Windows 11 still doesn't understand our complex lives – and it hurts I have been a Linux user for decades. Last week, I bought a Windows computer. It's not that I haven't used Windows – I do, as little as possible, in a VM – but recent problems with Teams persuaded me that repotting it in its own native soil would reduce the pain. And besides, I wanted to give Windows 11 a fair chance. Ho, as …
Probably. My kid added his school Google account to my tablet, a few days later Google pops up notifications on my phone wanting to know my date of birth.
Of course I entered 1/1/1970.
Looking forward to when their fantastic AI realises that the two generic words found in the dictionary aren't my first name and last name and asks me for my passport.
You might change your mind when you realise that it is just polite ransomware, and that you have no access to videos, bookmarks, music, work or even money unless you go as they demand. :-/
I have three Google accounts due to weird YouTube vs Google vs company thing. It's a pain, but I rarely use any of them, at least I rarely use any of them *on purpose* - they are always there, watching...
With Firefox, you can have multiple browser profiles. They have completely different browsing histories, cookie stores, password stores, proxy settings etc. For example, set up one for work and one for personal use.
Go to the "about:profiles" page.
Edit: You can run them at the same time in separate windows (not in tabs of one window though). I also like to put a theme on some so the window has a different color to avoid confusion.
Also for my main private PC, I just added a completely separate Linux user for work stuff This way, everything contained in a separate home folder and can be easily removed from the private PC. I can use mail programs, contacts, calendars etc. without mixing up the two.
You can also do two full graphical logins at the same time and switch with Alt+Ctrl+F1/F2/etc. Or you switch users using the GUI, but then you always have to unlock your screen.
Typically tty1 is the login screen and the user screens start from tty2 (modern distros) or from tt7 (traditional distros, because 1-6 were reserved for text console).
With Firefox you don't even need to go to all that effort. Just use "Open In New Container Tab" and select one of the pre-configured ones, Personal;work;banking, etc., or configure your own if you wish. Each container is completely isolated and you can have as many IDs logged in concurrently as you want.
Simples.
I think you can only use one profile at a time, but Firefox has a new feature (via a plugin from Mozilla) called Containers. These are brilliant! Colour coded tabs so you can see which is which, with own cookie store, history etc. I can log into different MS email accounts at once. If you launch Teams from one of these it still gets a little confused sometimes, but luckily I mainly use Zoom.
And yes, that's Teams in Firefox in Linux.
The only thing I dislike about containers is that so far you can't associate a container with a url in the bookmark system. Containers can be set for urls, but with MS or gmail its often the same url for multiple accounts.
Teams is the IE6 of communication apps.
The only reason I can think of why it is being installed everywhere, are kickbacks that likely managers are getting under the table. If your company gets "infected" by Teams, better look around if managers are talking about buying a new TV set or booking holidays, where you know they wouldn't be able to afford it from their salary.
Users report tons of issues about this app but they won't even address it anymore, just say "we need to learn to live with the shortcomings of Teams" - as if it was the virus...
Companies that employ IT crowd that use Linux must often run a secondary communication system, because Teams client on Linux is an abomination.
I find Teams to be quite clunky and very lacking in the intuitive-use stakes - and the ever changing of bits (moving around parts of the UI for no apparent reason) drive me up the wall.
MS realised, many years, ago that letting people connect Outlook to multiple organisations (i.e. email addresses) was a good thing. I can see no realistic reason to not allow the same feature within Teams and then to have say different coloured windows to show the differences in accounts.
> I can see no realistic reason to not allow the same feature within Teams
Quite probably for the same problem Microsoft have long had (it's a little better these days actually but far from perfect) - that they employ lots of smart people straight from collage. People who have been taught cr*p on university courses by people who seem to lack any real-world experience and so end up "reinventing" things that were done better and smarter years ago but ditched because of "innovation".
Actually, having a proper unified comms tool IS a good innovation. But not much use if the vendor can't make it performant and reliable.
The basics should indeed have been part of the requirements from the outset instead of seemingly inventing the whole bundle on the fly.
Rather like Outlook, I find Teams the best of the integrated comms clients by a long way despite its shortcomings. Sadly the bar is rather low. The same is true for Outlook. I keep going back to it on desktop and mobile not because it is fundamentally "good" but because it simply isn't as bad as the competition at doing the complex communications I need it to.
Chrome supports multiple profiles, they just open in new windows rather than different tabs. Works a treat for keeping all the different O365 accounts separate (and that increasingly includes for voluntary groups as well as work clients)
The frustration with the Teams client for Windows however is quite justified... Outlook is sitting there quite happily supporting six different Office 365 accounts simultaneously, letting me receive emails from any of them and send with little more fuss than a dropdown to select the account. Teams on the other hand is struggling with my work account and one client 'guest' profile; to support any more requires major logging out and and in again. Ironically the best client I've found for Teams so far is on the iPad...
In fairness, simultaneous use of multiple IDs is rarely handled well by modern UI'd desktops and remote services. All systems assume you have one ID, and if you have the temerity to want more, then you must log out and log back in again, an idea unchanged since mainframes stalked the earth.
KDE has had a "Switch User" option on the Power/Session section of the menu for a long time. Opt for that and whatever's running stays running but you're presented with the login screen which you'd obviously need for the other ID* - there'd be something wrong if you could just waft over into a different ID without presenting any credentials. Log out of the other ID when you've finished and, again, you have to present credentials to get back to your original session but it's still there as you left it. I don't see anything wrong about having to provide ID & password, in fact I'd count it as a problem if you didn't.
* This is assuming you're not just wanting a terminal session for the other user in which case you can just su.
The simple abiding mistake made by most possibly nearly all who use a computer operating system is to assume and expect it is designed primarily to help you in your tasks and desires rather than deliver them, lock, stock and barrel, to the computer operating system.
However, once you realise that, you are better able to groom the system to their liking of your upcoming fare/ware. All it takes are a few exceptional tweaks/critical leading driver changes.
>system:
=tweak(@);
&agent().
#do-
&if_ none=
1 put_sprite AR GMT, 42000000;
2 goto >
#on_cycle(10)
echo KICKSTARTER, NEED ASSISTANCE!!!11
begin_proc, would you?
>end tweak(@)
/wait for incoming mail
not connected with binary-hid os, but a great win-win doze
london royal symphony musicians need for a starting advertising. lots of fun. as real as el reg's comments fcuk why so many anons here must be from MS? ;-)
wholly a matter of culture. well, you know (-;
It's very possible, although I think the real explanation is much more simple and even more depressing: They don't care about user experience at all, so who cares what the lusers might want or need...
For Microsoft, users are captive so you don't really need to seduce them anymore, they will keep paying for your ware no matter how crappy it becomes. Just go through the motions of releasing "new" "fresh" versions, while simplifying the underlying structure and removing complicated features to reduce cost. Still, throw them a small bone from time to time and everybody is happy.
I have a domain for my business, mostly linked to Google services. A client added my email address to a Teams project.
And then ... bad things happened. I could not use this address myself when other clients wanted to invite me to taems. Attempts to set the password to take control of my own email address were pointless, because something at Microsoft at implicitly added my organisation (my domain) as a Teams organisation but it had no actual administrator. You can't reset passwords, only the admin can, but there was no way to become the administrator. The client removed my account from their Teams project, but it made no difference. Eventually, after a few weeks, a Microsoft tech called me and via a phone call, removed my organisation. It was incredible: I never registered my domain with Teams, it was somehow captured by the client innocently adding my email to a Teams project.
However, being able to call support when I don't pay a cent to Microsoft was actually kind of impressive, but not enough to compensate for such a strange experience.
The Linux Teams client is fine, and the browser client is acceptable. Electron supports native wayland now, so Teams will presumably get this over the next 12 months. Zoom still has the best Linux support.
This exact thing happened to a client of mine! Somehow their domain became registered with Microsoft with an Office365 tenancy. It was a 2 week nightmare to fix it and Microsoft could not tell me how it happened. They kept forwarding me around support departments because "you don't have an Office365 subscription" and then "this is an Office365 support issue". I don't recall what the final solution was, but it happened after I told them "You have somehow hijacked my client's domain and claimed to host their services. This can't be legal, can it?"
Idiot luser blames iffy software on OS.
Windows has suffered from being slagged off because ${software_package} is a POS since forever. I'd have thought that a professional might have been able to spot the difference, but apparently not. Incidently, didn't notice you ranting about how shit your Linux is because Teams misbehaved there too...(!)
This is like the key difference between Windows Mobile (the old CE based one) and Android. Google have managed to get the users to blame the supplier when the implementation on Phone X is a heap of shit. MS never managed that trick, so instability (always down to a shoddy third party RIL) was always blamed on the OS.
Also, on the subject of why multi ID doesn't really exist, you forgot the main reason - Legal. ...I know of no system that allows different simultaneous workspaces with their own IDs.... That'll be because you know most users will log in with both their work and private credentials at the same time and be less than careful about what ends up where, which will land you, not them, in GDPR hot water.
US Navy, 1979-1991, I had multiple identities according to classification then by project. I wore multiple hats all time, and changing over time. My final title was, amusingly, Special Projects. I was the one to keep track of them. Neverr seen a business get it right, even contracting with DoD.
I disagree.
First of all, I doubt that the author of the article is an idiot.
Second, I do believe that he advanced a lot of valid arguments.
Teams is a nightmare for me and I only use it once a week. Microsoft is increasingly nightmarish and totally overstepping its bounds. Forcing me to log in with a corporate ID just to open Excel ? WTF ? Am I going to have to send a dick pic as well ?
Thankfully, my Borkzilla ID issues are constrained to an environment where an actual admin is available to solve issues since it is all for customers and I work on their own hardware (sent to me via UPS or whatever else last year).
I shudder to think of what I would have to go through if I had to deal with that shit on my personal hardware.
Thank God for Firefox + NoScript + uBlock Unity.
Teams is really just a GUI for SharePoint with some bells and whistles added. The development team appear to be using Agile as new features appear which aren't fully implemented and often don't quite work.
The group video call is probably the best bit of Teams. Chats are OK but a nightmare if you want to delete something. The Files interface is poor and don't get me started on the appalling MS Office apps integration.
I have two clients who set out to fully use it and had training days etc. In both organisations its now just used for meetings, chats and a file repository for shared documents. None of the other features get used.
The Files interface is poor
Poor? It's a dumpster fire. As far as I remember of many things, the Teams do not strip EXIF metadata from pictures, so if someone shared a photo, you could easily see where they took it. Probably a feature so that your manager could see you are not working in London, but in fact somewhere in Portugal :-)
> you are not working in London, but in fact somewhere in Portugal
If you cheat on your location and haven't disabled EXIF metadata it's your own fault...
Seriously, I think not modifying the files in any way is The Right Thing to do. I don't want a transport program to make arbitrary changes on the content I ask it to transport. Not only it's not its place to do so, but it would be wrong more often than not.
If I'm stupid enough to send self-incriminating material, it's not the transporter's place to prevent that.
Bingo!
Great for chats and sharing the odd throwaway doc to each other but don't go any deeper down the rabbit hole, just too much pain! Even MS people have slagged off Teams so called "Wiki" notes feature as being the worst collab software feature ever in any MS software.
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