Some of the internal emails are interesting. Brutal for poor Dave.
But, if you want nothing revolutionary and want to band-aid (which is fine and understandable) then I agree with your plan to give it to Dave.
This time I get dialogs saying things like “Open” or “Save”. No guidance in the instructions which to do. I have no clue which to do.
Bill gates does not know basic windows usage lol
This is from 2003 for those who haven’t noticed
23 years later, not much has improved.
It is even much worse now.
My windows “start” menu takes at least a full minute to open. Then, when I select, say, Control Panel, it takes another full minute, totally blank with no options
I’m not a programmer or even smart, but isn’t that absolute shite? I’ve used Commodores, Apple II, Macs, 386, 486, have used windows since first job (I don’t remember my first Windows version, but it played Tetris in color. Three? haha 3)
Menus have always worked before.
My next laptop will be linux Mint because I like mint ice cream. Does it have menus that open? I am super excited.
I apologize but it made me really mad and now i feel better.
Don’t wait for the next laptop, just install Linux now.
It sounds like your laptop is completely unusable anyway, and you can dual boot while you’re figuring out if everything works
it’s good to do it on a new laptop. It makes migration easier to have the old system alive next to it
it’s good to do it on a new laptop. It makes migration easier to have the old system alive next to it
that’s why they recommended “dual boot”
that’s not “alive next to it”. you can’t see both at the same time
I have a laptop from work that runs Windows 11 and have the same experience with the unusable start menu. I wasn’t allowed to install Linux on the machine. I run Linux on every other machine I have and have used Linux since the 90s.
However after complaining and begging with IT I was allowed to try running Linux on it. It’s a managed machine, so I had to do a dual boot from a second drive IT installed for me. If it worked out and IT was happy, I could run Linux.
Unfortunately it was a total failure. The big issue is the CPU is AMD and has on-board graphics that are normally used for everything. However there is also a Nvidia GPU, I think an RTX Pro, which is used for acceleration stuff. In Windows this works well enough, the AMD handles most of the regular display stuff and is plenty powerful for that. The Nvidia gets used to offload certain workloads, to make sure the laptop is usable for certain kinds of software. On Linux this is a configuration that simply isn’t supported or working at all. Either it just won’t boot or do graphics at all or it’s extremely slow and/or unstable or with some effort the Nvidia chip can be completely disabled and just the AMD is used. Basically turning a $2500 laptop into a $1000 one and unable to run certain workloads. Now getting some of that software to run would be hard anyways, as it’s not typical software and only supported on certain versions of Windows. But I hadn’t even gotten to that stage.
The whole experience reminded me of getting Linux to run on my laptop back in 2002. An unstable mess with half the features missing. Back then I loved the challenge and when I finally got the thing to ping over the PCMCIA wifi card I was super happy. Never did get the sound working on that laptop tho.
Obviously I aborted the experiment and have just accepted Windows 11. It’s fucking awful and I bitch about it every time I need to use that machine. But for now, there doesn’t seem to be a better option.
Yeah, its known that setting up an nvidia card is notoriously hard on linux. I believe Linus T had something nice to say about them. But what you’re looking for does exist and can be setup with a little bit of tinkering.
Personally, I use NixOS, so I just have to add a few lines of code to my nix flake. Here are the directions
Then you just add an environment variable for the applications you want to run. If you don’t use Nix and want to set it up manually, as always the Arch Wiki comes into play. See section 1.3.1.2.
To sum that up, install the nvidia drivers through the package manger, mod probe the kernel, and add some udev rules. You’ll need to add those environment variables again for any application you want to use the gpu.
Edit: I forgot to mention its called Nvidia Prime. If you search the distro of your choice plus that it should help.
Nvidia itself is fine, as long as you don’t also have an AMD gpu. My main rig runs a Nvidia card and it’s just fine. I use Arch btw
My laptop says otherwise lol and because you didnt read the links I put
services.xserver.videoDrivers = [ "amdgpu" "nvidia" ]; hardware.nvidia.prime = { offload = { enable = true; enableOffloadCmd = true; }; # Make sure to use the correct Bus ID values for your system! nvidiaBusId = "PCI:0:2:0"; amdgpuBusId = "PCI:54:0:0"; };Is all it takes to install Nvidia Prime Offloading on a NixOS machine with AMD iGPU and an Nvidia dGPU.
Yeah, I had similar problems years ago.
Realistically, that is primarily gamer hardware, and Nvidia has no interest in open sourcing their drivers, or gamers nowadays, so it’s unlikely to ever be fixed.
Most people don’t have a spare thousand dollar gpu on their laptop though, and for them this is not an issue.
they did in fact open source their drivers and I haven’t had problems with Nvidia cards on Linux since years
Partially open sourced with heavy reliance on binary blobs and closed source user space code.
And yeah, we’re talking explicitly about Optimus switching being bad, nothing else.
All engineers have those cards in their laptops, it’s very common. Those aren’t for gaming, they are required to run a lot of the more advanced engineering software.
That’s because Windows 11 now uses React Native for a lot of things, including parts of the Start Menu. So something that shouldn’t be, is extremely resource intensive.
But don’t turn on the “display seconds” in the clock option. That would be an energy and resource waste, as the clock widget would have to be redrawn every second instead of every minute! Also, here’s copilot. Talk to it, we need you to use it to justify all the resources we’ve wasted on it’s development.
Mint runs like a scalded dog on my hand-me-down Dell laptop. Yes, the menus work. I’d bet it runs amazing on newer hardware.
That’s a high-voltage simile right there, goddamn
Edit: and yes, on my high end custom rig it goes like greased shit through a… Lightning… Pig?
It’s one I picked up from one of my very country uncles when I was young. It just stuck.
It’s marginally better than “runs like a raped ape”, as another , more city uncle used to say. Thankfully this boomer ass gem did not stick in my speech patterns.
Edit: damn yakko, that is the first time I have seen you lose your way with words.
Awoken at 4 will do that. I’m beyond coffee.
Sometimes I prefer a malaphor though (or possibly it’s malaprop when it’s a simile?)
Fair enough, but oof, I hope your day becomes more agreeable.
BOOOOOOM SHPLORT
Yeah I only use windows at work now, ditched it at home. The start menu takes over a minute to open, and then when it does it ignores clicks for another minute.
Then whenever I want to run outlook I have to search because the start menu doesnt let me set favourites. And I have to wait when I type in Outlook because the first search brings the crappy built in version of outlook (which I have clicked on more than once to be immensely frustrated to see it open) and then wait until “Outlook (classic)” appears and click that.
I discovered some of my less technically able colleagues gave up on Outlook because they assumed it wasn’t installed and use the web interface instead. And that is just one of numerous daily frustrations I get with Windows.
Honestly, Windows is now a big steaming pile of crap. All my home devices are on Linux, and I only use Windows at work because I have no choice.
That’s not my experience but I’m not trying to run Windows on a 30 year old computer.
Back in the early 2000s someone said “a experienced Windows user doesn’t notice a little bit of lagging”
How old is your pc and how many virsuses do you have lol
What the heck is going on during those 6 minutes? That is crazy.
🤣
So now I think I am going to have Moviemaker. I go to my add/remove programs place to make sure it is there.
It is not there.
What is there? The following garbage is there. Microsoft Autoupdate Exclusive test package, Microsoft Autoupdate Reboot test package, Microsoft Autoupdate testpackage1, Microsoft AUtoupdate testpackage2, Microsoft Autoupdate Test package3.
Garbage indeed.
Painfully hard to even read. I guess when you are the boss you just write however you want.
I wouldn’t mind seeing more. Oh well, the site wants a paid subscription to view more? LOLOLOLOL. No way in hell. The internet has gone to shit.
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Nah. I am already annoyed.
Bill should have just pirated WMM
You wouldn’t download a Bill Gates.
They’re all just idiots, amazing
So many managers
The silver lining was that Bill never had to experience movie maker. That would’ve been a whole extra email.
shower thought after reading that email:
i wonder if Bill secretly started using Linux after that
Probably why he does philanthropy.
“God, the company I started has such a reputation as the evil monopolist that we can’t even hire talented programmers to make our system decently usable. There’s not enough money in the universe that could convince people to work for us. I have to repair the world.”
Delightful, truly. Although I think it may be triggering some past trauma lol
