Windows keeps becoming more and more worse and bloated every month. This month's update bumped up the install.wim by 400MB! And last month's update added a similar amount of bulk. It's insane how much junk Microsoft keeps adding to the OS, whilst breaking core functionality.
People can take, and do take a lot. A lot of actual abuse is happening in relationships, from corporations, politicians, pollution from the environment, and so on. And change always seems HARD, and very uncomfortable. So, people tolerate.
And that's why you don't see many GNU/Linux offerings around - if there was a real market, corporations would adapt in a heartbeat. For example, Steam Deck is estimated to be sold 4-5M items, Chromebooks upwards from 20M. If there is a market gap where people actually want the thing, it will sell.
Another factor is of course Microsoft's business strategy. They are pushing Windows hardcore, so it would take a lot to disrupt the desktop space. Even now, but it would have been even harder between 2000-2020.
And it's very odd. You can find Microsoft and Apple laptops in many stores, but for GNU/Linux you basically have to go to speciality shops. Now, obviously, MS isn't going to be doing the whole 'if you don't sell non-Windows machines we'll give you a better deal' malarkey any more because they've learned that the court will bring the hammer down with a righteous fury when MS does that kind of anti-competitive nonsense (just remember the whole bundled browser saga), so it's weird.
I suppose it could just be the vicious cycle of 'no GNU/Linux laptops in stores' -> 'people don't know about GNU/Linux laptops' -> 'there's no demand' -> 'no GNU/Linux laptops in stores'. A problem which can only be solved by people in the know informing the general public (informing the public is always better than merely voting with one's wallet because multiple wallets > one wallet).
I don't care what the computer comes with, because I want to install the OS myself anyway. I expect that group not to be small for GNU/Linux, so even if there is a market for GNU/Linux installs the market of people who absolutely need it preinstalled is even smaller.
I'm shocked there's not more traction on this post. Breaking localhost is almost unthinkable to me. Of all the things network unit testing should cover, that's pretty close to the top.
Link at bottom has some results about sudden, recent localhost failures
working for several years, today localhost not found
after GUI reboot attempt
localhost and 127.0.0.1 should be the same,
it seems strange they shows different results.
wusa /uninstall /kb:5066835 (restart)
wusa /uninstall /kb:5066131 (restart)
wusa /uninstall /kb:5065789 (restart)
Windows 11 has been a failure technically and as a product concept - and I say this as a multi-decade daily end user and general fan of the Windows OS technology. Before Win11, every version of Windows generally got better in meaningful ways. Sure, there were occasionally some odd ideas tried but they'd get dropped in fairly short order. And of course there were bugs as is inevitable with any commercial product this big, serving this many disparate user types across such a wide hardware footprint. But for the most part, Windows improved over time and users felt like MSFT was at least trying to do the right thing, even when they stumbled.
But things feel very different with Windows 11. Microsoft now removes useful features like task bar Quick Launch folders, even though millions of customers used them. Why? Because they 'distract' from the 'Start Menu Experience (tm)' which MSFT now views as a Primary Monetization Surface. Most of the user-visible changes happening in Windows 11 aren't about improving user workflows but instead are focused on increasing MSFT's ability to upsell, cross-promote and drive adoption of monetizable features. This isn't some short-term UX fad that'll pass in a year or two. It's a fundamental shift in the entire Windows business. The purpose of Windows is no longer first and foremost improving the OS to be more useful, powerful, complete, efficient and bug-free. As a user, it felt like there was still some focus on being a state-of-the-art Operating System, that values like technical correctness and orthogonal completeness were at least debated. The priorities now seem to be: 1. Enabling new monetization vectors, 2. Reducing and streamlining the OS to be cheaper to maintain with a smaller, less skilled staff, 3. See #1 and #2.
How does an operating system even function without localhost? This is absurd I can't believe this was caught by even a single one of the 5,000 devs working on Windows.
It's not localhost that's broken, it's a specific mechanism of using the OS HTTP libraries to bind a service (possibly even limited to HTTP/2 ones) to localhost. Which is still a crazy bug to ship with but a much different problem from localhost being blanket broken.
