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Microsoft makes its case for Windows 10

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Re: Microsoft makes its case for Windows 10

#31

Post by YorkianTones »

taylorlapeyre wrote: post #6

Until Windows supports and supplies bash + the gnu core utils by default, they will have a hard time getting me to switch.

Bash scripts run in Powershell. We have hundreds of bash scripts for infrastructure build/deploy/etc. and they are cross-platform. On windows we execute them in Powershell. Powershell's been around for a decade and runs on XP and above (edit: and ships with Windows, I think Win7 and above).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_PowerShell

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1098786/run-bash-script-f...

Re: Microsoft makes its case for Windows 10

#32

Post by jay_kyburz »

BF179580656B wrote: post #16
ams6110 wrote: post #5

I just can't imagine ever going back to Windows.

I guess you lack imagination.

A few months ago I bought a surface 3 pro for testing. For the first week or so I was quite impressed by the metro stuff. Looks nice, works well with touch.

I was very disappointed that there are no metro interfaces for browsing files or basic things like looking at a text file.

Its really disappointing to have to drop down into the old, messy, ugly windows.

Metro is just not finished and its a shame.

Re: Microsoft makes its case for Windows 10

#33

Post by ploxiln »

zaroth wrote: post #21

Every time I sit down in front of Win8 I feel like my head is going to explode. Earlier this evening I was on the phone trying to walk a tech-challenged colleague through removing an existing account in 'Mail'. He had switched mail clients, and the new client would work once and then fail for hours, and then work once, etc. It hit me that Windows 'Mail' was trying to login with an old password, and must be causing hi…

Microsoft is following the popular trends. The "other major desktop OS", Mac OS X, is similarly bad. What used to be the default desktop for most linux distros, Gnome, is also going this way.

Lots of people love it. They say "computers shouldn't bother me with details, they should just work". They say "if I should be doing something, like backing up or managing settings, the computer should do it automatically". Even technical people say this, and I think it's a fair and realistic way to portray their opinion.

The only place you can hide from this trend is one of the full-manual linux distros (or bsd). I've used them for many years, I've worked on linux kernel drivers, I do dev-ops stuff, so of course I would hate this "make it easier" trend. But I feel that I am qualified to say that trying so hard to make things easy and automatic, while also keeping up with absurdly fast changes in GUI fashion, makes things less reliable and less fixable (and thus damn frustrating).

Things are more and more "designed", more and more "streamlined" and "optimized for user experience", and people seem to get the impression that the results are good, but in practice common people still don't really know how to even use the interface. I can figure out pretty quickly what you can click and what you can scroll, but the common user can't! and I don't prefer these slick new information-starved whitespace-fat interfaces. I guess they're just for demos, and their own designers.

Re: Microsoft makes its case for Windows 10

#34

Post by taspeotis »

YorkianTones wrote: post #31
taylorlapeyre wrote: post #6

Until Windows supports and supplies bash + the gnu core utils by default, they will have a hard time getting me to switch.

Bash scripts run in Powershell. We have hundreds of bash scripts for infrastructure build/deploy/etc. and they are cross-platform. On windows we execute them in Powershell. Powershell's been around for a decade and runs on XP and above (edit: and ships with Windows, I think Win7 and above). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_PowerShell http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1098786/run-bash-script-f...

> Bash scripts run in Powershell

...if you install Bash [1] so PowerShell can execute it. In much the same way that batch files can call Bash, or Windows Explorer can if you double click on it.

> A caveat to the accepted answer is that sh is not included in vanilla Powershell. I had to install Git, which optionally adds some UNIX tools to the PATH in Powershell, sh.exe being one of them.

> Note: sh.exe or another *nix shell must be associated with the .sh extension.

[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1098786/run-bash-script-f...

Re: Microsoft makes its case for Windows 10

#36

Post by nycticorax »

taylorlapeyre wrote: post #6

Until Windows supports and supplies bash + the gnu core utils by default, they will have a hard time getting me to switch.

If you find yourself using Windows from time to time, you might try Cmder: http://gooseberrycreative.com/cmder/. It's currently my favorite Unix-like shell on Windows. I've used cygwin and Hamilton C Shell in the past, but Cmder offers, among other things, a console emulator (ConEmu, I gather) that is much better than the default Windows console emulator.

Re: Microsoft makes its case for Windows 10

#37

Post by [deleted] »

zaroth wrote: post #29
sosuke wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deleting a Mail account was very painful, but so far it has been the only painful part of 8.1 I've run into.

I guess I got lucky with that one, right? I mean, who would think to go into the account settings and scroll to the bottom of a side-panel with no scroll bars to find a button called 'Remove Account'? Even the videos I was finding on YouTube were showing a way to get a 'Delete' button to show up in the Account list somehow. I mean, imagine, I have to search on YouTube for a video describing how to delete a mail accou…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft makes its case for Windows 10

#38

Post by WalterGR »

zaroth wrote: post #21

Every time I sit down in front of Win8 I feel like my head is going to explode. Earlier this evening I was on the phone trying to walk a tech-challenged colleague through removing an existing account in 'Mail'. He had switched mail clients, and the new client would work once and then fail for hours, and then work once, etc. It hit me that Windows 'Mail' was trying to login with an old password, and must be causing hi…

     Every time I sit down in front of Win8 I feel like my head is going to explode.
I use Windows 8 at work. I power it on, dismiss the new 'start screen', and from that point on it's almost EXACTLY like every version of Windows that came before it.

Look: you don't like Metro apps? Then don't use them.

As it stands, your problems - and the problems described by every other person on HN who has had their good sense similarly assaulted by Windows 8 - are entirely self-inflicted.

You have a choice and you choose to stick with what brings you displeasure.

Re: Microsoft makes its case for Windows 10

#39

Post by zaroth »

WalterGR wrote: post #38
zaroth wrote: post #21

Every time I sit down in front of Win8 I feel like my head is going to explode. Earlier this evening I was on the phone trying to walk a tech-challenged colleague through removing an existing account in 'Mail'. He had switched mail clients, and the new client would work once and then fail for hours, and then work once, etc. It hit me that Windows 'Mail' was trying to login with an old password, and must be causing hi…

Every time I sit down in front of Win8 I feel like my head is going to explode. I use Windows 8 at work. I power it on, dismiss the new 'start screen', and from that point on it's almost EXACTLY like every version of Windows that came before it. Look: you don't like Metro apps? Then don't use them. As it stands, your problems - and the problems described by every other person on HN who has had their good sense simila…

For now I just avoid it. I don't use a Win8 machine myself, so I have never had the cause to modify one back to Win7 behavior. But the Win8 machines I have had to use seem to push you back into Metro no matter how often you try to Win-D out of it, e.g. like the Network Settings example I got down-voted for below.

Re: Microsoft makes its case for Windows 10

#40

Post by Goronmon »

WalterGR wrote: post #38
zaroth wrote: post #21

Every time I sit down in front of Win8 I feel like my head is going to explode. Earlier this evening I was on the phone trying to walk a tech-challenged colleague through removing an existing account in 'Mail'. He had switched mail clients, and the new client would work once and then fail for hours, and then work once, etc. It hit me that Windows 'Mail' was trying to login with an old password, and must be causing hi…

Every time I sit down in front of Win8 I feel like my head is going to explode. I use Windows 8 at work. I power it on, dismiss the new 'start screen', and from that point on it's almost EXACTLY like every version of Windows that came before it. Look: you don't like Metro apps? Then don't use them. As it stands, your problems - and the problems described by every other person on HN who has had their good sense simila…

Yeah, it's funny. I use Win7 for work and Win8 on my home computers. I don't even really notice the difference anymore. 99% of the time I'm starting a program with something on the Taskbar or "Windows Key + 'chr'" or "Windows Key + 'visua'". And that never changes.

I mean, I get there are scenarios where some people get frustrated about some default behavior, but I run into something like that once or twice a year, and the rest is smooth sailing.

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