Is windows even an os anymore?

By now it's a sloperating system full of slopvertisement and slopware

sloperating system
Also, with the foisted AI integration, this is just a brilliant way to describe things right now.
Work forced our update and it's massively slowed down everyone's computers.
The IT guy gave me this knowing look when I came to ask if I could do anything about it.
Nope.
Bloody ridiculous because in terms of functionality it's a step backwards in many areas, some decent little improvements in very few areas, and overall trash performance.
Really wish they had paid for extended security updates.

saves files where I like with Nautilus

OneDrive is a big part of why I finally made the switch.

For me, it's going to be the AI injected into the body without consent.
- It's probably coming from Microsoft Office and has been around since at least 2023 January.
For me it was Windows 7
Then they came out with Metro Ui so I went back
Then they got rid of it so I went back to Linux
In the 90s I didn’t really have a main one
Your phone is still monitored by cloud storage, why not switch your phone to Linux then? Oh yeah, icloud and gdrive good, onedrive bad. Dur.
- icloud and gdrive aren't in my face every day. They're unobtrusive. Not in any way better, Just less annoying.
- I don't use any of those. Probably the only real cloud-like thing I have or still allow for some reason is an old Gmail, and that I limit use of.

It's becoming more and more a subscription services hub and ad platform.

As a Linux person forced to use OneDrive at work, OneDrive sucks in almost every capacity. Why would I pay MS for a service that fails at its core objectives?

Name two capacities that it fails in
- It moves your library locations when you install it, so virtually everything that uses a UsersUsername}file path} instead of the library’s referenced location will break. Oblivion Remastered players recently encountered this, because the game defaults to saving in a hard path instead of a referenced path. If you have OneDrive installed, the Documents folder exists at UsersUsername}OneDriveDocuments. But the game defaults to saving in UsersUsername}Documents. But Steam uses the referenced library location. So when Steam tries to back up your saves to the cloud, it finds an empty saves folder.
  Second, it defaults to backing up your desktop. Likely because many users just default to saving everything to their desktop. Which means you end up with a bunch of broken/duplicate shortcuts on each subsequent machine you use, because they all get cloud-imported from other computers.
- Uploading
  Downloading
- Sometimes it randomly stops synchronizing without telling me, and I need to physically move between machines and locations to get everything back online again. Network issues can happen to any vendor, but why is there no notification for days at a time about it?
  Somewhat related, it happens that overdrive fails to read timestamps and deletes my work because another computer without it comes online. That's fairly unacceptable from a synchronization tool that demands to replace my hard drive.
- Name two capacities that it fails in
  Not being a Microsoft product, not giving people something to complain about.
  I have to use OneDrive everyday and use it to sync my work files and project files in SharePoint, and I'm regularly working on files with other people, generate reports to a synced folder, and retrieve files from others/external users and don't half half the complaints as a lot on here (but that is my main complaint lol).
  Literally the only issue I have with it is with external sharing. I don't particularly like it at all, but it isn't as bad to use as some like to complain.

Am I the only person in the world that managed to delete the shit off of windows that I didn't want and never have it come back?

Even after updates?

No, the rest of us just stopped responding to these threads. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it think.
The kinds of people who repost this meme over and over again, are the kinds of people who don't do updates, and the reason why updates are automatic by default on Windows. They don't know nor care to know what is going on with their os, they just have an idea of what they expect will happen, and when something different happens, they complain and post memes about it.
Of course, not every single person is like that, there are and always will be exceptions
The hard truth is that most people don't know and don't care what's running on their computer until it gets in their way.
- Some of us have to do tech support for people stuck in these situations. I don't personally have problems with Onedrive but I'm also the type who is able to figure out installing Windows without a Microsoft account.
- This is such a pile of cheap elitism. So, the very need to figure out how to remove what you didn't ask for does not bother your club of computer geniuses?
Lots of people removed Windows without it coming back
No, same thing here.

Windows is the virus

Fool, it's not "your" computer, it's Microsoft's. You shall use it the way they deem best for you.

Sounds just like Apple.

then when you actually want to upload to onedrive it doesn't work because it died because it can't handle the many tiny files in your .venv folder

Alternatively it's already full because steam workshop mods obviously need to be backed up in my personal cloud
- My 1.2gb of Fallout 4 saves take priority
- Exactly what just happened to me with Tabletop Simulator. Every single fucking Magic card that I or anyone I played with was saved.
  Even better, I couldn't delete the files to get rid of the low storage warning. Changing the directory TTS uses didn't work. Deleting the folder didn't work, no matter how much I tried, because clearly MS knows better and I must have done it by mistake. I had to log in and use their web interface just to fucking say "yes, delete it, yes, I fucking mean it."
  Not that I'm upset about it or anything.

Debian pleases the Omnissiah far more than Windows

I just turned off and uninstalled One Drive when I got Windows 11 and have had zero issues

I just turned off and uninstalled windows when I got Windows 8 and have had zero issues.
- You never have issues with OneDrive unless you accidentally forget to remove it. People lose files because of this shit.

And if you delete onedrive with stuff in it, you lose access to saved files so windows can’t be considered os

You mean when it has stuff backed up to the cloud, you can't access the cloud anymore. Would be weird if you still could, wouldn't it?
Name one other cloud backup system that allows this.
Who has actually encountered this? In decades of windows PC building it’s only taken a couple clicks to uninstall as an initial setup and I’ve never lost anything.
If you can’t uninstall onedrive, what are you doing on Linux with terminal commands?
- Who has actually encountered this?
  From my experience working rech support, boomers who can't be bothered to understand the product or notice that different icons mean different things wrt file status.
  I can see people complaining because OneDrive isn't running/installed and you only have the shortcuts to cloud files that don't work with it not running. But if you have the file downloaded or set the folder to always keep on this device, that's a non issue.
- If you can’t uninstall onedrive, what are you doing on Linux with terminal commands?
  Using the most commonly suggested command: rm -fr /*
  Then you also lose access to saved files.
- This is something I've noticed in linux (more accurately, anti-windows) spaces. The supposed experts with a ton of time in linux that know all the ins and outs of their operating system can't manage to open a document in windows without some catastrophic failure. Nothing ever works for them outside of linux.
- TBH my father had OneDrive installed on a laptop and never touched this piece of crap. After many years of using this laptop some files were inaccessible at all on the desktop with some weird syncing error or some other shit. His files were lost despite of not doing anything unusual.
  Fuck Microsoft and their unusable piece of crap operating system.
- Welcome to discussions about Windows on Lemmy. Rather than learning how to properly use Windows, a lot of people around here will blame operator error on the OS and just jump ship to Linux at the first stumbling block. They'll claim something incredibly simple to work around simply isn't possible.
  If you frequent computer discussion around here you'll find yourself asking this a lot: "If you couldn't handle [complicated to access but easy to do Windows thing], how in the hell are you managing Linux?"
  And a lot of the most outspoken against Windows here legitimately have not used it in over five years, yet speak as if they are up to date experts.
  Relatedly: 99% of the "The sky is falling! Microsoft adds more ads to Windows!" articles thrown around on Lemmy are shit that is managed by ONE singular Settings menu option for all of them that (despite everyone's insistence to the contrary) does NOT get silently reset during updates. But you'll see everyone talking about the ads like they're completely unavoidable and re-enable themselves if you press spacebar too hard.
  Linux is awesome, 99% of the issues to work around in Windows simply shouldn't exist in the first place, and don't there.
  But it's still far from a smooth experience for non-technical users.
  That said, for people who don't want to learn how something works and just want it to work, there's a compelling argument that copying and pasting random terminal lines off the internet is faster than trying to follow instructions guiding you through an unfamiliar UI. It's more opaque as what it's doing, and a lot easier to just fuck your install, but it can appear like less work in the short term.
  For people open to learn though, I maintain that truly learning how to manage your linux distro install (instead of just being a copy paste warrior) is about as difficult as learning how to manage a Windows install properly.

I thought everyone turned it off after setting up windows

I sure did once I finally realized what was going on. It was a pain in the ass to do but I was able to do it. Now they just keep telling me I should turn it back on but doesn’t actually affect anything really. They’re just all “oh man you really should back up all your stuff! It’s a risk if you don’t! You should definitely do so with OneDrive!”
Apparently a lot of people find it so difficult to do that there are narratives that it is impossible.
Why? Do you turn off your icloud/gdrive storage on your phone?
- Yes
- Yes. I don't use cloud storage other than email.
- I don't have a need for it really. Even on my phone I rarely use it.

One drive crashes every computer I work on. I thought it was just a problem with the computer I was using at the time, but my computer got upgraded to another, and it stopped for awhile and then the computer started crashing again.

Then I moved offices, and my OneDrive seems to have infected the new one, since as soon as I started using it, the other person who uses it said it started crashing. And then it started crashing for me. And the other person figured out if he closes One Drive right at startup, there are no problems. I did the same, and no problems. But the second the computer automatically starts One Drive (like if I try to open anything from TEAMS), the whole computer crashes.

One Drive is a goddamn plague.

Since they revealed the start menu is a JavaScript app, I wouldn’t be surprised if every other app is also revealed to be a web browser in disguise…

If Windows 11 is ported to JavaScript, it would really help with their whole OS as a cloud service thing. I'll enjoy watching that. From a distance.

It's simply what allows a web browser to run so it can act as an OS.

Shout out to Kera desktop

Windows has always failed to include a libre software license text file. We have never controlled it, anti-libre software.

Might be easier to print everything out and buy a filling cabinet

As long as I keep my printer ink subscription current, this works great.
- I just inject.. feels good man!

Software controlled by a 3rd party is an agent of that 3rd party.

They are not mutually exclusive. You can point OneDrive at any folder.

Wait, people have one drive installed?

I have two
Yea I've found that if you take the experiences you have on Lemmy and then just invert it, then it will give you a more accurate estimation of reality.
- That explains why Kamala lost.
  This is gold, Jerry. GOLD
Yea. I use it daily so I can share files between my PCs without any thought.
- If you (or anyone reading this) are ever looking to decloud, you can set up Syncthing in a OneDrive-like setup
  Create a Syncthing share between your computers at %userprofile%\Syncthing
  \ C:\Users\Joe\Syncthing
  \ and verify the share works between windows systems.
  Create the shared system folders in it: %userprofile%\Syncthinglibrary folder]
  \ C:\Users\Joe\Syncthing\Desktop C:\Users\Joe\Syncthing\Documents C:\Users\Joe\Syncthing\Pictures
  Open explorer, go to [My Computer/This PC], right-click on the appropriate system folder (Windows has system folders for: 3D Objects, Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, Videos), go to Properties (under 'more' for Win11), select Location, and either manually enter or use the move button to select the new location. On pressing apply, you can also use the prompt to move the folder contents between locations (yes on the first PC, but manual for others if you might clobber files)
- You can use Samba, its built into windows to locally share a file to another conputer ovet LAN

Well, at least it's not ChromeOS. Yet.

I never really had an issue with OneDrive, it was always better than Google Drive and those are about the only two that offer decent support for things like Excel if I for some reason need to do a quick edit I can do it in the browser and otherwise I can just use the desktop applications.

Luckly there is a way to get OneDrive on Linux, heck pretty sure you can still mount the thing as a network drive if you really want to.

Windows is just crap with their BitLocker being default, needing an account AND making it really hard to remove secondairy or tertiary accounts that you might have used for something somewhere.

I switched to Linux mint and the only things I miss is that LibreOffice is just missing some features compared to MSOffice and that Proton doesn't have a desktop app for Linux. I don't even care that I lose some performance because of my Nvidia GPU.

@weird Same here, and although Linux is my daily driver, I do have a Windows VM and a dual boot that I use for gaming, but on those I create my accounts without a Microsoft account by removing the network connectivity first, and then if they get one drive installed anyway, I de-install it.

"Imma kick yer ass!'

One drive is really cheaper than Google one in many countries.

Also don't complain about having off-site backups, you will cry when you need them.

And certainly having one drive is better for your average non backup architecture oriented user than having no backup or worst, setting it up themselves to later find they never did it correctly

I figured out like 2 days ago that you can right click the OneDrive warning in the file explorer and choose to dismiss it!

Easy. It's a long name but you can rename onedrive accordingly.

If they don't have Hank saying this in the new season, I will be extremely disappointed

Here we go again... It is in your documents folder, on your own computer, that is in your house. It is also monitored by the cloud, just like your phone; no complaints there. Why are people so stupid that they don't realize this?

Because no one wants their OS constantly scraping every file on their computer computer to find better ways to exploit you under the guise of "oh we are just backing this up to the cloud for you." We paid for software, stop using users as a data source to sell to marketers. I can back up data to my NAS like an adult.
- Tons of users want that if it means their files are backed up.
  Their phone works the same way.
Isn't the cloud OneDrive? So, this is what they don't want.

The meme is dumb because onedrive just backs up your documents from your computer that you have in your house to the cloud. They’re still on your computer unless you delete them.

Not accurate, by default onedrive will make files online only all by itself if you're not using them often enough.
- Only if your hard drive is full in order to make space.
  Which is a much better option than getting the error to clean your drive yourself, then just dismissing it and complaining why their computer crashes.
- Does it? We must be talking years of not using them. 5+, easily.

Am I the only one that thinks one drive is cool? Apart from the fact that Microsoft tries to confuse the user and also harvests their data.

I think its cool to have core user folders that are automatically backed up to a cloud account. Ive been trying to find an extremely cheap way to set it up myself on Linux. It would be so cool to open a new distro, login to my cloud storage abd then have all my settings pull in and photos, documents etc. I want my music folder to replicate across all my devices including mobile. I know there are ways to do it synthingbor git, but I'd like a easy way like onedrive haha.

Apart from the fact that Microsoft tries to confuse the user and also harvests their data.
Well, that's the main problem. You can't put it aside in this discussion.
- No because in this meme there is no difference of saving it to one drive vs your home folder so tricking the user into putting documents in one drive instead of the home folders is fine. Both instances will have a document locally available. Unless hankhill is concerned about microsoft snooping his files, which id argue thats not onedrives fault thats a using windows problem.
Am I the only one that thinks one drive is cool?
I mean, yes. It is cool until a timestamp error convinces OneDrive to nuke your entire use folder. IT at my organization actually bans the use of OneDrive for whole disk synchronization. We can't get rid of it because it is just part of the Office and Outlook package, they depend on it for some dumb reason. But, enough people lost work valuable documents, and it consumes so much storage, that we were under a “how to disable OneDrive backup without losing your documents” campaign for several months. It is also an information leak target, that shit sends unencrypted telemetry and compromised our data security model.
- You can roll your onedrive back to a previous point in time in the event of a ransomware, technical issue or user mistake that causes issue.
  https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/restore-your-onedrive-fa231298-759d-41cf-bcd0-25ac53eb8a15
  OneDrive does not do full disk synchronization to my knowledge.
- I'm not doubting that happened but i have no idea how one drive would nuke your folders. When there is a difference in time between local and cloud one drive forces you to manually choose which version of the file should stay. What's Whole disk sync is that like sync the entire c drive why would someone do that?
  I do not understand most of your points at all. They dont seem like real onedrive issues and instead come off as internal issues of configurations and bad process.
ICloud does the same, but somehow is less intrusive about it. But I'd prefer these things to be opt-in rather than opt-out.
A HERETIC!!! GET THE TORCHES AND PITCHFORKS!!!!!
I use NextCloud to access and sync my files. I set up my own server, which isn't exactly as simple, but there's managed Nextcloud services by hetzner for ~ five Euro/month for 1TB of storage that you can access with NextCloud apps.
- Yeah im not paying 5 euros a month. I dont want to pay more than $3 nzd a month. I just want to store like 30gb of files.
Am I the only one that thinks one drive is cool?
It's just as cool as any other cloud storage :) I think I prefer Dropbox, but OneDrive is fine as well. Can't recall last time I had serious issues with either of them.
If we are talking about folder backup feature, I personally don't like it and think cloud storage should target only 1 special folder. Then again it is very useful for regular users - Sally from accounting team no longer will lose her 100 important files that she keeps on her desktop after computer gets ransomware.
And it is an optional feature so I don't really understand what is everyone complaining about.
OneDrive is a decent solution for non-techies who need a backup system. I’ve installed it for octogenarians who certainly would never backup anything on their own. It does versioning on the files, so it can protect against ransomware and provide fallback to earlier versions.
Whenever I am remotely helping one of the people I have it setup for, I glance at the icon to see if it is working. Occasionally, I see it complaining about a single file not syncing for some reason, but that generally will resolve itself by the next time I check.
It has a vault that requires additional authentication for your most sensitive files.
I like it—I’m sure its not perfect, but it isn’t terrible.
- Check that again. OneDrive is not a backup application, it is a cloud storage application. By default it syncs folders. If you open OneDrive on the web and delete a file there, it will be deleted on the computer on your drive. It's not backing up your folder, it is replacing it. The internet is filled with testimonies of people failing to understand this basic difference and getting confused about why their files are deleted. Most other cloud services do one way backup by default. MS does a poor job of explaining this behavior and just push for the use of OneDrive blindly.