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No Start Menu for You

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Re: No Start Menu for You

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Win10 at work and the Calc app lags for like 10s when opening before I can type in it. I firmly remember it started to do that after some reboot update ...

I hate the slow right click menu too, why is there a forced delay? I think visual design peaked a few years ago and now we are deliberately overcomplicating every piece of UI for no apparent reason.

My favourite scapegoat is the agile dev process.

It takes away freedom and agency for devs which makes small things also suck where mainly complex things needing multiple programmers did without agile.

Since agile is so process heavy.

I imagine there are no dev owner of calc.exe anymore at MS.

They ruined paint.exe too btw.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#172
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found Windows window management to be pretty poor. They removed always on top (except in OneNote, and it's in power toys). Open a second Word document and all your docs get maximised. Undock and re-dock your MS machine from it's MS dock and the MS OS suddenly has no clue where to put your windows. Dock to a different dock (hot-desking; same brand and size of monitor) and the entire display options need to be re-…

They have Powertoys https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/fancyzon... and https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/always-o... not sure how good it is since I haven't used it myself edit: you have to install it yourself

Powertoys is great!

I use it to manage how big my windows are across my monitors, or search for programs, or math, or always-on-top

Re: No Start Menu for You

#173
post #150

Sorry to be that guy , but this is why XFCE is so good! Them random delays when doing simple things in windows is so frustrating. A desktop should get out of your way, and be so quick you don't notice it. Window switches, minimizing, maximising, launching, closing etc. Or my personal favourite, type and the letters take their time to appear. Only after you have worked with a system that never ever lags on these every…

The XFCE whisker menu is an excellent start menu.

I don't use it much, but yes, when I do it's quick and self organised! I like ALT+F2 to bring up the nice little launcher. Usually have to type two letters to get the app I want.

... With no lag ;)

Re: No Start Menu for You

#174
post #164
post #34

I think search is hard generally. I switched to an M1 Mac pro recently, and it has its own set of challenges. For instance, there is no start menu but a search bar called Spotlight. You do your quick math in there (where you'd call calc.exe in Windows). However, it only accepts your query as math... sometimes. Like 50% of the times. Otherwise it searches the web. If you search for a program, it takes just that tiny s…

> Oh and for some reason, it's less stable than my prior windows machine. Apps just crash a lot, but that's probably due to the Arm64. I mean, remarkably stable compared to computer back when, of course, but compared to Windows 10, I have more crashes and even had to restart a couple of times! This is not normal: you might have a hardware issue or possibly some kind of invasive corporate security software. The two M1…

My experience has been the same.

I had an old Intel Mac start occasionally crashing after taking it in for a screen replacement. I fired up memtest86 and sure enough saw errors. I took it back and Apple replaced the entire motherboard for me for free.

Does anyone know if there’s a memtest86 equivalent for M1 macs? I’m not sure how I’d go about testing the ram on my machine now.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because of the supposed inaccessibility of Windows (clearly not true) It's a mixed bag and it's far from not true. You get great tools for performance debugging, you get some system symbols, got get system wide tracing... Unless you don't get the symbols. And even then, you often find the element which doesn't work properly and... that's all. Now you know what fails, but not why and you can't do anything about it a…

The debugging tools and symbols are mostly available, but that we can't verify why these bugs happen or fix them is down to the closed-source nature of Windows, then, isn't it? Another pipe dream to add to the pile: open-source Windows.

I am 100% sure it will happen someday.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#176
I just use Everything by voidtools and assign a taskbar icon to it so it can be launched windows + 3. Other applications I often use are in the taskbar so windows + (0-9) work for opening them. Beats using the Start Menu.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#177

I just use Everything by voidtools and assign a taskbar icon to it so it can be launched windows + 3. Other applications I often use are in the taskbar so windows + (0-9) work for opening them. Beats using the Start Menu.

[deleted]

Re: No Start Menu for You

#178
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh and for some reason, it's less stable than my prior windows machine. Apps just crash a lot, but that's probably due to the Arm64. I mean, remarkably stable compared to computer back when, of course, but compared to Windows 10, I have more crashes and even had to restart a couple of times! This is not normal: you might have a hardware issue or possibly some kind of invasive corporate security software. The two M1…

My experience has been the same. I had an old Intel Mac start occasionally crashing after taking it in for a screen replacement. I fired up memtest86 and sure enough saw errors. I took it back and Apple replaced the entire motherboard for me for free. Does anyone know if there’s a memtest86 equivalent for M1 macs? I’m not sure how I’d go about testing the ram on my machine now.

When this happened to me, I was told that the memory can't be replaced without replacing the entire motherboard. Which means that after warranty period has passed the machine is either very expensive to repair or unrepairable.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Tiling left / right etc? Doesn't exist. It sort of does, but it's not as obvious as it should be. Mouse over the green zoom button in the top-left corner of a window, hold the option key on your keyboard, and then "move window left" and "move window right" options appear.

I think just hovering the cursor above the zoom button for a few seconds will also trigger the left/right tiling options.

Wow, I had no idea!

I like OSX, but I will say that it has a lot of features which are basically impossible to discover except by accident.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#180
post #34

I think search is hard generally. I switched to an M1 Mac pro recently, and it has its own set of challenges. For instance, there is no start menu but a search bar called Spotlight. You do your quick math in there (where you'd call calc.exe in Windows). However, it only accepts your query as math... sometimes. Like 50% of the times. Otherwise it searches the web. If you search for a program, it takes just that tiny s…

> If you do consider switching, one warning about Mac is this: Window management is utter garbage. Maximizing is actively discouraged. Tiling left / right etc? Doesn't exist. Everything must be random size and overlap weirdly. Instead, each new version brings a new quick switch or workspace functionality that I have never seen anyone use.

Mac has a different window management paradigm. It suits some people, it frustrates others. I've switched from Linux/BSD after 15 years there, and it immediately made so much more sense to me. YMMV.

It also makes so much more sense if you have a very large screen. I've tried using dwm or Sway with my 43" screen and it's incredibly awkward. You need first-class support for floating windows, or at least smarter tiling.

But I agree, some things on macOS are not as good (workspaces), or plain dumb/useless (stage manager). For missing functionality, like keyboard-driven tiling, I fix things using Hammerspoon: https://github.com/rollcat/dotfiles/blob/master/.hammerspoon...

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