I prefer Windows 10 and Linux. Seriously!
I know it’s insecure, but I’m a Windows 10 holdout on my desktop. I allowed 11 on my shitty travel laptop and performance went way down. I’ll probably wipe it and dance with Linux again.
Linux master race!
What you already paid money for your OS? Fuck that. Help us sell your data for basic functionality too.
The Microsoft Store is impressively bad. So many random errors that don’t give any helpful information that are impossible to fix.
Installed Vivaldi and Brave from the MS Store on work laptop from the official pages. Got a Trojan in each that IT had to remove. Yeah no
Couldn’t install iTunes because my clock was wrong. That certainly wasn’t the ERROR I was presented with, but was ultimately the root cause.
That, coincidentally, was the very same evening that I decided to and did uninstall windows on that machine.
It’s probably because TLS uses your system clock to validate certificates. If your clock doesn’t match the server you’re connecting to, TLS fails and you get an “https failed/connection is insecure” error. And Windows likely uses https in the store to ensure MITM attacks can’t replace valid downloads with malicious ones.
I understand the mechanism, and why it is important.
I don’t understand why the error message from the store was nothing more than an error code, and why the MSKB for that code had absolutely no mention of a failed ssl negotiation as a possible cause.
Time->TLS errors aren’t handled well anywhere.
As critical as they are to 2fa and TLS, you’d think every OS out there would poke around a few time servers and scream bloody murder if the time was off.
Honestly, I think we, as a society, have leaned a little too hard into time as a precise critical failure point. It’s fine for things like GPS that actually require it. but our clocks don’t need to be precisely the same to tell how recent a request and response are and we can certainly make better hashing algos
wget will give you a sniff of what the problem is. Microsoft Store will not.
I don’t NEED an application to necessarily pinpoint the error. Just even a rough direction. Any browser will explicitly tell you if there is a cert issue. That’s more than enough to go on.
I have no idea who thought it would be a good idea to give an error code to a user in Hexadecimal form, with no other information.
An error occurred: 0x 80070003
is hardly helpful at all.
Oddly enough, giving the general public exact error messages ends up costing you in support and reputation.
They obscure the messages because the inexperienced masses start digging up red herrings. Knowledge to someone with zero experience causes a lot of confusion.
The experienced and capable users look up the codes and think about it for a minute, check their vpn, maybe a health dashboard, maybe reboot.
Just about every complex machine out there give error codes instad of real messages, even when they have large displays capable of telling you exactly what the condition is.
Probably using some AI to do fuzzy authentication or something. I had a window pop up like this on my work laptop for some random app it was checking for updates on but failed to authenticate for (just for that app, no other errors, hasn’t popped up again since).
still im not typing in a short novel into a terminal just to change my screen brightness brogur and fries
Ermmm that’s really not needed, there are distros that barely require you to ever open the terminal
I recently tried to install librewolf onto a W11 machine from the windows store. It won’t even launch that. Not even an error or nothing just gone.
if it helps, I installed it today using winget which I liked.
Install using winget:
winget install LibreWolf.LibreWolf --source wingetdon’t use the windows store, when not required you can never know what else they package into your apps. google and amazon’s android app stores do this, the latter is even open about adding tracking libs to apps
Well that’s the thing, it’s a pc I’m required to use and it got everything else behind administrators password if you catch my drift. (If I had my way it would be Linux)
For now I’ll have to make due with a ff that I tweak by hand where I can.
Don’t be too mean, but make sure your admin feels the heat.
Linux is good enough for the desktop for a fuckton of businesses. gentle pressure may get us there in a generatiohn or two
Moments like this are why people get frustrated—tools should get out of the way, not add extra hoops. Everyone’s setup works… until it suddenly doesn’t.
Cancel Microsoft 🤷♀️
i was about to suggest using
wingetto reinstall it but then i realized that would require a functional terminal to accomplish, something i had taken for grantedSurely the underlying cmd cli is still there even if the Terminal app wrapper is broken
It is, as is the native powershell terminal, thankfully.
I was gonna suggest “just launch
cmddirectly”, but then remembered that this usualy just launches Terminal if it’s installed.That’s when you open PowerShell ISE.
windows terminal preview is standalone on their github. when i had windows thats how i installed it
yeah, back when I was maining windows, I went through a lot of trouble to install non-store versions.
Of course, some places lock down their employees too much for them to do that
We can’t even use Windows store. We have a bespoke portal that has a very small list of approved programs to install.
Yup, I know just where that happens. It’s probably a joy to work in your IT. They probably have a keyboard macro for “no”
Always remember: Your OS should do nothing more than provide a GUI for you to access apps and run apps. Anything else is not necessary.
Your OS provides a GUI? fancy
Because people actually have a life.
The lines you draw are so arbitrary but at least you’re prepared to die on those hills.
Prey tell, what is this OS of yours that is not coercive and doesn’t contain bloat, yet has a full GUI as part of the operating system?
“Prey tell” lock in, man.
But also, Linux.
Okay be real, you want to do all your networking config and drive pools and high availability all through the CLI?? There’s still a reason I use the CLI in the GUI but thats just nuts
Girls, calm down, you’re both pretty. I was being sarcastic. Let’s not argue over a joke.
Honestly though if you pulled out a picture with 14 monitors all with terminals, I would be impressed
3 screens with 3 virtual desktops is my limit man.
Your OS can run your home server. No need for GUI if you know what you’re doing.
For some tasks (e.g. web browsing), you need a GUI. CLI browsers won’t cut it.
But what if my computer is JUST running Jellyfin? No need for a web browser?
The OS shouldn’t even do that. That’s the job of the display manager and desktop environment
True.
I also want it to have a built-in clock and calendar in the taskbar. But Microsoft won’t even let me have that! They got rid of the calendar!
I still see a calendar if I click the clock on my work laptop. Though that might have been one of the settings I clicked while wondering why MS even thought this should change.
Ah, you’re right. Instead of bringing up the calendar, it brings up notifications, and you have to click a little pop-up button to see the calendar. Thank God I only have to worry about this on my work computer.
From a non-technical user’s pov kinda true.
But not true at all when you enumerate the actual responsibilities of an OS.
lol wow
For anyone who’s interested, Microsoft have provided an update that’s about as helpful as you might have expected, right at the top of the Github issue where this has been reported.
! Note
What we Know
- There is an issue impacting all store applications on Windows as of 2026-01-21.
- There have been some reports that choosing to Repair the Terminal application has restored it to working order.
There have been some reports that choosing to Repair the Terminal application has restored it to working order.
… Or, you know, dont hook that shit so tight into your store that it breaks if the store is offline or something gets messed up? I have personally never seen applications randomly stop working on Linux (Unless i did something stupid, i once fucked up glibc for all flatpaks system-wide on Fedora), specially now that im on NixOS, its just not possible for a program’s files to get corrupted on NixOS since the store is read-only (Of course if it doesnt gracefully handle config errors and the config gets corrupted then it will break, but often times it would just be deleting the file and letting it create a new one, not reinstalling the application).
I actually want a distro that I don’t have to constantly fix.














