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What Microsoft got right about power users, but not quite
61–70 of 122 posts
Re: What Microsoft got right about power users, but not quite
#62> Open or save file Dialog is just the worst in all regards.
I guess the author never used any Gtk+ 3 file dialog :-P. Honestly the fact that you can perform actual file manipulation, use shell extensions (e.g. version control overlay icons), etc put it above pretty much every other file dialog except perhaps KDE's (but AFAIK even that doesn't have all the functionality you'd see in a regular file manager window).
Having said that, yes, it is unnecessarily slow and not because of the features above since some applications use older versions of the dialog that still have these features but appear instantly. Not sure why the "full fledged" version is slow.
Re: What Microsoft got right about power users, but not quite
#63This seems like a joke article. The 'long' startup time appears to be a second or two. The slow animated menu is quick - I'd like to see someone actually select a menu item in the time it takes for it to drop down. The animation doesn't impact usability. All a bit bizarre.
I felt the same way. They were ridiculous nits.
Re: What Microsoft got right about power users, but not quite
#64If you have VS Code installed, the JSON configuration for the Windows Terminal won't open in Notepad.
The config file still seems like a cop-out for "we couldn't be arsed to build a GUI settings editor". Excusable at alpha/beta, not a final release. Command prompt & Powershell both have GUI settings editors.
People have been complaining for years that Microsoft's stuff isn't configurable enough for power users/developers. Now they're following VSCode's lead and offering "infinite configurability" that's also wrong because it is "too hard!" This would almost be funny if it weren't so obnoxious.
Now, I will fully cop to out-dated docs being annoying, particularly when most of the configuration isn't really obvious or self-documenting. But complaining about Microsoft of all people offering highly flexible text-based configurations is hugely ironic to me.
Re: What Microsoft got right about power users, but not quite
#65If you have VS Code installed, the JSON configuration for the Windows Terminal won't open in Notepad.
I believe it opens in whatever your default application is for *.json files.
Yes, that's exactly what will happen. The author did not install any text editor and then complains about his files opening in the default one.
Re: What Microsoft got right about power users, but not quite
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Basic Features in separate packages means, many users will never use them, because they don't know they exist. Bulk renaming files for example is not something only power users do, it is something only power users can do because it just does not exist and/or is not discoverable for a normal user. And also as a power user, it is annoying to find a program for every basic thing the system should be able to do. On the o…
I can't be the only user who installs Cygwin just so that I can move files around, calculate hashes of files, and grep with regular expressions. Simple things Windows users don't get out of the box.
> Simple things Windows users don't get out of the box.
Of course they do. It's called Powershell.
Re: What Microsoft got right about power users, but not quite
#67> But the first launch of the Linux subsystem after system reboot is unbelievably slow. Proceeds to provide a video showing a 3s startup time to illustrate the unbelievable slowness that happens once after a reboot. I suspect the favorite activity of the author is therefore to reboot their computer, and to quickly rush to WSL2 after that. In which case I agree the user experience is not ideal.
Continuing to read: > Why is it animated? Or, even if it is, why is animation so slow? Given it is not animated on my computer, I suspect it is animated when Windows is configured to have animations... (and it if this theory is good, it is nice that they respect the disabling of animations, by the way, in contrast with the... Start Menu!)
> by the way, in contrast with the... Start Menu!
Well, good news! I don't know when this might've changed (I have animations enabled), but I just tested it on Windows 10 2004, and the start menu doesn't animate with animations off.
Re: What Microsoft got right about power users, but not quite
#68The history of Microsoft is the history of workarounds on top of workarounds, year after year, rinse and repeat. Here's a novel thought: instead of providing yet another iteration of workarounds for the power user, how about just fixing it for every user.
Take for instance the Start Menu. When the Win-X "quick access" menu was added years ago, it was essentially an admission that the Start Menu is not the best way to start at least some things. It didn't really get much better since but the Search and Run functionality was integrated into it. Now one of the PowerToys replaces the Win-R menu as a yet another clumsy attempt at fixing the Start Menu by bypassing it. And it seems no new functionality beyond what is already implemented elsewhere is being added, except everything will of course get a different alternate look. Some more discussion about it here: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/44
It looks like there isn't anyone at Microsoft who can take a look at the big picture and decide what they actually want to accomplish with the UI in the medium run. Different groups of people come and go, keep adding different things, abandon them, after a while somebody else starts off with yet another approach in parallel without drawing any conclusions from the failed previous one, etc. The lack of co-ordination really amazes me. Microsoft used to once advertise with the slogan "Where do you want to go today?" These days it seems to me they're not going anywhere, just running in circles.
Re: What Microsoft got right about power users, but not quite
#69I tried WSL2 for about six months.
I'm really glad that MS is investing in this and it's an aspect that has been long neglected. If you're a developer, and unless you're using MS stack (.NET), the experience has been always subpar.
I have to agree with the author that the experience is not quite there yet. But a lot of progress has been done. And I hope the progress continues and maybe in the future I'll try it again.
For me there is not a single deal breaker, but it's just a thousand paper cuts. Removing those will take time. Some of the annoying things I encountered:
1. Overall slowness. It's not only startup, it's in general. Not only on heavy tasks like parallel compiling, but even for lightweight stuff, you immediately notice when you try a real linux.
2. Some config like setting up ssh-agent correctly are hard and different than a real linux. No idea why.
3. Windows Terminal development is quite fast, and sometimes things change or break. For instance, the background color of my terminal suddenly changed and I had no idea why. After some googling and modifying config, it was fixed.
4. The fact that it required to sign in for Windows Preview program. (I think this is not required anymore) but it was very annoying as it requires very long updates that require like a million reboots. No idea why Windows has to reboot so many times for a single update. Additionally, after every update there was always surprises. From the harmless Edge popping up from nowhere asking you to become default browser for the nth time, to some hardware misconfiguration. Nothing too bad, but annoying.
5. (This one very subjective of course) The windows UI overall is, how to say it, a mess. Font rendering is awful. The mix of old style UI with new style UI is horrible. Some settings will be in new style, some other settings will be in old style.
As I said, I might try again in the future. But now I switched to Fedora and I'm really really happy with Gnome 3 and good old real Linux. I still have the Windows partition just in case, but I haven't booted in a while.