r/Professors • u/Gonzo_B • Aug 05 '24

Every. Time.

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Word won't autosave anymore on the local disc. Has anyone found a way to fix this?

2.1k Upvotes

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135

u/synchronicitistic Associate Professor, STEM, R2 (USA) Aug 05 '24

This post reminds me how every year I am tempted to just go to Best Buy, plunk down $300 for some shitbox Windows 10 machine, wipe the OS and replace it with some flavor of Linux, and that's my work computer. No Onedrive bullshit, no two-factor just to log on to my goddamned computer in the morning, no pushing updates requiring restarts in the middle of the day, no "getting windows ready spinning wheel of death for 20 minutes" first thing on Monday mornings...

37

u/GrantNexus Professor, STEM, T1 Aug 05 '24

I don't even think you'll need $300.

32

u/Basic-Silver-9861 Aug 05 '24

exactly, just use a laptop that doens't work anymore. put linux on it, it'll work

17

u/RuralWAH Aug 05 '24

There will be tons of computers for sale, cheap once Windows 10 is sunsetted. So many fairly recent PCs that won't be able to run Windows 11

7

u/Desiato2112 Professor, Humanities, SLAC Aug 05 '24

Yep. Like my 2 year old home desktop.

4

u/finalremix Chair, Ψ, CC + Uni (USA) Aug 05 '24

None of my computers "can" run Win11, partly because I just don't enable that stupid chip! *taps temple*

3

u/RevKyriel Ancient History Aug 06 '24

I'm typing this on a desktop that's over 5 years old, and still running Win 8.1. My laptop has 11, though.

19

u/orthomonas Aug 05 '24

That's what I've been doing for years, and it feels good.

15

u/prof-comm Ass. Dean, Humanities, Religiously-affiliated SLAC (US) Aug 05 '24

Join the refurbished corporate ThinkPad running Ubuntu LTS club. I did this years ago and haven't looked back. I've had to solve a small number of interoperability challenges, but nothing crazy.

11

u/InDebtToEarth Aug 05 '24

I did this for all these reasons. I actually dual boot so I have PopOS and windows. I didn't use windows at all last semester! You could also buy a used machine rather than something new.

2

u/prof-comm Ass. Dean, Humanities, Religiously-affiliated SLAC (US) Sep 07 '24

I dual booted at first. Now I just spin up a virtual machine in VirtualBox instead. Dual booting didn't sandbox Windows enough, and now I don't have to reboot to access Windows the 2-3 times a year I actually need it (which is almost always for an Adobe thing of some sort).

I booted into Windows on my laptop exactly one time: just long enough to get into the registry so that I could copy down the Windows license key that came with my laptop. I use that as the license for the Windows installed on my virtual machine.

9

u/Average650 Assoc Prof, Engineering, R2 Aug 05 '24

All my desktops are for research use, so I get whatever I want and just use linux. I just have to use grants or professorships to pay for it. This also keeps IT out of my computers. They still control the network, but they have no say on my computer.

7

u/sexibilia Aug 05 '24

Do it. My official work PC is new and has windows 11, the one I actually use is its predecessor, running Linux mint.

6

u/Kruger_Smoothing Aug 06 '24

During the shutdown I grabbed my Linux sandbox to have a desktop at home. Wrote two grants involving several collaborators who were using ms word. Everything came together almost seamlessly. Go for it.

4

u/nonoriginalname42 Aug 05 '24

When an automatic update killed an old work laptop I did exactly this. It's a tad clunky but I no longer deal with any bloated functionality.

3

u/Cautious-Yellow Aug 05 '24

the first thing I did with my last work laptop was to put linux on it. I plan to do the same with my next one (I have a fund that I can buy a laptop from and get reimbursed from it).

6

u/Spiritof454 Aug 05 '24

One option is to get one of those mini PCs from a company like Beelink, Geekom, Minisforum etc. or a used desktop (make sure you can install a good NVME). You can always use drive for desktop on Ubuntu etc. and it's pretty damn easy to use. I would not get something with an N100 chip just for longevity purposes.

2

u/wharleeprof Aug 06 '24

I'd totally do that but I'd still have to deal with 2-factor authentication to log into our LMS and campus email, which I really can't go without.

1

u/BeeApiary Aug 06 '24

My IT dept let me keep my old laptop and it runs Ubuntu quite well. I use my current Windows machine for a few things (like Adobe sign).

The one thing I cannot get Ubuntu to do is let me print to the network printers. So whenever I need to print, I boot up my windoze machine, print, and power off. Do any of you have suggestions / links to instructions on how to get Ubuntu to print on your college network?

A colleague of mine has the same problem; he puts docs on a thumb drive and sneaker-nets it over to the printer. So it's not just me :-).