Windows 11: Just say no • Hacker News Board

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#431

Post by slowmotiony » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 8:16 AM UTC

thrower123 wrote: post #19

pjmlp wrote: post #7

I have to agree, even though I have plenty of pro-Windows comments. To me Windows 11 feels like Vista, and to everyone that got burned with the rewrites on the WinRT side, just using plain Win32/MFC/Forms/WPF feels liberating. Multiple teams are fighting UI politics over WinUI, MAUI on top of WinUI, React Native with WinUI, and classical UWP is not going away (Windows 11 Store is written in it), then ASP.NET team is…

Winforms will never die. If I was looking to make an investment into a skillset that will still be really useful in thirty years, I would go deep on WinForms.

WinForms or COBOL. You'll be set for life :-)

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#432

Post by lukaszkups » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 8:19 AM UTC

I've updated my Surface Book 2 to Windows 11 by accident (thought that it was just another windows update but next morning I was greet with totally new system :O)

It works just nice, but it has the 1 thing that drives me crazy - rounded corners! WTH Microsoft, you could at least has an option to toggle it - I really loved the square UI of Windows 10... :|

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#433

Post by skeletal88 » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 8:20 AM UTC

usrusr wrote: post #265

ryandrake wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely a big problem with software. This "need to constantly pay developers" is part of the justification for moving towards subscription payment instead of one-time payment. The logic goes: One-time payment won't pay for future changes, and developers are always making changes, and they need to be paid for. But, what if I don't want future changes? For almost all software I've ever paid for, as a user, I ju…

Funny, I was just thinking to myself that maybe a paid subscription Windows could be a solution to undesired UI change. Because it would take away the lure of the upgrade sale licence. 64 bit w2k? Yeah, I'd totally pay for that. If I were in charge of Windows product strategy I think I would create competing subdivisions that replicate the model of Linux distributions but on the NT kernel. Sworn to binary compatibili…

Windows is not selling upgrades anymore, 8 to 10 was a free upgrade

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#434

Post by hdjjhhvvhga » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 8:21 AM UTC

aliswe wrote: post #110

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They won't let it happen. For now they decided to just ignore the project and not give it any publicity, but the moment it gains popularity, they will definitely react. Until now they attacked it indirectly through their kernel developer saying ReactOS stole his code - in spite of the fact they took all necessary measures not to and underwent an audit. This is the same old strategy Microsoft supported during the SCO…

i thought reactos contained portions of windows NT code?

No. Imagine you are a ReactOS (or Wine etc.) developer. The main thing you can't do is to use any code you are trying to reimplement. It literally contradicts the very aim of your project: to create a legal viable alternative to a proprietary system.

Moreover, you know it is the biggest danger and the main avenue Microsoft will attack you in the future, so you are extremely careful never to do anything even remotely illegal. When someone sends you links to fragments of Windows source code, you politely but firmly answer you are not allowed to look at this code. Because you know that if you look at it even once, an evidence of that could be used against you in court - and you are competing against the most important product of one of the richest corporations in the world, so you can't let yourself to be sloppy.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#435

Post by tnzm » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 8:31 AM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #96

GiorgioG wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do they keep messing with the UI? UX folks don't get paid to leave things alone.

Nobody gets paid to leave things alone and maybe that's a big problem with the world.

What if meaningless busy-work is qualified professionals getting paid to leave meaningful problems alone because solving them is bad for the racket?

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#436

Post by ACS_Solver » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 8:34 AM UTC

pantalaimon wrote: post #235

chasil wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if ReactOS will hit 1.0 by the time that Windows 10 goes out of support in 2024. It would be interesting to see older systems retasked to a free clone OS, potentially running most/all of the same software. https://reactos.org/project-news/reactos-in-2020/

Doesn't ReactOS use the libraries from wine? So you could just run Linux.

The point of ReactOS is driver-level compatibility with Windows. The project implements their own equivalent of things like the Windows HAL or Windows Driver Model, which ideally should mean ReactOS can be a drop-in replacement for old Windows machines used to run some piece of hardware that only has a Windows driver. There are still industrial machines being driven over parallel port by WinXP. The Win32 API program used for controlling the machine most likely works just fine with Wine, but the necessary driver definitely doesn't. The ultimate goal of ReactOS is that you could just install the driver on it and thus control the industrial machine exactly like WinXP did it.

It's an admirable project, though of course it's nowhere near ready for use. Currently ReactOS doesn't run on a lot of real hardware, and is still well behind WinXP in terms of hardware support (USB memory sticks don't work, USB keyboards have problems, Wifi has minimal support and only for open networks, etc), but the goals of ReactOS are very different from Wine.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#437

Post by cassepipe » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 8:36 AM UTC

I finally cracked and installed Linux Mint on my mother's pc after failing to give her proper phone assistance in Windows 10. I was shocked how cluttered it is. For someone like my mother it's very confusing. Why do web searches show up in the menu? Everything seems to be full of confusing effects and the settings remind me of the metro UI, there's almost no options or else you have to follow one of the little links (choose the right one!). I think Microsoft secret plan must be to have everybody switch to Linux. I mean how hard can it to have a menu open, show a search bar and give proper results that you can easily scan visually?

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#438

Post by npteljes » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 8:38 AM UTC

olah_1 wrote: post #49

Proton[1] is the reason my next machine will be Linux. [1]: https://www.protondb.com/

I'm a happy user. I only have one game currently, for which I reboot into my win10, but only because it has BattleEye anti-cheat.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#439

Post by Paianni » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 8:39 AM UTC

gpvos wrote: post #177

Paianni wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I don't agree. NT 3.51 — solid NT 4.0, 2000 & XP — less, less and less solid Vista — premature 7 — ok 8 — borked 10 & 11 — untouchable

2000 was pretty good really, more solid than 3.51 even

I hear the era of GDI being run in kernel mode was...not good for stability or security, but I rarely used 2000 and never used NT 4.0 so perhaps there are better mouthpieces than myself.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#440

Post by pjmlp » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 8:40 AM UTC

tailspin2019 wrote: post #307

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even Apple and Google have both figured out that screwing around with UX every release is a recipe for making your customers HATE you. ...are we talking about the same Apple and Google? Big Sur? Material You? Sure, maybe it’s not “every” release, but only because they have a faster release cadence than Windows.

I don’t know about Google but I would say that the majority of Apple’s design refreshes are iterative in such a way that someone coming from the previous release is very unlikely to get “lost” when presented with the latest UI. And this is the key. UI refreshes are fine as long as they don’t add unnecessary friction to the user experience. Apple’s refreshes are also generally complete, cohesive and coherent. Yes they…

To this day, when doing Material design based stuff you are left to your own devices, because Google UI/UX team announced it to the world, and then left to each single developer out there to customize their Android widgets to achieve their design documents.

There are a couple of Google IO sessions where the presenter goes through how to custom write Android views to match Material.

Then a couple of years of comunity complaints they released a Material custom theme for Android that still doesn't implement 1:1 their UI/UX specification.

When this framework was finally catching up with Material documentation, they release Material You.