Windows needs a change in priorities • Hacker News Board

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#561

Post by raxxorrax » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 10:41 AM UTC

apetresc wrote: post #364

the_snooze wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>File comparison, hard applications, legacy code, can be compiled to WASM and run quite well in the browser. Not when you're working on proprietary/confidential/classified information. >But many/most Spreadsheets can be done in Libreoffice, or code or no/low code alternatives. Not when you're working on spreadsheets that you need to send to organizations that heavily rely on MS Office.

> Not when you're working on proprietary/confidential/classified information. Why not? The WASM approach the OP is suggesting works entirely locally, the web is simply pushing client code to your browser.

You lose most of the advantages of running a software in your browser though.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#562

Post by alxlaz » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 10:42 AM UTC

lelanthran wrote: post #496

knighthack wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you browse the Internet then?

> How do you browse the Internet then? I assume by > using a window manager for ever I've used WindowMaker as a Window manager for decades. Only recently did I decide to switch to Mate because I wanted a taskbar at the bottom with useful things like applets to show and switch Wifi/network, volume control and often-used icons/launchers. TBH, if I could get things like tint2 and yabar working with the mate applets, I'd…

FWIW: most systray applets work with any of WindowMaker's dockapp systrays, and there are a few dockapps (wmappl, wmbutton) that allow you a slightly more compact often-used icons/launcher thing. Mate panel applets do need the Mate panel of course but you can generally find equivalents for just about anything.

I don't run Linux anymore (not natively, for everyday use, in any case) -- like most people in this thread I also think the desktop is a shitshow these days but it's a particularly bad shitshow in Linux, and I was using Linux in 2003 so I know what a shitshow looks like. But when I do still need to touch a Linux machine, WindowMaker is still my WM of choice. It's really good.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#563

Post by martin_a » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 10:43 AM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #498

ahmedalsudani wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think any of those are "not shameful"? - Google search - Google maps - YouTube - FB Messenger/WhatsApp - Instagram - Oculus - FB Marketplace

Facebook marketplace is full of stolen goods boosted by meth heads that they won't do anything about.

All the sweet monthly active users and the ad revenue!

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#564

Post by mulmen » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 10:43 AM UTC

YPPH wrote: post #555

mulmen wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, I think the power in a windowing desktop environment is not having to maximize windows. That’s a compromise for small screens. When I upgraded my 2014 RMBP to Big Sur I lost the ability to compose multiple windows because of the grotesque enlargement of the window header. The ability to snap to fill the screen may be useful on tiny screens but with Mac hardware shouldn’t be as important because the real…

Sure, but if I want to use one app on my screen and still have access to the menu bar, it means awkwardly dragging the window around to fill gaps. In Windows, it's one click. Similarly, if I want two apps side by side, it's even more awkward. Ideally I would want to avoid wasting pixels by having unfilled areas, so it's a lot of finnicky dragging to make sure they align up. In Windows, it requires two clicks.

Double click the window header. It will fill the space below the menu bar. Double click again and it will return to the previous size.

Agreed snapping would be nice. Windows does this well out of the box. MacOS leaves way too much quality of life to third party apps.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#565

Post by vishnugupta » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 10:43 AM UTC

jaclaz wrote: post #521

vishnugupta wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really need to dig very deep into my memory; wasn't Windows ME kind of dead on arrival? And MS themselves half acknowledged it by releasing XP within a few months.

No, there was a shift. The Win9x/ME (please read as DOS based) series of OS was intended for home users. The NT/2K was intended for business users. Only as an example most games at the time would not have run on NT/2K, and Win9x/Me was essentially single-user only. For some reasons with XP the good MS guys decided to force down the throat of pro/business users (that were very, very, very happy about Windows 2000) the…

That was a good bit of context, thank you!

I wasn’t aware that XP was meant to be an upgrade for 98/ME (home users) as well as for 2000 (business users). Talk about posing off both set of customers at the same time.

I personally didn’t mind ME and liked XP, but then it was as a student who didn’t do anything serious with computers so it doesn’t count much.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#566

Post by raxxorrax » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 10:45 AM UTC

GekkePrutser wrote: post #211

skoskie wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add MacOS to the list. The continued crippling of the OS for power users keeps pushing us toward the iOS experience, and it’s killing me. I can’t see details of my own log files for privacy reasons. The new Finder design is just awful and accomplished nothing for all the change. Now I learn I can’t make hardlinks for directories on APFS. The list goes on.

Yes, I moved away too. So much dumbing down, so many things changed just for the sake of it. And of course no settings to revert it. Eventually it was just too annoying to upgrade. A lot of it is security hardening but the problem is I have to give all control to Apple. There is no way for me to change anything in the read only OS part without the whole rigmarole of booting into recovery mode and blessing my changes…

They have long understood that security is always an argument to throw into the pot to justify their changes. Boot malware isn't really a widely spread problem in 22 and MS still pushes TPM 2.0. It is probably less about user security than control about users and machines.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#567

Post by bmacho » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 10:45 AM UTC

hackerfromthefu wrote: post #94

Silhouette wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody at Microsoft who has decision-making authority actually cares. Acknowledging this is the first step. The second is figuring out what would make them care or how to remove them so someone who does care can take over. That's a much harder thing to do. Realistically Microsoft is in a similar position to the likes of Google and Facebook. They have such an entrenched monopoly, bought through years of ignored warnin…

As a developer I want to implement everything possible on the web platform. It's now a viable competitor for enterprise applications, both because web is getting more feature rich and these days has pretty much anything you need, and because desktop is getting worse with anti-features and jank. It's a sad state of affairs but that's where we are. As a user I want to use cross platform applications as much as possible…

> It's now a viable competitor for enterprise applications, both because web is getting more feature rich and these days has pretty much anything you need, and because desktop is getting worse with anti-features and jank. It's a sad state of affairs but that's where we are.

Actually web is getting worse with anti-features and jank as well.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#568

Post by MrPatan » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 10:45 AM UTC

segphault wrote: post #22

Like every Windows user, I have had a lot of frustrating experiences with the abusive behavior and dark patterns that have taken over the platform. Like when they started having Skype silently run in the background logged in with the user's Microsoft account without any notice or human intervention, and removed the setting to disable it from launching at startup so that it couldn't be prevented. I had to completely u…

I don't even know what is my microsoft account anymore. I have created so many for so many services and devices over the years that I don't have a "main" one anymore.

So every new install is a crapshot, I try to go local account only, but something gets in the way and I end up creating yet another one for that specific device.

It's madness.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#569

Post by lwkl » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 10:46 AM UTC

Thank you. This is so true and annoying. Microsoft should treat their UI like their APIs and not break it with every major release. Changing a submenu is alright, changing how flat it is, is fine. But don't release a new settings app with every update. Microsoft settings is like Google chat apps as soon as you get used to it they throw it in the trash and release a new one to works completely differently.

I bought a MacBook recently after switching from Mac OS X to Windows and Linux 13 years ago. After booting for the first time I opened the settings app do do some changes and was expecting to google a lot and I didn't have to. The settings still have the same layout and it generally worked the same as on macOS 10.4. The same was true for the preinstalled system apps. They were in the same place, had the same names and generally functioned the same expect some UI changes. There are additions to the UI that replaced some old features like multiple desktops, the control center and the widgets but they didn't any of my usage patterns and it was pretty easy to integrate them into my regular workflow.

If you look at it from a normal users POV Apple has much better backwards compatibility than Microsoft, if my software is being maintained by a dev and I'm willing to update to the newer versions. If I want to keep using a program that was released 20 years ago not so much, but Microsoft has been breaking a lot of these programs in the last 5 years as well.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#570

Post by derac » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 10:47 AM UTC

apatheticonion wrote: post #466

GekkePrutser wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. The concept of WSL1 was much more interesting. Interfacing with Windows through a Linux userland. Actually do stuff on the windows system with a familiar interface. WSL2 is just Linux in a VM which has been around like forever. By the way it also put my system in a boot loop (blue screen on boot). I tracked it down to a buggy Lenovo driver but when I removed that it crashed on something else and I got sick of…

omg thank you for this. The amount of people trying to tell me WSL2 is groundbreaking - meanwhile I have been rocking Fedora in virtualbox for years. WSL1 was really interesting, but ultimately Microsoft needed a flagship product to demonstrate the capabilities of Hyper-V and WSL was the perfect project.

To be clear, wsl 2 lets you interact with the Windows filesystem. I believe you can launch exes in wsl1, but not 2. However, I've never needed to do that. It's definitely not groundbreaking, but it is convenient.

Using it with the new terminal app is nice. It will load and unload the ram for the instance immediately whenever you pop open a linux shell. IMO opening and closing virtualbox/hyper-v takes longer and is clunkier. Overall it reduces friction.