• rtxn@lemmy.worldM
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      1 year ago

      Some sort of hidden, concealed, clandestine internal QoS implementation in Windows. Reserving a portion of network bandwidth for high priority traffic sounds like a good concept, but I don’t like the fact that this is so hidden (I’ve been working with computers for many years and I’ve never heard of it until now), and that the mechanism to determine the priority of a packet is unknown.

        • rtxn@lemmy.worldM
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          1 year ago

          I love shitting on Windows as much as anyone, but that is a completely baseless, fictitious accusation. And if not, give me a credible source.

          If anything, I’d keep spyware traffic as low-profile as reasonable in Microsoft’s place.

          • dust_accelerator@discuss.tchncs.de
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            1 year ago

            I tend to agree.

            Nevertheless, some unknown implementation can have bugs and things can go wrong and there’s nothing you can do about it, short of “rebooting” or d̷o̶w̸s̸i̷n̴g̸ ̴t̶h̸e̷ ̸h̵a̵r̵d̷ ̵d̷r̶i̴v̶e̷ ̵w̶i̴t̸h̷ ̸̞̺͠h̵̺͙̎̍o̸͔͠ͅḻ̷̀̇y̵͚͍̎ ̷͉̅̅w̸͎̔a̷̧̫̒́t̶̼̉̓ę̵̾͗r̶̫͑͑ ̴̣̿͒(̷͙̎a̸̬̺͝͝n̸̞̓̓d̴̬͌̍ ̸͇͕͌͝s̷̡̯̓͝u̸̡̳̇͝b̴̳͜͠s̷͍̘̽ë̵̜q̷̝͐̄ȕ̵̞̐e̷̲̠̐́ń̴̨̙͝t̸̛̬͝l̶̮̔͠y̴͕̪̑͝ ̵̖̆ḃ̴̪̟u̶̢͓͑̌y̵̜̤͌̏i̵̦̋ň̴̨͚̀g̸͓͑ ̴͍̬̽à̶͜ ̴͇͔̓n̴̬͂͜ì̷̢̛̯c̴̤̖̈́e̶̼̫̐̊ ̵̹̏͝f̸̙̀̑r̷̪̩͆͆e̸̤̫͛͋s̷̢̙̏h̷͇͔́ ̸̭̆͝N̷̰͗͛͜V̶͇͒̚M̸̟̍͜ě̷̛̟ ̸̢̞́͝a̷͙͔͒͒n̷̻͇͝d̸̘̥͌̾ ̴̜͓͑p̷̬͑͊ŭ̸̮̏t̸̲̀t̴̡͚̽í̶͎͓̑n̴͕̘̒̈́g̴͓̰̓͝ ̵͓̎a̴̻̼͗ ̷̦̍̈́s̷̥̅̈l̴̝̂e̴̞̅͊ḛ̴̊̅k̷͚̕ ̵̛̼̬͗D̴̻̾̽e̵̙͂̊b̷̝͘ī̵̢͇ą̵̂n̴͖̑ ̶̼̚h̴̼͂͑e̷̲͆̆a̵̡̋d̸̢͔̈l̶͕̍̍e̸̛͕̙̒s̶̞͔̀͠s̸̯͖̕ ̵͍̦̈́̉ ̸̨̨̓i̸̙͖͗̌ņ̶̯̍s̸̡̖͗̇ṯ̷́̒ä̵̦́̎l̶̼̄l̵̨͊̊ ̴̳͑͗ó̵͎̅ǹ̴͈̚ ̷͖͊͝i̷̠͇̊t̷̼̞͒͘)̵͎̤̔͌

    • VeganPizza69 Ⓥ@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s used for updates. I’m not sure if it works all the time.

      I think that it used to be called superfetch in the old days. https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/superfetch-service-disable-helps-to-increase-speed/3c4d5b4b-edef-4eb7-9456-52fd304e606c

      If you’re using an “unofficial” license, it’s probably normal to disable updates and afferent services.

      I remember from years ago when I was modding Windows XP installations with nLite to try to purge all the unnecessary bits and install some useful stuff. Superfetch was this annoying service that supposedly ruined online gaming due to lag. :)

      • 0x4E4F@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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        1 year ago

        Prefetch and superfecth are just obnoxious services that waste disk space. You can safely disable them, there is no downside to not using prefetch or superfect on modern SSDs. On regular spinning drives, yes, they did make loading programs a bit faster.

      • sanguinet@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        It’s not, and in a vacuum I don’t think anyone would mind. It is the fact that it is concealed that is really shitty.

        “It reserves bandwidth for high-priority tasks such as Windows Update over other tasks that compete for internet bandwidth, like streaming a movie”

        As much as I’d like to keep my system up to date (and I really do), if I’m watching a movie then that is my priority. Any task I’m currently using the bandwidth on, should be considered my system’s priority. This is akin to rebooting the computer when it determines it is necessary, with the user having little control to stop it; it’s intend isn’t malicious, and it is meant to protect the user, but all it achieves is upsetting the user and make us find ways around it or turn it off completely.

  • gmtom@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I mean that only matters for people like us.

    99.99% of the Windows user base doesn’t give the tiniest semblance of a shit about any of that. Hell I run Windows on my gaming pc still and have never had cause to do any of that.

      • NateNate60@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’m going to be honest with you, as often as this has been memed and for as long as I have been using Windows on my work computer, I have never once been forced to restart on the spot by an automatic update.

        I’m sure those who have will be quick to reply but at this point I’m 90% confident it’s a loud minority.

        • msage@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          Yes, because even once is too many.

          In a corporate, I spent an hour and half every morning waiting for Windows to update. Then my coworker handed me Fedora DVD and I never looked back.

          • NateNate60@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I’m saying it’s never happened to me. Not once. Zero times. Zero is less than one.

            Normal Windows updates don’t take an hour long. Give me a break. The ones that do are the version upgrades. That’s like the equivalent of a distro upgrade.

            • Malfeasant@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Normal Windows updates don’t take an hour

              Correct. But who can tell the difference beforehand between a normal update and an abnormal one? The problem is Windows tends to hide those details. I’ve sat on support calls where a server needs to be rebooted for some configuration change, and Windows insists on applying updates because hey, you’re rebooting anyway, so what if it takes 1/2 hour to do this thing that should take 5 minutes…

            • msage@programming.dev
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              1 year ago

              Sure, your experience may be different.

              That happened in 2013 with random laptop they gave me. I kid you not it took that long, could have been a bug somewhere in the OEM, never cared enough to find out.

              But my experience is just as real as much as yours.

        • rtxn@lemmy.worldM
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          1 year ago

          I’ve seen an entire factory shut down for hours because two critical Win10 computers tried and failed to update. It’s never an issue until it becomes one.

          Plus a failed update is the whole reason I nuked my C: drive and switched to Manjaro (now running Arch, put down the pitchforks).

          • NateNate60@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Well, running Windows 10, a consumer user-oriented operating system, to control mission-critical machines is mistake number 1.

            This wouldn’t have happened if they had used Windows Server or something actually designed for that task (like Linux!).

            • rtxn@lemmy.worldM
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              1 year ago

              Neither of those options were available. It was written by a third-party for some old .NET Framework version, and the server and GUI components were written as a single application. Putting it on a server wasn’t an option either because the application’s GUI was constantly used for the management of assembly machines, and other applications were used for monitoring and administrative stuff.

              If you had been there, you’d know why this was a low-priority risk. That place was bleeding from a thousand wounds. At least this had some redundancy, for all it was worth in the end…

              (edit) I actually contributed to that software, even though it’s not open-source! I managed to nail down an issue where loading a project file using one locale would result in a crash, but not in others. The .NET stack trace was printed to an XHR response’s payload and I used that to locate a float.ToString() call where CurrentCulture was passed as the cultureInfo instead of InvariantCulture, so depending on the computer’s locale, it would try to parse CSV data either using a decimal dot or a decimal comma. I mailed this to the maintainer and the fix was released within the month.

        • Kedly@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Sure Windows gives you warning, but after a while it FORCES you to install, even if for whatever reason that new branch bricks your computer. I had a good 6 months of that where every time my computer got shut off, it would force the update and fail like 40 times before it finally let me revert and use my computer. There was no way to tell it to STOP UPDATING

        • Pan_Ziemniak@midwest.social
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          1 year ago

          Ive not had “must update on the spot right this very second,” but ive had countless, “we will update the second u power off or attempt a restart. If you try and restart into ur linux partition, we will somehow ensure u fail to boot right up until u got thru with our forced update.” Which also sometimes goes hand in hand with, “oops, i was supposed to update, but i shit myself instead. Youre going to need to try again at least once or twice. Dont worry, whether the update goes thru or not, itll only take a maximum of 90 minutes.”

          Windows can fuck its facehole thru its ass as far as its auto updates are concerned for all i care.

  • pHr34kY@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    20 years ago, a friend said “Windows does whatever you don’t tell it not to do”. It is as true now as it was then.

    90% of configuring Windows is disabling shit.

  • smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 year ago

    Learning Linux is learning how to use a computer.
    Learning Windows is learning how to avoid big companies will when you want to use your computer.

  • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    I mean, you don’t HAVE to do any of that stuff in Windows, it’s just helps a bit.

    I’m sure there are plenty of windows horror stories. But almost every Windows computer I’ve had in the last decade, both custom and OEM, has worked pretty well out of the box. And almost every Ubuntu computer I’ve had over the last decade has had problems that weren’t trivial to fix.

    I like Linux, but when people compare these problems like they’re the same just are missing the point.

  • Melllvar@startrek.website
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    1 year ago

    Unpopular opinion: The Windows Registry, a centralized, strongly typed key:value database for application settings, is actually superior to hundreds of individual dotfiles, each one written in its own janky customized DSL, with its own idea of where it should live in the file system, etc.

      • excitingburp@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The language itself has no type enforcement, the type checking is implemented within nixpkgs. This might seem like pedantry, but it really matters for things like LSPs (text editor autocomplete). I think that’s what scares some people off: it’s like OG Minecraft, you need to have the wiki/search.nixos.org open while you are doing your editing.

        That being said, the type checking goes much deeper than what the windows registry does - e.g. it won’t allow you to enable conflicting services - like grub and systemd-boot - at the same time.

  • arthurpizza@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I know instantly how to get the packages I need in Linux but I had to do some research to enable the webcam in Windows 10.

    The idea that one OS is easier than the other is misattributed familiarity.

    • KISSmyOS@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      I discovered yesterday that Windows has a command line package manager in Powershell that can install, uninstall and update basically every software you might ever want to install on a Windows PC.
      winget search ""
      winget list
      winget upgrade

        • 0x4E4F@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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          1 year ago

          Well, it’s under a permissive license, so there is little he can do legally, except maybe sue them for not mentioning the original project, which I’m sure they will add and that will be that eventually.

          • onlinepersona@programming.dev
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            1 year ago

            That’s true. A little recognition would’ve been nice and I think that’s all he was asking for. Microsoft had a whole team work on it when they could’ve just given him a job to maintain it.

            CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

        • Baggins [he/him]@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          They pulled a corporate and rewrote an opensource project to embed it into windows

          CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

          Do you really need to license your comments?

          © 2024 Baggins@lemmy.ca - All Rights Reserved

          (Plz don’t sue me for making a derivative work based your comment and violating the license kthxbai)

            • Saik0@lemmy.saik0.com
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              1 year ago

              I own my own instance. Your “license” is not accepted. Your instance sharing content with mine is an automatic agreement to my instance’s terms.

              1.2 Grant of License: By uploading User Content, you grant Saik0-Lemmy a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use, copy, distribute, publicly display, and modify your User Content

              See how silly this is? Your license means nothing. It’s just wasted screen space. And nobody is pissed. People are just trying to talk sense to you.

  • Interstellar_1@pawb.social
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    1 year ago

    I recently discovered, after a while of wondering why the audio quality in windows was worse than fedora that the automatic windows audio enhancements actually made the audio significantly worse 😅 meanwhile I still haven’t figured out how to stop windows from randomly switching the audio source from my headphones to my nonexistent display monitor audio.

    • Spaz@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Open device manager, goto audio devices,then disable the audio driver for your monitor. Simple

      • bort@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        Simple

        it would be “simple”, if start->settings wouldn’t point me in an completely wrong direction. As it is, you need to know the secret phrase “device manager” (or “control panel” or “management console”) to find the hidden settings-dialogs that will actually solve the problem.

  • lemmyingly@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Interestingly, I like to keep my network connected devices up to date. Why would I disable that on any OS?

    For me, candy crush et al was never installed on my Windows computers by default, both on home and pro versions. There were install shortcuts, but never the actual programs themselves.

    • 0x4E4F@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      1 year ago

      Keeping a Pro or a Home install up to date is not always a good thing. From a security standpoint, yes, I do agree, but when half your personal files go missing after an update… you kinda start wondering why you let this thing update automatically in the first place.

      LTSC editions though, yes. I leave them to autoupdate. They do it like once a month anyway, so it’s not that big of a deal anyway, it’s not really such a big problem. And the updates don’t take that long, no new features are added, just security updates and that’s it.

      So, if you’re worried about security and being up to date, I’d recommend the Windows LTSC editions. That is the only thing I ever install if I have to install Windows.

      • lemmyingly@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I haven’t experienced the missing files issue on any of the machines I use, nor have the people I know. I guess the missing files thing is when some people set up their directories in a specific unusual way.

        On a couple of machines my personal directories are in the default locations and on one machine there on a separate drive.

          • lemmyingly@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Apparently the files were never deleted. The issue was something failed with a temp profile during the update process for some users. I don’t care enough to read on it further. That’s good enough in my opinion and not a reason to avoid Windows.