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No Start Menu for You

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Re: No Start Menu for You

#21

Post by hnlmorg »

msla wrote: post #5

I've long thought that Windows NT might make a pretty good OS if it weren't married to the Microsoft Windows interface. I know I'm abusing the terminology here, but only because the concept of a replaceable graphical shell is utterly foreign to an OS which began as one of many replaceable graphical shells for MS-DOS.

1. You can replace the graphical shell for NT. Wikipedia even lists a few popular shells: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alternative_shells_f...

2. NT did not begin of as a shell for DOS. You’re thinking of the other Windows desktop lineage that ended with Windows ME.

3. Even Windows 3.x and 9x (the OSs that did use DOS as a bootloader) supported alternative shells. It was literally just a one line change in a config file. I authored one such shell for Win95.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#22

Post by dimgl »

com2kid wrote: post #7

Across 2 different machines, 100% repo, the start button on my keyboard only opens the start menu every other time I push it. It has been that way for 4+ years, it went away for a bit after an update, then came back again. Microsoft never has recovered from their dismantling of their test organizations.

Do you have a gaming keyboard? Weird keyboard glitches on Windows were happening to me due to switches on the keyboard, but from a UX perspective it always seemed like Windows was the issue.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#23

Post by jcelerier »

mscdex wrote: post #18
msla wrote: post #5

I've long thought that Windows NT might make a pretty good OS if it weren't married to the Microsoft Windows interface. I know I'm abusing the terminology here, but only because the concept of a replaceable graphical shell is utterly foreign to an OS which began as one of many replaceable graphical shells for MS-DOS.

There are still some alternative shells that exist, even for Windows 10 and 11, including xoblite (inspired by blackbox I believe) [1] and Cairo Shell [2]. [1] https://xoblite.net/docs/ [2] https://cairoshell.com/

Oof, I must still have my xoblite config from 2006-2007 somewhere on a hard drive backup, thanks for the nostalgia

Re: No Start Menu for You

#24

Post by rightbyte »

martin_ky wrote: post #6

It seems to be a pattern with (not just) Microsoft products to hang the UI while waiting for some remote API, usually talking to the home base. Happens a lot to me with Office desktop apps - they freeze sometimes for a good second or so while starting and more surprisingly also when closing. One time it bothered me so much, that I recorded an ETW and unsurprisingly the time during the hang was spent waiting for some…

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 ...

Re: No Start Menu for You

#25

Post by [deleted] »

spijdar wrote: post #19
msla wrote: post #5

I've long thought that Windows NT might make a pretty good OS if it weren't married to the Microsoft Windows interface. I know I'm abusing the terminology here, but only because the concept of a replaceable graphical shell is utterly foreign to an OS which began as one of many replaceable graphical shells for MS-DOS.

Strictly speaking, I don't think there's any technological reason why you couldn't replace the shell, although practically I'd bet the boot chain will refuse to load e.g. a replacement compositor that's not signed by Microsoft, not to mention the lack of API documentation at that level. I mention it since sometimes I daydream about trying to force a newer Windows runtime/kernel to load an older shell... Still, in a m…

[deleted]

Re: No Start Menu for You

#26

Post by llanowarelves »

Windows Start Menu has been broken for me sometimes (typing does nothing, have to re-click the menu to toggle it a few times and then it works), over the last few months. Last few weeks has been ok.

And recently completely-finished browser downloads have to wait extra long (beyond when the browser says it's done) plus an F5 in Explorer, for Windows to not complain about a "missing file at path" when trying to use the completely-downloaded file. This could be an interaction with a virus-scanner (ESET) putting the file in quarantine or whatever real quick before putting it back out but nothing has changed on my end in the last ~4 years.

I appreciate that the author here is actually profiling stuff.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#27

Post by MattGaiser »

bitwize wrote: post #4

Meanwhile, an Amiga with a half meg of RAM and a 7 to 25 MHz processor never fails to respond instantly to user input unless it's totally hosed. We seem to have forgotten this very fundamental principle: the user's desires, expressed through input, are paramount for a desktop OS, which means that the OS must be designed from the ground up to respond to input at a very high priority. Mainframe operating systems like U…

The desires of the user cease to matter by the time they have purchased the product. After someone has purchased a computer, wishing it were faster is a very expensive item to action.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#28

Post by viraptor »

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #16

Great article. I love Windows deep dives—both because of the supposed inaccessibility of Windows (clearly not true), and because Windows is something I've daily-driven for 23 years, and I've come to really appreciate. If only MS could get its act straight, clean up its UI framework mess (WinUI, WPF, WinForms, Win32, WinRT, MAUI... sheesh) and stop applying stupid regressive updates and dark patterns.

> 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 anyway.

I keep getting disappointed like that by windows over and over. I find what fails and it doesn't actually change anything.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#29

Post by vladvasiliu »

dimgl wrote: post #22
com2kid wrote: post #7

Across 2 different machines, 100% repo, the start button on my keyboard only opens the start menu every other time I push it. It has been that way for 4+ years, it went away for a bit after an update, then came back again. Microsoft never has recovered from their dismantling of their test organizations.

Do you have a gaming keyboard? Weird keyboard glitches on Windows were happening to me due to switches on the keyboard, but from a UX perspective it always seemed like Windows was the issue.

I also figured this was related to the keyboard. I sometimes use Windows at work, where I have a wireless MS (heh) keyboard.

I swear it basically always misses the first key I press if I haven't typed in a while. Sure, it could be the keyboard going to sleep to save power or whatever.

But that same keyboard never had any kind of issue on my other computers, including under Windows, nor on that very same computer running Linux.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#30

Post by grishka »

martin_ky wrote: post #6

It seems to be a pattern with (not just) Microsoft products to hang the UI while waiting for some remote API, usually talking to the home base. Happens a lot to me with Office desktop apps - they freeze sometimes for a good second or so while starting and more surprisingly also when closing. One time it bothered me so much, that I recorded an ETW and unsurprisingly the time during the hang was spent waiting for some…

I wonder how much improvement can be had by installing an application firewall and restricting everything that doesn't need networking for its primary functionality.
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