My latest at ZDNET:
"No one running a so-called Home edition of Windows should be forced to manually edit the registry or run PowerShell scripts to manage updates or turn off features they don't want to use. Those users shouldn't have their files moved to OneDrive without their informed consent. If they choose an alternative browser or search engine, that choice should be respected."
@edbott no one should be using Windows at all. Win11 is unusable spaghetti-code spyware that barely functions and support for Win10 ended last October. If anyone is struggling switching to Linux, ask for help. We’re not all elitists. Join us. You can do it.
@andrew ok, sure, thanks
@edbott sir, having read your post, I agree with all your points, but as you said, someone at Microsoft has to own the consumer experience. I don’t think there’s anyone willing, or that vacancy is deliberate. Your article makes the case for desktop Linux perfectly, and you probably won’t find many fans of Microsoft in “the fediverse.” Many of us out here advocate for terminating that abusive relationship altogether. 😅
Great article though. Thanks for sharing.
@edbott Good article and accurate from my POV. As a corporation IT person in a “Microsoft shop” with, checks logs… 62001 devices whose OS platform name starts with “Windows”, I can professionally state that managing so many devices would be far more ridiculous than it currently is without the tools provided by Microsoft. And overall support costs for Windows 11 are less than any other Windows version and I’ve been around since MS-DOS.
But personally my breaking point wasn’t Copilot. It was Recall. While I look forward to implementing it in the corporation, it’s an unmitigated disaster for a private consumer IMO. If there is one thing my latest IT job has proven to me, it’s that nothing can be made 100% invulnerable. Also, it’s just damn creepy.
So after a lifetime of Windows literally from 3.0 to 11, I am now a Fedora user for my personal computing. I have no more NTFS partitions to give. And while I wish the company would let me use Fedora for work (while I insist all those outside my current team remain on Windows) I am content to use Windows myself.
And so long as I do, I will continue to enjoy your insights. Thank you for all the years Mr. Bott. (I’ve always been a bit envious of that name TBH. It’s just sort of perfect for the topic.)
@edbott
Yep, don't want to deal with any of the mess that is included with Windows 11, which is why this former Microsoft MVP is gradually migrating all of my personal Windows computers, with related Microsoft stuff, to #Linux and #opensource apps.
It's a real shame since I have so much time invested in Microsoft, but I don't want to fall victim to the sunk costs fallacy in my current and future technology decisions.
Yeah i resorted to PowerShell scripts to clean it up some. But after that i realized that could be undone next update and that Bitlocker is in no way privacy protecting if it is owned by M$. So i started dabbling with VeraCrypt and things got so hairy i resorted to Fedora Workstation.
Which runs fine, even got a lot of windows games running with it.
Thank you Fedora, Gnome and Proton for making this possible, even streaming 48Khz sound works just fine.
Read the article and have a couple reactions.
Ironically, the core features of Windows work better than ever, for the most part.
Then why does file explorer take so long to open?! And notepad's speed is destroyed when Copilot is on!
The OneDrive Backup feature gets turned on without informed consent from customers, and it's way too difficult to undo those changes.
Major problem yes, but also it's not obvious how you should handle files that should not be backed up in the first place!
I am a developer, which means I have a good chunk of files that:
Any properly configured backup solution would completely ignore these so I can reliably work in peace.
@Epic_Null @edbott If you must run Windows 11, run Pro, use a local account, and run both Windows10Debloater.ps1 and the Windows 11 debloat.
If tools like file explorer and notepad are slow, it is because they have external dependencies. Running local account avoids most of that. I do not have a Microsoft account.
@mike805 @Epic_Null ugh no this is terrible dumb advice
@edbott @Epic_Null How so? Because Windows 11 still kinda sucks?
Just got a Linux Thinkpad for BF. I have to deal with Win11 at work and that's enough for me.
@Epic_Null On all of my Windows 11 PCs, even the one or two that are old and slow, File Explorer opens right up. In milliseconds. I hear this complaint from others and have no idea what the root cause is.
Did you read the Onwdrive Backup article? This feature doesn’t mean your files leave your local PC unless you specifically request they be “online only.”
@edbott
I have not yet read the article(TM) but...
just had a call from someone unable to change their timezone from being off by 2 hours because the default was California (I went to elevated Terminal to change it -- because Admin had no rights in Settings or Control Panel -- after they told me that the "Thinking" answer from AI told them to go to their Home Edition's SECPOL.MSC 🙄
* AI had been told it was just one retail, home computer with user admin rights, and not corporate-managed
On all of my Windows 11 PCs, even the one or two that are old and slow, File Explorer opens right up. In milliseconds. I hear this complaint from others and have no idea what the root cause is.
I do not know what to tell you. On some of the computers I work with, I can literally sigh and ask aloud why File Explorer is taking so long to load before it loads.
This feature doesn’t mean your files leave your local PC unless you specifically request they be “online only.”
Even if I trusted that, I don't want the git repository, the repository's state, and the build results for every incremental change and build all backed up to the nebulus coud. ESPECIALLY during times when I have plaintext passwords in there.
(Why would I have plaintext passwords? Maybe because I am developing something that uses a remote resource?)
@Epic_Null you can choose which folders to back up. And indeed all you have to do is store them outside the Documents folder to ensure they are not backed up. That’s not the issue.
I’m going to look into the File Explorer thing some more. It might be related to network configurations, especially NAS hardware. And also maybe addins or utilities. Any details about your configuration that might be relevant?
As someone who has taught Windows since 2002, pretty much everything is slower.
File Explorer and file/folder properties both take at least 3 seconds to open, and often another 2 or 3 to be responsive. Win-R is laggy and Powershell auto-complete makes me wonder if my connection dropped.
This is despite running on boxes with 8-16 times the resources, backed by SSD instead of 5200 rpm rust.
I've taught Windows for at least a decade longer than you, if we want to go down that road. (j/k)
I have seven physical machines and more than a dozen virtual machines here and none of them display this behavior. I am not disputing your account. I am saying that there is probably a third-party root cause for those issues.
@edbott None I can disclose. I did, however, try to go outside of documents and create a folder called Code.
Guess what I found it doing.
Hint: it does not match your expectations.
@Epic_Null if you created a folder outside of the OneDrive folder and it was not in one of the three known folders (Documents, Pictures, Desktop), it does not get synced to the cloud.
