14h ago

I need to vent about Windows. I want workplaces to use Linux.

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.

91 comments

I've only worked at one software company where devs where allowed to install Linux as their OS. It was awesome... except when there was an update and then you had an urgent request from management while you where fixing what the update broke

Fuck Windows and Microsoft really.
🙏🙏🙏 testify, brother.

I have a channel on my team's Slack were I just vent off on these kind of situations 😬
#windows-is-the-best, inspired from #gitlab-is-the-best, the chan were everyone vents off when the CI refuses to pick up workers 😅

I've been saying this for 30+ years, but no-one wanted to listen.

I actually would really prefer for companies to just provide us virtual machines and I can connect to vpn and then to the work hosts. This way I can use my own setup.

funny how with sooooo many updates, Windows are still very vulnerable. You buy a Windows PC, you better equip Antivirus software too; it is like bread and butter. On Linux and also Mac, you never need to worry about these things.
- Why would someone work on hacking Linux when it's 2% of the market share?
  Also, this is just false....
  On Linux and also Mac, you never need to worry about these things.
  
  To strengthen our collective security, which is shared among all who care to see- While Microsoft rarely deigns to even give an error code when shit breaks.

I unplugged my company issued Windows 11 Dell laptop from its charger yesterday so that I could go ask a manager a question in their office, and the entire computer just shut the fuck off despite having full charge. I'm so glad I moved all my personal stuff to Linux.
- Sounds like you have a bad battery
  
  Possibly, though I would be surprised. I only recently got this job so the laptop is brand new, but I have also had it long enough that it was an odd and unexpected event, before then I had not had any power issues, and not since either. Since it is not reproducible, I'm not so sure it is the battery.
  Outside of this, it is either Win 11 or the Dell hardware that has other peripheral issues. Often when disconnecting from a secondary display, the screen freaks out and I have to try again. Furthermore when logging into the laptop remotely, Windows 11 for some reason decided to wipe out cleartype, making all the font textures crunchy, despite having set Remmina to connect with best-quality settings.

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.
  
  Haha that's on your shitty IT dept. I'm sure the OS has very little to do with it
  
  This. I have a mobile workstation with a 12th gen i7, 32gb RAM, and NVME SSD but it's not uncommon to be waiting multiple minutes for boot due to all the pre-installed spyware from IT. It takes up half the RAM at all times and severely limits the performance for many non-whitelisted apps to the point I can't even run Firefox smoothly on it anymore.
- What kind of PC is this? Does it have an SSD?
  If it’s anything like my company a “New” desktop is the managers old desktop.

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
- Wow, that is some nightmare fuel type shit. That's actually crazy.

Too many times I've been at the very limit of failing to deliver an assignment. I used to have classes from morning to night (used to get home at 23:00) and sometimes I did homework at uni and scan/upload in my computer since camera-scanned documents don't look as good, so I had to deliver them ASAP, but Windows would take a LOT of time to load Teams and sometimes it started applying updates at startup, so it would be SLOW AS HELL.
Just some days ago it happened again (the homework was assigned a day before) so I booted up windows and what a surprise (/s) it started applying updates, so Teams wouldn't even open. I had to send the files from there to my linux computer (I love you, KDE connect!) because I still had to add some things to the document and Teams for Linux loaded in a second lol

Come work at Meta, we have Fedora Linux laptops :)
Edit: Maybe we should crowd source a list of companies that let you use Linux. I've worked at startups and straight up told the CEO "I'm installing Linux" and that has worked, but corporate companies you can't get away with that
- No thanks

This. If updates are SO important, then Windows can do it while it's shutting down.

If you’re stuck with Windows for corporate-issued computers, the next time this happens you can abort shutdowns in Windows.
Command Prompt:

shutdown /a
Saved me several times over the years.
- Also Windows has a button similar to “don’t update this week” or similar.

luckily i can wipe my work laptop and install linux (for now, there are discussions about not letting unmanaged devices on the network at some point...), but what annoys me is seeing how much tax money we send straight to microsoft. i work in the education sector in europe and the majority of the company's funds comes from the government, to send millions of that straight to the US, especially with the politics going on right now, seems like a horrible idea. and SO many others are doing the same thing, i swear if we invested just 10% of it into FOSS the world would be a better place already and we'd all save money.
- 100% retaliatory tariff on Microsoft products when Trump enacts his tariffs. And all that money goes to switching government and education over to Linux.

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.
  
  One place I worked at just gave people Linux computers without telling them and disabled the boot image. The job was mostly online Salesforce, so Chrome got them through everything. Imaging was a breeze. We even made it kinda look like windows. No one really commented on it. We didnt hide it from anyone but we didnt go out of our way to make a big deal out of it.
  Linux works when people stop thinking of it as "Linux". Its "Android" or "Steam OS" or "My smart TV" etc.... All you need to do is rename it and suddenly they are ok with it.
  
  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, hell no. We are absolutely tiny.
  It's very much a trust-based situation as we all work together and in a small team.
  I would actually love to know how to handle remote shutdown of PCs and lock out and things like that, for as we do grow, we are getting busier, and starting to expand.
  
  So I'm a total noob when it comes to business systems and I have never used ActiveDirectory or group policies, but wasn't Linux or rather Unix originally designed as a system for many users on one big machine/network? Why is it so difficult for businesses to manage permissions and group settings on a large amount of devices? What does Microsoft/Windows do so much better there?
  
  I heard Ubuntu got some big upgrades starting with 22.04 in terms to support for GPOs.
  I never tested it personally but they do have some documentation for it and they can be added to a Windows domain: https://documentation.ubuntu.com/adsys/en/latest/

Windows fr thinks that getting updates done is more important than getting work done.

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.
- Depends on the settings your IT has set up... Mine will let you put it off, but after a couple times you're left with no choice but to let it run.
  
  but after a couple times you're left with no choice but to let it run.
  That would be an user issue then. If I have an update I'll try to do it asap, if I can't then end of my shift.
- That also shocked me. Then again, Windows does suck pretty bad.
- I have had several, but usually you had like 1 hour. Entreprise windoze 7 a couple of years ago, happened several times. There was also some update that bricked some 50% of the dell laptops lol, mine went through but my colleagues sweated bullets.
  Now it's force restarting "outside business hours" or some crap. How stable.
- I call BS on OP, just another ragebait made-up story.
  Forced restarts haven't been a thing for years, unless the OP somehow badly setup their machine.

My company has multiple options for computers. You can choose the windows laptop. The bigger windows laptop. The other windows laptop. Or if you are a graphic designer, that one MacBook option.

Then come up with a better alternative to office 365.
Windows isn't keeping Microsoft around. Its their office software. (and azure)
- what makes their office software so much better than, say, libreoffice? i don't work an office job, and haven't had the misfortune of running windows since i dropped windows 7, but when i did switch, the programs seemed basically the same. office software seemed like a solved problem by then. what new features has microsoft added and convinced people they need that foss options don't have?
  
  It just does more and more easily. It styles things better, makes them more professional looking with a click. It can do certain things like nested tables in Word that Writer cannot do. Excel is much more powerful than calc, it has more functions, more refined functions, it's easier to work with, has more and prettier chart options. And oh you can create tables in Excel that are sortable. There are many other cases.
  Now for the last two the die-hards will whine and whinge about how you should just use a software for creating charts and a database but sometimes you just want to make something quick, sometimes that's overkill for what you need. Grandpa doesn't need to learn how to deal with databases just to make a sortable list of books he's read, he can just use excel and the Libreoffice people telling him to pound sand because they won't add that feature to calc because it doesn't belong there means he and many other people don't use calc, they use MS office. Likewise the Libreoffice defense force saying of making graphs and charts to just use dedicated software, well many corporate types, business people, white collar workers don't understand those things and may not be able to get them installed, what they understand, what they already have is MS office and it works and has lots of pretty, professional, very slick options which don't make them look poorly in office meeting presentations.
  Just on the sortable tables front, I can't tell you how many times I've run into hobby stuff that's based on an excel file with tables that rely on being sortable. From stat sheet creators to mini-databases (<2000 rows) on some game created by fans.
  It's useful for those who need the very bare basics of being able to open and read basic MS word documents, csv files, excel files, and to write an occasional letter. But the moment you need to start doing beyond basic formatting or dealing with files that have that, you run into issues.
  You have this gulf of usability, it's useful for people at the very bottom of the basic needs pole, barely computer literate types who think facebook is the internet and it's useful for highly technically competent people who can and do use other dedicated software, often without GUIs to solve problems, it's a frustration for the middle 60% of the population who are more than basically computer literate but not scientifically trained, not CS or IT.
  
  They are extremely integrated into the rest of the ecosystem and are insanely pervasive among 9-5 desk jockies. They aren't gonna relearn a spreadsheet software especially when it doesn't have all the same features as the thing they have been using for 20 years. Not to mention they dont actually give a shit about how much their company is paying for it. The majority of these people dont know what FOSS is and are just using computers because that's what pays their rent.
  Libre office is very far from being a drop in replacement for 365 and will most definitely never replace it. At the end of the day its all about userbase. Why do people still use twitter and Instagram even though there are FOSS alternatives that may be even better? Because that's what everyone else uses and most people just dont care.
  
  Good question. I wish I had a better answer than what I'm about to say.
  It just is.
  I'm a diehard anti-Windows, Linux-lovin', FOSS crusader myself, but if Microsoft released a copy of MS Office for Linux (as a one-time-purchase), I would buy it today.
  For most tasks, you're right, there's not much you can't do in LibreOffice. But the interface is clunkier. Excel makes it easier to make good-looking spreadsheets. And as much as it hurts me to say, looks matter when dealing with nontechnical folks.
  Plus there are some things that are just more intuitive in Excel, like certain kinds of charts and graphs. There are some advanced features of Excel that don't even exist in LibreOffice. Like chart styles and certain team collaboration features.
  Compatibility is... okay... For the most part, but having it all guaranteed by a bunch of paid devs would be really nice.
  There is a more detailed list here
- Actually staff and commercial vendors are keeping Windows. Plus no one gets fired for choosing MS products. That IT staff are all Windows certified means Windows will always be the answer. That users are similarly trained and need certain Windows software will mean they demand it too.
  
  I'd be so bold as to say about 90% of windows business users are only using it for office/excel/outlook
- Nextcloud and LibreOffice: allow us to introduce ourselves
  
  Yeah have a great time supporting libreoffice across an org of 200/2000/20000 end users. Not happening. Not without a dedicated helpdesk team that ONLY supports users office troubles. The cost of that would be way more than their monthly 365 subscription.
  Also theres the infinite number of comparability issues youlll run into if you need to do business with another company that only uses Microsoft.
  Also nextcloud is great but it absolutely is not competition to one drive or SharePoint in the enterprise.

I've been pretty lucky that I've been able to use Linux on my work laptop the past 3 jobs in a row. It really helps that we use Linux production in and when I tell them that I haven't used Windows in nearly a decade, they're usually willing to let me work with Linux.

@ranovich if you just need to hop on a call and windows is giving you shit, why not join using another device?

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.

Go get drunk. You deserve it.

"Tell me it's Friday without saying it's Friday" ;)
But to the point, yeah, my current job tried to convince me to switch to Windows. I tried, it was miserable experience, it broke in 3 days and all that was even before the current Windows ludicrousness
- They asked you to install Windows on your personal machine? Do companies not give you a work laptop anymore?
  
  No, on work laptop

I also use Windows at work, and it is driving me insane. The updates can be annoying, but it is mostly just how fucking slow it is. Directories routinely take mulitple seconds to load, and I don't understand why. I also just prefer Gnome in general, but I do think the Window's user interface as a whole is pretty good when it works. I will say, WSL works well for the things I want to run "in linux", and it integrates very nicely with VS Code.
I can actually install Linux if I want. They provide instructions for how to roll it in to Intune etc, and I will probably try it, but keep a dual boot to Windows available for when I really need it. The problem is that my job is married to Office, which doesn't have native linux support at all. We ues OneDrive, Outlook, Teams and collaborative Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Most of these probably run okay enough in browser, but especially for big Word documents where we need to make sure formatting is okay (a nightmare in Word even without multiple users editing the document at once), I am not sure if it works well enough. Rclone can be used to sync to OneDrive. For now I just try to avoid making office documents whenever possible, sticking to markdown, latex and csv files etc., store as much as possible on our i.e. our GitLab instance instead, and hopefully it will it will be easier to switch over time.
I also wonder what would happen if Donny wakes up one day, decides he wants to invade Europe or something and all our Office 365 licenses suddenly stop working. We would have a lot of other bigger issues of course, so it's not the most critical issue.
- Directories routinely take mulitple seconds to load, and I don’t understand why.
  Probably thumbnail generation, and I was going to say file indexing, but surely that runs in the background. Baloo in KDE is a lot less intrusive anyway.
  
  I was going to say file indexing, but surely that runs in the background.
  Assuming indexing is enables, yes.

The update thing started maybe 10 years ago or was it 15. Company I worked for went from terrible patching to this BS. Why something in between was not sufficient I will never know or why it cannot hot patch.
Edit: Before the company actually did serious patching worms regularly took down the whole company for days. But why they had to go from that to interrupting presentations and calls is beyond me.

At work we have everything windows. When getting my work laptop with windows, I just intalled PopOs on it. I do have the problem of not able to use AOVPN, so I can't work from home. But since I need to go close to work, why even work from home.
- why even work from home.
  The freedom of not wearing pants at your desk
- What is AOVPN?
- Pajama Pants
  
  I remember hearing during lockdown that sales of business pants had tanked, but sales of business shirts hadn't.
  
  Or sweatpants @ work

Your workplace probably doesn't want to spend millions (depending on size) teaching their employees how to use the terminal.
- Token Linux hater of the thread. Have a cookie for fulfilling this important role of reminding us that Linux is the only OS family that ever needs troubleshooting
  
  I'm not a "Linux hater". I love Linux. I'm just being honest. Normies aren't going to be able to use Linux until Linux developers and community decide it shouldn't only be usable by developers.
  reminding us that Linux is the only OS family that ever needs troubleshooting
  No one said that, you literally just made it up.
- What year is it? Terminal is pretty much optional these days, especially if we're talking enterprise with dedicated IT staff.
  
  What year is it?
  That's a great question
  Terminal is pretty much optional these days
  LOL good one
- Users don't even know how they organize their files, the difference between sharepoint, teams or onedrive. Of course they can't use a terminal but they would never need to like users in windows don't handle updates, their IT do.
  
  When basic tasks like changing the scaling, setting a default power profile, or a default audio device, or just installing software don't require use of the terminal, call me back.
- Stop.

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