Those of you who still use windows for one reason or more, where do you draw the line about the shitty things microsoft is doing? By drawing the line I mean using some other operating system no matter how bothersome it might be.
Not judging or anything, i’m just curious where the general mindset is about it.
I use windows because the fire code mandates it, and cause having sunlight in rooms is nice. Also I can see the weather and when the mail arrives.
My dog’s use Windows to spot their dreaded enemy, the squirrel.
We will never be able to repay them for this vigilance
Why anyone is OK with Microsoft’s key logging of everything including passwords is beyond me.
I thought this was about recall but no, there is a second keylogger in Windows lol
Step 4: Toggle the switch off under Getting to Know You. The keylogger is now off.
Well that’s not creepy at all…
Oh, don’t worry your little head. Microsoft is taking very special care of all your passwords and nothing bad can happen.
But seriously, I would be shocked if Microsoft’s password stores weren’t already hacked. I think at some point Windows users are going to wake up to some very unpleasant news.
Thank you for mentioning that, wasn’t aware it was doing that. Disabled it now.
The line is between my home and the office. Linux at home for nearly twenty years and windows at work because so few know better.
I only use Windows at work because that is what they have me on my work laptop and I haven’t replaced it. I just use Linux in a VM instead. That way I don’t need to explain a thing to internal IT, but just work within the VM.
My work is maintaining a distributed windows network. Domain controllers VM’s and over a hundred workstations in several locations.
Yep. IT gives everyone Windows, and I don’t have an important reason they would grant me an exception. So Linux stays at home
IT would give you whatever you wanted. Management insists on windows because reasons. All of my domain controllers and most of my VM’s run on KVM/QEMU. All of our digital signs run raspberry pi’s. Simple truth is that most shops run windows due to long standing tradition. One they will not question.
Eh, I’m sure it’s some combination of legal’s opinion on risk, purchasing’s contract with Microsoft, and IT’s desire to stop end users from breaking things. At the end of the day, it doesn’t bother me too much
I am IT where I work. It has nothing to do with legal where I work. It just ingrained habit and opinion. I have several linux machines running there now and no one has noticed expect one lady who commented ‘it never messes up anymore’ in reference to a kiosk they use to look up items. Over the last five years I have improved things there until the only problems I have are windows problems. Killing the microsoft store was a big move forward. Now no local admin actually keeps people from installing programs on their own.
I drew the line when my Windows box told me I couldn’t do something even with admin. Kid, you work for ME, not the other way around.
Always preferred Linux over Windows, but I had issues with games on it. I just decided that I wouldn’t play any games that didn’t work. That was a couple of years ago now, and things have only improved since.
My fiance, who is not a technical person, even decided she wanted her new PC to run Linux unprompted, which is a hell of a win for Linux and for me in not having to support a Windows box in the house.
Windows 10 stops working for my purposes (gaming, browsing internet, office docs, some other windows exclusive programs).
Every tool for it’s job.
I have 4 windows boxes 5 linux boxes and 3 macs in the house.
I will not force the children off Roblox I will not buy the children macs. I will not put forth monumental effort for a substandard experience just to get rid of windows.
If roblox gives in to linux with a native app or wine, (or they age out of roblox) I’ll give it a test run with the kids assuming they don’t have another game that requires the same.
I cannot eradicate the last Windows box for work because there are closed things I must occasionally deal with. That said it’s use is around once a week.
I will eventually eradicate my security camera VM, but I need a lot of time to work on frigate.
Roblox is banned in our house. Not due to o/s concerns, but child grooming concerns. Snapchat, also banned.
There’s no chat for underaged kids anymore, so it’s less of a concern.
Frigate’s setup is a bit fussy at first but is well worth the time and effort. I’ve been running 2 instances for two years and can count the number of false positives on one hand.
So what I have going on is Blue-Iris. I have a load of pixel barriers and notifications wrapped around times. If someone opens the community mailbox not between 2 and 4 pm on week days or 11am on Saturday, it sends me a webhook ntfy with the image and an emergency alarm (mail thefts been happening). I have it doing ALPR on two streets and then I have alarms for humans in the driveway and humans on the back porch at specific hours with more webhook ntfy. I dedupe alarms and use Blue-Iris for scrubbing and storage.
My cameras are super good at AI person detection and provide it through ONVIF so I don’t know that I’ll get a lot more out of it, but getting rid of the Windows laptop running the job would be nice.
I believe Frigate can do all that, but you’re looking a huge investment of time to duplicate your Blue-Iris configuration. If it were me I’d be tempted to put up with Windows until something forced a change.
were me I’d be tempted to put up with Windows until something forced a change.
I’ll get to it eventually before it breaks :) Of all the windows needs, that’s the lowest hanging fruit.
Home Assistant already draws feeds from the cameras in tandem, so the alerts themselves could be replaced easily, but getting the offending image and the pixel barriers would require Frigate. I’ll probably build it up in a container and pass through a USB Coral
You may not even need the Coral. I moved from a old system with an ancient CPU and usb Coral to a small laptop with a Intel N200 processor. With Frigate running in Docker the N200’s object detection is just as fast as the Coral with almost no impact on CPU utilization.
If I could do it fast enough, the windows laptop has a decent mobile gpu
But I kinda want to do it in a VM, and i’d rather pass through the coral than suck up the cpu cycles on the box from the other vm’s
Seems like there’s work around for Roblox on Arch but it uses closed source tech. Still maybe an improvement over Windows if you haven’t given it a try.
Thanks for looking it up, I’ve already been there, it’s Android emulation and it doesn’t perform well enough for what they’re doing. One is doing split timing stuff, and the other is doing perverse things to build a boat that won’t even run under native Android.
Back when the straight wine client was allowed, it was good enough I could have switched, but I walk have been back where I am now.
I’m a bit concerned that even if I did convince them to use an emulator, Roblox would get a case of the ass and block it as they did for Linux.
As disappointed as I am that they’re stuck in Windows, I’d be irrationally angry having to reinstall Windows.
Ah that’s unfortunate. Hopefully they can fix their rectal cranial inversion and just allow people to play the game.
You can run Roblox on Linux with “Sober”.
It’s the android emulation client
-
It’ll only work until they decide to make it not work. When it stops working I’ll have to reinstall windows which would be worse.
-
It does not preform well and the controls are different. For really big builds in build a boat and obstacle courses, it underperforms enough to make them upset.
-
I hate Windows more than anything or anyone in this world. Pretty sure my blood pressure is up a little just thinking about dealing with that OS.
Last time I used Windoze was to create a live usb to install Linux.
The AI nonsense would need to personally disrupt my user experience on a daily basis.
I’ve already made up my mind about switching due to the AI nonsense that has already happened, but I’ve been putting off actually doing anything about it.
I can give my historical experience. Early 2025, I saw horrific articles on Copilot and decided to switch early. I had a bad distro hopping experience. First tried Linux Mint, might have been a slightly old install, but even my wifi didn’t work. Tried a later install, and it was much better, but game performance wasn’t great. Hitman WOA didn’t even load levels. Helldivers 2 had an annoying white border (I eventually fixed this a year later using an odd hack)
I then tried Bazzite. I didn’t quite like the layout, but it functioned. I had a hard time installing apps; it tried to simplify this with various virtualization/containerized solutions, but it meant so many tutorials for basic native-Linux apps didn’t work.
When W10 EOL came around, I tried another distro well touted: CachyOS. It was very smooth. I learned it’s Arch, same as the Steam Deck, and does have some “technical complexities” which I felt I wanted to avoid, but I guess in the end it’s been nothing I’m not a little used to from my work as a programmer. It mostly uses okay UIs for system settings, and some programs require you to use another package installer rather than their default “Octopi”. Some of my early issues came from installing Flatpaks rather than Arch User Repository items.
Games have been fantastic. Rarely when something uses video I need ProtonGE, which is an easy toggle; I should probably just make it default. Helldivers 2 and Division 2 seem to run better than on Windows.
The biggest decider has been: Changing to Linux was NOT annoyance free. There was transition, there was fiddly configuration, and I replaced some apps I use. A key thing is, Windows was quickly moving away from being annoyance free - stuffing Copilot and OneDrive ads into EVERYTHING. So, even accepting a few Linux struggles ended up being an overall lesser frustration.
At first I expected cachy to be just arch with calamares and kde but when I checked they even have their own kernel version. Very sophisticated.
Any of these things comes to mind:
- Not respecting my configuration.
- Updates taking hours and then having to boot safe mode to repair after said update.
- Having to constantly fight spyware.
- The feeling that my computer is not my own.
- Stupid design decisions.
- Feeling like an unpaid tester for an anti-consumer company.
If it does not work on linux, I don’t buy it. I’m sick of Microsoft. They feel like abusers.
But all of these things are already happening. Why are you still a Windows user if these are your lines in the sand? (Did you mis-read the assignment?)
I use windows where I’m forced to. Read work. The red line has already been crossed.
I drew the line fifty years ago, with Bill Gates’ Open Letter to Hobbyists.
I drew the line at “Ads in the start menu,” and fully switched when a game that I’ve played on and off for ~15 years started working on Linux. I’ve been using Linux for most of my life, but I uninstalled Windows for the last time about 4 years ago
At work I’m paid for it. The software is very much specialised and while probably possible to run under Linux it’s just too much of a headache.
I did install Linux on our SVN server though.
I stopped using Windows on my own machines many years ago. It was probably about the time when the games I was playing ran well enough, so dual booting was just taking up space I could use.
It’s tied to my job, so I’ll stop using Windows when I stop working there.
