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Windows needs a change in priorities

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Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#801

Post by baal80spam »

tonguez wrote: post #716
pie_flavor wrote: post #684

I am the most ardent Windows evangelist I know. I have spent so much time learning Windows's APIs and idiosyncrasies because they're just so cool. I love the APIs, I love the system, I love the software and I love the way everything Just Works. And I'm not installing this shit. It's a skin. It's Windows 10, but retvrned to rounded corners, and with a tenth of the customizability. It's an attempt to put Mac in Windows…

“I love [Windows]… I love the way everything Just Works.” Stopped reading here.

It IS true, though.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#802

Post by adhesive_wombat »

_dain_ wrote: post #601
joe_the_user wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like being in an abusive relationship. Indeed, another way it's like an abusive relationship is people's reluctance to leave despite all they've experienced. I hear all the horror stories and then say "I've been using for ten years and it works well" and I get "oh, but I don't want to have to fiddle with things" (after discussions of how hard Windows is to get to do things). Linux has glitches but Microsoft mani…

I've seen so many people say things like: "Windows is fine, all you have to do is [gigantic list of obscure settings changes, registry edits, external freeware programs] to turn off the telemetry!" It will eventually get to the point where it will take more settings-twiddling to make Windows do what you actually want than Linux does.

I used an Ubuntu 21.10 installer recently, it was completely uneventful to set up with the default side-by-side configuration and actually easier than the Windows one (which must create a Windows account, you can then disconnect this from your local account later with a magic settings dance).

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#803

Post by adhesive_wombat »

the_snooze wrote: post #713
goosedragons wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PDFs? Unless participants need to edit the actual slides themselves what's wrong with PDFs? Most half decent PDF readers these days have a presentation mode where it goes full screen and arrow keys page through. Yes, you lose swoopy animations, sound effects and video but that's arguably a plus. And participants can read the slides on a wider range of devices with little hassle. Your speaker notes can stay with whate…

My government funding overlords require me to send them PPTXs and DOCXs. And MS Teams on Linux only supports full-screen sharing, not window-specific sharing, so I can't do presenter view on my screen and slides-only on the call. I feel a lot of responses here are missing the point. Linux doesn't do what I need it to do with respect to the established MS Office norms I have to conform to. Linux is a bad tool for my r…

While I'm sympathetic to this because it's, well, simply true for many people, I think it's always important to bear in mind that

> Linux doesn't do what I need it to do with respect to the established MS Office norms I have to conform to.

Is an entirely deliberate outcome that Microsoft has pushed hard for over decades (as you'd expect, since losing that monopoly is an existential threat to them).

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#804

Post by slaymaker1907 »

ripley12 wrote: post #231
slaymaker1907 wrote: post #206

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I really don't care that much about UI visual consistency so long as it doesn't make the application confusing (i.e. not underlining hyperlinks or something). However, stuff like tasks on startup should be managed in one location that is easy to find.

> stuff like tasks on startup should be managed in one location that is easy to find Task Manager's Startup tab?

It doesn't show everything there. For example, it doesn't show Steam or Discord on my machine at all. There are many ways of implementing startup tasks on Windows.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#805

Post by adhesive_wombat »

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…

Even on Linux, when I use the Teams Electron program (app? website in a dress?), it comes up in the PulseAudio mixer as Skype.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#806

Post by goosedragons »

dehrmann wrote: post #715
smackeyacky wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's true anymore. Gnome with two tweaks (put the min/max buttons back on the window header and move the main menu to the bottom of the screen so it works like the old win 10 task bar) and it's streets ahead of Windows 11. It's a great blessing in disguise when Microsoft decide your old laptop won't support Windows 11.

The article mentioned all the UI generations you can find in Windows. Linux is even worse. Once you leave the menus your desktop environment provides, it becomes a design free for all. Sometimes you'll see UI styles from another environment (run Kompare in Gnome), sometimes you get ancient X UIs.

If GNOME bundled Kompare or other KDE programs you might have a point. You wouldn't blame Apple for the look of LibreOffice on macOS so why blame GNOME for the non-GNOME programs?

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#807

Post by bigmadwolf »

the_snooze wrote: post #713
goosedragons wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PDFs? Unless participants need to edit the actual slides themselves what's wrong with PDFs? Most half decent PDF readers these days have a presentation mode where it goes full screen and arrow keys page through. Yes, you lose swoopy animations, sound effects and video but that's arguably a plus. And participants can read the slides on a wider range of devices with little hassle. Your speaker notes can stay with whate…

My government funding overlords require me to send them PPTXs and DOCXs. And MS Teams on Linux only supports full-screen sharing, not window-specific sharing, so I can't do presenter view on my screen and slides-only on the call. I feel a lot of responses here are missing the point. Linux doesn't do what I need it to do with respect to the established MS Office norms I have to conform to. Linux is a bad tool for my r…

I have no idea why the Linux Teams application is so limited. Instead on Linux to get the missing features you can run browser based teams in Chrome or Edge. It supports window specific sharing. Can also do blurred and virtual webcam backgrounds (but does not support custom virtual background).

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#808

Post by Zopieux »

hutzlibu wrote: post #656
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…

"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)

Are you complaining about missing drivers in Linux? For the life of me, I never had to install any particular driver since like 2010 on both laptops and workstations. Not even for printers.

Specialized audio/video equipment? Probably, and of course the vendor will only provide them for Windows.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#809

Post by jazzfool »

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…

No, this is a non-problem. If Microsoft stuck with Win32, just like how Apple stuck with Cocoa, this wouldn't be an issue.

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#810

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

digisign wrote: post #799
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #781

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This reads like a comment from Slashdot, circa '97 Sadly, while some parts of the Linux Desktop have come a long way since the 90s, many others have not. > If you have a "toxic" relationship with inept/malicious application software, break ties with it now just as you should from Microsoft. Presumably people use software to do something , and many times there simply isn't alternative software that does what you wan…

This describes Windows as well though, just read all the complaints from the original article and thread. Sadly there is no decent OS any longer, they all had/have their flaws and now they are being dumbed down and control taken away.

You'll find no argument from me on that score. It's just a matter of which is the least suck for any given person's needs at this point.
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