ is still my go to for everything. Especially dumping "temporary code" in unsaved tabs, then like 6 months later trying to figure out if any of its still relevant or safe to finally close.
So what's the deal with vim? I spooked up a vps recently and decided to forgo the gui options, like a real Linux server admin. I have been using nano and it seems to do all I need from a basic text editor in the terminal. I get that vim/emacs meme-bantering but actually why. It accepts texts and stores them in files. What is the actual point/difference?
Visual Studio is the full IDE, VS Code isn't. Visual Studio and VS Code are completely different products, even though both carry Visual Studio branding.
What would be missing from VS Code or VS Codium that an IDE needs?
I'm an ex Visual Studio user, now writing all my code in VS Codium. I organize my project tree in VS Codium, I build from it and, like a Visual Studio user, I press F5 to debug, set breakpoints and inspect variables.
And that's just the default install using the vanilla C/C++ extension it ships with, not some complicated setup that takes any time to get working.
If you have a monopoly and need to maximize profits then the question becomes: Why not?! You could extract more money this way, and it's not like your users would go anywhere else at this point.
That is why it's so important to fight and break up monopolies, and to limit what these companies can do. Because they have no reason not to squeeze every penny they can get out of you!
Issue is, I don't think even the current competition is helping them to get better, if they became smaller for some reason they'd just go back to their active sabotage days.
What I'd think would help to actually wither Microsoft's monopoly in addition of breaking it up is forcing them to open source Windows, thus taking their main leverage on the market. Windows would be a good (not great) OS if it wasn't for MS and its shareholders trying to monetize it as much as possible, and trying to make all computers like what the Junkman had in the Superhero Team vs. Genocidal Purple Guy Part 3.
This is the norm of what shareholder-driven companies in a situation of monopoly will tend to do. They try to see how much they can abuse their position of dominance on the market to maximize their profits. Microsoft's primary goal isn't to make a good user experience, or even a good OS. Their main goal is to milk as much money as possible from its assets for its shareholders. They've been playing that game for decades, only backtracking when the consumer backlash is strong enough to threaten their sales or when the government threatens to break them up.
On top of that, Microsoft has a long history of letting arrogant elements of top management take control of projects who will then force their "vision" down the throats of their customers who don't want any of it. They will only backtrack once the sales numbers become disastrous enough. Then usually the control returns to more competent people and a decent product tends to result from it. Think how Windows Vista lead to Windows 7. And how Windows 8 lead to Windows 10. Or even how the XBox One was originally designed and marketed as some sort of stupid way to watch NFL games on your TV with Kinect controls until they realized they were losing the console war and then started treating it like a gaming console again.
Because you could replace the text of this mene with Nvidia drivers or any number of pain in the ass sub systems. Fuck even anti cheat for many games as well. Windows for the most part just works. Search works just fine and 98% of users couldn't give two fucks about notepad.
I mean it's not complicated. If you don't want to use Windows, your options are:
Pay thousands for a Mac computer that may not have the features you want, and never be able to upgrade or repair it, or
Get a software engineering degree so you can figure out how to install, use and regularly debug Linux. Because even techy people you know that might want to help you don't know anything about Linux.
I walked my 83 year old dad through a Linux Mint install on his laptop over the phone a few weeks ago when the Windows install shit the bed. All he needs is a browser, he's good now.
Get out of here with that "software engineering degree" BS.
And this is why it will never be more popular: A community that refuses to acknowledge the shortcomings, and animosity for anyone who questions it or asks for support.
It is easier more than ever to install linux today.
People like to use words like "easy" and "hard" to describe clicking buttons and typing letters into a display. These are the wrong words. The word is "complicated".
Doesn't matter if it's easier, the fact remains that it is complicated and likely always will be.
The process to install Ubuntu vs Windows is pretty much the same.
Create a user, choose a timezone, connect to Wi-Fi or LAN and wait for setup to finish. It is not complicated by any mean.
As I mentioned, most people never install an OS in their life, so they don't know how to create a boot drive and install an OS.
So the issue isn't that installing Linux is complicated, it's that installing an OS on an empty drive is not a thing that the vast majority of pc users has done or will ever do.
So the issue isn't that installing Linux is complicated, it's that installing an OS on an empty drive is not a thing that the vast majority of pc users has done
Linux is great until it isn't. As soon as you venture outside of whatever packages user interfaces offer you, the "degree" analogy applies. For some, the thought of editing a text file to configure an option blows their mind.
Lmfao guess he doesn’t need you to help him setup his email port settings or have any issues with audio drivers or any of the other common issues we see with Linux installs.
Why would a random 83 year old set up his own email port configs? He signs into gmail.com like everyone else, let's be realistic if we're gonna talk shit
I worked for an ISP residential tech support for 3 years. Don’t tell me what’s realistic lmfao. I experienced it very, very often. And they sure as fuck couldn’t do it in windows.
We can compare anecdotes if you want, I've been in tech twice as long as you were and I can count on one hand the number of people doing their own IMAP setup. That remains the same if you go back to me being a child.
There's no need to be a dick man, this is a nerd forum for awarding fake internet points. Chill out.
Pay thousands for a Mac computer that may not have the features you want, and never be able to upgrade or repair it, or
M1 Air costs USD $750 where I live.
Get a software engineering degree so you can figure out how to install, use and regularly debug Linux. Because even techy people you know that might want to help you don't know anything about Linux.
Hyperbole to sell an easily disprovable false narrative. For what?
That MacBook will have 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, which is completely useless, not to mention fucking highway robbery when you can buy a Windows laptop for half of that with better specs.
Hyperbole to sell an easily disprovable false narrative.
LOL I'd love to see you prove me wrong. Go on ahead. It's easy!
That MacBook will have 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, which is completely useless, not to mention fucking highway robbery when you can buy a Windows laptop for half of that with better specs.
You said thousands of dollars. They're not thousands. And yeah, you can get a cheaper machine. And put some flavor of GNU/Linux on that too!
LOL I'd love to see you prove me wrong. Go on ahead. It's easy!
Niche suppliers normies have never heard of. Can't find them on retail sites or in stores. Also very expensive.
I know all of these things. I use Linux. I think Linux is better than Windows. I'm just answering the question of why so many people continue to use Windows.
Cost to run the company? They will proudly milk as much money as they can to maximize profits. Having a bigger margin is a point of pride for them. Watch any shareholder meeting. They will publicly brag about it.
One time I struggled debugging a program on a clean Windows machine. For some reason it seemed like it couldn’t find a JSON file that’s obviously in the system. I could even open the file on my own and view its contents.
Turns out after much frustration that the file was actually a json.txt file. I didn’t notice because the extension was hidden, so I only saw .json and thought it was fine.
Pennywise kills a handful of people every 27 years and has been doing so for 300 years or so. He probably has kill count under 100.
Between the kills he gets that are directly shown on screen and the number of casualties you could reasonably assume were the result of his actions, Heath Ledger’s Joker probably killed a few thousand people.
Ronald McDonald on the other hand, was the main marketing vehicle for a company that sells food products that are incredibly unhealthy and addictive. He is probably indirectly responsible for the deaths of millions of people.
Heart disease kills several orders of magnitude more people than extradimensional demons or psychopathic clowns.
Heart disease kills several orders of magnitude more people than extradimensional demons or psychopathic clowns.
And if you factor in politicians, you have psychopatic clowns killing millions by passing policy that objectively helps keep those heart disease numbers up!
It's a well known fact that advertising never works and is a waste of money. That's why the entire industry died 80 years ago, and nobody ever published an ad ever again.
Considering Ronald McDonald was a character primarily aimed at young children, I don't think they were mentally capable of having personal responsibility at that age.
As for the parents who were pestered to buy happy meals by their children, there's like 50 ways to answer this question. I personally think that in a mentally healthy adult, personal responsibility is a factor, but it's not the only one and is balanced by social conditioning, genetic predispositions, mood in the moment, and a ton more factors.
The children who for one reason or another were brought up eating fast food are conditioned both socially and biologically to eat fast food, and breaking out of that addiction (as with any other addiction) can be very difficult, and is more complex than doing the equivalent of saying "git gud scrub".
Wow, that turned into a wall of text, sorry.
Tl;dr: it's way more complex than just "personal responsibility".
The Linux infiltration of PC gaming communities has been one of the most successful covert operations in the history of espionage. So successful that the agents don't even need to hide their identities.
If they're that dumb leave the extensions on and let their eyes glaze over it like they would anyway. Hiding the extensions doesn't seem beneficial in any way.
if you designed the system so that the extension is part of the functionality, then you have to hide it away so that your users don’t accidentally delete or modify the extension thus rendering their files useless (within said system)
it’s a fundamental shell design flaw: one should never allow users to modify data critical to functionality. And it’s not something that can be changed because almost all applications depend on this
AFAIK the "terminal ads" were suggesting Ubuntu Pro when using the package management. It's very far away from actual ads. Just the free version suggesting the paid one. Not ad space sold to third parties.
Just the free version suggesting the paid one. Not ad space sold to third parties.
You've read it here, folks. Microsoft just needs to promote Xbox deals and such, then it's not an ad space sold to third parties. (Either that or you're holding Canonical to a different standard than Microsoft.)
It would be more like MS selling extended support, which is fair and relevant to something being on the update page.
Would it be bad if a community driven distro had a donations link once a year in the package manager? Not really. A bit annoying, but we still live in a world where they need money too.
which is fair and relevant to something being on the update page.
The Ubuntu paid ad doesn't show just in the updater either. Seems like double standard allowing Canonical advertising their paid product every time the terminal is opened and Microsoft would be only fine to be allowed to advertise paid updates in the updater.
Would it be bad if a community driven distro had a donations link once a year in the package manager? Not really.
I'm a packager of a small but public repository. Over the years some of the packages were actually picked up by the upstream distribution (minor stuff to scratch my own itch, nothing noteworthy, IMO, but still). I was never offered a few cents of whatever donations came in. Such money goes to the distribution leaders, not the actual community and even less so to the actual upstream software developers. If anything, the upstream software developers should get the money, not a downstream distribution where most of the work is automated anyway and yet replacing bookmarks in the default browser to customized ones for the distribution is common practice. Back when people still bought MP3 music, Canonical replaced the affiliate IDs for MP3 music stores to funnel money off upstream developers into their own pockets.
A bit annoying, but we still live in a world where they need money too.
Windows 10 started out as a free upgrade to Win7 and Win8 users (at least the Home variant, not sure about Pro and higher). Since then Win11 has also been a free upgrade. Do we live in a world where Windows developers need to make money from their product then?
So how are people going to know who you are and how to support you? First time I'm hearing from you. Leave a note somewhere. Your altruism is appreciated, but you do need to eat too! Don't passively let capitalism take advantage of you. You don't need to extend your values to corporate.
Money still runs the world. Windows or FOSS devs. I wish things were different, but you are wasting your political support on something that is not a big deal.
Ubuntu Pro is hardly an ad and not comparable to candy crush. Letting people know of a service to get more support is within scope (which is a target for enterprise anyway). To be clear there are better things to criticize about Canonical.
So how are people going to know who you are and how to support you? First time I’m hearing from you. Leave a note somewhere. Your altruism is appreciated, but you do need to eat too! Don’t passively let capitalism take advantage of you.
I do have a regular job. I'm doing fine. I don't want or need money donated to Linux distributions. Updating a few packages is hardly any work at all because the majority of tasks is automated (as I said: my repo is small and for my own use. I don't advertise its existence but I also don't hide it either). Actually developing software is. I don't want distributors nagging users for money to then put in their pockets. Distributors can promote pledge drives to fund hosting on their website.
Ubuntu Pro is hardly an ad
Yes, it is.
Letting people know of a service to get more support is within scope
Cool, so Microsoft's "Back up to OneDrive" once per month and "Get more OneDrive storage" don't count then...
Look my you ran an update and the update program is letting you know how you can get extended support if you needed. It is with in the scope of the activity in a way that Candy Crush and One Drive are not. If Kden live was more explicit about being part of the KDE universe I don't think there is harm to that either. Ubuntu pro is not malicious or vendor locking (in its current state). What is the big deal that you spend so much energy here? Letting people know how to get 12 years of support instead of just the standard 5? There is a cost to doing that and ensuring quality. The discussion on the distribution paying upstream is important, but kind of a separate matter (and yes they could be doing more).
This is supposed to be for a company that has multiple machines and needs security back ported. Any regular desktop user can just opt out. Real question, what changes do you want to see to make things better? Like we do need to improve communication on how to support FOSS in general. I am not a particularly good programmer, so don't commit bug fixes. I live in the shit hole US South and 50% below median for the state, so my money contributions are never that high. If we are allergic to Ubuntu Pro or x packages are looking for funding. in npm, how do we really address anything? I get that ads are very invasive, but i think you are picking the least impressive hill to die on here.
The Amazon story is really old and Ubuntu did hear the critical voices and reverted the change. The terminal ads can be annoying on servers but you can turn them off.
If you want to throw dirt on Ubuntu, let's talk about Snaps and the messy Snap Store and how the current Ubuntu site looks like (not desktop user friendly really), and what they did to LXD
I still don't understand what LXD does that LXC doesn't do. LXC is significantly more popular. All the major control panels (like Proxmox, SolusVM, Virtualizor, etc) support OpenVZ or LXC but not LXD.
I'm not trying to argue? I legitimately don't know what advantages LXD has since I don't see it used widely in the industry, whereas LXC is everywhere.
LXD also has some cool features like launching VMs in a way that's nearly indistinguishable from containers, which can be useful if you need to do something like run a distro that uses cgroups v1 (e.g. CentOS 7) on a more modern distro.
Now that I think about it, the decline of ubuntu began when they inserted amazon affiliate links in their ui a long time ago. The final straw for me is forcing snaps when attempting to install some apps via apt. I replaced all my ubuntu machines with debian without any issue.
Ah yes. MicroCanonicalSoft. Ubuntu used to be great. But they are working hard to ruin it.
I am currently looking for an alternative that has a similar allround-ish support for hardware. Ubuntu supports my Macbook and my Acer Tablet out of the box while others do not competely do so. I could write a whole rant about the tablet with 64-bit processor but 32-bit eufi bios and intel processor that kinda obscures access to the audio and wifi devices unless you use a specific driver.
I'd prefer something debian based but I can't stand flicking in video playback or scrolling through a webpage. Which is why I like Wayland at the moment, since it fixes those things.
It was ok at best. I first tried Linux around the time opensuse was released, and even then the only reason it was more popular was due to coming out a bit earlier and sending live CDs. Then Suse fucked the Linux community alongside MS for like a decade, and now it's canonical's turn to help out.
I could write a whole rant about the tablet with 64-bit processor but 32-bit eufi bios
If you have <4gb RAM, just use a x86 version of the distro. AFAIK it essentially has no downsides, and possibly requires less resources.
I'd prefer something debian based but I can't stand flicking in video playback or scrolling through a webpage. Which is why I like Wayland at the moment, since it fixes those things.
You can’t imagine how much I hate this setting. A couple of weeks ago I helped a guy install some specific software on a windows machine provided by the customer. It’s like one exe with a config file. Pretty basic. My instructions were:
Copy the exe to a specific path
Create a new text file in the same path and copy paste this provided text into the file
Rename file to abc.xml
The exe was throwing errors because of the missing config file. Of course the filename was abc.xml.txt 💩
This is part of what helped the I love you virus to spread. Not too many idiots would open a file titled ILoveYou.txt.vbs, but even some smarter people will turn their brains off if they get a file titled ILoveYou.txt, possibly even me, except the first thing I do with a new computer is unhide file extensions.
Sure but if you're doing rooty stuff all day then sudo you're sudo not sudo going sudo to sudo type sudo sudo sudo every sudo fucking sudo time sudo you sudo want sudo to sudo do sudo something. And yeah it sudo caches it for sudo a bit but sudo it's still too sudo much.
#: I'm just going to write some memos in WPS Office and send it to the networked ftp server running on Binbos.
Oh and while I'm at it, I'll just ssh into a few other computers as root, using Nautilus (as root of course) and keep them all open until I shutdown, just because I want to copy their docx files.
It's still a valid complain, but the problem is not exactly the presence or absence of a confirmation IMO, it's a deeper matter.
What causes user desensitization (I guess that's a word) is a direct result of how Windows users traditionally install software - from untrusted sources or by downloading them directly from a vendor's website then manually installing it.
UAC would be just fine if it was a rare thing to see, but because of this "download a .exe > double click > install" flow users see it all the time, which defeats the purpose of the warning. It became just another half-measure Windows has implemented.
And it's unhelpful because it doesn't give any details about what it wants to do with that admin access and also treats permission for one action as permission for all actions (not that you can tell what they first action you're permitting is).
I like the way android does it, where you can grant or revoke special permissions by category of action.
Though the system I'd like to see is one where each program is sandboxed and then even you close the program (or it prompts for an elevation), then you get a list of system differences between the sandbox and your system and can choose whether and which changes to push from the sandbox env into the main env. Or to combine sandboxes so that programs can interact with each other.
Here's the problem. So many legitimate things need elevation, and often multiple times in a single install. Guess what most Windows users do, when they see an elevation prompt. What do you reckon?
Honestly I don't think it's that bad. I have to use sudo just as often on linux as I have to accept the elevation box on win. Win11 has some serious issues but UAC is harmless.
Sudo is very different. You need to explicity enter your password. It may be cached for a short time and I'd argue that's actually better.
If I'm installing something, it asks for my password once but can then raise to root multiple times that's fine.
If I'm installing something and it asks for elevation three times, for example it needs to Install multiple drivers. It generates an automatic click when installing for many unexperienced users. It's dangerous imo.
So you think a person that would turn off UAC wouldn't just put NOPASSWD in the sudoers? I doubt that. And even if they had to enter their pwd... Wouldn't that just be annoying for the casual user instead of increasing security? I doubt they would be like "Oh I have to enter my pwd now, that really makes me think twice about whatever I was going to do with sudo."
Sudo is just clicking "ok" with extra steps, thus making adding and removing programs more annoying, thus meaning the common user will probably just be logged in as root all the time. I challenge you to change my mind.
That's exactely what happened in my mind when I was getting started with Linux (kind of), although it's arguably a habit that comes from using Windows where people don't really think about OS users and permissions
As a Linux beginner who has a couple of false starts into it being my daily driver I'll say that there are two stumbling blocks left for me. Permissions "issues" is the bigger problem and some programs not being as fleshed out is the other.
I don't know. Not everyone who uses a computer should be an expert. Not everyone is 100% alert all the time. I know there has to be a line somewhere.
I feel like it would be really easy to have the OS check if the exe is appended to some other extension and force the user to rename it before allowing it to be executed.
There has to be a level of "competently trained user" in there we can strive for. I think we were getting there about the time I was in high school circa 2003, where every last one of us could format an MLA essay in MS Word and do an autosum in Excel.
Something that put me off of Microsoft products for a decade before I switched to Linux was their constant rearranging of the UI, requiring users to re-learn how to do basic tasks that worked just fine.
I feel like there's a lot of misunderstanding about what I'm trying to say.
I'm saying the average windows user will begin to get fatigue when some installers ask for elevation 3 times (maybe more). They'll end up just pavlovian clicking OK whenever that prompt appears. Which ends up circumventing the whole reason the prompt exists.
Often they don't. If more granular permissions were to be used. Hklm/programdata needing admin to do anything in it for example. Putting permissions on hklm/software/package to write is enough to make a lot of software work without opening up the whole system.
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