

Installing Windows 8 after 8 years of Linux - rootdiver
http://answers.microsoft.com/thread/195d953e-df20-44b6-9eaa-3e5bd5754a75

======
fsniper
I'm actually fascinated with the lastest comment on that page from klkvsk:

"Anyways, blame Intel and N-7265 wifi adapter you have in your laptop, not
Microsoft. Windows does have a generic driver that works well most of their
adapters, but seems like not all of them. That's a question for Intel, why is
it not compatible."

This is just Linux guys' (me) scripted answer for people trying linux for the
first time who has wifi problems. Things are really inverse now.

~~~
jmuguy
I'm not sure whats up with Intel wireless in the past couple of years but we
(team of IT guys) constantly deal with issues with it on Windows (specifically
HP notebooks). For a while our response was to look for driver updates. We
finally discovered that rolling the driver back, usually to whatever came with
Windows, was the real answer.

~~~
fsniper
I'm lucky I'm not working in a similar position. I hate driver issues.

------
kweinber
I recently switched from a 15" macbook to a lenovo windows 8.1 laptop after 10
years of mac/linux for my daily driver.

I live with Windows as the base install and virtualbox linux (arch + ubuntu).

I am so glad to be free of the Mac... My hardware is upgradeable again, the
touchscreen is a real innovation, Excel opens instantaneously and when I want
Unix, I use the linux vm, I am not tempted to use the strange halfway house
that is the mac unix cli/packaging system with ports/homebrew on its back.

windows 8.1 is a bifurcated experience, but they tried to do something new...
it feels like Apple desktop engineers only really do truly new stuff in
desktop hardware (smaller, lighter, glue and solder) ... the software is
pretty but way behind Gnome, KDE and Windows...

I was the biggest MS hater you could be 10 years ago.... now it is Apple that
seems like the bad guy that isn't innovating now...

~~~
eddieroger
You do know that the "unix cli/packaging system" thing is actual UNIX, right?
Like, bona fide, certified UNIX for a while now. Homebrew is just a different
package manager than you're used to, but not so different from things like apt
or yum once you get to know your way around it.

~~~
jordigh
I'm sorry, but comparing homebrew to apt or yum just incenses me.

Let's begin with the most glaring difference: source distribution vs binary
distribution. Installing my GNU Octave takes under a minute with yum or apt
but hours or days with homebrew or macports.

Let's also proceed with how none of homebrew, macports or fink is native to
Mac OS X, but is some tacked-on thing that most Mac OS X users are unfamiliar
with (yeah, most Mac OS X users don't even know that a terminal exists or what
to do with it). It does not control the entire OS, but only some packages,
which are going to be installed in /usr/local or /opt or /opt/local. And woe
betide the users, the same Mac OS X users who just learned that their OS has a
command line, if they decide to use more than one of these package managers.
Conflicting packages strewn all over their filesystem! Great fun trying to
figure out which Python distribution is getting run and which Python packages
are getting imported.

While we're on the topic of Unix unfamiliarity, let's also talk about
simplicity. The typical user sees the following when told to install Xcode and
run this, run that, set these environment variables, modify their .bashrc:

[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2015/03/10/10598...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2015/03/10/10598846.aspx)

Now let's move on to "one day is a long time in brewland!" There is no promise
of stability or attempt to make sure that all packages work together with each
other. There is no stable distribution. If you're lucky, you might be able to
check out specific git tags of each package, but this doesn't work for all
packages, and you're expected to be updating your entire set of packages
pretty much daily if you want to have "support". The instructions that worked
yesterday for getting the software you want may not work today, because all of
the packages moved under your feet overnight.

Let's finally also see what happens when they upgrade from one Mac OS X
release to another: breakage everywhere. Some packages may need to be
recompiled, some may no longer compile (hello there, LLVM bugs that prevent
compilation of GNU Octave), or hours upon hours of copying or moving homebrew
or macports trees around during an operating system upgrade.

Homebrew and macports are a parody of what Unix package management should look
like, and fink doesn't have the maintainership that a GNU/Linux or BSD distro
has.

~~~
Shorel
Then it can be compared to Gentoo. Which is actually another Linux distro.

(but I no longer use it)

------
barbs
My Dad recently got malware on his Windows desktop computer, and wanted me to
fix it for him. He's reasonably tech-savvy but malware can happen to the best
of us. I tried searching and removing suspicious looking files, but it kept
coming back, so I decided to reformat the computer and reinstall windows.

The first part was to get an image to install from. Windows offers .iso
downloads on their website[0], but you need to enter the product key for the
computer to access it. I used a third-party tool to dig this out of the
registry, but attempting to use this key on the website gave a non-descript
error-code. After googling around, I found that it wasn't giving me the
download because it was an OEM-license (or something), since it came installed
on the DELL computer.

Luckily my Dad had kept the disc that came with the computer, and I used this
to reinstall windows. However, like the OP, I was missing drivers for a
handful of things, including the built-in wireless and wired network adapters.
Luckily, before reinstalling I'd found a folder on the C drive called
"Drivers" which looked important, and had backed this onto a USB drive.

The point is, the whole process took much longer than expected due it
being...Windows. The DRM and driver issues would likely be totally absent if I
were installing linux. And the whole reason I was doing this in the first
place was to remove adware, which is barely ever if at all a problem on linux!

[0] [http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-
recovery](http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-recovery)

~~~
ygra
The easist way to get rid of adware I tend to use on other's PCs is to just
use System Restore. Most adware won't break in there so it just takes a few
minutes to be reasonably sure that the system is clean again (at the expense
of the last thing they installed, of course).

As for getting a clean slate back, Windows 8 has a Reset function that
restores the system to a fresh install state while keeping data intact. Also
much easier than hunting for a recovery DVD or an ISO.

------
egeozcan
I got a brand-new laptop with Windows 8 pre-installed from a local
manufacturer in Turkey (Actually it says "Grundig" but it's assembled by
Arçelik[1]), as a present. It had an i5 and an SSD so I decided to give it a
go as a mobile workstation (I'm the kind of developer who likes his large
monitors a bit too much). The installation was single-language and I wanted it
to be English, so I re-installed from the dedicated partition and there I
could choose English. Installation took quite a few restarts and at least an
hour. During this time, most of the messages I received were really vague
("Your computer is being reset" with a looping load animation doesn't help me
see the progress). After it finished, I went on to update it to Windows 8.1.
Here's a summary of my experience:
[http://imgur.com/a/Qr49N](http://imgur.com/a/Qr49N) ("Something happened".
Wow!)

Please note all those pre-installed apps in the background of the last
picture, which you can't get rid of unless a) you remove them one-by-one and
clean registry manually or b) download a fresh copy of Windows from Microsoft
but then you lose some drivers for some reason and need to hunt for them.

After tweaking, restarting, deleting stuff, modifying registry and so on, I
could finally install the 8.1 update.

That's why I'm so excited about .NET going full cross-platform (I've been
developing primarily on Windows since nearly 10 years, mind you).

[1]
[http://www.grundig.co.uk/Pg/AboutGrundig](http://www.grundig.co.uk/Pg/AboutGrundig)

~~~
ryanjshaw
As a Windows developer and somebody who actually likes using Windows, I'm
still shocked by how pathetic Windows Update is.

I'm often reinstalling because as a developer I want to try out the newer
platforms. I gave Windows 8.1 a try recently. Fresh install and Windows Update
says there's nothing to update. Knowing that's BS, I force it to refresh --
after a significant wait suddenly there's 1GB of updates. Really? Why did I
just download a 3.5GB ISO that is 1GB out of date? I press on and force the
downloads to start because a safe system is a priority to me.

The downloads take forever to start. When they eventually do start, they
randomly stop (no ethernet activity) for random periods of time. All this time
I'm twiddling my thumbs wondering if there's some kind of "intelligent"
downloader that is slowing down because I'm trying to do something else on the
system. Eventually they finish downloading and installing and the system
reboots. After the reboot... I have more hundreds of MBs more of updates
waiting for me. WTF?

I go through this process 2 or 3 more times, and now I'm just left with
"optional" updates. Curious, I click on the 'more information' link to hit the
Microsoft website (because for some reason the Windows Update UI just shows
the most completely useless generic text for each update). Apparently the
'optional' updates are "rollups"... surely that's important?! Who knows,
because Windows Update packages are opaque blobs.

So I go ahead and install the optional updates. Reboot. Now everything is
good, right? Nope, go take a look at the Windows Update History - it turns out
a bunch of updates actually failed to install at some point? It looks like
they might have successfully installed later... or did they? At this point I
don't even care.

Compare with the Linux (Ubuntu, but I'm sure others qualify too) experience:
apt-get update; apt-get upgrade. If there's an issue I get informed
immediately and because the updates are per-package it's clear whether or not
I should care -- no opaque blobs here. When it's done, I know it's done and
there won't be any more magical updates mysteriously appearing. I know I can
run the update/upgrade in the background while I use the machine for other
things. I just don't understand why Microsoft can't get the update experience
right!

~~~
TheRealDunkirk
> As a Windows developer and somebody who actually likes using Windows, I'm
> still shocked by how pathetic Windows Update is.

Heh. My workstation in my cubicle at the office is getting a hard drive
replacement right now because some update left it stuck at startup, saying
"Windows is configuring things. Please do not turn off your computer." (Or
something to that effect.) I get it; if it takes longer than 15 minutes to
fix, core IT is going to re-image the drive, but now I have to reinstall
Visual Studio and SQL Server, and patch, and patch, and patch. And always be
afraid that it will just happen again some day.

~~~
dragonwriter
Seems to me that while the Windows Update hanging is a problem there, at least
as big of a problem is that your "core IT" is only keeping base images of
systems rather than images of complete-and-current builds with applications
and current patches.

~~~
TheRealDunkirk
Your IT/PC guys keep images with Visual Studio and SQL Server? Yes, please. It
was a major hassle getting approved for the PARTIAL-admin account just to so
_I_ could install those things.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Your IT/PC guys keep images with Visual Studio and SQL Server?

Well, I've known of shops where IT keeps complete role-specific (e.g.,
developer, etc.) or even individual-computer images rather than just generic
base images. Or at least have IT track software installed per-user and handle
rebuilds even if they use a generic base image. Where I work they don't,
unfortunately, but I would never _not_ call that out as a problem.

Common practices and _good_ practices are often not the same thing.

------
rikkus
I made the move in the same direction some years ago and, yes, there are
always problems, but IME a missing or broken driver is common with a fresh
install of Linux OR Windows.

I've often had to download a network driver (both WiFi and wired Ethernet)
separately and get it onto the machine via physical media, bluetooth or IRDA.

As for software updates: Yes there's a load of Lenovo crapware and yes it's
best to just do a clean install. I'm writing this on a T430s which I did a
clean install on. I then installed the Lenovo software I actually use:

    
    
      Power management driver
      Active protection system (I replaced the DVD drive with a SSHD)
      Fingerprint recognition thing
    

The OP says they install Ubuntu and all is well, but Ubuntu is going to be
wanting software updates just as Windows is - it's just that it doesn't have
separate crapware asking for them separately.

The lesson when it comes to installing an OS is: Be prepared. Either be
somewhere where you can download your NIC (or WiFi NIC) software separately
and get it onto the machine (it's too often NIC drivers that are missing,
which is pretty much the worst thing to be missing!) or get them downloaded
first, after finding out what's in the machine.

As for the developer account thing: I don't know why that is, but it annoyed
me too. They should really not do things like that. They should also stop the
push to get everyone to log into VS using a Microsoft account, as that's plain
annoying.

Finally: "I start Subleme[sic] Text , download some npm packages and started
writing code ."

Installing Sublime text, npm (and npm packages) on Windows is just as easy as
on Linux.

With .NET becoming easier to work with in Linux, I'm now considering a move
back to Linux on my laptop, so perhaps I'll write an equivalent article on
attempting to move the opposite way.

~~~
Gracana
> but Ubuntu is going to be wanting software updates just as Windows is

But Ubuntu comes with drivers for all the network devices it supports, and
when it does updates, it does them all in one go with a single reboot
required. You install, get online, update, and you're done. A base Windows
install often will require external media to get online to get updates, and
the process is a painstaking series of rebooting and re-launching/re-starting
windows update.

> Installing Sublime text, npm (and npm packages) on Windows is just as easy
> as on Linux.

I think the point is that he tried doing it The Microsoft Way, and that it was
full of barriers and frustration. Of course you can use other tools, but
Microsoft tools on a Microsoft system ought to be easy, right?

~~~
rikkus
I agree that the updating process for Windows is still annoying after all
these years, with reboots required, then launching Windows Update (which tells
you there's nothing to do), then you tell it to check again, it finds stuff,
it installs it - then you get it to check again and now it finds more stuff.
This has got less painful over the years, but at least with Linux you do one
update and might have to do one reboot if there's a kernel update, or restart
some services or X if there's something there that needs it, so yes, Linux
definitely wins here (and I hear there may be rebootless kernel updates
coming...)

It's also odd that Windows 8.1, released much earlier than Ubuntu 14.04,
didn't have a NIC driver that worked with the OP's device, when Ubuntu did.
Obviously they put drivers through WHQL, but still, it'd be great if they
could have a fast track for at least a very basic driver to get you connected.

I'd really like to see most devices which have some 'common' functions be able
to function with a minimal feature set without requiring a special driver. I
believe displays have been able to do this for years with VESA mode, (some)
webcams with UVC. If this could happen for NICs, it would make life so much
easier.

Yes, Microsoft tools on a Microsoft system should be easy. I think they should
have a team who sit and start from scratch every day, installing the OS,
getting the tools, starting to work - and see what the experience is like.
It's as if they never test this.

------
Tepix
I had to install Windows 8.1 Pro in order to use the Kinect v2 SDK. Boy is it
annoying.

The worst part is if you want to use Skype - don't use the version of Skype
that comes bundled with Windows! It forces you to change your Windows login
into a MSN login and will only run while in the foreground (fullscreen). Total
crap!

I had to change my login back to a local login and then download a "normal"
version of Skype that also works in the background and doesn't force me to use
MSN to log into windows.

That's just one of the many annoyances I ran into. I'm somewhat looking
forward to Windows 10 - it can only get better (oh no, I said it!).

~~~
rikkus
Yes Skype is pretty horrible, but at least they did what they should have done
and continue the desktop version.

------
scrapcode
I'll agree with the statement about the advances of Linux in the past 5+
years. I must admit though, I learned almost everything I know in the terminal
through wrestling RedHat and Mandrake into shape. It was extremely
disheartening as a kid to finally get Linux dual-booted with Windows and then
take 3 days to get Broadcom to work. - This isn't quit the same thing, but
it's interesting to see how the community has taken shape to a point where
Linux is a viable replacement for Windows for almost everyone.

------
teh_klev
Sigh. In 2009 I came back to Linux/Unix after a roughly equal amount of time
and had my own WTF moments getting things up and running. But I got there, so
no big deal and I didn't feel the need to bait the Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu
forums with a post like that. Instead I RTFM'd and posted a couple polite
questions asking for help with things I didn't understand and got tripped up
with (WiFi drivers ;) ) and off I went on my way.

This is just /. style flamebait, no idea why it's on the front page of HN.

------
mark_l_watson
Pre-installed crapware on Windows machines is a huge problem, and I am
surprised Microsoft does not ban this practice because it affects their brand.

You can buy signature edition Windows machines directly from Microsoft that
are crapware free, which is what I did a few months ago.

~~~
jpobst
They are unable to prohibit OEMs from installing whatever they want as part of
the antitrust settlement.

------
grandalf
The UX of windows 8 is so incredibly poor (even after 8.1) that I question the
methodology used to design it. Whatever test group or user studies are
suggesting that MS is going in the right direction are deeply flawed.

It's just utterly confusing to figure out how to do nearly anything on the OS.
There are all sorts of noisy visual cues that look like they communicate state
or flow but don't, as well as many seemingly ill-conceived UX "modes" that
bewilder me and that just doesn't happen for me with tech stuff.

Want to get to the control panel? There appear to be several different ones
and you have to hover your mouse in just the right place on the screen in
order to coax a bar to slide in and show you a few options. There are several
such bars, each triggered by some kind of mouse hover.

Since I'm ranting, even the usability on the modern IE site is horrid.

It seems that the idea is to have one environment for tablets and for 'normal'
users and another for "pro" users who care about advanced control panels. Even
if you accept two entirely different UX metaphors coexisting as reasonable, it
still boggles the mind how anyone could expect normal users to figure out
those strange mouse hovers.

It's just such a bewilderingly odd user experience. 8.1 cleans up a few of the
biggest warts but is still (IMHO) a UX disaster and I would actively
discourage anyone from deciding to use it.

Maybe the best business decision for MS would be to just copy OSX as much as
possible and then let the legal department deal with any infringement claims.

------
bryanlarsen
I had experiences very similar to those of the OP. After almost 20 years with
Solaris or Linux as my primary OS (with a brief interlude using OSX), I bought
a Lenova Yoga 2 Pro and I thought I'd try using Windows as my primary OS. Two
motivators: Windows had at the time better HighDPI support than Linux, and
since I use Vagrant for everything anyways, I thought I could get the best of
both worlds. That experiment didn't last long.

It works both ways. My boss is a Dev that's been developing in Windows for a
similar amount of time, and he's being exposed to Linux for the last 3 years
due to the project we're both working on, and I can understand his
frustration.

It's a different mind set, really. Emacs & the CLI are second class citizens
on Windows. Big IDE's are second class citizens on Linux. Not too mention 20
years of experience solving problems and knowing where to look for answers....

~~~
rikkus
"Emacs & the CLI are second class citizens on Windows"

I haven't used Emacs on Windows, but Powershell is the best shell I've used (I
used to use zsh on Linux). There's also console2 and conemu if you want to
avoid the built in cmd-derivative, which is rather unpleasant.

~~~
Shorel
But in Windows if I want to ssh somewhere I have to use another program.

------
luxpir
Impressed by the writer's dedication to putting spaces both _before and after_
punctuation.

Also nice to start to read from Linux natives being confused with Windows. Oh
how the worm has turned!

I've a foot in both camps, but any serious computing happens on Linux. With
the exceptions of Excel and some niche Win-only software I work with.

~~~
bebna
As someone who uses sc[1][2] (basic desc: spreadsheets in console with vi-like
controls), I don't understand why someone would use switch to windows (as in
reboot), just for Excel. Don't gnumeric and libreoffice fill all your typical
spreadsheet needs?

[1]
[http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10699](http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10699)

[2] [https://github.com/dkastner/sc](https://github.com/dkastner/sc)

~~~
Macha
I can't speak for everyone obviously, but I have plenty of lecturers that
insist on .doc/.docx handups and after an incident where a basic document (as
in headings, page breaks and paragraphs as the only formatting) written in
Libreoffice ended up in a 5 column layout on Word for no explicable reason,
I'd rather just write them in an application that I know will show the same
when the lecturer opens the file as when I open it.

~~~
peatmoss
If your workflow is push-only, exporting to PDF fixes this. I have Office
loaded on my iPad only for extreme situations. Also, I have Office 365 through
my institution that I've been known to use once in a blue moon. Most of my
document creation these days is org-mode -> PDF though.

------
colinbartlett
With all the positive Redmond news here recently, I really expected this to be
a glowing review of how improved Windows is. But I guess some things never
change?

~~~
Lancey
Things have changed a lot! (for the worse)

------
zenlot
Seems that author is confusing Microsoft Windows 8.1 with the Lenovo stuff
which it ships along when you buy a laptop with the pre-installed software.
And because of this reason I didn't bother reading other parts of the article.

Though, I have been using FreeBSD as a base for 10+ years, Linux at work and
with the arrival of Windows 8.1 I have switched to base of 8.1+Hyper-V+FreeBSD
as a VM. This perfectly works on the Lenovo hardware (which I prefer) and I am
amazed how Microsoft improved, since the year of 1992+, when I have discovered
their products.

~~~
theandrewbailey
> The bottom line , the computer was full of crappy Lenovo and other brands
> software that just gets in my way and i don't want to use. Even worse after
> about 2 days some of the bundled Lenovo apps started crashing once in a
> while. I know this issue is not related to microsoft, and i am not blaming
> them for this.

Seems pretty clear to me that he's not confusing the Lenovo stuff with
Windows.

~~~
ld00d
Even if he was, that speaks to one of the main issues with Windows: most of
the time you get a Windows machine, it has manufacturer-installed software.
Microsoft could choose to control that through their licensing, but they
don't.

------
dhimes
I'm in almost the same position as the OP. I bought a toshiba s55 with Win 8.1
as a travel rig because my eeePC just wasn't able to handle the load any more.
The Toshiba doesn't fit as well into an airline seat, but it is a very nice
setup. I use Linux Mint in VirtualBox (my main work machine- the one I'm on
now- is also Mint but as a native install.

In short, I'm quite pleased with win 8.1. I like the tile stuff ok. VBox with
Mint is fast enough for development work (no usb 3 support yet). But for the
first time in years I can confidently print and scan and really get full use
out of my hardware.

The drawback is crapware. I apparently downloaded something called Pokki which
isn't really a virus (some people might have a use for it) but which is pretty
hard to get rid of (maybe not for Win types but it took me a while). I don't
think they tried to be malicious- everything was in an easily discoverable
folder and their website tells you where it is, the just have an auto-start
process that you have to delete after starting in 'safe mode.'

Other than that it's fine. I follow the same security practices: I have an
admin account that I don't use very much but I use for installing 'global,'
trusted software like vbox and Office (Libre/MS). I do my work under a non-
priviledged account. Etc. Oh, and I did use the Norton virus thingy, just in
case.

Overall my experience with Win 8.1 has been positive.

------
Shorel
I dual boot Windows 8.1 and Linux Ubuntu in a Dell Inspiron 13 2-in-1.

It's true Intel network drivers suck. Not only WiFi. I have to transfer the
Ethernet network driver for the desktops in the office via USB, as any Windows
Install does not have the driver in the disk. And this is for wired
networking.

Nowadays most network hardware is done by Intel. So it sucks everywhere.

In contrast, Ubuntu is totally plug and play. I have an external USB drive
that can boot in the desktops and in the Dell laptop. Even with different
video cards (AMD vs Intel), it just works.

I can change the sound output device with a single click in Ubuntu. The laptop
boots in 'secure mode' and Ubuntu is recognized by the UEFI loader.

But not everything is perfect in Linux.

The accelerometer (or whatever hardware that autodetects the laptop's
rotation) only works in Windows. Then, for reading comics, I boot to Windows.

The video performance is better in Windows. I always get screen tearing in
Ubuntu, while I get perfect playback in Windows (unless I use display
mirroring and output to HDMI and the internal display at the same time).

If I want good FullHD video, I have to boot into Windows (and output to only
one screen).

------
sudioStudio64
It doesn't work the way that I thought it would? (Instead of learning how it
actually works.)

------
M8
_" I start Subleme Text , download some npm packages and started writing
code."_

Not really comparable to Visual Studio. One is a notepad while the other is an
IDE.

~~~
josteink
Fair enough (and I say this as a Visual Studio user), but we should also note
his aim was not to have an IDE. The IDE was not a goal, it was a means to a
goal.

His goal, what he wanted to try out, was creating Windows Phone apps, and for
this the big complex IDE is was a prerequisite, and this prerequisite caused
him to fail reaching his goal.

Contrast this to other development tasks, like web-development, and the need
for these complex tools went away and he could be instantly productive. Does
that say anything about developing Windows Phone apps?

It's definitely not a direct apples to oranges comparison, but when making
Windows Phone apps gets its complexity way beyond web-apps, that is entirely
something within Microsoft's control.

------
gonewest
I think it's fair game to point a finger at Microsoft for this, they can't
claim lack of involvement or interest in their device ecosystem. They could be
putting all vendor drivers in the Windows Update repository, insisting that
the drivers themselves be separate from any optional or value-add tools,
cracking down on straight up advertising ploys such as installing URL links to
websites on the desktop, etc.

------
Lancey
I respect the writer's persistence. I got a new Acer laptop with Windows 8.1
on it and decided to give it a shot. I already had a live USB ready to go but
decided I'd see how much I could work on Windows before getting frustrated.

Not long apparently. Once the setup process started asking me for an e-mail
address with no option to skip I gave up and put Linux Mint on it. Keep doing
your thing, Micro$oft.

~~~
AlyssaRowan
Check the bottom of the screen (you may have to look carefully). You're
looking for something like _Sign in without a Microsoft account (not
recommended)_ -> _Local account_ \- there's a similar flow when creating a new
user.

It is there, but it's (obviously deliberately) hidden behind one _hell_ of a
UX antipattern. I guess they want people to use Microsoft accounts more than
they want people to be able to use Windows.

And Microsoft accounts are still stuck using only 16-character passwords (!),
and I'm not completely clear on what does and does not get 'synced' \- if it's
my %AppData%, I don't trust SkyDrive, so that's definitely out.

------
spiralpolitik
In my many years of installing both Windows and Linux I've learned the most
important lesson is always have a USB Ethernet adaptor to hand as you can be
certain you'll have problems getting the WiFi card to work correctly at some
point.

(Ubuntu is very good on this front. Debian not so much but that's down to
politics not technology. Windows is still a hot mess)

------
realusername
I sadly had the same experience as this guy. I guess when you are a standard
user browsing the web, everything works fine on windows, but if you are a web
developer it's just a nightmare.

There is always something to install which is not there, I have to install
tons of drivers, Putty, WinCSP, a decent terminal (cmd.exe is just unusable),
WAMP, python, various python libraries, perl, node.js (lots of front-end tools
needs it now), Cygwin (otherwise it's impossible to do anything with the base
programs), wget.exe, 7zip, notepad++ (the built-in notepad does not handle
newlines properly), git, setup bash aliases, emacs, Firefox ... (the list can
be expanded).

So yeah, you can code on Windows, but you are basically fighting with the
system all the time to install everything you need.

~~~
sudioStudio64
The thing is...you're trying to make it act like linux. That will be a fight.
If you take the time to learn how things are done on windows...or any platform
for that matter...it wouldn't be that hard.

~~~
jevgeni
This is exactly the thing.

I have been using xBSD and OS X for the last 10 years, but have been
confronted with the need to do some financial modelling on Windows (as a side
note, I guess this is not "serious" computing, according to some comments
here).

Attempt #1: Try the SciPy/Anaconda stack. Mostly OK, but Python's Windows
support is an afterthought. Anaconda is especially sweet, but getting any kind
of serious Python distribution running in a corporate environment is a pain.
Integration being the main source of misery.

Attempt #2: Try F#. Sweet mother of god, everything runs, compiles, does what
I expect it to do and efficiency is awesome. Visual Studio 2013 is although an
IDE, but nowhere near a bloated, monstrous carcass like Eclipse; or in fact
not as bloated as some Emacs setups I've seen. Only "downside": the need to
buy a couple of books on .Net and F#.

The moral of the story: Microsoft has an enormous capacity to create some
ground breaking stuff and then f- it up completely by bad commercial
decisions. Thankfully it seems, they've started to fix that.

~~~
sudioStudio64
Whether anyone here thinks that is serious enough or not...that's pretty
freaking cool. Right on.

------
beyti
I think the OP has a lot of confusions about the "vendor", "operating system"
and very suprisingly with "linux" and "ubuntu" generalization.

I can understand the first two, but can't seem to understand one who has 8
years of xp with linux is able to generalize "ubuntu" with all of the other
linux operating systems.

Quite the waste of my time to read this, nothing gained for me other than the
thought of "hackernews top posts are going bad" sadly.

~~~
theandrewbailey
> The bottom line , the computer was full of crappy Lenovo and other brands
> software that just gets in my way and i don't want to use. Even worse after
> about 2 days some of the bundled Lenovo apps started crashing once in a
> while. I know this issue is not related to microsoft, and i am not blaming
> them for this.

It's pretty clear that he distinguishes Microsoft from Lenovo. There's nothing
specific that I can point to, but it seems that he knows the difference
between Linux and Ubuntu, also.

~~~
beyti
I can clearly read that he was devastated about the Lenovo bloatware aorund
3rd day and 1 for Microsoft & No network problem. I assume more of a vendor
issue than microsoft caused this tiredness.

And Ubuntu is a really distinguished linux distro for its ease of usability
and general driver compatibility; not like most of other greatly used linux
distros, which care more of power users than everyday users.

~~~
theandrewbailey
> And Ubuntu is a really distinguished linux distro for its ease of usability
> and general driver compatibility

It's why I've had my parents using Xubuntu for the past 4 years. There haven't
been any Big Problems. Calling Xubuntu Ubuntu might be cheating, but it's the
same thing minus Unity.

