Honestly, I've always just wondered where all the hate comes from for Windows. I haven't actually had an unstable version of windows since probably Vista left the market. I don't get those blue screens of death. Don't have error messages popping up everytime I turn around. I simply sit down and it's working. (As I use my PCs for web serving purposes too a lot of times, I'm not in the habit of every turning them off. Mine tend to be on 24/7/365 usually.)
Are there things that annoy me with Windows out of the box? Sure there are! I, for one, personally *hate* the bleeping search indexing options. I'm a writer and as such, my drives are full of various documents and text files. I'm also a book collector, and my drives are full of about 6 to 8 TB (yes, TB, not GB) of ebooks in various formats. And yet, Windows wants to scan all those, build a dictionary from them, and then point an index to any word that appears in those books so that when I search for "dragon", it can tell me how many documents have "dragon" in them.
(Hint: I'm an avid reader of fantasy and a game master/player of Dungeons and Dragons, so you can just imagine how many that is!!)
So Windows starts up... indexing.... indexing...indexing...indexing...indexing... endlessly indexing.... with at least 1 whole core running at 99.9875% power, heating the PC/laptop and making the internal fans sound like an airplane engine....
/UGGHHH!!
But, I can disable that from the services menu, set it to never run again, and generally not be bothered by it.
Folks come in here all the time and post things like, "My PC keeps flagging this as a virus!" Can't say I've ever had Window's Defender flag anything. As far as I know, I don't have a single file or folder blocked from virus checking, and yet I never have a problem with things compiling and running.
Never any firewall issues. Even if I write a program that needs internet connectivity, it just pops up a permission box on start-up and then I'm good to go forever more.
My videos play. Same with sound. They stream to my TV, my iPad, and share across various other devices and PCs easily.
QB64 itself works with zero issues with Windows. In fact, it works BETTER with Windows, as there's a whole list of keywords and such that aren't supported elsewhere, but as far as my memory recalls, I don't think there's a single keyword that works elsewhere that doesn't also work on Windows.
Windows APIs are nice. They're all well documented and easy to interface with and work with. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say such a thing about Linux. (X11 anyone?
)
And, at the end of the day, Windows is still Windows. An EXE I compile on a Win 7 machine is going to work on a Win 8 machine, on a Win 10 machine, on a Win 11 machine, and -- I'm guessing here, but I honestly think so -- on a Win 12 machine. Can the same be said for Linux? If you compile an executable today, and upgrade your kernal/OS tomorrow, will it still run or will you have to recompile that program once again?
And my biggest problem is that *There is truly NO such thing as Linux!* It's a blanket term, like car. You truly don't buy a car. You buy a Ford, or Chevy, or Suburu, or Hyundai, or whatever flavor you buy. Parts from one won't work on parts from another. You can't compile on Mint and expect it to work on RedHat, though both are "Linux systems". Heck, you can't even guarantee that a program you compiled on Mint will work on another PC running Mint. You might have Mint-Gnome-KDE, while the other PC has Mint-ChickenLittle-McD...
And folks talk about windows being a paid service, but I just don't see that either. The only thing I pay MS for is a yearly subscription to MS Office -- $69 a year, and that gives me all the office applicates up to date an in their latest versions.
We have folks who are willingly paying $10 a month to our Patreon -- $120 a year -- just for QB64PE! MS Office does a lot more than what we do -- (At least, for me, it does. I'd be utterly lost without Word, Excel, and Access.) -- and it's half the price that some folks are paying to help keep us up and going.
TLDR: There may be folks who will up the ghost and finally abandon Windows, but I personally can't see Steve ever doing so. I imagine 50 years from now, when I'm an old and decrepit man of 100, I'll still be running their stuff and wondering just what the heck it is about them that folks always act like they're the devil.
Are there things that annoy me with Windows out of the box? Sure there are! I, for one, personally *hate* the bleeping search indexing options. I'm a writer and as such, my drives are full of various documents and text files. I'm also a book collector, and my drives are full of about 6 to 8 TB (yes, TB, not GB) of ebooks in various formats. And yet, Windows wants to scan all those, build a dictionary from them, and then point an index to any word that appears in those books so that when I search for "dragon", it can tell me how many documents have "dragon" in them.
(Hint: I'm an avid reader of fantasy and a game master/player of Dungeons and Dragons, so you can just imagine how many that is!!)
So Windows starts up... indexing.... indexing...indexing...indexing...indexing... endlessly indexing.... with at least 1 whole core running at 99.9875% power, heating the PC/laptop and making the internal fans sound like an airplane engine....
/UGGHHH!!
But, I can disable that from the services menu, set it to never run again, and generally not be bothered by it.
Folks come in here all the time and post things like, "My PC keeps flagging this as a virus!" Can't say I've ever had Window's Defender flag anything. As far as I know, I don't have a single file or folder blocked from virus checking, and yet I never have a problem with things compiling and running.
Never any firewall issues. Even if I write a program that needs internet connectivity, it just pops up a permission box on start-up and then I'm good to go forever more.
My videos play. Same with sound. They stream to my TV, my iPad, and share across various other devices and PCs easily.
QB64 itself works with zero issues with Windows. In fact, it works BETTER with Windows, as there's a whole list of keywords and such that aren't supported elsewhere, but as far as my memory recalls, I don't think there's a single keyword that works elsewhere that doesn't also work on Windows.
Windows APIs are nice. They're all well documented and easy to interface with and work with. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say such a thing about Linux. (X11 anyone?
)And, at the end of the day, Windows is still Windows. An EXE I compile on a Win 7 machine is going to work on a Win 8 machine, on a Win 10 machine, on a Win 11 machine, and -- I'm guessing here, but I honestly think so -- on a Win 12 machine. Can the same be said for Linux? If you compile an executable today, and upgrade your kernal/OS tomorrow, will it still run or will you have to recompile that program once again?
And my biggest problem is that *There is truly NO such thing as Linux!* It's a blanket term, like car. You truly don't buy a car. You buy a Ford, or Chevy, or Suburu, or Hyundai, or whatever flavor you buy. Parts from one won't work on parts from another. You can't compile on Mint and expect it to work on RedHat, though both are "Linux systems". Heck, you can't even guarantee that a program you compiled on Mint will work on another PC running Mint. You might have Mint-Gnome-KDE, while the other PC has Mint-ChickenLittle-McD...
And folks talk about windows being a paid service, but I just don't see that either. The only thing I pay MS for is a yearly subscription to MS Office -- $69 a year, and that gives me all the office applicates up to date an in their latest versions.
We have folks who are willingly paying $10 a month to our Patreon -- $120 a year -- just for QB64PE! MS Office does a lot more than what we do -- (At least, for me, it does. I'd be utterly lost without Word, Excel, and Access.) -- and it's half the price that some folks are paying to help keep us up and going.
TLDR: There may be folks who will up the ghost and finally abandon Windows, but I personally can't see Steve ever doing so. I imagine 50 years from now, when I'm an old and decrepit man of 100, I'll still be running their stuff and wondering just what the heck it is about them that folks always act like they're the devil.