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Windows needs a change in priorities

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Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#651

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

lpcvoid wrote: post #482
zo1 wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Installation is utterly broken and hopeless on Linux. Let's not pretend like it's in any way ready for the general consumer. Including Ubuntu, the "flagship" poster boy for widescale adoption of Linux. We're more likely to see people going back to dumb-terminals with GUIs being streamed to their ChromeOS from a server running linux than we are to see people using Linux.

What part of installation is broken? It's literally a GUI that you can click "continue" on until you get to the pretty looking progress bar.

Application installation is broken. If software isn't hand-curated in the distro's repository and kept up to date by someone, then get ready to set up a dev environment and compile from source. Hopefully you will not break your entire system trying to cater to whims of whatever insane build environment it uses. This includes new versions that no one has got around to packaging yet.

AppImage and Flatpak are making inroads to eliminating this foolishness, but I still routinely run into software that isn't yet on board with that.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#652

Post by garethrowlands »

sgjohnson wrote: post #210
khaledh wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that Windows with all its warts now is still far ahead of the competition in that department (desktop GUI). Whether that's due to monopoly or being actually better, it doesn't matter. The fact is competition is almost non-existent.

In what ways is Windows desktop GUI better than macOS? The only thing Windows has going for itself is backwards compatability.

In my opinion, Window management on Mac is bad compared with everything that isn't Mac. On the other hand, there's lots to like about Macs, so I keep using them.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#653

Post by croes »

bayindirh wrote: post #641

Talking about wonderful backwards compatibility, and then talking inconsistent UI design is kinda ironic though. Because all these older themed windows are using the exact feature you told you love in the opening paragraphs of the piece: "Backwards compatibility". So, why Microsoft shouldn't use the exact feature they have built so painstakingly? Also, forcing these older UI toolkits to render the same as the latest…

It's one thing to keep old the old API for backwards compatibility it's another to lack a new API for the new UI.

>The API to render a Windows 11 native context menu does not exist.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#654

Post by stonemetal12 »

rbut wrote: post #56

Talking about dark patterns, here are a couple I've noticed. In Windows, I'm very careful about NOT signing in to anything Microsoft, unless I have to. I make sure I use a local administrator account instead of a Microsoft account. Yesterday I had to open Microsoft Edge for something that would only work in Edge, and lo-and-behold, Microsoft had taken my Xbox Game Pass sign-in and applied to Edge, then informed me th…

Maybe I am being silly about it but Minecraft just migrated from mojang accounts to MS accounts. I am worried they are going to pull these sort of hijinks with that.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#655

Post by jenscow »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #84

I’m not a Windows user and I know this is not a popular opinion, but… I really wish Windows 8 had been better received. Sure it was a huge break from Win<8. But it was a bold, thoughtful and thorough one, with a lot of potential. Refining Metro but ultimately sticking to its core ideas would almost certainly have produced a better Windows experience overall than the basically incoherent changes which followed.

Well, you're right about one thing,

> I know this is not a popular opinion

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#656

Post by hutzlibu »

spaniard89277 wrote: post #582
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…

From my POV it has come to a time where the tradeoffs you make switching to Linux (xubuntu in my case) are worth it. A few days ago I had to do some helpdesk for a friend with windows 10. We suspected that one of his three drives failed, and windows just refused to start up, so I wanted to jump into recovery/safe mode and take a look. But for doing so you need to go through a ridiculous lenght rebooting the PC multip…

"If I have to fight with a system more than I fight with linux, with it's drivers issues and the problems that I can't fix without googling as I'm not intimate with the SO, what's the point?"

Linux with universal good drivers, is probably what most of us would want and need.

(except for the lucky few, who never had an issue)

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#657

Post by alternatetwo »

charles_f wrote: post #331
Traster wrote: post #220

The problem I have with windows is two-fold. Firstly, I came to windows before Vista. So I know how powerful the old windows settings/features were. I knew exactly where to access everything I wanted. I have a feeling this is probably the same for many people from all sorts of backgrounds (Personally, I experimented with Apple - Hello touchbar!). But the second issue is the new damn UIs aren't exhasutive! THey're a t…

> If you're going to ship a product that refers me back to the old UI for half the stuff I'm interested in... just don't ship the new UI. That's exactly the problem of each iteration on Windows. New overlay on top of the old one that always misses the one thing you need, and you either get lucky and find the right menu right away to get to the old screen that gives you what you want, or you get into hell. The new net…

I put a shortcut for specifically that screen on my desktop ... and ClassicShell makes it easy to open the original control panel.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#658

Post by zerkten »

rbut wrote: post #56

Talking about dark patterns, here are a couple I've noticed. In Windows, I'm very careful about NOT signing in to anything Microsoft, unless I have to. I make sure I use a local administrator account instead of a Microsoft account. Yesterday I had to open Microsoft Edge for something that would only work in Edge, and lo-and-behold, Microsoft had taken my Xbox Game Pass sign-in and applied to Edge, then informed me th…

It gets more complicated than that. Imagine having to sign into the machine with a work (AAD) account. Potentially, your machine can be taken over and bound to AAD policies operated by IT at the same time it's connected to a personal account. Very messy.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#659

Post by bayindirh »

croes wrote: post #653
bayindirh wrote: post #641

Talking about wonderful backwards compatibility, and then talking inconsistent UI design is kinda ironic though. Because all these older themed windows are using the exact feature you told you love in the opening paragraphs of the piece: "Backwards compatibility". So, why Microsoft shouldn't use the exact feature they have built so painstakingly? Also, forcing these older UI toolkits to render the same as the latest…

It's one thing to keep old the old API for backwards compatibility it's another to lack a new API for the new UI. >The API to render a Windows 11 native context menu does not exist.

My comment was not about that. That lack of API situation is unacceptable from my point of view, but I'm not terribly surprised about that when we're talking about Microsoft.

My comment was about the paragraph starting with:

There’s a meme about how there are at least ten different design conventions in Windows 11 and it’s very much “in your face” once you start using Windows 11 on the daily.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#660

Post by suby »

derac wrote: post #541
technobabbler wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this. Macos is my daily driver and it does a good job of staying out of my way. I recently got a windows pc just for gaming, and god DAMN it's annoying. Even worse than Vista. Nothing is consistent anymore and everything is always trying to grab my attention for irrelevant shit. What the hell happened :/

As a long time Windows user, I highly recommend using this to turn off the useless crap. https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-Script

In my experience, messing with Windows in this manner (especially with an unmaintained script as this one is) results in a broken installation after enough updates. I just let my Windows partition do whatever the hell it wants, and keep my use of it to absolutely minimal levels.
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