Microsoft Windows, goodbye and good riddance to you

[Werne]

I am, or better said was, primarily a Windows user. The first computer I got had Win95, later as Microsoft continued to develop it I also got Win98, WinXP and Win7. I was always willing to tolerate it's problems but right now I'm just sick of the fact that every Windows version turns out to be a failure to me. It fails to meet my expectations and requirements, and I'm not that demanding. All I ever required and demanded was that something I pay 100$ actually functions correctly and that I can use it the way I want. Unfortunately, it seems I am a fool asking for the one thing that's never going to happen. :(

 

Anyway, I went through four different versions of Windows in ten years, I've also had a chance to use other versions like Win2000 and WinNT and I have to say, I was never satisfied with any of them. They are all broke, each in it's own way and as far as I can tell, there is no way to fix them. :confused:

 

Win95 often crashed my programs, no matter what I did to prevent that. Luckily, it was rather obsolete when I got my first comp so it was replaced soon by Win98 which would instead give me annoying error messages every half an hour and it really liked to show off it's BSOD screen. WinXP wasn't much different than 98 but a least errors and BSODs would happen less often. And then we come to Win7 which I have for a month now, it's UAC that gives me headaches, updates that break my PC every now and then and the fact that installing some programs or drivers tends to cause fatal system failures (it especially hates AMD drivers and DirectX). :rolleyes:

 

I tolerated that, all of it, because I was constantly thinking about how much I paid for that thing and how I should give it one more chance. Well, that was my thinking until today, no longer.

 

Windows screwed me over pretty bad this morning, Win7 forcibly restarted, without a warning, to install updates while I was doing something which cost me half an hour of work. I would've tolerated it, if the bloody thing actually wanted to boot after it finished updating. It updates, boots, fatal hardware failure BSOD on login, reboot in safe mode, BSOD on login, Insert CD and repair Windows, BSOD on login. I couldn't even start it to see what the problem is. After 5 hours of work I somehow managed to roll it back to before the update and let it update again, it worked fine this time.

 

For the love of god, it screwed itself up during updating. :blink: It's freakin' mind-blowing that one of the most expensive and most widely used operating systems can't even update itself correctly. :facepalm:

 

Then half the programs I have wouldn't even start so I had to repair it again, all my UI customizations are gone, all the settings I changed got reset, it's all gone. A month worth of customizing this thing to actually feel useful is gone, that's when I snapped. If I am to use something then I will use it the way I want it, not the way I'm forced to use it. If it doesn't work like that, it's not worth my time. :dry:

 

I mean yeah, the UI looks great and some things that got added over the years are really handy but if I have to suffer through another one of it's fatal errors I'll tear the hard drive out with a crowbar and an axe. Ten years of same problems over and over again for god's sake, what's enough is enough. :armscrossed:

 

 

 

So now I'm switching everything but my games to something I was always impressed with, Linux (to be more specific, Ubuntu). I'll still keep Windows around for now because of my games but I definitely won't use it for anything else. And by the end of this month I'll be switching to Linux completely and removing the Microsoft's spawn of satan called Windows forever. :biggrin:

 

Since I really like to write on this ancient keyboard, I'll write. So, first time I saw a Linux based OS I thought it's a piece of crap, it was Ubuntu 5.04 in 6th grade (my school was the first in Croatia to use a Linux based OS), it looked pretty complicated to use and rather limited compared to, at the time, much more dominant WinXP. But a week later I had a chance to use it myself and I was amazed by two things, it's speed and it's low RAM usage. It was also more handy than Windows when it comes to some things. I haven't been able to use it for a while since then so I completely forgot about it.

 

Three years later I started using it again, this time it was Ubuntu 7.04 in my first year of middle school. I went through many different versions as it got updated, each better than the previous. That thing was quite fast, even compared to 64-bit WinXP most other computers in the classroom had. I was told to work on it and after a while I really got used to Gnome shell environment and it's terminal-based commands. I also had a chance to test it's stability and it was nearly indestructible. Nearly. :whistling:

 

I still prefered Windows because it wasn't as limited but Ubuntu was something I really enjoyed using and customizing, it was almost limitless when it comes to customization. :smile:

 

But it got forgotten again due to the fact that internet had quite a few limitations around here until about 18 months ago, from low speed to having a 512MB max data limit and Linux wasn't the most popular OS so I couldn't get it anywhere. There was also the problem of me being sent to military training at the age of 16 so I couldn't use my computer much. :(

 

I got to see a few DELL laptops with Ubuntu though but those things were rare.

 

Anyway, since I have a lot less work to do lately and I got reminded of good old Ubuntu, I set up a WinXP/Ubuntu 12.04 dual-boot (it later became Win7/Ubuntu dual-boot) three months ago. Gotta say, it really changed as the years passed, the new UI is prettier, it has better support for Windows/Mac programs than 9.10 and and a much greater variety of customizations. It changed like wine, it got better as years passed. :thumbsup:

 

I managed to use it with no problems and customize it to a far greater extent in 3 months than I've ever been able to modify Windows in the past 10 years. It took me a bit to get used to the new UI but it became pretty darn simple after an hour or two. And I already knew a lot about it so using it again is not a problem at all.

 

 

 

I always used Windows because I constantly got forced to use it throughout my life, by school for a time and later by the programs I used. Now that I look back it's not such a great thing after all, it's good for those who like to play games that depend on it and people who prefer simplicity but that simplicity comes at a cost of stability, at least for me.

 

I know Linux has it's problems as well, I'm not stupid. It's just that those problems for me are far less severe, far less common and they're also far easier to solve because of the way this thing works. And hell, it's a free OS, I didn't pay anything for it so if it starts bugging out on me I'll just get rid of it and get a new one without regretting a thing. There's plenty of other free flavors of Linux to choose from as well. :happy:

 

And yeah, I know plenty of you use and praise Windows but I've lost all faith in it over the years I've been using it, it's just not good enough for me and I doubt it will ever be. I might even try getting Debian GNU instead of it, I've seen it once or twice but I never got to actually try it out, it uses gnome shell if I recall correctly so it should be simple to use.

 

And that's it, I'm done writing. This whole thread is just my thinking and a huge rant. You can like it or not, I don't care. If you want, feel free to voice your opinion on what I said, it's always good to hear what others think to get a better perspective on things. :yes:

Edited March 1, 2013 by Werne

[Dragoncete68]

Well Mr Werne, one thing I can tell you for sure, I don't update my Windows 7. As soon as I noticed Windows was dowloading patches EVERY DAY I aborted that, and it's been 3 years without problems.

And though I'm not gonna replace it with Ubuntu, it's good to know we'll always have a FREE alternative.

What I use a lot is programs that come from the Linux environment, as Firefox, VLC, OpenOffice an so...

Congratulations for your bravery.

[hoofhearted4]

I haven't had a reason to switch from windows yet but I do wanna start using Linux just cause I'm in school to be an IT and we've used it a bit. I just really don't want to have to reboot into windows every time I wanna play a game

[Erik005]

I have never had a blue screen on windows 7 and I haven't seen one on windows 8 yet.

 

So I'm sticking with windows for now

 

Also it doesn't download updates every day, so please don't spread lies.

 

I've noticed most problems with windows are caused by oem's pre installing bloat-ware. And I'm afraid that a dell or acer Linux computer will have the same bloat-ware

[Vagrant0]

I have never had a blue screen on windows 7 and I haven't seen one on windows 8 yet.

 

So I'm sticking with windows for now

 

Also it doesn't download updates every day, so please don't spread lies.

 

I've noticed most problems with windows are caused by oem's pre installing bloat-ware. And I'm afraid that a dell or acer Linux computer will have the same bloat-ware

I managed to bluescreen my Windows 7 once so far in about 3 years of usage. It only happened because I was running several memory-poor applications at once. So yeah, it can happen.

 

As for updates. I don't know how frequent they are since I have my automatic updates turned off, but between Windows, Java, Adobe Acrobat, Flash, and a few other programs I could certainly see how one could be prompted or forced to update on a daily basis if you have automatic updates turned on. But that is entirely why I don't have automatic updates, much less most "scheduled" processes. The reason being that it doesn't matter what sort of schedule you have, you usually always get inconvenienced by it (even in an office situation where everyone goes home at 5pm, you still have those cases of people having to work through the night/weekends to meet deadlines). So this is something I always turn off as a rule, and instead make it a point to run it every now and then just to patch any of those serious exploits that occasionally pop up.

 

However I will probably also go to Linux instead of Windows 8, just because I have not seen anything I like in Windows 8. The saying "don't fix it if it ain't broken" is one that clearly never gets spoken around Microsoft. If I wanted a computer that had a smartphone UI, I would just use a smartphone.

[Werne]

@Dragoncete68 Yeah, that thing updates nearly every day, it's been getting on my nerves, so did that pop-up that jumps out of nowhere when I disable auto-update. I got Win7 just because XP was going belly-up for the millionth time so I decided it's time for an upgrade. Thought the new one will work better, boy was I wrong. :(

 

And plenty of free alternatives exist, from Chromium OS and Jolicloud that are designed for notebooks and surfing to real operating systems for desktop PCs (mostly Linux-based) like Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Zorin, PC-BSD, Linux Mint, etc. You won't get the same level of compatibility as with Windows or Mac, that much is certain. If you know what you're doing you can get many things to work perfectly in a Linux based OS. It's complicated though and doesn't support everthing which turns people away. But since most of them are free, trying them out before you pay a 100$ for Windows is worth a shot in my opinion. :thumbsup:

 

Hah, I remember OpenOffice though it was called StarOffice back when I used it in middle school, had to make presentations and stuff like that in it. It's included in Ubuntu but it's now called LibreOffice. Don't really get why they changed the name so many times, it's still the same thing. VLC and Firefox are two things I can't live without, Firefox comes with Ubuntu and I got VLC through the Software Center immediately.

 

I don't get why I'm brave though, plenty of people use Ubuntu. :huh: You can even buy Dell and ASUS laptops/desktops with Ubuntu pre-installed on them.

 

@hoofhearted4 Rebooting every time you want to do something is a nuisance, I agree with that. That's why I got Wine and PlayOnLinux, they do a pretty good job when it comes to installing/using programs and games. They don't support everything though (for example, Wine only has DX9 and DX10, no DX11 support) and if you want to install a windows game through steam, you're gonna have to go through some complications. :confused:

 

But it fits my needs, I got Blender with nif support and Photoshop CS3 (the most important things), Fallout 3 with FOSE, FOMM, GECK and FO3Edit, even had Skyrim for a while just to see if I can make it work, it did work quite well. It all works just fine, had no problems what so ever. :happy:

 

@Erik005 I had BSODs on every computer and every Windows I had, not to mention errors, updates that break everything, drivers that don't work, etc. I guess it all depends, someone may have it work perfect and someone else can have problems with it.

 

And it does update every day for me, one time it updated 3 times in one day. And once it started installing 250 updates, took all night to finish.

 

About bloatware, I didn't have pre-installed Windows, I installed it myself. I've seen pre-installed ones and they do tend to have a lot of useless stuff I wouldn't want on my PC. I'm pretty sure Dell/ACER Linux comps have plenty of bloatware too, luckily it can be uninstalled easily through Software Center and then removed completely by booting it in recovery mode and starting package repair which removes all unused packages. I removed half the stuff that comes pre-installed on Ubuntu that way, it's just useless.

 

@Vargant0 I had auto-updates on because I sometimes don't use my PC in a few days, even weeks, so when I turn it on there's lots of stuff that needs to get updated. That's the only reason I keep them on, I don't need to update 20 programs manually that way.

 

And I have the same opinion of Win8, so far I haven't seen one useful thing in Win8 and I hate the way it's laid out. It's poorly implemented smartphone UI is a failure in my opinion, no start button is just wrong and the integrated Windows Defender is useless. Besides, I always get Avast anyway.

 

And god, that apps "start menu" that pops up every time you turn it on. :rolleyes: I hate apps, I hate Win7's gadgets and I hate apps, I don't need them nor do I want them.

 

When I used it, all I kept wondering is who is the genious who came up with that concept, it looks unprofessional to me and that puts me off. I definately won't be geting it ever, unless it grows a normal start menu and starts looking like a computer OS not a smartphone. :dry:

Edited March 2, 2013 by Werne