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I find big differences among tablets, so I'd say it depends. However powder is so much cheaper than it's just a no brainer if you don't have really dirty dishes. For dirty dishes I still prefer a good tablet though.

Good, if you don't release open weights, someone else does.

exactly, he's part of a problem


I could also say the Linux desktop creators are the problem as well. It's so buggy, it makes it impossible for me to switch.


This doesn't make any sense as there is not a linux desktop but multiples and the major ones have been less buggy than windows for the most part of the last 20 years.

Hardware support is where Linux used to struggle. Nowadays things aren't perfect but much better. Basically it means you need to figure out which hardware to buy based on available support, before making the purchase.


I am willing to concede this might be true, but I personally have never checked Linux support before through 3 generations of desktops. Intel/Nvidia twice and then AMD/AMD.


Because support is generally great.

Until you get some Windows apologist who points out that their proprietary touchscreen that has multiple layers of DRM doesn't have Linux drivers and therefore Linux doesn't have good hardware support.

You have to be careful in the same way that you can't expect to wipe an M series Mac and stick Windows on it.


Apple devices have multiple layers of touchscreen DRM, but most other devices are just lacking drivers, because there are far too many devices for five unpaid interns to write drivers for all of them.


All of them will work. What "support". What is this nonsense. Seriously.


What desktop and which distro? In the past, there have been times where a bug showed up for me over the years, especially before 2018. Currently tho, Debian 13 + KDE - zero issues.


> I've tried nothing and I'm all out of ideas


Yes, but what is the cost or perceived cost to the user to try? This “clever” response proves nothing, sadly


Well we know the actual cost of doing nothing.


Debian, Ubuntu, Suse, and Fedora have had a bug free desktop experience for years. If you stick to the default repositories and use last year's hardware everything just works.


Honestly, that’s a 2016 argument. I flipped a few contact centers over to Linux desktops and had very few issues. If anything we probably spent 5x the resources getting Windows 11 certified internally.

Microsoft knows it, but they don’t care about windows. When IBM started offering Macs to employees, they figured out that the support burden was very low, significantly lower than windows, even with users having years of windows experience.

Intune was supposed to be the answer to that, making Windows management MDM like. But for their most entrenched enterprise customers, they can’t really switch without co-managing with Configuration Manager. Most of the people behind that product are laid off or otherwise attrited, as there’s no path to a subscription service.


Who are these “creators”? Can you point to them? Is there a legal entity?


Which “the” Linux desktop? GNOME? KDE? xfce? Cinnamon? COSMIC?


This question reinforces the point IMO


I'd stupidly assume that having a choice and control over the experience is empowering, and watching a couple of YouTube videos titled "which Linux distribution is best for me" isn't too hard?

Or is it in your opinion?

If it is maybe they better stay on the "shut up and do how I say, puppet" OS.


That linux has an awesome rich and diverse range of desktop experiences?


Switch to linux, don't look back


Unless you work a job where you're not in control of the OS you're using, which just happens to be most of the non-dev office jobs out there. Dismissing Windows problems with "just switch to Linux bro" doesn't really help.


I have to use Windows at work and I will never have weird cloud authentication issues because I'm required to use a work-provided MS account on the computer. The author says he's a Windows guy, and always will be. This article, and these types of complaints, are really only relevant if you're using it on your personal PC.


I did think about personal devices, but it is a valid point, though many companies I know do support at least windows+mac if not linux. Supporting Linux desktop for a company is more difficult due to lack of anything resembling GPOs (and no ansible-pull isn't that). It is definitely a thing systemd should implement.


If you're in a Windows-only job and you've got proof that Windows is getting in the way of doing your job you might just be able to convince those who decided to make it a Windows-only workplace to change their stance.


When it's not your problem, it's not your problem. If you're forced to use Windows in a corporate environment, your IT admin is in charge of you having an account.


If you’re not in control of the OS, then you’re not responsible for problems caused by the choice of OS. Tell your boss that Windows is not allowing you to use basic features and let them choke on it.


You don’t sound very mature.


Why is it immature to hold decision makers responsible for their decisions?


How do you answer questions like "how are other people getting their work done on Windows?" How much leverage do you expect the average white collar worker to have?


Is a cashier, for example, not supposed to tell their boss when the cash register jams?


I don't get your reasoning. It's in fact very mature, everyone got their job to do and you don't mess with someone else job.

If you have to make spreadsheet on a windows computer, it's not up to you to check why excel won't open. You're not trained to do IT. You might do more harm than good.

That's how it works in mature work environment.


"choke on it, boss" when they're expected to use the approved OS and software doesn't sound very mature to me.


The wording is bad, agree. But the reasoning is mature, everyone their own job.


Came here to say this.


Yea I am also surprised, tho I stopped using pagefile in 2011. I always told people to buy as much RAM as possible, so nowadays everybody I know has 64GBs and I have 96. Windows and Linux can use it as cache and it works amazing.


Use the opportunity to remove adobe from your life so that you can kill two birds with one stone.


I have no plans to. I like Lightroom and Photoshop and am willing to keep paying for it.

I will note that I have used Darktable extensively. But there isn't a good Photoshop alternative.


isn't affinity free these days when you don't pay for their AI?


There's free and there's free.

Affinity is a risk. Undocumented file formats (unlike PSD + LR database), no XMP support and vendor relying on AI to keep it free.

Nope!


also this comment did not age very well considering what adobe did to Animate today..


So you are mitigating the risk by staying on undocumented file formats? I see


Microsoft management should be held accountable for this sh.. and laid off. It is obvious these people do not understand software development on such scale.


Keep in mind ubuntu does not ask for updates - snap just updates apps as it wants. So sometimes firefox just breaks because of it.


Hate is a weak word, basic stuff like notepad, snipping tool or terminal don't even work today https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/windows-...


My most recent astonishment was they've shoved copilot into notepad. Why did they get rid of Wordpad and ruin notepad again? It's like they've forgotten the entire purpose of Task Manager, Notepad, etc. Then again (gestures at World Economic Forum today)...feels like I'm mainlining crazy pills these days.


Telemetry said a lot of people were using notepad so if they shove AI into it the AI usage number goes up.


Wordpad confused too many people looking for Word and not finding Microsoft 365 for Family Workgroups Home Edition, especially after they boosted Windows 10 Wordpad to have enough features/power to replace the lost word processor of Microsoft Works, so it was removed.


You're a little behind, it's Microsoft 365 Copilot Premium now

(They may have turned it into a joke, but that is the truth https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/the-microsoft-365...)

Maybe these days for interviews, instead of calculating how many golf balls fit in a schoolbus, they can calculate how much time, money, intellect, and brand goodwill they've spent renaming Office 365 -> Microsoft 365 -> Microsoft 365 Copilot. Then add in how much time, money, and intellect everyone else has spent trying to figure it out


Though to be fair I wasn't trying for accuracy, I also included throwback digs from Windows for Workgroups and Microsoft's "Edition" phase. (Windows 98 Second Edition; Windows Millennium Edition; etc.) Particularly because "Edition" will probably come back around and has already partially done so. (Some of the Microsoft 365 nomenclature does refer to the "home edition" versus "work edition", but for now it is still a little-e SKU difference and not yet a SKU Brand.) Microsoft marketing has gifted us so many terrible brand names across a long history of trying to find the worst, most generic brand names. (To which you can partially blame the "Great" marketer that looked at WordStar, WordPerfect, and many others and suggested to Microsoft the generic "Word" was the best approach. If you own the generic the only way to rebrand is to stack more generic.)


Oh I know, it was tongue-in-cheek in the sense of "it's tough to out-satire these folks"

I'm not sure if they'll manage to top this one ("Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 R2 SP3 Feature Pack") https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/download/details.aspx?id=442...

I might title this piece, "Full STEM without liberal arts"


Office and Windows are good words. Copilot is a good word.

Microsoft and 365 are ok.

Microsoft should really be the hidden name like Meta or Alphabet.

Office Copilot is a great name. Of course they didnt use it.


That's a patently absurd reason (although I could totally see it). They could have just renamed it rather than destroy the value proposition of Notepad.


True. Though some of that destruction to Notepad isn't just the loss of Wordpad's fault but Microsoft's problems with Notepad++ eating its brand for too many years and making too many "must install" lists.

I'm not entirely sure how Copilot integration helps them beat Notepad++, but I suppose that's why I'm not a PM.


Why would they care about Notepad++'s impact, though? Nobody is deciding whether or not to use Windows based on Notepad. For some of us, Notepad was most useful in its original form and Notepad++ was not a good replacement.

But at least an earlier, less bad, version of Notepad is still available on Win 11. There's just no icon or link to it, so you have to know it's there. It's C:\Windows\notepad.exe


As someone else who has never particularly liked Notepad++ either, I mostly agree that chasing after it is a mistake, especially this many years after Notepad++'s height in relevancy. Perhaps ironically, many of those same "must install" lists that included Notepad++ have moved on to other tools, one of them being Microsoft's own VSCode. VSCode is a "good, helpful" AI host to sell more AI, so I presume some "AI in Notepad" pressure is "capture the few remaining people not yet installing VSCode out of the box".

> But at least an earlier, less bad, version of Notepad is still available on Win 11. There's just no icon or link to it, so you have to know it's there. It's C:\Windows\notepad.exe

Also, for what it is worth, a new relative to EDIT.COM is now back, in almost its former glory, just not yet installed in every Windows by default: https://github.com/microsoft/edit


Today I ran an into an issue with Notepad while at work. I tried to open and print a .txt document for an order, and it completely failed with some type of filesystem read error. Didn't save the log, since I was in a hurry to place the order, but a quick google search didn't help at all. Granted, the file is in a Dropbox folder, so I thought could be affecting it somehow, but notepad++ opened it just fine. Sure, using notepad to type and print orders isn't the best possible work flow, but it's always worked for me in that same setup previously.

I tried to explain why my document printed with line numbers to the recipient (who isn't particularly tech savvy), and felt like a crazy person while doing so.

Looks like I'll be using notepad++ going forward, with line numbers off, and I'm pretty confident they'll respect that preference and keep shipping software that works.


The purpose of Notepad, for Microsoft, is that it is an experimental playground, and always has been.

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180521-00/?p=98...


I know who runs that blog, but that's a really exaggerated take.

Notepad has had nearly identical UX from Windows 1.0 until 10. Sure, there's a search feature that appeared at some point, ditto with the status bar, at some point they made it able to open files larger than 64K, and apparently you can open files from URLs directly?

Five or so noticable changes in an extremely lightweight and utilitarian application in thirty years is not at all like completely redesigning it into an AI slop machine.


To wit: "Second was how he got Notepad to load files so quickly"

So much for that


Tabs and auto-recover are welcome additions (but still cannot compete with the likes of Notepad++).


Tabs are fine I guess but also: it's NOTEPAD.EXE. Its purpose to be super primitive and launch in 2 milliseconds and give you a place to paste or type some text real quick. Anyone who needs a good text editor with actual features will just download the good text editor of their choice.


> Tabs and auto-recover are welcome additions

They were very unwelcome to me.


Simple example of the newly poor UX. I try to start notepad to jot down some scratch. It sluggishly reopens whatever it previously had open (e.g. from before a reboot)...and in doing so, doesn't actually create a new document for me.


That was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. For my use case, it rendered Notepad unusable.


Then turn off session resuming? Turn off Copilot? They're options in the Settings menu, if you don't want them.


Never ever seen a power supply without a switch in my entire life and looking at eshops here in europe i cant find it either. Even the $30 have that

Also try pressing power button for 5-10 seconds on a laptop instead


Maybe EU requires it? Most (all?) newer Dell desktops here have only the "soft" pushbutton power switch on the front of the case. Of course you can just pull out the power cord itself.


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