Fuck Windows and Microsoft really. Today I had a meeting call through Teams first thing in the morning so I start my computer 10 minutes earlier than the call because it takes a like 3 or 4 minutes to boot and for Windows to be responsive. Windows decides to apply some past update so it takes 2 or 3 additional minutes which is fine, I am just in time for the meeting call. Well, 10 minutes into the call a notification in windows appears that the computer will restart in 5 minutes and with no option to postpone WTF. Imagine this was an important sales call, an emergency or something else critical, I might be fucked. The computer restarted I started my linux personal computer and I connect my bluetooth headphones to the it but no, they were connected to the Windows computer while it was restarting so I could not just call from it as the microphone started failing a few weeks ago. (I will just replace it, thanks Framework). So fuck my company for using Windows. Fuck Windows for developing such a nightmare OS with so shitty code. This was for sure a patch for a critical vulnerability, like always. And WTF this is Windows for a business, have a fucking super stable branch that does not need patches every other day. I don’t care about your updates to the shitty weather widget, just have a fucking working operating system that let’s me do my work. Fuck Microsoft monopolistic practices that keeps people and businesses from switching to Linux. There is no better publicity for Linux that Windows itself. Most Linux/GNU distros just let you choose when to update.
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my boss told me today if we moved to literally any non-microsoft platform or software, i’d be out of a job.
and he’s right. most of us only have careers because microsoft can’t push out a software that’s more than barebone functional - and everyone use them even if there are far superior alternatives out there literally only because of familiarity.
i’m not planning to stop giving microsoft shit of course. they should be criminally prosecuted over their exchange service even and how it’s blacklisting competitors to force businesses onto the platform a la microsoft classic tactics. but eh.
Windows also used to show me the ugly face of Trump in the start menu even if I didn’t ask for it. That was more than 4 years ago. Recently was accidentally hovering over some ‘copilot’ button in Edge of a friend. And again - pop-up with Trump. So yes: fuck Windows, fuck Microsoft
I’m assuming the windows machine is a work PC and the Linux is yours right?
Because what you describe doesn’t sound like a “windows” issue but rather an IT management issue.
You can put off updates and reboots a very long time. And always be able yo postpone them.
Applying updates on boot daily sounds dumb to me. But I’m also figuring your IT dept has poor (or no) sense in managing their inventory well. Most updates can be applied silently at a scheduled time.
Also, your machine sounds old and/or poorly maintained the way you describe it. If its more than 5 years old your company is just cheap.
I’m all for griping about Windows but this seems off to me.
I recently had a spare machine sitting around doing nothing and was feeling a bit masochistic, so I decided to install Windows 11 on it just to see what it was like. I’ve used Windows 10 a tiny bit but essentially haven’t touched Windows in years. A couple of the fun things I noticed:
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After installing, I was going to set a new wallpaper. I double-clicked on a jpeg file and instead of opening it, it popped up with a window asking me what I wanted to do with this apparently unknown file type. I literally said out loud, “what do you mean, it’s a fucking jpeg.” Then it did the same thing for a .zip.
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I also made a restore point once I had all the basics installed, so I could roll back when Windows inevitably fucked up doing an update. I then did the first big update and it fucked it up. “No worries” I thought, “I made a restore point!” I went to restore it, and discovered that for some unknown reason Windows only saves one restore point. This wouldn’t have been a problem, except that Windows had decided to fuck itself up, and then automatically overwrite the manual save point with it’s own save point from immediately after it fucked itself up, leaving that as the only thing to restore to.
I then quite sensibly formatted the drive and went back to using Linux.
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I agree.
I find the Teams app works great on Ubuntu. The Microsoft apps work OK in browser, until you have a lot of collaborators.
I rarely need to switch to windows, so when I do switch I expect to spend an hour doing updates.
Our work is the opposite. As soon as a new machine arrives we go straight to BIOS at boot, switch the settings and install Linux immediately. Windows never sees the light of day. I do feel for you as we do do sales calls and in the middle of sales calls the people that we are calling have their computers reboot on them, do an update, or I’ve just got to restart and on restart it does an update and huge amounts of time are wasted on those people.
Windows probably costs the world millions a day in wasted, for time for shit like that.
How do you manage your fleet? How big is your network?
I‘d love to push for Linux at work, but have yet to see a solution with similar management capabilities than a Windows domain. And I don’t want to manage individual clients, as sysadmin I want to push templates like GPOs and the like.
Can see it work for smaller environments, but not in a company with a couple hundred machines.
I work in a higher ed org that uses a mix of (mostly) Red Hat servers and Windows & Mac endpoints; the Linux-focused admins use Ansible for things I’d do with either GPOs (if it’s something tried & true) or Intune (if it’s some half-baked newness and campus IT would actually give my group the permissions) in Windows.
Oh, Ansible is an interesting starting point. Would not thought of it for that purpose, I always „only“ link it mentally to automated deployment.
Will look into it out of curiosity.
I’m no Windows fanboy but I have to use it quite a lot, at home and at work. I don’t know what versions or settings you guys have set up but I’ve never had a Windows update I can’t postpone, ever.
In corporate managed fleet of PCs updates are pushed by the company internal management systems. Some companies give you a 24hours option, some others (ahem, power tripping sysadmins, I know, I was one) say “fuck you and your work, you install when I say so”. It’s not strictly a Windows thing, it’s a company policy.
because it takes a like 3 or 4 minutes to boot
What kind of PC is this? Does it have an SSD?
My one year old Dell Latitude with a fast SSD needs about 8 minutes every morning to boot windows and start all that security crap that company IT has put on there.
