Windows 11: Just say no • Hacker News Board

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#451

Post by xioxox » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 9:32 AM UTC

tablespoon wrote: post #369

john_moscow wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> * Windows 10 fixed it Windows 10 is biggest garbage fire POS Windows version yet, because of their new update model. For the last several months , I've been unable to install the mandatory (for non-enterprise users) feature update patches. They fail to install with a cryptic error code and get rolled back. If I don't get this figured out soon, I'm not going to be able to get security patches anymore. I should be ab…

Yes - Windows update is one of the most unreliable pieces of software I've had the misfortune to use. On one of my machines checking for updates hangs indefinitely. The whole update service is stuck and can't be stopped. I can do some hacks involving deleting the update catalogue in safe mode, but it just breaks again a few weeks later.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#452

Post by worble » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 9:34 AM UTC

aqfamnzc wrote: post #156

hbn wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah Windows Search is useless. I'd recommend Everything[0]. Though, it's more for general file searching than searching for programs. Can't remember if it learns your habits and pushes them to the top or not. Regardless it's instantaneous and I almost never use the Windows search since I discovered it https://www.voidtools.com

Everything is pretty much the only thing I miss from Windows. Maybe paint.net too. I haven't found a suitable Linux equivalent for either.

I quite like pinta as a paint.net replacement. Don't think it's as feature complete, but hits that ease of use sweet spot for really quick crops or adding text, etc.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#453

Post by CTOSian » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 9:48 AM UTC

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…

>be happy to go back to a Win95 interface with the latest kernel.

I would be happy to be even on Win3 interface with the latest kernel: themes and colors that worked almost on every f application! bonus: thick BORDERS! look now at the pathetic 1pixel borders they have (and NO F way to change that)

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#454

Post by maaneeack » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 9:52 AM UTC

Brave-Steak wrote: post #301

jcranberry wrote: post #47

Ive been using win 11 on my laptop for a couple months now. I like the new UI, it feels simpler and less gaudy. The drop down menu expansion thing is fine. I also prefer the redesign of the settings app. I find casting my screen and bluetooth works better. Windows has been missing something decent window snapping features forever and although it's a bit clunky I appreciate that it's there. The only thing that has ann…

My biggest annoyance is that they've removed the ability to open the task manager by right-clicking the taskbar. Instead, I have to right-click the Windows icon in the bottom left. Just ... why? What benefit is there to not letting me right-click anywhere on the bottom part of my screen? Do none of these muppets even use Windows?

Ctrl-Shift-Esc brings up Task Manager, unless they removed that in Windows 11 too.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#455

Post by a-dub » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 9:53 AM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #448

a-dub wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

sure, the "chicago" ui was indeed a huge step forward... but until nt4, it was still only skin deep.

even after nt4, abominations such as mfc and heritage from ms lan manager lived on. the network protocols were so poorly designed that entire companies (riverbed, et al) sprung up to rewrite them as less latency sensitive alternatives that would actually function over wans.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#456

Post by mrjin » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 10:00 AM UTC

Has been using Windows, Linux and BSD at the same time for almost two decades now. I use Windows for almost everything, Linux/BSD were really for exploring OS implementations, experiments etc.. Don't really want to mention Windows 9x/ME as I wasn't impressed at all, Windows NT5/2000, then Windows Server 2003/2008 were very stable and those perhaps the best releases of Windows IMO. At the same time, Linux/BSD might be more stable but the usability of the GUI was much worse. Linux/BSD get much better since then, especially Linux, I can almost do everything it need with it now. But Windows well, get much worse. Windows Vista required too much resource and I did not really use it much. Windows 7 was much better than Vista, but really I did not see much improvements from Windows 2000 excepts it looked better. Windows 8 was a step way too far by forcing user to change their habits for decades and also looked much uglier. Windows 10 basically is just Windows 8 adding back those visual elements removed from Windows 7. Worst problems with Windows 10 are not really trying to switching the UI to a new one but really not respecting the users at all and breaking existing functionality while replacements do not work at all. I seriously no idea what was their product managers were thinking by forcing restart to update without asking permission. My colleague's laptop restarted in the middle of a presentation to his boss and a whole bunch of other stakeholders as Windows 10 decided it's time to update and the estimated time to complete was over 2 hours as there were over 200 updates to install... The annoyance I personally found were Disk Manager GUI and diskpart utility broken at the same time; Both traditional GUI and so called modern UI to set IP Address/DNS server were broken at the same time. Have 32 GB of RAM and got BSOD because of out of memory for no reason etc. Almost every update, there would be surprise, not necessarily bad, but you just don't know what's going to work or break each time. Unfortunately there is still something I don't really have a replacement on Linux, or I would have ditched Windows now. If the current trend does not change, I will have to ditch it eventually, only a matter of sooner or later.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#457

Post by piaste » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 10:09 AM UTC

amyjess wrote: post #274

harry8 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously if you're genuine about that it's such a temporary solution. You're saying you can't trust your operating system vendor at all. Start making plans to dump them is really the only sane thing to do at that point.

I use Linux for most things and only boot into Windows for games. Wintendo is a real thing. I'd like to be able to play the games I want to without worrying about being frog-marched into an OS without a taskbar. At this point I would settle for a deny-then-allow solution involving dropping any and every packet that's not from the servers of the small handful of online games I play, any well-known wikis that cover the…

> I use Linux for most things and only boot into Windows for games. Wintendo is a real thing.

> I'd like to be able to play the games I want to without worrying about being frog-marched into an OS without a taskbar.

Lutris/Steam with Proton works wonderfully nowaday!

The main caveat is if you enjoy multiplayer gaming, it often require extensive low-level access to your Windows environment for anti-cheating purposes. Wintendo is the correct approach in that case; VFIO is an option, but afaik some anti-cheat systems will detect that they're running inside a VM.

Most security concerns go out of the window (pun not intended) when the most sensitive information your OS has access to is your Steam account, which has 2FA against a separate non-Windows device.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#458

Post by pjmlp » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 10:12 AM UTC

smackeyacky wrote: post #261

Gys wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I will just wait for Windows 12, whenever it comes up, the UI war will be settled by then. There is always hope ;-)

They've had 4 years to settle on a GUI for .NET Core and completely failed. At this stage, the 3rd party gui libraries are looking better and better i.e. Electron.NET https://smackeyacky.blogspot.com/2021/08/electronnet-cross-p...

Here is the joke, MAUI with incompatible XAML is now delayed to post .NET 6 release, while with UNO you can go cross platform today, on .NET 6 and without having to rewrite XAML yet again.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#459

Post by fithisux » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 10:37 AM UTC

The os landscape is destroyed by devices requiring special drivers. This is why the options are constrained. I definitely do not like osx or Windows. I prefer Linux and Solaris needed more love. But there are newcomers like haiku and genode. The market is very hostile to these efforts.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#460

Post by _Algernon_ » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 10:38 AM UTC

vore wrote: post #73

_Algernon_ wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lock screen without full disk encryption is security by obscurity. Change my mind.

Windows can definitely also do full disk encryption via BitLocker...

It couldn't when a lock screen was introduced in the 90s. Bitlocker being enabled by default is a pretty recent thing.