How usable did it end up being? Like would he frequently need to change disks? Or just during startup?

The UI of 7 plus the kernel of 10, and the marketing approach of XP, would make a windows that might come close to being as good as linux today and certainly wouldn’t be enabling linux to steal even a few % of market share.

And before that, there were games that spanned multiple floppies. Plus, floppies were less reliable, so there was a higher chance one of the disks would fail to read, leading to the Retry, Fail, Abort menu.

They were only 1.44MB so a 50GB game would take like 40k floppies.

Yeah, I’d consider time from boot to login prompt to be a useless metric. You could design an OS to show a prompt before anything else to “win” this pointless race.

Boot to usable is the only one that makes sense.

Ok, one case where boot to login is useful: you want to boot up and walk away for a bit, so less waiting for a login means you can login before walking away. Though, personally, I find RAM training takes a long time these days if you’re not waking from suspend, so still think boot to login is moot.

Yeah, that was an unexpected nice thing about switching to Linux, though also the whole point. Like I knew that I wanted to take control back over my computer and OS, but I was surprised at just how much nicer it is when defaults are set without any profit incentive. There just wasn’t “spend time disabling MS attempts to get me to use their other software” or “dig deep for how to change a setting MS would really rather you don’t change” periods and it made me realize that that was where I’d spend a majority of the “computer maintenance” time on windows.

Don’t ban aftermarket exhausts completely, just the ones that optimize for loudness or dirtier air.

I’d like to see devices that detect when a car is running too rich or lean (bad cases I can smell right away, so it should be detectable at a range), along with enforcement and seizing vehicles where they deliberately mess with those, especially if there’s a switch or function present that can switch between legal and illegal modes to pass emissions tests and then go back to spewing out unburnt fuel or a much higher number of nitrous oxide compounds.

Windows comes with its own set of challenges in the form of wanting things set up differently from how MS wants them set up and not wanting to be nagged about using their shitty programs and services. I got to the point where any time the OS or software initiated some kind of contact with me, it would annoy me even if it might have been helpfull because I’m so used to those being from the marketing department.

Like I’ve noticed that Linux can do things without annoying me even if that thing used to annoy me on windows just because I don’t have that expectation that it’s trying to sell me something.

What even is the benefit of getting the users who don’t even give a fuck about any of the things that are useful to learn (and have for those who did learn enough to use them)?

Yeah, plus there’s other downsides to popularity, like it being worthwhile for advertisers and scammers to target. As much as I’d like to see MS fail, there are big advantages to having them run the noob friendly OS, similar to how reddit still existing benefits Lemmy.

Last thing I want to see is Linux selling its soul to appeal to the lowest common denominator because it just gets worse from there.

Personally, I’d take choice over adoption.

Yeah, would make sense, they just aren’t filtering the things I’d filter during that conversation.

And I hate how windows did everything it could to enable that shit, too. Like I’ve had devices (specifically wireless headphones and mice) that worked fine when plugged in, and then suddenly some installer pops up by the company that made the device because windows is all too happy to automatically run shit when you plug a device in. I hope there’s at least some kind of authentication back end where it recognizes a device ID and grabs the installer like that, but I suspect that it just uses a standardized way to grab an url and just runs whatever is on the other side of that.

Should have switched autorun anything to default off after the Sony rootkits over twenty fucking years ago. It should have never even been a thing in the first place, since viruses on floppies existed before CDs (where autorun first showed up) even existed.

Or that you’ll ever get paid if you do win.

Not to mention they often cheap out on both the software and hardware, so you end up having to slowly navigate through poorly designed UIs that it struggles to display.

It’s even more pathetic than that. They aren’t just expressing their will to play the game, they are asking for approval despite it. It’s similar to the “nothing personal” disclaimer which is usually followed by something with significant personal disruption.

Most honestly expressed, they’d be, “I’m doing/about to do something that impacts you negatively, please don’t retaliate against me because I don’t like it when negative things happen to me.”

Edit: just noticed the commenter you replied to reversed the original saying and agrees with you.

They must have found one in the bargain bin.

I’m sure there’s plenty of other reasons to not steal a tesla. It being a mobile surveillance device being one of them. Also, if I was going to steal a car, I’d pick one with better build quality and one that doesn’t have a different fire exit than the normal way to exit that I’d probably be going for if my car was suddenly on fire.

That “or else” is pretty great, though. Using linux after windows might feel like getting into a healthy relationship after being in an abusive and controlling relationship.

It would be cool if it rolled into a functional telescope.

As long as the cost is lower than mining it from the ground, I think other gaps can be overcome, especially where batteries already have their own logistic waste path. Though I guess it also depends on scale required to get that cost. If it’s something that can be set up at any waste facility, sourcing might be close to “free”, as in it might just require a redirection of what’s currently done. I don’t think it even needs to be cheaper than mined lithium, since there’s other costs associated with that, like environmental.