Maybe I'm wrong, but I was certain something like this already exists?
https://christitus.com/windows-tool/
It has worked well for me on a gaming system that does not contain sensitive data, check it out.
>Doing things manually by recipe is also less than optimal.
>The ideal, therefore, is an automated Windows detoxifier
I've already seen it baked in for a few years now for specialized uses.
There are scientific instruments which require very specialized software from the manufacturer, Windows-only naturally, and to use the latest software you need a post-2022 OS version now.
The most recently-purchased are on Windows 10, set up by the "experts", and run like dogs compared to the 20-year-old instruments still using Windows XP.
The same app version on W11 is very noticeably worse and I've been working on it in preparation for migration.
For XP Pro there was a couple documentation pages of manual settings to Windows that you were expected to follow which increased Windows performance, before installing the major lab app.
Now there are quite a few pages to the manual checklist beforehand, and then during install a factory autoscript tweaks away and stuffs in some dependencies for about a half hour before the package finally begins to install. Afterward alerting you if any recognized beneficial manual changes are still recommended. Not only Pro, but Enterprise and LTSC are supported now but they are not so great either.
Arf arf, it still wants to make you howl :(
There are dozens more settings that need to be identified and experimented with, fortunately it's a 24/7 lab and this started as soon as W11 was released.
Anyway, Windows has gotten to the point where I can make plenty as a consultant just visiting labs and recovering untapped workflow from the electronics. Which never would have paid off even a few years ago. I don't even need to automate. Manual is just fine. As things progress it's likely to pay better than being a referee witness or calibrating the instruments against NIST-traceable materials too.
Decades ago I wrote thousands of LOC before they had very advanced software like this, now I still write pages of text but it's all "scripts". And not mainly the code kind, more like a screenplay where I'm the actor following the script my own self with a number of one-liners :\
Reproducible results require a reproducible environment so it's worth it.
Today the instrument manufacturer's offerings are very advanced, you need their current app version to support the newest instruments, but the app also does still support a number of 20-year old models. Basically new software has shipped with updated factory device drivers for the old (expensive) lab hardware to keep it running with later Windows versions.
I have one of those on the bench that is highly reliable for years on XP, that way it uses up less than 1 GB of memory and only 1.2 GB of drive space for Windows, plus another 1.4 GB of 2006 instrument software and it runs like a top.
The new software on W11 can get the same instrument to analyze the chemical in the same amount of bench time and get the same result from the same calibration. This is impressive but anything less would always be complete failure. The instrument factory engineers have gone the extra mile with their built-in auto-tweaking script too. Too bad nothing less would do. But all interactions with the combined system are still like you've got a Chihuahua in a Greyhound race compared to XP. And Windows 11 does it with Enterprise "only" taking up about 10 GB, and then the lab app takes another 15 GB on the drive, plus you've got to have at least 8 GB of memory.
Or approximately 10x the PC resources to do a noticeably poorer job of accomplishing a comparable thing using the exact same instrument. Or if you are not prepared to give the workflow a complete workover, a much worse performance when it comes to what you can get done on the same analyzer in one day.
Although everybody should have a chance to get their hands on XP when it's mainlining SSDeroids on the bare metal :)
I'm an old man now. They moved my cheese. How dare they.
Also they put more tracking crap on the OS that I don't want.
For business users I'd say the biggest thing is Active Directory - being able to manage and micro-manage a fleet of hundreds or thousands of PCs by a small team is highly desirable.
Also QuickBooks (online does not come close to replacing desktop enterprise) & CAD, in my experience.
The application is cumbersome enough as a native app I can't even imagine if the whole thing were ported to run on JS.
People have said this before, but how much frustration does it cause when microsoft moves a default ribbon around? Try moving those people to a program with different icons. Yikes. Now do it across a giant organization and try to justify the resulting performance hit to a board.
This isn't even getting into all of the arcane business logic that keeps processes moving built on excel sheets, fucking macros and who knows what else. Sure, most of it works fine but when it doesn't and people don't know how, why or where...
Legacy software for me.
Catia only works on Windows.
For example, QuickBooks may run just fine with Wine (not sure, haven't checked), but it would forfeit your ability to access QuickBooks Support personnel. For businesses without a dedicated IT department (or just a small one), this may be a deal breaker.
The other wrench is that we arent just using Catia, we are using Visual Studio and communicating via COM to make macros, Visual Studio is nice because it has an integrated COM debugger.
I got another... I need to run a Catia license server too.
Just to clarify, Fedora is the greatest OS of all time. I would love to use it 100% of the time. Windows is utter trash in comparison.
I also had bad luck with drivers and bluetooth/audio issues the last time I tried to switch. That might have been just that particular Ubuntu release though.
I might try it sometime soon again, especially if Microsoft annoys me with Windows 11 again.
The main thing is - if you are in the microsoft ecosystem enough to be seriously using AD - you use AD. Microsoft IT is its own world.
You can replicate a lot of it in *nix but I've never seen anything as cohesive as a windows domain controller.
I think the only windows services I 100% would give a thumbs down to is websites (I do not like IIS) and print management.
All I'd say is it's pretty easy and more or less "just works" these days. I remember fighting over basic stuff like second monitors, but for the most part, all the issues relating to Linux itself are solved. A DE like Gnome is simple, clean and easy to use. Gaming totally works thanks to Steam.
The only hurdle is if you absolutely need a full Office or Adobe install. For most of us, that comes with our work machines. For me, Linux is perfect for my personal rig.
Wouldn't dream of going back.
`theregister.com` appears to be the same with most of the screen space when navigating this site covered in ads.
Don't believe Microsoft's "marketing" about LTSC that it won't work for a general purpose OS. I use this for my gaming PC and it is fantastic.
No need for any sort of debloat script that is doing untested things, LTSC is a working version of Windows.
It's infuriating, I would happily pay for a real licence for this, and MS makes it basically impossible to do so.
That being said, check out the WindowsLTSC subreddit. All the information on how to get it is there.
You don't need any sort of crack make it work and don't need to go anywhere shady to get the ISO. And if you are concerned from an ethical standpoint, buy a normal Windows license and just install LTSC instead.
- If you're looking to do this 100% to the letter, then you'll need to enter some form of VL agreement with an authorized reseller. This will come with a minimum purchase of 5 licenses.
- If you're looking to do this with a "real" key, but not by the book, then one of the gray market sites.
- If you're looking to do this morally (by paying Microsoft), but don't care if the actual activation is completed with the license you purchase, then purchase a Windows 11 Pro license but use https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts/ to activate your Windows 11 LTSC. The ISO itself can still be sourced from Microsoft.
- If you don't care about any of this, then the same as the above except don't buy the Windows 11 Pro License
- If you absolutely want to buy a single license "by the book"... there is no official offering available.
- You can download the eval ISO from Windows and add in the ~couple MB of additional XML files to be able to change the eval ISO to a version of the installer with the full SKU. The specific files will change per version. There were also some variations for doing this post-install for Windows 10 LTSC but I'm not sure if anyone has bothered for Windows 11 LTSC.
- You can download the full ISO from somewhere else (so you don't have to add anything). E.g. the massgrave links.
- Of course, if you have access to the VLSC for other reasons you can just download through the portal.
Practically, I see the first option as a waste tbh because Microsoft publishes the SHA256 hashes of the ISOs anyways. massgrave most likely rehosts the full ISOs because it is both easier to work with and easier to validate. #3 is nice, but not applicable to most folks. If sourcing the ISO from Microsoft sounds like too much work I don't think you lose much (if anything) by sourcing it elsewhere instead.
Edit: oh no, the Microsoft employees found me.
That said, there are sites with legitimate content (uploaders are known and trusted and so forth).
While it is not "legitimate", it is also not hard at all to do if you already know how to take an ISO and install Windows in the first place. It doesnt require any cracks or torrents.
Visit the mass graves.
I am running it on 3 different gaming devices and have had zero issues with it, and I have it installed on my partner's gaming PC and he also has not had any issues with it.
also a "decade" I am not sure is true, the current version is 11 2024. Before that was 2021, 2019, 2016, 2015.
That being said, I would be very curious what games actually break.
Or even better, just use Windows 10 LTSC. It's the last sane version of Windows.
Start by building on-premise systems and you'll develop a different mindset.
Call the person out as e.g. racist or don't. Or call out the statement or whatever as stupid or messed up and make them apologize. But, nitpicking things as "micro-aggressions" and giving them this weird power, meh. Just say, "Hey, get a load of this a-hole" and move on.
Now, here it kind of works because they are micro and because it's not a human, etc.
I am the only one?
I think most problems stem from home versions of windows.
Still prefer my Linux machine tho.
All my stuff is backed up to a synology so it wasnt a huge ordeal, but there are horror stories around the net about onedrive interactions.
No real issues to report. Various OEM and custom machines run fine. Ever since Windows 7 I'd say I haven't ran into major issues or even many minor ones.
Something I found mind boggling is that the windows/search button doesnt load every time.
From my nvidia 3060 gpu laptop, to my tiny i5, to cheap refurbished laptops, all computers seem to have an issue displaying the search/windows button's data.
I believe if you wait long enough, it shows up, but sometimes you click off and re-click.
Anyway, its utterly mind boggling that the OS that has 90% of users has this issue.
(My guess is that its doing some sort of online thing and it wont display results until it gets the ads/sends data)
Use Linux. Windows is over if you want it.
I love being able to remote into my home PC and experience near lag-free use via RDP. I've tried the Gnome and KDE implementations but they aren't that great as a user who just wants to connect and use the PC.
I found the gnome one confusing, as it had two options. One had to be logged into locally and unlocked first. The other didn't I believe but there was some other gotcha. Maybe having signed in once but then locked the session. I do remember not being able to RDP from a fresh reboot which made me think the machine failed to boot. KDE's implementation I think also suffered from having to log in locally first.
I've made use of Sunshine and Moonlight for now. It works, but it's meant more for gaming. No copy and paste, more bandwidth or more cpu/gpu cycles, etc.
Though, I do have to hazard a guess that Wayland will be a bit of a hiccup. Remove graphical desktops were niche enough that a lot of the good solutions for them in the past have not been high on people's radars.
Only for about 20 years for graphical desktop and 34 years for console.
Console options: Telnet, Rlogin, SSH.
Graphical options: X forwarding, VNC, X2Go.
> Using Wayland.
Why?
""Open-Source Low-Latency Accelerated Linux WebRTC HTML5 Remote Desktop Streaming Platform for Self-Hosting, Containers, Kubernetes, or Cloud/HPC""
The GNOME Remote Desktop offering seems fine but yeah, the specific use case you have of wanting to be able to login does require an additional system wide login step which is a little unusual. LightDM and others work similarly; it's basically a vnc password to keep rabble off the actual login screen. https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-remote-desktop
For the many many wlroots Wayland's, wayvnc is quite good. Their first FAQ question is about running over ssh, on a headless backend. https://github.com/any1/wayvnc/blob/master/FAQ.md#faq
Personally I think sunshine & moonlight is 100% the way to go. There is one way client->host copy paste. Agreed that more would be better, but there are good independent tools for shuffling data around, lots of ways to fill in the gap. The bandwidth is very tuneable but yes 0.5mbit/s is going to be pretty rough. But sunshine will gladly use hardware encoding, that's very low latency, and that is basically free: there's dedicated encoders on any vaguely modern hardware. Being able to get av1 or HEVC for basically free feels about as good as it gets to me. Moonlight client of course will also decode in hardware too. Remote desktop-ing has never been so low impact to CPU or GPU, and the ability to do absolutely anything (watch videos even) with such high smoothness and low latency is stunning. 100% recommend sunshine+moonlight. Afaik, no way to remote login over it though?
Horrendous install process, just clicking no to hundreds of "features" I don't want, interspersed by patronising, uninformative messages like "chillax, we're just setting things up for you". And when you're done, you're bombarded by notifications, visual clutter. My poor eight-year-old nephew had a stock-ticker on the task bar! A totally overwhelming, ugly and hostile interface.
On the old laptop, I installed Windows to do the firmware update (a thousand curses on manufacturers that don't provide the option to flash from Linux), and moved straight to install EndeavorOS.
The experience was night and day. Simple, clear and informative install with clear, well-explained choices. Fast. On completion, I've got a clean, empty DE, ready to be tweaked to my liking. Oh, and it's free, as is all the software I'm using on it.
This is Arch, there are memes about Arch being hard. Unbelievable how much easier and more pleasant getting Arch up and running is than Windows these days. Microsoft have crippled their UX with horrendous junk.
The only reason anyone really needs Windows is if they're running one of about four pieces of software for professional reasons.
Win11 is peak enshitification, such a big opening for Linux at the moment. Non-technical parent needs a computer, give them Linux; child, ditto. All most users need is a browser these days. No reason most people need that Microsoft shit in their lives.
Really feel like there's a Conway's Law explanation that would underscore the shift here. But I failed to find any links/coverage of the shift.
LarryDarrell•5h ago
I'm trapped because I'm a C#/WPF developer. But, the day after I retire will see a reformat and installation of Debian.
The only thing I'll miss is Directory Opus.
yndoendo•5h ago
nix0n•2h ago
Have you been able to get a debugger working for this? Last time I tried to develop C++ this way, the Visual Studio debugger would not work from within a VM.