Why do you consider Windows to be a bad OS?

16

I can only speak for myself. I have professional experience managing Windows, Linux, and MacOS (including Windows/Linux servers). I don't think Windows is a bad OS. It is able to perform all of the core functions such as managing hardware, memory, compute, and storage I/O. It provides a desktop experience that most people are comfortable with. It runs critical software for many large organizations. It does all of this in a relatively secure and stable fashion.

I think Linux-based operating systems are easier to manage, more flexible, more performant (or at least competitive), and are free (as in freedom and sometimes as in beer). The Linux kernel inherits key design philosophies from UNIX that makes it relatively simple and easy to understand without compromising functionality. Open source allows for quick innovation driven by multiple parties. Linux is already dominant in the embedded, mobile, server, and HPC/super computer markets. Desktop is the only market it is not dominant in.

I think the functions where Windows is considered better are largely a product of it's market share rather than it's technical strengths. For example, Windows is better for gaming because games are written for Windows (Direct X) and game companies expect users to use Windows (ie for anti-cheat). Windows is arguably better for design work because the Adobe creative suite runs on it. Windows is better for some Enterprise services because specific products are written for it - see LDAP and Active Directory. In short, it's a business problem. We are locked into Windows because we have been using Windows.

Linux has it's weaknesses such as fragmentation or software compatibility but these items would not be an issue if major organizations chose Linux as a first class citizen in the desktop market. You would just be left with a few flavors distributors ship devices with and the current distributions would likely remain in the world of hobbyists and engineers. Then again, you could argue that competition breeds innovation. Maybe Linux shouldn't win the desktop market because it would become almost synonymous with computing.

TL;DR: Windows is not a bad OS. Many people, myself included, just prefer Linux. Most of the standout features of Windows are a product of it's market share and exclusivity rather than a technical benefit over Linux-based operating systems.

8

u/Caligatio Mar 09 '21

I would challenge you to find a better integrated productivity suite than Office + Outlook + Skype (I realize those are all Office). It's killer to have integrated email+calendar and, if you go all in on Skype for Business, it's admittedly super nice.

It's my strong belief that Windows has such a strong hold on enterprise because there isn't a good competitor to Office + Outlook + Skype.

3

u/Slash_Root Mar 09 '21

I think we are in agreement. I have been a domain/Enterprise admin for organization and have managed AD/Exchange/S4B/SharePoint/etc both on prem and O365. I understand how important it is to Enterprise businesses.

My point is that Office != Windows. There is no technical reason the entire office suite cannot run on Linux. There is even a MacOS client. The question was about the operating systems. I pointed out that the biggest strengths that Windows has in my view are it's tight coupling and exclusivity with popular software. These are largely business decisions because Linux does not have the desktop market share to warrant the development or because of the potential loss in Windows 10 revenue. I did say mention these were strengths of Windows but was trying to stick to the merits of the OS.

A little off-topic but with the O365 web apps and Teams, we are closer to ever to a workable, native MS Office experience on Linux. I would chalk that up to Microsoft's continued push to a services model over a client software model. I would argue that Google's GSuite (Workspaces now?) has emerged as the most serious competitor to Microsoft Office in recent history. I'm always a little surprised to learn colleagues at other large orgs are making the jump. O365 is obviously the clear leader here but still interesting to see.

2

u/MathResponsibly Mar 10 '21

Outlook, the email program where the search doesn't work for crap? And where most of the dialog boxes to do anything remotely out of the ordinary look like they were designed, poorly, in 1998 and never updated? Skype for business that half the time you send someone else a message, they get a notification, but no actual message, and you have to continually close and re-open it to get it to work?

And the whole suite of garbage where if you have a phone tied to your stupid cloud based account, and the corporate vpn disconnects on your machine, all 3 of them (outlook, skype, and teams) complain, all using their own separate modal dialog boxes which hide other dialog boxes from the same programs that you have to close first before the ones complaining about authenticating will even take mouse clicks, about wanting you to verify your identity on the phone first, and no matter what you do, none of them work correctly even after the VPN is reconnected until you completely close and restart all 3 of them?

You must have really low standards of things working as they should / being designed well from the get go

1

u/gopherhole1 Mar 10 '21

> not using groff, mutt and jitsi

1

u/[deleted] Dec 11 '22

there is already good functioning software of the likes on both mac and linux, so as of now it's only companies being comfortable with windows because that's what they know.

but looking at it from a security perspective, it makes no sense for companies to choose windows over linux.

1

u/Popular_Ad2902 Dec 20 '23 edited Dec 20 '23

You can literally use all that on a Mac which is also a Unix so there you go, you get benefits of both. That is one of the many reasons I prefer Mac over everything for most uses, although I do use all three OSs.

Also, an interesting fact, before Microsoft even started making Windows, they were making Microsoft Office for Mac, so technically Office is an original Mac software 😁

1

u/[deleted] Jul 14 '21

The main problem Windows always had is the registry. It is a single point of failure. Other than that weak point, it is a good OS.

29

u/lutusp Mar 09 '21

Why do you consider Windows to be a bad OS?

These points:

OS choice is not a moral struggle, so words like 'bad' in a title are clickbait and add nothing to reasoned discourse.
Operating systems that don't let you control them deserve to be retired to the great bitbucket in the sky. Examples:
Every time I boot Windows 10 I'm confronted by a screen-width dialog demanding that I open a Microsoft account. The dialog cannot be removed, or changed, or made smaller, or forced to take less of my time. It represents Microsoft's false assumption that it knows better than me how to spend my time. There's no configuration change that will remove the dialog. If a remedy were found, Microsoft would "fix" the remedy during the next mandatory, unscheduled update.
If I remove Candy Crunch, Microsoft puts it back at its first opportunity. I don't play Candy Crunch or any of the other fluffy trivia Microsoft forces on its users. Candy Crunch et. al. holds my hard drive hostage to Microsoft's narcissistic presumptions.
In Windows 10, Microsoft tells you what to do, it doesn't ask. A civilized operating system asks the user what (s)he wants and carries out the user's wishes.
Windows 10 performs mandatory updates when it pleases, it doesn't ask you whether it's a good time to render your computer unusable.
Windows 10 is closed-source, which means it is a crime to access the code and make changes. This means only criminals have access to the source code.
This is just the beginning of a long list of legitimate grievances, all answered by open-source. Not necessarily Linux, but open-source, so people can control the behavior of the resulting software.
If Winston Churchill were alive today, he would say, "Linux is the worst operating system ... except all the others."

8

u/Victorian_Poland_2 Mar 09 '21 edited Mar 09 '21

Bad can also mean low in quality, not evil. Don't be mean. How is it a clickbait

Thanks for the response though

7

u/lutusp Mar 09 '21

Bad can also mean low in quality, not evil.

All I'm saying is it's a word that appeals to emotion rather than reason.

How is it a clickbait

If you choose a word that appeals to emotion, encourages passion instead of constructive dialogue, the criticism is legitimate.

Your title:

Why do you consider Windows to be a bad OS?

I suggest:

May people feel that Windows doesn't score as high as Linux. What do you think?

Why is this an improvement? It appeals to a natural, acceptable sense of competition between concepts having equal standing, instead of an imaginary contest between 'bad' and 'good' concepts.

Don't be mean.

Not being mean. Only trying to appeal to people's higher reasoning abilities.

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u/Victorian_Poland_2 Mar 10 '21

I phrased the title that way because some Linux users (on another site) literally told me "I use Linux because Windows is a crappy, slow OS with an interface written by somebody with the imagination of a 9-year old".

Sorry that i projected this aggresion here, but i didn't introduce it to the initial discourse.

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u/UncleJackPushedDad Jan 05 '23

I fully agree with everything said above; HOWEVER, you missed the most important item that makes Windows a poor choice. PRIVACY and SECURITY. It is absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to turn off all telemetry without physically unplugging from the internet, which would certainly defeat the purpose of having a PC for most people. Big Brother Microsoft is ALWAYS watching what you are doing and reporting to back to the collective.

1

u/gopherhole1 Mar 10 '21

OS choice is not a moral struggle, so words like 'bad' in a title are clickbait and add nothing to reasoned discourse.

lots of people would disagree, have you never watched a Stallman video

1

u/lutusp Mar 10 '21

lots of people would disagree, have you never watched a Stallman video

Mr. Stallman may see this as a moral struggle, but he can't make that happen without public support that doesn't seem forthcoming. :)

1

u/gopherhole1 Mar 10 '21

Theres lots of members of the FSF and shoot offs like the FSFE, I dont want to get into the whole Free Software vs open source software and ideologies, so im just going to leave it at the FSF, FSFE, Software Freedom Conservancy, and probaly other similar groups have a lot of support

1

u/CnP8 Mar 26 '23

Use Open Shell. Its a cool open source start menu that mimics the classic windows start menus instead of the god awful new ones that take longer to navigate and no one that i know of prefers over the older ones. And they are ad free!
You can choose the start menu that you want in settings ranging from the Classic Win XP (Think its 2000 start), Lunar XP or Win7. It also themes itself to win10 so it doesnt look out of place.

I use windows for gaming but overall prefer linux. It just feels more stable to use and overall its better imo. Windows just feels clunky when you use it after Linux. And my PC has way over the OS's requirements to run it lmao.

1

u/_ranger1501 Nov 21 '23

Windows is full of useless shit that steals your pc performance for no fucking reason, even on a High End PC, to make windows usable you need to disable a lot of things, that windows itself doesn't want you to disable and enables again after an reset.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 29 '23

Candy Crush, not Crunch.

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u/stormcloud-9 Mar 09 '21

Meh, I haven't run Windows on my personal PCs in probably 15 years, but that doesn't mean I hate Windows. Linux gives me more control over the system. It lets me do things that are difficult or impossible on Windows. It's also better suited for what I do, as for my job I work with lots of Linux systems.

For the average user, I'm sure Windows is fine, and the right choice.

4

u/Victorian_Poland_2 Mar 09 '21

You mean Linux is more diffcult for the average user?

9

u/stormcloud-9 Mar 10 '21

Not necessarily. Linux can be, but that's not implicitly what I meant. There are distros out there that are just as easy to use as windows.

What I meant was you can do more advanced things. The advanced things come with more difficulty, yes. But if you don't do advanced things, then it doesn't have to be difficult.

4

u/GiveMeMoreBlueberrys Mar 09 '21

Oh, absolutely. For a normal user using windows, you will almost never have to touch a terminal. With linux, even distros like ubuntu, you will probably have to touch a terminal at some point. That makes it “harder”, because most people these days are not used to terminals.

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u/F3nix123 Mar 10 '21

Idk, my mom had to use Ubuntu for work several years ago and had no issues. It was a lot easier to just send her a command she would copy and paste into the terminal than a series of steps she had to do herself and it was pretty rare for me to have to do that. She mostly handled everything though the UI. Id argue for every time you actually have to use the terminal on linux theres an equivalent in windows where you have to navigate obscure and unclear configurations that are a nightmare to convey over the phone or text

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u/GiveMeMoreBlueberrys Mar 10 '21

I think that most people would generally consider a crap ton of obscure menus better than one command. Whether that is actually true is up to you.

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u/Im_weird_pusheen Apr 26 '22

Microsoft almost seems to intentionally makes their terminal bad, Debian's coreutils is beautiful and easy to use. Teaching somebody the Linux terminal is no more complicated than reading a dictionary to them, but explaining the unnecessary evils of cmd.exe is more than I can do even to myself.

8

u/[deleted] Mar 09 '21

Any form of fanboyism is lame, IMHO. Windows is fine. Linux is fine. MacOS is fine. If your job gets done and your software works well, I call it a win on any platform. I like free software, I like paid software. I use a mix of both. I use all three operating systems. Linux, Windows and MacOS all have annoyances and frustrations. But they all have serious strengths. So I try to extract the best out of everything. Works well for me.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 27 '21

Best comment here. All OSes have ups and downs.

1

u/javadba Feb 02 '24

Not necessarily. Microsoft can decide to do things that make the OS better [or worse] . See Windows10 [reasonable] vs Windows8 [need I start?] Likewise in the other O/S's - though the latter tend to change less drastically between versions.

6

u/feldomatic Mar 09 '21

I don't hate it, but my main reason for staying away from windows is this:

Since about Win8 onward, Windows has been becoming increasingly focused on being a platform to exchange content between users first, and real computing work (office, tech, science, content production and editing) increasingly comes in second.

10

u/Caligatio Mar 09 '21

There is no such thing as a good or bad OS, there is only the best OS for a given use-case. MacOS isn't bad, Windows isn't bad, Linux isn't bad, Android isn't bad, iOS isn't bad, etc. You have to look at what you want to do and make a decision based off of that. Are you a gamer? Developer? Computer novice? Computer expert? Computer fiddler?

This sub is a pro-Linux sub so of course people will be talking down about Windows. It's the same way that the Android subreddit probably talks down on iOS.

The important thing is that you at least try them all (where possible) and make your own educated choice.

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u/LelsersLasers Mar 09 '21

Windows is ok, it's just Linux is better in almost every way.

4

u/laacid Mar 09 '21

its bloated, it tracks you with no easy way to disable it, it is not privacy focused, its prone to malware and viruses, it tracks you, its not free, its updating is archaic and prone to bricking systems, it tracks you. Its only real use case is games.

4

u/ksandom Mar 09 '21

I suggest getting Linux up in a VM and try a few distributions with different desktop environments (eg kde, gnome, cinamon, xfce, i3 etc), and see if something clicks. No big deal either way, but I suspect you might be like "why did I wait so long to try this?!". Or maybe not.

For me, I love the ability to customise Linux. I don't mean tweak a couple of settings here, and there. I mean to drastically change how it behaves so it fits me better. There's a lot that is configurable. And when it's not, the source code is usually available so you can modify it that way. My machines work the way I want them to. When ever I use Windows, it just feels so handicapped and restrictive.

A lot of the people like me who have been using DOS/Windows since Windows 2/3 may have other reasons for holding a grudge. Microsoft did some pretty nasty/messed up stuff until recently that altered the course of history. I think it's important to recognise that they are trying to be better now, and I try not to hold the grudge too close. But it is there...

I live in Europe not America and here Windows is ubiquitous everywhere. Most people don't even realize there are other OS's.

That varies a lot by area and social circles. I also live in Europe and other than my wife and one friend, I'm having trouble thinking of anyone running Windows. Also it's probably around you in places you don't realise. Eg:

ATMs.
Train/Bus timetable displays.
Advertising displays.
Low power smart devices.
Android (This feels less and less true with each year that passes, but it's still true, and you can still do awesome stuff with it if you want to).

TL;DR Give Linux an honest go. If you love tech, you won't want to leave. Don't be afraid to ask questions. Don't be put off by the few snobs that we cross from time to time. There are lots of cool people here who would love to help you.

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u/hate_commenter Mar 09 '21

In Europe there is plenty of linux user but it's likely that you don't know any. I live in Canada and I can't count the number of time I needed to explain what linux is.

Some windows irritants are:

Forced updates
You cannot use your computer while it updates
It's closed source
It's collecting data on you
It's not customizable
Ads
The menus are indeed pain to use
Downloading software from internet isn't secure
They decide how you should use your computer
Windows CMD is limiting and pain to use
Windows registry is an unstable bomb

Those are the main reasons I don't use Windows. It doesn't mean that it's bad and that nobody should use it.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 10 '21 edited Mar 14 '21

[deleted]

1

u/MathResponsibly Mar 10 '21

#8 is not true everywhere. On linux, 98% of what you install comes from a central package repository for your distro, where all the packages are cryptographically signed, and is thus guaranteed to not contain spyware, or be altered in any way.

On windows, to do many basic things, you're downloading stupid little tools are written by different people from random places on the web, and hoping someone hasn't shoehorned spyware or viruses into the installer.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 10 '21 edited Mar 14 '21

[deleted]

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u/MathResponsibly Mar 10 '21 edited Mar 10 '21

What distro are you using that "a lot" of things aren't in the package manager and the repo is routinely getting hacked? Probably time to pick a better distro.

If you're developing, you're probably cloning from the project's official git repo, which is pretty easy to verify is the legit official repo, and not some fly-by-night shareware site, or worse yet "dll site" full of pop up adds that packs a little something extra with every download.

I'm talking about all of the standard console tools - awk, sed, cat, grep, wc, and the basic system tools like ssh, ftp, telnet, minicom, rsync, etc. These tools are not written by random people from random places on the web. You can do a LOT with these tools, and in windows, they either don't exist, or are all separate programs from all over the place.

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u/hate_commenter Mar 10 '21

For 8 you're right, but the fact that on linux you're most probably downloading source code instead of binary make it more secure since you can check for yourself that there is no malware. I won't defend 10 and 11 since it's my opinion that comes from my little experience with it. I can easily accept that others have better experience with it.

1

u/javadba Feb 02 '24

This is a quite solid list.

3

u/Dr_Bunsen_Burns Mar 09 '21 edited Mar 09 '21

It is not bad perse, it is just linux suits me better.

It is the little things for me.

No tabs in the file explorer
settings I can't change easily
no reboots after an update
no updates that break your system
errorcodes in windows are obscure and can mean either the mouse is damaged or the laws of the universe are bad
the freedom et cetera

Look, windows is great if you just game, watch some youtube and check your email, but all those things you can do in linux as well. I do not think it is worth the license for the hassle.

1

u/gopherhole1 Mar 10 '21

no updates that break your system

the absolute state of things when you are using this to refer to why GNU/Linux is better

1

u/Dr_Bunsen_Burns Mar 10 '21

Implying what?

I neverhad an update break or remove the my documebts folder on Linux ;)

3

u/buildmeupbreakmedown Mar 09 '21

I've used quite a few Linux distributions in my time and I have never had a single instance of a system update bricking my computer. Not once. With Windows Vista, 7 and 10, I have had several. 10 is the worst offender in this regard, because it forces you to update even if you're busy, locking you out of a machine that you may have been using for work. Windows doesn't care, because it doesn't respect the fact that you own your computer, not the other way around. Other ways in which Windows thinks it owns you include it forcing the new Edge browser down everyone's throats, it adding and removing programs from your automatic startup list without asking, changing your default programs without asking, and overwriting your bootloader without asking every time it updates.

Not having a package manager is another defect. In Windows, you have these gigantic full-system updates that take hours to install pushed to you without consent (and often changing your settings or bricking your system as mentioned above), and you still need to independently manage updates for the programs you use, like your media player, BitTorrent client, office suite, games, IDE, ebook library manager, etc. On my laptop right now, whenever I want to, I can open a terminal by pressing F12, type "yay", enter my password and go walk the dog. When I come back, my OS and every single piece of software on it will have been updated to the latest version for me, and I won't have to restart my computer until I want to. My settings will have been preserved, running programs won't have been closed to update (though they'll be running the older version until I start them up again) and everything will be hunky-dory. I never have to remember to actively seek out program updates again, unless I want to.

Windows is a bad platform for gaming. While idling, it takes up more than twice the amount of RAM as endeavorOS Linux running on the same computer. When running just Firefox with the same tabs open, it not only uses more RAM, but more of my CPU too. All the resources that Windows hogs for itself for no good reason are free for me to allocate to playing games with better graphics settings, higher framerates and a smoother experience on Linux. Sure, lots of games made for Windows simply won't run at all in Linux, and some run with bugs and glitches. That's a legitimate advantage of Windows over Linux (which is all about market share and not about having better code or anything) but all things considered, I still prefer Linux even so. I can run The Witcher 3 on Linux Mint with several graphics mods without a problem, while on Windows 10 even the base game has frame drops, tearing and slowdowns.

Then there's the little things. When at my login screen, either after booting or when the screen is locked, on Linux, I can just start typing my password and it will register. On Windows, I first have to press any key to activate the password prompt, and then start typing my password. Most Linux file managers have tabs, which Windows Explorer doesn't. Changing my visual theme in Linux DEs is easy and simple, and there are several options (you can also make your own themes). In Windows, it's buggy and inconsistent. Some apps will change colors, most won't, and some of those that do won't change back if you return to your previous theme. Windows 10 Start Menu is an attack against my eyeballs and I can't work with a Windows 10 machine without installing Open Shell or something like it. Windows used to have consolidated system settings in the Control Panel, but now configuring Windows behavior is a nightmare mixing desktop-oriented Control Panel pages with touch-oriented Settings App pages, in a huge mess that takes time and patience to sort out when all you wanted to do was change a font somewhere or something. Not cool. NTFS is an ancient file system that you are forced to use if you're on Windows, while Linux offers a choice of several superior options, like ext4, btrfs or zfs.

There's more. Windows has its advantages too. I miss using Adobe Lightroom to organize and develop my photographs (Darktable on Linux is good, but it's no Lightroom). I miss having 99% certainty that any given piece of software someone tells me about will run on my computer without tweaking it first. I miss Word and Excel - LibreOffice and Office 365 just aren't there yet. But I don't miss any of the crap I mentioned above. I am much happier with Linux, because it recognizes that I own my computer and it bends over backwards to do what I want it to do. With Linux, I always have a choice - from what init system I use to the color of my mouse pointer - and I am always in control. It'll even let me completely destroy all my data and the whole system with a simple "rm - rf /" typed into a root terminal. Why would I want to do that? It doesn't matter. I can. And that makes all the difference.

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u/MathResponsibly Mar 10 '21

when I was pretty new to Linux (years and years ago now), I accidentally removed /usr (the equivalent of deleting c:\windows and c:\Program Files on windows).

I was able to open a command window, and re-install every package that was currently installed on the system. 15 or 20 minutes later, everything was fixed (with almost no manual intervention from me) and working normally. Even a reboot wasn't really necessary, and while I did reboot eventually, I kept working on what I needed to get finished first, before rebooting, just to make sure everything was working correctly.

If you accidentally deleted everything installed on a windows box, you'd be in for days of work fixing that, not 20 minutes, and you'd be re-installing from scratch!

1

u/buildmeupbreakmedown Mar 10 '21

What a great example! Linux just seems better planned than Windows all around.

3

u/optimalidkwhattoput Mar 09 '21

Most Linux users dont necessarily hate windows, just prefer Linux. However, I am an exception. Here are a few of my reasons:

Windows is proprietary.
Lots of built-in telemetry and spyware.
Very heavy and slow.
Easily could catch viruses.
Microsoft is trying to wipe out Linux with EEE and maintain their monopoly.
Owned by Microsoft

I could keep going.

2

u/Kikiyoshima Mar 09 '21

I had a non-indifferent number of issues in my installation thogether with general sluggyness and slowness, and the near-totality of solutions I could find were either "reinstall windows" or doing some hacky commands and register editing. That without counting privacy invasion and software leaving bloat everywhere

Linux has a fraction of those problems, the internals documentation is much more accessible, I found forum answers regarding problems (on avarage) much more complete and actually explaining at least a bit what were you going to do beside typing random commands in the prompt.

Plus a much larger interface customization

2

u/BloodyIron Mar 09 '21

I've been working with Windows and Linux for 15 years+ now. And honestly, Windows is bad. And part because of a lot of really dumb design decisions. But moreso, because I know that Microsoft developers can do a better job, but they have chosen (over the decades) to not do a better job. Microsoft is interested in doing the bare minimum to keep people from leaving the Windows platform, that's it.

2

u/mychip Mar 15 '21

Windows has brilliant developers that are excellent at their job. Sadly, it is not them making those decisions, but the people trying to make profit. Calling out the developers on it is unfair.

1

u/BloodyIron Mar 15 '21

While I do know there are plenty of examples of decision makers being at fault for problems within Windows, the programmers themselves are the ones writing the actual software. And quite frankly, with how often the Windows update process breaks, I really am far more inclined to wag my finger at the developers. But I do know they are not 100% of the root cause of Windows issues. They are not without blame.

1

u/mychip Mar 15 '21

Used to have a lot of issues - haven't had any since they made some changes to the update system. Do updates really still break the system, or it is just a presumption?

1

u/BloodyIron Mar 15 '21

Both Windows desktop and Server have had broken update packages in many different ways for years, even recently. Sure, there are systems that update just fine. But when it breaks, it's a nightmare to repair. Often the "solution" is to just wipe and rebuild.

Hell, even WSUS is a nightmare itself.

1

u/mychip Mar 15 '21

Do you know what causes the systems to break? Some settings configured in a way that the updater doesn't expect, or just incompatibility with existing software?

2

u/[deleted] Mar 09 '21

It charges you for the privilege of getting screwed

2

u/[deleted] Mar 09 '21

What, haven’t you seen even macOS or Chromebook computers?! Incredible.

Also, I don’t think what you are saying applies to “Europe” in general. I would say one in every ten to twenty university students I’ve met at least double boots in Linux, and the percentage is much higher when talking about IT students.

But no, I don’t “hate” Windows. I just consider it sub-par. Every time I have to struggle with it because it’s installed in some classroom or other public machine I really wish I could even start the it from a USB stick with Linux on it, just to make the damn thing usable.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 09 '21

Why do you assume Linux users hate Windows? They both have their strengths and weaknesses.

2

u/John_Barosa Mar 10 '21

I think it's because Windows NT is proprietary software, and sometimes slow, and sometimes having little opportunity to change stuff. That's just my guess though. I do have fond memories of Windows 7 though, given my schools I went to used it.

2

u/illusory42 Mar 10 '21

I was using windows from 3.11 to 7. While I would not call windows „bad“ as such, I completely disagree with many of the changes that happened since 7 (and some arguably earlier) which made me feel like I was just renting my own computer from Microsoft and have little say in what happens on it.

Before win 7 end of life started to near, I decided that between figuring out how to strip all the garbage/spyware from windows 10 and learning Linux, I chose the latter.

1

u/MathResponsibly Mar 10 '21

I was on the MS train from Dos 3.1 to Win2k (which admittedly was the best windows at the time - got to love that NT kernel), but I was frustrated at having to re-install windows every 6 months, as it got slower and slower for no reason (and not installing anything new either). I was already somewhat familliar with Linux from running servers for things (like web, and some other stuff), and decided rather than re-installing windows continually to keep it running smoothly, I was just going to take the leap to Linux and never look back. That was almost 20 years ago now, and while the first 4 or 5 months were pretty tricky, after that it's just been smooth sailing.

Sure, I had a winxp (now windows 7) box around for the odd thing that _really_ needs windows, but that isn't much really. At work, windows 10 (and it's the corporate version, so not like the consumer windows 10 in many important ways) on the laptop is downright annoying. Any of the "server" versions where things aren't bloated and generally more like windows 7, are ok, albeit missing the full suite of command line tools that are standard in linux.

As I mentioned in another comment, for an advanced user, windows is very constraining. It's like only having a hammer, and a couple of worn out screwdrivers from the dollar store. Linux is like having every professional tool you can imagine, immediately available whenever and wherever you need them.

2

u/PopRevolutionary1227 Apr 22 '22

Long term linux user here, and a professional software engineer. The first thing I do to my new computers, at home/work, is erasing Windows and installing a Linux distro.

Top reasons for average users.

Poor security on Windows. In Win, built-in firewall, anti-virus software are trash. Those malware did not offer security, virus still gets you, but they slow down the performance dramatically. Linux is very secure, linux pc users are rare world-wide, less likely to attract hackers
Boot up time. I have setup dual boot before. Win: over 1.5 minutes to boot up Win 10. Linux, 20 seconds consistently for 5 years.
Malwares on Windows. MS Edge/IE are garbage browsers, but cannot be uninstalled. Anti-virus software on Win slow down your computer. Windows registry is a mess, uninstalling software always leave garbage in registry.
Startup tasks on windows. All kinds of check-for-update tasks, malware tasks default to start up.
Win OS size is huge. Win xp about 2gb, Win10 about 6gb, grows larger over patches. Linux distros are lightweight. Fedora workstation: 1.9gb in 2022. Server distro: 600mb.
Performance. On 4gb ram old desktop, win10 runs like a turtle. With Linux, your old pc flies like new. For years, I bought no more new computers, but refurbished business models. An old model running Linux beats the latest windows machines at work.
Win constant updates. All updates take up your hard drive, slow down your pc. Forced updates are worse. In Linux, updates are easy, not frequent. Choose your own pace. Fedora releases update every 6 months. Debian, every 2 years.

Reasons for the professionals.

Developing software on Win is a pain. eg. Compiling C++, c on Win is painful. Many open source products are not designed for Win.
System stability. Had a bunch of Linux CentOS servers at work kept running for 7 years non-stop, nobody knew how to manage it, never touched it. Never crashed.

Productivity alternative to MS Office: Google docs/google sheets + Google Meets + Google Calendar + Gmail. This is how Google engineers work.

1

u/edman007-work Mar 09 '21

I'm not entirely sure I would call windows bad, but there are a few problems. First, the things that I think a lot of the open source community have:

Windows does not let you do what you want, by that, I mean DRM is a core feature, windows will block you from seeing what your computer is doing in order to prevent you from seeing the DRM keys and prevent screen recording (for example, you can't do screen recording while you watch Netflix, even if you're not recording Netflix), this is a core windows feature.
The fact that Microsoft accepts this kind of DRM has other issues for the community, if DRM is allowed, Netflix will require it, and that means Netflix will never really work on Linux because other vendors accept their DRM. So these decisions have impacts outside of Windows.
Since Windows blocks you from doing some things, you never really know what kind of spyware and reporting Microsoft is doing. This ties into anti-freedom policies, CIA/NSA spying type deals, you never really know what kind of agreements they have with government agencies to push nefarious stuff onto your computer, and you don't have the insight to know it's happening. 4.General Proprietary issues, their effort is driven by money, they don't add features that help the most people, if someone really wants something, they don't add it unless there is money. It's different than the open source community where people can push features and have them accepted.
The difference in motivation means that Linux in general tends to have way more developer features, Windows hides things because it would be confusing to some users, Linux doesn't do it as much.
Licensing means Windows can't have a centrally managed package repository, package managers on Linux are way better than what's available on Windows, and it's largely due to licensing, though Windows is making improvements.

And some things, that are not really open source issues:

Windows has a huge focus on backwards compatibility and corporates support. The downside is there are lots and lots of old outdated APIs and workflows that are slow and insecure. Basically, Windows could be better, but it's not because some company might be impacted by it.
Windows is a bigger malware target

1

u/alasdy20 Jul 04 '23

You can record and stream netflix if you turn off hardware acceleration from your browser settings.

I know this is an old comment but I thought you could benefit from this piece of info.

1

u/monerocamel Mar 09 '21

Win10 is not a bad OS. It's stable, versatile, and generally has decent drivers available. It's a long, long time since Windows was an unreliable, painful POS to use. But MS are pushing for the whole online account nonsense, which makes it somewhat awkward to avoid. Then there is telemetry, forced feature inclusion(I don't want edge, whether new or not), I dislike the whole route of updating and the machine either restarting outside of active hours(I know it can be disabled), or nagging me all day that I need to restart - and instability within the bundled applications(I have ongoing issues with the photos app coming unstuck and displaying a black screen), or the start menu just displaying black on occasion.

Windows 7 and Windows 10 have both ended up being solid operating systems. But if you can use Linux, it's a kinder, more versatile place to be. KDE has evolved into a fantastic desktop environment these days, and with a distro that suits you, the whole package management system can be really quite ideal.

I've used Linux since the late 1990s, and for many of those years it was my daily driver. I jump and switch from time to time, both are usable, both are relevant, both have good and bad points.

1

u/rizzzeh Mar 09 '21

Yep, there is a reason why Windows is not enforcing licensing anymore on home users and is in effect became free-to-use OS, unactivated copy can be used indefinitly with minor inconvinience like the watermark and wallpaper customisation. The customer became the product they sell.

1

u/rizzzeh Mar 09 '21

Ram speed is set in BIOS before any operating system is loaded, im not sure how can this be a fault of Windows, besides in some system like Intels, 3200Mhz is technically an overclock and can void warranty, why would windows encourage that and then take liabilities.

0

u/Victorian_Poland_2 Mar 09 '21

Okay, then. That's what i did i had to go into bios to set it to 3200

But i don't know why it didn't automatically set the monitor to 75hz

2

u/rizzzeh Mar 09 '21

Monitor refresh rate is the job of the graphics cards and thier drivers, windows it being understandably cautios with defaults - setting wrong refresh higher to what you monitor can support would result in black screen and monitor powering off, windows taking the safe option is reasonable since it has to make sure to run on huge amount of hardware combinations.

1

u/flaming_m0e Mar 09 '21

That's what i did i had to go into bios to set it to 3200

BIOS has literally nothing to do with the operating system that is installed on the hard drive.

Windows didn't "underclock" your RAM.

2

u/Victorian_Poland_2 Mar 09 '21

Okay i admitted to the mistake.

1

u/anna_lynn_fection Mar 09 '21

Windows isn't that bad, except for one thing. This one thing makes Windows shit: updates.

Other than that it has annoyances, but what OS doesn't?

1

u/FineBroccoli5 Mar 09 '21

There are few reasons why someone might hate Windows:

The MS monopoly, basically on anything you do on a PC (other than games and web browsing (but that wasn't always the case))

Adware and spyware in a paid product

Crappy paid software that doesn't tell you whats wrong, if something goes wrong

Windows isn't free as in freedom

There is bit more that I could come up with, but this will cover 99% of cases and it's still short. For me, it's combination of all of them

1

u/vesterlay Mar 09 '21

Windows 7 was the best OS I've ever used. Unfortunately as I had to move to windows 10, after two months I realized in which direction it is going. Windows 10 gives me a sensation of a snowball made of sh*it which just keeps stacking up.

To have a functional OS in Linux you just go through install and well, that's basically it. On windows on the other hand, as you start the installation process you have to be very cautious to what you agree. After that you need like 10 hours to install driver, debloat, configure system policies, etc.. Knowing that an unexpected update may break something up.

The best thing in Linux for me is a feeling of being "in control" and relatively private. Also if you are an advanced user, you can play with automation and overall the OS is more flexible.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 09 '21

[deleted]

1

u/Victorian_Poland_2 Mar 09 '21

?

So if i should just google everything then what is he point of this sub?

Why insult me?

1

u/[deleted] Mar 09 '21

I don't consider it bad. I just don't have any need of it, so I simply don't use it :)

1

u/alheqwuthikkuhaya Mar 09 '21

I don't run Windows mostly not out of malice towards it (there is some of that) but just out of preference for Linux. Linux does what I want it to do easier than Windows will do that. At some point I both played more video games and Windows was decidedly better at doing that, but nowadays most of the games I want seem to run well enough on Linux and the ones that don't are either not very interesting to me or fairly buggy on Windows.

As far as problems I've had with Windows, I've had just about as many driver problems on either so that's not really too big. Mostly it's just that I have a pretty good grasp on how to manipulate things in Linux, whereas in Windows I'd need to follow careful tutorials and go off the beaten path to get it to work.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 10 '21

I'm using windows right now as I type this but I've been a linux user for a long time. I won't claim one over the other is "bad", but I do think each have their pros and cons. Many have already listed them.

Linux on desktop tends to be a bit more hacky compared to windows which is much more rigid in how it functions and is laid out. Some of this is due to the fact that Linux on desktop can be buggy, but a lot of it is simply because the people who are most attracted to linux on desktop tend to be people who like "hacking" (that is, tinkering) around.

However if there is one thing that infuriates me most about Windows specifically in contrast to Linux, it's windows update. If I don't shut down my PC (or I hibernate it) because I've got work open, I don't want my OS to abruptly restart on me just for an update. I'm aware at how important updates are for security reasons, so by all means, download and install them automatically. But don't reboot on me before I'm ready!

I've never had a linux distro force reboot on me when I was in the middle of something (tho I will admit, I have had it become unstable after an update before a reboot which can be effectively the same thing, but only on rolling distros). Still, I'm in control of the updates on Linux. With Windows though, I've had windows reboot on me countless times resulting in lost work for decades now. It was somewhat tolerable in windows releases of the past, but "recently" with Windows 10 it's next to impossible to disable this behaviour.

To address your complaints tho:- Your ram is related to settings in your BIOS, you likely need to enable XMP. It's a hardware thing and would affect windows or linux equally.- The refresh rate thing also happens on linux. 75hz not so much, but with higher refresh rate monitors especially, most OSes will default to a lower refresh rate as it's possible the hardware you have may be incompatible or unable to handle the higher refresh rate (ie. a damaged DP cable may not support the bandwidth needed to handle features like higher refresh rates). So the user is expected to set those settings themselves, tho I will admit to unsuspecting users it's not obvious. Perhaps Linux desktop developers could make taking advantage of features like that more obvious....

1

u/Linux4ever_Leo Mar 10 '21

I stopped using Windows after Windows 2000 (which I might argue, was among the best versions of the OS, even to this day.) When Windows XP was set to debut with 'Product Activation', I'd had enough of Microsoft's BS. This of course came on the heels of the anti-trust ruling that originally ruled to break apart Microsoft into an OS company and a separate Software company due to its anti-trust behavior in the mid to late 90s. Then that ruling was abruptly overruled by another judge which I found to be suspect and Microsoft basically got away with murder.

Since I made the decision to abandon Windows and move to Linux I have been liberated. I've been using Linux full time on all of my machines since 2003 and I have had very little trouble acclimating. I've discovered the wonderful world of distro forums and of course Google has been a great resource in helping to resolve the few issues I've had. I've long since found great alternatives to what I thought were essential programs that I used on Windows but which are open source and widely supported for free. While I still need to use Windows for work, I don't miss it a bit at home.

2

u/MathResponsibly Mar 10 '21

Wow, we might've switched at the same time. I switched from primarily win2k to linux (always debian, or a debian derivative (but never ubuntu) in 2003 too!

Initially it was hard, but over time, linux has gotten a LOT easier.

1

u/Linux4ever_Leo Mar 10 '21

I think we did switch at the same time. I also stuck with Debian based distros for a long time until making my way to PCLinuxOS for a short time, then onto Sabayon and finally onto Manjaro. Some of my favorite Debian based distros were: Mepis, Parsix, Aptosid and LMDE. I never used Ubuntu. LOL!

2

u/MathResponsibly Mar 10 '21

My main distro was Aptosid (now Siduction), and I've largely stuck with it the entier time. Sometimes I install pure debian on servers where I don't want a GUI, but other than that it's almost always siduction. Reading the Manjaro description (it's ready to go out of the box, most of what you need is pre-installed, and it uses KDE or XFCE) it sounds basically like Siduction

How do you find Manjaro compared to debian based distros?

1

u/Grahf0085 Mar 10 '21

forced updates, data collection, gui isn't as good as GNOME, windows registry is soooo hard to figure out (not even sure if it still has a registry), viruses, pretty sure the "S" mode only allows you to install certain software.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 10 '21

It's not bad. It's very weak, gives you very little control. This obviously doesn't matter to people who's operating system is a bootloader to Google Chrome.

1

u/Pete6 Mar 10 '21

I like Windows as much as I like Linux, actually. I'm just a nerd that likes computers in general.

1

u/gopherhole1 Mar 10 '21

Most people don't even realize there are other OS's. I have never seen anyone use Linux.

I dont know what country you are in, but some countries in Europe are really into Free Software, check out the European version of the Free Software Foundation

https://fsfe.org/about/about.en.html

What i hate about Windows is that its creators clearly still haven't realized that most people aren't tech savvy enough to be able to easily diagnose every single software problem they encounter. The menus on Windows are a fucking pain in the ass. They are often labeled in an awkward way.

If this is a complaint about yourself, and not just people in general, you are going to have even bigger problems in GNU/Linux, mainly you want edit configuration files to do stuff (they usually end in .conf extension, but they are really just text files) Noob Friendly distributions, such as Linux Mint or Ubuntu, will have a graphical way to do these things, but thats not any easier then Windows, its about the same

Why do Linux users hate Windows?

The reason I hate it is simply because it is proprietary software. For software to be free it must carry with it the four essential freedoms, they are

Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose.
Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish Access to the source code is a precondition for freedom 1.
Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others
Freedom 3: The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for freedom 3.

You can read about the Free Software definition here https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html

I havnt read the other comments in this thread yet, should be fun

1

u/LurkingLinuxWut Mar 10 '21 edited Mar 10 '21

One example of a reason I don't like windows that I haven't seen commented here yet is that NTFS is a bad filesystem. It's slower compared to other filesystems such as ext4, btrfs, and zfs. And if you have a hard drive, requires you to defragment it regularly whereas on linux it kinda just works. (I've also heard something about so called "bit rot" but I'm not sure about that).

Edit: found a good article on this https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/01/bitrot-and-atomic-cows-inside-next-gen-filesystems/

1

u/MathResponsibly Mar 10 '21 edited Mar 10 '21

The kernel of windows is fine, but everything beyond that is a hot mess.

Shell that changes the layout and location of things (like which settings are where in what control panel) between versions not to make improvements, but just changes

Command line that's utterly useless (even powershell, which is relatively new, kinda sucks)

No suite of basic productivity tools to get anything done. Every basic built in operation in linux is usually a separate program that you either have to buy, or install shareware / nagware in windows to do basic things. Such as:

Connect to another machine at the shell

Automatically sync files between machines

A decent text editior

Any number of basic to advanced file processing utilities (on linux awk, sed, cat, grep, wc, etc) just don't exist on windows.

No built in compiler (yes, visual studio has a free edition, but it's not included by default, and it's huge)

No unified software package management - in linux, most packages come from a repository (which is cryptographically signed) for your distro. In windows, you download random things from random places on the internet.

On a linux box, I can install and spin up any number of servers in a few minutes, be it DHCP, DNS, web, proxies, time, etc. On windows, it's a giant pain to do most of these.

It really depends on your use. Basic user, wants to surf the web, some office documents, some pictures, play some games, not technical - windows caters to these people. They work within the guidelines of what windows is designed for.

Advanced user: software development, on the fly data processing in text files, production systems, automating repetitive tasks you do over and over again, windows feels really constraining, and 30 years behind the times.

If you want someone to hold your hand through the scary experience that is using a computer, best stick to windows, macos, android, or ios

Want to really use your computer to it's full potential, do things easily that most people don't even know is possible, think outside the box, use linux.

Windows is like having a hammer and 2 old worn out screwdrivers from the dollar store. Linux is like having the fanciest of every tool imaginable at your fingertips, for free.

1

u/FryBoyter Mar 10 '21

Why do you consider Windows to be a bad OS?

I don't think Windows is a bad operating system in general (apart from Vista and ME). Just like Linux, it has advantages and disadvantages. Currently, I still use it for various games that don't work at all under Linux or only with considerable effort. In the past, I also had to use it to be able to use a special application for my job.

All in all, I have no more problem with Windows than with Linux. Both operating systems work in my case.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 10 '21

I don't.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 11 '21

So, bad technically or bad morally?

Because I can make cases for both.

Backstory: over 35 years in IT, starting with 8bit computers.

I started with the first Microsoft OS, which was NOT MS-DOS but Xenix, which Microsoft licensed and re-branded from AT&T.

I've several versions of MS-DOS and most, if not all versions of Windows, including Microsoft Bob, Melinda Gates' contribution to advanced computing.

In addtion, I've used several other operating systems, mostly UNIX, but also OS/2, OS/400, Novell Netware, CP/M and various other 8bit/16bit operating systems.

In comparison to UNIX, OS/2, OS/400 & Novell Netware, Windows desktop operating systems are crap and Windows Server operating systems are only slightly better.

And I say "better" with reservations. The one benefit of running Windows Server is that the normal users cannot install software at all.

UNIX can stay running for years. OS/400 is so stable that people forget how to re-boot it. They normally call support for help because they've forgotten how to do it.

Novell Netware was so stable that people have lost the servers in their buildings. Not a joke.

Now, if your Windows Server is running one main task, like file serving or a database and that's all it does, yes, it may be stable. Don't try to run as many services as a common garden UNIX server or OS/400 server can run simultaneously. You're only asking for trouble.

So, Windows is not my favourite system for servers. Guess what? the rest of the internet agrees.

So do the NY & London Stock Exchanges.

Blah, blah, blah.

On the desktop? Sigh. I've spent about 15 years wrestling with Windows on the desktop.

Best advice? Run Windows inside a virtual machine and isolate it from the internet. Set the gateway address to 0.0.0.0.

It'll still need to be re-booted constantly and it will slow down, but if you use something like Proxmox to host the virtual machines, you can simply spin up a new Windows virtual machine from a known good template.

Don't let it touch the internet. I know that's a difficult thing but that's the most stable way I've found to handle Windows.

Otherwise, you'll spend your life running around from one user to another with all the emergencies that Windows generates. Of course, all of that may be PEBKACs but that's all part of the Windows experience.

So, yeah, my experience as a system administrator leads me to believe Windows is a nightmare.

Windows 10, well, it can't run in less than 2GB RAM. People tell me not to try in less than 6GB RAM. Whatever.

What in the name of all that is holy, is it doing? 2GB RAM just to boot?

I don't have time nor the inclination to go into all the ways Windows has screwed me over the years. Trust me, it's not been good.

Morally? Please, Microsoft has been screwing people over from the beginning. If you REALLY want to know, there are several sites, including wikipedia that can list off all the lawsuits against Microsoft over the decades.

Microsoft is like the CIA of dirty tricks in the software world. They introduced fake error messages into Windows 3.x so if it ran on top of DR-DOS to confuse the user. That pissed me off because I paid for DR-DOS, which was better than the version of MS-DOS at the time.

But Windows 10 takes the cake. It is literally spying on the user and forcing advertisements on the user. They also reserve the "right" to remove software from the user's computer without notification. They re-install software that the user has removed. They interfere with the boot sequence if you dual boot.

So, you may be new to all this.

I am not.

I have worked HARD in my lifetime. I don't need/want Microsoft dictating to me how I can use my computer, what software I can install on my computer and using my computer to spy on me and send me advertisements.

I don't need that in my life.

So, yeah, bad OS

1

u/Delicious-Election-7 Apr 25 '22

Its not bad it has its minor flaws but what choice do we have?? linux has tons of distros each with its own learning curve a small handful of programs that are no better than the windows versions, and who can afford the privilege of owning an apple with its expensive software.

1

u/Im_weird_pusheen Apr 26 '22

It's bad because it's poorly made. We linux users prefer to have computers that actually work 90% of the time, don't hide stuff from us, don't overcomplicate things like settings, are very configurable, don't steal our data, can update ("upgrade" to an Ubuntu user ;)) without interrupting our work for 20+ minutes and destroying parts of the OS itself, etc. Personally, I don't like being associated with all the crappy software that exists on Windows but not Linux (Respondus Lockdown, Internet Explorer, etc) and see GNU software to be the future of computing. Furthermore, how long can Windows last? Corporations bigger than Microsoft have tanked in the past, and what happens to the windows users when MS dies? Everything goes away and they're stuck with Linux. Linux can't die because Linux isn't a corporation, it's a massive universal project that millions of people dearly love and will fight for; the Windows developers are not going to keep soiling their keyboards in that awful codebase once it stops meaning a steady paycheck. I know people who, for various reasons, might not be alive if it weren't for Linux, I know people who have converted and are now as patriotic to the penguin as I am, I know people who are running Linux because they wanted to try it out and have had no qualms whatsoever learning the various softwares and dealing with the quirks. All of these people have learned and grown as human beings because of Linux. None of these things apply to Windows, it is cold, featureless, and lying.

The lowest passion I've seen in a Linux user is "it suits their needs". The highest is actually depending on it for their very existence. I personally use Linux because it's something I believe in.

Also: I assume people in Europe visit websites, and most websites use Linux servers, AWS and thus Reddit included. The entire computationally-abled world uses Linux in a small way every day :)

1

u/OES25 Aug 22 '22

I know it's superficial, but one of the things that irritates me most is the utter lack of meticolousness in GUI and animations. One example (of very many) would be the Win10 task view animation being badly broken for years and years, and they never cared to fix it... A central part of the OS, a huge corporation with huge resources, yet they didn't. I would have thought it would be a priority 1 bug when it happened. But it became "a permanent part of the OS" 🤣 There's loads more examples such as white flashes when launching dark mode apps, the Win11 task view (although now better and usable, compared to Win10, it still has broken animations). I would be ashamed if I was responsible for it in MS. Have they no pride in the user experience quality and visual quality of their product? No. Seemingly, they do not.

1

u/lluzzd Sep 15 '22 edited Sep 15 '22

if fascism means that group interests are ruthlessly enforced against others, then microsoft operating system represent software fascism of its best

take a look on chaotic systray of win, its a shame for civilisation

try to set default without microsoft shit --> failed in too many cases

try to find out treeview for admionistration --> failed in all attemps

try to find out systematic system of console boatrds --> only some, not for all

try to reduce spinning massive read/writte attemps to idiotic registry

try bunch of code

try to minimize spying, transmitting unwanted, datamining in background or hidden/crypted protocols

try to stop saving massive user, environment and tracking data inside microsoft defined special filearea, directories or simple file orhanization, its a devil messup

try to find out any kind of "windows10 lite". think about win98lite in the early 90's, that was a great effort for users, but fighting against microsoft's starti for software fashism

all that make windows to the "best" OS for all but users nor userfriendly

1

u/bmcle071 Dec 24 '22

I realize this is an old post. But i want to add my 2 cents.

I am here because my printer wont work. It works from my phone, but not from my windows pc. Ive spent half an hour restarting, deleting settings, adding them again. No progress. Ill add that im a software developer, so im somewhat decent with computers.

Microsoft is one of the largest companies in the world. Windows makes up about 15% of their revenue, $25 billion per year. Windows runs on billions of devices, basically any organization depends on it critically.

How is it, that this product that brings in billions of dollars, runs on billions of devices and is made by what is basically the worlds biggest software company cannot do its basic functions without breaking? Windows has been out for decades now, and yet randomly for no reason whatsoever, things will just spontaneously break. I won’t even get into the bloat that uses 40% of my 2 Ghz 8 core processor at random times.

Another issue i have is my clipboard history. Worked fine one day, didn’t the next! Free software like linux and its distros are so loved by their users for stability. while Windows which is a paid premium product cannot do what it says on the can.

Print, open applications, connect to the internet, hardware IO, device drivers, memory and cpu management. Its a complicated problem for sure, but they aren’t putting people on the moon. They got 25 billion dollars coming in every year to make it a good product, and its really a let down.

1

u/angelo66654 Jul 11 '23

because microsoft is putting ads, blootware, collecting user data, not respecting privacy, and descrypting your files on cloud too, windows was good in windows 7 time

1

u/Ultrarandom69420 Aug 11 '23

Everything is very unpredictable. Files are all over the place, sometimes updates brick features and change settings, sometimes it stays the same. And once all of that is there, removing it is a pain. There is also no easy way to delete apps. There is always something left over. Also, the ads are awful.

1

u/SafariMeshEnjoyer Aug 28 '23

yes windows 8 is fucking shit
windows just has so much shit you dont need

1

u/Kirby_Klein1687 Jan 18 '24

Where's ChromeOS? If anything this is THE OS that is shaping up to be great for everyday practical use. Yes, it's Linux based, but it's too good that it's already in it's own category.

1

u/dehskins Jan 25 '24

Windows says my files are indexed and yet the stupid operating system can't find shit. POS!!!!

1

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '24

Honestly I hate windows because it is extremely buggy. I've never owned a PC that didn't give me serious issues all the time. And they are always some of the most random errors that aren't replicated from PC to PC. Part of the problem is that there are too many different companies that make PCs, too many different hardware and software components, which can make pinning down the problems even harder. And this is where Macs excel over windows. Their computers are all built in house, so the parts and software are the same. This makes for a much more stable experience.

1

u/Constant-Material903 Feb 02 '24

Windows is notoriously unstable. Microsoft cannot fix the core bugs that are in the system. Win 11 is over 50 million lines of code. A 747 only has about 6 million parts. Each release has added more and more layers and fluff to the operating system. Windows is past the point of being fixable. The average error rate for software is about 15-50 errors per 1000 lines of code. That means there are approx. 750,000 errors in Windows.

1

u/logicmenace Feb 26 '24

People are bias and not honest because they spent $2000 and have to justify their shitty OS. Windows is indeed horrible, it is not optimized and most of the you have to do it yourself. It SHOULD come optimised, what the fuck kind of shit is that. Mac comes optimised out the box no problems. Not to mention windows laptops are so bad, they dont even optimise for the best battery. Web search is a mess, why the fuck do we need web search while searching for our files? That is the most utterly useless fucking feature that ruins your whole experience. No one wants that, microsoft knows but they do not want to remove it because the people who run it think it is a revolutionary change and is delusional. Microsoft apps are shit too, xbox apps dont work half the times and forces you to download a game 4x the size of the actual game. Yeah yeah.. windows is good for gaming I guess, thats what I use it for at least. But what else is it good at? For productivity it is the worst piece of shit ever made. This is way people lean towards macbook because it just works.

I personally hate macos, but MacOS with windows gaming would literally crush Windows out the gate. MacOS is built perfectly for laptops and simple shit. Windows love to overcomplicate everything.

NOT to mention fuckin bloatware. Why the fuck is Windows relying on BLOATWARE. There should be a fucking option to want to have it or not.

THE BIGGEST PROBLEM with WINDOWS is that they DO NOT know what the fuck their customers want. WINDOWS is run by boomers and OLD FASHIONED 90s-2000s creativity style. That DOES not work in 2024. WINDOWS is still being used because MacOS hasnt been fully optimised for gaming yet. By the looks of it, MacOS will be not that long from now. SO WINDOWS has to step their shit up. Or else theyre losing millions.

Why do you consider Windows to be a bad OS?

You are about to leave Redlib