Researcher finds a way to invisibly reverse Windows updates

every few months more Linux enjoyers are minted.

They all deny deny deny until microshit done something that triggered them, next thing you know they are posting about which distro is good for their use cases.

it is a rather slow process, but we are going the right way.

fuck mega corps.

How Mega are IBM (Red Hat) and Canonical (Ubuntu) these days?
- too big but that doesnt invalidate using linux instead of Windows
  
  That was my point - there's commercial support for those who require it and community distros for those who don't. Personally my daily driver is Arch with a Cinnamon desktop.
  
  I use Arch, btw
  
  Personally my daily driver is Arch
  Yes

Windows bad. Microsoft bad.

Does that satisfy the group think here on Lemmy?

I suspect you lack value of software freedom.
- Incorrect. I just think there is a lot more nuance to be considered rather than constantly beating people over the head with "just install Linux".
  
  Nuance is the friend of truth. Still, I would argue that's limited to a transition period away from proprietary software to some free software alternative (Linux is just one good answer).
- I literally cannot use Linux at the moment due to incompatible software, as much as I love Linux and use it on every other computer I own.
  These posts about Windows and other mainstream platforms are helpful or interesting for some of us, I wish people on Lemmy would stop shooting them down just because they don't like Windows/Micro$oft.
  
  I think many of them don't even know how to use Windows.
  I don't see most of these problems using Windows Pro - it affects Home versions. There's a reason I make my family pay for a Pro license.
  
  I am biased but being unable to use Windows probably says a lot more about the OS than the Linux users.
  
  Seeing people in toxic relationship with their computing can be frustrating. I can't blame others for expressing themselves in response by either beating a dead horse, poking a sensitive spot for schadenfreude, or circlejerking.
- Ah, yes, the insult retort.
  I'm convinced, let's packup and go home boys, we don been told.
  Please allow me to retort: You have no idea what it means to manage even an SMB, let alone an Enterprise with thousands of machines.
  Tell me, Sir Open Source, what CAD options are there in the OSS world that competes with Catia or Autodesk and their management servers?
  Show me a cost analysis for a 10 user SMB to switch them from Windows to Linux, and the ROI before they return to running in the black. Don't forget to include the lost productivity and the retraining costs.
  Now, how about a Linux box that can run CNC hardware... I'll wait.
  
  No insult was intended.
  I have no expectation to convince anyone of anything, no matter how I try to go about it.
  Not "open source" but software freedom. It's open source but with a moral component.
  Indeed I have no idea about that and, if you care about that, perhaps someone else can help you with specifics.

We're on Lemmy so literally everyone is reminded non stop by you dogmatic weirdo's.

How do you know someone is a Linux zealot?
Don't worry, they'll tell you.
- I think the long stripey socks?
Yeah it is turning into echo chamber lol
Every here who was going to be converted likely already switched, we need some fresh blood. Did reddit just botch something? looks like we got a new wave last few days.

There has to be a windows-looking flavor of Linux, right?

I know ElementaryOS looks like Mac.

Linux Mint is what you're looking for.
- Or you are free to install the Cinnamon desktop on any other distro.
- Does it have Clippy
  
  Just throw this in an Electron app or something https://github.com/pi0/clippyjs
try linux mint!
It's Mint for real. Mature, no-nonsense, get out of your way so you can get shit done on your terms OS.
Zorin OS is going for the Windows look
I prefer mine to not look like Windows.
- I’ve never understood why you’d want it to. Windows has like six design languages mashed together.
zorin emulates the look and feel of windows and is an out of the box that comes with a lot of preinstalled software including play on linux that allows for easier running of windows software.
cinnamon, lxde, kde, and mate are all desktop environments that mimic the basics of windows ui like the taskbar, start menu, and windows with minimize, maximize, and exit buttons at the top. and all can be installed/selected during install on pretty much every popular distro. there's prolly some others i've forgotten but those are all solid choices.
edit: whoops had mint listed but that's not a de that's a distro
Do you just want open-source Windows? There’s always ReactOS.
Zorin. But, tbh, imitators won't offer the most streamlined, seamless experience out there nowadays. If you like the most authentic Linux experience while staying on the user friendly side I'd say go with Gnome. There's KDE too, for an experience like older windows (eg. Win 7) and that's pretty authentic as well, just not my cup of tea. Try them out and decide for yourself!

I'd ask how you suddenly converted the majority of workplace PCs and software to run on something other than Windows.

Done. It's all in the browser already.
- Hahahaha, right, right.

Sadly, the certificate program I'm doing requires either Mac or Windows. I'm considering picking up an old Macbook Air for it just to not deal with Windows bullshit, but I already have a second SSD in my computer with Windows, whereas a sufficiently powerful MacBook would be around $200 used unless I can find one from Free Geek for a bit less.

Yawn, right, right.

CAD would like a word.

As would all the automation built to export/import excel sheets.

I can go on and on, even for a home user.

Matter of fact, I will:

My standard response to "just go Linux" :

I keep having to say this, as much as I like Linux for certain things, as a desktop it's still no competition to Windows, even with this awful shit going on.

As some background - I wrote my first Fortran program on a Sperry Rand Univac (punched cards) in about 1985. Cobol was immediately after Fortran (wish I'd stuck with Cobol).

I had my first UNIX class in about 1990.

I run a Mint laptop (for the hell of it, and I do mean hell) . Power management is a joke. Configured as best as possible, walked in the other day and it was dead - as in battery at zero, won't even boot.

Windows would never do this, no, Windows can never do this. It is incapable of running a battery to zero, it'll shutoff before then to protect the battery. To really kill it you have to boot to BIOS and let it sit, Windows will not let a battery get to zero.

There no way even possible via the Mint GUI to config power management for things like low/critical battery conditions /actions. None, nada, zip, not at all. Command line only, in the twenty-furst century, something Windows has had since I don't recall, 95 I think (I was carrying a laptop then, and I believe it had hibernate, sorry, it's been what, almost thirty years now).

There are many reasons why Linux doesn't compete with Windows on the desktop - this is just one glaring one.

Now let's look at Office. Open an Excel spreadsheet with tables in any app other than excel. Tables are something that's just a given in excel, takes 10 seconds to setup, and you get automatic sorting and filtering, with near-zero effort. The devs of open office refuse to support tables, saying "you should manage data in a proper database app". While I don't disagree with the sentiment, no, I'm not setting up a DB in an open-source competitor to Access. That's just too much effort for simple sorting and filtering tasks, and isn't realistically shareable with other people. I do this several times a day in excel.

Now there's that print monitor that's on by default, and can only be shut up by using a command line. Wtf? Again, in the 21st century?

Networking... Yea, samba works, but how do you clear creds you used one time to connect to a share, even though you didn't say "save creds"? Oh, yea, command line again or go download an app to clear them for for you. In the 21st century?

Oh, you have a wireless Logitech mouse? Linux won't even recognize it. You have to search for a solution and go find a third-party download that makes it work. My brand new wireless mouse works on any version of Windows since Win2k (at the least) and would probably work on Win95.

Someone else said it better than me:

Every time I've installed Linux as my main OS (many, many times since I was younger), it gets to an eventual point where every single thing I want to do requires googling around to figure out problems. While it's gotten much better, I always ended up reinstalling Windows or using my work Mac. Like one day I turn it on and the monitor doesn't look right. So I installed twenty things, run some arbitrary collection of commands, and it works.... only it doesn't save my preferences.
So then I need to dig into .bashrc or .bash_profile (is bashrc even running? Hey let me investigate that first for 45 minutes) and get the command to run automatically.. but that doesn't work, so now I can't boot.. so I have to research (on my phone now, since the machine deathscreens me once the OS tries to load) how to fix that... then I am writing config lines for my specific monitor so it can access the native resolution... wait, does the config delimit by spaces, or by tabs?? anyway, it's been four hours, it's 3:00am and I'm like Bryan Cranston in that clip from Malcolm in the Middle where he has a car engine up in the air all because he tried to change a lightbulb.
And then I get a new monitor, and it happens all damn over again. Oh shit, I got a new mouse too, and the drivers aren't supported - great! I finally made it to Friday night and now that I have 12 minutes away from my insane 16 month old, I can't wait to search for some drivers so I can get the cursor acceleration disabled. Or enabled. Or configured? What was I even trying to do again? What led me to this?
I just can't do it anymore. People who understand it more than I will downvote and call me an idiot, but you can all kiss my ass because I refuse to do the computing equivalent of building a radio out of coconuts on a deserted island of ancient Linux forum posts because I want to have Spotify open on startup EVERY time and not just one time. I have tried to get into Linux as a main dev environment since 1997 and I've loved/liked/loathed it, in that order, every single time.
I respect the shit out of the many people who are far, far smarter than me who a) built this stuff, and 2) spend their free time making Windows/Mac stuff work on a Linux environment, but the part of me who liked to experiment with Linux has been shot and killed and left to rot in a ditch along the interstate.

Now I love Linux for my services: Proxmox, UnRAID, TrueNAS, containers for Syncthing, PiHole, Owncloud/NextCloud, CasaOS/Yuno, etc, etc. I even run a few Windows VM's on Linux (Proxmox) because that's better than running Linux VM's of a Windows server.

Linux is brilliant for this stuff. Just not brilliant for a desktop, let alone in a business environment.

Linux doesn't even use a common shell (which is a good thing in it's own way), and that's a massive barrier for users.

If it were 40 years ago, maybe Linux would've had a chance to beat MS, even then it would've required settling on a single GUI (which is arguably half of why Windows became a standard, the other half being a common API), a common build (so the same tools/utilities are always available), and a commitment to put usability for the inexperienced user first.

These are what MS did in the 1980's to make Windows attractive to the 3 groups who contend with desktops: developers, business management, end users.

All this without considering the systems management requirements of even an SMB with perhaps a dozen users (let alone an enterprise with tens of thousands).

Nobody is going to debate you on this. They just peddle Linux and almost literally tell you to go fuck yourself if you run into all the inevitable issues "just Google it".
They just cannot accept that their precious OS isn't even remotely viable for the vast majority of people.
I have sortof the opposite reaction as you. Like if I know what I want to do why am I clicking through GUIs hunting for stuff? Why would I want things that aren't scriptable? It is the 21st Century, software components should work with my existing setups.
I also remember you from the last time you posted that little anecdote.
Like one day I turn it on and the monitor doesn't look right. So I installed twenty things, run some arbitrary collection of commands, and it works.... only it doesn't save my preferences.
Surely blindly installing 20 things and running whatever commands you can find doesn't fix a Windows problem either? No wonder they're constantly needing to wipe out the install and try again. I don't think they said anything better than you, they have a child and don't want to spend any time learning Linux.
- 😄I have a child and installed Linux to grow him with a proper free open OS 👌🏻
  
  Otherwise DOS got an open release lately, and then find him some Zork, Umoria and Keen :)
  Get him started on Lotus for homework as well
  
  I really do not like DOS…
I'm not saying right, or wrong, but wouldn't known battery issues be the domain of the manufacturers? Sincerely strange that there has been no standard set up seeing as his so much of the foundation of the Internet depends on Linux machines. Did no manufacturer consider this? Seriously? Not trying to fight, but if dead battery truly is an issue... Seems odd.