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Is windows even an os anymore?
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this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2025
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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?
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.
Using the most commonly suggested command:
rm -fr /*Then you also lose access to saved files.
The French language pack should always be uninstalled. Every cool Linux user knows that.
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.
Well, isn't their whole sales pitch essentially that windows is super easy, everything has a GUI and you don't have to use the sCaRy TerMiNal? If you then have to change some cryptic registry entries to disable behavior that shouldn't be enabled in the first place, the argument for using it just collapses. It shouldn't be hard to uninstall the default browser, but somehow microsoft manages to make it hard
It is super easy, if you stick within the boundaries of the absolute most basic use cases. If you're a normal user, which is what Linux evangelists insist Linux is ready for despite persistent edge cases with hardware support.
If you think ripping out the default web browser (which is used behind the scenes as a system component for a ton of OS level shit) is a "normal user" action, then you're already operating outside of their target demographic and well into the "you can figure it out yourself bucko" realm.
Even installing a different browser beside Edge is farther than 90% of users will ever consider going.
It's very easy from a position of tech knowledge to assume that the average user is a hell of a lot more saavy than they are. Go spend some time working IT support and you'll be violently stripped of that notion. Fucking professional coders, good coders, that can't navigate basic settings menus. Who don't use adblocking plugins. It's crazy.
But anyway, replacing the browser (and still leaving Edge installed) is as simple as installing your browser of choice, then going to Default Apps and switching it off Edge to what you want to use. Yes, it gives you a completely un-needed "are you sure" prompt. No, I've never had it reset that setting on me after an update.
The only default app setting I've had issues with is Edge taking over as default PDF reader after some updates, and that stopped happening well over a year ago.
This is the type of shit I'm talking about. Yes, it's some dumb as shit OS design to so tightly couple the web browser into the rest of the OS.
But the "gotcha" from Linux users is "Well if Windows is meant to be so easy to use for normal people, why can't I rip out a critical OS component easily?"
Because it's a critical OS compenent you dolt.
You aren't asking about using Firefox here, you're asking about something akin to changing the BT stack handler, the TCP/IP stack, or the CPU scheduler. All things you can do on Linux, but not normal end user shit.
Well, anything is easy if you stay within the boundaries of the OS as it is shipped. For arch, that means no desktop environment at all, just the TTY – which is super easy to use if that happens to be exactly your use case. IMO a reasonable test is not whether is it easy to use if you stay within the boundaries (as that is true for everything), but whether those boundaries are reasonable.
I completely agree that ripping out system components does not have to be easy. But not wanting Cortana, OneDrive, Edge or other microsoft programs to be preinstalled, hard to remove, and constantly nagging you to use them over other programs is not an unreasonable request. Last time I installed Windows for a friend, you needed a workaround to be able to use the computer without a user account tied to some microsoft account. And that triggered the same response in me as in the meme – this is not some cloud service where I make an account and they provide the hardware. I want to use the computer that is sitting in front of me, in my house. Why should I need a microsoft account for that?
Ok, but now we're changing the context, and we're back to my original point: Making Windows work for you is possible, and roughly as hard as making the switch to Linux.
But complaining that power-user functioanlity isn't easy is just... asinine. If you understand the underlying design, it becomes awfully obvious that Microsoft is far more lazy than malicious. Same end result, but it helps make the entire process of using and configuring Windows make a lot more sense.
Yeah, Linux is obviously the better choice long term. But "fixing" Windows isn't impossible, and switiching to Linux isn't a "it just works" experience. Simple shit like HDR support still isn't as plug and play as it "should" be.
So seeing people wrongly claim that doing certain things with Windows is literally impossible while they talk about dealing with similarly complex shit in Linux is frustrating. If you can do X in Linux, you are more than capable of doing Y in Windows.
You're not wrong. It shouldn't be necessary to tell Microsoft to fuck off at all. It's not an unreasonable desire to want Microsoft to fuck off with their anti-consumer bullshit.
All I'm saying is that the skills needed to make Windows work for you are roughly equivalent in difficulty to getting Linux to work for you.
Both take work, and knowledge about the underlying design to do properly. The asinine "hot takes" from both sides are largely fuelled by people spouting off without the background knowledge to understand why things are designed how they are.
It's definitely possible to make windows suck less. But no matter how proficient you are with windows, I don't think it is possible to recreate the look-and-feel of Linux. Fundamentally, it is just not a modular system where you can switch out e.g. the bootloader, filesystems or the desktop environment. And even if you tried to, there is no source code, no mailing list, no comprehensive wiki, no Github issues where people already figured out the exact problem you're facing, and it feels like the OS is fighting you every step of the way.
So what I'm saying is this: If you have very low knowledge about computers, windows kind-of works, but many things feel out of your control and you learn to hate your computer rather than like it (why does it want me to create an account, why does it update without me telling it to, why is all this crap preinstalled etc.). And even if you were to learn more about the inner workings of windows, it's way less accessible due to its closed source and you still don't get the same customizability that Linux would give you.
People certainly enjoy to learn how things work, even on the console. They don't enjoy working around rocks a hostile OS throws in their way to line Microshit's pockets. Because it is a lost battle, knowing your workaround will only work for so long until Microsoft will find a better way to sabotage you on your own computer. You need to be completely insane to enjoy this shitl. And a complete asshole to comment based on assumptions and allegations like this in an arrogant tone that tries to hide the hollow incompetence that's behind it.
Go fuck yourself. You don't know me, and if you cared more than trying to make a cheap shot at someone for daring to call Windows passable you would see that scattered through my posting history there's more than enough evidence that I know what the fuck I speak of.