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Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

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Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#231

Post by willtim »

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #219
willtim wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the Deepin desktop? I haven't tried it but many magazine sites say it's now the most polished. I'm fairly happy with i3, until I need to plug in additional screens...

Deepin's, elementaryOS's, and Pop!_OS's DEs look nice, but I've never tried 'em. I generally avoid "niche", satellite distros/software because, well, you can't expect them to work as well as the their major competitors. Cinnamon IS a major DE and a stylistic competitor to KDE and Xfce, and it's quite nice too (but not offered as a Manjaro flavor, sadly). >I'm fairly happy with i3, until I need to plug in additional s…

> what happens when you plug an additional screen in?

Absolutely nothing. I have to tyoe xrandr commands to make anything happen. I3 is strictly just a window manager. Unfortunately projects like Gnome solve these problems in a completely monolithic fashion, with no module or component that I use that just solves this problem.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#232

Post by userbinator »

thrower123 wrote: post #176
dangus wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’d have a great point if you only mentioned VB6 and left out AIM and that word processor that spat out binary files.

I still have a portable version of Word 2003 on a flash stick, because it still works better. The most incomprehensible thing to me is how much worse all the IM software I have to use today is.

I think IM has such a low bar to entry (how hard is it to create a TCP connection and send and recieve stuff?) that encourages lots of churn and competing protocols.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#233

Post by pfranz »

stinos wrote: post #151
pfranz wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up with Windows. My jobs used Unix/Linux and I switched to Mac at home before Vista came out. I got a job using Windows during the Windows 8-10 transition. During that 10 year gap I'd help friends and family setup printers and stuff. I was aghast at the things that hadn't changed in the 10+ years. I really wished I had written it up because I fell back into things quickly. One thing I still remember is how oft…

in Linux it's only when a specific component (like the kernel) gets updated Fair enugh, but depending on what distro you run that seems to be fairly often as well. Like, more than 'a few times' a year. Then again if you dont run a server for which downtime is a true loss, or something alike, is rebooting that much of a problem (honest question)?

I haven't really paid much attention, but I'm pretty sure CentOS/RHEL only do kernel updates with distro updates. If so, it's about once or twice a year: https://access.redhat.com/articles/3078

In practice, my companies have done them less frequently. Kernel packages are less often about security patches and more often around a magic combination of kernel+GPU driver+software--I think one of them paid Red Hat for custom cuts.

As for maintaining a personal machine, that distro would probably suggest rebooting more often than RHEL (you'd also have to effectively logout/"restart" for any core package for your Desktop Environment or X). I haven't measured, but I feel like my Synology gets updated every few months.

As for the impact of rebooting. Windows Updates (and macOS updates) are more than just a reboot. It's often an unknown amount of time. Even for a normal reboot, it's really really nice to just leave everything open so you can pick up where you left off. Personal or work it's more than just a browser, but terminals I have open, shell history, vim sessions.

It's like a recent article about fast software https://craigmod.com/essays/fast_software/

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#234

Post by pas »

MikusR wrote: post #189
pas wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome and Firefox auto updates too. But those are fast, done in the background and they don't require reboots. Windows is still terrible at this.

They do require you to restart the application. Same with Windows, it updates in background and requires a relaunch.

I have no problem with the relaunch, but it takes a lot of time to do the actual update at relaunch time. So the launch time with update is at least a magnitude larger than it should be.

This coupled with the fact that Windows update is rather monolithical yet it should be simple to update most of the non-kernel parts without reboot leads to too many slow reboots :/

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#235

Post by pas »

potentialverand wrote: post #147
pas wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome and Firefox auto updates too. But those are fast, done in the background and they don't require reboots. Windows is still terrible at this.

I don't think updating an application is really comparable to updating an operating system. The OS is vastly more complex. Nevertheless, Firefox on Linux via package manager definitely requires a restart. Typically I know when Firefox has been updated because I get a window saying "your browser needs to restart". https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/9s78fh/sick_of_get...

The restart is not the problem, the time it takes is. (And that it prompts rather aggressively to reboot.)

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#236

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

computerex wrote: post #230
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fact is that the linux story and experience has improved dramatically over the past 10 years. Yes, and it still sucks in a lot of the same ways it always has, and a few new ones (bloat, more incomprehensibly tangled base system than ever before...). Just yesterday I watched PCManFM, when told to copy a directory from an SMB share, copy the folder but none of its contents. This kind of basic functionality being comp…

I think it'd be cool if you provided any verifiable evidence/support at all to validate and support your silly assertions. I pointed out 3 well known OEM's that ship hardware with linux pre-installed, 2 of them target linux exclusively. This wouldn't be the case if there wasn't a market for it and if the experience was as bad as you make it out to be. You provided no rebuttal at all for this point and merely glazed o…

Technically it was Lubuntu, but gvfs is still the backing component that handles SMB for PCManFM just as it does for Nautilus.

> Here's a video showing you how to mount an SMB share, it is quiet straightforward: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPnVzyMBlAI

This is so exactly the problem with the Linux Desktop evangelists. Someone says they have a problem with Linux, a bad experience, and your childish ego can't handle the concept of your fetishized OS not being perfect so you immediately assume the person talking is an idiot.

> No operating system is fool proof. For vast number of users that don't have specific OS specific software requirements, Linux is a very viable alternative.

Linux Desktop evangelists have been saying this for 20 motherfucking years and yet Linux still has pitiful desktop market share. What will it take for this community to wake up and realize that maybe people aren't retarded and have very legitimate reasons for not choosing your OS? Even people who like the idea of an Open Source Desktop OS?

> Here's someone's mom trying out and using linux

Could you try being less intentionally insulting maybe? This is such typical Linux Desktop evangelist garbage. It's an attempt at shame, but it backfires because what you're really saying is that Linux makes a great web kiosk and as long as you don't want to do anything interesting with it it will work fine.

Ultimately you don't have to listen to me. Look around you, your waifu Desktop OS is not being adopted by the masses, or even the non-masses. You've been telling the same comfort story to yourselves for 20 years about big bad Microsoft's exclusivity deals and Office lock in and all sorts of other nonsense while completely ignoring what people who might actually care what OS they use have been screaming at you about all the ways you've been doing it wrong.

This is why Linux will never be the majority Desktop OS of choice: because the community is full of people like you!

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#237

Post by phendrenad2 »

0x38B wrote: post #60
pwinnski wrote: post #13

Good times. I remember when this was part of the court case. Sounds like what we need is for Tim Cook to try to use iOS 13 and lose access to one of his favorite apps by upgrading to Catalina, and then to get a crumb or something into his keyboard.

...or try using Google Docs in Safari on iOS 13 with a text editor in split view. Two blinking cursors and no easy way to choose which window is active. To enter text in the Google Doc after using my text editor, I have to tap the URL bar twice, dismiss the suggestions, and then it's active. Given that my iPad is my only computer, this release has been really rough. It's getting there, and I'm sure with time it will…

I'm sorry but I'm pretty sure any fix for your workflow would break the workflow of many people. Both windows being active seems like the entire selling-point of splitscreen, right? (I don't have an iPad so I'm just guessing). The right solution is probably a Google Docs app that is able to be aware of other instances of itself.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#238

Post by jcranberry »

llarsson wrote: post #127
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After 15 years on OS X, I won't be buying another Mac. The MB keyboards with no Escape key and constant breakage, and dropping support for 32-bit apps, would have been enough for me. The newly onerous restrictions on software signing, and Apple's general obsession with sacrificing anything and everything to get thinner and lighter, only make it worse.

Work gave me an MBP. I am a vim user, so I need my Escape key. Mapping Caps Lock to Escape is easy to do now, even through the Settings GUI. I am not trying to convince you to stay with Mac, I am just saying that this particular thing helped me immensely.

It always surprises me when people remap the caps lock key. I find that I use it quite often.

For vim you case use 'C-[' I believe which does the same thing as escape.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#239

Post by pwinnski »

wetpaws wrote: post #50
cdolan wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a rMBP 2015 with two monitors (in addition to the laptop monitor) daily. One over HDMI and the second via Thunderbolt/DisplayPort to HDMI (so two cables into the rMBP). I’ve never had this issue? What is your setup? I always thought it was funny that in a Mac you can’t set your default monitor, but I’ve never run into the issue you are describing.

Click on one monitor and then move mouse to another monitor and move mouse down to the edge (without clicking anywhere). Of all alien, obscure and mind bogingly bizzare ux behaviors this would be probably in my top 5.

I would hope that my dock would be on whichever screen my mouse is, so I don't have to drag my mouse across a large monitor to get way over there to get to the trash.

What you term "alien, obscure, and mind-bogglingly bizarre" is the only way I think should work.

Re: Bill Gates on Windows Usability (2003)

#240

Post by ChikkaChiChi »

pishpash wrote: post #115
TimTheTinker wrote: post #52

The early 2000's were a period of especially low usability for Microsoft's products. At the time, I had a roommate who was a die-hard Windows user. Over several years, I tried to convince him to switch to Mac OS X, with examples like: (a) Just drag/drop a PDF to a printer spool window, and it will print; (b) to install an app, usually you just have to drag it to the Applications folder; to uninstall it, simply drag i…

After OS X, has anybody ever switched back to Windows from a Mac OS for daily use (i.e. not for a specific application that is only available on Windows)? I don't even want to look at Windows now. It's so unsightly in a way that you don't notice until you switch away.

I have been on Apple devices since the early days of the shift to Intel, and regularly use a PC for home projects.

Windows 10 has refined the usability while Apple has stagnated recently trying to bring iOS apps into the desktop mainstream. Even though both have plenty of problems, the biggest issue right now is that Microsoft seemingly wants all of your metrics, whereas Apple is marketing heavily that they are building everything around privacy.

I am looking forward to seeing how well the Windows Subsystem for Linux works with the new Console. That is the main reason so many engineers went to Macs in the first place.

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