Windows 11 still sucks.

[Lucio Chiappetti]

Off-topic:
"Notoriously complex" ? The draft of the 730 form instructions for 2026 in Italy is 177 pages (just checked, since this thread reminded me to check, it is still in draft form ... a couple of month more to be ready), when the form itself is 13 pages (including the result of the calculations ... the stuff you put in is half of that). In past years it was called "lunar" by some politician (can't remember if it was when we still had the longer 740 form - now called PF - or already the 730 ... which should be the "simplified" version ).

In a remote past one collected the form at the town hall and filled it by hand, then it was made available as a PDF by Agenzia delle Entrate, then they introduced fiscal assistance centres to check it before submission (originally they had an agreement with employers so the taxpayer did not pay for assistance) ... then they moved to online forms (first for 730, later also for PF) ... if one trusts himself one can do everything online on the official site... in recent years it has greatly improved ... the "precompiled online form" is almost complete with all kind of data. And one is not subject to verification for the precompiled data one accepts.

[Octopuss]

Off-topic:

There is an alternative in Windows which is LibreOffice.

I admit it's been over ten years since I last tried, but it was horrible experience. But it was mostly because of the GUI for me. My wife however, she uses Word and Excel for living, and after a week she basically said "screw this shit, it's not 100% compatible with Office, I cannot use this", so we went back to Microsoft. Fortunately I managed to snatch two legal boxes of Office 2010 few months ago so I don't even need to mess around with activation bypassing and stuff.

[Mæstro]

I have said before that I was chained to Windows half a year longer than I wanted, for my undergrad economics course then made heavy use of Excel. Nobody was surprised to learn that the economics faculty at my university had a special deal with Microsoft. I refused to use Office 365, but my copy of Office 2010 which I have had since that year sufficed for course purposes. We did nothing especially advanced in Excel, so LibreOffice might have sufficed then, but knowing that Office 2010 should have worked in any case means the delay was only for prudence, to avoid the disruption to my daily computer during term time should anything have gone wrong.

I have always found LibreOffice adequate for my own purposes. Mathematicians tend to prefer LaTeX, for which I use LyX, and because I have not yet figured out how to make Beamer slides in it, I have always worked with Impress, which again suffices. i have used Draw to complete forms uploaded as PDF, whereas in the Windows days, I would print and scan them. Write and Calc have also sufficed for my modest needs.

There are two annoyances in LibreOffice. First is that, whenever I open it, it claims it was improperly closed and offers, often twice when dismissing the first time, to restore whatever I had last up. The other is that it turns out that LibreOffice still demands Firefox (ESR), Konqueror, Epiphany or Chromium as a dependency after all, and I do not know how to force it to ignore these so I can uninstall Chromium once and for all. These defects are not enough to sour my opinion of it, but should be noted.

[Lucio Chiappetti]

Being afar from Windows since the NT era more than 20 years ago, I am not sure what the difference between Office 365 vs 2010 is. I suspect the former is the new GUI I do not like, and the latter is the old GUI similar to OpenOffice and LibreOffice. I find GUI changes annoying. After all on a text processor (which could even be Google docs when I'm forced to use it, or the "rich text" editors used on some forums or other web tools like pbworks) one in general knows what one wants to do ... hence one is annoyed to find that the button, menu item or whatever (I hate icon-only buttons vs text buttons, or at least text tooltips) has changed look or position, so one is chasing after how to do it after a change.
I help a disabled friend on his PC (which has Windows, while I'm Linux) and I managed to convince him to use LibreOffice on Windows when there was the MS Word GUI change. This was more or less at the same time I had to choose whether stick to OpenOffice or move to LibreOffice on Linux. I did an enquiry and choose LibreOffice because it seemed to have more perspectives (true) and more GUI stability (not true).

Anyhow I do use LibreOffice only marginally for non-serious work (an occasional letter, or a scratch spreadsheet). For serious work I use LaTeX (all astronomical journals require manuscripts in LaTeX ... and I use it also for other kind of reports), and Beamer for presentations, and mysql (actually MariaDB) as database, with the command-line client or a couple of front ends I wrote myself).

[Mæstro]

I am not sure what the difference between Office 365 vs 2010 is.

Office 365 is Microsoft’s online, JavaScript-based version of Office since 2011. In contrast, Office 2010 is the traditional, local Office instalment which came that year. Microsoft has continued to maintain Office 365 and traditional releases in parallel; the most recent traditional one is Office 2024. The GUI changes which we both dislike, notably the ribbon, were implemented in Office 2007 and inherited by Office 2010. The half-hearted ribbon adoption in Office, WordPad, Paint and elsewhere is one of the reasons why I slightly favour XP over 7.

[andyprough]

I have always found LibreOffice adequate for my own purposes. Mathematicians tend to prefer LaTeX, for which I use LyX, and because I have not yet figured out how to make Beamer slides in it, I have always worked with Impress, which again suffices. i have used Draw to complete forms uploaded as PDF, whereas in the Windows days, I would print and scan them. Write and Calc have also sufficed for my modest needs.

It's been good enough for my needs as well. I did my first college degree using OpenOffice, and have done my graduate studies with LibreOffice as well as most of my documents, spreadsheets, and presentations for my work. When I need better MS Office compatibility because I'm collaborating on a document with other people, I use OnlyOffice.

The other is that it turns out that LibreOffice still demands Firefox (ESR), Konqueror, Epiphany or Chromium as a dependency after all, and I do not know how to force it to ignore these so I can uninstall Chromium once and for all. These defects are not enough to sour my opinion of it, but should be noted.

I haven't run into that on MX, Trisquel or antiX. Might be a Debian thing, if that's what you are using, I haven't used straight Debian in many years. I often run with only Pale Moon and with LibreOffice.

[Mæstro]

I haven't run into that on MX, Trisquel or antiX. Might be a Debian thing, if that's what you are using, I haven't used straight Debian in many years. I often run with only Pale Moon and with LibreOffice.

Indeed, the dependency is baked into the Debian repository. I have said before that I have been on the fence for a while about whether I should make direct Debian or AntiX my next distro, when this one’s ELTS expires three years hence. Pure Debian appeals for its certain decade of security updates and broad application support, AntiX for the presumably lighter system load. This small point is in AntiX’s favour. If AntiX can receive Debian (E)LTS updates, then unless there are unforeseen hardware incompatibilities, AntiX seems like it should suit nicely.

[UCyborg]

I guess I'm similar in a way to that guy on VOGONS in a way that I can't let go of Windows, just happen to find XP too primitive compared to him, but other non-Windows options are still alien to me and don't feel right.

[Moonchild]

As far as I'm concerned I have another 6 years to feel out the market. 6 years can make a lot of difference in the IT world, so I'm holding out hope something better will emerge and this madness will be over and done with. Win 11 is just more and more a no-go and I'm not surprised to see adoption of win 11 falline and win 10 going back up in recent graphs. Win 11 is just getting in the way of getting your work done.

[Mæstro]

As far as I'm concerned I have another 6 years to feel out the market. 6 years can make a lot of difference in the IT world, so I'm holding out hope something better will emerge and this madness will be over and done with.

I held such an attitude throughout the late tens towards Windows 10. I thought to myself that current fashions such as flat design would someday die down. Your own old picture of a storm in web standards, which we both thought would abet in due time, is apt. My hope was that, as physical limits to hardware development were reached and Moore’s law became obsolete, the necessary conditions for breakneck software development would give way, and likewise, fashions would change from those popular in the tens. Instead, trends popular since the mid-2010s have calcified. The current generation of icons look just as barren as their precursors ten years ago, and I keep seeing new casualties of the mobile-centric design craze which refuses to die. What do you suppose could plausibly change Windows 11’s course within the next six years?

[Moonchild]

I was a 7 holdout myself having a similar attitude. 8 and 8.1 were unacceptable. 10, while flat, I evaluated and quickly saw that if necessary, I could use it unlike the 8/8.1 fiasco, but stayed on Win 7 for a long time after the Win 10 release, keeping an eye on it. Only once one of the later versions provided enough maturity and stability did I move across (primarily because of gaming requirements becoming Windows 10). Now, I'm in a similar holding pattern for whatever comes after Windows 11 -- I will never user Win 11 as my daily driver, period. Maybe something better comes, maybe not, but in the meantime I'm using what works for me.

What do you suppose could plausibly change Windows 11’s course within the next six years?

I think the massive decline and refusal we're seeing is the only thing that could make it change course. And its ties to the A.I. bubble as well. Once that pops, a lot of Windows 11's reasons for being increasingly terrible will also fall away and it's possible (but not guaranteed) that something better will come out of it. And if not, then I'll have to look at potential replacements available in 6 years outside of Microsoft's sphere.

[andyprough]

I heard that Photoshop runs on Wine now.

[UCyborg]

Ah, mentioning gaming, how behind I ended up... If I had the stats written, putting them together would probably show most time spent in D3D9 based games.

Don't know if this is true, but I recently saw a comment about ReactOS' development of the graphics stack here, supposedly in recent weeks, it got the ability to load recent enough NVIDIA drivers to support up-to GTX 9xx series, with working 2D and 3D acceleration.

[frostknight]

In the computer repair shop where I spend some time, there are people coming in and they are running Windows 10. They do not not want to use Windows 11 for various reason which I will not list.

To make this short, it is the start time for Tax season here in the USA. Those with enough tech savvy like to use the windows version of Turbo Tax or Quickbooks to do their taxes for the April deadline. And these two tax programs do not run on Linux.

Does the online version of turbo tax work on linux? Have you tried before?

If so, I would recommend those people using linux even if it means using online version of turbo tax.

The current security of linux due to protocols, permissions and how much its targeted, is in favor of online turbo tax if it can work on linux.

I mean I wonder how much windows 10 and 11 are actually dialing back and forth. It could be as bad as android dials back and forth or worse if you consider the fact that android's main weakness is SMS otherwise its more secure.

I have never gotten hacked on any android phone I have had. But its happened to me even as late as windows 8.

I would guess some on here would think my claim of linux being more secure is false, if you don't include the targeted aspect meaning linux usershare vs windows usershare causing how much each is targeted. Btw, I looked up something recently...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_malware

This mentions some malware doesn't work well on linux but some does.

I don't know how accurate some of this is, but it is at least wikipedia and they are no longer in the days where they let everyone edit without any correction so... yeah, its probably true.

Cross platform is definitely one weakness that affects linux though according to that.

LibreOffice still demands Firefox (ESR), Konqueror, Epiphany or Chromium as a dependency after all, and I do not know how to force it to ignore these so I can uninstall Chromium once and for all. These defects are not enough to sour my opinion of it, but should be noted.

This is downright megalomaniac type thinking to say you must have this to install libreoffice. What the hell are debian devs thinking.

So arrogant... and narcissistic.

Then again, I once had a situation where I tried to uninstall firefox and it tried to install epiphany and vice versa. Its like they didn't trust their users to know what they are doing... so apple-like thinking.

I expect this from proprietary software, not linux distros. Simply unbelievable.

[Night Wing]

Does the online version of turbo tax work on linux? Have you tried before?

If so, I would recommend those people using linux even if it means using online version of turbo tax.

I do "not" and will "never" post any financial or medical information using "any" online programs simply because with this type of information, it will be using these company's servers. In other words, this information will be "stored" on their servers which hackers love to probe with targeted attacks. This "online" stuff is for "convenience".

And if hackers are successful in breaching these online programs where a person puts their most private information on, a person could find their identity stolen, their banking information stolen as well as their medical information stolen.

When it comes to my personal financial information, I have no online accounts. For my credit cards, when I have to make a payment, I use a "land line" phone to make that payment. No smartphone or any other device where I have to access an online service (computer server). For banking transactions, I go "directly" to my two banks "in person" to make any transaction.

As for my medical information, every physician I see whether it be my general practitioner or any specialists, they "all" have "patient portals" where they store all of my medical history which includes my social security number, my medicare number, etc. But to get to my online patient portals, I have to have an online account for every one of them.

My physicians get irritated with me because I "refuse" to make an online account for my patient portal with them. But I do not care if they all get irritated. I told every one my physicians, "if you get a breach, I "AM" the one in trouble because it will take me years to undo the damage hackers create with stolen information from a successful breach. And to top it off, these physicians do not even realize they've been hacked for "months" after the breach.

When companies or physicians get hacked, they all notify people they are very"sorry" a person's private and very valuable information was stolen. Well, saying they are sorry this happened, this "does not cut it with me". Think how many companies have gotten hacked and the hackers have put ransomware on those servers.

I do not mind the "inconvenience" of driving to my banks because I cannot get hacked with an online account because I do not have any online banking accounts. Ditto for my credit cards since I do not have any online accounts with my credit cards. Hence, using a land line phone to do all of my credit card business, beats hands down any online account safety wise. And I still get a monthly "paper statement" for my banking accounts. These monthly paper statements cost me $2.00/ monthly because I refuse to go "digital". And for me, paying $2.00 monthly for a paper statement is "peace of mind" which an online account cannot do.

I will give you an example.

My ISP is Comcast. I have an email account with Comcast. When I first went with Comcast over forty years ago, I had to give a backup email account with Comcast. It was and still is a very old Hotmail email account. Comcast got hacked, but it got hacked for a least four months prior to the breach. Comcast told me to make a new password and I did. Problem solved? NO!

For about nine months, my Hotmail email account was "flooded" daily with about three to six phishing emails every single day for that nine month period of time. Then it just stopped. I guess it stopped because the hackers knew I was not a sucker and smarter than they are.

In closing.

Even though I use linux distros as my daily driver with my three linux browsers, I do not recommend getting a online account for financial or medical just for "convenience" because if these accounts get hacked, it will mostly take "years" to fix the damage done. Our customers at the shop, we let them decide what they what to do with their private information.

[Mæstro]

Then again, I once had a situation where I tried to uninstall firefox and it tried to install epiphany and vice versa.

This is precisely what happens to me if I try to uninstall my vestigial Chromium package! I tried to add all the browsers onto the hold list, but apt would not let me, as sudo, designate more than two or three of them. Strictly speaking , the LibreOffice help files (which are HTML) require one of these approved browsers. I would love to override this manually, but do not know how.

[UCyborg]

Recent Mint 22.2 doesn't come with Chromium out-of-box and LibreOffice help packages only have browsers listed as suggested packages, so not hard dependencies. I read the hint you could edit /var/lib/dpkg/status manually in emergency to delist redundant package as dependency. But, never tried.

[Veit Kannegieser]

Off-topic:
The LibereOffice <-> firefox dependency is only the online help package, i think, which recommends
firefox-esr | epiphany-browser | konqueror | chromium | firefox
in Debian 13. Have purged that too after install.

[frostknight]

I do "not" and will "never" post any financial or medical information using "any" online programs simply because with this type of information, it will be using these company's servers. In other words, this information will be "stored" on their servers which hackers love to probe with targeted attacks. This "online" stuff is for "convenience".

And if hackers are successful in breaching these online programs where a person puts their most private information on, a person could find their identity stolen, their banking information stolen as well as their medical information stolen.

How is that any different then windows + turbo tax on the OS itself?

If you think they aren't transmitting information over the internet without your knowledge to the same level, I would say, I wish I could be that naive...

This is precisely what happens to me if I try to uninstall my vestigial Chromium package! I tried to add all the browsers onto the hold list, but apt would not let me, as sudo, designate more than two or three of them. Strictly speaking , the LibreOffice help files (which are HTML) require one of these approved browsers. I would love to override this manually, but do not know how.

I just installed devuan again on one of my computers, it didn't do that whole dependency mind eff to me. on excalibur or daedalus.

Maybe its a debian thing? And not a devuan thing?
Idk...

Also put xlibre instead of xorg on.

[Night Wing]

I do "not" and will "never" post any financial or medical information using "any" online programs simply because with this type of information, it will be using these company's servers. In other words, this information will be "stored" on their servers which hackers love to probe with targeted attacks. This "online" stuff is for "convenience".

And if hackers are successful in breaching these online programs where a person puts their most private information on, a person could find their identity stolen, their banking information stolen as well as their medical information stolen.

How is that any different then windows + turbo tax on the OS itself?

If you think they aren't transmitting information over the internet without your knowledge to the same level, I would say, I wish I could be that naive...

You missed the point. I will make this short using "medical". In order to get my Patient Portal, I have to have an online account to gain access to the Patient Portal. The online account is not on the same server as the Patient Portal. The Patient Portal info is stored on another (second) server.

So an online account is like a first door, but a hacker has to have access to the second door to steal a person's medical info. Since I have no online accounts for any medical, a hacker cannot get access to single me out to steal my private medical information. Basically I do not exist for a hacker.

I also do not store any financial or medical information in any folders in any of my three email accounts. But if a hacker got access to one of my email accounts, the folders in there I created will sorely disappoint a hacker because the folders in all three of my email accounts are folders with the file names of; Fishing, Archery, Surfing, Surfboards, etc. Very useless info for a hacker. There is nothing of value information wise in any of my three email accounts.

As for my Contacts in my email accounts; the only names in my Contacts are:

1) My wife
2) My wife's sister (my sister-in-law)
3) My wife's sister's husband (my brother-in-law)
4) My wife's oldest niece
5) My wife's youngest niece
6) My next door neighbor

I also do not put any of the above's name with their personal email addresses in my Contacts because I have them in my memory. But since I'm old and I might have a stroke and lose parts of my memory, the above names with their email addresses are in a "paper log book" in my home. I used the word "log book" from my days when I was working in the maritime industry and am now retired.