$300 for the most important piece of software on the hardware that you interact with every day, sometimes all day, for years? That’s a steal.

And again, as an OS, Windows just works and Linux doesn’t. Even if you wanted to set things manually in the registry to disable the bad consumer “features”, you’d still spend less time than configuring a standard Linux install and it would be more stable.

It’s like Apple fan bois nowadays. Ridiculous.

Or… Read what I said. Spend the $300 on the enterprise license. No ads. No forced notifications. A single computer with multiple users at one time in a home environment is not a use case that would get any thought. Those that want it, can do it. And it’s easy, and free. Hyper-V is free and the licenses for the virtual machines are free too because the container host is windows. Lock an instance per output and voila. Recall won’t be coming to enterprise or server and if it does, it will be disablable. Just like forced updates are disabled in enterprise. Forced reboots disabled. Etc.

If you want that experience you buy that experience.

I’m sure if you edit the registry inside emacs from a live iso boot from 6 burned CDs, it will unlock all the golden rainbow features you require.

Yes exactly. I love Linux. I build embedded systems devices with it. I run it on some of my rack appliances. But I’m also not a blind fan boi.

Windows made leaps and bounds into stability with XP. And since then it’s been a slow cog into being an excellent enterprise grade OS even with users bashing it all sorts of ways.

Most (all) of the complaints except price focus on money grabs and features for the docile masses. Forced updates, reboots, integrations, etc. My 80 year old relatives can use it and you know what it works great when they type into the “computer question box”. Click start menu and type. It brings up their files, folders, apps, answers to web questions, etc. That makes sense to someone who doesn’t understand a computer. It’s not pandering to the IT folk, it’s pandering to Karen.

If you’re IT folk, you can just spend a little more money on the proper license and all that goes away. Or you spend some time hacking the registry and get it for free usually.

The only BSODs I have had in the last decade are graphics driver related usually when pushing beta drivers hard. My Linux OS’s have had way more stability issues with less interaction.

It 100% is in a desktop environment used by users.

In an embedded locked system not in space, it’s the same.

No. It really isn’t.

Windows with the proper license and configuration is more stable, more productive, and that configuration takes less than an hour once for the life of the machine.

In 2024 if you’re still bashing Windows for BSODs, stability, updates, etc, you’re doing it wrong. You can bash all day long for privacy violations and corporate greed but both of those are fixed with the proper version like Windows Enterprise. Costs more, but you are less of the product.

The US is a hostile place for online hosting. All small and medium businesses should move their operations out of the US. I did years ago, never looked back. Only the big ones with lobbiests will remain, just as our dear lord and saviour capitalism intended.

They’re like the last ones to the party lol

Issue is definitely corporate greed outsourcing issues to a mega monolith IT company.

Most IT departments are idiots now. Even 15 years ago, those were the smartest nerds in most buildings. They had to know how to do it all. Now it’s just installing the corporate overlord software and the bullshit spyware. When something goes wrong, you call the vendor’s support line. That’s not IT, you’ve just outsourced all your brains to a monolith that can go at any time.

None of my servers running windows went down. None of my infrastructure. None of the infrastructure I manage as side hustles.

I’d actually love to take some sort of sea train, underground tunnel or floating death wave train one day. It wouldn’t be relaxing, peaceful, or cheap. But it would be an adventure.

Copilot sucks. Gemeni is a sassy teenager. Chatgpt 4o is actually halfway decent. When they announced Gemeni had a million context tokens, that was awesome. But it can’t give coherent output to save its life. Useless.

I’m fully aware of the few buzzword and marketing pitches that cloud hosting uses. I’m forced to use both GCP and AWS for different contracts and I’m good at it.

The real truth is that most websites and internet services do not need scale. They do not need all this crap. A Pentium 3 could host all the data for most of these businesses and services. You don’t need serverless lambda functions to handle an api when an actual endpoint does the same thing to pull some info. The few companies that need such distributed computing and power, will need a big on-site or off-site implementation. It makes sense for that sometimes. But most times, it doesn’t even then. You’re just outsourcing your engineering and paying a premium.

I have seen so many startups spin up cloud accounts costing thousands of dollars a month when they’re in “private beta stealth”. Literally a $500 laptop could host all of their services just as quickly with no monthly fee. But as long as the VCs are paying, just flush that cash down.

Anything that requires a fancy buzzword is usually stupid but a good way to make money for someone. The “cloud” has always existed as offsite hosting. Off-site shared servers, VPSs, whatever. It’s no different than running CPanel on an LAMP VPS in 2003.

But calling it “the cloud” gave all the business majors a hard on and then the accounts department realized they could manipulate share pricing by reducing the amount of assets a company holds. It’s the same stupid reason many companies don’t own their corporate headquarters or remote centers. They lease the, even if from themselves through another holding. It looks better on paper so the share price goes up. It’s all mind boggling stupid.

It’s a Google updates issue since they’re blocked. Apple isn’t but they comply with the Chinese government just as much as they do in the US as does Google. Remember Google is banned because it would not comply with China. How quickly the Americans forget.

Most likely the corporate spyware that Microsoft enables, requires very recent Google services and Apple services to operate. It’s pretty standard in the corporate spyware world. Usually just a few months out of date at most.

I don’t buy anything on ticketmaster. I won’t install their app.

I still see people I want to see. I just may have to travel to do so.

I’m convinced Americans have the same level of propagandist ignorance as North Koreans. And they also have no idea. Only a few can see the reality. And they try to escape.

So same with the people voluntarily visiting the USA right? Because the same laws already exist there.

First, obviously this is not good. Secondly, if anyone is complaining about this from the USA, you don’t get to. CBP has the right to inspect your electronics with no questions asked by you. They have a right to make a copy of all data. They have a right to seize your electronics and decrypt them if you fail to provide the encryption pin. They have the right to compel you to unlock and decrypt your devices if it uses fingerprint or facial unlock. They have the right to revoke your residency status if you aren’t a citizen.

CBP has authority to do this at any sea, land, or air crossing. It also has the authority to do this within 100 miles of any border. That means about 70% of all Americans live their day to day lives within the scope of the exact same legislation. And yes it is used, all the time. If you think it isn’t, you’re just ignorant.