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No Start Menu for You

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Re: No Start Menu for You

#81
post #34

I think search is hard generally. I switched to an M1 Mac pro recently, and it has its own set of challenges. For instance, there is no start menu but a search bar called Spotlight. You do your quick math in there (where you'd call calc.exe in Windows). However, it only accepts your query as math... sometimes. Like 50% of the times. Otherwise it searches the web. If you search for a program, it takes just that tiny s…

I have never had any app crash on me and I’ve been using M1 Pro daily for a couple months now. For solving window management I use yabai which lets me navigate my machine (mostly) with the keyboard, just as I’m used to from my Linux daily driver

I had apps crash on me 4 times in a M1 and I don't even own one, so I used it for a total of maybe 10 hours or so.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#83
post #4

Meanwhile, an Amiga with a half meg of RAM and a 7 to 25 MHz processor never fails to respond instantly to user input unless it's totally hosed. We seem to have forgotten this very fundamental principle: the user's desires, expressed through input, are paramount for a desktop OS, which means that the OS must be designed from the ground up to respond to input at a very high priority. Mainframe operating systems like U…

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/procthread/p...

The way this is implemented in Windows seems to be fundamentally broken though, because when my laptop is busy compiling in Visual Studio, I cannot even scroll UI views with the touchpad - exactly this would never happen on an Amiga, no matter how many things it does at the same time (my uneducated guess is that the touchpad driver - or any other thread related to input processing - isn't priority-boosted as well).

Re: No Start Menu for You

#84
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wouldn't that make things worse? Those applications usually expect to be able to make these calls. So now, instead of lagging once in a while when the home base is having troubles, it will lag all the time. Not necessarily. The lag may be waiting for the remote server to respond to a request, and the app may move on quickly if it can't open a connection at all. It's not totally uncommon to work totally offline (e.g…

In my experience, each time a firewall is blocking a connection, you experience it as a timeout, so the app tries to connect and finally times out. Which would take longer. I haven't tried though

it won't wait for a timeout if the connection is explicitly dropped by a blocking rule

Re: No Start Menu for You

#85
post #4

Meanwhile, an Amiga with a half meg of RAM and a 7 to 25 MHz processor never fails to respond instantly to user input unless it's totally hosed. We seem to have forgotten this very fundamental principle: the user's desires, expressed through input, are paramount for a desktop OS, which means that the OS must be designed from the ground up to respond to input at a very high priority. Mainframe operating systems like U…

Fucsia's kernel (Zircon) is hard real-time I think, which is what you want if you value predictability and low latency over all else. Though you don't need an RTOS to make a responsive app, of course. It's just there's such a tendency for systems to bloat and become a tangled mess of RPCs and process activations, while using an RTOS tends to tie your hands and keep you from getting into such a mess.

[deleted]

Re: No Start Menu for You

#86
> I have a good understanding of the problem, but I do not have a solution

REALLY

Just don't call background services, unless the user explicitly requested a remote service! My Linux installs and (to a lesser degree) my Windows LTSB/LTSC installs don't have these issues, you know?

Re: No Start Menu for You

#87
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much improvement can be had by installing an application firewall and restricting everything that doesn't need networking for its primary functionality.

Wouldn't that make things worse? Those applications usually expect to be able to make these calls. So now, instead of lagging once in a while when the home base is having troubles, it will lag all the time.

It shouldn't, because any network requests would fail early and instantly, somewhere around opening the socket.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#88
post #34

I think search is hard generally. I switched to an M1 Mac pro recently, and it has its own set of challenges. For instance, there is no start menu but a search bar called Spotlight. You do your quick math in there (where you'd call calc.exe in Windows). However, it only accepts your query as math... sometimes. Like 50% of the times. Otherwise it searches the web. If you search for a program, it takes just that tiny s…

Switching between Windows and Mac, spotlight (or Alfred) is something I missed on Windows (solved by using FlowLauncher, PowerToys Start doesn't support plugins). I don't understand the need to wait for something other than a search box to draw on the front when I just wanted to search and launch something. On top of that, there is no way to customise the search result or create aliases. If I installed something port…

PowerToys Run does seem to support some plug-ins though. I happily use https://github.com/lin-ycv/EverythingPowerToys to use Everything for bettler local search for example.

Re: No Start Menu for You

#89
post #10
post #4

Meanwhile, an Amiga with a half meg of RAM and a 7 to 25 MHz processor never fails to respond instantly to user input unless it's totally hosed. We seem to have forgotten this very fundamental principle: the user's desires, expressed through input, are paramount for a desktop OS, which means that the OS must be designed from the ground up to respond to input at a very high priority. Mainframe operating systems like U…

Terrible comparison, Windows is still catching every one of those inputs and handling them. The diff is the amiga is doing maybe three things total. This isn't even apples to oranges, it's apples to radish farm.

The comparison might not be equal in terms of how much they’re doing, but the Amiga was doing it on a single core CPU, so it could quite literally only do one thing at a time.

A modern OS running on a multi-core CPU has even less reason to hang - one of the cores should always be available to immediately switch context to handle UI events, even if the other cores are running a million processes. There’s no -technical- reason for it to hang, just poor programming.

Edit: Upvoted because despite disagreeing, your comment seems to have sparked a ton of discussion, and that's always great. :)

Re: No Start Menu for You

#90
post #34

I think search is hard generally. I switched to an M1 Mac pro recently, and it has its own set of challenges. For instance, there is no start menu but a search bar called Spotlight. You do your quick math in there (where you'd call calc.exe in Windows). However, it only accepts your query as math... sometimes. Like 50% of the times. Otherwise it searches the web. If you search for a program, it takes just that tiny s…

Solve window management on MacOS with 10 lines of Hammerspoon config:

    local hyper = {"ctrl", "alt", "cmd"}
    hs.loadSpoon("MiroWindowsManager")
    hs.window.animationDuration = 0.3
    spoon.MiroWindowsManager:bindHotkeys({
      up = {hyper, "up"},
      right = {hyper, "right"},
      down = {hyper, "down"},
      left = {hyper, "left"},
      fullscreen = {hyper, "f"}
    })
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