Windows is the Problem With Windows Handhelds (theverge.com) 71
Microsoft shipped its first Xbox handheld nearly two weeks ago. The $600 white Xbox Ally cannot reliably sleep, wake, or hold a charge while asleep. Neither Microsoft nor Asus would admit there's a problem or offer a timeline to fix it after repeated requests by The Verge. Asus said it needs more time to test.
Installing Bazzite, a Linux-based operating system, solves the problems, the publication reports. The same hardware runs games up to 30% faster than Windows and beats the Steam Deck in all but one benchmark. Steam runs more responsively without Windows bloat. The device can be used like a Nintendo Switch, pausing games with the power button and resuming hours or days later. Bazzite initially had sleep issues but fixed them two days after programmer Antheas Kapenekakis obtained the hardware and consulted with two AMD contacts. The black Xbox Ally X, which doesn't have as many sleep issues, gets a similar speed boost with Bazzite.
Two Xbox Ally units tested on Windows repeatedly woke themselves at random intervals. One lost 10% battery after 12 hours of supposed sleep, the other 23%. After another 12 hours, both had only 30% battery remaining. One tried to apply a Windows Update while asleep. Both units refused to wake from sleep at times and required hard resets. Many users have reported similar issues on Reddit with both Xbox Ally versions.
Further reading: Microsoft's Next Xbox Will Run Full Windows and Eliminate Multiplayer Paywall, Report Says.
Installing Bazzite, a Linux-based operating system, solves the problems, the publication reports. The same hardware runs games up to 30% faster than Windows and beats the Steam Deck in all but one benchmark. Steam runs more responsively without Windows bloat. The device can be used like a Nintendo Switch, pausing games with the power button and resuming hours or days later. Bazzite initially had sleep issues but fixed them two days after programmer Antheas Kapenekakis obtained the hardware and consulted with two AMD contacts. The black Xbox Ally X, which doesn't have as many sleep issues, gets a similar speed boost with Bazzite.
Two Xbox Ally units tested on Windows repeatedly woke themselves at random intervals. One lost 10% battery after 12 hours of supposed sleep, the other 23%. After another 12 hours, both had only 30% battery remaining. One tried to apply a Windows Update while asleep. Both units refused to wake from sleep at times and required hard resets. Many users have reported similar issues on Reddit with both Xbox Ally versions.
Further reading: Microsoft's Next Xbox Will Run Full Windows and Eliminate Multiplayer Paywall, Report Says.
Where will they install the rootkits? (Score:5, Informative)
If people switch to Linux these games won't have anywhere to store their rootkits for anti-cheats.
The only downside i can see is that some games want windows for anti-cheat
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There is no downside to ditching Windows. Game companies will eventually get wise to people wanting Linux instead of Windows. They already know this but need time to remove the Microsoft tendrils that currently choke their creativity. Windows is on its way out. Maybe not today, but soon. Nadella has screwed the pooch.
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There really isn't. I was skeptical and expected a 2-week long oddysey, but I put arch on my PC this past weekend and all my games work. It's definitely not suitable for mom, but my son could handle this.
Linux is still ... not great in terms of overall experience, but it's not worse than Windows, it's just different things that break. The difference is that it's often easy to identify exactly what is broken and work around it (ex. plasmashell crashesh when the screen is blanked, because my HTC vive was conn
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I found learning Linux's quirks the same as learning Windows'. When I first starting using Windows I often thought "WTF is wrong now?" but with a little patience, effort, and research was able to correct the issues. Eventually I became a Windows guru able to fix damn near anything. The same will happen with Linux. I didn't get really serious with Linux until a couple of years ago, before that just tinkering and using it for things like the RasPi. Yes, it's different than Windows under the hood in many ways
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Because there's no such thing as the Windows Recovery Environment, because such a thing is never needed in the Windows world, right?
Re: yes and no (Score:2)
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This kind of shit never, ever happens on Windows.
True since your only recourse when problems like these happens on Windows would be to perform a complete reinstall so yes all the different ways to save your install does not happen on Windows.
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*Nix user: "But you can run the game (or whatever) in a Windows VM"
Reality: You set up a VM, install Windows on it, install the game on it, deal with lots of performance hits... and the game kinda works.
Not to mention if you have documents formatted in Office (.docx), it's a roll of the dice whether they'll open 100% properly in LibreOffice or whatever the latest thing is.
*Nix is _not_ a drop-in replacement for Windows... it would have to 100% interpret Windows programs and Office documents and everything w
Re: Where will they install the rootkits? (Score:2)
Windows has been vastly inferior tech for at least 20 years now. It's not technology that keeps Windows going, it's something else.
Marketing, business, advertising, dirty tricks against their competitors, and talking MBA types into working against their employers are Microsoft's strengths.
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"lock-in" is the word you're looking for.
People can't switch without considerable cost in money and/or convenience. That could be as simple as using two different systems at home and at work, which adds to the mental load.
Windows has been winning for 30+ years because it's familiar shit. Everyone knows it's shit, but at least you already know the taste. Consumers know that if they use Windos their skills trained at work transfer. Businesses know that if they use Windos then new hires don't need basic comput
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There is no downside to ditching Windows
Depends on your definition of downside. Apparently normal shutdown of the system is an issue that ASUS still can't fix. The original ROG Ally (RC71L) and it's successor has had similar problems that required UEFI firmware updates to fix. (Hell Linux even has a special check for older firmware versions that prints a "please update" notice to the system log if it detects a firmware version that's too old.)
Further, as I'm typing this my own RC71L can't shutdown normally from Linux. Sure it looks "off" as th
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They'll just make a kernel stub and an installer like Nvidia did (probably still does?).
Of Linux becomes popular for games due to the performance bump there's no reason to think gamer will be any more resistant to rootkits on it.
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So the games with the root kits flop?
I don't see much resistance to them in the gaming community at all. A little bit of whining.
Well that's not a fair comparison (Score:3)
I mean back when Windows came out, there was virtually no "power save" on PCs. If you wanted to suspend to disk, your BIOS would do that for you. ACPI came out in 1996, well past the prime of Windows.
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...why can't Windows do it better since it has a head start and official hardware and software support?
Now you're starting to ask the right questions. After all these years, why does it still suck so much? The depressing answer is that they're breaking it on purpose, for profit, because it sells upgrades, because most consumers really are that stupid that they still haven't caught on to the pattern after 30 years. Linux development on the other hand isn't driven by direct profit margins from retail sales, so they don't have the same type of perverse incentives to self-sabotage.
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I mean back when Windows came out, there was virtually no "power save" on PCs.
If you mean Windows 3.0, it was for the 286 and there was no power saving that wasn't vendor-specific. For example I have a GRiDPad 1910 and that has a sleep mode. If you mean a recognizable version of Windows NT, it was for the 386 and there was still no standard power saving.
If you wanted to suspend to disk, your BIOS would do that for you.
The OS still had to prepare itself for sleep.
ACPI came out in 1996, well past the prime of Windows.
Yes, but Intel and Microsoft brought out APM [wikipedia.org] in 1992. Their collaboration is a major reason why power management was bad on Linux for years. Microsoft wrote the tools that vendors used to m
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There still isn't on even the latest laptops if Windows is mismanaging the power handling. For example for some Lenovo laptops, including their flagship X1, Windows will sometimes wake up from sleep and try and do whatever it is it does when it's not even supposed to be running. Since the laptop is supposed to be asleep it can be in a backpack or similar, and since it's running in some weird sleepwalking state the thermal management for the fan never kicks in so it eventually cooks itself and goes into th
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We knew this (Score:5, Interesting)
This is why the Steam Deck felt like such a revelation when it hit the market. Every review for a pc handheld has used it as a comparison and mentioned the experience of the Steam Deck couldn't be beat for a handheld PC. People wanted ways to install the OS on other devices and that's why Bazzite and other similar solutions were being worked on by the community.
Sure there are games you can't play on Steam OS but that goes for almost any gaming device. Even Windows needs help with community based compatibility projects for older games, as well as solving issues with newer games that prevent them from running. Dual booting is always possible, and with this type of experience it seems preferable to spend as much time in Steam OS or a variant like Bazzite rather than Windows.
For the price of an Xbox Ally X you could get both a Steam Deck and a Switch 2 and be able to play a good variety of games including Fortnite and other games that might require anti cheat, and get the Nintendo games too. You could even afford a Steam Deck and digital PS5 for the same price and have access to a wide variety of games and be able to play in 4k.
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it's also the interface. The Steam Deck had an interface designed for a controller.
The Windows handhelds though, has to deal with the Windows UI, which is barely usable with a small touchscreen, and without a virtual mouse, impossible to do a lot of things.
I have the Ally and Legion Go. The Legion Go is more usable because it has a huge screen which means it's actually possible to use the touch screen. And the mouse touchpad is somewhat usable. The Ally (the original unit) has no mouse emulation and thus ge
Shorter title (Score:5, Informative)
You could stopped at 'Windows is the Problem'. Everyone would understand. No need to say anything more.
Re: Shorter title (Score:2)
What a time to be alive... Windows can't sleep on mobile devices correctly and isn't great for gaming, so the solution is to switch to Linux which can sleep properly on mobile devices and is better for actual gaming?
It's like bizzaro world has arrived!
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That would leave everyone dumber. There are other portables with Windows that don't have the problem, showing clearly Windows isn't the problem, but rather the implementation of 3rd party drivers is. As usual.
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So... *Nix is the answer?
Okay... do a clean install (full format, bare metal style... nuke and pave as geeks call it)... with no editing configs or going into terminal or setting up VMs, what games or Windows-only stuff work?
Sure, *Nix has stuff *mostly* equivalent that'll mostly do stuff, but that document you spent a lot of formatting on in MS Office probably won't open right in LibreOffice... now you get to reformat the entire thing, and hope you don't lose anything.
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My linux laptop sleeps via S0ix but has no periodic wake or any connected standby features, but that's only because S3 sleep doesn't exist on anything modern.
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No, windows actually does this. Modern Standby aka S0ix sleep state (RIP S3) will periodically wake, check for updates, and apply them.
Note that Windows will also do that if you have manually disabled all connectivity, which is daft and just eats the battery.
A slightly smarter way to implement that would have been if the system remembered that its connectivity was disabled when it entered standby so there's no reason to wake up to check for updates - the system probably hasn't re-enabled connectivity while on standby! (Or, one should at least hope so, but of course with Windows, you never know...it has a habit of doing things you never ask
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" but of course with Windows, you never know"
Windows never does anything that you don't allow it to do. Disabling automatic maintenance takes 4 or maybe even 5 seconds.
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It's a feature that this Mac user was obviously unaware of. It didn't just decide to wake itself up from sleep, it was *supposed to*.
It's 2025 (Score:5, Interesting)
It's 2025. We've known for a couple of decades that Win32/Win64 and Windows and its main ecosystem only work because various hacks into the kernel to make it all run more smoothly. Even the video driver architecture basically has built in restarts when buffers blow up.
It's a shitty proprietary operating system which somehow, every time they try to clean it up, it gets worse under and on top of the hood. I stopped using Windows for my own personal devices four years ago, and will not go back. Ubuntu, Debian and MacOS offer cleaner UIs, and even if the software libraries are a bit smaller, at least I'm not a prisoner to endless ads.
Christ I had to set up a Win11 laptop yesterday, and between setting up the OS and Edge I had to turn down "offers" and additional tracking functionality around seven or eight times. Actually more, because then I set up a non-privileged user profile, and had to do it all again. And that was Win11 Pro. I can only imagine how much worse the Home editions are.
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Been a non-windows user for two decades now, and don't miss it one bit. Sometimes sad if a cool game is out only on Windos, but I anyway don't have as much time anymore as I used to.
It's not just Windos, though. DOS was equally horrible. I replaced MS-DOS with Novell DOS on one of my PCs for utterly different reasons (better to run a small BBS system on) and that was miles ahead of the Microsoft shit.
It keeps getting worse because we are not the customers anymore, we are the product. Your data is sold, your
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It's a shitty proprietary operating system which somehow, every time they try to clean it up, it gets worse under and on top of the hood.
It is almost impossible to engineer a system to do ANYTHING reliably when money is the primary focus. That is why Microsoft will ALWAYS fail: They are a monopoly and don't really have to succeed.
FFS! (Score:2)
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It's time for Microsoft to ditch Windows and adopt Linux as the core operating system. Too much legacy garbage code and house-of-cards architecture. If Google can make profit off Android/Linux, then so can Redmond.
I'd be surprised if Microsoft couldn't fuck up a Linux based OS with their own cruft. While all the groundwork has been laid, and they could likely take one of the various Windows compatibility layers available and polish it for current compatibility across the board, they'd insist on shoveling it full of nonsense and cruft until even the Linux kernel would be screaming for mercy and asking digital what ever few minutes. It's a cultural issue for them, and I don't think changing the underlying kernel and ba
Re:FFS! (Score:5, Insightful)
yeah this
The problem isn't the OS, although there are some... choices in there...
The problem is the underlying corporate culture and strategy, and the underlying beliefs that lead to that strategy.
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If Microsoft made an OS that immobilizes you, sucks the data out of you, and anally probes you with AI to the extent that Android does... they will have re-invented Windows.
The parts you would want to tear out of MS Linux would be exactly the parts they don't let you.
I"m going to assume (Score:2)
it's because of all the telemetry baked-in to Windows, that is the cause of poor performance and battery life loss while asleep.
It would be interesting to run a be-bloated version of Windows on these systems, and see if it improves anything, or if the whole concept of Windows on a hand-held is a disastrous mess.
Re: I"m going to assume (Score:3)
Forget handhelds, the whole concept of Windows is a bad joke. You start with a kernel created by the same people who did VMS, but then shit directly into it for years, and expect a good result?
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Bonus points for the VMS reference! Perennial winner of the "Least Fun System to FTP File To" award.
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You do know there are ways to disable the majority of that stuff, and the rest can be blocked at the firewall.
Windows (some version), on a handheld, is dependent on having the right drivers and all that jazz for the device, and whoever made those drivers not deciding to end support (or even issue an update that disables those drivers)... it'd have to be a version of Windows tuned for the device in question... kinda like the UMPC thing (wish that'd caught on a lot more).
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My work just dumped Windows 11 on me (Score:5, Informative)
The clipboard is slow. The mother fucking clipboard is slow.
I suspect what's going on is that Microsoft is monitoring my clipboard for some stupid AI bullshit. Whatever the case it's 2025 I have a 6-core CPU with 32 gigs of RAM and my clipboard is slow to respond. Periodically I get an error message in Excel because it was unable to complete a copy option into the clipboard.
Windows 11 is the most user hostile piece of software I have ever used in my entire life. As near as I can tell it exists so that Microsoft can monetize me further and so that it can train their AI to replace me at work. Also maybe some surveillance.
It's like a villain from a Franz Kafka novel decided to write an operating system
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There isn't anything there that isn't already off (Score:2)
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Dig into where stuff is being sent over your IP connection... that stuff can be blocked at your firewall (route it to loopback, 127.0.0.1)... it won't make it to MS.
Re:My work just dumped Windows 11 on me yup (Score:2)
The Clipboard is total shit in Windows 11!
It stops working after a while and I had to setup a button in Directory Opus (best file manager out there) that I can click to restart the clipboard. I just run a PowerShell Script that just runs:
get-service cbdhsvc_* | restart-service
But then again Windows 11 is total shit!
I primarily run xUbuntu in Virtual Box for 98% of my work.
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*hugs his Windows 10 Enterprise IoT LTSC computers*
You're more or less right...
Everything is going to be feeding the LLM-AIs "so they can be more intelligent".
I wish Win7 had been the last big version... if they'd built _optional_ new versions based on that instead of the pseudo-Mac-like interface Win11 has, it'd be okay.
ASUS is atrocious (Score:2)
"Neither Microsoft nor Asus would admit there's a problem or offer a timeline to fix it after repeated requests by The Verge. Asus said it needs more time to test."
Microsoft is Microsoft of course, whatever. ASUS used to be my first choice. Today they infamously have the worst support around, whether you're talking about tech support or warranty support. They are literally the last vendor you should consider when shopping for computer equipment, whether it's for gaming or not. This is the least surprising s
Re: ASUS is atrocious (Score:2)
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“There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed”, Bill Gates, Chief Software Architect
Windows sleep problems are very old (Score:2)
Microsoft has known about the issues with power draw during sleep for many years. Linus TechTips on YouTube even did a name and shame episode on this issue a number of years ago. It got Microsoft's attention. They said they would work on the problem. But the rot must have been very deep. Issues persist to this day. Microsoft has created a monster that they do not know how to control. And they appear to be making things worse as of late with their forced AI tools.
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I expect some power draw during sleep mode, the power draw during shut-off bothers me more. It seems worst on my Thinkpad, which I only power on every week or two, and almost every time I power it on it needs a charge. Seems to lose at least 20% charge per week, and sometimes much more.
My Dell and HP laptops have the same issue, but might last a couple months vs. a couple of weeks.
I'm always selecting the "Shut down" option from the start menu or running "shutdown /s" from a command prompt. I'm told this is
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One: the battery will _always_ lose some in storage
Two: it's a laptop, not a desktop. There's going to be some power draw... if you want full 0% draw, pull the battery.
Three: "hibernate" stores the RAM data to disc
Four: Full shutdown will shut it down totally (where it runs the whole BIOS self-test before even trying to boot), the battery will still self-discharge regardless.
Also, setting a laptop to spin-down and start-up a spinning harddrive is a ton of wear-and-tear on it (each of those cycles wears dow
TIL (Score:1)
TIL there are Windows handhelds. WTF. Why?! Who asked for these?
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gamers.
old joke (Score:4, Funny)
When I read stories like this I'm reminded of a very old joke
"The only thing Microsoft could make the wouldn't suck is a vacuum cleaner"
\o/ (Score:1)
Sleep:
[S]creen off
[L]eave ports open to allow
[E]asy access for haX0rZes to
[E]nable them to
[P]ush cryptomining jobs
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There is such a thing... I do believe it's called A FIREWALL.
You can block individual connections if you have the details of what is connecting to where.
And, you only get infected with crap if you let crap onto your system.