>the only remaining use case for me is a gaming PC
More and more it seems people don't even find it necessary for that.
I'm "the Linux friend" for a lot of my friends, and over the last year-ish a surprising number of them have asked about advice for switching to Linux. I've helped four people attempt the switch, and three out of the four have stuck with Linux so far.
All the damn developers keep turning off online play for Linux users though... I play two games a lot currently, Apex Legends and Battlefield 6, both block Linux players from online play thanks to their shitty kernel rootkits not supporting Linux.
Apex Legends at least was running fine on Steam Deck prior to november 2024 when they instituted this change, and I can tell you from personal experience it had very little impact on cheaters, which was their excuse for the change (supposedly most cheaters were connecting via Linux clients).
> supposedly most cheaters were connecting via Linux clients
I always find this so hard to believe, mainly because the majority of players are on Windows, which means that the market for cheats is there and statistically most likely to happen there.
I just don’t play games by devs that snub Linux. There are many to choose from.
The thing with Linux cheats is that they were significantly easier to make(you didn't have to think about bypassing the anticheat at all, you could just read the game's memory or LD_PRELOAD your cheat in), and a lot more were publicly available(in true FOSS fashion, a lot of Linux cheats were open-source). A cheat that could cost $30-$60 a month on Windows could be free as in freedom(and free beer) on Linux.
I'm sure the number probably changed a bit, but I can tell you for a fact it isn't like cheaters disappeared overnight just because they banned Linux clients.
yup i am too, steamdeck helped convert me fully. this year my goal is to move my main gaming desktop to linux with tiny spare ssd for windows to run the odd anticheat game on.
cachyos has been nearly flawless for a non-steam deck (gpd win mini 2). Upgrades broke my tv being set to the primary display under gamemode but that was an easy fix.
The other game changer (heh) was going all in on amd: cpu, integrated gpu, and discrete gpu via oculink.
Nvidia may be the best overall performance for gaming and ai workloads, it still doesn't play nice with linux gaming
I can't even be bothered to dual boot into Windows to game anymore. Wiped my Windows drive over the weekend so that it could be used as a snapshot drive. If the game doesn't work on Steam on Linux I'm not interested - simple as that.
Gaming is a smaller thing for me than the Adobe creative apps, especially Lightroom.
Granted, I could get that on Macintosh. But while their fans like to claim that Apple's engineering is all about usability, that hasn't been true for quite some time. It's now become a status/elitism thing (see, e.g., yesterday's conversation about Tahoe icons). And their UX model is very contrary to my way of thinking about things.
Unless you need compatibility with Adobe file formats, Free editing software works fine too. I've been using Darktable for about a decade. People bash on GIMP for not being able to do what Photoshop can, but it's because GIMP is built with the intent of being extended by the user. It can be extended to do what people complain that it cannot do. Kdenlive is good at filling the needs met by Premiere. I think the hardest Adobe application for me to recommend a portable alternative to is After Effects. Maybe Blender can be coaxed into filling some AE uses.
I strongly disagree. Have you used Lightroom in the last, say, two years?
They've had a revolutionary upgrade in their masking tools. ML models power automated, smart mask creation. For example, on a landscape photo I can get, with just a couple of clicks, separate masks for sky, water, land, foliage, structures, and natural ground. The power that this gives me to edit my photos is amazing. To the best of my knowledge, Darktable and others have nothing approaching this.
By large agree, the most recent years in lightroom have been some of it's most transformational. A lot of tasks that used to require going into PS have been borderline automated. Their more recent denoise methods as well have been nothing short of excellent.
Not that its perfect when 100% automated but it takes a fraction the time to adjust things towards perfection, no one misses doing it by hand.
Rapidraw does try to compete some having ML based masking but I gotta agree most the open source solutions have been lagging behind bigtime.
Users of creative apps are rarely also programmers capable of creating the extensions you mention. If the goal is getting people to switch to your application, open source or not, you need to provide a level of minimal functionality. What is minimal functionality varies from person to person and may include the way you interact with said functionality.
While Gimp and Krita are very useful and even usable for a lot of people... that doesn't mean it's a suitable replacement for the Adobe products. Some will get Affinity running with Wine... frankly it would be nice if there was an "easy gutton" to doing a lot of this. I'm not sure about the legalities of copying actual MS dll's from Windows for use with Wine even... even if yoou have a license, as I'm not a lawyer, which can impact the ability to make it easier to do/use.
It would be nice if more software at least got tested to run on Wine/Proton with closer to first party support. Bridging the gap between a full Linux version, and something that can at least run in Linux.
I get the joke, but I disagree. It mixed hardware with software in a weird way.
Macs are as much about the hardware than the software, and the OS is just another Unix variant. Much closer to Linux/BSD than Windows.
I like tech (no fear, I've been coding for 41 years at this point), but I don't like configuration, I'm a programmer, not IT, and also I heavily lean to getting shit done, so I prefer tools that don't get too much in my way.
I abandoned Linux on the desktop after I lost a battle with Linux audio. I can't freaking believe there's not a single thing that unifies everything, it's such a pain in the ass to setup right.
On notebooks it's a lost battle due to issues with power management that require way more fiddling that I'm willing to invest into.
I’m not sure what distro you used or how long ago this was - but I’ve been using Pop!_os as my general OS + dev env (and more recently switched off Windows to Bazzite for gaming) - and I’ve never once had to battle with audio or weird twiddling with settings to get stuff to work. In my experience - both have had the kind of out-of-the-box experience I’ve come to expect from Windows. If anything - Windows has required a lot more fiddling with settings and hunting down drivers as of late.
Try using a Bluetooth headset in online meetings. That's only the tip of the iceberg... Another is when you're trying to mix multiple inputs/outputs in Linux across various pro audio accessories, which only Mac seems to get right.
Work laptop on Ubuntu 20.04 with pipewire, I've used several bluetooth headsets over the years from all different brands and haven't had any issues across Google Meet, Zoom, or Teams.
Coworkers with wired headphones (also on Ubuntu, but I don't know if they switched to pipewire) tend to have problems regularly.
Usually PipeWire handles these situations better than PulseAudio, which is still the default audio daemon in many/most distributions.
To properly support Pro Audio you have to completely switch the audio stack to JACK - which I also used in MacOS a few years ago because Apple's audio stack wasn't up to the task as well.
It's more that Mac and Windows do better at auto-switching to mono+mic mode vs stereo audio mode than Linux in practice. If I don't manually switch in the audio settings it's problematic... I usually just use my webcam mic and keep my headset on stereo despite the reduced quality for others hearing me.
I use my Bluetooth headset on discord, slack, and google meet without any problems on Pop and Bazzite ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Funny enough - I have less problems with audio on Pop/Bazzite than my Mac (where my headset mic can be muted by flipping up - but is unable to unmute without power cycling the headset) or Windows (which cannot ever remember which device I want to use for which app).
I held off on switching to desktop Linux because of horror stories on places like HN. But it’s seriously not been my lived experience. I can only think that maybe these were problems 5+ years ago - or it’s folks that went with super customized Arch installs or something.
TBF, it's not as bad as it used to be.. the main issue is that unless I manually switch to mono mode before going into meetings, then back to stereo to listen to music after, I tend to have issues.
I mostly just use my webcam's mic, despite my headphones being better so I can leave my headset on bluetooth/stereo.
Valve saw exactly this scenario, because you're right: Windows isn't good for stability any more. Windows isn't good for driver compatibility anymore. Windows isn't good for being easy to do your own thing. It's only good for gaming...
I do exactly the same as you. I wish that I didn't need windows for gaming, and things are getting better on that front, but my favorite game (AoE 2) works significantly better on windows than on wine :(
> the only remaining use case for me is a gaming PC
even this has gone away for me, exited first with Bazzite and am now on CachyOS. Still got a debloated Windows11 on a different SSD for when friends want to play games with kernel-level anticheat or other bs.
feels good to be free of Microsoft. work on a Mac, game on Linux, phones run Android.
Love cachyos. Such a great OS. Wanted to love bazzite, but it's got too many opinionated takes and rpm-ostree is a PITA. pacman does have its pitfalls, but aside from upgrades, it's been appliance-level stable for a 100% gaming laptop docked to my tv
yup...at first i thought, "at work i have to manage rpm-ostree servers, so why not use the same tech at home?", well, because the tech is freaking buggy, annoying and deprecated already (imagemode/bootc).
Bazzite also had strange issues with the XBOX controllers i use, those issues went away with CachyOS. in the end it doesn't matter that much, on both i use(d) KDE Plasma. GF also uses the PC with her own useraccount to play her games. overall very satisfied, can't complain.
don't lynch me, decided to go for the pretty standard instead of Sway or Hyprland, as i feared that this would bring more issues with gaming. maybe that's an irrational fear, who knows.
Bazzite is built using imagemode/bootc; is it not?
I'm trying to understand the "deprecated already" in your first paragraph. (All I know about rpm-ostree is from using and adminning a distro that relies on rpm-ostree. I.e., I don't know much.)
Here is my guess as to what you mean: Bazzite could continue to use imagemode and bootc while replacing rpm-ostree with something better, and maybe you'll give Bazzite another look after that happens.
Fedora Atomic and RHEL used to ship with rpm-ostree, new versions are now using bootc. the base philosophy is still to ship the OS as an image, but bootc goes more into layering like docker-images, so that you can deploy changes a bit more easily/dynamically.
they're different technologies with bootc being the new kid. bootc means "bootable containers". rpm-ostree has not much to do with containers and is more like managing your OS with git-logic.
forget about "imagemode", that's the marketing-term RedHat uses for bootc.
i imagine bazzite will migrate to bootc sooner or later, but of course that requires a new way to build and ship it.
The first paragraph of the home page of https://universal-blue.org/ ends with "We produce a diverse set of continuously delivered operating system images using bootc."
Another author explains: "Bazzite utilizes bootc to manage the base image for your system, pin specific versions, and perform rollbacks when needed. For systems with customized software via layered packages, rpm-ostree becomes essential for installing, upgrading, and managing those additions."
"Why do this? Each tool is chosen for its strengths: bootc offers robust control over base images, ensuring that your core system remains unchanged unless you explicitly update it, while rpm-ostree provides flexibility for managing additional software without compromising the integrity of the atomic base. This separation helps maintain stability and security. Bazzite uses bootc for managing system images and rpm-ostree for adding layered packages."
Of course, nothing I wrote contradicts your assertion that rpm-ostree "is freaking buggy, annoying", but it does cast doubt in my mind on your belief that bootc can by itself completely replace rpm-ostree.
I get ~weekly crashes using an Nvidia card with arch/hyprland, but honestly it's less problematic for me to deal with than windows updates. I can format and rebuild my machine from scratch in less time than windows takes to download and perform an update.
Flawless experience on non-nvidia hardware though.
That's why I keep using Gentoo and X11 to handle my three GPU setup. An Intel iGPU, an AMD dGPU on the same package as the Intel CPU and a RTX 4060 Ti eGPU connected through Thunderbolt.
Only have issues with it on my machine with an Nvidia card. Understand that it can be unstable and accept that when it happens - but with AMD/integrated graphics I don't have the same problem.
Either way, only serves to further the point that Linux is in a pretty good place and the experience should only be better on more stable options.
I don't have that problem with Arch+COSMIC, which has the tiling you get with Hyprland but without the overly complex configuration. You can also switch to floating windows with one button if needed.
I mean, macOS is not a serious OS either. It has worse error management/reporting than Windows - Microsoft at least give you the courtesy of pretending they're trying to help you resolve the issue with an indecipherable hex code and badly localised error message, that you may, if you're very lucky, be able to Google.
Apple give you a middle finger with a "Something went wrong" or just spins forever. No information whatsoever on what the problem is and how you could possibly debug it. Compete lack of tooling to help with that too.
Probably my favourite example was when it was giving me an error message of "A device is using too much power, try unplugging and replugging it". Which device? Which port? What is "too much"? HA, FUCK YOU. I spent hours trying to debug this (so there is a tool that can give you power use per USB device, but it's a point in time one). In the end rewired everything because it was just impossible to discover what the hell was its problem. Another fun one was trying to extend my macOS screen to an iPad, where the button just wasn't there. Why? What was I missing? Who knows.
> Probably my favourite example was when it was giving me an error message of "A device is using too much power, try unplugging and replugging it". Which device? Which port? What is "too much"?
Another fun one: “Updates are available. Do you want to install them?” What updates? What software is getting updates? What do they fix? No information, just a notification asking you whether you want to install vague updates.
I mostly agree with you. Now with proton/steamos, the only games that need windows are multiplayer games with kernel-level anticheat mechanisms (e.g., destiny 2).
Battlefield, Call of Duty, Apex Legends, PUBG, Rainbow 6 Siege, Fortnite, Valorant, League of Legends, Teamfight Tactics, GTA5 online (and likely gta6 online).
Personally, only TFT is a blocker for me, and you can get an inferior version working on linux, but it only takes you playing one of those games for it to be a blocker.
Games "often not working under windows" is cope linux advocates tell themselves to convince themselves there is no reason for anyone to have windows installed. Its more the exception rather than then norm, and is usually the older games where their wine setup could be used on windows for the same effect.
For me the last one was Blade and Soul, and in the end, I dropped it rather than put up with it.
Even live-service games are less of a hassle than they used to be. BDO works well, Genshin works with occasionally having to update Proton, and the new shiny Where Winds Meet worked for me from the first day (never even tried it on Windows :P)
I think in the last 6 months, I've dual-booted for pretty much these things:
* To install a new motherboard's RGB-tweak utility because it doesn't work right in OpenRGB yet. Ran it once to pick settings, then it seemed to write to NVRAM since it's been stuck that way now.
* To use ham radio programming software that was clearly written by a single hobbyist and I didn't expect to work on anything but happy-path Windows systems.
* To try a weird specialty keyboard with a nonstandard card-reader (most of them just appear as normal HID keyboards, this one was a custom USB endpoint which apparently emulated a serial device with the right software. In the end, it didn't work well in Windows either-- the software was apparently mostly Win7-and-below.
* To deal with an old scanner that the vendor provides a Linux software package for, but only as a binary .deb that didn't seem to work well on Void. (Problem solved by picking up a used scanner explicitly supported by SANE for $10 at the Goodwill)
It's not the "can't" necessarily, it's about friction, I could get it working on linux, but then I'd probably be just fiddling with settings way longer than I do today.
Current Windows gaming experience is almost like a console, just play and forget, (if you just use your machine for that).
Another potential issue is that I have games in all the major launchers (and a GamePass subscription), and the only one that works reasonably well on Linux is Steam.
I installed Bazzite just last month, it's set-and-forget. Zero hardware / driver issues, everything autoconfigured.
Didn't even need to download steam.
Absolutely shocked me how smooth the out-of-box experience was compared to even Windows 10.
To my further surprise, I found my game library's compatibility on Bazzite was stronger than Windows 10 somehow. (Some old games like Moonbase Commander don't launch on Windows 10)
Agreed - Bazzite is the kind of set-and-forget level of quality I expect for a gaming appliance. I haven’t needed to twiddle with a single setting to get any games I’ve been playing (Stalker 2, Kingdom Come 2, Doom The Dark Ages, Arc Raiders, Helldivers, etc).
FWIW - GOG and Epic games play just fine via the Heroic app on Bazzite. I’ve only played a few games from those platforms so far - but it’s been as seamless as playing games off steam in my experience.
Ah I see, people don't remember the time where most games just released on console, because it was the biggest target group. This time will come back. Like it or not. People won't buy a pc for 2k.
I love OneDrive. I don't know why everyone hates it. I save things in OneDrive, and they are backed up to the cloud and synced with the other computers I use.
Some computers are shared by six family members, each with their own MS account and 1TB of storage. OneDrive makes it so the computers can have a 1TB hard drive but still give everyone ready access to their files by not storing them all on the hard drive.
If I don't want something synced to Onedrive then I usually save it in my downloads folder or another separate folder I create outside Onedrive. I've never had any problems.
The comments by people who hate make me wonder why my experience is so different than theirs.
If I don't want something synced to Onedrive then I usually save it in my downloads folder or another separate folder
My complaint is that MS has intentionally made it SO DIFFICULT to do that. There's a significant amount of extra clicking and thinking necessary to go through the steps to do it.
There is? Not at all. Whatever I save from my browser (Edge/Firefox/Chromium) is automatically saved to Downloads and Downloads is not automatically synced with OneDrive Backup. Backed up is Documents, Music, Videos, Desktop etc. but Downloads not AFAIK.
That's true. I wasn't clear - I was thinking mainly of the Office products: Word, Excel, etc. They've got a whole different Save As dialog that go out of their way to funnel you into OneDrive. So it's interrupting my flow precisely in the course of things I need to use brainpower on themselves.
Additionally if you don't save on Onedrive autosave is disabled.
Autosave worked decades ago before we even had cloud storage, but apparently in 2026 we just can't have feature parity with Word 97 without cloud storage.
MS actually made it harder to save stuff in OneDrive by basically hardcoding the folders it will backup unlike most other similar services that let you sync arbitrary folders on any drive.
The windows Explorer and the save dialog make it pretty easy to save a file somewhere else. Also, there is just one folder which syncs with OneDrive but some many more which don’t sync with OneDrive.
I haven't had too many issues with it that I couldn't resolve myself, but I understood what it was and what it was doing on my system. I opted in. I wonder if most of the people who don't like OneDrive didn't know it was enabled.
> OneDrive makes it so the computers can have a 1TB hard drive
No, it's a 1TB storage account accessible via the Internet, and wholly dependent on a good Internet connection, especially if you actually use most of that 1TB. Non-tech people will take misrepresentations like this at face value, which further makes tech a disempowering force.
The "Files-On-Demand" feature of OneDrive makes it possible for everyone in the family to login into any computer with OneDrive and quickly access all their files (I have 500/500 fiber). Because some/most of the files are stored on the cloud and only downloaded when they are accessed, the hard drive of the computer can be smaller (1TB) than the total sum of all the files stored by all the users (6TB). It's very nice. I can also turn off Files-on-Demand and everything will be stored locally on my computer. It sounds like many people are bothered that Files-on-Demand is enabled by default.
The two main frustrations that I've seen encountered are:
1) Microsoft aggressively attempting to convince you to use OneDrive, no matter how many times you turn it off.
I've had a Dropbox subscription since before OneDrive became a common name, and it works for me, so I have no real use case for OneDrive. That doesn't stop Microsoft forcibly "helpfully" re-enabling the OneDrive app and embedded link in the quick access bar regularly...which leads to
2) Microsoft attempting to sync your user profile in OneDrive, and bugs that arise from how it implements that.
I've never enabled this, so I haven't dug into how it works, but the first time I ever encountered OneDrive discussion in tech or adjacent circles was people complaining about OneDrive syncing of user profile folders breaking some games.
I assume it's something like the comedy of errors that could come out of folder redirection and software not expecting multiple people touching it at once, or the comedy of conflict resolution on a filesystem layer that isn't expecting that for semantics, but I have heard more complaints about OneDrive in this context than I've heard anything else about it.
So I suspect that it works fine, if you use it as a Dropbox-alike.
Using it as a Folder Redirection/Roaming Profiles replacement, or trying to say "no" to Microsoft, is where the problems ensue.
The problem is Microsoft shoving it down our throats and making saving to local FS as cumbersome as possible.
I wouldn't have minded Onedrive, in fact I would have used it a lot more, if it just showed up as an external mounted drive in Explorer where I could just paste files and folders I want shared or backed up. But nope, Microsoft in their infinite wisdom just have to sync up my entire home directory by default and have Office/365 only save docs and sheets to cloud by default. No thank you.
Agreed, I'd even be more inclined to use the Web versions, which are inherently tethered to OneDrive in Linux if the boundaries were better respected... I want an explicit spot backed up, maybe with the option to sync other directories. I don't want to be tricked or forced into it... or see a windows update change the configuration on me.
My wife got into trouble whilst unknowingly using OneDrive. She had a lot of photos on her laptop and they were being uploaded to OneDrive until it hit a limit (1TB?) and then started nagging her to upgrade to more storage. I had to disable OneDrive and move the photos back to her computer to resolve it.
Wholeheartedly agreed. Also the OneDrive Backup feature is great - previously people had to rely on other services (Box, Dropbox) and remember to save stuff into those folders. Now your most important Documents folder is saved in the cloud. Great. Backup! I don't think that OneDrive pestering you about buying more storage after using up your free storage is a bad thing, somebody needs to pay for stuff.
I understand the point, that everything is a bit convoluted and badly explained and may even lead to bad stuff happening. When you disable OneDrive Backup (good feature) and OneDrive deleting all your files locally with a little shortcut to OneDrive in the Cloud with all your files? Yeah... that is bad practice, but an easy fix for MS. Besides that hickup I currently don't undestand what the fuss is about.
I prefer the Dropbox solution, and tend to configure OneDrive, Google Drive, etc the same... I like to be explicit about it... I don't want all my general docs sync'd, for that matter, most of my projects are in a git repo anyway.
I know my Documents/Pictures directory isn't sync'd, I don't want it to be... to me my workspace is far different than what I want backed up to the cloud... I also have a local nas that is also setup for cloud sync for my service accounts. I emphatically do NOT want system default workspace directories sync'd.
How does this work with multiple PC's? Does it just merge all files into the same Documents folder? What if apps are saving app data to these folders, and you have the same app on multiple computers?
All your multiple PCs have the same Documents folder. Files created on one PC are synced to the cloud and appear in all the other PCs' Documents folders, and will be downloaded to the local storage if you try to access them. You get a small icon next to each file or folder to try and tell you if the files are local or in the cloud or whatever status. If apps are saving data to synced folders (eg. all those many many games happily polluting my Documents folder), then that same data is available to the same app on different computers. Could be good, or bad if the apps are being used on different computers at the same time with no real way of determining which PCs changes win for which particular file.
> All your multiple PCs have the same Documents folder. Files created on one PC are synced to the cloud and appear in all the other PCs' Documents folders
That sounds horrible.
> Could be good, or bad
It sounds bad either way. If the app exists on both computers there's good chance of conflicting overwrites of whatever is saved there. If the app is not used on a device then it's just a waste of downloading and syncing useless data.
They should just make the computers and have subfolders in a shared documents folder AND prompt you about so this before starting so you can turn off this or that folder before anything gets uploaded or downloaded. It's user-hostile design currently
It doesn't matter what I think, and you don't have to understand. Just don't turn it on by default, and if you do, make it safe and easy to turn it off.
Tooling and workflows that make sense on a centrally-administered domain do not belong on my home computer.
Considering I've had multiple family members and friends tricked into syncing to OneDrive without meaning to, I'd say that's a big reason. My Dad's old neighbor lost the ability to send and receive email after a Windows update did that to her, since it filled up her free Microsoft account and then Hotmail stopped working so she couldn't use email anymore and she had no idea why.
You clearly understand what’s happening better than most people. As someone who came back to Windows recently after 15 years away, the lengths to which the UI goes to hide the actual location of files and prevent you from directly addressing the filesystem is incredible. Thankfully I don’t have to use Windows for anything important. I would never recommend it to anyone else. (Not that the alternatives are much better.)
What’s mainly wrong with OneDrive is that it doesn’t work how most people expect, it’s on by default, and it deletes files from your local PC without asking. No matter how nice it is if you understand what’s going on, those details are enough to make it hate-worthy IMO.
It's about consent and respect for the user. If you build something awesome, you don't have to shove it down peoples' throats.
When more people Google "How to disable xyz" than "How to enable xyz," that would be a strong hint to most of us, but it doesn't mean anything to Microsoft's developers. ("Hey, at least they're engaging with the product," they tell each other.)
When I see comment saying that onedrive confusing, and that people are having problems with it, I always wonder if the "hacker" crowd is really the "hacker" type they want to portrait themselves, or just inexperienced computer users bitching on Microsoft for internet points.
OneDrive is an easy and well integrated cloud drive. The principle of having a cloud drive is not new anymore, and I believe people should get over the fact that, indeed, the files on the cloud drive is... In the cloud; colour me surprised!
You can absolutely be mad at a lawnmower that cut your foot off as there isn't any scenario where your feet should be at risk during normal operation of a regular lawnmower. Unless I intentionally try to insert my foot into the blades somehow, such dangerous faults would be entirely on the manufacturer.
Now if you proceed with he same horrible lawnmower and cut off your other foot, then that might be on you.
While the analogy is being stretched, same applies here - if Microsoft makes terrible footguns, then that's on Microsoft even if the users should have stopped using Microsoft by now.
It's not on me, it's on my employer, which forces me to use a laptop with MS Windows installed. Sure, I ssh into a machine running Linux where I do real work, but still.
Also - lots of people are used to it and habits die hard, regardless of technical merit etc.
I use OneDrive at work for all of my documents and have never encountered the horror stories I frequently read. I read these stories often enough where I believe there genuinely is a problem. But I do wonder why there is a difference for some and not others. Perhaps I've conditioned myself to live with its faults?
I will say that the Microsoft Office OneDrive save experience is completely subpar. It behaves completely separate & unlike Windows Explorer and is just unpleasant to work with.
We weren't using OneDrive at work, then we had it imposed, and everyone went through a few days period where they had to find where their documents went and/or changing the hardcoded paths in various things to match the new location.
Using OneDrive is often fine. Having it imposed on you is a breaking change.
I didn't have a problem until I migrated to another Mac. Then I started having duplicate files. I think I fixed it by logging out of everything and deleting the duplicates but it was a couple hours wasted. Didn't have this problem with Dropbox in my career.
Definitely and still a happy paying Dropbox user, even though I'm well within my free limits (after several referral storage bumps). IT pretty much just works, but the Linux experience could use some updates.
My experience is exactly the same. I use OneDrive for easy replication of lots of stuff between my own devices, and to transfer files to friends. I've never had a lost-data problem.
On the other hand, UX for doing that sharing is clunky.
And I believe it's pretty well documented that the reason for the File-Save experience being so awful is that Microsoft is actively trying to deter us from using our own local storage, and coercing us to use their (subscription) cloud products.
The problem with this thinking is that you can never be sure these problems won’t happen to you.
I’m pretty sure it had worked just fine for the users in the article too, until it didn’t.
IMO they should clearly encourage users to keep backups elsewhere in case something happens, but they’re currently doing the exact opposite: encouraging users to back up (and on Windows even store) files exclusively on OneDrive.
I found out my mom was paying for OneDrive because her Android phone autosynced a bunch of her files and she ran out of 'space'. She had no idea what it was but the OS pushed it hard.
Could be worse, it could be syncing to Google Photos.
Oh, you want to download all photos so that you can free the cloud space? Too bad, you can only download them one by one. Or use Google Takeout and leave half of them undownloaded.
First thing I do on any Windows machine is uninstall OneDrive anywhere possible. It's caused me enough grief that I just avoid it entirely at this point.
The article makes valid points about users misunderstanding how OneDrive works (and ascribing the misunderstanding to “dark patterns”), but I’ve been using Linux (first pop-os and now cachyos) for years, while at the same time shadowing most (not all) of my home directory to OneDrive[0] (I have an annual x365 subscription and that 2TB cloud storage is hard to ignore). I’ve had no issues whatsoever, though admittedly I’m not your average user (40 years in tech). I also make local backups of course, but tbh the utility of having my files available from anywhere is pretty useful to me. YMMV.
To point out how shambloic it was it was originally called SkyDrive but they were forced to rename it thanks to a trademark lawsuit. I mean, they launch a product that is so important to them that they are willing to make us all miserable shoving it down our throats and they can't be bothered to spend a few $100 or $1000 on a trademark search.
I was working with Word and found that it defaulted to OneDrive which I could have lived with if it worked. Except it didn't work and when I tried to save documents I could not save.
Needless to say that was the last time I used OneDrive. Microsoft doesn't get it
Force somebody to use it -> It fails -> Somebody never uses it again
Third-party vendors like DropBox, Box and many others have made products that look like OneDrive but actually work and never make it so I can't save my work.
I have OneDrive completely disabled on my personal PC. I still found I couldn't find files that I had created with Word in the filesystem. Turns out even if you don't have the OneDrive service running on your PC, Office will store files in OneDrive directly through the API -- it's not hard to turn off (thanks Copilot!) but it's one more thing to be resentful about.
When I have to use Windows for work (which I 100% would prefer over Mac when I can't have Linux Desktop), I've found OneDrive works best if you give it one file. I gzip a tar file on Windows and let OneDrive sync that. As long as it's only one file, it does a good job.
Whatever you do, don't try to sync a git repo folder with OneDrive.
OneDrive is an absolute cancer. I teach Computer Science and my students are constantly accidentally checking their repos out onto onedrive which, of course, makes the performance absolutely atrocious to the point of unusability, and it often affects the weakest students who are most likely to get knocked out of CS by unrelated issues like this.
The UI in Windows is intentionally designed to confuse the issue so people unintentionally end up using One Drive, which is free until it isn't and then they can jam you with a subscription. Many of my students barely have an understanding of what a file system is and how it works now due to this horrible user-hostile UI.
MacOS is headed this direction as well. Congrats linux: you just need to continue to get worse at the relatively slow rate that you always have and you will be the best desktop/laptop OS within a few years.
I am pretty sure we'll see Desktop Linux in the US cross the 10% mark this year... however, I don't think it will get much higher without first party sales support from OEMs. Most people don't change their OS and just use what came with it, which today is mostly Windows or MacOS.
I'd really love if some vendors would license Pop from System76 for more, broader hardware support. I think it's just about the best out of the box experience in Linux for most users.
This take is weird. Git and OneDrive in a sense both are version control systems. What do you think would happen if you created a Git repository and a SVN repository in the same folder, then proceeded to add files from .git to SVN and let SVN manipulate them? It is not OneDrive's fault that your students don't understand version control.
IMO, instruction should have had the users create a "src" directory under their profile/home directory to use for their repositories, and expressly mention the why's. That said, the fact that OneDrive slurps up Documents, etc. by default instead of an explicit directory, is part of the problem.
Even worse. It doesn't slurp up the documents folder in your home directory. If you click on documents via explorer (or a file selection dialog), or go to c:\users\myusername\documents, you will arrive at different folders.
Agreed. Using one file management version-control system within another, is a surefire recipe for trouble and disaster.
But it isn't the students' fault, I guess they are still learning how to use computers.
This is purely an IT Administration fiasco. The IT admin should simply exclude the repository folders/paths from OneDrive. Or make everyone to save non-code documents to a separate shared network path, which is a storage drive that gets automatically backed up daily.
enshittification of the NET and now OS continues. The problem is that students nowadays have very little opportunity to learn this. My daughter does not understand what a pendrive is and when the data is on her phone and when on the SD card (meanwhile sd card slots are being sunsetted in all the brands).
This is cartel to remove the data ownership possibility from people. Recently Polish youtuber got his video blocked because he showed how to play locally stored mp3 files (accused of breaking yt policy on allegedly showing people how to download illegal files)
If we allow companies to put an equals mark between not storing your own data in cloud and piracy, this will finish the cartel's objective very fast.
as part of that program, online communications and storage of all users of large US tech companies, including Microsoft, is made accessible to the NSA.
Posting this here, hoping desperately for someone to give me an example proving I'm wrong:
It's insane to me that there isn't a simple, GUI-based app that provides this utility in a clean, straightforward way. Basically just "dropbox, but let me set the destination to another drive on my PC/network/VPN (or a 'repo', for 'advanced' users)".
Just a plain interface that shows me my files and allows me to say "I want this folder to be backed up to here, here, and here". I can do that manually for every folder I want backed up, but other users may opt to backup a whole drive or whatever, depending on need.
Seems like a slam dunk. Frustrating that I don't know enough about the footguns with backups (duplications, cpu limiting, etc) to just write the app myself, but I have been looking at what the eframe and rustic libraries can do together. Feels imminently do-able by someone who has a lot of experience with backups. But maybe it's even passable do-able by someone who just knows what he wants.
For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.
I appreciate the recc, but it misses the mark I think? Time machine is only on a single OS, and is designed as more of a "keep my whole system safe" backup rather than a "back these things up" backup.
I can understand why people might want to backup entire drives, or to backup OS content minimally, but my use-case is to just pick a few folders and only have those backed up. Not to an external drive, but to internal ones and network ones.
That's the tool I'm looking for. While Time Machine can exclude everything but the folders to backup, it doesn't seem to be able to back them up with different cadences or rules about content limits or whatever else. It's all or nothing. I'm just not sure it provides what I'm looking for.
I think it might! Definitely checks enough boxes for me to try out, anyway.
The UI is a little cumbersome for me, personally, but it does seem at least straightforward enough for me to understand what the intentions are.
ETA: Welp, that didn't last long. A service running in the background that exposes an "insecure" url for a browser to then open as the only means for GUI interaction with the app is not a great recommendation for everyday users. It looks like it has all the features, but I'm looking for a user experience. CLIs provide the features. I'd like an app, not a service running a webserver. Shudder the thought of just shoving the front end in an electron app, but even that would be better than this for casual users.
You could create an app that has a tray status icon, that launches a tauri app connected to the same web service (assuming it's only listening on localhost, it's fine).
The main question is who is in control not whether it is off or online. Microsoft obviously thinks that users are not, and it is Microsoft. We should have been more careful with embracing the walled gardens.
Tbh I don't understand why 'Microsoft thinks that users are not' maybe because my kids are not logged in to onedrive yet. Do I understand correctly that MS tricks the users somehow to synchronize folders with cloud?
Kind of... you now have to sign into windows with a Microsoft Account, that has a starting (free) tier OneDrive, that will "easily" enable and start operations against directories you may not recognize are syncing, and even if disabled may change with automatic forced updates... it will then start nagging you to create a paid account for more storage, etc... otherwise tie you into Office products, where it starts saving to OneDrive by default, which you may not recognize and that doesn't even get into a lot of the dark patterns and manipulation.
FTR, I've used it and usually configure to explicitly only sync a single directory.
For "off-line backups", I'm thinking air gapped. Or on a backup server running no MS software, and using a filesystem with frequent & reliable snapshots.
People are locked in. It's not easy to switch to another product. Even if someone is willing the pay the price for another system and pay to have the data moved and apps repurchased, they now have to learn a new OS.
But that’s the thing, why is it this way? Driving a Hyundai or a Toyota you wouldn’t notice the difference, but learning a new OS is so hard that people don’t do it.
I wish the ergonomics would be more standard so switching costs aren’t so high.
Because it benefits the tech companies to make their user interface different enough to make it difficult to relearn another one. There are no official standards like there are for the vehicle user interface.
Saw someone calling Microsoft "Microslop". Seems appropriate given their enthusiasm for AI, lack of software quality, and lack of regard for user experience.
Used to call that Windblows and Microsucks in my early 20s, I am not sure it was edgy back then and I am sure it isn't now. The UI/UX changes from ME > XP > Win8. At least you could keep the _classic_ look until Win10, I am not certain is the case with Win11 and what every Windows Copilot is coming next.
iCloud is trivial to set up for a family account. We're all on macs.
My company uses Dropbox which is windows and mac.
For some reason Microsoft gave me 40Gb of free storage on skydrive in their early days, and it was always a little off to use, mostly due to search. So it ended up being used to store misc files like software installers which I can always find elsewhere if OneDrive misbehaves.
MS has been doing shit like this for decades. Every couple months I log into my dusty Windows account and lo and behold there's a bunch of weird shit like Candy Crush or Copilot or whatever that's just decided to reinstall itself for the nth time.
I just noticed yesterday that Copilot or OneDrive is pressuring me to set it up and my options are: Yes, Remind me in 1 week, or Remind me in 1 month. Like, what the fuck is that?
It is a testament to the power of tech policy momentum that a company can crank out absolute shit for decades and the corporate world just keeps on using their software because "that's what we've always used".
As far as I'm concerned, I'm fine with these tech CTOs replacing their software engineering workforce with LLMs because the bar is already on the fucking floor when it comes to use experience.
I've noticed that about Windows, that it has some sort of attachment disorder: the longer you're away from it, the more it freaks out and throws a tantrum about something the next time you boot it up. If it's been 3 or more months, you can absolutely forget about your settings staying as they were.
> As far as I'm concerned, I'm fine with these tech CTOs replacing their software engineering workforce with LLMs because the bar is already on the fucking floor when it comes to use experience.
The engineers can’t be completely to blame here, Microsoft is too consistently bad for that. It is a high-level strategy issue. Replace the Product Managers with LLMs maybe… a bunch of random matvecs couldn’t possibly be wrong so consistently, right?
What I hate about it is that it's turned on automatically.
It's basically just holding your computer for ransom because guess what the 20 gigabyte they give you for free doesn't cut it lmao.
Don't call it a backup my SSD is 2 terrabyte and I ain't paying you anything.
Yeah I was in the minority that actually defended OneDrive but I'm facing my own issues with it recently. I'm aware of the windows default client behavior but on systems I have the storage on, I modify it to pull down everything. Bad UX on Microsoft's part but it's not related to what appears to be bigger issues under the hood.
Back in October I had issues with the Linux dlang Onedrive client deleting all the files shared with me. Unlike Microsoft, the developer actually acknowledged there could be a problem and we figured out the cause was new unintended behavior caused by an old config option, really long issue thread for it here: https://github.com/abraunegg/onedrive/issues/3475 (TL:DR it was a very niche situation unlikely to have affected anyone else, I have more concise thoughts on it in the Gentoo bug: https://bugs.gentoo.org/964370 )
So that was really bad, but we were able to restore all the deleted files from her OneDrive web using its recycle bin. That leaves me with the issue I'm facing now. Some of the files which I created and put in the share she shares with me have my ownership but OneDrive doesn't recognize I created it and she can't change the permissions to share back to me. So now I have to figure out how many files are affected here and I guess copy them on her side so the new files get her ownership and share back properly to me.
I do want to say as well, those files just don't show up at all on my side in OneDrive but they DO show up in my Office apps recent list. It just refuses to let me open them. She sees them though with my ownership and both the web and windows onedrive clients throw errors if she tries to change the permissions. Absolutely maddening.
Whelp browsing this on my phone was one way to remind me to put my VPN back on holy crap. In the middle of the article is an embedded TikTok video about the subject of the article while three different ads were overlapping my screen. Unbelievable.
...and even if they suck it into onedrive, good luck finding it! Is it in my work onedrive, personal onedrive, a "teams" folder, or did they relabel it to a sharepoint folder? No idea! Everything is now saved on my downloads folder because my file system is so whacked with all these other virtual folder overlays....
Man, I wanted to like Teams folder mounts.. what a mess.
Aside: WTF isn't the Teams wiki using markdown files you can edit and sync locally? I mean if this has changed since I last tried, cool... but that's the single biggest thing I wanted from this. Now, I just put a _docs directory into my projects and have markdown files in there sync'd to the git repo... I've given up on files in teams for the most part.
Also with teams, splitting up chats and meating chats is a pain... the "activity" indicator doesn't tell you WTF subtab for chat something is in now. I used to at least halfway like teams if you avoided (over)using features, now it's just a craptastic mess.
It's interesting because on one hand there are posts like this were most people agree, and then there are posts about LLMs how they can one-shot a Windows application.
I think they're related. Software Engineering is about enumerating these edge cases and dealing with them. That requires skill.
Vibe-coding, or even prompting for larger chunks of code doesn't force you to enumerate these edge-cases.
And I firmly believe that reviewing the code for those edge-cases is harder than writing it yourself, as by nature you have to work backwards. You've arrived at a place, and you need to find out which routes were taken, and whether those routes are correct. Guardrails, snow-chain warnings, slope % warnings etc.
When you've arrived at the place it's easy to say: eh, whatever. We got here. Ship it. Especially with the push from above these days to go faster.
I absolutely can't deal with sync conflicts, they are confusing and infuriating.
So I don't use any form of automatic cloud sync, anywhere. Once you accidentally overwrite a file with an older version open on another system, its hard to go back to that nonsense
Happened to me 2 nights ago with a document my wife was editing on my laptop. I booted up Windows, which forced me to start some process while I was half paying attention. Windows booted normally but my Desktop was missing that critical file.
It was in my history? Check
Recent documents? Check
Visible in the file explorer? Check
Desktop? No dice
Try to open from the file dialog... error. The message? Can't get it from some URL.
My wife wakes up and starts crying. She's spent hours. What the fuck? I understand computers, and files don't just disappear.
"Were you editing it with Tritium?" (blames my product!)
Wait, a URL? I bet it's some OneDrive dark pattern.
Fix it by de-selecting "backup" multiple times and then clicking "submit". Files magically re-appear after I make sure to tell Microsoft to "keep my local copy".
What happened is exactly what it suggests. OneDrive migration doesn't just copy your files to a server. While the migration is occurring, the operating system is optimistically re-mapping them all to a cloud URL and/or deleting them entirely.
Halting the migration and disabling "backup" returned the mapping back to the local disk, and I was able to open the file as normal.
I know, it's as crazy as it sounds and your bet was my bet at first as well.
For decades, the unofficial Microshit motto has been:
Intel inside, Idiot outside.
Because Microsoft treated users as if they were idiots.
So basically tons of Windows related websites teach this infallible little trick as solution when a user gets a Windows BSOD (Blue Screen of Death):
Reboot!
Invariably, the reboot causes the Windows OS to start working again, till the recurrence of whatever circumstances (typically, hardware and/or software conflicts) caused the BSOD in the first place. It is left to the user to figure out what went wrong and how to prevent the issue from recurring again, as the BSOD messages are typically cryptic for the average user to decipher (maybe not so difficult in the modern era of AI assistants invocable from a handheld smartphone).
In fact, I would say the whole IT industry grew tremendously over the last few decades, because Microsoft's products were powerful, user friendly (to an extent, and until they worked), but quite complex to maintain (the dreaded Windows updates nightmares) and troubleshoot in case of issues. That's because every company using M$ products needed dedicated IT Support teams solely for such maintenance, help and fixes for M$ products. Even other vendors like Oracle grew as competition to Microsoft's corporate dominance.
The wonderful (and sometimes terrifying) world of antimalware software may not even have existed were it not for Microsoft products.
maybe I’m just getting old, but I’m really tired of these [super popular product tons of people use but EVERYONE hates it] posts and comments. just quickly checking the Apple App Store, the Onedrive app has 4.7 stars
Better question: who the hell is giving these apps (or really any apps) five stars?
I don’t rate the apps I use unless other than to give it 1 star for doing something I hate. My banking app’s transaction search doesn’t work at all, so it gets 1 star. But 1.9M ratings resulted in a 5 star average — who are the freaks giving their banking app 5 stars and why?
On iOS at least, an app can quickly ask for a star rating via a modal dialog. No review necessary.
Thanks to dark patterns, users sometimes think it's asking them to rate their previous experience, or the podcast they're listening to, but those wind up tallied as app star ratings.
No doubt there's a lot of review spam as well. Apple has also gotten lazy with cracking down on review dark patterns. I noticed apps are getting away with the "pop up review dialog -> positive: go to OS level review window -> negative: go to in-app feedback form" pattern.
It makes perfect sense to me. I rely on that feature. My monitor is big and it's much easier to use the big screen to sort vacation photos and delete the 90% which are garbage and not worth preserving. When I delete the garbage ones, of course I want to delete them everywhere. (And if I accidentally deleted the wrong photo, I can undelete within 30 days.)
Google's Photos application is intentionally designed in such a way to hold people's files hostage. It will ask to back your stuff up on startup without the user being able to permanently disable it, with only the classic "Not now, I'm sorry my digital overlords, ask me about it next week" option being available. What will happen is that people that don't know better accept it to get it out of their way, have all their personal pictures uploaded to Google's servers where they are abused in all sort of ways (including getting a father reported to police for CSAM and permanently blocking his account for taking a picture of his son to send a doctor), and because the free plan has a limited space available but won't be respected during upload, they'll start panic-bombing the user with "All your pictures are going to be deleted if you don't pay up or clean". This is all intentional, of course: Google and its developers know the vast majority of its Android users don't know or care about all of this and will exploit that. The Gallery app doesn't have the same Google Drive constant reminder and is what I usually install when I see the above repeatedly happen on other people's devices, which is well over a dozen times now, but Photos cannot be removed, of course.
I actually switched from using Google Photos to OneDrive because the latter keeps photos as files on my system and I can view them normally in explorer rather than forcing a bespoke cloud service.
One user's stupidity becomes Internet bait for something that's saved so, so much time.
I remember playing the backup & restore game when rebuilding my PC, which I just happened to do last night as I received a new SSD. I didn't have to worry about documents and thanks to a separate volume, redownloading my Steam library, either. That was a massive time save. And it didn't have to be OneDrive, it could have been any cloud sync service -- but OneDrive works just fine.
The user just fucked up and had a conniption fit on Tiktok.
OneDrive doesn't always work fine, though. I avoid it like the plague because a OneDrive screwup caused me loss of valuable data.
Was it user error? Maybe, maybe not, but that's irrelevant. If it's so easy to make an unrecoverable and catastrophic mistake, it's a tool that's too dangerous to use on the daily.
All I know is that a bunch of files reverted to very old versions and I found no way to recover from that. It was pure loss. How did it happen? I have no idea. But how doesn't matter at all to me. What matters to me is that OneDrive proved itself untrustworthy.
> If it's so easy to make an unrecoverable and catastrophic mistake, it's a tool that's too dangerous to use on the daily.
Shift+Del and rm -rf don't have any guardrails around them. In tech you are surrounded by footguns and bear traps. MS made it that much worse by wrapping these in dark patterns that may change without notice but the logic that "dangerous things should be prohibited" is a perfectly good way to end up living in an environment where someone else curates what you can and cannot do. For your protection of course.
A tool isn't dangerous because you can make an unrecoverable and catastrophic mistake (you can make one with a kitchen knife and we still use them every day). It's truly dangerous if it can and does act against your wishes, interests, and reasonable expectations like OneDrive did.
The article is accompanied by a TikTok video I can't scrub through so I can't tell why it's not possible to go to OneDrive's recycle bin and recover the lost data.
Here it is really not a "footgun" that can shoot you accidentally, it is really volontary awful dark patterns.
You say delete my "onedrive" storage content, why on earth someone sane should expect that Microsoft will also delete the data one your computer, that you never asked to be sent to OneDrive in the first place.
The comment I replied to suggested a generalization that "a too that allows you to make grave mistakes is too dangerous to use. We're surrounded by tools in real life and computers which allow you to make major mistakes (ever run a copy/sync tool like robocopy and others with source monitoring, and someone was deleting from the source after seeing the copy at the destination?). So I don't agree with their generalization. Tools aren't dangerous because of what they can do or because they allow you to make mistakes.
But this wasn't a mistake, or at least not an unprovoked one. The user did nothing wrong. They operated under reasonable assumptions established by decades of computer tools. This was a user who didn't get cut by the knife's blade but by its handle. The tool was configured to operate against the user's interests, wishes, and reasonable expectations. This isn't "a dangerous tool" this is a developer who weaponized a tool. The danger is the practice of misleading the user. MS took a pipe and made it a pipe bomb, the solution isn't to declare pipes to dangerous to use.
> why on earth someone sane should expect that Microsoft will also delete the data one your computer, that you never asked to be sent to OneDrive in the first place
From a reasonable user perspective of course it makes no sense. If you investigate from a technical perspective, knowing how the tool works, it "works as intended". OD Backup is not backup, it's storage. That's the first trick MS pulls. OD didn't back up your data, it moved it to the cloud and didn't tell you. This is the second trick MS pulls. Disabling the "backup" means disabling the storage of your single copy of the data. This isn't a trick, it's just the level of competence at MS.
> OD didn't back up your data, it moved it to the cloud and didn't tell you.
Now I think that I understand your mistake. You think that onedrive moves the data to the cloud, and so obviously losing the cloud version makes you lose the file.
But it is not what is happening from my understanding, and here is the very dark pattern:
- The file is and stays in your computer. (Actually OneDrive doesn't know how to store more than what you have in local copy... totally miserable).
- So it is just a "copy" that is sent to the cloud.
- When you delete your files in their cloud (in the sense of getting ride of your storage there, and not only files), only then "OneDrive" actively goes to delete your files in your local disk!
I agree, OneDrive is very similar to `rm -rf`. But I think that is a bad thing for a file sync service to be.
It's worse, because it runs without the users explicit knowledge or consent, and it lacks the implicit guardrails `rm -rf` has (in that most people who use Linux and the terminal are at least literate).
> MS made it that much worse by wrapping these in dark patterns that may change without notice
> It's truly dangerous if it can and does act against your wishes, interests, and reasonable expectations.
Do you really not consider the first to be an example of the second?
> Shift+Del and rm -rf don't have any guardrails around them.
Shift+Del asks for confirmation. I would expect OneDrive to do at least that much before deleting files off the local machine, even if they're recoverable.
> Do you really not consider the first to be an example of the second?
I think too many people got the impression that I'm defending OD and can't get out of that trench. My point is that a generic tool being able to do dangerous things isn't a high enough bar to say don't use it (often). A tool being able to do dangerous things in the manner I described above is a completely different devil. The "how" you end up doing a dangerous thing is what should be punished.
I want to be able to do whatever I want with my computer and my data and not have someone define what's "too dangerous" for me to use. But what happened here wasn't what the users wanted, or could reasonably expect to happen. That's the key.
> Shift+Del asks for confirmation
I'm sure OD also asked for some confirmation. By that time it's too late, you're confirming what you think will happen, not what will actually happen. When you confirm shift+del you know what you are confirming. When you confirm OD's dialog you're confirming under misleading assumptions.
I never asserted that. I asserted that if a tool is that dangerous, it shouldn't be used on a daily basis. I stand by that. Use it if it solves a problem for you, but intentionally every time, not as a matter of habit or in the background with automation.
> It's truly dangerous if it can and does act against your wishes, interests, and reasonable expectations.
> I asserted that if a tool is that dangerous, it shouldn't be used on a daily basis
Agree to disagree. I will repeat, we are surrounded by dangerous tools that we use on a daily basis. Clearly the "danger" part is not the criteria that defines if or how often you should use the tool.
> OneDrive meets those criteria.
Correct. But those are my criteria, and I believe they are the ones that carry my argument. Your criteria was "is dangerous" which is not enough to carry the weight of your conclusion.
Correct, I'm just saying that I think your criteria supports my opinion. As you say, we disagree about this. Fair enough. I'm not telling anyone not to use OneDrive. We all make that sort of decision for ourselves.
All I'm saying is that OneDrive hosed me in a terrible way, so I'm no longer willing to risk using it. Particularly since it doesn't really address any need I have and if I did have such a need, there are better tools (for me) available.
The other dangerous tools you've mentioned haven't ever burned me.
I want to make this very clear, my point is about how we define a “dangerous” tool. It’s not what it can do, it’s how it does it. The real danger is in an untrustworthy tool, in fooling users like OD did.
Options are not a guardrail. Documented options that operate intuitively and consistently are the guardrail.
This is where OD failed by MS's design, it didn't operate intuitively and consistently with almost any other computer tool, and didn't document the behavior properly in a way that the user can take advantage of the knowledge.
Helping my mom recover from OneDrive's "cleanup" was the closest I've come to negotiating with terrorists.
As time marches on, Onedrive has actively continued to blur the difference between local file storage vs storage in their cloud.
No doubt this has gotten more "seamless" in recent years than it was at first.
The exact definition of "deceptive trade practices".
Windows is not for doing serious stuff anymore, the only remaining use case for me is a gaming PC (if you turn off all the nags, it's pretty decent).
I work on a Mac, I run servers on Linux, I game on Windows.
>the only remaining use case for me is a gaming PC
More and more it seems people don't even find it necessary for that.
I'm "the Linux friend" for a lot of my friends, and over the last year-ish a surprising number of them have asked about advice for switching to Linux. I've helped four people attempt the switch, and three out of the four have stuck with Linux so far.
All the damn developers keep turning off online play for Linux users though... I play two games a lot currently, Apex Legends and Battlefield 6, both block Linux players from online play thanks to their shitty kernel rootkits not supporting Linux.
Apex Legends at least was running fine on Steam Deck prior to november 2024 when they instituted this change, and I can tell you from personal experience it had very little impact on cheaters, which was their excuse for the change (supposedly most cheaters were connecting via Linux clients).
> supposedly most cheaters were connecting via Linux clients
I always find this so hard to believe, mainly because the majority of players are on Windows, which means that the market for cheats is there and statistically most likely to happen there.
I just don’t play games by devs that snub Linux. There are many to choose from.
The thing with Linux cheats is that they were significantly easier to make(you didn't have to think about bypassing the anticheat at all, you could just read the game's memory or LD_PRELOAD your cheat in), and a lot more were publicly available(in true FOSS fashion, a lot of Linux cheats were open-source). A cheat that could cost $30-$60 a month on Windows could be free as in freedom(and free beer) on Linux.
But the anti-cheat technology on Windows is more through, so it's harder to cheat on Windows.
If the number of cheaters hasn't changed, but Linux users are now blocked, then your premise is flawed.
I'm sure the number probably changed a bit, but I can tell you for a fact it isn't like cheaters disappeared overnight just because they banned Linux clients.
yup i am too, steamdeck helped convert me fully. this year my goal is to move my main gaming desktop to linux with tiny spare ssd for windows to run the odd anticheat game on.
How do you like the steam deck? Do you feel like it was worth the cost?
Absolutely love it, the wife and I have hundreds of hours between us on our steam decks and it has consistently performed better than I expected.
[dead]
cachyos has been nearly flawless for a non-steam deck (gpd win mini 2). Upgrades broke my tv being set to the primary display under gamemode but that was an easy fix.
The other game changer (heh) was going all in on amd: cpu, integrated gpu, and discrete gpu via oculink.
Nvidia may be the best overall performance for gaming and ai workloads, it still doesn't play nice with linux gaming
I don't think that's Nvidia's fault, I've never seen an eGPU enclosure system of any type work seamlessly on Linux.
> I don't think that's Nvidia's fault
Most issues on Linux come from fighting the community, which historically Nvidia has done a lot of.
I can't even be bothered to dual boot into Windows to game anymore. Wiped my Windows drive over the weekend so that it could be used as a snapshot drive. If the game doesn't work on Steam on Linux I'm not interested - simple as that.
Gaming is a smaller thing for me than the Adobe creative apps, especially Lightroom.
Granted, I could get that on Macintosh. But while their fans like to claim that Apple's engineering is all about usability, that hasn't been true for quite some time. It's now become a status/elitism thing (see, e.g., yesterday's conversation about Tahoe icons). And their UX model is very contrary to my way of thinking about things.
Apple has a lot of failings recently. But macOS still has far more claim to “usability” than Windows!
If only because of the fact that the start menu (equivalent - the dock and applications view) isn’t an ad filled react app.
The Start menu is not a React app. It is based in C++ & XAML with a React component.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMJNEFHj8b8&t=287s
I strongly disagree, but de gustibus non disputandum
Unless you need compatibility with Adobe file formats, Free editing software works fine too. I've been using Darktable for about a decade. People bash on GIMP for not being able to do what Photoshop can, but it's because GIMP is built with the intent of being extended by the user. It can be extended to do what people complain that it cannot do. Kdenlive is good at filling the needs met by Premiere. I think the hardest Adobe application for me to recommend a portable alternative to is After Effects. Maybe Blender can be coaxed into filling some AE uses.
I strongly disagree. Have you used Lightroom in the last, say, two years?
They've had a revolutionary upgrade in their masking tools. ML models power automated, smart mask creation. For example, on a landscape photo I can get, with just a couple of clicks, separate masks for sky, water, land, foliage, structures, and natural ground. The power that this gives me to edit my photos is amazing. To the best of my knowledge, Darktable and others have nothing approaching this.
By large agree, the most recent years in lightroom have been some of it's most transformational. A lot of tasks that used to require going into PS have been borderline automated. Their more recent denoise methods as well have been nothing short of excellent.
Not that its perfect when 100% automated but it takes a fraction the time to adjust things towards perfection, no one misses doing it by hand.
Rapidraw does try to compete some having ML based masking but I gotta agree most the open source solutions have been lagging behind bigtime.
Users of creative apps are rarely also programmers capable of creating the extensions you mention. If the goal is getting people to switch to your application, open source or not, you need to provide a level of minimal functionality. What is minimal functionality varies from person to person and may include the way you interact with said functionality.
While Gimp and Krita are very useful and even usable for a lot of people... that doesn't mean it's a suitable replacement for the Adobe products. Some will get Affinity running with Wine... frankly it would be nice if there was an "easy gutton" to doing a lot of this. I'm not sure about the legalities of copying actual MS dll's from Windows for use with Wine even... even if yoou have a license, as I'm not a lawyer, which can impact the ability to make it easier to do/use.
It would be nice if more software at least got tested to run on Wine/Proton with closer to first party support. Bridging the gap between a full Linux version, and something that can at least run in Linux.
This flowchart continues to be more or less accurate: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/mx4dni/cho...
Might need a little update to bring it up to date.
Disclosure: I fear technology and my daddy is not rich.
I get the joke, but I disagree. It mixed hardware with software in a weird way.
Macs are as much about the hardware than the software, and the OS is just another Unix variant. Much closer to Linux/BSD than Windows.
I like tech (no fear, I've been coding for 41 years at this point), but I don't like configuration, I'm a programmer, not IT, and also I heavily lean to getting shit done, so I prefer tools that don't get too much in my way.
I abandoned Linux on the desktop after I lost a battle with Linux audio. I can't freaking believe there's not a single thing that unifies everything, it's such a pain in the ass to setup right.
On notebooks it's a lost battle due to issues with power management that require way more fiddling that I'm willing to invest into.
I’m not sure what distro you used or how long ago this was - but I’ve been using Pop!_os as my general OS + dev env (and more recently switched off Windows to Bazzite for gaming) - and I’ve never once had to battle with audio or weird twiddling with settings to get stuff to work. In my experience - both have had the kind of out-of-the-box experience I’ve come to expect from Windows. If anything - Windows has required a lot more fiddling with settings and hunting down drivers as of late.
Try using a Bluetooth headset in online meetings. That's only the tip of the iceberg... Another is when you're trying to mix multiple inputs/outputs in Linux across various pro audio accessories, which only Mac seems to get right.
Work laptop on Ubuntu 20.04 with pipewire, I've used several bluetooth headsets over the years from all different brands and haven't had any issues across Google Meet, Zoom, or Teams.
Coworkers with wired headphones (also on Ubuntu, but I don't know if they switched to pipewire) tend to have problems regularly.
Usually PipeWire handles these situations better than PulseAudio, which is still the default audio daemon in many/most distributions.
To properly support Pro Audio you have to completely switch the audio stack to JACK - which I also used in MacOS a few years ago because Apple's audio stack wasn't up to the task as well.
It's more that Mac and Windows do better at auto-switching to mono+mic mode vs stereo audio mode than Linux in practice. If I don't manually switch in the audio settings it's problematic... I usually just use my webcam mic and keep my headset on stereo despite the reduced quality for others hearing me.
I use my Bluetooth headset on discord, slack, and google meet without any problems on Pop and Bazzite ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Funny enough - I have less problems with audio on Pop/Bazzite than my Mac (where my headset mic can be muted by flipping up - but is unable to unmute without power cycling the headset) or Windows (which cannot ever remember which device I want to use for which app).
I held off on switching to desktop Linux because of horror stories on places like HN. But it’s seriously not been my lived experience. I can only think that maybe these were problems 5+ years ago - or it’s folks that went with super customized Arch installs or something.
TBF, it's not as bad as it used to be.. the main issue is that unless I manually switch to mono mode before going into meetings, then back to stereo to listen to music after, I tend to have issues.
I mostly just use my webcam's mic, despite my headphones being better so I can leave my headset on bluetooth/stereo.
For me it's Autocad. Although I heard people managed to run it to Linux and don't complain.
Ha... Ha haha haha... Ha!
Valve saw exactly this scenario, because you're right: Windows isn't good for stability any more. Windows isn't good for driver compatibility anymore. Windows isn't good for being easy to do your own thing. It's only good for gaming...
So: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steammachine
I do exactly the same as you. I wish that I didn't need windows for gaming, and things are getting better on that front, but my favorite game (AoE 2) works significantly better on windows than on wine :(
> the only remaining use case for me is a gaming PC
even this has gone away for me, exited first with Bazzite and am now on CachyOS. Still got a debloated Windows11 on a different SSD for when friends want to play games with kernel-level anticheat or other bs.
feels good to be free of Microsoft. work on a Mac, game on Linux, phones run Android.
My migration is pending more users reporting good results with nVidia GPUs.
But the decision has been made and for my own convenience I've got a new nvme for OS.
Love cachyos. Such a great OS. Wanted to love bazzite, but it's got too many opinionated takes and rpm-ostree is a PITA. pacman does have its pitfalls, but aside from upgrades, it's been appliance-level stable for a 100% gaming laptop docked to my tv
> rpm-ostree is a PITA
yup...at first i thought, "at work i have to manage rpm-ostree servers, so why not use the same tech at home?", well, because the tech is freaking buggy, annoying and deprecated already (imagemode/bootc).
Bazzite also had strange issues with the XBOX controllers i use, those issues went away with CachyOS. in the end it doesn't matter that much, on both i use(d) KDE Plasma. GF also uses the PC with her own useraccount to play her games. overall very satisfied, can't complain.
don't lynch me, decided to go for the pretty standard instead of Sway or Hyprland, as i feared that this would bring more issues with gaming. maybe that's an irrational fear, who knows.
Bazzite is built using imagemode/bootc; is it not?
I'm trying to understand the "deprecated already" in your first paragraph. (All I know about rpm-ostree is from using and adminning a distro that relies on rpm-ostree. I.e., I don't know much.)
Here is my guess as to what you mean: Bazzite could continue to use imagemode and bootc while replacing rpm-ostree with something better, and maybe you'll give Bazzite another look after that happens.
Fedora Atomic and RHEL used to ship with rpm-ostree, new versions are now using bootc. the base philosophy is still to ship the OS as an image, but bootc goes more into layering like docker-images, so that you can deploy changes a bit more easily/dynamically.
they're different technologies with bootc being the new kid. bootc means "bootable containers". rpm-ostree has not much to do with containers and is more like managing your OS with git-logic.
forget about "imagemode", that's the marketing-term RedHat uses for bootc.
i imagine bazzite will migrate to bootc sooner or later, but of course that requires a new way to build and ship it.
Bazzite is part of Universal Blue. Source: https://universal-blue.org/#images.
The first paragraph of the home page of https://universal-blue.org/ ends with "We produce a diverse set of continuously delivered operating system images using bootc."
Another author explains: "Bazzite utilizes bootc to manage the base image for your system, pin specific versions, and perform rollbacks when needed. For systems with customized software via layered packages, rpm-ostree becomes essential for installing, upgrading, and managing those additions."
"Why do this? Each tool is chosen for its strengths: bootc offers robust control over base images, ensuring that your core system remains unchanged unless you explicitly update it, while rpm-ostree provides flexibility for managing additional software without compromising the integrity of the atomic base. This separation helps maintain stability and security. Bazzite uses bootc for managing system images and rpm-ostree for adding layered packages."
Source: https://knowledgebase.frame.work/en_us/how-to-manage-bazzite...
Of course, nothing I wrote contradicts your assertion that rpm-ostree "is freaking buggy, annoying", but it does cast doubt in my mind on your belief that bootc can by itself completely replace rpm-ostree.
Thanks for your reply.
oh, oops, thanks for correcting me in that case! turns out i know even less about that stuff than i thought...
GPU drivers are legit easier on Linux than they are on windows at this point.
I get ~weekly crashes using an Nvidia card with arch/hyprland, but honestly it's less problematic for me to deal with than windows updates. I can format and rebuild my machine from scratch in less time than windows takes to download and perform an update.
Flawless experience on non-nvidia hardware though.
That's arch/hyprland though. You're even making it harder for yourself than it needs to be.
That's understating it. There's no amount of skill that will render that setup stable - it's baked into the way those projects are managed.
That's why I keep using Gentoo and X11 to handle my three GPU setup. An Intel iGPU, an AMD dGPU on the same package as the Intel CPU and a RTX 4060 Ti eGPU connected through Thunderbolt.
Only have issues with it on my machine with an Nvidia card. Understand that it can be unstable and accept that when it happens - but with AMD/integrated graphics I don't have the same problem.
Either way, only serves to further the point that Linux is in a pretty good place and the experience should only be better on more stable options.
I don't have that problem with Arch+COSMIC, which has the tiling you get with Hyprland but without the overly complex configuration. You can also switch to floating windows with one button if needed.
I haven't had any issues with NVidia's on the latest machine I built (like nothing).
It's just an optional update whenever I remember to check for one.
I mean, macOS is not a serious OS either. It has worse error management/reporting than Windows - Microsoft at least give you the courtesy of pretending they're trying to help you resolve the issue with an indecipherable hex code and badly localised error message, that you may, if you're very lucky, be able to Google.
Apple give you a middle finger with a "Something went wrong" or just spins forever. No information whatsoever on what the problem is and how you could possibly debug it. Compete lack of tooling to help with that too.
Probably my favourite example was when it was giving me an error message of "A device is using too much power, try unplugging and replugging it". Which device? Which port? What is "too much"? HA, FUCK YOU. I spent hours trying to debug this (so there is a tool that can give you power use per USB device, but it's a point in time one). In the end rewired everything because it was just impossible to discover what the hell was its problem. Another fun one was trying to extend my macOS screen to an iPad, where the button just wasn't there. Why? What was I missing? Who knows.
> Probably my favourite example was when it was giving me an error message of "A device is using too much power, try unplugging and replugging it". Which device? Which port? What is "too much"?
Another fun one: “Updates are available. Do you want to install them?” What updates? What software is getting updates? What do they fix? No information, just a notification asking you whether you want to install vague updates.
I mostly agree with you. Now with proton/steamos, the only games that need windows are multiplayer games with kernel-level anticheat mechanisms (e.g., destiny 2).
Otherwise, spot-on to my MO
How many games do you use on Windows that you can not use on Linux?
Battlefield, Call of Duty, Apex Legends, PUBG, Rainbow 6 Siege, Fortnite, Valorant, League of Legends, Teamfight Tactics, GTA5 online (and likely gta6 online).
Personally, only TFT is a blocker for me, and you can get an inferior version working on linux, but it only takes you playing one of those games for it to be a blocker.
How many of these will not run under Wine/Crossover/Hangover?
My guess is that most DRM'ed games won't work right, but they often don't work right under Windows either.
He listed those because they have kernel-level anti-cheat or DRM system that requires Windows/MacOS to run. You cannot WINE them.
> but they often don't work right under Windows either.
This is certainly untrue. Them working often is the entire reason why Windows is the "gaming OS".
Games "often not working under windows" is cope linux advocates tell themselves to convince themselves there is no reason for anyone to have windows installed. Its more the exception rather than then norm, and is usually the older games where their wine setup could be used on windows for the same effect.
For me the last one was Blade and Soul, and in the end, I dropped it rather than put up with it.
Even live-service games are less of a hassle than they used to be. BDO works well, Genshin works with occasionally having to update Proton, and the new shiny Where Winds Meet worked for me from the first day (never even tried it on Windows :P)
I think in the last 6 months, I've dual-booted for pretty much these things:
* To install a new motherboard's RGB-tweak utility because it doesn't work right in OpenRGB yet. Ran it once to pick settings, then it seemed to write to NVRAM since it's been stuck that way now.
* To use ham radio programming software that was clearly written by a single hobbyist and I didn't expect to work on anything but happy-path Windows systems.
* To try a weird specialty keyboard with a nonstandard card-reader (most of them just appear as normal HID keyboards, this one was a custom USB endpoint which apparently emulated a serial device with the right software. In the end, it didn't work well in Windows either-- the software was apparently mostly Win7-and-below.
* To deal with an old scanner that the vendor provides a Linux software package for, but only as a binary .deb that didn't seem to work well on Void. (Problem solved by picking up a used scanner explicitly supported by SANE for $10 at the Goodwill)
It's not the "can't" necessarily, it's about friction, I could get it working on linux, but then I'd probably be just fiddling with settings way longer than I do today.
Current Windows gaming experience is almost like a console, just play and forget, (if you just use your machine for that).
Another potential issue is that I have games in all the major launchers (and a GamePass subscription), and the only one that works reasonably well on Linux is Steam.
I installed Bazzite just last month, it's set-and-forget. Zero hardware / driver issues, everything autoconfigured.
Didn't even need to download steam.
Absolutely shocked me how smooth the out-of-box experience was compared to even Windows 10.
To my further surprise, I found my game library's compatibility on Bazzite was stronger than Windows 10 somehow. (Some old games like Moonbase Commander don't launch on Windows 10)
Agreed - Bazzite is the kind of set-and-forget level of quality I expect for a gaming appliance. I haven’t needed to twiddle with a single setting to get any games I’ve been playing (Stalker 2, Kingdom Come 2, Doom The Dark Ages, Arc Raiders, Helldivers, etc).
FWIW - GOG and Epic games play just fine via the Heroic app on Bazzite. I’ve only played a few games from those platforms so far - but it’s been as seamless as playing games off steam in my experience.
Set my teenage son up to dual boot his gaming rig with SteamOS this Christmas. He hasn't rebooted to Windows since...
> the only remaining use case for me is a gaming PC
Amiga users have been here before.
[dead]
Gaming will be dead soon too... Thanks to hardware shortages..
Ah I see, people don't remember the time where most games just released on console, because it was the biggest target group. This time will come back. Like it or not. People won't buy a pc for 2k.
I love OneDrive. I don't know why everyone hates it. I save things in OneDrive, and they are backed up to the cloud and synced with the other computers I use.
Some computers are shared by six family members, each with their own MS account and 1TB of storage. OneDrive makes it so the computers can have a 1TB hard drive but still give everyone ready access to their files by not storing them all on the hard drive.
If I don't want something synced to Onedrive then I usually save it in my downloads folder or another separate folder I create outside Onedrive. I've never had any problems.
The comments by people who hate make me wonder why my experience is so different than theirs.
I agree here, but...
If I don't want something synced to Onedrive then I usually save it in my downloads folder or another separate folder
My complaint is that MS has intentionally made it SO DIFFICULT to do that. There's a significant amount of extra clicking and thinking necessary to go through the steps to do it.
There is? Not at all. Whatever I save from my browser (Edge/Firefox/Chromium) is automatically saved to Downloads and Downloads is not automatically synced with OneDrive Backup. Backed up is Documents, Music, Videos, Desktop etc. but Downloads not AFAIK.
That's true. I wasn't clear - I was thinking mainly of the Office products: Word, Excel, etc. They've got a whole different Save As dialog that go out of their way to funnel you into OneDrive. So it's interrupting my flow precisely in the course of things I need to use brainpower on themselves.
Additionally if you don't save on Onedrive autosave is disabled. Autosave worked decades ago before we even had cloud storage, but apparently in 2026 we just can't have feature parity with Word 97 without cloud storage.
You can still access the traditional save dialog by pressing F12 instead of Ctrl-S
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/customize-the-sav...
Thanks!
MS actually made it harder to save stuff in OneDrive by basically hardcoding the folders it will backup unlike most other similar services that let you sync arbitrary folders on any drive.
The windows Explorer and the save dialog make it pretty easy to save a file somewhere else. Also, there is just one folder which syncs with OneDrive but some many more which don’t sync with OneDrive.
I haven't had too many issues with it that I couldn't resolve myself, but I understood what it was and what it was doing on my system. I opted in. I wonder if most of the people who don't like OneDrive didn't know it was enabled.
> OneDrive makes it so the computers can have a 1TB hard drive
No, it's a 1TB storage account accessible via the Internet, and wholly dependent on a good Internet connection, especially if you actually use most of that 1TB. Non-tech people will take misrepresentations like this at face value, which further makes tech a disempowering force.
The "Files-On-Demand" feature of OneDrive makes it possible for everyone in the family to login into any computer with OneDrive and quickly access all their files (I have 500/500 fiber). Because some/most of the files are stored on the cloud and only downloaded when they are accessed, the hard drive of the computer can be smaller (1TB) than the total sum of all the files stored by all the users (6TB). It's very nice. I can also turn off Files-on-Demand and everything will be stored locally on my computer. It sounds like many people are bothered that Files-on-Demand is enabled by default.
That's because you're using it.
The problem comes when people who don't want to use it are tricked,.manipulated, fooled and dark patterned into using it against their understanding.
The two main frustrations that I've seen encountered are:
1) Microsoft aggressively attempting to convince you to use OneDrive, no matter how many times you turn it off.
I've had a Dropbox subscription since before OneDrive became a common name, and it works for me, so I have no real use case for OneDrive. That doesn't stop Microsoft forcibly "helpfully" re-enabling the OneDrive app and embedded link in the quick access bar regularly...which leads to
2) Microsoft attempting to sync your user profile in OneDrive, and bugs that arise from how it implements that.
I've never enabled this, so I haven't dug into how it works, but the first time I ever encountered OneDrive discussion in tech or adjacent circles was people complaining about OneDrive syncing of user profile folders breaking some games.
I assume it's something like the comedy of errors that could come out of folder redirection and software not expecting multiple people touching it at once, or the comedy of conflict resolution on a filesystem layer that isn't expecting that for semantics, but I have heard more complaints about OneDrive in this context than I've heard anything else about it.
So I suspect that it works fine, if you use it as a Dropbox-alike.
Using it as a Folder Redirection/Roaming Profiles replacement, or trying to say "no" to Microsoft, is where the problems ensue.
The problem is Microsoft shoving it down our throats and making saving to local FS as cumbersome as possible.
I wouldn't have minded Onedrive, in fact I would have used it a lot more, if it just showed up as an external mounted drive in Explorer where I could just paste files and folders I want shared or backed up. But nope, Microsoft in their infinite wisdom just have to sync up my entire home directory by default and have Office/365 only save docs and sheets to cloud by default. No thank you.
Agreed, I'd even be more inclined to use the Web versions, which are inherently tethered to OneDrive in Linux if the boundaries were better respected... I want an explicit spot backed up, maybe with the option to sync other directories. I don't want to be tricked or forced into it... or see a windows update change the configuration on me.
The problem isn't using OneDrive. The problem is not using it. If you try to not use it, the dark patterns the article references appear.
My wife got into trouble whilst unknowingly using OneDrive. She had a lot of photos on her laptop and they were being uploaded to OneDrive until it hit a limit (1TB?) and then started nagging her to upgrade to more storage. I had to disable OneDrive and move the photos back to her computer to resolve it.
Wholeheartedly agreed. Also the OneDrive Backup feature is great - previously people had to rely on other services (Box, Dropbox) and remember to save stuff into those folders. Now your most important Documents folder is saved in the cloud. Great. Backup! I don't think that OneDrive pestering you about buying more storage after using up your free storage is a bad thing, somebody needs to pay for stuff.
I understand the point, that everything is a bit convoluted and badly explained and may even lead to bad stuff happening. When you disable OneDrive Backup (good feature) and OneDrive deleting all your files locally with a little shortcut to OneDrive in the Cloud with all your files? Yeah... that is bad practice, but an easy fix for MS. Besides that hickup I currently don't undestand what the fuss is about.
None of this is new. They haven’t fixed it for years. At this point it’s not an oversight or mistake, but fully intentional behavior.
I prefer the Dropbox solution, and tend to configure OneDrive, Google Drive, etc the same... I like to be explicit about it... I don't want all my general docs sync'd, for that matter, most of my projects are in a git repo anyway.
I know my Documents/Pictures directory isn't sync'd, I don't want it to be... to me my workspace is far different than what I want backed up to the cloud... I also have a local nas that is also setup for cloud sync for my service accounts. I emphatically do NOT want system default workspace directories sync'd.
How does this work with multiple PC's? Does it just merge all files into the same Documents folder? What if apps are saving app data to these folders, and you have the same app on multiple computers?
All your multiple PCs have the same Documents folder. Files created on one PC are synced to the cloud and appear in all the other PCs' Documents folders, and will be downloaded to the local storage if you try to access them. You get a small icon next to each file or folder to try and tell you if the files are local or in the cloud or whatever status. If apps are saving data to synced folders (eg. all those many many games happily polluting my Documents folder), then that same data is available to the same app on different computers. Could be good, or bad if the apps are being used on different computers at the same time with no real way of determining which PCs changes win for which particular file.
> All your multiple PCs have the same Documents folder. Files created on one PC are synced to the cloud and appear in all the other PCs' Documents folders
That sounds horrible.
> Could be good, or bad
It sounds bad either way. If the app exists on both computers there's good chance of conflicting overwrites of whatever is saved there. If the app is not used on a device then it's just a waste of downloading and syncing useless data.
They should just make the computers and have subfolders in a shared documents folder AND prompt you about so this before starting so you can turn off this or that folder before anything gets uploaded or downloaded. It's user-hostile design currently
> That sounds horrible.
This is how Roaming Windows User Profiles work at most companies. I don't understand why you think it sounds horrible.
It doesn't matter what I think, and you don't have to understand. Just don't turn it on by default, and if you do, make it safe and easy to turn it off.
Tooling and workflows that make sense on a centrally-administered domain do not belong on my home computer.
You are conveniently ignoring the crux of the matter - that onedrive was forced on people without their knowledge or consent.
I enjoy my car, but I would dislike if someone took it without my consent and signed me up for uber instead.
Considering I've had multiple family members and friends tricked into syncing to OneDrive without meaning to, I'd say that's a big reason. My Dad's old neighbor lost the ability to send and receive email after a Windows update did that to her, since it filled up her free Microsoft account and then Hotmail stopped working so she couldn't use email anymore and she had no idea why.
You clearly understand what’s happening better than most people. As someone who came back to Windows recently after 15 years away, the lengths to which the UI goes to hide the actual location of files and prevent you from directly addressing the filesystem is incredible. Thankfully I don’t have to use Windows for anything important. I would never recommend it to anyone else. (Not that the alternatives are much better.)
What’s mainly wrong with OneDrive is that it doesn’t work how most people expect, it’s on by default, and it deletes files from your local PC without asking. No matter how nice it is if you understand what’s going on, those details are enough to make it hate-worthy IMO.
OneDrive on Windows with 6 users is probably fine.
Try adding Teams, Sharepoint and 9000 more people in the mix.
Oh and MS Office that will try to force it on you.
It's about consent and respect for the user. If you build something awesome, you don't have to shove it down peoples' throats.
When more people Google "How to disable xyz" than "How to enable xyz," that would be a strong hint to most of us, but it doesn't mean anything to Microsoft's developers. ("Hey, at least they're engaging with the product," they tell each other.)
When I see comment saying that onedrive confusing, and that people are having problems with it, I always wonder if the "hacker" crowd is really the "hacker" type they want to portrait themselves, or just inexperienced computer users bitching on Microsoft for internet points.
OneDrive is an easy and well integrated cloud drive. The principle of having a cloud drive is not new anymore, and I believe people should get over the fact that, indeed, the files on the cloud drive is... In the cloud; colour me surprised!
If you're using Microsoft in 2026, that's on you. You can't be mad at the lawnmower that cut your foot off, it's just doing what it does.
You can absolutely be mad at a lawnmower that cut your foot off as there isn't any scenario where your feet should be at risk during normal operation of a regular lawnmower. Unless I intentionally try to insert my foot into the blades somehow, such dangerous faults would be entirely on the manufacturer.
Now if you proceed with he same horrible lawnmower and cut off your other foot, then that might be on you.
While the analogy is being stretched, same applies here - if Microsoft makes terrible footguns, then that's on Microsoft even if the users should have stopped using Microsoft by now.
> If you're using Microsoft in 2026, that's on you.
Not necessarily. I don't use Microsoft on my personal machines, but my employer forces me to use it at work.
It's not on me, it's on my employer, which forces me to use a laptop with MS Windows installed. Sure, I ssh into a machine running Linux where I do real work, but still.
Also - lots of people are used to it and habits die hard, regardless of technical merit etc.
Microsoft is staffed by highly educated adults. They have agency to do better and actually serve their paying customers well. They choose not to.
No, Microsoft is staffed by over-educated conformists who were specifically hired to maintain that empire.
Their problem is that they've cultivated a customer base who are ok with Windows for 30+ years.
I use OneDrive at work for all of my documents and have never encountered the horror stories I frequently read. I read these stories often enough where I believe there genuinely is a problem. But I do wonder why there is a difference for some and not others. Perhaps I've conditioned myself to live with its faults?
I will say that the Microsoft Office OneDrive save experience is completely subpar. It behaves completely separate & unlike Windows Explorer and is just unpleasant to work with.
We weren't using OneDrive at work, then we had it imposed, and everyone went through a few days period where they had to find where their documents went and/or changing the hardcoded paths in various things to match the new location.
Using OneDrive is often fine. Having it imposed on you is a breaking change.
I didn't have a problem until I migrated to another Mac. Then I started having duplicate files. I think I fixed it by logging out of everything and deleting the duplicates but it was a couple hours wasted. Didn't have this problem with Dropbox in my career.
Definitely and still a happy paying Dropbox user, even though I'm well within my free limits (after several referral storage bumps). IT pretty much just works, but the Linux experience could use some updates.
My experience is exactly the same. I use OneDrive for easy replication of lots of stuff between my own devices, and to transfer files to friends. I've never had a lost-data problem.
On the other hand, UX for doing that sharing is clunky.
And I believe it's pretty well documented that the reason for the File-Save experience being so awful is that Microsoft is actively trying to deter us from using our own local storage, and coercing us to use their (subscription) cloud products.
The problem with this thinking is that you can never be sure these problems won’t happen to you.
I’m pretty sure it had worked just fine for the users in the article too, until it didn’t.
IMO they should clearly encourage users to keep backups elsewhere in case something happens, but they’re currently doing the exact opposite: encouraging users to back up (and on Windows even store) files exclusively on OneDrive.
I found out my mom was paying for OneDrive because her Android phone autosynced a bunch of her files and she ran out of 'space'. She had no idea what it was but the OS pushed it hard.
Microsoft gets their tendrils everywhere.
Could be worse, it could be syncing to Google Photos.
Oh, you want to download all photos so that you can free the cloud space? Too bad, you can only download them one by one. Or use Google Takeout and leave half of them undownloaded.
First thing I do on any Windows machine is uninstall OneDrive anywhere possible. It's caused me enough grief that I just avoid it entirely at this point.
The article makes valid points about users misunderstanding how OneDrive works (and ascribing the misunderstanding to “dark patterns”), but I’ve been using Linux (first pop-os and now cachyos) for years, while at the same time shadowing most (not all) of my home directory to OneDrive[0] (I have an annual x365 subscription and that 2TB cloud storage is hard to ignore). I’ve had no issues whatsoever, though admittedly I’m not your average user (40 years in tech). I also make local backups of course, but tbh the utility of having my files available from anywhere is pretty useful to me. YMMV.
[0]. A huge shoutout to the folks behind the amazingly solid https://github.com/abraunegg/onedrive
I have had to turn off One Drive after a series of incidents where it deleted or rendered files unrecoverable. It's basically malware to me.
I quit using OneDrive early in the Win 8 era.
To point out how shambloic it was it was originally called SkyDrive but they were forced to rename it thanks to a trademark lawsuit. I mean, they launch a product that is so important to them that they are willing to make us all miserable shoving it down our throats and they can't be bothered to spend a few $100 or $1000 on a trademark search.
I was working with Word and found that it defaulted to OneDrive which I could have lived with if it worked. Except it didn't work and when I tried to save documents I could not save.
Needless to say that was the last time I used OneDrive. Microsoft doesn't get it
Third-party vendors like DropBox, Box and many others have made products that look like OneDrive but actually work and never make it so I can't save my work.I have OneDrive completely disabled on my personal PC. I still found I couldn't find files that I had created with Word in the filesystem. Turns out even if you don't have the OneDrive service running on your PC, Office will store files in OneDrive directly through the API -- it's not hard to turn off (thanks Copilot!) but it's one more thing to be resentful about.
When I have to use Windows for work (which I 100% would prefer over Mac when I can't have Linux Desktop), I've found OneDrive works best if you give it one file. I gzip a tar file on Windows and let OneDrive sync that. As long as it's only one file, it does a good job.
Whatever you do, don't try to sync a git repo folder with OneDrive.
Just curious why you would consider syncing a repo already under git? (assuming it's sync'd to github/azure/gitlab etc)
OneDrive is an absolute cancer. I teach Computer Science and my students are constantly accidentally checking their repos out onto onedrive which, of course, makes the performance absolutely atrocious to the point of unusability, and it often affects the weakest students who are most likely to get knocked out of CS by unrelated issues like this.
The UI in Windows is intentionally designed to confuse the issue so people unintentionally end up using One Drive, which is free until it isn't and then they can jam you with a subscription. Many of my students barely have an understanding of what a file system is and how it works now due to this horrible user-hostile UI.
MacOS is headed this direction as well. Congrats linux: you just need to continue to get worse at the relatively slow rate that you always have and you will be the best desktop/laptop OS within a few years.
> and you will be the best desktop/laptop OS within a few years.
Arguably it's already the best desktop/laptop OS. Hopefully within a few years it can be the most popular desktop OS.
Then again... maybe this year is the year of the linux desktop...
I am pretty sure we'll see Desktop Linux in the US cross the 10% mark this year... however, I don't think it will get much higher without first party sales support from OEMs. Most people don't change their OS and just use what came with it, which today is mostly Windows or MacOS.
I'd really love if some vendors would license Pop from System76 for more, broader hardware support. I think it's just about the best out of the box experience in Linux for most users.
This take is weird. Git and OneDrive in a sense both are version control systems. What do you think would happen if you created a Git repository and a SVN repository in the same folder, then proceeded to add files from .git to SVN and let SVN manipulate them? It is not OneDrive's fault that your students don't understand version control.
IMO, instruction should have had the users create a "src" directory under their profile/home directory to use for their repositories, and expressly mention the why's. That said, the fact that OneDrive slurps up Documents, etc. by default instead of an explicit directory, is part of the problem.
Even worse. It doesn't slurp up the documents folder in your home directory. If you click on documents via explorer (or a file selection dialog), or go to c:\users\myusername\documents, you will arrive at different folders.
Agreed. Using one file management version-control system within another, is a surefire recipe for trouble and disaster.
But it isn't the students' fault, I guess they are still learning how to use computers.
This is purely an IT Administration fiasco. The IT admin should simply exclude the repository folders/paths from OneDrive. Or make everyone to save non-code documents to a separate shared network path, which is a storage drive that gets automatically backed up daily.
https://www.thewindowsclub.com/how-to-remove-a-folder-from-o...
It's really sad if you think about that delivering the best desktop UX is all about just not actively sabotaging it on purpose.
Win the game by doing nothing while the competition drives themselves into the ground via enshittification.
After 40 years of computing this is the best we can do? No wonder we can't have nice things.
Maybe the Windows users should be called "victims" at this point.
enshittification of the NET and now OS continues. The problem is that students nowadays have very little opportunity to learn this. My daughter does not understand what a pendrive is and when the data is on her phone and when on the SD card (meanwhile sd card slots are being sunsetted in all the brands).
This is cartel to remove the data ownership possibility from people. Recently Polish youtuber got his video blocked because he showed how to play locally stored mp3 files (accused of breaking yt policy on allegedly showing people how to download illegal files)
If we allow companies to put an equals mark between not storing your own data in cloud and piracy, this will finish the cartel's objective very fast.
I’ve used OneDrive for like 8 years without issues. It works great for me.
Well, if "great" agrees with sharing all your data with the US government, then maybe.
This happens as part of the PRISM program, whose existence was leaked by Edward Snowden last decade:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM
as part of that program, online communications and storage of all users of large US tech companies, including Microsoft, is made accessible to the NSA.
Maintaining local, off-line backups is an endless PITA.
But consider the alternative... :(
Posting this here, hoping desperately for someone to give me an example proving I'm wrong:
It's insane to me that there isn't a simple, GUI-based app that provides this utility in a clean, straightforward way. Basically just "dropbox, but let me set the destination to another drive on my PC/network/VPN (or a 'repo', for 'advanced' users)".
Just a plain interface that shows me my files and allows me to say "I want this folder to be backed up to here, here, and here". I can do that manually for every folder I want backed up, but other users may opt to backup a whole drive or whatever, depending on need.
Seems like a slam dunk. Frustrating that I don't know enough about the footguns with backups (duplications, cpu limiting, etc) to just write the app myself, but I have been looking at what the eframe and rustic libraries can do together. Feels imminently do-able by someone who has a lot of experience with backups. But maybe it's even passable do-able by someone who just knows what he wants.
For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.
Sweet! Sounds easy. If someone could wrap that up in a GUI that works on all OSes, that seems like it would solve my problem!
yeah! like some kind of virtual box you can drop your files into...
You want Time Machine and a WD Passport.
Sometimes the best solutions are the simplest.
I appreciate the recc, but it misses the mark I think? Time machine is only on a single OS, and is designed as more of a "keep my whole system safe" backup rather than a "back these things up" backup.
I can understand why people might want to backup entire drives, or to backup OS content minimally, but my use-case is to just pick a few folders and only have those backed up. Not to an external drive, but to internal ones and network ones.
That's the tool I'm looking for. While Time Machine can exclude everything but the folders to backup, it doesn't seem to be able to back them up with different cadences or rules about content limits or whatever else. It's all or nothing. I'm just not sure it provides what I'm looking for.
Would Syncthing fulfill your requirements?
I think it might! Definitely checks enough boxes for me to try out, anyway.
The UI is a little cumbersome for me, personally, but it does seem at least straightforward enough for me to understand what the intentions are.
ETA: Welp, that didn't last long. A service running in the background that exposes an "insecure" url for a browser to then open as the only means for GUI interaction with the app is not a great recommendation for everyday users. It looks like it has all the features, but I'm looking for a user experience. CLIs provide the features. I'd like an app, not a service running a webserver. Shudder the thought of just shoving the front end in an electron app, but even that would be better than this for casual users.
You could create an app that has a tray status icon, that launches a tauri app connected to the same web service (assuming it's only listening on localhost, it's fine).
The main question is who is in control not whether it is off or online. Microsoft obviously thinks that users are not, and it is Microsoft. We should have been more careful with embracing the walled gardens.
Tbh I don't understand why 'Microsoft thinks that users are not' maybe because my kids are not logged in to onedrive yet. Do I understand correctly that MS tricks the users somehow to synchronize folders with cloud?
Kind of... you now have to sign into windows with a Microsoft Account, that has a starting (free) tier OneDrive, that will "easily" enable and start operations against directories you may not recognize are syncing, and even if disabled may change with automatic forced updates... it will then start nagging you to create a paid account for more storage, etc... otherwise tie you into Office products, where it starts saving to OneDrive by default, which you may not recognize and that doesn't even get into a lot of the dark patterns and manipulation.
FTR, I've used it and usually configure to explicitly only sync a single directory.
For "off-line backups", I'm thinking air gapped. Or on a backup server running no MS software, and using a filesystem with frequent & reliable snapshots.
In a healthy market with viable competition this would either not happen or be swiftly corrected by a massive drop in market share.
So what’s gone wrong?
People are locked in. It's not easy to switch to another product. Even if someone is willing the pay the price for another system and pay to have the data moved and apps repurchased, they now have to learn a new OS.
But that’s the thing, why is it this way? Driving a Hyundai or a Toyota you wouldn’t notice the difference, but learning a new OS is so hard that people don’t do it.
I wish the ergonomics would be more standard so switching costs aren’t so high.
Because it benefits the tech companies to make their user interface different enough to make it difficult to relearn another one. There are no official standards like there are for the vehicle user interface.
Vehicles don’t have an official standard, just a de facto one.
If someone invented a superior way to control a vehicle everyone else would adopt it. But things have settled I guess.
I guess the set of inputs to a car is smaller than a computer..
Every time I need to add my file and send it out I manually download it first.
The shenanigans that happen when you 'link' to files, or not, from Teams to Outlook to Sharepoint is beyond me.
They also constantly sneak it into Word. If you don't pay close attention they suddenly save your local file to some Cloud Desktop folder.
Saw someone calling Microsoft "Microslop". Seems appropriate given their enthusiasm for AI, lack of software quality, and lack of regard for user experience.
Used to call that Windblows and Microsucks in my early 20s, I am not sure it was edgy back then and I am sure it isn't now. The UI/UX changes from ME > XP > Win8. At least you could keep the _classic_ look until Win10, I am not certain is the case with Win11 and what every Windows Copilot is coming next.
[dupe]
OneDrive just deleted all of my files
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46493506
I use iCloud, Dropbox and OneDrive for family, professional use and junk files respectively.
Works out really well. They all work perfectly for their intended uses.
> uses
Are you implying each one's intended uses are different? What are the differences?
iCloud is trivial to set up for a family account. We're all on macs.
My company uses Dropbox which is windows and mac.
For some reason Microsoft gave me 40Gb of free storage on skydrive in their early days, and it was always a little off to use, mostly due to search. So it ended up being used to store misc files like software installers which I can always find elsewhere if OneDrive misbehaves.
MS has been doing shit like this for decades. Every couple months I log into my dusty Windows account and lo and behold there's a bunch of weird shit like Candy Crush or Copilot or whatever that's just decided to reinstall itself for the nth time.
I just noticed yesterday that Copilot or OneDrive is pressuring me to set it up and my options are: Yes, Remind me in 1 week, or Remind me in 1 month. Like, what the fuck is that?
It is a testament to the power of tech policy momentum that a company can crank out absolute shit for decades and the corporate world just keeps on using their software because "that's what we've always used".
As far as I'm concerned, I'm fine with these tech CTOs replacing their software engineering workforce with LLMs because the bar is already on the fucking floor when it comes to use experience.
I've noticed that about Windows, that it has some sort of attachment disorder: the longer you're away from it, the more it freaks out and throws a tantrum about something the next time you boot it up. If it's been 3 or more months, you can absolutely forget about your settings staying as they were.
> As far as I'm concerned, I'm fine with these tech CTOs replacing their software engineering workforce with LLMs because the bar is already on the fucking floor when it comes to use experience.
The engineers can’t be completely to blame here, Microsoft is too consistently bad for that. It is a high-level strategy issue. Replace the Product Managers with LLMs maybe… a bunch of random matvecs couldn’t possibly be wrong so consistently, right?
The engineers must share partial blame. They’re developing the actual software after all!
What I hate about it is that it's turned on automatically.
It's basically just holding your computer for ransom because guess what the 20 gigabyte they give you for free doesn't cut it lmao. Don't call it a backup my SSD is 2 terrabyte and I ain't paying you anything.
Yeah I was in the minority that actually defended OneDrive but I'm facing my own issues with it recently. I'm aware of the windows default client behavior but on systems I have the storage on, I modify it to pull down everything. Bad UX on Microsoft's part but it's not related to what appears to be bigger issues under the hood.
Back in October I had issues with the Linux dlang Onedrive client deleting all the files shared with me. Unlike Microsoft, the developer actually acknowledged there could be a problem and we figured out the cause was new unintended behavior caused by an old config option, really long issue thread for it here: https://github.com/abraunegg/onedrive/issues/3475 (TL:DR it was a very niche situation unlikely to have affected anyone else, I have more concise thoughts on it in the Gentoo bug: https://bugs.gentoo.org/964370 )
So that was really bad, but we were able to restore all the deleted files from her OneDrive web using its recycle bin. That leaves me with the issue I'm facing now. Some of the files which I created and put in the share she shares with me have my ownership but OneDrive doesn't recognize I created it and she can't change the permissions to share back to me. So now I have to figure out how many files are affected here and I guess copy them on her side so the new files get her ownership and share back properly to me.
I do want to say as well, those files just don't show up at all on my side in OneDrive but they DO show up in my Office apps recent list. It just refuses to let me open them. She sees them though with my ownership and both the web and windows onedrive clients throw errors if she tries to change the permissions. Absolutely maddening.
Whelp browsing this on my phone was one way to remind me to put my VPN back on holy crap. In the middle of the article is an embedded TikTok video about the subject of the article while three different ads were overlapping my screen. Unbelievable.
Privacy Badger for Firefox blocks the TikTok. I assume there is a PB for Chrome?
>remind me to put my VPN back on
don't you mean adblock?
Any VPN worth its price has built in malware/ad blocking
VPN can do that too!
Boingboing used to be brilliant, I got into Doctorow through it. Absolute trash now, so sad.
Duck browser ftw
...and even if they suck it into onedrive, good luck finding it! Is it in my work onedrive, personal onedrive, a "teams" folder, or did they relabel it to a sharepoint folder? No idea! Everything is now saved on my downloads folder because my file system is so whacked with all these other virtual folder overlays....
Man, I wanted to like Teams folder mounts.. what a mess.
Aside: WTF isn't the Teams wiki using markdown files you can edit and sync locally? I mean if this has changed since I last tried, cool... but that's the single biggest thing I wanted from this. Now, I just put a _docs directory into my projects and have markdown files in there sync'd to the git repo... I've given up on files in teams for the most part.
Also with teams, splitting up chats and meating chats is a pain... the "activity" indicator doesn't tell you WTF subtab for chat something is in now. I used to at least halfway like teams if you avoided (over)using features, now it's just a craptastic mess.
It's interesting because on one hand there are posts like this were most people agree, and then there are posts about LLMs how they can one-shot a Windows application.
I think they're related. Software Engineering is about enumerating these edge cases and dealing with them. That requires skill.
Vibe-coding, or even prompting for larger chunks of code doesn't force you to enumerate these edge-cases.
And I firmly believe that reviewing the code for those edge-cases is harder than writing it yourself, as by nature you have to work backwards. You've arrived at a place, and you need to find out which routes were taken, and whether those routes are correct. Guardrails, snow-chain warnings, slope % warnings etc.
When you've arrived at the place it's easy to say: eh, whatever. We got here. Ship it. Especially with the push from above these days to go faster.
I support an environment with well over 20k devices across windows, android and ios that use one drive.
no major issues here. sure its got the occasional bug, and is missing some features i think it should have... but all in all its very usable.
I absolutely can't deal with sync conflicts, they are confusing and infuriating. So I don't use any form of automatic cloud sync, anywhere. Once you accidentally overwrite a file with an older version open on another system, its hard to go back to that nonsense
F* OneDrive
Happened to me 2 nights ago with a document my wife was editing on my laptop. I booted up Windows, which forced me to start some process while I was half paying attention. Windows booted normally but my Desktop was missing that critical file.
It was in my history? Check
Recent documents? Check
Visible in the file explorer? Check
Desktop? No dice
Try to open from the file dialog... error. The message? Can't get it from some URL.
My wife wakes up and starts crying. She's spent hours. What the fuck? I understand computers, and files don't just disappear.
"Were you editing it with Tritium?" (blames my product!)
Wait, a URL? I bet it's some OneDrive dark pattern.
Fix it by de-selecting "backup" multiple times and then clicking "submit". Files magically re-appear after I make sure to tell Microsoft to "keep my local copy".
This story is very unclear on what exactly happened and what caused files to be "deleted". I bet on user error.
Read the article.
What happened is exactly what it suggests. OneDrive migration doesn't just copy your files to a server. While the migration is occurring, the operating system is optimistically re-mapping them all to a cloud URL and/or deleting them entirely.
Halting the migration and disabling "backup" returned the mapping back to the local disk, and I was able to open the file as normal.
I know, it's as crazy as it sounds and your bet was my bet at first as well.
This being Microsoft, the null hypothesis is "user error induced by intentionally evil UX".
For decades, the unofficial Microshit motto has been: Intel inside, Idiot outside.
Because Microsoft treated users as if they were idiots.
So basically tons of Windows related websites teach this infallible little trick as solution when a user gets a Windows BSOD (Blue Screen of Death): Reboot!
Invariably, the reboot causes the Windows OS to start working again, till the recurrence of whatever circumstances (typically, hardware and/or software conflicts) caused the BSOD in the first place. It is left to the user to figure out what went wrong and how to prevent the issue from recurring again, as the BSOD messages are typically cryptic for the average user to decipher (maybe not so difficult in the modern era of AI assistants invocable from a handheld smartphone).
In fact, I would say the whole IT industry grew tremendously over the last few decades, because Microsoft's products were powerful, user friendly (to an extent, and until they worked), but quite complex to maintain (the dreaded Windows updates nightmares) and troubleshoot in case of issues. That's because every company using M$ products needed dedicated IT Support teams solely for such maintenance, help and fixes for M$ products. Even other vendors like Oracle grew as competition to Microsoft's corporate dominance.
The wonderful (and sometimes terrifying) world of antimalware software may not even have existed were it not for Microsoft products.
Indeed. Up until the user-hostile turn of Windows 10 and 11.
maybe I’m just getting old, but I’m really tired of these [super popular product tons of people use but EVERYONE hates it] posts and comments. just quickly checking the Apple App Store, the Onedrive app has 4.7 stars
does everyone hate it?
Better question: who the hell is giving these apps (or really any apps) five stars?
I don’t rate the apps I use unless other than to give it 1 star for doing something I hate. My banking app’s transaction search doesn’t work at all, so it gets 1 star. But 1.9M ratings resulted in a 5 star average — who are the freaks giving their banking app 5 stars and why?
looks like about 400,000 people for Onedrive rating 5 stars
looks like millions for my banking app (Chase) rating 5 stars
do you really not understand why people might do things different from you?
After seeing almost everything on Amazon rated about 4.4 out of 5, seeing OneDrive rated a 5 looks like rating manipulation.
sure, it’s all fake data, nothing’s real, everyone hates these very well-used and well-rated products. ya got me
hundreds of thousands and millions of fake reviews. it’s all manipulation!
The kind of people willing to leave stars on an app store are already a biased sample.
Yeah, for lower ratings. People leave reviews because they’re pissed, not mildly happy.
On iOS at least, an app can quickly ask for a star rating via a modal dialog. No review necessary.
Thanks to dark patterns, users sometimes think it's asking them to rate their previous experience, or the podcast they're listening to, but those wind up tallied as app star ratings.
How does this translate to apps with low ratings, or something in the middle?
Mcafee for iPhone has 5 stars. iBeer has 5 stars. Every app in a search of “DMV” has five stars. Every “gpt” ai clone app has 5 stars.
No doubt there's a lot of review spam as well. Apple has also gotten lazy with cracking down on review dark patterns. I noticed apps are getting away with the "pop up review dialog -> positive: go to OS level review window -> negative: go to in-app feedback form" pattern.
onedrive app doesn't come preinstalled on your phone, or aggressively try to trick you into using it.
[dead]
[flagged]
Please don't fulminate or post ragey flamebait on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're aiming for better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Yeah, I agree. Google Photos is super confusing.
Why would anybody ever want their pictures to disappear from their phone if they delete them on the web? It doesn't make any sense.
> It doesn't make any sense.
It makes perfect sense to me. I rely on that feature. My monitor is big and it's much easier to use the big screen to sort vacation photos and delete the 90% which are garbage and not worth preserving. When I delete the garbage ones, of course I want to delete them everywhere. (And if I accidentally deleted the wrong photo, I can undelete within 30 days.)
What doesn't make sense is that it is not explicit, and it is not easily and clearly configurable!
And if you don’t pay the subscription they hold your gmail hostage.
I put the effort in to move off gmail, was worth it. Now gmail is just my spam inbox
Google's Photos application is intentionally designed in such a way to hold people's files hostage. It will ask to back your stuff up on startup without the user being able to permanently disable it, with only the classic "Not now, I'm sorry my digital overlords, ask me about it next week" option being available. What will happen is that people that don't know better accept it to get it out of their way, have all their personal pictures uploaded to Google's servers where they are abused in all sort of ways (including getting a father reported to police for CSAM and permanently blocking his account for taking a picture of his son to send a doctor), and because the free plan has a limited space available but won't be respected during upload, they'll start panic-bombing the user with "All your pictures are going to be deleted if you don't pay up or clean". This is all intentional, of course: Google and its developers know the vast majority of its Android users don't know or care about all of this and will exploit that. The Gallery app doesn't have the same Google Drive constant reminder and is what I usually install when I see the above repeatedly happen on other people's devices, which is well over a dozen times now, but Photos cannot be removed, of course.
I actually switched from using Google Photos to OneDrive because the latter keeps photos as files on my system and I can view them normally in explorer rather than forcing a bespoke cloud service.
One user's stupidity becomes Internet bait for something that's saved so, so much time.
I remember playing the backup & restore game when rebuilding my PC, which I just happened to do last night as I received a new SSD. I didn't have to worry about documents and thanks to a separate volume, redownloading my Steam library, either. That was a massive time save. And it didn't have to be OneDrive, it could have been any cloud sync service -- but OneDrive works just fine.
The user just fucked up and had a conniption fit on Tiktok.
Keeping things in onedrive is fine if you want. What was not fine was moving files there without user informed consent.
There are plenty of prompts, nay, ads, about OneDrive before this ever happens. OneDrive also has a long file history.
The user fucked up. Sadly HN even gobbles this shit up with no thought.
OneDrive doesn't always work fine, though. I avoid it like the plague because a OneDrive screwup caused me loss of valuable data.
Was it user error? Maybe, maybe not, but that's irrelevant. If it's so easy to make an unrecoverable and catastrophic mistake, it's a tool that's too dangerous to use on the daily.
How do you lose data on OneDrive? It has a 30 day (if not longer) file history.
All I know is that a bunch of files reverted to very old versions and I found no way to recover from that. It was pure loss. How did it happen? I have no idea. But how doesn't matter at all to me. What matters to me is that OneDrive proved itself untrustworthy.
> If it's so easy to make an unrecoverable and catastrophic mistake, it's a tool that's too dangerous to use on the daily.
Shift+Del and rm -rf don't have any guardrails around them. In tech you are surrounded by footguns and bear traps. MS made it that much worse by wrapping these in dark patterns that may change without notice but the logic that "dangerous things should be prohibited" is a perfectly good way to end up living in an environment where someone else curates what you can and cannot do. For your protection of course.
A tool isn't dangerous because you can make an unrecoverable and catastrophic mistake (you can make one with a kitchen knife and we still use them every day). It's truly dangerous if it can and does act against your wishes, interests, and reasonable expectations like OneDrive did.
The article is accompanied by a TikTok video I can't scrub through so I can't tell why it's not possible to go to OneDrive's recycle bin and recover the lost data.
Here it is really not a "footgun" that can shoot you accidentally, it is really volontary awful dark patterns.
You say delete my "onedrive" storage content, why on earth someone sane should expect that Microsoft will also delete the data one your computer, that you never asked to be sent to OneDrive in the first place.
The comment I replied to suggested a generalization that "a too that allows you to make grave mistakes is too dangerous to use. We're surrounded by tools in real life and computers which allow you to make major mistakes (ever run a copy/sync tool like robocopy and others with source monitoring, and someone was deleting from the source after seeing the copy at the destination?). So I don't agree with their generalization. Tools aren't dangerous because of what they can do or because they allow you to make mistakes.
But this wasn't a mistake, or at least not an unprovoked one. The user did nothing wrong. They operated under reasonable assumptions established by decades of computer tools. This was a user who didn't get cut by the knife's blade but by its handle. The tool was configured to operate against the user's interests, wishes, and reasonable expectations. This isn't "a dangerous tool" this is a developer who weaponized a tool. The danger is the practice of misleading the user. MS took a pipe and made it a pipe bomb, the solution isn't to declare pipes to dangerous to use.
> why on earth someone sane should expect that Microsoft will also delete the data one your computer, that you never asked to be sent to OneDrive in the first place
From a reasonable user perspective of course it makes no sense. If you investigate from a technical perspective, knowing how the tool works, it "works as intended". OD Backup is not backup, it's storage. That's the first trick MS pulls. OD didn't back up your data, it moved it to the cloud and didn't tell you. This is the second trick MS pulls. Disabling the "backup" means disabling the storage of your single copy of the data. This isn't a trick, it's just the level of competence at MS.
> OD didn't back up your data, it moved it to the cloud and didn't tell you.
Now I think that I understand your mistake. You think that onedrive moves the data to the cloud, and so obviously losing the cloud version makes you lose the file.
But it is not what is happening from my understanding, and here is the very dark pattern:
- The file is and stays in your computer. (Actually OneDrive doesn't know how to store more than what you have in local copy... totally miserable).
- So it is just a "copy" that is sent to the cloud.
- When you delete your files in their cloud (in the sense of getting ride of your storage there, and not only files), only then "OneDrive" actively goes to delete your files in your local disk!
I agree, OneDrive is very similar to `rm -rf`. But I think that is a bad thing for a file sync service to be.
It's worse, because it runs without the users explicit knowledge or consent, and it lacks the implicit guardrails `rm -rf` has (in that most people who use Linux and the terminal are at least literate).
> MS made it that much worse by wrapping these in dark patterns that may change without notice
> It's truly dangerous if it can and does act against your wishes, interests, and reasonable expectations.
Do you really not consider the first to be an example of the second?
> Shift+Del and rm -rf don't have any guardrails around them.
Shift+Del asks for confirmation. I would expect OneDrive to do at least that much before deleting files off the local machine, even if they're recoverable.
> Do you really not consider the first to be an example of the second?
I think too many people got the impression that I'm defending OD and can't get out of that trench. My point is that a generic tool being able to do dangerous things isn't a high enough bar to say don't use it (often). A tool being able to do dangerous things in the manner I described above is a completely different devil. The "how" you end up doing a dangerous thing is what should be punished.
I want to be able to do whatever I want with my computer and my data and not have someone define what's "too dangerous" for me to use. But what happened here wasn't what the users wanted, or could reasonably expect to happen. That's the key.
> Shift+Del asks for confirmation
I'm sure OD also asked for some confirmation. By that time it's too late, you're confirming what you think will happen, not what will actually happen. When you confirm shift+del you know what you are confirming. When you confirm OD's dialog you're confirming under misleading assumptions.
> "dangerous things should be prohibited"
I never asserted that. I asserted that if a tool is that dangerous, it shouldn't be used on a daily basis. I stand by that. Use it if it solves a problem for you, but intentionally every time, not as a matter of habit or in the background with automation.
> It's truly dangerous if it can and does act against your wishes, interests, and reasonable expectations.
OneDrive meets those criteria.
> I asserted that if a tool is that dangerous, it shouldn't be used on a daily basis
Agree to disagree. I will repeat, we are surrounded by dangerous tools that we use on a daily basis. Clearly the "danger" part is not the criteria that defines if or how often you should use the tool.
> OneDrive meets those criteria.
Correct. But those are my criteria, and I believe they are the ones that carry my argument. Your criteria was "is dangerous" which is not enough to carry the weight of your conclusion.
> But those are my criteria
Correct, I'm just saying that I think your criteria supports my opinion. As you say, we disagree about this. Fair enough. I'm not telling anyone not to use OneDrive. We all make that sort of decision for ourselves.
All I'm saying is that OneDrive hosed me in a terrible way, so I'm no longer willing to risk using it. Particularly since it doesn't really address any need I have and if I did have such a need, there are better tools (for me) available.
The other dangerous tools you've mentioned haven't ever burned me.
I want to make this very clear, my point is about how we define a “dangerous” tool. It’s not what it can do, it’s how it does it. The real danger is in an untrustworthy tool, in fooling users like OD did.
Shift+Del and rm -rm are pretty hard to use by accident. Onedrive comes with the computer preconfigured to do some pretty unintuitive things.
For example, if a user does not actively change the save location, at least for office apps, the default behavior is to save to onedrive.
Shift and -f are the guardrails.
Use `rm -r` and just press Delete if you want to have protection.
Options are not a guardrail. Documented options that operate intuitively and consistently are the guardrail.
This is where OD failed by MS's design, it didn't operate intuitively and consistently with almost any other computer tool, and didn't document the behavior properly in a way that the user can take advantage of the knowledge.
rm -rf doesn't get this:
https://i.imgur.com/LZGEpGt.png
"Content not viewable in your region" (Imgur isn't available in UK)
Strangely poetic!
I really want to make my own translation pack that turns all "Not Now" buttons into "Fuck Off"
Just subscribe to this expensive service!
How about no. I dropped some important documents on a few flash drives that I have lying around.