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Posted by jovial_cavalier 1 day ago

Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March(blogs.windows.com)
60 points | 117 comments
sagacity 46 minutes ago|
I recently got locked out of my machine because logging in with the mandatory Microsoft account-backed primary user of my machine didn't work anymore. It said I was offline and I had to use the "previous password" even though I didn't have a previous password for that account.

Hacking around in the recovery console to add another administrator user worked, but then I couldn't reset the original user's password because it was tied to the Microsoft account and you can't change the password locally.

I don't need Copilot managing my inbox through AI, nor do I need a more exciting widget experience.

I just want an OS where if something like the above happens there's a way to fix it without having to reinstall. It doesn't seem like much to ask.

Edit: yes, I can use Linux but I have decades of Windows muscle memory and I do a bunch of DirectX programming. I shouldn't have to switch :)

cbdevidal 17 minutes ago||
Also years of Windows muscle memory here, especially the keyboard shortcuts. I’ve used Windows since 1997. I’ve decided I’m done. A new PC arrives in a month. It’ll be running Ubuntu. I’m done.

Maybe there is a Linux language similar to DirectX you might transition to? Maybe test code in a VM? (Although that gets you right back into Win11.)

cheschire 3 minutes ago|||
These suggestions are like telling someone that that is being harassed to maybe wear something different.

While it would, yes, likely avoid the problem happening again, it shifts the responsibility to the party that should not be at fault.

Meanwhile the harasser is like “what’s wrong? I took an anti-harassment class?”

theandrewbailey 11 minutes ago|||
> Maybe there is a Linux language similar to DirectX you might transition to?

Yes: DirectX. Just make sure that it runs in Wine or Proton.

Nit: DirectX is a bunch of APIs and libraries, not a language. Same for Wine and Proton.

irishcoffee 14 minutes ago|||
The day I can’t make a local-only account on windows (for personal use, work is a different matter unfortunately) is the day I stop using windows.

It’s irritating enough that new linux installs want me to add accounts. I can skip it, which is nice, but just don’t show the screen. If you’re installing linux you either know what you’re doing or you don’t: if you do you know it’s possible and don’t need it jammed in your face, and if you don’t you’re probably not quite tall enough to understand it isn’t needed and you probably don’t want it anyways.

k4rnaj1k 14 minutes ago||
[dead]
PeterStuer 3 hours ago||
What people realy want: as little OS as possible to let them run just the things on their computer they want to run.

What Microsoft wants: Windows as their straightjacket into the Microsoft services as that is where the revenue is.

Why Windows got this bad: incentives and coercion placed on the teams to show uptake on the services no matter what leading to perversion in tactics and complete alienation of the user base.

The incentives are alomost perpendicularly misaligned.

Regaining trust is extremely hard after you've crossed an edge. People are looking for the exit, finding there is indeed a door, and stopping them will take far more than just some reassurance from the DJ boot.

neya 1 hour ago||
It's always the MBAs. The organizational structure incentivises them on the wrong metrics. So they adapt and optimize for that. In real life, after a while, you hit a plateau with features and market demand. What these MBA clowns love to do is take what's already perfectly fine and mess it up and create a road map for it to fix something to being it the way it was, so they can justify to their higher ups they are "adding value" to the company. And half way through this, they leave the company. Now some other new employee comes in, has no idea why this had to be reworked and messes it up even more. You have this loop enough times, you end up with how software engineering works in the fortune 500.

The moment you hear "let's circle back" enough in meetings, that's your tell tale sign to quit the workplace infested with MBAs. A good organization is always run by engineers at the top level and engineers don't incentivise engineers simply for working on roadmaps of perfectly fine existing features. That's the difference.

Keyframe 20 minutes ago|||
Which company would you say is the example(s) of the latter? Sounds like utopia I'd like to be a part of.
colechristensen 17 minutes ago|||
They want to be Apple. Apple sells hardware, services, and takes a huge cut being a software store.

Microsoft sells software. They turned office into a service but it's still software. Nobody really wants to use their store. Their hardware is a cute little side hustle.

Microsoft's strategy for turning into Apple is kneecapping their own software.

theandrewbailey 14 minutes ago|||
> Regaining trust is extremely hard after you've crossed an edge.

Microsoft needs to learn consent. Everywhere there's a Yes and "Remind me later", there has to be a No. And the No has to work and be remembered forever, not forgotten after the next update. Using Windows has to stop feeling like you're being roofied all the time.

embedding-shape 9 minutes ago||
Good luck with that. I have a Windows computer I sometimes have to run stuff on overnight, like renders or what not. I've disabled everything I can related to Windows Update, plus setting "Active hours" or what not, so the computer doesn't reboot because of updates in the middle of the night.

Today I woke up, went to check the progress and wouldn't you know, Windows Update updated the computer and rebooted, and what I was waiting for was aborted... So fucking tiresome to use shit like this.

snorremd 24 minutes ago|||
Regularly being presented with a "Set up Windows" after boot forcing you to click "no thanks" on a bunch of Microsoft services is exactly the kind of thing that irritates me. I've politely declined their services about 10 times already, make it stop!

When I get tired of Battlefield 6 I'm likely going full Linux. It is simply not worth putting up with Microsoft Windows for gaming. More and more games seem to work either directly on Linux or at least via things like Proton (courtesy Valve Software).

colechristensen 21 minutes ago||
I got one of those external drive enclosures for an NVMe drive after I upgraded.

The only reason I still have Windows is the little screw securing the drive into the enclosure is in the wind and I can't be bothered to find it (for backup of all of my things so I can delete windows and install linux)

djyde 9 minutes ago|||
But I really wonder, is wanting a "little OS" just a hacker thing? For most people, they probably just want a full-featured OS. I don't have a solid take on this yet.
Someone 46 minutes ago|||
> What people realy want: as little OS as possible to let them run just the things on their computer they want to run.

Citation needed. “As little OS as possible” would mean not having a standard clipboard, not having a standard way to install fonts, etc.

Even interpreting that as “all the functionality, but limit applications to utilities for managing the hardware”, I think there people who want that, but I doubt that’s what people, in general, want. Having to choose (and, likely, pay for) a photo manager, a simple word processor, etc. is just too much of a hassle for many.

Also, why would any commercial entity develop such an OS? The margin is in the

PeterStuer 12 minutes ago|||
There is a huge difference between having a text editor included and running it by default on startup to pretend fast launches.

And then there is the whole world of nearly impossible to avoid 'services' you realy do not want but will keep popping up regardless of your wishes ('Telemetry', Onedrive, Copilot, Edge, Recall, Bing adds in the start menu ffs...).

Let us also not forget being forced into a Microsoft account against your wishes ... does it still feel like it's your computer?

globalnode 55 minutes ago|||
been on linux for a month now, i found the exit and stepped through it. the pain points change from getting shafted by m$ to doing research and learning how to make the system work. at least the second option gives me some agency, and now its all set up i wish i had of switched sooner! ive got to say valve is doing the lords work, along with all the other linux enthusiasts.
cineticdaffodil 3 hours ago||
Linux would need to be willing to safe the work millions of people put into memorizing excel, word and windows workflows.
cwillu 1 hour ago||
“Linux” needs to do nothing of the sort.

People who want to save their work by moving to a platform without those issues need to be willing to either do the work or pay for it.

snerc 59 minutes ago||
I've never read a more archpilled comment
engeljohnb 14 minutes ago|||
Linux is doing just fine without normies.
redeeman 46 minutes ago|||
"i hate how the current system is, i see some other guys have something that doesnt have these issues, what the other system needs to do is make their system exactly like my current, so that I dont need to spend ANY effort myself"

few moments later

"i hate how the current system is"

mdavid626 29 minutes ago||
I literraly can’t name one feature since Windows 7 what was worth it, even on the contrary: every update made the system worse.

I had to restore Notepad, Calculator and Paint from Windows 7. What the hell Microsoft?

cfiggers 17 minutes ago||
On Windows 11, when you reconnect to a monitor or set of monitors that you've connected to before, it will automatically return your open windows to the layout across those monitors that you had when you last disconnected (assuming those windows are still open).

This is extremely nice and saves me time on a literally (not figuratively) daily basis, to the point that I generally forget that it hasn't always worked that way.

Telaneo 11 minutes ago|||
I can name features, but everything I can think of are technical features rather than obvious surface level stuff: DX12, better support for SSDs (Windows 7 doesn't natively support TRIM), HDR (I guess, but it still seems broken to me). And none of these are things that couldn't be implemented in Windows 7. The UI has nothing to do with these things, and there's no reason we couldn't have them without the trouble Windows 10/11, other than the fact that MS doesn't want to do things that way.
Keyframe 14 minutes ago|||
I used to run all three major OS' where I saw no real difference in me using it for the apps etc I needed. As I leaned more heavily on the development side, linux kind of prevailed. Windows 8.1 and Yosemite were the last of the other two I've used for real. Never had to look back to other two since, be it for work, games or whatever.

Even occasional need for Adobe things stopped. I would still really like to see Adobe suite on linux, but if they don't want my money that's cool too I guess. I suspect the software tools people use for work is what's holding them back mostly, like Altium, CADs etc. Funnily enough, Microsoft office is just fine without OS native version most of the time.

fancyfredbot 23 minutes ago|||
WSL is a great feature and was a part of Windows 10.
wokkel 12 minutes ago||
So you install an launcher to run linux. Ditch the launcher i'd say.
alkonaut 17 minutes ago|||
WPA3, DNS over HTTPS, WSL2, Windows Sandbox, Per monitor DPI scaling, QUIC, DirectX 12. The list can be made pretty long.
tossandthrow 13 minutes ago||
Funny that you mention wsl as a great windows feature - the ability to get out of windows.
alkonaut 6 minutes ago||
Wine is a great thing on Linux too…
advael 4 hours ago||
It fascinates me to speculate about who this is for. At least among people I've talked to, the ones who still want windows (instead of the obvious alternatives) cite wanting things to "just work", often claiming that they "don't want making the computer work to become a second job" or similar. I personally don't think these preferences reflect the reality of how much effort using e.g. a linux distro is in this day and age, to be clear, but these are the beliefs I encounter. Are there really people who want to deal with providing feedback and stress testing an operating system and its various software components and features, but doing this for a corporation that sets the terms of their transparency efforts and ultimately does this for profit and will still grab the reins and exert control against their users' will when they feel like it?
jofzar 4 hours ago||
Windows insider builds have always been for people who like being on the cutting edge, it's the same as people who run nightlies for Linux.

Some people just enjoy testing and the pain that comes with it.

advael 4 hours ago||
Right, but it's hard not to claim those people would likely get more out of an OS they could customize more, and also that it's considerably more exploitative of those people across the divide of corporate product versus community project
herrherrmann 4 hours ago||
Sometimes it’s just about using the path of least resistance. I’ve also contributed to Apple Maps’ and Google Maps’ data, even though I’d prefer to exclusively contribute to OSM and other open platforms instead. But, it was just easier to go through a quick form in the (Apple|Google) Maps app, because that’s where I was at that point in time. Maybe the excuse is laziness and/or force of habit?

Edit: I also imagine the reach of the mainstream platforms to be much higher (e.g. Windows vs. Linux or Google Maps user reviews vs. <is there even an alternative?>).

zx8080 3 hours ago|||
> obvious alternatives

First of all, in many countries outside of EU/US it's just not possible to buy laptop without preinstalled Windows 11 (except Apple). For example, even if a model supports Linux in the US as many Lenovo Thinkpads do, in Singapore it's just not sold without Windows.

Second, Microsoft has broken sleep with pushing S0 sleep in UEFI. Bettery life is shit now, and hibernate is disabled by default in most OS. Also, hibernate in Linux is a complete disaster comparing to windows one (windows presaves memory to disk continuously, while in linux you have to wait until the whole ram (+ vram, if gpu) is saved/restored). It takes time. Sleep s3 is needed, but Microsoft killed it. So linux is really a bad choice for laptop. But Windows 11 is much worse, especially if you don't really like ads.

londons_explore 3 hours ago|||
I don't really understand the rationale behind disabling S3 sleep...

Was it simply that getting every device and driver to properly support it was hard, so the easiest option was to remove it and have the machine always powered up?

als0 3 hours ago||||
> Microsoft has broken sleep with pushing S0 sleep in UEFI

> Sleep s3 is needed, but Microsoft killed it.

Would you or someone else here mind explaining this?

numpad0 2 hours ago||
ACPI defines power state of power-saving capable offbrand fake IBM computers(among other things, and also the "fake IBM" part is almost completely moot at this point).

ACPI power state S0 is everything running. S1 pauses CPU and CPU I/O bus. S2 puts CPU to reset. S3 cuts power to CPU. S4 cuts off everything(not actual power off). S5 cuts off everything(actual power off).

S3 and S4 are often referred to as Sleep and Hibernation. In Sleep, RAM contents are kept as-is, and sleep handling code just restore CPU internal states that gets lost. In Hibernation, OS usually dump RAM contents to disk, and write back to RAM upon bootup - S4 and S5 aren't always clearly separated and both Windows and Linux tend to go through standard boot processes, then do the state resume using RAM dump they find on disk.

For SOME reason, Microsoft forced laptop vendors to quit supporting S3 in favor of their custom "S0iX" state, which is more or less just machine running at full power, which can be extremely wasteful as far as sleep state goes.

The official explanation for this pressuring is that everybody want notification and this is the only way Windows could possibly handle notifications. A lot are skeptical about that.

1: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/k...

londons_explore 3 hours ago||||
> hibernate in Linux is a complete disaster comparing to windows one

Part of this is that hibernation can't be cancelled mid way, which is dumb. Ideally a computer is like a light switch - you can turn it on and off instantly whenever. To get closer to that, if you turn it off, but then immediately on again, the hibernation should be cancelled and return you to your desktop.

Also, the whole idea of a 'hibernation image' which is read from disk in one huge 10+ second read is best for hard drives. Now that everyone uses SSD, it should all be demand-paged in.

gsich 51 minutes ago|||
True. I have Fedora and FDE, if I enter Hibernate it's a crash on bext boot.
PunchyHamster 1 hour ago|||
Why would they use windows and not macos for "just working" ? Even office moved to web for most companies
scotty79 1 hour ago|||
I used to daily drive Windows 10 for many months before official release. It was great. I wish I could stay on development builds that still had Windows 7 style Start menu.

Sadly now I use Windows 11 just because manufacturer of my laptop didn't bother to ensure that their sound driver worked corrctly on Windows 10.

My mouse lags for seconds when gpu is busy, even with something as trivial as alt-tabbing from a game.

hulitu 1 hour ago||
> Are there really people who want to deal with providing feedback and stress testing an operating system and its various software components

Feedback is there on their feedback site. They just wouldn't listen.

prymitive 4 hours ago||
> You want to see what we’re doing, understand our decisions, and see progress through shipping. Second, a shared sense of pride.

So basically: - recent changes are all crap - so why did you make them?

lpcvoid 4 hours ago||
Shareholder value had to be increased, don't you understand?!
jeltz 4 hours ago||
More likely: "People needed to get promotion packages, don't you understand?!"

I would guess many of the bad changes are caused by perverse incentives which do not even help shareholder value.

rincebrain 3 hours ago||
My mental model remains that the Windows team is mostly governed by designers on Macs who want to see a user-visible change to get their promo and never use Windows.
nikanj 1 hour ago||
Because mortages need paid, and when you’re working as a programmer, you deliver what the top brass wants
jollymonATX 1 hour ago||
Migrating off windows, win server and exchange saved us a lot of money and was suprisingly not as challenging as we had feared.
jofzar 4 hours ago||
> The theme is simple: fewer disruptions, more clarity, more control. This update moves Windows toward a single monthly restart by consolidating OS, .NET, and driver updates, and gives you more flexibility to time updates around your schedule. We’ve also made changes to the Power menu so you’ll always see the standard Restart and Shut down options without having to install a pending update first. You decide when updates happen, not the other way around.

Finally, like seriously, so many times I have to "shutdown" (aka restart) for an update before going to bed. I don't want to have to babysit my desktop computer when I want to finish up for the night.

qingcharles 4 hours ago||
They talk about improving memory footprint and performance, but simply removing (or making optional) the massive amount of cruft and telemetry in a default Windows 11 install would go miles.

Installing Tiny11 and then running a debloat over its corpse results in a much faster and less memory hungry default clean install.

SeriousM 3 hours ago||
> Second, a shared sense of pride. We want to be proud of what we build...

Yep, that's marketing. You don't care about your users.

xeonmc 3 hours ago||
I guess their intent was to instil a sense of pride and accomplishment for those who’ve sunk intangible investments into their platform.
avaer 3 hours ago||
Yes, they do admit that.

> a broader shift to make AI in Windows more intentional and realign the experiences to those that provide the most value to users

To be fair they are claiming a shift away from their previous policy of not aligning the product to provide value to users...

avazhi 3 hours ago||
> realign the experiences to those that provide the most value to users

Aside from the fact that nobody actually takes what Microsoft says seriously (they are professional bullshitters [with full time PR firms perfecting their bullshit] and have been for 30 years), it's funny that even this line can be reasonably interpreted as pushing more blatant nonsense onto consumers as long as it's what C-suite types think they should be paying for.

Notice that what provides the most value to users is not at all necessarily the same thing as'what our users want'. And it isn't even clear that Microsoft is thinking of consumer users here as opposed to corporate users and corporate IT departments, which are in most cases these days their actually direct customers. Most home user consumers don't pay for Windows directly.

999900000999 3 hours ago|
>We’ve also made changes to the Power menu so you’ll always see the standard Restart and Shut down options without having to install a pending update first. You decide when updates happen, not the other way around.

Multiple times I've wanted to shutdown my laptop so I can go home and Windows says no, sit here for 5 minutes.

I don't trust sleep mode to not keep running and overheat, so I wait.

Macbooks with 1TB drives are getting cheaper every day. Music production on Linux isn't really practical. A lot of this stuff barely runs on Windows/OSX.

Competition is great. But this is about the Mac Neo( and left over M4 Macs crashing in price ). Desktop Linux is still a challenge.

I consider myself an advanced Linux user, and it still took me an hour this morning to figure out how to get a VPN to work on Open Suse.

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