Windows needs a change in priorities • Hacker News Board

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#761

Post by bruce511 » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 6:16 PM UTC

sgjohnson wrote: post #533

bruce511 wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty big thing. I'm still using programs daily that I acquired in the 90's,some of which was last updated in the 90s. Updating the OS is one thing, there will be change, and none of us likes change, but it doesn't cascade down to having to change every detail of my work flow. So maybe it's the only thing Windows has, but for me anyway it's a pretty big "only".

> That's a pretty big thing. It's also the bane of its existence, because it means that they can NEVER retire anything, because by doing so they would break backwards compatability. And that's actually how we ended up here. They can never get rid of even Win16 GUI (let alone Win32) because it would break shit written for Windows 3.1 (yes, there are still some dialogs in Windows 11 that use Windows 3.1 file select dia…

Actually windows 64 bit won't run 16 bit programs, that part has been gone for a decade or so.

Yes there are probably alternatives, but that's the point, I like the way it's working now - I don't want to find new equivalents and then discover what's missing from them.

But I'm not sure what the existance of win32 has to do with anything - it's not like it stops win64 from working.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#762

Post by wolpoli » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 6:19 PM UTC

wvenable wrote: post #168

Sakos wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I first heard about this, everything that's ever bothered me about the Windows 8-10-11 evolution makes so much more sense. They're turning it into MacOS.

The Macification of Windows has been in progress for years -- and it makes no sense! When Microsoft designed the UI for Windows 95 they did extensive user studies and everything from how the start menu worked and the task bar was carefully figured out. They've spend the last few decades undoing all that work piece by piece until nobody actually knows how to use it anymore.

If anyone is wondering about the user studies that Microsoft did for Windows 95, you can read about it here: https://web.archive.org/web/20060615110538/http://www.acm.or...

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#763

Post by digisign » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 6:20 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #745

digisign wrote: post #714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor security design. App installers should definitely be sandboxed, "sip" or not. Preventing the local admin from making any changes due to lack of that, is fixing the wrong problem. Or perhaps not in a granular enough way.

So it’s “poor security design” when a user with root access specifically disables the security and bad things happen?

Yes, useful and destructive/fatal configuration should be separated.

If you have to remove a load-bearing pillar to install a light-switch, the design is poor, to say the least.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#764

Post by digisign » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 6:39 PM UTC

syshum wrote: post #592

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 dont think it is contempt for the users, It is more that consumers (i.e non-enterprise editions of windows) is the Beta Test group for windows Microsoft has always been, and will always be an enterprise company, they do not care about Consumers, and they do not care about SMB business. they care about Large Enterprise. I have seen it countless times in my career, SMB space and can be complaining up a storm about a…

You've just described the passive side of "contempt."

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#765

Post by ncmncm » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 6:45 PM UTC

unsupp0rted wrote: post #665

ncmncm wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, Apple customers mostly just convince themselves that they must want whatever it is Apple chooses to offer at the moment. This is most easily seen whenever the new version of an Apple product arrives, lacking a feature they had relied on. They immediately set to work persuading themselves they can make do without that.

How can I reply to this? If I agree with you that Apple sucks, then you were right that Apple sucks. If I say most of Apple's design and philosophy decisions are the best option for someone like me, then you were right Apple sucks because I'm trying to convince myself otherwise. The only version of my experience you'd believe is the one you believed already: that Apple sucks.

Well, you're right, as far as that goes. But there's the old T-shirt slogan, "If you can't change your mind, are you sure you still have one?" The processes by which Apple arrives at its feature set and design necessarily differ radically from the process that determines what features any individual needs. So, any overlap (insofar as that differs from what everybody else does) must be largely fortuitous, unless in fact your process is to look at what they offer and choose to want just that. Or, you are just one of the tiny minority where they happen to match by accident.

Clearly almost all Apple fans have to be in the former group. It is just possible you are in the latter, instead.

It is the same, BTW, for political parties.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#766

Post by scarface74 » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 6:45 PM UTC

digisign wrote: post #763

scarface74 wrote: post #745

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it’s “poor security design” when a user with root access specifically disables the security and bad things happen?

Yes, useful and destructive/fatal configuration should be separated. If you have to remove a load-bearing pillar to install a light-switch, the design is poor, to say the least.

There are two separate levels

- root access - doesn’t disable SIP

- Disabling SIP requires you to go through many contortions.

People didn’t need to disable SIP to install Chrome. They were doing it for other reasons.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#767

Post by iforgotpassword » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 6:48 PM UTC

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #751

spaniard89277 wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Try Manjaro with KDE. Manjaro is way better than Ubuntu; KDE is way better than Xfce.

Try debian with i3.

Debian is way better than Manjaro; i3 is way better than KDE.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#768

Post by edgyquant » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 6:48 PM UTC

sandGorgon wrote: post #351

banana_giraffe wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even stuff like WSL is loosing it's shine now for me. I've personally hit a bug on multiple computers that I can reliably repo a blue screen if I attempt to update a specific package. The github bug for this issue last had activity from MS 4 months ago. Kinda makes it hard to take it seriously if such a major blocker is treated with such low priority.

wsl2 has been very very stable for me. in fact, i have spent a lot of time in the last 6 months on wsl2 (FYI - fedora is my main) i really recommend trying out wsl2. you now can install it from the window store.

Yeah I’ve never had issues. I’ve used Linux as a daily driver since Vista came out so wsl has been nice for me. I can finally have a gaming PC that can also serve as a docker server and just generally test my backend on. With that said my two coworkers, who are very much Windows daily driver users, have had nothing but issues. Some times I think my Linux knowledge is what’s helped me here, ironically.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#769

Post by bostonsre » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 6:50 PM 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.

It's not just running a vm on windows. The integration between the two makes it a lot more streamlined than just running something on virtual box. You can do stuff like browse the windows file system from Linux easily and vice versa. You can also run windows executables from inside Linux to do things like write stdout to your windows clipboard by piping it to powershell.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#770

Post by shadowgovt » Mon, Mar 21, 2022, 6:50 PM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #690

konstmonst wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got a Mac at work and I hate it with passion. I now use my own linux Laptop instead. There is no del key, no home, ctrl and alt are swapped in some aplications and not the others. Login screeen does not remember the language and animations come back after every update even when I explicitly disable them. Muscle memory from other 99% computers I use doesn't work and most of the games don't. I feel like mac os is…

> no del key Ctrl+d, like in emacs > no home Ctrl+a. Also: Ctrl+e for end-of-line. Like in emacs. Also Ctrl+fbpn. Works best with CapsLock->Control, which is a native GUI option, not something you have to install/CLI for (linux) or something you have to registry hack (windows). I really miss these on Windows and Linux, though not enough to fight the native layout. It's a rougher fight than you might imagine, though.…

The last time I had to use MacOS regularly, the thing that killed it for me was the lack of a tiling window manager.

I use xmonad in Ubuntu and I haven't dragged a window on my personal laptop in years. Not only was that option missing on MacOS, the underlying OS abstractions actually made it impractical to build the last time I checked; windows were owned by the application, there was no language to move another application's windows except asking the application to move its own, and doing that required the application to be frontmost. So tiling was a context-switch morass and a bad UX.

However, it appears the Accessibility Manager may since have grown enough feature hooks to support what I want, and https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst may do the job. I'll have to test it the next time I have my hands on a MacBook of some flavor.