something that fucking irritates me sooooo much about using windows is that i can never tell what it's thinking!

how it should be:

• windows process starts happening
• i look at the task manager and see what its doing
• it tells me exactly what part of the process it's at and what it's doing (ie 'stopping services', 'looking for folder')
• i give it a thumbs up

what it really does:

• windows process starts happening
• i look at the task manager and see what its doing
• it just says "disk: 99%" with no other feedback
• i give it a thumbs down

i've been maintaining my own computer for years. i know the insides and outsides of this PC really well at this point. (this computer is something like 7 years old, part replacements nonwithstanding.) and i know of utilities and things that help me continue to maintain it and troubleshoot when things get stuck in the pipes.

but windows has a problem. well, a lot of problems. but specifically it *hates* being transparent about what the hell it's doing.

sometimes it just pauses during startup and has no visual feedback whatsoever. what is it, boy? timmy stuck in the well? i have no idea, because all it wants to give me is a black screen. sometimes a black screen with a loading symbol, even, if it wants to get really fancy.

so, like, work with me, man. i want to FIX whatever is causing it to pause if it is in fact hanging on some hook somewhere. and as my dad taught me when i was a puppy: if i don't know it's broken, i can't fix it, so you have to tell me, ok?

except windows has - especially in the last decade or so - been wrenching any sort of control from the hands of computer owners. if the trends of stuff like the playstation store admitting that we buy the right to rent (and not outright own) the various games we purchased with real money on their service... honestly, it's capitalism, plain and simple.

but back to the point: what the hell, man? why can't i just know what my computer is doing? sometimes a random process will start happening in the background in task manager.... but "the background" ends up being something that uses 99% of the disk with no notification, not even a courtesy popup!

like, okay, i know you want to be unobtrusive. but we have a NOTIFICATION SYSTEM! you can tell me if you're doing some weird shit like defragging my drive (which, again, i don't MIND happening when i know when it's happening and can coordinate it to do it when i'm not doing something really intensive). and if you won't at least tell me when you do it, can you at LEAST tell me what you're actually doing *in the moment* so i can see if it's freezing at a particular point and can go online and ask people about it?

it's just. maddening. it's one of the little sticks on the bonfire that's going to get lit up one day by me when i decide to just deal with driver incompatibility with linux and swap over for good. i don't WANT to - windows has been good to me in other ways, and i am more familiar with it than anything else, and i don't want to have to give up that understanding of an OS that allows me to maintain it better. and it's stable! or at least reasonably so.

but every time i see that disk usage spike, or have to wait for something to do its thing before i can open minecraft...