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Windows 11: Just say no

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Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#441

Post by PostThisTooFast »

cogman10 wrote: post #64
userbinator wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and UI elements that haven't been updated since Windows 2K. Also known as "the good part"... Everything else about Windows UI since then has only gotten less usable and more hostile.

This is what drives me nuts. Why do they keep messing with the UI? Nobody wants that! Even Apple and Google have both figured out that screwing around with UX every release is a recipe for making your customers HATE you. What I, and probably non-power users want out of windows is for it to be faster and use less power. I'd honestly be happy to go back to a Win95 interface with the latest kernel. Microsoft needs to fi…

Amen. The Windows UI has descended further into a disgraceful, unusable, and unprofessional shitshow with every release.

Windows 7 sucked ass. Windows 10 is, for some people, literally unusable. Its UI is hideously crippled by defects in both function and design.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#442

Post by usrusr »

skeletal88 wrote: post #433
usrusr wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, I was just thinking to myself that maybe a paid subscription Windows could be a solution to undesired UI change. Because it would take away the lure of the upgrade sale licence. 64 bit w2k? Yeah, I'd totally pay for that. If I were in charge of Windows product strategy I think I would create competing subdivisions that replicate the model of Linux distributions but on the NT kernel. Sworn to binary compatibili…

Windows is not selling upgrades anymore, 8 to 10 was a free upgrade

8 too? I was going to write something about this, particularly in how that's the reason why I don't really disagree with GP despite pondering the exact opposite "what if". But the sudden appearance of an 11 that nobody asked for gives me the impression that the culture that was fostered on the paid upgrade is still very much alive.

Meanwhile my mind has taken a deeper dive into the rabbit hole fantasy of competing Windows distribution divisions. I'd expect it to seem like a total failure : the surface. E.g. with Steam users refusing to get lured into the "gamer Windows" (something with an X in the name), the "crippled version that is entirely ad-funded" (10, basically) drawing too much hate for the entire brand while still not being crippled enough to push people to paid options and the one you can get with the Office subscription being a little too incompatible for employee lockout reasons with the plethora of in-house essentials required to run at customers. But Microsoft could still come out stronger, having a well defined place for bad ideas to go to die. And who knows, one of the niche distributions might be essentially sysinternals with a kernel and a package manager.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#443

Post by aliswe »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #434
aliswe wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i thought reactos contained portions of windows NT code?

No. Imagine you are a ReactOS (or Wine etc.) developer. The main thing you can't do is to use any code you are trying to reimplement. It literally contradicts the very aim of your project: to create a legal viable alternative to a proprietary system. Moreover, you know it is the biggest danger and the main avenue Microsoft will attack you in the future, so you are extremely careful never to do anything even remotely…

This is part of what I read on HN:

The first thing we observe is that the directory structure is basically identical. Yes, NT kernel subsystems are identified with short codes like "Ke" or "Ex". It's plausible that someone with a lot of NT knowledge would end up creating top level directories with these exact names, as is true of the WRK. But it seems kind of unlikely: the Wine sources do not show this pattern.

If we look at the Kernel Executive (Ke) subtree, we can see that there is a thing called a "Balance Set Manager". Both source trees define it in a file called balmgr.c - not only the location of the file but also the file name is identical.

https://github.com/Zer0Mem0ry/ntoskrnl/blob/master/Ke/balmgr... https://github.com/reactos/reactos/blob/master/ntoskrnl/ke/b...

It appears from the module description that the "balance set manager" is an optimisation of some sort related to reducing memory usage. Is this really something that needs a reimplementation with identical function prototypes?

Looking at the code of the identically named KeBalanceSetManager function, we can see that not only is the function prototype identical, but the order in which it does things is also identical. First it changes a thread priority, then it schedules a periodic timer callback.

Some of the local variables in these functions have identical names: PeriodTimer, DueTime, WaitObjects. Yes, these are obvious names. It's not a smoking gun. But it's not looking good.

Finally we discover that the ReactOS Balance Manager does .... nothing. It enters a loop which starts out by doing a wait for an event (fine, it's inherent to the task), and then switches on the result. But the code in the arms of the switch are commented out (the commented out code does a subset of the stuff in the NT code). The loop does nothing, just sits blocking in a loop forever. Why does this code in ReactOS exist if it does nothing?

It's the same story for the other big function in this file, KiScanReadyQueues. The code is virtually identical, line for line, with minor formatting and occasional trivial naming differences. Even the assertions are identical.

I'm not alleging anything specific or illegal, just comparing a small part of both codebases. However given what I've just seen, I wouldn't touch ReactOS with a barge pole. The Microsoft guy's complaint is entirely understandable.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20345645

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#444

Post by dotancohen »

moffkalast wrote: post #209
glimshe wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm enraged by the new UI where you can't have multiple instances of the same application side-by-side in the taskbar. It's one of the things I hate in chromebooks, which Windows decided to adopt as their only (non hidden) option.

Yeah you're not alone there, the stupid idea that windows now needs to be fully tablet capable without a keyboard to the detriment of everyone else using it normally. Literally making the interface less informative and adding clicks, waiting and gestures to achieve actions that should've been a single point and click. I call it the "BIG BATAN" ideology, as everything needs to be a clean oversized button without any e…

  > I swear if MS eventually removes the don't group fallback
  > I'm finally ditching Win for KDE and never coming back.
Exactly the switch that I did - get this - in 2005. And I never went back. Even in multiple software development roles, having to interact with Word- and Excel- using colleagues, and having "UX experts" sending me Photoshop files, KDE has pulled me through.

I have been using KDE on-and-off since 2001 before switching fully in 2005, and in all that time KDE has had a single disruptive UI switch, going from KDE 3 to KDE 4. The upgrade to KDE 5 went all but unnoticed.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#445

Post by eatYourFood »

pjmlp wrote: post #406
ryandrake wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely a big problem with software. This "need to constantly pay developers" is part of the justification for moving towards subscription payment instead of one-time payment. The logic goes: One-time payment won't pay for future changes, and developers are always making changes, and they need to be paid for. But, what if I don't want future changes? For almost all software I've ever paid for, as a user, I ju…

That is why consulting and outsourcing exist, you only pay for developers while you actually need them. There are even companies outside software business, that pay contractors per tickets, basically a budget is assigned and the contractor does as much tickets as they are capable of for the given budget. Now the quality of the code is not for the faint of heart.

This ignores the changing nature of consumer demand and competitive pressure. Often time, implementations should be treated as a product that needs nurturing rather than a one off project where you get to the finish line and you're done.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#446

Post by flohofwoe »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #413
alkonaut wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not broke, stop trying to fix it. There could have been better ways to keep it modern, but just leaving everything alone because “it works” isn’t really an option. First comes Unicode, then 4K/High-dpi scaling, then touch support and so on. Once high DPI screens arrived, UIs that scaled poorly literally don’t work.

Apple managed to support high-dpi without turning the whole thing upside down.

Because they had aquired a solid foundation that had fixed this problem already 30 years ago (NextStep with Display PostScript).

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#447

Post by flohofwoe »

brailsafe wrote: post #288
userbinator wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and UI elements that haven't been updated since Windows 2K. Also known as "the good part"... Everything else about Windows UI since then has only gotten less usable and more hostile.

After installing Windows for the first time in easily 6 years, I was shocked that things like the device manager and disk management still look like they're from Win95. It's not better if it's not remotely consistent

Those control panels might look dated, but they are a lot more discoverable and feature complete than their modern replacements.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#448

Post by mschuster91 »

a-dub wrote: post #396
Someone1234 wrote: post #21

Windows 11 is half-baked. But it isn't just half-baked because it was rushed out while ignoring all the feedback (although it absolutely was). It is also half-baked because Microsoft's management has no particular strategy or plan for what they want Windows to be. So Windows 11 just feels like an "and kitchen sink" where someone picked up an iPad, noted down a bunch of random features without rhyme or reason and then…

> Regardless of what that vision is, at least then Windows would be a something, rather than a whole host of competing ideas and contradictions i.e. a mess. the big problem is, and this is primarily why i dislike everything windows, is that humans are mimicry machines. if you give them tooling that's an inconsistent mess, it's going to normalize the idea of inconsistent messes, and then they will create inconsistent…

> windows ultimately normalizes inconsistency and mediocrity

Windows 95-7 design did not, quite to the contrary. Unfortunately I can't find it again, but usually the link appears on any HN discussion about classic Windows design sooner or later... anyway, the point is that the classic Win95 design was consistent across the whole OS (for apps that used the standard OS controls). UI elements had clear shadows, borders and margins separating elements visually, color schemes by default assisted that visual separation and they were customizable (e.g. for those with accessibility needs). Additionally, menus and hotkeys were consistent across Microsoft apps with (IIRC) clear guidelines on how third party apps should use menus, so that end users didn't have to learn much.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#449

Post by flohofwoe »

john_moscow wrote: post #351
Someone1234 wrote: post #21

Windows 11 is half-baked. But it isn't just half-baked because it was rushed out while ignoring all the feedback (although it absolutely was). It is also half-baked because Microsoft's management has no particular strategy or plan for what they want Windows to be. So Windows 11 just feels like an "and kitchen sink" where someone picked up an iPad, noted down a bunch of random features without rhyme or reason and then…

It continues a decades-long tradition where every other Windows version is borderline unusable and universally hated. As long as I remember: * Windows 3.0 was perceived as buggy * Windows 3.1/3.11 was a major improvement * Windows 95 was extremely unreliable * Windows 98 sort of addressed most of the issues * Windows 2000 was a weird amalgamation of the NT kernel and 98/ME look'n'feel that wasn't received well * Wind…

IFIR Windows 2000 was extremely well received by professionals (which at that time still was the target market). Windows XP was just the "consumer relesase" of Win2k and didn't actually add all that much except a new weird-looking UI theme.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#450

Post by approxim8ion »

robbedpeter wrote: post #359
GiorgioG wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do they keep messing with the UI? UX folks don't get paid to leave things alone.

Ux is snake oil nonsense and has no place in software design. They create change for the sake of change and dumb everything down as if complexity were a sin.

I feel like this takes it too far. Complexity may not be a sin, but it is possible to make things much more cohesive.

"Modern" UX does involve a lot of dumb antipatterns and things that break usability, but I don't think we should throw the baby out with the bathwater here.

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