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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

#91

Post by WorldMaker »

JohnFen wrote: post #86
WorldMaker wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. Though some of that destruction to Notepad isn't just the loss of Wordpad's fault but Microsoft's problems with Notepad++ eating its brand for too many years and making too many "must install" lists. I'm not entirely sure how Copilot integration helps them beat Notepad++, but I suppose that's why I'm not a PM.

Why would they care about Notepad++'s impact, though? Nobody is deciding whether or not to use Windows based on Notepad. For some of us, Notepad was most useful in its original form and Notepad++ was not a good replacement. But at least an earlier, less bad, version of Notepad is still available on Win 11. There's just no icon or link to it, so you have to know it's there. It's C:\Windows\notepad.exe

As someone else who has never particularly liked Notepad++ either, I mostly agree that chasing after it is a mistake, especially this many years after Notepad++'s height in relevancy. Perhaps ironically, many of those same "must install" lists that included Notepad++ have moved on to other tools, one of them being Microsoft's own VSCode. VSCode is a "good, helpful" AI host to sell more AI, so I presume some "AI in Notepad" pressure is "capture the few remaining people not yet installing VSCode out of the box".

> But at least an earlier, less bad, version of Notepad is still available on Win 11. There's just no icon or link to it, so you have to know it's there. It's C:\Windows\notepad.exe

Also, for what it is worth, a new relative to EDIT.COM is now back, in almost its former glory, just not yet installed in every Windows by default: https://github.com/microsoft/edit

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

#92

Post by basch »

WorldMaker wrote: post #88
anonymars wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're a little behind, it's Microsoft 365 Copilot Premium now (They may have turned it into a joke, but that is the truth https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/the-microsoft-365... ) Maybe these days for interviews, instead of calculating how many golf balls fit in a schoolbus, they can calculate how much time, money, intellect, and brand goodwill they've spent renaming Office 365 -> Microsoft 365 -> Microsoft…

Though to be fair I wasn't trying for accuracy, I also included throwback digs from Windows for Workgroups and Microsoft's "Edition" phase. (Windows 98 Second Edition; Windows Millennium Edition; etc.) Particularly because "Edition" will probably come back around and has already partially done so. (Some of the Microsoft 365 nomenclature does refer to the "home edition" versus "work edition", but for now it is still a…

Office and Windows are good words. Copilot is a good word.

Microsoft and 365 are ok.

Microsoft should really be the hidden name like Meta or Alphabet.

Office Copilot is a great name. Of course they didnt use it.

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

#93

Post by daemin »

tonymet wrote: post #46

> 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 lat…

It's because these things aren't priorities for management so they aren't for the engineers, the latest fads like AI are priorities and therefore they get integrated everywhere.

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

#94

Post by anonymars »

WorldMaker wrote: post #88
anonymars wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're a little behind, it's Microsoft 365 Copilot Premium now (They may have turned it into a joke, but that is the truth https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/the-microsoft-365... ) Maybe these days for interviews, instead of calculating how many golf balls fit in a schoolbus, they can calculate how much time, money, intellect, and brand goodwill they've spent renaming Office 365 -> Microsoft 365 -> Microsoft…

Though to be fair I wasn't trying for accuracy, I also included throwback digs from Windows for Workgroups and Microsoft's "Edition" phase. (Windows 98 Second Edition; Windows Millennium Edition; etc.) Particularly because "Edition" will probably come back around and has already partially done so. (Some of the Microsoft 365 nomenclature does refer to the "home edition" versus "work edition", but for now it is still a…

Oh I know, it was tongue-in-cheek in the sense of "it's tough to out-satire these folks"

I'm not sure if they'll manage to top this one ("Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 R2 SP3 Feature Pack") https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/download/details.aspx?id=442...

I might title this piece, "Full STEM without liberal arts"

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

#95

Post by paisawalla »

baby_souffle wrote: post #13
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.…

> Is ther eany OS/desktop where you dont pay the "linux tax" when it comes to how the GUI feels? That'll depend on how much time you want to invest. /r/unixporn has a lot of _beautiful_ looking desktops but almost all of them come with a non-trivial list of configuration files and plugins ... etc. > or have missed a lot of features that commercial OSes have, installing programs is a mix of flatpaks, APKs, and buildin…

> /r/unixporn has a lot of _beautiful_ looking desktops

The emphasis here should be on the word _looking_ instead. A lot of these desktops (majority are hyprland setups) reveal themselves to be superficial jank when you try to do anything remotely commonplace, like connecting to a new wifi network. It's great that windows slide around at 60fps, but if your answer for managing your network is to open the cli, what even is the desktop for?

And I say this as someone who uses Gnome and maintains his own extension forks.

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

#96

Post by cogman10 »

LtWorf wrote: post #89
cogman10 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of that bloat is due to compatibility and the 32bit -> 64bit transition. Linux has suffered from the 32/64 bit problem as well for quite some time. The only difference is because of opensource it's been easier to slowly kill off the 32bit ecosystem. That's not been an option for windows.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the amount of RAM needed.

Absolutely it does, for 2 different reasons.

First up, the nature of dlls is that the same dll for multiple applications gets saved in memory just once. If you have 2 windows applications and one is 32bit and the other 64bit, then both of those applications end up loading up effectively the same dlls, but one is compiled for 64bit apps and the other 32. That nearly doubles the amount of ram needed in a mixed system.

But then there's just the fact that 64bit code by it's nature uses and passes around 64bit pointers everywhere. That's not quite as significant but it does have an effect.

The other part that ends up adding to the memory consumption is from XP on microsoft added compatibility layers. What those effectively did is distribute a different set of dlls based on the application being launched. So now instead of having 1 copy of the dlls like you did with 95, 98 and ME you can end up with potentially 3 or 4 different dlls. And that's ultimately exploded as more versions of windows have been released.

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

#97

Post by basch »

volkercraig wrote: post #47
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 ri…

8 and 8.1 were two full different releases as well. 8.1 was much better than 8.

The Kernel Version Numbers are a better hint at what is going on than the marketing releases.

Windows 2000 NT5, XP NT 5.1

Vista NT6, 7 NT6.1, 8 NT6.2, 8.1 NT6.3

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

#98

Post by timbit42 »

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.…

Zorin OS asks whether you want a Windows-like or MacOS-like desktop during setup.

My top recommendation for a Windows user though is Linux Mint. It's desktop is called Cinnamon and while it doesn't look exactly like any Windows desktop, it's familiar enough that people don't have trouble switching to it. Linux Mint seems to be the, "It Just Works", Linux distro these days.

Beyond that, if you don't mind installing themes, most Linux desktops can be themed to look like whatever version of Windows, MacOS, etc. that you want. Getting the feel can be more difficult. KDE Plasma is very customizable though if you are willing to spend the time.

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

#99

Post by tonymet »

daemin wrote: post #93
tonymet wrote: post #46

> 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 lat…

It's because these things aren't priorities for management so they aren't for the engineers, the latest fads like AI are priorities and therefore they get integrated everywhere.

that's a copout in my opinion. Most of the quality decisions are established by team culture and experience. If a team is full of webdevs, no amount of management investment in performance will make a good app. conversely, a team of high performance members will be able to deliver quality apps despite management's input.

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

#100

Post by bsoles »

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.…

> is there any Linux distro with a desktop experience that matches Windows and macos?

Sure. Ubuntu, for example.

I don't know what people's expectations are in terms of UX & GUIs, but I have been perfectly happy with Ubuntu over the last 10-15 years.

Other than gaming (I am not a gamer) and some specialized applications (Photoshop, etc.), I can always find an application on Ubuntu that worked for me: Libre Office, FreeCAD, KiCAD, IDEs, most programming languages, ...

There is no problem with installing stuff either. In the last 10 years, I did not have to build anything from source and "apt" (or its GUI equivalents) works perfectly fine.

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