Windows needs a change in priorities • Hacker News Board

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#881

Post by CRConrad » Thu, Mar 31, 2022, 11:50 PM UTC

goosedragons wrote: post #806

dehrmann wrote: post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The GP wasn't blaming Gnome, they were complaining about the Linux GUI desktop in general. Running a KDE app on Gnome was just an example; they could just as well have mentioned the opposite and still not be "complaining about KDE ".

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#882

Post by CRConrad » Thu, Mar 31, 2022, 11:59 PM UTC

wanda wrote: post #708

wanda wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no side taskbar This is literally the first thing I do on a fresh install. What the hell were they thinking > start menu further ruined but whyyyyyyyyyyyy I honestly never had a problem with Microsoft Windows over its UI decisions until Windows 8. Windows up to and including Windows 7 were actually ok, because you could put the start menu on the side, switch to classic UI, turn off the graphical embellishments that…

Errata: Windows 8 became very tabletified, but with options... should read: Windows 8 became very tabletified, but without options...

Dammit, I was just going to reply to your GP comment and ask how one switches on the classic UI! :-(

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#883

Post by CRConrad » Fri, Apr 01, 2022, 12:13 AM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #226

dend wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, but you see - there is a difference in how theming works in Windows 11, in that it's different from the high-contrast mode. So, you can get a control that swaps the theme to high-contrast (you need to use the native Windows API for that), but you can't get one that works with the Windows 11 style of dark theme out-of-the-box without re-writing it from zero.

In other words, they decided to rewrite the theme stuff while neglecting to realise that there's existing code (which they mostly broke around the time of Win8 by removing the Appearance control panel...) that would do what they wanted. I'm in agreement with the others here that Windows 2000 was probably the peak of consistent UI in Windows. XP didn't really regress but added bitmap-style skinning to the elements, an…

> I'm in agreement with the others here that Windows 2000 was probably the peak of consistent UI in Windows. XP didn't really regress but added bitmap-style skinning to the elements, and up until 7 the Windows Classic theme was fully customisable. In Win8 they removed that, and it's been a clear downhill from there.

I agree almost, but not quite 100% with that. My tiny disagreement: The decline set in a bit earlier, not after but some time in the W7 era: Up until some point you could set window border width to 0 in the Appearance control panel applet; after that this input field was apparently made read-only for the user. For a while after that you could "hack" that by editing a Registry value, but AFAICR they disabled that, too. (Or rather, if not exactly disabled Registry editing, made the display driver ignore it.)

Re: Windows needs a change in priorities

#884

Post by stuffbyspencer » Mon, Apr 04, 2022, 8:38 AM UTC

phendrenad2 wrote: post #856

stuffbyspencer wrote: post #692

Hot Take that no doubt will meet a lot of doubt: I would make a prediction that Window's next OS, is going to be semi-Linux based. Imagine Windows doing to their OS the way they did with their browser, forking opensource code and rebranding it as their own. I could see them deciding to take some flavor of Linux (or maybe even something esoteric like Google's Fuchsia), and just slapping on their bloat & spyware. I don…

> Hot Take that no doubt will meet a lot of doubt That's neither a hot take nor a new one. People have been predicting it since the 1900s. If anything, more people believe it than doubt it. But sadly, after making these predictions, and being proven wrong, year after year, no one sits down and asks why it didn't happen. But I did. So let me try to explain. The short version is: "The Linux kernel licensing model is ho…

I'm not familiar with how Google does it with Android & Chromebooks, do you have a similar level of understanding there? Your explanation was very good, thank you for that information. I'm now wondering if Google is just small enough (with their OS operations) that they don't face these issues, or if they do something different.