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Quantum Cog @lemmy.world

Microsoft is blocking Windows Customization Tools

TLDR: StartAllBack, ExplorerPatcher and some other projects are being blocked on 24H2.

One more reason to switch to Linux

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256 comments

  • Micro$oft are being dicks again, film at 11 but here's the thing - if you're interested in customizing Windows - just grab that live distro and get to it man. Linux is here and it's ready for prime time.

    At this point Windows is just for businesses who don't know better (or refuse to learn) and people who haven't been told The Good News yet.

    • Sorry, it's not ready for prime time.

      It's great for advanced users who are willing to put in the effort to work for them as a desktop.

      It's also great as a host for services.

      And is dogshit in a business environment.

      As some background - I had my first UNIX class in about 1990. I wrote my first Fortran program on a Sperry Rand Univac (punched cards) in about 1985. Cobol was immediately after Fortran (wish I'd stuck with Cobol). So I was in IT working before Linux existed.

      I run a Mint laptop. Power management is a joke. Configured it as best as possible, walked in the other day and it was dead. Windows would never do this, unless you went out of your way to config power management to kill the battery.

      There no way even possible via the GUI to config power management for things like low/critical battery conditions /actions.

      There are many reasons why Linux doesn't compete with Windows on the desktop - this is just one glaring one. So many run-of-the mill things that take effort to deal with.

      Now let's look at Office. Open an Excel spreadsheet with tables in any app other than excel. Tables are something that's just a given in excel, takes 10 seconds to setup, and you get automatic sorting and filtering, with near-zero effort. No, I'm not setting up a DB in an open-source competitor to Access. That's just too much effort for simple sorting and filtering tasks, and isn't realistically shareable with other people.

      There's that print monitor that's on by default, and can only be shut up by using a command line. Wtf? In the 21st century?

      Networking... Yea, samba works, but how do you clear creds you used one time to connect to a share, even though you didn't say "save creds"? Oh, yea, command line again or go download an app to clear them for for you. Smh.

      Someone else said it better than me:

      Every time I've installed Linux as my main OS (many, many times since I was younger), it gets to an eventual point where every single thing I want to do requires googling around to figure out problems. While it's gotten much better, I always ended up reinstalling Windows or using my work Mac. Like one day I turn it on and the monitor doesn't look right. So I installed twenty things, run some arbitrary collection of commands, and it works.... only it doesn't save my preferences.

      So then I need to dig into .bashrc or .bash_profile (is bashrc even running? Hey let me investigate that first for 45 minutes) and get the command to run automatically.. but that doesn't work, so now I can't boot.. so I have to research (on my phone now, since the machine deathscreens me once the OS tries to load) how to fix that... then I am writing config lines for my specific monitor so it can access the native resolution... wait, does the config delimit by spaces, or by tabs?? anyway, it's been four hours, it's 3:00am and I'm like Bryan Cranston in that clip from Malcolm in the Middle where he has a car engine up in the air all because he tried to change a lightbulb.

      And then I get a new monitor, and it happens all damn over again. Oh shit, I got a new mouse too, and the drivers aren't supported - great! I finally made it to Friday night and now that I have 12 minutes away from my insane 16 month old, I can't wait to search for some drivers so I can get the cursor acceleration disabled. Or enabled. Or configured? What was I even trying to do again? What led me to this?

      I just can't do it anymore. People who understand it more than I will downvote and call me an idiot, but you can all kiss my ass because I refuse to do the computing equivalent of building a radio out of coconuts on a deserted island of ancient Linux forum posts because I want to have Spotify open on startup EVERY time and not just one time. I have tried to get into Linux as a main dev environment since 1997 and I've loved/liked/loathed it, in that order, every single time.

      I respect the shit out of the many people who are far, far smarter than me who a) built this stuff, and 2) spend their free time making Windows/Mac stuff work on a Linux environment, but the part of me who liked to experiment with Linux has been shot and killed and left to rot in a ditch along the interstate.

      Now I love Linux for my services: Proxmox, UnRAID, TrueNAS, containers for Syncthing, PiHole, Owncloud/NextCloud, CasaOS/Yuno, etc, etc. I even run a few Windows VM's on Linux (Proxmox) because that's better than running Linux VM's on a Windows server.

      Linux is brilliant for this stuff. Just not brilliant for a desktop, let alone in a business environment, or for most users who are used to Windows/Office.

      If it were 40 years ago, maybe Linux would've had a chance to beat MS, even then it would've required settling on a single GUI (which is arguably half of why Windows became a standard, the other half being a common API), a common build (so the same tools/utilities are always available), and a commitment to put usability for the inexperienced user first.

      These are what MS did in the 1980's to make Windows attractive to the 3 groups who contend with desktops: developers, business management, end users.

      As a very advanced user, I just don't have the time to play fuck-fuck with Linux on a desktop - I have work to do with what little time I have.

      Here's a question: if Linux truly competes with Windows, why don't massive organizations that have the IT manpower/expertise use it for their desktops? They'd save millions in licensing alone. Why is it they feel those tens of millions are better spent on contracts with MS?

      • See, ive had Linux problems, but my problem with windows is that I gave to actively fight the system to get anything done. It feels like PvP, and there's fiat bullshit reverts of stuff. And the GUI is runny garbage!

        Linux isn't good enough, I agree.

        But windows is far enough into enshitification that it isnt either anymore, and its getting worse. So fucking fast; its getting worse. I fucking miss usable windows; I'd still be on 7 if I could. But I can't.

        So if at this point Linux isn't adequate, that means computers aren't adequate. I use Linux so I don't lose my computer, so it can do something at least.

      • There's a bunch of problems with this post, but I'll start by saying that at different times over the last decade I have certainly agreed that Linux just consumes too much of my time to use in a business environment. I'm rocking linux at work over the last few months, but just on Friday for example I booted into Windows because I couldn't get a god damn Teams screen share to work.

        Firstly, your post kind of deals with "business" as though all businesses have homogeneous use cases. Of course Linux might be more suitable for some businesses rather than others.

        For power management, IDK what you're saying really. I'm running a stock debian environment. I've never looked at these settings before but it took me literally 5 seconds to find the "Automatic Power Saver" options for low battery situations. Perhaps you want something specific that doesn't exist but IDK, I don't think this is really a deal breaker for business.

        I'm not really sure what you're getting at with Excel vs LibreOffice Calc. There's 5 people on my team and we all use Calc all day every day. It's fine. The features we use are "moderately complex", as in complex functions, pivot tables, filtering, et cetera. No macros or db connections. Yes I'm sure some people use Excel in ways that Calc might struggle with, but I'm also sure the reverse is also true. Yes Calc has a more humble vibe.

        if Linux truly competes with Windows, why don’t massive organizations that have the IT manpower/expertise use it for their desktops? They’d save millions in licensing alone.

        This is a complex question. I think part of the answer is simply that this wasn't always the case, a decade ago Linux was much less viable than it is today.

        Orgs and individuals have built up a gargantuan amount of knowledge around and within the Windows ecosystem, and that knowledge has value. This means that moving to another platform will have huge training and support and specialist costs, even if the underlying platform is free.

        Also, I'm sure you've seen the recent posts about whatever German state migrating 30,000 machines to Linux. You've probably also heard of that other German city that developed LiMux and ran it successfully for a decade and how desperate MS was to win them back.

        As I started off by saying, yes there are problems, and I agree that Linux might be out of reach for many businesses for the next few years. However, the compelling issue I encounter regularly is compatibility with the microsoft ecosystem. That's not so much the fault of Linux itself, but really a network effect problem. If everyone started using linux tomorrow microsoft would ensure teams would work without issue.

      • Curiously, for me it's more or less the other way around, in a sense. I run Linux on both my Desktop and my Laptop, and feel that after setting them up the way I like, I am more productive than under Windows. In Windows, I oftentimes had the feeling that I had to work against the OS whenever I wanted to configure it in a way that wasn't quite standard, while I tend to feel that I can work with the OS when using Linux. Especially Win11 introduced lots of things that detracted from the user experience for me, and where only changeable by editing the registry, which isn't great.

        I do recognise that parts, or even most of that probably isn't applicable to the standard user, but as what could reasonably be called a power user, I never really had any problems working with Linux.

        I'd also say that for non-power users, people who mainly work within Word processors, or their browser, a stable LTS distros can in some cases be less hassle than Windows.

        Regarding Excel - gotta give that to you, I always felt that Excel in isolation was good software, and I am not aware of any replacement that's equally as friendly to non-programmer users, while also being equally as capable.

        Regarding your last point - Dunno, I don't work there. I would however raise that inertia can be quite powerful. No one ever got fired for buying IBM, no one ever got fired for licensing Windows. Doesn't mean that there aren't other, possibly good, reasons.

    • Linux isnt quite ready for prime time.

      But neither is windows anymore, and Linux isnt generally shitting itself and taking features, features you might rely on away from you

      The fucking precarity of modern windows, man. Plus the amount it must spy on you.

    • Good for you I guess but good luck with commercial software development when your whole toolchain is Windows only. Same for video games, and Proton only works properly if you have a new GPU which supports all the Vulkan features.

    • This will be true when Linux supports anticheat (well, when anticheat supports Linux).

      Sure, not everyone uses their computer for gaming, but I'm sure a lot would like the option.

    • I'll switch to Linux when Visual Studio Community (NOT Code) works on it and I never have to touch the command line ever again.

      • Just switch to code.

        I put in the effort to redesign my work flow from VS (Enterprise license) to VS Code (totally free) earlier this year. I thought it couldn't be done, but it was easier than I thought. I'm super happy with the result as I hated what they did with recent VS versions. Microsoft just can't stop fucking up perfectly fine UIs in the name of "progress".

        • Got any highlights of things you had to adjust to?

          • The biggest thing is the UI being completely different. I did use VS Code before, but only for my own projects, not stuff for work. So I did know how to use VS Code, but still it's a major mental adjustment with everything being in a different place, features and shortcuts working differently etc.

            I really missed to Solution Explorer, which is probably my most used tool during work. But thankfully there is an excellent plugin which provides a Solution Explorer in VS Code. It's a bit different from what I'm used to but it works just fine.

            Normally for casual profiling I'd use VS builtin tools. Only switching to something like DotMemory when really diving into optimization. This seems to be missing from VS Code. Probably there's a plugin to fix that, but I want to keep the number of plugins to a minimum to prevent issues of plugins not being updated or having compatibility issues as much as possible. So now I switched to a different work flow for this to use tools like DotMemory sooner instead of the builtin stuff from VS.

            Resharper isn't available for VS Code yet, but I don't mind it. Some of my colleagues use it, but I prefer to do everything myself anyways and not use automated tools for code.

            I miss the Nuget package manager. Everything can be done using the terminal, both in VS and VS Code, which works the same. But the UI provided by the manager is so nice, it shows all the info you need, let's you do almost anything with two clicks. I've checked out some plugins which are supposed to help with this, but have found none as good as the VS package manager. I'm proficient enough with the terminal it doesn't really matter, but I still miss the manager and find myself checking different sources manually which used to be a lot more efficient. So I've taken an efficiency hit here, but I still can get the job done.

            Having everything done in the terminal panel takes some getting used to, where VS often launches different windows to get different kind of outputs. This is just something to get used to and could probably be changed in the settings, but I think it's fine.

            In VS the project is launched as a separate process and then VS attaches itself to the process for debug and inspection purposes. In VS Code it's a subprocess of the main editor process. This has some implications using third party tools for profiling for example. But I haven't noticed anything going wrong. I think the way VS does it is better, but it's probably fine? In theory an application could crash the whole VS Code process. But my code never crashes so I should be fine, right?

            Running and debugging is different but fine, with different profiles and debugging flags being managed from the UI and working perfectly. Publishing however is done only using the terminal, not the UI. Everything I need is available, but it took some figuring out how I need to do stuff using the terminal with regards to publishing. I've created a page on Confluence for myself with all the different stuff, which flags etc. It took some time but I think I've got everything figured out.

            For version management we already used a third party tool, so luckily no changes there. I have had to set some new ignores, but other than that no changes.

            Creating new projects is something I haven't figured out how to do. For work I only ever work in existing projects that have been around for ages. I don't know how easy it would be to create something new with all the required files and parameters so my colleagues can also use it. The other day I wanted to quickly check something in an empty project and I had to reach for VS again (for shame). I need to put in some time figuring this out in VS. It's probably not complicated, but as I said I wanted to check something quickly so I didn't have the time.

            There are probably a thousand little things I have changed or have to get used to. But these are the main ones.

      • As someone who genuinely loves the command line - I'd like to know more about your perspective. (Genuinely. I solemnly swear not to try to convince you of my perspective.)

        What about GUIs appeals to you over a command line?

        I like the CLI because it feels like a conversation with the computer. I explain what I want, combining commands as necessary, and the machine responds.

        With GUIs I feel like I'm always relearning tools. Even something as straightforward as 'find and replace' has different keyboard shortcuts in most of the text-editing apps I use - and regex support is spotty.

        Not to say that I think the terminal is best for all things. I do use an IDE and windowing environments. Just that - when there are CLI tools I tend to prefer them over an equivalent GUI tool.

        Anyway, I'm interested to hear your perspective- what about GUIs works better for you? What about the CLI is failing you?

        Thank you!

256 comments