Posts by BobChip

"Fixing" Win 11?

Why even bother when Linux is a very viable alternative?

Dump Microsoft?

Did that years ago when Win 8 dumped (deprecated..) several of my expensive peripherals. MS response - just go buy new ones! My response - they still work perfectly under Ubuntu, so I will dump Microsoft instead. Did that, and have never found any need to use anything made by MS since then. Happy penguin bunny now.

Re: Like everybody else, we will NOT be using AI in the future

I will emphatically NOT be using AI anytime in the near future - If ever. I tried using copilot to test some simple synthetic organic chemistry questions. It was wildly inaccurate, to the point of making some positively dangerous suggestions. While utterly wrong, it was also reassuringly confident and certain in its suggestions. It "quotes" nonexistent literature and fantasy references!

If it is this "good" on a topic I know (retired research chemist), I can only imagine that it is equally useless when consulted on any other technical subjects like law - a legal colleague has already confirmed this to me.

This technology is far too dangerous to be released for general use, now or best never. Critical thinking has never been so vital! Sadly, a skill not common amongst a great many internet users.

On the credit side, it is so bad that it makes student plagiarism in essays and course work (cheating) laughably easy to detect.

NOT a "courtesy" detail

MS bloat and clutter can only be seen as "courtesy details" through the eyes of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. With apologies to Douglas Adams.

Re: Windows 11 is pretty bad

I am with you on this. It is FAR easier to sort out a Linux bug than a Win (10 or 11 - you pick) bug. Mainly because Linux online help files and forums tend to offer helpful - and mostly concise and accurate - advice. Unlike MS "resources". I would far rather have to resort to the Terminal / command line in a Linux OS than in anything made by Microsoft. Just my personal IMHO

Re: Bye, it was nice to know you

Drop MS software? I did so years ago and now claim my pint!

Punishment?

I gritted my teeth, and took my punishment on the chin. I actually enjoyed it, and continue to do so........

Irresponsible?

Irresponsible? Certainly so. But not without consequences..... "Most governments are dependent? on Microsoft services". But by no means all, and maybe not for so much longer?

Re: Coluld be good, could be bad?

Sadly, ANY security is at risk once a system gets into the hands of users. I doubt that any system can ever be made both truly useful AND completely user-proof.

Re: Dairy cows?

Unfair to farmers. Farmers really value their cows, and take great care to look after them well for the long term. An unhealthy (AKA unhappy) cow does not produce nearly as much milk as a happy one. Strangely, a dead one produces no milk at all, today or tomorrow.

M$ would far rather kill the cow to get more milk today, than moderate their behaviour in order to get a little milk every day for years to come. I suspect their long term position is now well past recovery. However, I don't see their decline and demise as a cause for concern, and I don't propose to worry about it. (P.S. I no longer hold any M$ stock....)

Re: Air Gap

I prepare client sensitive (planning) plans and drawings on a Linux system.

1 Internet access is OFF while I am working. Whole desktop is completely airgapped.

2 Work is saved to an external USB HDD. If needed, I will create a temporary directory on the external drive to store work in progress, or useful files copied from the desktop.

3 Finished work is copied from HDD to USB / DVD, and then delivered to the client BY HAND. No emails, file transfers etc..

4 HDD is safely unmounted.

5 Machine is restarted with internet enabled, to permit system updates, searches etc.

6 Desktop is checked for any residual data, copy and paste files or informative emails etc, to be properly cleaned / deleted. Nothing sensitive is stored on the desktop. Ever.

7 On request, the external HDD is either overwritten or handed to the client. NOTHING is left in my hands, except for paper records.

Is all this too extreme? If it sounds like a lot of work, it is. Plus quite a lot of forethought and care in carrying out. But it provides a level of privacy and security which my clients obviously appreciate. I get repeat work.

No clouds for me, thank you!

Re: Other US's?

BETTER US's are available. Nuf said.

Trust is gone!

Trust is totally GONE!! This is the key point, and quite frankly the only point worth bothering about. Microsoft seem to be (suicidally?) determined to make matters worse. I do not use anything made by M$ now, and have no intention of ever doing so again in the future. Win 8 was the last straw for me.

Re: Access help.......

Way back in the 70s... If your phone stops working, just ring our help line from the number that has stopped working..... Seriously! They still live among us....

Re: "AI is changing the way we use our PCs,"...

To be honest, it was Win 8 that did it for me. It deprecated a very expensive film scanner and an expensive large format drawing office printer. MS response at the time was to suggest I "just" replace them with hardware which was "Win 8 compatible" - about £3k even then; vastly more today. I was then astonished to discover that all this hardware still worked perfectly under Ubuntu. Guess what I did

It is fair to say that MS FORCED me to move to Linux. This article is simply the latest example of the same thing. Are MS so desperate to "succeed" with their concept of AI that they have lost all focus on their customers? And will therefore lose them because of this "obsession"? If so, they deserve what they get.

Re: Paid for?

I hate to remind you that M$$ products were never "paid for", as in bought and now your property for ever. Read the MS EULA. It is explicit that you do NOT OWN the software. You bought a license to use the software for (an indeterminate? period of time? I have never found anything resembling clarification on this.) The MS business model is driven by the need for constant monetisation, by whatever means possible. With a M$ OS on your machine, it is really a bit of a moot point as to whether you truly own "your" hardware either, as it is mostly the OS that determines how you use it and what you can do with it.

You do not have to ask which OS I switched to more than a decade ago..........

Can't even login?

Not a problem with Linux systems, which the USER controls. Wonder if that is the real (orange) reason why the US military have what is probably the largest installed Linux user base in the world....?

do not want their customers moving...

Tough cookies M$. Like King Canute, the tide has turned and there is now no stopping it.

Reluctance of customers to adopt?

Not so sure about that. The small community I work in and with seems to be increasingly a Linux one. More to the point, of all the colleagues who have "gone Linux" over the last three years, not a single one has reverted to M$. OK, it is hardly a landslide, but the arrow is clearly pointing in one direction only.

Passing a couple of laws would do the trick......

Really?? When was the last time(s!) you drove faster than the posted speed limit? And got away with it?

Law by itself achieves nothing - it is aggressive and continuous enforcement that makes laws effective. Governments of all stripes, in almost all countries, have consistently ignored this simple fact for decades. Because at the end of the day passing impressive sounding legislation costs almost nothing compared to actually enforcing it.

ex. member UKELA (now retired)

Re: What I’d like to know…

No need to know anything - from now on. I have (or used to have) a copy of Win 10 on a 2 Tb SSD in a multi-system machine which can run any one of up to 5 OSs by way of SATA power switches selected on boot up. The other 4 drives run Linux or other nix OSs. I could easily run Win 11 if I wanted to do so. I don't! I kept a Win 10 setup just for the occasional - and now increasingly rare Win project and some old games. Having observed the way in which MS is aggressively pushing an increasingly unattractive working environment, I have had enough. 2 days ago, I finally finished a small project that required a Win system to complete it. I do not expect to be asked to do any more in the future - that market has vanished. Today I reformatted the Windows drive and installed a fresh copy of Linux Mint. A much better use of a 2Tb SSD, IMHO.

My entire workspace is now free from anything made by M$, and is completely hassle free as well. My entire (small) business runs smoothly and easily on Linux, and much more securely now as well.

Just ditch Windows and discover just how much simpler and more agreeable life becomes!

Re: Web apps

We seem to be moving quite quickly to an era in which the actual OS on the machine in front of you will be irrelevant, PROVIDED THAT you can access and use the apps / creative software / databases / communications you need on line. As Microsoft have already realised (and have done for quite some time) the money is to be made from selling cloud services, not operating systems.

The big questions now become :-

Who do you trust to support / maintain the business-critical remote software your business relies on to make and market your product?

Who do you trust with your critical intellectual property?

What will it cost?

Microsoft - particularly inf the context of Trump's America - seems to have universally failed on the trust issue. Almost everything else is secondary. Trust, if anything, will be what drives any changes.

This is why the sensitive designs / drawings I create for clients are created on an internet disabled machine, backed up on a separate air-gapped HDD, and are finally passed on by hand on dvd or memory stick. I make sure there is nothing sensitive left on my (Mint) machine when I enable an internet connection for update and maintenance purposes. My clients not only appreciate the level of security I can offer, but some will insist on it. Fortunately, Linux systems make this easy to manage.

My "cloud" is my very secure desktop and separate HDD. It is a hassle, no question, but it is necessary and it works for me.

Re: COMMUNISM!

That's a little harsh - they are scientists, not MS. Science may be very competitive, but at the end of the day it is still all about sharing data.

Re: It's a pain - but there is a better solution

Can't use LibreOffice? Why not? People in my working group - 50 + in our local network - use MS, Linux and Apple OSs, and their office suites, all the time to create and exchange documents without any difficulty. Just take care to watch your save and send formats before you commit.

If you are a free agent, have another look. If you are constrained by a "big brother" business policy............ well hard luck.

Re: Landfill

While some computers undoubtedly will end up in landfill, I should like to think that the majority will either be recycled (materials recovery) or repurposed (given a new life with a new OS). The "end of 10" ought to imply a large supply of very cheap (and often very powerful) second hand machines with years of useful life left in them, for those who have the wit to take advantage of the opportunity to grab one. (I have just spent £40 locally on a very high spec pre-owned Dell laptop for my wife, now revitalised with Linux Mint).

All this depends on corporates not wanting to completely write off the asset value invested in these machines, to somewhat offset the cost of buying the new ones, AND someone to take the time and trouble to "clean" them before releasing them to the second hand market. Sadly, I suspect that the cost of cleaning up will win out, until the penny drops and someone realises that this will have to be done anyway, for compliance reasons.

Compliance sledgehammer (too smashed up for economic materials recovery) followed by landfill after all......?

Wish I wasn't an optimist.......

Re: Smells of desperation

Desperation indeed. But paying for it? No I am not! I went Linux years ago.

Re: Remember, the best protection from small explosions is.....CORRECTION

The best protection from ALL explosions is distance. Lots and lots of distance.

There.

FIFY

Ditching Bing

Yet another reason (on top of many existing ones) to abandon Micro$$t for good. I have already done so, and feel so much more productive, comfortable and secure as a result. I will never be going back to anything made or pushed by MS

Linux alternatives

Yes, LibreOffice is very good. GIMP is quite a reasonable alternative to Photoshop - yes, it works differently to Photoshop, and there will be a learning curve, but to date I have yet to find any task which I used to do in Photoshop which cannot be done just as well in GIMP. Inkscape is a very powerful vector graphics package like Illustrator. I used to be considered a Corel Draw power user, and now regard Inkscape as a good (even if not quite as good) alternative to Corel. I always preferred Corel to Illustrator, but that probably reflects familiarity and the type of work I was doing, as much as the respective merits of each package. But Inkscape is good and, like Libre Office and GIMP, it is free.

Xcode I don't know enough about to comment on, and while there are decent basic (free) CAD packages available for Linux, I would agree that there is (as yet) nothing available to compete with the power of Autocad. I understand that it can be run in Linux using Codeweavers Crossover, but I have no personal experience of this.

To sum up, my personal decision in the face of the imminent demise of a usable Windows system is to switch to Linux. Not only do I move to an infinitely more user-friendly, stable, easy to maintain, nag free OS, but I also recover a nice 2Tb SS hard drive which I can put to much better use. No brainer.

What price Windows 11 / 12 now?

Re: Maybe Microsoft should go back to making just an O.S.

Someone else already does make "just an OS". Two of them. Apple and Linux. The choice is yours.

Re: moved to Linux

One big step?

No. Not really. In one sense, only about 30 minutes to go double boot - or for a complete install. In another sense, a couple of days or so to adapt to the new, FAST, secure environment.

I was FORCED to take this step when Windows 8 deprecated hundreds of pounds worth of expensive peripherals which had worked perfectly under Windows 7, but which to my considerable surprise still worked beautifully under Ubuntu. No further explanation or justification needed. MS response had been "just go out and buy all new kit compatible with Win 8 (and stop being a nuisance..)"

I continue to watch MS's "progress" with the same fascination as watching a disaster movie. You know what is coming....... but not quite when.

Re: A tempting deal

If I had said that every time I'd advised someone to "go Linux" I would have run out of fingers years ago. I have of course taken my own advice. Very happy Minty penguin now.

Re: Windows and I...

It was Windows 8 (2012, I think) that did it for me. It deprecated several very expensive peripherals - film scanner etc.. - which I then found, to my enormous surprise and astonishment, were perfectly well supported by Ubuntu. I started out on dual boot, but within a few months the boot logs told me that I was no longer using Windows at all. Now I work entirely in Linux, and have never had any cause to regret it.

I was not "persuaded or drawn" to switch to Linux. Microsoft FORCED me to jump. Probably the only thing for which I am ever going to be genuinely grateful to Microsoft.....

It is by no means an OS landslide, but I find myself increasingly working in partnership with other designers and businesses who have also switched to Linux. More significantly, none of them have gone back to Microsoft.

Microsoft will stop at nothing.......

I recognise the above title statement to be demonstrably true. And it is not just Microsoft playing this game. I also find it deeply concerning - meaning I do not like it and "will stop at nothing" to prevent it from impacting me. My solution may seem drastic, but it is relatively simple and very effective:-

1 Linux

2 Have nothing to do with Microsoft; in particular Office 365 or anything else linked to cloud storage. Sorry Google, but that mostly applies to you too...

3 As far as possible, treat your computer as an air-gapped stand alone device, where you store your sensitive data. Make air gapped backup (external HDD) a habit. You ought to be doing this anyway.

4 I recognise the need to use the internet. For this I use a cheap - almost "disposable" Chromebook, and a clean, reformatted USB data stick for data transfer between this and my isolated desktop when necessary.

5 Software updates (fast and easy on Linux) are managed by enabling WiFi for only the few minutes needed. This minimises the risk of intrusion.

I appreciate that for a lot of users this is going back to the stone age. I would only point out that the stone age was much simpler to keep secure, and that no one tried (as much) to monetise your every last keystroke.

Inconvenient? Less so than you might think. It is as much about working habits as anything else. And the people for whom I prepare sensitive plans and drawings are clear that they very much appreciate the level of security and privacy I can offer.

Re: Windows Hello, Windows Goodbye!

Hello Linux. Simples

Re: I don't need bloat!

I read years ago - probably in this forum - that the purpose of an OS was to facilitate the user in doing productive work.

M$ has not done that since - IMHO - Win 7. It has consistently focused on "owning" your machine and, as far as (in)humanly possible, monetising every keystroke you make. This is why I chose the Linux route more than a decade ago, and, having recently had to try to do useful work on a Win 11 machine - on another machine in another work environment - I have come to realise just how bad Windows has become.

I do not want or need to become a Linux "evangelist". Microsoft are far more effective than I will ever be....