I was playing around with my nVidia settings in Linux, and I wanted to check something over on the Windows side, so I booted my G3 into its vestigial Windows 10 installation. I’d never bothered to install the nVidia drivers… I just used the Intel integrated graphics, as it’s more than sufficient for the few minutes of poking around I typically do in Windows before starting to feel queasy and quickly going back to where I belong. In this case, though, I wanted to check out something in the nVidia settings program.
I grabbed the drivers from the nVidia site (what a pain compared to just opening the driver manager and clicking the radio button for the newest driver), and after it was installed, I performed the customary reboot and looked for the nVidia settings program. It was not there… the icon in the system tray had no actual function but to sit there and be green. The only option available was to exit!
After a bit, something told me that the nVidia settings program was missing, but it was available from the Microsoft Store. Well, that’s a no-go; I don’t have a Microsoft Store on this PC, and even if I did, there’s no way I’d ever use it for anything, ever. That goes double if it would require getting a MS account and signing in, which I am sure it does.
I searched about the issue, and I discovered that MS has demanded that the nVidia settings program be distributed exclusively through the MS store, and nVidia apparently can’t or won’t tell them what they should be told about that.
So, if I was to lower myself to use Windows 10, I would not be able to access the settings program for my video card unless I was willing to kiss Microsoft’s ring to get it.
Windows just keeps getting worse and worse. I thought it was bad when Windows 10 landed in 2015… enough so that I began my migration to Linux that same year, effectively ending my 25 year run of running Microsoft Windows (on top of MS-DOS in the first five) as my sole OS. Even though the MS cheerleaders keep talking about how improved Windows 10 is, it’s farther from what I am willing to accept now than it was nearly five years ago. The trivial improvements that give consumers slightly more control over updates (but still far less than what they had with any previous Windows version) don’t outweigh the things like this. I haven’t thought about going back, but if I was, I’d have scuttled that plan as soon as I saw how bad Windows truly is at this point.
None of this is a surprise. I’ve been saying for some time that this is all going to get worse, not better, as the market share of Windows 10 continues to surpass the actually usable versions of Windows. All of this pain and suffering MS has inflicted since 2015 has been them being nice to try to get people to let themselves be corralled into Windows 10. After Windows 7’s numbers become a triviality, it’s “no more Mr. Nice Guy.” If what we’ve seen is them being nice, I don’t want to see what “no more Mr. Nice Guy” looks like.
This is the kinder, gentler Microsoft now. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)
