Time to quit Windows

I have to use windows for so many things its not viable to run on VMs. personally I think Microsoft should be sanctioned over the updates issue. Its back to the early days of windows 3.1 (yes I am that old) where every update causes significant problems across a suite of programs already installed and working. I find I get 2 or 3 updates a week that cause programs to fail. Increasingly I have found that Microsoft updates actually crash current apps while you are working on them, particularly when they are updating network related bits. How any OS provider can decide unilaterally that their update process is more important than you continuing to work on your machine is beyond belief. Its impossible to stop updates, even if you postpone and limit as data limited your network connections. Worse is the Edge debacle - in the 80's MS lost the battle over IE being mandatory - now the same has to happen over Edge. I have gone through every possible mechanism to stop it being re-introduced yet every update they try and re-install. B4X (I use B4J and B4A predominately) havent suffered too much but I find things like the right click on tool bar for last edited files list - doesnt update - I did have an issue with B4J where I thought I had a bug in some network code - spent a couple of hours trying to find out why then we had a power outage and on reboot of the pc - windows did its update on restart and voila - problem gone again........ There are not enough people prepared to be vocal to challenge MS on these issues and no political will either. I do actually wonder what OS I have now after having downloaded over 23Gb of updates this year so far - I suspect that the amount of 'original' windows is very small - I wonder what a court would rule about whether the licence I singed up for is actually applicable to a different product. - not to mention the percentage of worldwide internet bandwidth taken up by updates.... we would all have better speeds if it werent for that volume all the time.

I for years have done this. I have a Windows VM I do development on. I do not play games or casually browse the internet. (100% dev work) It has been up and running for over 3 years. It is backed up nightly and I always have 3 days of backups.

My daily driver is real hardware (Windows at the moment but has been Linux in the past) and has changed a few times. On that I play games, try new software and just play around. This model works for me and keeps my dev box clean of crapware even with Windows updates. (Except for Windows crapware... LOL)

I am a windows user, and don't plan to leave windows. I have a couple of virtual machines with Linux, one with ZorinOS and the other with Ubuntu.
Zorin is very well refined in terms of user interface, but I found some incompatibilities with specific softwares due to libraries either missing or elsewhere located.
Ubuntu is the reference distribution.
My experience is that if a user finds issues with Windows, it's usually his/her fault.

I prefer Windows. I guess that it is a matter of getting used to. I do have Mac and Linux computers.
I'm too used to tools such as Notepad++, Directory Opus and many other useful utilities. I have tears in my eyes when I need to do too many things with the Mac Finder tool. In many cases I prefer to SSH to the Mac computer

I've disabled auto updates and the computer can run for several months without reboot:

Erel said:

Directory Opus

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You should tell the truth: you have Amiga ?

I have used B4A in a VirtualBox Windows VM ever since I got B4A (9 years), with the host being various Ubuntu derivatives, I like Ubuntu flavours now, choose the one with the desktop you like, they are good. (got sick of windows in about 2006 I think, difficult to change at first, but gets much easier and I won't go back)

Just a note of caution: we should declare explicitly when we're referring to Windows Home or Windows Pro.
They're different enough to shift our conclusion from "let's quit it" to "I can put up with it".

In my case it's W10 Home Edition and I find it annoying. In general, I don't want to be considered just the one who spent its money and bought an "autonomous black-box".
I much prefer the role of "sole master", taking all his responsabilities if in the position to know every single bit and detail of what he buys.

When I see Notepad calling home on an encrypted stream, my trust on the OS company goes below zero. Hundreds of cryptic-named services. Most doing things far from what their names imply, being used as a common tunnel for other pieces of sw. I'm sure that great part of the discomfort depends on my refusal to deeply learn (or even, to simply better understanding) Windows OS. Since its inception I had bias against it...

Hello,

Aaaaaah, Windows, the only operating system where users must do the debug ??
Too funny, the best way:
-1 disable automatic updates;
- 2 Wait and see...
Alternative, maybe better:
-1 and only one, keep Windows 7

Personally, on the new computer with W10, i always wait 3/4 months before doing it. And only if it is absolutely necessary. ?
It's why i use most important softwares on the old one who's under W7 ?

udg said:

Yesterday I tried the update to Windows 10

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I guess the problem with W-anything is BLOAT. the updates must now be so complex with a bazillion lines of code, that almost anything that is updated WILL break something else.
But, then, bloat has been there for a very long time and probably started when W3.1 headed to W2000 (which I think is still the most stable). Around late W7 it also stopped supporting 16-bit. That caused a lot of legacy installs to still be running somewhere-everywhere.

i think Windonkey is finally getting irrational.
and that's what makes me finally really really consider ubuntu.
i only need win for one thing : B4x.

Erel said:

Notepad++, Directory Opus and many other useful utilities

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all available elsewhere @Erel all available elsewhere as better implementations as well

Laurent95 said:

the only operating system where users must do the debug

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ABSOLUTELY ?

How is it that my android phone has word and excel with pretty much full used features on it - but on the PC that lot takes up big space and stuff no-one in this life-time needs or uses? [nope not starting a new thread for that one].

I was disappointed by Win8 flavors, so i have switched to Ubuntu. Now at work i use both Ubuntu and Win10, and the both are equally stable. I found that WIN10 is a good flavour of Windows, I use Virtualbox if i need specific tools on a OS that is not on the other. You can copy and past, drag'n'Drop beetween the OS, and you may have a seamless integration of the different applications. I find more and more a convergence in the graphic interfaces. Mono/.Net, java, containerization...OS battle is over, we are now in the framework and protocol era, with mainly web (and his uggly html/javascript syntax) as UI. It's time now to switch to a new web client interface. The easy way of embedding code and GUI makes the success of VB, basic4ppc, B4X, C# Windows Forms

chams said:

I find more and more a convergence

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Mmmm those last comments from that point onward : Interesting perspective. Interesting. . .

chams said:

It's time now to switch to a new web client interface.

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Looks like a good topic for a new thread. . .why what when how etc..

Many forms of operating system have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that Microsoft Windows is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that Microsoft Windows is the worst form of operating system except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…

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-Winston Churchill on operating systems