Posted by tech234a 3/29/2025
I was recently trying to integrate EasyAuth OIDC with a custom IdP and it was a terrible experience. No logs indicating why it wasn’t working. I had to dig down into the configuration xml schema to discover EasyAuth didn’t even support client_secret_basic auth method so we couldn’t use it in the end. Every product is like this. Great if you do everything MS wants you to do exactly, but if you have any requirements not blessed by Microsoft you’re SOL.
This I find baffling. Outlook and One Note are some of the worst applications known to man. Clunky interfaces and confusing messes to navigate.
Software is no longer a product like a chair and table which you can just buy and move it from the store to your home. It is more like a managed service like a utility connection. It is available for use only as long as the vendor allows it. You buy a subscription and play nice. The buyer might also not have the admin user privileges on the software they bought with their money.
The same might happen to cars and all other smart devices as well. Cars might always be connected to the car company, which might have some remote control over the car. Phones are already like this. It is a matter of time, all your home appliances are partly controlled by the companies who sold them.
Not all software does this but I also don't recall it being unusual.
I am on a 10+ year old Laptop with Slackware, for desktop use it is just as fast as any modern Laptop with Windows, I would even say it is faster.
Also you will find Libreoffice is just as good as M/S Office. Just ignore the fud. FWIW, I believe many foreign countries will start migrating to Linux and I heard that is already happening in China.
I have two, sadly.
1. I use my Windows PC for flight simulators. While many simulators will indeed run under proton, the hardware devices (VR, joysticks, throttles, pedals, panels, etc.) usually will not, or at best run with minimal functionality.
2. I develop cross-platform software and need a Windows PC to test that environment.
A third for some people:
3. There is no great alternative to certain visual media software. e.g. Affinity Photo/Adobe Photoshop has no equivalent on Linux. No, GIMP is not anywhere near equivalent- in the same way that Nano is not equivalent to Visual Studio Code.
I've read online that people have attempted to use wine in order to emulate the Windows environment with no success.
Old Intel based computers are terrible for power usage. Modern computers that are ARM based are much better for the environment.
And modern computers that are Zen based are even better. You can do real work on them, instead of sitting idle all day. /s
Windows is over. I moved to Apple silicon a while ago and never looked back. Even though macOS has its warts, it's not hostile to its users.
He even stated back then that he’s have Office run over the internet if he could.
Another example of this is how Xbox Live has been a thing since the original Xbox. Long before iOS and Android. And more recently, Xbox Live has become more than just a subscription service but a full on streaming platform.
Let’s also not forget that traditionally enterprise licenses for Windows would be billed annually. By this, I don’t mean someone purchasing Windows Server for their home lab, but actual data centre use. (I’m pretty sure this was the case, been a long long time since I’ve gone through a Microsoft audit, let alone been purchasing data center licenses, some someone do correct me if I’m misremembering here).
So I don’t think any of this is a knee jerk reaction to Apple and Google eating their market. I think it’s always been their long term strategy but it’s just taken this long for the wider industry to align.
Now with the gaming market being increasingly subscription based, other software vendors switching pricing format (eg Adobe) and the internet being far more accessible than ever, MS are in the best place they’ve ever been to press home the final missing piece: Windows Home.
It's also very naggy about signing up to iCloud and using an Apple Account.
It doesn't force you - but it's still annoying.
You can also move Mac OS X out of the way by running an ARM Linux VM on the Apple ARM computers.
This really appears to be the simplest explanation -- turn every desktop into a thin client, served by walled-garden apps, and with Azure integration/dependencies.
Then charge subscription fees to turn all computer owners into renters. Oh, and show ads too, while you're at it.
I miss the days when you bought a high quality version of something that you kept using for years.
Besides, it's a good challenge; this site is called Hacker News, after all.
Obviously this is a way of 'legitimizing' consent to data collection and it would be very interesting to see a breakdown of every byte of data MS gets sent (even file explorer communicates with a US IP address).
I genuinely think the EU needs to take a look at this, I would be very surprised it this wasn't abusing their monopoly-like position for mandatory data collection (although, they probably welcome it!).