I assume that he has a severe mental health problem. I had a neighbor who’s kid had schizophrenia and would spend all day writing about how we were hacking his dreams and other nonsense. The sheer volume of letters he wrote to us about it was staggering. A ream of paper or more landed in our mailbox every week. It’s amazing how much someone can do when they only can focus on a single thing and have way too much energy.

I felt sorry for the kid, when he was on his meds he was perfectly nice, if kinda odd.

there’s no way someone’s expending that much time and effort and not getting paid for it

…you say on Lemmy, of all places. 😜

I am not unfamiliar with Windows in any sense thank you. Windows is objectively bad, there is no good reason that one must maintain their own custom image to install an operating system to a usable capacity because the vendor image is so disgustingly bloated that getting any real-world use is a chore.

And it’s not even recent Windows enshittification that is the problem, it is the foundational architecture of the NT system. With a Linux operating system, you install, and you’re done, on Windows, you install, then you need to go out and do 15+ updates that for some reason aren’t done during install, then you need to go out and get all your drivers for your hardware. It’s poorly designed, slow, clunky, and, especially considering that Windows doesn’t have a package manager and a curated software repository (Winget + MS Store does NOT count), unbelievably insecure.

My organization has pretty much decided that Windows is on the way out, it’s just going to be a very long time for us to transfer to Linux-based operating systems. Even after getting Windows to a just-about acceptable standard, it’s still far heavier than any Linux-based OS would be, which for our thin clients is genuinely proving a problem as many of our staff have high memory usage workflows and are frequently seeing programs crash due to memory limitations.

Unless you are severely, clinically deluded, there is no way you can genuinely state that what you hear in Linux communities is “batshit”; everyone knows Windows is dying, even Microsoft…

As someone pointed out below, Rufus does have a feature now that lets you check a box to do this automatically.

First point, fair. I’m not arguing that. I despise Microsoft as much as the next person here. I honestly don’t have strong feelings about Windows at its core, I’ve used it extensively, but I also always knew how to work around Microsofts bullshit, whatever. Doesn’t make the paractices any less predatory. Fair.

Second point, I in no way defended Microsoft and/or Windows. I only talked about Linux there. That’s quite some interpretation, equating that to defending an abuser in a toxic relationship.

And third point, yeah, “Windows is for people with no self-respect” totally sounds like psychology and business ethics. Just what is the point of such a statement? It is hardly the average users fault that Windows has the market share it has and that Microsoft has the power it has. Or that its shitty practices are allowed in the first place. Call it lazy or complacent or “no self-respect” or whatever you want that most users just accept it, unless there are alternatives that work for the majority, people are getting educated about them (and the problems with how things are otherwise) and the community actually helps with issues in good faith at large, I don’t expect things to change drastically. Which is what I was trying to get at, but I certainly could have explained that significantly better. And we desperately need regulatory changes to restrict and prevent such predatory behavior in the first place.

I’ll try to do the educating and helping part in my immediate surroundings, anyone I can get to try Linux (or other alternatives in other categories) is good in my book. Instead of telling my friends and family they have no self respect.

And before you read that into this, I am not talking about people who actively defend Microsofts shitty practices. I am talking about people who just use it because that’s what was on the device when they got it. And created an account during setup simply because it asked for it, without giving it a second thought (since that sadly has become commonplace, which, again, I am not defending). And I assume that is the vast majority.

It sounds a lot more like you are the one categorically not respecting people who use Windows, as opposed them having no self respect. Blanket statements like that help noone.

Maybe I’m stupid here, maybe I’m misreading your comment, whatever, tell me if I’m wrong. I currently don’t feel like putting more energy into this discussion, if you can call it that, but I’ll see.