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The beauty and terror of modding Windows

windowsread.me

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Re: The beauty and terror of modding Windows

#71

Post by rererereferred »

torben-friis wrote: post #3

>If you dig through Windows enthusiast communities TIL those exist (genuinely). I’ve never met anyone who likes windows, just people who put up with it for work/gaming and people who doesn’t care about the whole thing enough to move from the default (which is totally understandable).

I was a Windows modding enthusiast until I tried Linux and the modding there was superior (and then compiz appeared).

These days whenever I use Windows I install bash and use a terminal so I don't really care about the window management, other than maximizing windows.

Re: The beauty and terror of modding Windows

#72

Post by layer8 »

RGamma wrote: post #62
layer8 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the first item, there’s at least a keyboard shortcut that I use regularly: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20121030-00/?p=62...

It would take one teeny tiny setting to always do this, yet it seems so far away...

As an approximation, you could use AutoHotKey to have the key press sent every 200ms when an Explorer window has focus. ;)

Personally, I wouldn’t want to have it automatically, because sometimes you have really long file names, or other columns that can get arbitrarily wide. There would also have to be a configurable maximum column width.

Re: The beauty and terror of modding Windows

#73

Post by expedition32 »

Telaneo wrote: post #63
torben-friis wrote: post #3

>If you dig through Windows enthusiast communities TIL those exist (genuinely). I’ve never met anyone who likes windows, just people who put up with it for work/gaming and people who doesn’t care about the whole thing enough to move from the default (which is totally understandable).

I'm not sure these people like Windows as much as they like what it does for them, but they are willing to put in significant effort to remove the normal Windows roadblocks and annoyances, and thus are willing to hack and chop it to bits to get them closer to their end goals more quickly. They're not like a car enthusiast who loves their MX5 out of its sheer beauty and feel, but rather they love their SUV because of…

Why yes for me an OS is just something that I use to launch games, browsers and programs... Is that so strange? There is no Windows cult unlike Linux.

For most people I'm sure computers are a tool not an identity.

Re: The beauty and terror of modding Windows

#74

Post by RGamma »

layer8 wrote: post #72
RGamma wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would take one teeny tiny setting to always do this, yet it seems so far away...

As an approximation, you could use AutoHotKey to have the key press sent every 200ms when an Explorer window has focus. ;) Personally, I wouldn’t want to have it automatically, because sometimes you have really long file names, or other columns that can get arbitrarily wide. There would also have to be a configurable maximum column width.

Nah no workaround. I'll take the hit until I can switch to something better on my work PC. Several decisions Microsoft has taken make it more likely that I'll invest the time. May as well try to un-Microsoft my org (at least to the degree I'm involved) while I'm at it.

Re: The beauty and terror of modding Windows

#75

Post by chroma_zone »

Having spent a few years trying to write Windows utility software, it is really exhausting to be in an antagonistic relationship with Microsoft and have their updates constantly break your work.

The article mentions ExplorerPatcher -- the changelog [1] of that project is informative. Every release involves fixing a bunch of things that Microsoft broke, intentionally or not. Some of this is understandable given how it (necessarily) messes with low level OS components, but there is still zero transparency and you just need to roll with whatever changes. I can't imagine doing that kind of work anymore.

[1] https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher/releases

Re: The beauty and terror of modding Windows

#76

Post by lproven »

Hard_Space wrote: post #25
lproven wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was news to me, too. But I rarely use Windows. I used to like it but for me XP was so ugly and bloated I switched to Linux and OS X full-time. I've never looked back. I just play occasionally to keep my skills vaguely current. Sometimes I need to work with it. Windows 11 is awful . Bloated, full of ads and nags, forcibly keeps your stuff in the crappy MS cloud drive for which there's no Linux GUI client. You can…

I moved all my LAN machines to IoT LTSC 2021 a year ago. Though I don’t regret it, be aware that update delay limits are the same as other Windows OS versions; that useful things like WSL2 will need installing from the app store to get the systemd version, and you’ll need to install the Windows app store from an enthusiast repo on Github; that Windows major version number is a fair way behind, affecting max Docker da…

Interesting.

I almost never use Windows, and I don't want things like WSL or Docker anyway. I mainly keep it around for things like upgrading firmware, occasionally flashing new ROMs onto phones, stuff like that.

I tried the MyWhoosh virtual-cycling app on one of my boxes.

https://mywhoosh.com/

I was able to download and install the Windows Store direct from Microsoft with no problem at all.

https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9wzdncrfjbmp?hl=en-GB&gl=I...

(I just Googled that link -- it might not be the right one. MyWhoosh is only available on the Store. It refused to run on my elderly GPU anyway, though.)

Thanks for the warning, though!

Re: The beauty and terror of modding Windows

#77

Post by asveikau »

chroma_zone wrote: post #75

Having spent a few years trying to write Windows utility software, it is really exhausting to be in an antagonistic relationship with Microsoft and have their updates constantly break your work. The article mentions ExplorerPatcher -- the changelog [1] of that project is informative. Every release involves fixing a bunch of things that Microsoft broke, intentionally or not. Some of this is understandable given how it…

This seems to be about injecting your own code into a running process and then modifying its behavior. The kinds of things that would break from build to build are VERY DIFFERENT from what typical applications would face.

Re: The beauty and terror of modding Windows

#79

Post by cyberax »

torben-friis wrote: post #3

>If you dig through Windows enthusiast communities TIL those exist (genuinely). I’ve never met anyone who likes windows, just people who put up with it for work/gaming and people who doesn’t care about the whole thing enough to move from the default (which is totally understandable).

I loved hacking Windows back in 2000-s! It was super-hackable and had PLENTY of very thorough documentation (Petzold's "Programming Windows"!).

You could even do a lot of kernel-level shenanigans with relative impunity thanks to its layered design. You could do some amazing stuff.

As an example, SWSoft released container ("lightweight virtualization") support for Windows in 2005, before containers were even a thing in the mainline Linux. They did that by adding a layer of redirection on top of the kernel objects without having access to Windows source code.

Re: The beauty and terror of modding Windows

#80

Post by chroma_zone »

asveikau wrote: post #77
chroma_zone wrote: post #75

Having spent a few years trying to write Windows utility software, it is really exhausting to be in an antagonistic relationship with Microsoft and have their updates constantly break your work. The article mentions ExplorerPatcher -- the changelog [1] of that project is informative. Every release involves fixing a bunch of things that Microsoft broke, intentionally or not. Some of this is understandable given how it…

This seems to be about injecting your own code into a running process and then modifying its behavior. The kinds of things that would break from build to build are VERY DIFFERENT from what typical applications would face.

A lot of basic tweaks to windows behavior require those types of unstable hacks. The point is that developers or users who want to modify their system are forced into sketchy software.
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