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Hate is a strong word, but I don't like Windows 11

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Re: Hate is a strong word, but I don't like Windows 11

#41

Post by Zardoz84 »

svrtknst wrote: post #8

I'm not being factious, but is there any Linux distro with a desktop experience that matches Windows and macos? Like, yes, I know there are many flaws with both. A lot of sound, technical issues with windows and macos. A slew of UX ones as well. But despite W11 carrying around remnants of Windows 98 still, both of those OSes _feel nice_. Multiple desktops work well, nice gestures, simple installers and applications.…

KDE/Plasma you only need to change the default behaviour of the mouse selection and you will have a better Windows like experience out of the box.

Re: Hate is a strong word, but I don't like Windows 11

#42

Post by cogman10 »

snailmailman wrote: post #17
svrtknst wrote: post #8

I'm not being factious, but is there any Linux distro with a desktop experience that matches Windows and macos? Like, yes, I know there are many flaws with both. A lot of sound, technical issues with windows and macos. A slew of UX ones as well. But despite W11 carrying around remnants of Windows 98 still, both of those OSes _feel nice_. Multiple desktops work well, nice gestures, simple installers and applications.…

The KDE plasma UI feels like all the best parts of windows 10 to me. The default taskbar+clock+system tray+start menu UI feels exactly like windows 10 to me. But you can also customize it very easily. The settings menu feels a bit more like MacOS than windows’ control panel though. Several linux distros use that UI. Im on NixOS but i probably wouldn’t recommend that as a starting place. I’ve used bazzite and it worke…

Yup, Plasma has also gotten really good. It started to get really good with 5 and has polished like crazy with 6. It's defaults are now pretty close to perfect out of the box for me as a long time windows user.

I'd say it's close to the windows 7 or 10 experience. But without any of the clutter that has crept in.

Re: Hate is a strong word, but I don't like Windows 11

#43

Post by p_ing »

anonymars wrote: post #12
lousken wrote: post #7

Hate is a weak word, basic stuff like notepad, snipping tool or terminal don't even work today https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/windows-...

My most recent astonishment was they've shoved copilot into notepad. Why did they get rid of Wordpad and ruin notepad again? It's like they've forgotten the entire purpose of Task Manager, Notepad, etc. Then again (gestures at World Economic Forum today)...feels like I'm mainlining crazy pills these days.

The purpose of Notepad, for Microsoft, is that it is an experimental playground, and always has been.

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180521-00/?p=98...

Re: Hate is a strong word, but I don't like Windows 11

#44

Post by mmmpetrichor »

svrtknst wrote: post #8

I'm not being factious, but is there any Linux distro with a desktop experience that matches Windows and macos? Like, yes, I know there are many flaws with both. A lot of sound, technical issues with windows and macos. A slew of UX ones as well. But despite W11 carrying around remnants of Windows 98 still, both of those OSes _feel nice_. Multiple desktops work well, nice gestures, simple installers and applications.…

I felt the same way for a long time. I switched to linux Mint with cinnamon last september because I'd had enough of windows 11 and feel completely at home on this desktop. I still have to boot windows to play some VR games, unfortunately, but otherwise I'd never touch windows again or miss it.

Re: Hate is a strong word, but I don't like Windows 11

#45

Post by greenavocado »

yonatan8070 wrote: post #37
greenavocado wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AppImage is the clear winner on the Linux desktop for things that aren't in the repos or for users that are unwilling to engage with apt too much. AppImage provides a macOS like Application experience. Flatpak is on life support; there isn't much going on there but it still works.

> Flatpak is on life support; there isn't much going on there but it still works. Since when is Flatpak on life support? Everybody (except Ubuntu) is pushing for it, from the regular desktop distros like Feodra all the way to image based distros like KDE Linux and Fedora Silverblue.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44068400

https://www.osnews.com/story/142467/flatpak-not-being-active...

Re: Hate is a strong word, but I don't like Windows 11

#46

Post by tonymet »

> why is the UI so slow / explorer slow / bluetooth slow

this is a legitimate complaint, but I see latency absolutely everywhere. my iPhone 17 Pro dropped frames out of the box . now 3/4 unlocks drops frames.

I'm not defending Windows, it's obviously in decline -- but trying to identify root cause. There used to be curmudgeon engineers on staff who would berate team members over blocked UIs, dropped frames, input latency over 30ms . Dave Cutler made a rubber stamp that rejected (then paper) code reviews with "Size is the Goal". That culture has retired.

Web-dev's design interactions targeting 500-2000ms, so to them everything on the OS looks fast . Adding 150ms to right-click is unnoticeable . Like 15kHz audio to a boomer or purple to the color blind .

It's easy to beat up on MS, because most open-source devs have despised them. But Microsoft had a very high bar for engineering until about 10 years ago ( you may laugh, but remember they were writing OS's that last 40+ years) . Apple had an extremely high bar until about 5 years ago.

This isn't just one bad product, but an entire industry lowering its standards.

Re: Hate is a strong word, but I don't like Windows 11

#47

Post by volkercraig »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #32

> Since I already committed to ditching my partner in favor of a more attractive ex… This was a funny sentence to read, as my first thought as I started the article was “Windows users are starting to remind me of people stuck in cycles of abusive relationships.” Windows has been in a cycle of abusively bad releases followed by sheepish "sorry, we learned our lesson" releases for nearly thirty years. What is the autho…

Don't get me wrong, If hating Microslop was an Olympic sport I'd be on the podium every 4 years, but Win 95, XP, and 7 were functional, usable and stable OS's. 8 got a lot of flak for it's horrible UI changes, but under the hood it was actually a big improvement to 7.

It's been steadily downhill since 7 though. Integration of spyware got it's foothold in 8 and now that we are at 11, you've got a completely spyware ridden OS, and then on top of that, basic things like context menus, audio drivers, screenshot tools, and connecting monitors to laptops is broken.

Many of these issues were ironically the same issues that stopped me from running Ubuntu Dapper Drake when I first installed it. It's just an unacceptably bad product from Microsoft, and if businesses weren't vendor locked (specifically the business I work for) I'd never even look at it, much like I don't look at Lotus or Corel products.

Re: Hate is a strong word, but I don't like Windows 11

#49

Post by traceroute66 »

einr wrote: post #31
svrtknst wrote: post #8

I'm not being factious, but is there any Linux distro with a desktop experience that matches Windows and macos? Like, yes, I know there are many flaws with both. A lot of sound, technical issues with windows and macos. A slew of UX ones as well. But despite W11 carrying around remnants of Windows 98 still, both of those OSes _feel nice_. Multiple desktops work well, nice gestures, simple installers and applications.…

This is the same stuff that comes up every time in these threads, and at some point, you have to consider that maybe you're holding it wrong. For example: "installing programs is a mix of flatpaks, APKs, and building from source"? Like Windows and macOS aren't hellish wastelands of unreliable and inconsistent installations? Really? Microsoft Store? .msi? Custom .exe installer that litters random junk in inscrutable p…

> Or, macOS: Is it a .dmg with an .app that you drag to Applications?

   - In 98% of cases it is a .dmg with .app ... so drag and drop or App Store install.
   - 1% of cases it is a standard installer and that is mostly because the developer is old-school and too lazy to make a .app (e.g. here's looking at you Microsoft)
   - The remaining 1% (Homebrew/Macports) is really for the power-user, and in most cases you can just download a pre-compiled mac binary from the developers Github anyway.
For example I have never used Homebrew/Macports because my 1% power-user software has been available through the developer's Github (e.g. `bazel` etc. all publish mac release binaries )

> Meanwhile, 99% of my Linux software is "apt install foo" and that's it.

But `apt install foo` is a synonym for "custom installer that does who knows what" and/or "tar.gz with random crap in it"

Why ?

Your average user will blindly follow `trust me, sudo curl foo | bash` ...

And your average user is unlikely to look at the apt package build rules and/or source and/or dependency list and in the majority of cases will just answer `Y` to any questions from `apt`.

Re: Hate is a strong word, but I don't like Windows 11

#50

Post by cogman10 »

jasode wrote: post #21
bigyabai wrote: post #2

> However, there are some programs I use daily (like Scrivener) and are essential to me 2026, the killer app for many Windows users is now a text editor that has ran in Wine since 2012. We're making good progress, folks!

>2026, the killer app for many Windows users is now a text editor that has ran in Wine since 2012. Your comment is a little confusing since the author already mentioned Wine with the following sentence that's after the one you quoted: >"Using Wine is an option... well. Buggy option." Were you trying to disagree with the author and say it's not actually buggy?

Wine has gotten very good over the years.

But I think we have to recognize that it has had a pretty large usability issue. There are several programs, like winetricks, that have existed because of how hard it can be to get things setup to work well with random bits of software.

It's been a far cry from the windows or mac experience of double clicking on an installer and having everything just work. Though it's pretty close to that now.

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