10 ways Windows is just BETTER

[TheRevTastic]

1 hour ago, Patrick C. said:

The claim ‘Windows is better’ is inherently relative; it's literally incomprehensible outside of a context in which Windows is being compared to other operating systems.

 

Do you need someone to walk you through how comparisons work, or is your trouble in seeing how a refutation of one of the video's claims is relevant to the video?

That has nothing to do with this thread not being about Linux.

 

Just like there was a 10 ways OSX is better and then this video there will most likely be a 10 ways Linux is better. Wait to comment until then.

[finest feck fips]

26 minutes ago, TheRevTastic said:

That has nothing to do with this thread not being about Linux.

 

Just like there was a 10 ways OSX is better and then this video there will most likely be a 10 ways Linux is better. Wait to comment until then.

Why?

Let's try a remedial lesson, although I admit hope is fading fast.

When someone says, for example:

Quote

Apples are better than other plants because apples are sweet

 

And another replies:

Quote

Actually, blueberries are also sweet

 

that reply is on topic, because apples cannot be better than blueberries on account of their sweetness if both apples and blueberries are sweet.

This is not a video (or a title) simply about macOS or Mac hardware. It is about how Mac is better than other operating systems, i.e., Linux and Windows. That would be true whether or not LMG ever made any video ever again— whether they're going to make another, similar video about the relative advantages of desktop Linux have nothing whatsoever to do with whether discussion of Linux is germane to this conversation.

[vanished]

9 hours ago, Video Beagle said:

I gotta say point..8 i think it was..the task bar? Hell yes.

 

I've been an Apple user since 1980...macs since probably 85...

I used to have a great extension for my Mac OS9 stuff that gave me a Windows like (I'd guess XP? given the time?) task bar on the mac. SO useful.

I've gotten use to the dock in OS X....and using the task bar in Win10 doesn't seem as great as the olden days, but, man, that I dug!

ehh, OS9 would have been more Win 98 or 2000.  Not that there was a difference between those, 95, and XP in anything other than visuals iirc.

edit: in fact, even vista unless I'm making a mistake... I think it was 7 that brought the fused "quick bar / task bar" idea where the launcher turns into the representation of the window rather than being separate that's still used today, and that's the only significant change there's ever been.

[caincha]

you know what bothers me the most about this sort of video - specially coming from LMG? It's soooo biased!

After hearing many things you can do just the same on a Mac - like using Automator to, you know, automate tasks and which has been there for ages - I stopped watching…

 

Sure gaming really IS better on Windows and I think mostly because Apple doesn't care about it since Apple II when Woz was still there but productivity? I mean come on!

If you work in the music industry or film industry and each minute wasted costs thousands of dollars you don't want a system that upgrades and reboots itself with no user interaction or that will delete your files when it does upgrade. That's why people in those industries prefer Macs.

Likewise that's why people prefer Linux as a server.

 

And that's why Apple does not reply your e-mails

[vanished]

6 hours ago, caincha said:

you know what bothers me the most about this sort of video - specially coming from LMG? It's soooo biased!

I think the main issue is the title.  People who follow the channel closely and realize this is a series where they ask users of each thing (iOS, android, Mac OS, Windows, etc.) what they personally like to make the content will watch it for what it is and not think there's too much of a problem*.  Newcomers though will see that title and assume it's a balanced review of the OS against all others, considering the pros and cons, which it is not.  Contrary to what the title says (or at least implies), this isn't "Windows is the best OS, this is why", it's "these are the reasons people like Windows".  It's the top pros it has over anything else.  Sure, there are pros of other OSes that they have over Windows too, and these get their own video.  There's also many cons to Windows.  Again though, those aren't the topic.

 

*While, as mentioned, this isn't covering the downsides, or what other OSes do better (they get their own video for that), it does need to consider the validity of the points.  For example, if there was a claim about Windows search being the best when it's pretty commonly accepted that Mac OS does it better, that wouldn't make sense.

[3 Lions]

10 hours ago, caincha said:

you know what bothers me the most about this sort of video - specially coming from LMG? It's soooo biased!

How can they be biased? 

 

The points in this video are points brought up by the community on this very forum, LMG is therefore NOT biased. 

 

 

Edited September 21, 2019 by LinusTechTipsFanFromDarlo

[caincha]

9 hours ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

I think the main issue is the title.  People who follow the channel closely and realize this is a series where they ask users of each thing (iOS, android, Mac OS, Windows, etc.) what they personally like to make the content will watch it for what it is and not think there's too much of a problem*.  Newcomers though will see that title and assume it's a balanced review of the OS against all others, considering the pros and cons, which it is not.  Contrary to what the title says (or at least implies), this isn't "Windows is the best OS, this is why", it's "these are the reasons people like Windows".  It's the top pros it has over anything else.  Sure, there are pros of other OSes that they have over Windows too, and these get their own video.  There's also many cons to Windows.  Again though, those aren't the topic.

 

*While, as mentioned, this isn't covering the downsides, or what other OSes do better (they get their own video for that), it does need to consider the validity of the points.  For example, if there was a claim about Windows search being the best when it's pretty commonly accepted that Mac OS does it better, that wouldn't make sense.

Fair enough but then again they could (should?) filter things that doesn't make sense or that just isn't true.

For instance - and this is just an example - I could say I like Linux because it's good for gaming. While you can game and apparently do it well it doesn't mean Linux is the best OS for this task so why would they say it is knowing it isn't? Just because a good number of people in the forum said it is?

That is pretty much what they did in this video that had over 800k views. You think at least 80k of those knows what it's about? I'd bet no they don't and they will take it at face value which is the reason it annoys me as LMG is feeding lies as if it were true…

[TechyBen]

5 minutes ago, caincha said:

Fair enough but then again they could (should?) filter things that doesn't make sense or that just isn't true.

For instance - and this is just an example - I could say I like Linux because it's good for gaming. While you can game and apparently do it well it doesn't mean Linux is the best OS for this task so why would they say it is knowing it isn't? Just because a good number of people in the forum said it is?

That is pretty much what they did in this video that had over 800k views. You think at least 80k of those knows what it's about? I'd bet no they don't and they will take it at face value which is the reason it annoys me as LMG is feeding lies as if it were true…

The video title is clickbaity. But it was explained in the video, it's "why do you like Windows".

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

5 hours ago, LinusTechTipsFanFromDarlo said:

The points in this video are points brought up by the community on this very forum

while that is true LMG could still fact check those. if i were to reply there and say that Windows is the only OS that supports 4K, would they put that in? no. because it's false. 

[Sauron]

Turns out r/linuxmemes caught wind of this

 

 

But... jokes aside, if I can give some feedback I'd say I don't think videos like this hold that much value. They don't really offer much information on anything other than what a portion of the forum feels might be true. I agree with others that fact checking answers (particularly making sure that the features on display really aren't available or as good on other platforms) would go a long way, and more generally it would probably be nicer to have a straight up comparison between two systems than just having separate videos listing uncontested points about one or the other.

[vanished]

6 hours ago, caincha said:

Fair enough but then again they could (should?) filter things that doesn't make sense or that just isn't true.

For instance - and this is just an example - I could say I like Linux because it's good for gaming. While you can game and apparently do it well it doesn't mean Linux is the best OS for this task so why would they say it is knowing it isn't? Just because a good number of people in the forum said it is?

That is pretty much what they did in this video that had over 800k views. You think at least 80k of those knows what it's about? I'd bet no they don't and they will take it at face value which is the reason it annoys me as LMG is feeding lies as if it were true…

I agree that things like that would be a problem, as mentioned at the bottom of my previous post.  What things in particular do you think were inaccurate or unfair? - aside from the automator thing (I'll definitely give you that, and Linux also has the crontab + bash scripts for stuff like that)

[caincha]

6 hours ago, Twilight said:

while that is true LMG could still fact check those. if i were to reply there and say that Windows is the only OS that supports 4K, would they put that in? no. because it's false. 

That's exactly my point thanks!

[caincha]

1 hour ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

What things in particular do you think were inaccurate or unfair? - aside from the automator thing (I'll definitely give you that, and Linux also has the crontab + bash scripts for stuff like that)

I would have to see it again but there were at least 2 or 3 thing that was said - or implied - you can only do on Windows which ain't true.

And I've seen videos like this before that sounds like they don't know what they're talking about but really is just lazy. They don't know much about Linux or OSX then assume this and that and then make a video as if their assumptions are facts - and that triggers me by a lot  

[plurus]

Nothing says OS unity like two different looks side by side. 

 

 

[Radium_Angel]

BeOS r5 for life!

(for those of you that remember what an amazing system it was at the time)

 

Personally, NT4.0 is my fav, but there's this slight issue with a solid internet browser.

Oh yeah, and DirectX (which I think stopped at 6.0 for NT)

[vanished]

On 9/21/2019 at 11:35 PM, plurus said:

Nothing says OS unity like two different looks side by side. 

 

 

 

Yeah that is terrible, and specifically one the bad things I pointed out in my post about the pros and cons when they were collecting feedback to make this video

[rogervn]

I'm pretty sure that they don't mean that windows is better in every one of those steps than BOTH Linux and Mac OS.

 

Linux is obviously one million years more customizable than Windows, but Windows is a bunch more than Mac OS. On the other hand, whoever claims that Linux has better hardware compatibility than Windows must not have tried different configurations like multiple monitors in an active dock like the Lenovo ones or practically almost every fingerprint reader I've seen on a laptop, but is also nothing close to Mac OS for more obvious reasons.

 

The point of the video is that picking all those reasons, Windows would still make more points than both other OSes in their view, in which obviously gaming has A LOT more weight than things like OS Unity.

 

Maybe with Google stadia we can start seeing a change in focusing development of games that work on Linux, but otherwise, Linux will never win a comparison among a gamer community.

[aaronfranke]

Some issues in the video:

 

3:08 No extra effort is needed due to auto-installing drivers... as opposed to what? Mac and Linux, which come with the drivers built into the kernel and you don't even need to wait for them to install? Where's the extra effort? Drivers aren't an issue on any OS these days.

 

3:55 Customization... remember this is a video about how Windows is "better". How is customization something Windows is better at in any way? Mac and Linux can be heavily customized, have you seen /r/unixporn? Just because Windows can be customized, doesn't mean it's better, in order to show it's better you have to show it's... better... than something else.

 

7:20 Shortcut keys... you see, Mac and Linux have tons of shortcut keys too. How is Windows "better" in this regard? You have to show that Windows has something the other platforms don't.

 

7:45 OS Unity... have you seen https://www.windowscentral.com/sites/wpcentral.com/files/styles/w830/public/field/image/2015/07/windows-10-menus_.jpg

 

Most other points I agree on.

 

One thing I think you forgot is that, interestingly enough, Windows is better at failing, and almost always has a soft landing when it crashes. A program install on Linux can break your package manager if interrupted, but on Windows a failed install doesn't break everything. For the OS itself, a bad update on Windows can also easily be reversed using system restore and also Windows Update's own automated revert system. Windows also works much better when it is out of RAM compared to Linux (which mostly just freezes when it runs out).

 

[vanished]

55 minutes ago, aaronfranke said:

One thing I think you forgot is that, interestingly enough, Windows is better at failing, and almost always has a soft landing when it crashes. A program install on Linux can break your package manager if interrupted, but on Windows a failed install doesn't break everything. For the OS itself, a bad update on Windows can also easily be reversed using system restore and also Windows Update's own automated revert system. Windows also works much better when it is out of RAM compared to Linux (which mostly just freezes when it runs out).

My experience, particularly in exactly the RAM example you gave, has always been quite the opposite, although it's been a long time since I've had that issue personally on any machine or platform.  As for the rest, certainly it has improved a lot over the years, but Windows used to be horrible for locking up the whole system due to some rogue program, where as Linux always had the option to switch to a command line and kill the offending application, or the entire graphical environment if necessary.  That's also to say nothing of the more reliable file systems that were less prone to breaking if power was suddenly lost, etc.

[finest feck fips]

On 9/26/2019 at 2:35 PM, aaronfranke said:

3:55 Customization... remember this is a video about how Windows is "better". How is customization something Windows is better at in any way? Mac and Linux can be heavily customized, have you seen /r/unixporn? Just because Windows can be customized, doesn't mean it's better, in order to show it's better you have to show it's... better... than something else.

I don't think it's really fair to characterize macOS as comparable in customization even to Windows. Background: I grew up using Windows at first, then switch more or less exclusively to desktop Linux in junior high, and at my previous job used a Mac every day for my job as a developer for a little over a year and a half. I found that despite everything, including the supposed ‘shared Unix roots’ of macOS as a Unix desktop and the Unix inspiration of Unix-likes such as Linux, it was much, much harder to get what I wanted (coming from a Linux perspective) out of macOS than it is to get the same out of Windows. For example:

• compose key emulation: only works on macOS through an hack using macOS ECMAscript internals and some key remapping using Karabiner, still doesn't support the full Unicode character set of my XCompose mappings, but on Windows, WinCompose just handles everything correctly, provided you use a singular XCompose config file instead of includes (and there are other compose key implementations as well)
• alt+click window management: there just is no way with acceptable performance (???) to get alt+leftclick window dragging or alt+rightclick window resizing on macOS. AltDrag works nicely on Windows
• a decent Quake-like terminal emulator, competent terminal emulator performance in general: I use tmux for pretty much everything, and short of using hardware-accelerated graphics in iTerm (which has other problems), terminal emulator performance on macOS is very bad (which is something that should be incomprehensible; it's a fucking terminal emulator), iTerm is extremely bloated and messy to configure, and simple emulation of a Yakuake- or Guake-style terminal emulator required supplementing iTerm configuration with goddamn Hammerspoon scripting, of all things. Just a nightmare
• emoji preferences: macOS forcefully overrides selected fonts to inject Apple's emoji almost everywhere (only apps that don't use Apple's APIs for font rendering are spared, which is a small minority). There's nothing at all like Linux's fontconfig to specify font substitution, and the only way to change macOS' displayed emoji is to disable ‘System Integrity Protection’ (because root is not actually root on macOS, and you can't overwrite system fonts as root without disablig SIP), then replace the Apple Color Emoji font files with files of the same name and identical character sets with the emoji you actually want. And if you fuck up in any way (i.e., a single glyph is missing from your replacement font or you don't have a replacement font) a bunch of apps just crash on startup because you're missing a font. wtf??? — on Windows, there's none of that bullshit: you can use the fonts you fucking want
• macOS doesn't even have per-app volume mixing, and during the entire period in which I used macOS, Apple's updates had broken third-party software which restored that functionality, so there was no way to get it

 

Using macOS day in and day out, pretty much everywhere I turned in trying to get comfortable or produce a setup I could actually enjoy using, I ran into tons of walls and a shocking dearth of third-party options. As an aside to this macOS rant, I also think that more or less first-party customization counts for a lot more than third-party replacements and hacks, which is often what customization in fact means on non-free operating systems. Being able to pay some schmuck $50 for some proprietary software to hide your macOS dock and replace it with a task manager with sane behavior is not evidence of a customizable OS, but of a clever hack against the grain of a very inflexible OS.

 

macOS has some strengths, but I'd say it's the least customizable of the big 3, both in purist terms of ‘native’ customizability and in practical terms of the availability of third-party workarounds. In my experience, macOS tends to be customizable only very narrowly and at a surface level, or extremely laboriously through third-party tools. But it also has the further problem, not shared by Windows, that to keep things clean and to promote Apple's conception of the Right Way™ of doing things, Apple often removes entire APIs during updates, breaking third-party customization tools right after Apple essentially co-opts their design. (This happened with Karabiner, the de facto standard key remapping tool on macOS, when Apple added basic customization for caps lock key behaviors in macOS Sierra.)

 

(And of course imo it's silly to put operating systems that each only support a single desktop environment in the same universe as Linux in terms of customizability.)

 

On 9/26/2019 at 2:35 PM, aaronfranke said:

One thing I think you forgot is that, interestingly enough, Windows is better at failing, and almost always has a soft landing when it crashes. A program install on Linux can break your package manager if interrupted, but on Windows a failed install doesn't break everything. For the OS itself, a bad update on Windows can also easily be reversed using system restore and also Windows Update's own automated revert system. Windows also works much better when it is out of RAM compared to Linux (which mostly just freezes when it runs out).

 

I see the point you're making here, and I think it's a good one: Linux problems can sometimes break the entire GUI, and imperative package managers are not safe to interrupt. But I've much more often reached a point where the only viable solution— even for an expert— is to reinstall with Windows than with Linux. Linux failures tend to be ‘harder’, as you describe, but also grittier and more raw; there's more to work with. So I would add to your observation about Windows' efforts to give users soft landings that to some extent the same efforts make Windows failures more opaque, harder to debug, and harder to work with for experienced users. So you're right about that, but there are tradeoffs to these different approaches to failure.

Additionally, there are features of some Linux distros that mitigate those problems in a way much more reliable than Windows restore points. Distros that use a copy-on-write filesystem by default, for example, take snapshots before and after every package manager action, so they're effectively transactional, and they add bootloader entries for every snapshot. So on openSUSE for example, if you install a package that somehow breaks your GUI and renders your system unbootable, you can still just boot what you had previously. In contrast, Windows restore points are far more partial, and often fail to actually resolve whatever is causing an issue.

Similarly, some package managers are not as vulnerable as others, and also much more robust than Windows update. While they're not really suitable for novice users, functional package managers like Guix and Nix mean that distros like GuixSD and NixOS perform atomic upgrades (and installations) for everything, even on traditional filesystems. Consequently, it's safe to unplug the power from my Linux-based gaming PC, for example, in the middle of an operating system upgrade. But unplugging the power from Windows during a Windows Update could be fatal, by contrast.

PS: I don't really know the behavior of Windows in low-RAM situations, but in general Linux is less subject to interminable freezing when low on RAM than macOS (a reference point because I've used it more recently than I've used Windows). This is because of a kind of controversial feature Linux has called the OOM killer: when Linux is out of RAM, it just starts straight-up killing processes to recover it. macOS has a different kind of memory pressure system which is good in some ways, but ultimately the system becomes essentially unusable if demand for RAM and swap is completely overwhelming. I'm kind of surprised to hear you say that about Linux w/r/t RAM, and not sure what could be causing that experience for you.