Three years ago, I migrated from Gmail to FastMail because I was afraid of losing access to my digital life on Google's whim.
Two years ago, I found out that my favorite Youtube creators were all on Nebula.
One year ago, I switched my phone to LineageOS to get security updates a little longer.
A month ago, I installed OpenStreetMaps because Google Maps got really bad at showing points-of-interest.
And today, Kagi removed the only obstacle that kept me on Google Search. I'm looking forward to building my filter list.
After accidentally de-googlifying myself, I might ditch Windows next. It feels really nice using products that respect me, as opposed to services that are actively hostile because of advertisers.
You know you're only getting half the security updates though, yea? The Android ones you're getting, but anything in the baseband/modem/low-level hardware you're not.
Don't get me wrong, I think Lineage is great and I use it too, but I think too many people are fooling themselves on how much extra security they're getting using it.
LineageOS will be using the exact same baseband that came with Android 9 on hardware they're deploying Android 12 to, if the phone's actual support stopped at 9. Yes with the new "Play System Updates" there's better security coverage, but it's still a gap compared to supported hardware.
I had to read your comment extra carefully to realize that you weren't saying LineageOS is _behind_ on updates for the baseband/etc., but rather that it only extends availability of Android updates, not baseband updates, due to the baseband being proprietary and updates no longer being released by the OEM.
In other words, LineageOS provides the latest Android and baseband updates available; it's just that for the baseband, "latest" can be a lot older than for Android, if your phone hardware is no longer supported by the OEM.
If you get a Pixel phone and put GrapheneOS on it, you're actually ahead on OS updates compared to vanilla AOSP. For example, the webp vulnerability was backported 4 days ago, while regular Android users will have to wait until October to get a fix for this vulnerability.
(Of course, the thing about the baseband still remains, but Google now offers 5 years of security updates, which are immediately ported by GrapheneOS.)
I'm wary of telemetry, but willing to accept it. It's the lack of respect that gets to me. "Yes/Maybe Later"? Showing me a fake Windows update screen once a month to try to get me to use an online account and switch to Edge? Starting a Bing search when the start menu doesn't recognize an application's name? Pre-installing games with advertisement and microtransactions?
It's a commercial operating system, for Christ's sake, stop pushing sleazy features. They are quickly burning through all the trust acquired over decades.
My favorite was when they wanted everyone to switch over from Internet Explorer to Edge (this was before support was dropped), so attempting to search "Internet Explorer" in the start menu caused it to override it with Edge instead.
This of course was quite annoying because we still had many applications at the time that (unfortunately) required Internet Explorer.
It was even more annoying because when attempting to get to "Internet Options" or "File Explorer", it automatically replaced those with Edge, which is not at all helpful.
This effort was also completely undone by the fact that if you misspelled Internet Explorer it would still come right up as the first option.
I'm still upset that they've removed most Control Panel results from the start menu search as well, because after all these years the Settings app is still incomplete.
> My favorite was when they wanted everyone to switch over from Internet Explorer to Edge (this was before support was dropped), so attempting to search "Internet Explorer" in the start menu caused it to override it with Edge instead.
Was this before or after they actually removed iexplore.exe?
This was at least several months before, maybe more.
I'm not actually sure they even fully removed it. It seems pretty impossible to open, but as one of our users showed me if they open one of our HTA files and clicked a link in it, Internet Explorer happily opens up despite even being blocked with Group Policy.
>Starting a Bing search when the start menu doesn't recognize an application's name? Pre-installing games with advertisement and microtransactions?
I'm always surprised when I see things like this on HN. Also complaints about it auto-rebooting to install updates, requiring an MSN account, etc.
I turn all that stuff off when I first install it, so I see none of those problems. I just kind of assume any tech-savvy person or power-user would also do so.
And we might think the defaults suck. Rightfully, they would for us. But for granny or a gen-Z kid with no computer knowledge? Somebody who isn't going to know to make backups, run scheduled updates, or know the difference between local search and internet search? Those defaults probably make sense.
For me, it works great because I turn that stuff off and I know how to manage a computer. For people who don't, it also probably mostly works great, because they don't have to know how to do that.
Seems like there's just this one odd slice of people caught in the middle who know enough to get irritated by the defaults, but not enough to configure their system the way they want it. If you're in that group, then you're tech-savvy enough to look up how to change the settings to make it work the way you want. I encourage you to do so and make those changes to save yourself some stress and irritation.
Some things can only be disabled on Windows Enterprise, not on Home or even Pro. For example for some aspects you need Group Policy, which isn't available in Home.
The defaults might make sense from a usability perspective, but are predatory and plainly spy on the user, with the majority of users not even aware of it.
This resonates with me. Whenever I use a windows machine, it really doesn't feel like I am in control and treated as a adult. Adding to the list, click-baity AI-aggregated sex&crime news delivered to you by default. It offends me.
While your list of changes is impressive, I noticed it took you years. So maybe you're a little like me: I find change hard, a cognitive burden that needs a good-enough reason above a certain pain threshold.
I was lucky enough to have been forced to work with Linux in Uni, and when I first set it up myself (trying out two or three distros because I actually managed to bork the first installation somehow), it was in an environment that embraced discovery and I wasn't on my own. Now at work, it's an uphill battle you don't use Windows. Confidence is a must.
I've been getting dialog boxes for default applications a lot lately. Ie, I've associated, say, .png with an image viewer (which is not MS), but lately when opening a .png I'd get the "what application do you want to open with?"-box, with a "Windows suggested"-app as the number two choice. That's disrespecting the choice I've made. Then, this goes for basically all non-MS default apps I've associated with.
The only thing I will credit Win8 for is that it felt really good on a Surface--Win10 was actually a step back on that platform. Which is natural, because 8 was clearly designed for the Surface to the exclusion of everything else, and they rightfully had to walk it back because the choices they made were ridiculous on the majority of Windows machines.
Even as recently as 2021, I still kept around a Windows partition for the occasional game that wouldn't run on Proton. I was still able to play the majority of what I wanted, but brand new titles often required patches after release, or some games would crash on occasion.
Now? I haven't even thought about compatibility in months. I don't even look at the user tweaks anymore, when it used to be a constant factor. Granted, I don't play multiplayer games with anticheat, which last I heard was still a lingering issue. Your mileage may vary, but I completely removed my Windows partition a while ago, and haven't even thought about since.
The Steam Deck is Linux and runs a large majority of games. You can do it on your laptop with Proton. It's amazing. Even weird stuff like Mass Effect Remastered (which requires EA Play client) works on Linux now.
Unfortunately 'the majority of games' wont include whatever fotm rando game my friends are inviting me to this time. If gaming was strictly a solo activity for me I would have gotten rid of windows a long time ago.
Almost all the games I play are these random multiplayer games with friends. In my experience, proton is only a blocker around 5% of the time. I still have a windows partition for those times (and I always laugh when I boot it and am "welcomed" by their "Let's take a moment to configure windows" garbage).
Just saying, if you have the HDD space, I'd say give dual booting a shot. you'll probably be surprised how usable Linux is for gaming these days.
I've moved 95% of my gaming to Linux entirely, after the steam deck convinced me it had gotten this good, and I barely miss Windows. Occasionally I'll still boot over to Windows for something like iRacing or to just experience some of the better graphics features, but honestly I find I don't really miss them and the Linux gaming experience these days is pretty seamless, even with my wacky setup of i3 and nvidia.
You'd be surprised how many games run perfectly well on Linux. Unless you're playing something with ridiculous anticheat like Valorant it will most likely run fine.
That was my position 5 years ago. For the last 3ish years I've been gaming on Linux with very few issues.
I'll be the first to say it's not perfect, but it's 100x better than it was 5 years ago. I'd say at least 70% of steam games just work when you hit play, 25% require a bit of configuring to get working, and only around 5% refuse to work at all.
I actually bought my first Windows machine since 2005 a couple of weeks ago. It’s been surprisingly better than I expected although it took a bit to work through some WSL quirks with SSH.
I haven’t gotten a machine with a proper graphics card in years and I wanted one to experiment with LLMs locally, so I got a gaming PC setup.
I regularly game with Steam and Lutris on Fedora and it's really good - I wouldn't say perfect but the only problems I've had have been with one or two much older titles. No way I'm going back to Windows.
Dosbox + Steam with Proton is the best PC gaming I've ever encountered.
There's a tiny gap in the early windows 9x days that I've been thinking of filling by upgrading my Dosbox Win 3.11 to Win 98. Overall though, it runs a greater percentage of dos/windows games than any dos/windows machine I've ever had access to.
(I'm considering moving to FreeBSD though. Dosbox runs fine, and Steam + Proton sort of works there, apparently. Checking it out in more depth soon.)
>It feels really nice using products that respect me, as opposed to services that are actively hostile because of advertisers.
Hot take, but IMO Windows has far more respect for the user than Linux does.
Everything is far more QA'd (and designed to be QA-able) and at least tries to minimise user frustration. There are exceptions to this, like "suggestions" in the Start menu, but outside of this it's designed in a user-first way.
(Desktop) Linux, on the other hand, seems to be more of an intellectual experiment designed to please the people who are writing it rather than a consumer-focused product. Performing basic tasks are unnecessarily complex, entire design paradigms are thrown out on a whim and compatibility issues continually arise because there's no single dominant standard.
I agree with most everything else you’ve said, but I feel like I’m using a different windows than everyone else when they talk about “forced reboots”. This never happens to me! I’ve seen prompts, but they were always able to be delayed. Is it something that only kicks in if you go ages without manually rebooting?
At a certain point though, I’d say forcing users to install critical security updates is the user-centered option.
I've been using Windows 10 for the past year and a 4 months now, after some 10 years 100% on Linux. I had to disable a weird setting which would forcefully update and reboot the computer when it considered to be "Not Active". I believe it was called "Active Hours" and by default had no way to turn off: you had to choose some hours of the day when you're supposedly not using it. Lost some work like this and had to do some tinkering, not sure if register or otherwise. Or maybe I just disabled automatic updates I guess.
So, in conclusion, no, an OS taking control off my hands forcefully is not user-centered, no matter how much in programming circles updates are seen as "crucial". Nothing is more crucial than the computer being predictable to its owner.
People forget the security hell that preceded Microsoft's obsession with updates. You get half the internet's bandwidth used by a worm or you get forced updates. I haven't seen anyone propose a viable compromise.
Obviously auto security updates, and make the other updates optional. Microsoft does not bundle the security and "feature"/telemetry updates for your benefit.
I can't use Group Policy because when I upgraded from Windows 8, it upgraded to Home edition
it's Home edition because that's what came with the laptop's Windows 8, it was never an issue on Windows 8 because you could disable stuff on Windows 8 without using Group Policy
This Windows computer doesn't force reboots (though it does nag me), it hasn't tried to trick me to upgrade to 11, it isn't sending telemetry to MS, it has never forced me to sign up for a non-local account.
I think it does force security updates on me, which I think is clearly pro-user, though arguably not respectful.
I also decided to use Edge to access my job's shitty Outlook stuff, and every ten minutes Edge tries to trick me into doing something, including but not restricted to making itself the default (you can pry my Firefox from my cold dead...). Until I decided to try Edge, it has not ever done anything to try to get me to use Edge.
That said, I'm not agreeing with GP that Windows "has more respect for the user than Linux does", that just seems confused to me. But I also think that I read a lot of criticism of Windows that seems laughable.
Previously when I installed Windows, I had the option to create a local account. I had to click on a few misdirections but I was able to do it.
Recently though, I had to reinstall Windows to do something, and I could not find a way to create a local account at all. AFAIK they removed the option now, or made it much harder to find.
Well, maybe I'm wrong about that. It's a standard build of Home, with an hour or two invested in config maybe a decade ago when I installed it (back when it was 7, or something, before 10 existed). I spent a little time on Wireshark seeing what it was doing, but not much time, and that was a long time ago. So maybe I'm wrong. :thinking:
Ah, yeah, that’s true, but the point is that you should be respected by default (even if they just asked yes or no). It’s on by default, turns back on almost every update, and some level is on at all times (mandatory).
And yet, my software from 20 years still works on Windows.
On Linux, I have to spend days to months figuring out how to port code to the latest snowflake distro flavor dependency. And that's something that takes an software skilled individual, imagine how disrespected your average user is in this process.
> (Desktop) Linux, on the other hand, seems to be more of an intellectual experiment designed to please the people who are writing it rather than a consumer-focused product
Honestly can't tell if you're joking, but I guess yes. Linux is the most stable OS I've ever used. There's a reason most mission critical and online services that require constant uptime run almost exclusively on Linux.
Windows used to have a nice GUI attached to a mostly unstable system. That was 20 years ago. Now Windows feels like a predatory product that's borderline unusable.
> There's a reason most mission critical and online services that require constant uptime run almost exclusively on Linux.
That argument only applies to servers. Places where you don't need to wrangle x11, the audio stack, gpu drivers for less common cards, conflicting gtk and qt versions for different apps you might use on a whim, hidpi support in old apps, theming issues... I've no idea how many of these are still a plague these days, but they certainly have been for long.
Servers are way more predictable linux configurations.
For desktop, win32 is as solid as it gets (too bad it's shipped within a desktop filled with increasingly many dark patterns).
ymmv and this evidence is anecdotal of course, but our team has used linux on framework laptops now for more than a year and we experience way, way less issues than on windows.
I can't remember the last time I had a problem with linux as a desktop, everything just works. Of course, framework makes sure it does, just like every other manufacturer of laptops does with windows.
EDIT: multi-monitor support, bluetooth headset, printing, various audio devices, etc: this is all just plug and play in my experience, feels much smoother than on windows.
Audio has come a long way, pipewire just works in my experience. And Wayland is in daily driver territory, so X11 is only needed if you have some specific requirements. Steamdeck/proton has massively improved gaming.
That’s not to say it’s not still Linux, there will be some tinkering. But compared to a decade ago there’s way less banging my head against the wall.
If you’re already competent in administration Linux you might find it’s time to revisit the desktop.
> Linux is the most stable OS I've ever used. There's a reason most mission critical and online services that require constant uptime run almost exclusively on Linux.
You’re talking about servers, while the comment you’re responding to is about desktop usage.
> Hot take, but IMO Windows has far more respect for the user than Linux does.
You need to be more specific about what desktop Linux flavours aren't holding up in your eyes because window managers like XFCE and Cinnamon are bulletproof as far as I'm concerned and I've never had issues with them. Especially XFCE.
> there's no single dominant standard.
This is a common criticism and I totally get you here. Not knowing what's going to work for you is annoying and truthfully, no one really wants to shop around for window managers and the only reason I know what's good in the first place is because I spent weeks in my youth test driving everything available, something I no longer have the energy for.
Maybe 5-10 years ago, but today’s Linux desktop has evolved to be much more user friendly and stable. Applications have a standard containerized format (Flatpak), the most popular distributions ship a software store to update your apps and system with one click, and the stability of things has improved to a point where (in my experience) things almost never break unless you’re running the absolute bleeding-edge latest-gen hardware. I would highly recommend giving it a shot if you haven’t at least tried it as a daily driver before. (To get started, just look up a tutorial for how to dual-boot with Windows or play around with it in a Virtual Machine)
There's more ads on a clean install of Windows than most streets of New York City. Why does a professional OS come with Candy Crush installed by default?
> Everything is far more QA'd (and designed to be QA-able) and at least tries to minimise user frustration. There are exceptions to this, like "suggestions" in the Start menu, but outside of this it's designed in a user-first way.
I feel like windows is deliberate about being user hostile. Just because they're very slick about being user hostile doesn't make it any different.
Linux feels like someone with my best interests at heart made a good attempt and half succeeded.
Your take on desktop Linux is quite accurate, but Windows feels less QA'd than Linux to me nowadays. Windows will give me a popup begging for a reboot, then when I reboot it asks for another reboot. For months there was a bug where the settings window would become tiny and resizing didn't work. The Microsoft Teams "get started" window takes on the order of 30 seconds to close - that is I click the X button, no immediate reaction, and then it closes half a minute later.
Your perception of desktop linux and its creators sounds like it is based on a cursory trial from at least ten years ago, frankly it sounds quite disrespectful to the makers.
I couldn't disable the anti-virus in Windows 10 that kept checking my hard drive (yes, my laptop is so old it has a hard drive) and making it slow down
then I just downloaded a program that let me disable it, and I also disabled the firewall
but without the firewall service, I can't get updates (why is that service a pre-requisite for updates?), and I forgot how to re-enable it because I don't remember what program I used to disable it since it's some hack anyway
so now my Windows partition is not really usable, and I'm typing this on Linux where I can just change stuff without breaking everything
Windows has never respected users. Not in version 3.0, and not today in 11. Millennium Edition and Vista were particularly egregious, and 11 took it to a brave new world.
There is no such thing as a single Linux experience, each distribution targets different personas and goals.
If you want a curated Linux desktop experience, then try Elementary OS. It is very aligned to a Mac experience.
Eh, honestly with GNOME ymmv. Many API breakages, most recently with extensions in version 45. It's also not very light. GNOME's UX is also quite opinionated but some people like that.
I just use gnome, I am sure other desktop environments suit others better. But I know gnome just works. Windows and MacOS have the same issues you pointed out with gnome though.
With popOS maybe, but I would never hand Ubuntu Desktop to a non-dev. I can't remember the last time where it properly installed (including getting NVIDIA drivers working) without using the terminal.
What's amazing here is how google did this essentially to themselves by degrading their own products to the point that existing users started to look at alternatives.
I'm such a huge fan of Nebula. All my favorite creators are on there. You do have less content to watch, but I find most of it to be at a pretty good quality.
The creator that convinced me to come over was Jacob Geller. His video essays were amazing, and I wanted to find a way to support him.
I would love to use Nebula but it seems to lean quite politically in one direction (as I suspect from a Canadian platform) which seems like something I don't want to support with my dollars. At least on YouTube I can find a diverse range of opinions
I don't have a Nebula account, but I checked their feed a while ago and they seem to have a variety of opinions, at least for videos about
politics/economics. I found both socialist channels (eg. "Second Thought") and liberal/pro-market channels (eg. "PolyMatter"). I'm not sure if they have any right-wing/republican channels though, so if that's what you want, perhaps it is not for you
I would like to de-google but rely on Google Voice which is tied to all my US financial accounts. Very concerned one day they're going to kill the service, and it is somewhat neutered as financial institutions are refusing to communicate with Google Voice numbers (had to cancel my Ally account since it wouldn't do two step to a Google Voice number).
Search is fine for my uses. It doesn't have the facial recognition to quickly search for all photos of a person but it looks to be tagging things in an accepta le manner and I've found the things I've been looking for.
I used their free trial - 1Gb of storage available for a year iirc - to try out a few things but then ran in parallel for a while and now have stopped syncing my new photos to Google. Good luck with whatever you decide!
Ente have 'ML Search (beta)' option, I have just spotted on their desktop app:
'This will enable on-device machine learning and face search which will start analyzing your uploaded photos locally.
For the first run after login or enabling this feature, it will download all images on local device to analyze them. So please only enable this if you are ok with bandwidth and local processing of all images in your photo library.
If this is the first time you're enabling this, we'll also ask your permission to process face data.'
I looked through the standard 'alternative to Google photos' top 10 lists that get updated occasionally and none of them offered a similar enough experience to make me look deeper.
I saw ente on a Reddit post somewhere. I like it's a mostly paid product with what seems to be a sustainable free/trial tier which is unlikely to drive them out of business. I like the e2ee, and their clients being opensource and they provide an easy way to keep an offline mirror (through the desktop client). It ticks my boxes.
Ah, sorry, I meant an app that uses OSM as data source (OrganicMaps in my case). For some reason I thought I had an "official" app the OSM project, otherwise I wouldn't be so casual with the name.
And a shout-out to StreetComplete, that gamifies contributing to OSM.
Two years ago, I found out that my favorite Youtube creators were all on Nebula.
One year ago, I switched my phone to LineageOS to get security updates a little longer.
A month ago, I installed OpenStreetMaps because Google Maps got really bad at showing points-of-interest.
And today, Kagi removed the only obstacle that kept me on Google Search. I'm looking forward to building my filter list.
After accidentally de-googlifying myself, I might ditch Windows next. It feels really nice using products that respect me, as opposed to services that are actively hostile because of advertisers.