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Microsoft blocks even more customization apps in Windows 11 version 24H2

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Re: Microsoft blocks even more customization apps in Windows 11 version 24H2

#111

Post by theodric »

cm2187 wrote: post #88
poisonborz wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judging by replies here should really be a "why are you still on windows" askHN. Besides other reasons here, when you have decades of experience on how things work, hundreds of little utils and tools... and you want to finally concentrate more on productive work in your life and not start the whole hurdle anew. Maybe if a perfect, seamless VM environment would exist, but that still leaves the HW problems.

I think I would miss how seamless is RDP too. I have a lots of VMs at home (simplifies backups, or allows to have a machine behind a VPN without affecting connectivity of the main machines).

RDP is excellent, but xrdp[1] works pretty well (although most of the time I stick to SSH sessions and don't bother with remote GUI)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xrdp

Re: Microsoft blocks even more customization apps in Windows 11 version 24H2

#112

Post by FdbkHb »

fieryskiff12 wrote: post #84
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #2

Extract from Adventures in application compatibility: The case of the jump into the middle of an instruction from nowhere by Raymond Chen. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20230324-00/?p=10... > What happened is that we recently made changes to this internal function, and apparently those changes were enough to cause the patcher to go haywire. This is unfortunately a regular occurrence: Whenever a new build…

and from my experience, explorer can go haywire with certain file types (eg.: Opus) and merely sleeping and starting the machine again, after a couple of uses. And some windows machines from the windows 7 era can freeze program by program after some days just being on. On windows 10 you can replicate it by just pulling outages until you see this effect, or someing worse.

The opus issue is truly unforgivable. The only way to reasonably browse folders that contain opus files for me has been to change the view to a list type, without any metadata detail, then go to the options in explorer to apply that view to all folders of the same type (explorer will automatically pick a set of configurations that changes depending on file type contained in a folder. In this case, it's the "music" type if it detects a majority of audio files).

The issue is caused by the metadata parser and since it doesn't get prompted if you don't use a detailed column view you don't hit the issue that way. Of course, this represents a loss in functionality since you won't be able to sort things by metadata columns like artists/composer/album title etc.

Re: Microsoft blocks even more customization apps in Windows 11 version 24H2

#113

Post by lolc »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #96
Springtime wrote: post #39

Microsoft still haven't implemented a native vertical taskbar after all the years of it being in the top voted[1] request (part of the request to move to any side of the screen) and the fact it's been part of Windows for like 15 years. It's a dealbreaker tbh. Third-party tools that restored the W10 taskbar in W11 allowed users to continue having a taskbar that's usable for them yet the latest W11 betas show they're r…

Funny, how many GNU/Linux desktop environments allow you to do that easily, while being developed by a handful of people, while MS has probably hordes of people working on the UI of Windows. They just don't seem to get it or have complelety incapable UI/UX designers or something.

Every configuration option is a support burden. I say tihs as a KDE user who installed Gnome for the parents.

Re: Microsoft blocks even more customization apps in Windows 11 version 24H2

#114

Post by FdbkHb »

Krasnol wrote: post #22

> Like in the case of StartAllBack, you can bypass the block by simply renaming the executable to something else. If you want to upgrade to a newer build, delete the app, update your system, and then launch it using a renamed executable. This is ridiculous. I assume they just want to prevent average Joanne to use the tool, but she wouldn't do it either way or even get the idea to look for it. I mean...there are still…

>So what's the point?

The point is if it breaks after an update you have to get into windows safe mode to unbreak your system if ExplorerPatcher causes an explorer crash loop (which it did in the past after windows updates ran). Even not-too-average Joe might get stumped by this and not immediately know what to do. The process of getting into safe mode is very cumbersome in itself if you need to do it from a system that boots into the desktop without any issue (windows doesn't consider the explorer crashing infinitely to be an issue): you need to forcefully shut down your computer three times /during the boot process of windows/ so that windows thinks "there's an issue" and gets you into the Recovery mode.

It's not like during Windows 7 and older releases where you only needed to press the F8 key to get a menu for safe mode boot. Anything that forces you to attempt to get into safe mode to fix is thoroughly undesirable and unfun to experience.

Re: Microsoft blocks even more customization apps in Windows 11 version 24H2

#116

Post by zelphirkalt »

lolc wrote: post #113
zelphirkalt wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, how many GNU/Linux desktop environments allow you to do that easily, while being developed by a handful of people, while MS has probably hordes of people working on the UI of Windows. They just don't seem to get it or have complelety incapable UI/UX designers or something.

Every configuration option is a support burden. I say tihs as a KDE user who installed Gnome for the parents.

So how come, that far fewer people can role out such a feature easily, while MS cannot? "No need to offer support." I hear you say, but is that really it? If the feature just works well, because it has been developed well, and does not cause many if any support cases, then that point would be invalid. Lets take for example XFCE panels. I can stick them wherever I like. If there is a problem, then it is with panels themselves, not with their position. And for things like deskbar mode I can write a wiki article and point people to that.

I think support shouldn't be such an issue, if things are well done. And of course you can always have less-power users, who will have some issue. But they will have issues anyway, if not with a deskbar kind of thing, then with some other thing. Should MS therefore strip their OS of all features? It seems ridiculous. Why not release a "Windows for computer illiterate" version then and keep a capable version?

Re: Microsoft blocks even more customization apps in Windows 11 version 24H2

#117

Post by felsokning »

FdbkHb wrote: post #105
chmod775 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm too old, but since when is simply using another software as opposed to built-ins considered modding? Most of these seem like replacements to me. If doing that little is now considered "modding" a desktop OS, we've fucked up somewhere. Even phone OSes like Android let you download replacements of built-ins (such as another launcher, file manager, photo app) right from their app store.

> Maybe I'm too old, but since when is simply using another software as opposed to built-ins considered modding? Most of these seem like replacements to me. ExplorerPatcher /is/ modding. It's not killing explorer.exe and launching another UI that is independent from the os like, say, what blackbox for windows or litestep did. It's patching running executables in memory in a way that could break whenever any data stru…

> You surely don't expect this to survive all future refactorings and cleanups?

The Win10 bar code has been there, since October 2021, though? I don't know how frequent refactorings are (at M$FT) but given it's been there for nigh three years, I don't see how that's a relevant factor.

Even _if_ it were refactored (and/or cleaned-up), it wouldn't be omitted from the release notes, right?

Unless it's on the roadmap _for_ cleanup, this change to try to "disallow" the program, purely based on the program name and no other identifiers, doesn't give me (don't know about anyone else) much faith that removal would either be executed or executed well (e.g.: legacy Win code spaghetti'd to other code that they haven't changed/fixed, yet).

If I were a betting person, new feature 'x' for cloud or advertising purposes would take priority over any modification[s] or clean-up/removal.

In other words, there's no ROI (read: profit) in fixing their technical debt, currently, and there hasn't been for almost three years (if we go with the lifetime of the Win10 bar code existing still in the Win code-base).

Why would that suddenly change?

Re: Microsoft blocks even more customization apps in Windows 11 version 24H2

#118

Post by marginalia_nu »

krimskrams wrote: post #90

After having used Windows for over 20 years (XP to 10), I decided to switch to Linux a year and a half ago and I'm happy for it. The requirement for a Microsoft Account and nonsensical UI changes requiring more clicks to reach the settings I want was annoying but not a deal breaker at first. Microsoft has also been trying to make Windows more like MacOS, or a mobile tablet, since Windows 8 which I don't like. What re…

I don't think it's so much Linux getting better as Windows getting worse. Like even beyond having ads in the start menu and having the default browser open up to a gigantic chumbox, a lot of the things Linux was historically getting crap for like the inconsistent UI elements; that stuff is so much worse on Windows now. Running KDE apps in Gnome or vice versa looks significantly more visually consistent than running Windows apps in Windows.

Re: Microsoft blocks even more customization apps in Windows 11 version 24H2

#119

Post by KronisLV »

ryanjshaw wrote: post #48
iforgotpassword wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that just vscode, that ugly abomination that I've given up trying to configure in a reasonable fashion after like 5 minutes every time I tried it out again? Anyways, I'm on jetbrains these days and never looked back.

Yes, you're right, it's VS Code they're referring to and it's not the same thing. I tried JetBrains Rider and stopped using it after the console window didn't auto scroll as I logged stuff into it - I don't know how something so basic doesn't work properly. I should probably try again, as so many people recommend it that I can only assume I did something wrong to mess up the console. (Edited, I originally misundersto…

> I tried JetBrains Rider and stopped using it after the console window didn't auto scroll as I logged stuff into it - I don't know how something so basic doesn't work properly.

I use JetBrains IDEs as my daily drivers, nowadays they're pretty good and feel more responsive than the previous versions (you can even choose between the older type of UI and something more minimalist).

As for the console, is it possible that you weren't scrolled all the way to the bottom? For example, if you scoll up a bit and want to look at specific lines, the console will append the text to the bottom but won't move your viewport, whereas if you scroll back down to the bottom (or use the button for that), it'll start scrolling automatically again.

Re: Microsoft blocks even more customization apps in Windows 11 version 24H2

#120

Post by probably_jesus »

jiggawatts wrote: post #52
Springtime wrote: post #39

Microsoft still haven't implemented a native vertical taskbar after all the years of it being in the top voted[1] request (part of the request to move to any side of the screen) and the fact it's been part of Windows for like 15 years. It's a dealbreaker tbh. Third-party tools that restored the W10 taskbar in W11 allowed users to continue having a taskbar that's usable for them yet the latest W11 betas show they're r…

It's because the Windows 11 UI was designed by people who've never used anything other that an Apple Mac. Yes, Microsoft hires employees with zero Windows experience to design their operating system. That's why the Windows 11 taskbar has the icons centred -- because Apple OSX does too. That's why there's no way to drag the taskbar around -- because Apple OSX doesn't allow this either. Etc...

Apple and Microsoft are competing on who can make the worst UX in the desktop arena. Window management is so bad in osx and I refuse to pay for add-ons to make things slightly better when Linux and the small galaxy of window managers have been doing it so well, and for free, for literally decades.
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