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Windows 11: Just say no

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Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#461

Post by vetinari »

skeletal88 wrote: post #433
usrusr wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Only for end-users with OEM licences, and only limited amount (10 licenses max? Or so).

For corporate and government, it was not free. And these are where the money is.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#462

Post by vetinari »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #413
alkonaut wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not broke, stop trying to fix it. There could have been better ways to keep it modern, but just leaving everything alone because “it works” isn’t really an option. First comes Unicode, then 4K/High-dpi scaling, then touch support and so on. Once high DPI screens arrived, UIs that scaled poorly literally don’t work.

Apple managed to support high-dpi without turning the whole thing upside down.

Apple doesn't run 20 years old binaries. On the contrary, they break ABIs faster than Linux distros, so they can move faster.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#463

Post by [deleted] »

aqfamnzc wrote: post #156
hbn wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah Windows Search is useless. I'd recommend Everything[0]. Though, it's more for general file searching than searching for programs. Can't remember if it learns your habits and pushes them to the top or not. Regardless it's instantaneous and I almost never use the Windows search since I discovered it https://www.voidtools.com

Everything is pretty much the only thing I miss from Windows. Maybe paint.net too. I haven't found a suitable Linux equivalent for either.

[deleted]

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#464

Post by vetinari »

marmaduke wrote: post #358
wruza wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you notice new control panel elements, if not looking for damned “them appliances for interchange connectivity” or whatever bullshit they came up with this time for networking cpl? fire the idiots that keep messing around with the UX Don’t push on them too hard, maybe they are bound by some evil contract. Legend has it, one guy sold his soul to make the new PATH= editing dialog after 666 weeks (~13 years) of n…

> new PATH= editing dialog But that one in Win 10 at least seems like an improvement

Exactly, and a price for that was one developer soul, according to the legend mentioned above.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#465

Post by vehemenz »

blondin wrote: post #208
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

this is so true! apple podcasts is a fine example, among others, of this conundrum. on every iteration an "improvement" makes the app less usable. on the last iteration they decided that i should now "follow" shows and not "subscribe" to them. what's worse is that some screens had the old and the new names resulting in extreme confusion. on that same iteration, someone decided that the way i was deleting episodes was…

Interesting. The Podcasts app was a disaster when it was released. I honestly can’t imagine how it could have gotten worse.

I’ve been using Podcruncher since 2010. Manual downloads, no hiding episodes, custom playlists. All in a straightforward interface. It is amazing that Apple with its resources can’t deliver anything comparable.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#466

Post by vetinari »

adrianN wrote: post #362
phkahler wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> UX groups don't want to fix existing UIs, they want to design new ones. Maybe they need to check their ego at the door and do the job they're paid to do? There's a reason it's called work and not happy-fun-time.

Or they just work for the competition where they're allowed to design new things.

So the competition would have a problem with ever-changing UI and unsatisfied users?

Any rational company would sign-up for that immediately.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#467

Post by raxxorrax »

babypuncher wrote: post #183
partiallypro wrote: post #124

I have been using Windows 11 as a daily driver and don't really understand people's hostility towards it. It is definitely an upgrade over Windows 10. Comparing it to Vista is nonsensical. I don't agree with a few decisions (like making centering the menu a default?) but most are easily fixed. I would like to see them delay it to fix some problems, but it's possible those will already be fleshed out by launch.

People just don't like change. There will be lots of weeping and wailing an gnashing of teeth, then people will grow accustomed to it. Same happened with 8 and 10. The furor over 8's missing start menu was intense, even though it takes literally seconds to install Classic Shell and get a better start menu than Windows 7 ever had. In 3-4 years the cycle will repeat again with Windows 12.

I still don't like Windows 8 at all, Windows 10 was a rollback in my opinion, I use it exactly as I did use Windows 7.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#468

Post by hdjjhhvvhga »

aliswe wrote: post #443
hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is part of what I read on HN: The first thing we observe is that the directory structure is basically identical. Yes, NT kernel subsystems are identified with short codes like "Ke" or "Ex". It's plausible that someone with a lot of NT knowledge would end up creating top level directories with these exact names, as is true of the WRK. But it seems kind of unlikely: the Wine sources do not show this pattern. If we…

Yes, I remember that discussion, it was very interesting, but it was quickly became obvious that the whole thing is very nuanced, and what may seem too much of a coincidence for an outsider (comparing the codebase of stolen or licensed source code of Windows with React OS), it could have a very rational explanation.

They took the huge effort of complete rewrite and clean room implementation just for that! So not only it would make no sense for them to cheat, it would mean actually harming the project and causing its demise. Nobody in their right mind would do so.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#469

Post by hughrr »

handrous wrote: post #162
hughrr wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah if they gave me a high DPI Windows 11 classic theme without telemetry and some actual quality control I’d be all over it. My mother also agrees with me on this. She’s been progressively hating Windows more every release too.

I like that driver management no longer sucks, I like search-to-launch, and I like the way you can send windows to the left or right half of the screen (decent tiling WMs or Spectacle on macOS are much better, but hey, Windows' thing is better than nothing). ... that's a fairly complete list of improvements to Windows since, I dunno, Win2k, that I care about. Most other changes have been neutral, or made it worse. [E…

If you think driver management doesn’t suck then try owning an HP wireless printer. Total shit show.

Re: Windows 11: Just say no

#470

Post by vetinari »

apatheticonion wrote: post #378
john_moscow wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It continues a decades-long tradition where every other Windows version is borderline unusable and universally hated. As long as I remember: * Windows 3.0 was perceived as buggy * Windows 3.1/3.11 was a major improvement * Windows 95 was extremely unreliable * Windows 98 sort of addressed most of the issues * Windows 2000 was a weird amalgamation of the NT kernel and 98/ME look'n'feel that wasn't received well * Wind…

> Windows 10 fixed it Good joke. There is nothing I can do in Windows 10 that Windows 7 didn't do better. From start bar search to window decorations. Windows 10 has actively gotten in the way of what was a great practical experience. Windows 11 makes the window decorations a little better (still inconsistent with poor design choices), but adding a bunch of crap that I can't opt out of on install (like teams, skype a…

VPN handling.

L2PT in Win 7 either auto-guesses your routes, or you have to add your own - after each connection, as a local admin, with ever changing interface name. You don't have scoped DNS either.

Windows 8 (!) fixes both these things: you can set up routes together with the connection for once and all, you can have scoped DNS, and you have complete control over cipher suites. As a bonus, you have Powershell API to that.

Windows 10 inherited this from Windows 8.

So this is one datapoint, what Windows 10 does way, way better than Windows 7.

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