Live data from Hacker News

Windhawk Windows classic theme mod for Windows 11

windhawk.net

91–100 of 144 posts

Re: Windhawk Windows classic theme mod for Windows 11

#91
post #59
post #25

It's incredible the effort Windows 10/11 users will go to in order to reach a somewhat functional and reliable computing experience via third party modifications, yet Linux is somehow too much effort. Just look at the instructions on that page..

A foolish take, makes me believe you didn't really work in the real world. Because the entire global computer ecosystem is built on Windows-compatible software. Finance, accounting, medical, car diagnostics, and even HVAC software are built windows-compatible-only only. Don't get me wrong, I use Xubuntu on my crappy old devices, Ubuntu on my secondary mini-pc, and switch between them with KVM while working. I tried t…

Don’t bother. HN has a very hard anti-Microsoft bias, especially when it comes to Windows. At the same time will completely overlook many of the same warts or different warts that exist on macOS or Linux because they get a free pass for some reason.

Despite its flaws Windows still remains a very capable workhorse general purpose OS, and with WSL dev is a non issue. Hell, having actual Linux is better than the macOS Frankenstein Unix and homrbrew

Re: Windhawk Windows classic theme mod for Windows 11

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why do they choose it? i have a windows workstation because one CNC machine that we use needs it. only other reason i can see is gaming? I have all 3 major OSs at home and, honestly, Windows 11 is stuff of nightmares to me

Adobe products, for example. Or any of other of miriad of other products which have only Win/MacOS and no Linux support. And, no, Wine cannot run anything. You see, I don't need OS at all, I need applications. Some of these applications are "universal" (FireFox, for example), some has good equivalents, and some are unique to OS. And, no, DarkTable, or RAW Therappe are not equivalent to Lightroom or Capture One. And n…

You can run nearly any Windows app with winboat. Its not based on wine, it runs real windows in a container.

Re: Windhawk Windows classic theme mod for Windows 11

#93
post #25

It's incredible the effort Windows 10/11 users will go to in order to reach a somewhat functional and reliable computing experience via third party modifications, yet Linux is somehow too much effort. Just look at the instructions on that page..

Windows 11 user here. I use zero third-party modifications. Some people are masochists.

Re: Windhawk Windows classic theme mod for Windows 11

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every techie knows about Linux by now. Not everyone chooses to use Windows because they're foolish or don't know any better

why do they choose it? i have a windows workstation because one CNC machine that we use needs it. only other reason i can see is gaming? I have all 3 major OSs at home and, honestly, Windows 11 is stuff of nightmares to me

Creative Cloud and DAWs. Those are my only reasons and basically the only reasons I ever hear from people. A Linux port of Photoshop would probably put a small dent in Windows' market share at this point.

Re: Windhawk Windows classic theme mod for Windows 11

#95
post #25

It's incredible the effort Windows 10/11 users will go to in order to reach a somewhat functional and reliable computing experience via third party modifications, yet Linux is somehow too much effort. Just look at the instructions on that page..

Windows 11 user here. I use zero third-party modifications. Some people are masochists.

Indeed, some people are :)

Re: Windhawk Windows classic theme mod for Windows 11

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Human reaction time is around 200ms Even if you are talking about the entire loop, that sounds pretty high. Maybe if its moving your hands in reaction to an unexpected stimulus in your feet... We can tell the difference between 60fps (~16ms per frame) and 120fps (~8ms per frame). Any more than that is a noticeable amount of waiting. It does get complicated, though. What if the information is presented immediately,…

https://humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime You'll probably see around 200ms. Not saying that's the relevant number in this discussion, but that's probably where the number comes from.

On mobile, I consistently get just under 400ms. I suspect using a mouse would get me closer to 200ms, since I would be resting my finger on the button.

So yes, total reaction time is generally quite long, but most of that time is spent performing "action".

That site would be more interesting if it provided a second interface where you do something predictable, like match a repeating beat.

Re: Windhawk Windows classic theme mod for Windows 11

#97
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you install or run a program, how do you make sure it doesn't include malware? I assume that you check for the author's record/reputation, and perhaps look at the source code if it's available. It's similar with Windhawk mods. The GitHub and X profiles are verified to be the profiles of the author, so you can decide whether you trust them. The source code is available, so you can inspect it as well. Mods are sin…

To review these third-party mods one needs to understand C++, Windows programming, and fairly obscure theming-related parts of its internals, some of which are undocumented/reverse engineered, and many have poorly understood side effects. This is a pretty specific combination of skills that slowly approaches arcane status, even if might feel otherwise to some. But again, larger apps are indeed harder to review than t…

Huh, with AI you can always "review" those mods. They are small enough. Anyway they are distributed via the creator's github repo, so it's already somewhat of a peer reviewed mechanism.

Re: Windhawk Windows classic theme mod for Windows 11

#98
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disabling animations makes everything better no matter the OS. When executing a sequence of actions, not having to wait 100-300ms for the device to show some random animation before inputing the next action is a time saver and a removes the "why is my computer/phone wasting my time" feeling. Human reaction time is around 200ms but in a sequence of actions, we don't need visual feedback to move to the next action; it'…

I agree there are many bad timer-waster animations. But animations can be a good thing. Take scrolling as an example. Pressing page-down on a text-page or in a text-editor, without animation, it takes me a lot of time and energy to find the place where I left off reading or editing before scrolling. A good animation can save a lot of time here. It's similar with other operations -- and I agree that those operations t…

> Pressing page-down on a text-page or in a text-editor, without animation, it takes me a lot of time and energy to find the place where I left off reading or editing before scrolling.

We used to be able to look at the scroll bar to keep track.

Furthermore page down/up used to move a full page consistently. But today it might as well be a random amount specific to the application or content. Making it impossible to train muscle memory.

Re: Windhawk Windows classic theme mod for Windows 11

#99
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've come across Windhawk before but the mods being just C++ programs seemed a little suspicious to me, how do you make sure the mods dont include malware?

FUD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty,_and_doubt I'm so sick of people telling me to BE AFRAID . If you want to live without the risk of a little danger, go live in prison.

> If you want to live without the risk of a little danger, go live in prison.

You have a very interesting idea of prison life.

In any case, labeling this a FUD I find to be a rather ill-spirited characterization. "Be cautious, not afraid." It is difficult to exercise caution without being aware of the risks, and this is a real risk.

But since we're getting all philosophical, it also hampers the exploration of the space between uncontrolled safety + original vision controlled safety + a total loss of that vision. Which I find is what a lot of the pleas towards "freedom" actually turn out to be; an obstruction of curiosity and rigor that would otherwise yield a more robust portfolio of options. The Monkey's Paw edition of the idea, where freedom is just another word for the unknown. The ability to do better, and an active choice not to.

If I think about when I usually take on operational risks at work confidently, it comes down to two things: knowing what might go wrong, and having a contingency plan. It is not going YOLO. Note the emphasis on taking on risks (so these are not unavoidable risks).

Contrast this with what was said. You're appealing to the risk both remaining unknown and staying unavoidable, while being fully aware that people do not maintain contingencies for this. How is this any reasonable? Is "rolling the dice on getting their systems infected" vs. "just getting their OS look different" really what you think people are looking to spice up their life with?

This is not a knock on the project or the community mind you, it's a knock on your idea of preferring to keep things yeeing and hawing. Something which I can assure you I'm growing equally if not more tired of than purportedly "having to be afraid". Especially given how I increasingly struggle to suspend my disbelief when people claim they're now being told all the time how they should "be afraid", and how they're now supposedly living in terror because of it, as the innocent victims they are. People blatantly mischaracterizing reasonable concerns as FUD over and over kinda does that to you. I think the trendy word for this is "performative"?

Between having to choose "not telling people about dangers so that those with an inability to properly self-regulate their anxiety don't go toast" and "always leading with the danger and safety information", maybe the way forward instead is having appropriate spaces for these? Cause I'd argue in that case, the extents the post you replied to went is pretty okay for this forum in my view. They know that arbitrary code is submitted, so they're wondering how malware is screened. Big deal.

Re: Windhawk Windows classic theme mod for Windows 11

#100
I imagine it would be frustrating to be the windows shell dev who has to investigate the torrent of bizarre memory corruption bugs that inevitably occur on Windhawk users’ machines after major OS updates. There’s really no avoiding it when you detour unstable “implementation detail” sort of functions across the taskbar/systray/start/etc. especially now that c++ coroutines are in widespread usage therein.

But to be fair, I understand the demand for products like this, because of several painful feature takebacks between 10 -> 11. It would be nice if cleaner approaches like wholesale shell replacement were still as straightforward as they were prior to windows 8. The “immersive shell” infra running in explorer + the opaque nature of enumerating installed UWPs + a bunch of other things make that almost impossible today.

Post reply on HN