I'll stick with Windows 7, thanks. The last OS that doesn't try to babysit me.
Have you met our lord and saviour Arch Linux?
Microsoft begins work on its 2020 Windows releases in new preview
41–50 of 87 posts
Re: Microsoft begins work on its 2020 Windows releases in new preview
#42Windows was once quite exciting, it punched above its weight and enabled people to do stuff that they didn't know they wanted to do but were grateful for it. This energy is now in the browser with Chrome being where the innovation is at. Microsoft can do whatever they like with their venerable operating system but the days of it being exciting and newsworthy are over. The fun is elsewhere and they have missed the boa…
>I know you can do development on Windows but I only see Apple things at those conferences and in meeting rooms. That's just biased to macbook pros. I might be biased because I work in gaming but windows workstations are pretty great and getting better. Meanwhile, dealing with Apple's increasing anti-professional hardware offering is getting worse every year.
I thought the same thing. It's also very biased towards developers.
The biggest market is not developers and power users. It's office workers, which need email and office, and it's PC gamers and VR enthusiasts that need powerful hardware. Both of these markets are heavily Windows dominated, because it just works better than Linux and Apple. (because Apple has shitty hardware for games and is way more expensive for office usecases)
The casual market is already in the hands of smartphones and maybe tablets. They don't need a laptop to surf the internet, write emails and play casual games.
Re: Microsoft begins work on its 2020 Windows releases in new preview
#43The biggest problem with Microsoft is them not sticking to their strength. I was an avid fanboy till Windows 7. This was an OS that could cater to power users- keyboard shortcuts, powershell (shitty console but anyway). They started running after the touch segment and deliberately removed the keyboard interface. They didn't get the app-buyers and the keyboard people (like me) probably left them. Linux is mature now,…
> They started running after the touch segment and deliberately removed the keyboard interface. They didn't get the app-buyers and the keyboard people (like me) probably left them. I get that for ordinary users it's a dealbreaker, but I never understood this complaint about the Windows 8 touch UI from power users or developers. It takes maybe 5 minutes to download and install Classic Shell and suddenly you have a cla…
Classic Shell is no longer maintained. It works okay-ish today, but while it was still maintained, its developers had to regularly fix it, because it does rely on undocumented APIs. It's a pretty safe bet that it won't work in the 2020 release, and I'm not aware of any good alternative.
A lot of Linux (and Windows) users don't realize it, but the amount of work that independent developers put into making Windows 10 (and Windows 8) useful for non-consumer applications, like software development or CAD, is breathtaking. There's probably an order of magnitude more people involved in that than in FOSS desktop development right now. This obviously says a lot about Windows' popularity (which, post-Windows 2000, is actually not all that undeserved), but it also says a lot about just how astonishingly terrible some of its design decisions were. Twenty years ago, the kind of hackery that gave us Windows Blinds was considered amazing, but borderline useless, because who the hell needs that after the age of 16. Today, that kind of hackery is essential because who the hell can use that after the age of 16?
There has been no shortage of poorly-though UI changes on Linux, either, but you can at least avoid them there, because you have several choices of desktop environments.
(Edit: yes, I know about OpenShell. Its last bugfix was in August last year.)
Re: Microsoft begins work on its 2020 Windows releases in new preview
#44The biggest problem with Microsoft is them not sticking to their strength. I was an avid fanboy till Windows 7. This was an OS that could cater to power users- keyboard shortcuts, powershell (shitty console but anyway). They started running after the touch segment and deliberately removed the keyboard interface. They didn't get the app-buyers and the keyboard people (like me) probably left them. Linux is mature now,…
I find Windows 8 complaints so full of hyperbole. I used Windows 8 daily on my work laptop for years, and these are the items I needed to adjust to.
Launching programs: Windows key + type type to Windows + S + type type (I still use that on W10)
Shutting down the PC: click on start to right-click on start
The Windows 8 UI was a failure and it sucks you need to adjust, but come on. I'd prefer Linux too, but changing an entire OS over easily avoidable UI gripes sounds weird to me.
Re: Microsoft begins work on its 2020 Windows releases in new preview
#45I'll stick with Windows 7, thanks. The last OS that doesn't try to babysit me.
I get this argument from my father in law too so I don't take it as a joke. He had used XP until 1-2 years ago and doesn't care about the security risks of an unmaintained os.
Win 7 support ends January 14th 2020.
Re: Microsoft begins work on its 2020 Windows releases in new preview
#46I'll stick with Windows 7, thanks. The last OS that doesn't try to babysit me.
I get this argument from my father in law too so I don't take it as a joke. He had used XP until 1-2 years ago and doesn't care about the security risks of an unmaintained os.
Some people only learn through consequence.
Re: Microsoft begins work on its 2020 Windows releases in new preview
#47The biggest problem with Microsoft is them not sticking to their strength. I was an avid fanboy till Windows 7. This was an OS that could cater to power users- keyboard shortcuts, powershell (shitty console but anyway). They started running after the touch segment and deliberately removed the keyboard interface. They didn't get the app-buyers and the keyboard people (like me) probably left them. Linux is mature now,…
Huge rant incoming:
My biggest issue is still not knowing how the (ugh..) fuck to remove Candy Crush Saga from my god damned “downloaded” apps list. On fucking Professional I should not have to deal with that crap. All the instructions on the internet I have found seem to no longer work, and it’s the tiny things that add up that really annoy me. It even shows up in classic shell ...
Re: Microsoft begins work on its 2020 Windows releases in new preview
#48The biggest problem with Microsoft is them not sticking to their strength. I was an avid fanboy till Windows 7. This was an OS that could cater to power users- keyboard shortcuts, powershell (shitty console but anyway). They started running after the touch segment and deliberately removed the keyboard interface. They didn't get the app-buyers and the keyboard people (like me) probably left them. Linux is mature now,…
> They started running after the touch segment and deliberately removed the keyboard interface. They didn't get the app-buyers and the keyboard people (like me) probably left them. I get that for ordinary users it's a dealbreaker, but I never understood this complaint about the Windows 8 touch UI from power users or developers. It takes maybe 5 minutes to download and install Classic Shell and suddenly you have a cla…
A lots of the Windows 8/10 design decisions are outright mistakes, not even controversial.
Like in Windows 8, you had to place your mouse on the far right of the screen to access certain features. Fine with a small laptop touch screen, but clearly they haven’t tried it on a 4k, 42” non touch screen at native resolution where the side of the screen is far far away in term of mouse travel.
I believe to this day, the Windows 10 start menu search feature is non deterministic (I removed Cortana and web search). I can search twice the same words and I won’t see the same results, seems random. You can search “SQL management Studio” and “SQL server management studio” won’t show up at any point of the typing (it did in Win7). It feels just broken.
Having two control panels with some settings in one, some others in the other, and because they progressively move them you are never sure where to find them is just bad.
I have many other examples like that. They are not a matter of taste, it is just bad QA and bad design.
Re: Microsoft begins work on its 2020 Windows releases in new preview
#49The biggest problem with Microsoft is them not sticking to their strength. I was an avid fanboy till Windows 7. This was an OS that could cater to power users- keyboard shortcuts, powershell (shitty console but anyway). They started running after the touch segment and deliberately removed the keyboard interface. They didn't get the app-buyers and the keyboard people (like me) probably left them. Linux is mature now,…
I find Windows 8 complaints so full of hyperbole. I used Windows 8 daily on my work laptop for years, and these are the items I needed to adjust to. Launching programs: Windows key + type type to Windows + S + type type (I still use that on W10) Shutting down the PC: click on start to right-click on start The Windows 8 UI was a failure and it sucks you need to adjust, but come on. I'd prefer Linux too, but changing a…
It depends how low the barrier is to switching. For me it's very low. I use Windows at work, OSX at home and Linux frequently at both so the only question is which do I want to use on my home machine? Switching for me is just a question of a few hours work re-installing stuff. Plus as a techie there are benefits just to switching, due to becoming more intimately familiar with a different OS. For me that's a plus all by itself.
As for Windows 8, I did use it daily as my primary office OS for several years and I deeply hated it. These stupid side bars kept popping up all the time, system settings were hard to find, constantly switching back and forth between two completely different UIs grated against my nerves every single time. 10 has the same problems, but straightened out just enough to just be irritating rather than actively painful.
It's not like MacOS has no pain points. I'd love to have easier access to more games, but Porting Kit works just well enough to bridge that gap for me.
Re: Microsoft begins work on its 2020 Windows releases in new preview
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Generally, if stuff like this breaks I usually drop the application.
That's assuming you can drop it.
Yeah, sometimes that's a problem. Usually, these apps tend to be some sort of web technology, which means I can use them in a browser, so I've been lucky in that sense.