[HN Gopher] Windows 11: Just say no
___________________________________________________________________
Windows 11: Just say no
Author : CrankyBear
Score : 203 points
Date : 2021-09-16 18:02 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.computerworld.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.computerworld.com)
| jl6 wrote:
| Why would anyone want to upgrade to Windows 11 on release day?
| Surely it's better to wait a couple of years for the worst bugs
| to be shaken out. What new features are worth putting yourself
| through version .0 pain?
|
| As far as I can tell, the only reason to upgrade to a new version
| of Windows is because the old version has stopped getting
| security updates.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| This article seems to be making a point that you shouldn't
| upgrade to Windows 11 _right now_ , since you might be encounter
| problems that result from the upgrade. But I have bigger
| apprehensions about Windows 11 than just that. Windows 11 feels
| like the culmination of a push to turn Windows into a walled
| garden service rather than a utilitarian operating system for
| generic computing devices. Dark patterns like forced logins, pop-
| ups tips, ads (https://www.xda-developers.com/microsoft-breaks-
| windows-11-b...), a lack of hardware support
| (https://www.pcgamer.com/how-the-hell-is-microsoft-already-
| sc...), and so on make me feel like it is time to move on from
| Windows.
|
| At the same time, there isn't a good alternative for everyday
| use. Although I would consider myself reasonably tech savvy, I
| can't say I am comfortable enough to use Linux as a daily driver
| and to trust that I am using it securely, as compared to taking
| updates with one click from Microsoft or Apple. Maybe my
| perception is wrong, but we really need better educational
| resources to teach people and get them _comfortable_ with
| computing infrastructure (hardware /software/services) from
| outside the big tech vendors.
|
| Leaving that aside, I am not sure what Microsoft's larger
| strategy is. It feels to me like they're trying to be more like
| Apple at times. But if that's the case, why would I use
| Microsoft? Apple is already very good at being Apple and has
| better software and hardware for such an experience.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| >lack of hardware support
|
| Lol, this might be a chance for linux to outshine windows in
| hardware support.
| hef19898 wrote:
| I had the same feelings about Linux. Turned out Ubuntu runs
| just fine on the certified hardware from Lenovo, and personally
| I trust Ubuntu as much in terms of security updates as I trust
| MS.
| rejectfinite wrote:
| >Windows 11 feels like the culmination of a push to turn
| Windows into a walled garden service rather than a utilitarian
| operating system for generic computing devices
|
| They cannot do this due to enterprise apps.
|
| Maybe for the Home version.
|
| So many companies are on older Win32 ERP software that do not
| have a webapp. Also games. All Steam games etc would stop
| working.
|
| They tried with Windows 10S version and nobody uses that.
|
| But wow that pcgamer article shows the mess. Im on a i7 4790k
| PC w Windows 10 but with 11 I might not get updates??
|
| I haven't actually had any Windows 10 issues... runs all the PC
| games ever made, all the Windows apps. I try and disable all
| the telemetry in UI, turn off animations, use Firefox to
| minimize the privacy issues. Takes a while but once its setup
| it just trucks on.
| sunnytimes wrote:
| try linux mint .. or as already stated Ubuntu .. both are
| fantastic daily drivers IMO.
| prirai wrote:
| Using Linux is quite easier these days than ever before. About
| the usability: One command can update your system as well as
| all the apps installed. No hassle of shutting down your pc
| after an update. Limitless comfigurations to make the system
| your own. I would suggest using a community based distro, ones
| like Debian, Linux Mint, Fedora, Arch (Slightly hard), KDE
| Neon, etc. There's a very large community and also well written
| documentation to support you if you get stuck. Also, help is
| available most of the time in the terminal itself, no need to
| go anywhere. There's also the feeling of freedom and that an OS
| doesn't track you and staying out of the way to give you the
| most fluid experience acocording to whatever suites you.
| ageofzfarm wrote:
| What's really difficult for the average user is the
| installation process.
|
| Debian is what I install to friends and family because the
| system is really tested, stable and does not annoy them with
| continuous update pop ups. Then every two years, we have a
| dinner at my place and I help them upgrade.
|
| They tell me that their pc seems less "magical", that they
| feel they have more control over what it does.
|
| The only real issue is compatibility with the office suite
| when the beancounter sends Excel sheets.
| Tarsul wrote:
| Excel really is the/my last hold-out for Windows. Excel for
| web is not adequate. Maybe it's better that way for
| MS/windows, otherwise there are no reasons to stay with
| windows except it being a habit. For my private use I'll
| try changing to Linux with Steam Deck.
| easton wrote:
| > No hassle of shutting down your pc after an update.
|
| Has kernel hotpatching made it into a free distro? The only
| way I ever got it to work was installing RHEL (money) or
| Ubuntu Landscape (money after 10 servers). This would be
| super nice, as then I could once again have year long uptimes
| for my boxes.
| 127 wrote:
| Installed Manjaro on my HP laptop instead of Windows and the
| hardware actually works better with less issues.
| NtGuy25 wrote:
| I really like Windows 11. Hyper-V has some MASSIVE updates which
| noone talks about, as well as stuff like the network stack being
| rewritten. It's better to view this as a Windows 10 Refresh with
| alot done behind the scenes and a new UI. Not much of this is
| talked about though, outside of really niche highly technical
| circles.
|
| There's some false narrative about it which is bizarre.
| Causality1 wrote:
| You know I used to follow Windows news rabidly. The new features
| were incredible, I looked forward to every release. Somewhere
| around the time Microsoft added a lock screen to a desktop
| computer without going "only joking, haha", I started dreading
| every update.
| zbuttram wrote:
| So the last "good" Windows was what then, 3.1? Modern lock
| screens are essentially just glorified login prompts and we had
| that in 3.11 I believe.
| noitpmeder wrote:
| This seems incredibly out of touch with reality.
| amackera wrote:
| I'm sorry, what? Why wouldn't you want a Lock Screen? That's a
| basic security measure, without a lock screen Windows would be
| a non-starter for any secure enterprise.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| A lock screen without full disk encryption is security by
| obscurity. Change my mind.
| xtracto wrote:
| It's a different type of security:
|
| I leave my email, jira, slack, and other services logged in
| while I am working. When I step out of my computer I lock
| my screen to prevent other people in the room from using
| _my account_ in those services.
|
| I am aware that they can grab the hard drive and get
| whatever crap I've got there, but they cannot login into my
| email, bank, and other services. That's why the lock screen
| is useful for me.
| vore wrote:
| Windows can definitely also do full disk encryption via
| BitLocker...
| Causality1 wrote:
| A lock screen is not the same as a login screen. A lock
| screen is the functionless screen you have to dismiss before
| being presented with the login screen.
| pjmlp wrote:
| I have to agree, even though I have plenty of pro-Windows
| comments.
|
| To me Windows 11 feels like Vista, and to everyone that got
| burned with the rewrites on the WinRT side, just using plain
| Win32/MFC/Forms/WPF feels liberating.
|
| Multiple teams are fighting UI politics over WinUI, MAUI on top
| of WinUI, React Native with WinUI, and classical UWP is not going
| away (Windows 11 Store is written in it), then ASP.NET team is
| pushing Blazor everywhere including on Web Widgets.
|
| I will just wait for Windows 12, whenever it comes up, the UI war
| will be settled by then.
| Gys wrote:
| > I will just wait for Windows 12, whenever it comes up, the UI
| war will be settled by then.
|
| There is always hope ;-)
| jnsaff2 wrote:
| This is M$ doing its tik-tok releases.
|
| XP - decent
|
| Vista - horrorshow
|
| 7 - alright (compared to vista)
|
| 8 - horrorshow
|
| 10 - alright (compared to 8)
|
| 11 - horrorshow
|
| Personally I will never use it unless I really need to and then
| kicking and screaming but that is my observation.
| amyjess wrote:
| Vista SP2 was better than 7.
|
| At least Vista had a real start menu. Yeah, early Vista was
| rough, but by SP2 all the problems were fixed.
| Koshkin wrote:
| FWIW, it's "tick-tock."
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| Allow to fix your list :
|
| XP - decent
|
| Vista - horrorshow
|
| 7 - alright (compared to vista)
|
| 8 - Not too bad
|
| 8.1 - alright
|
| 10 - dumpster fire
|
| 11 - another dumpster fire
| hef19898 wrote:
| That! It started before XP so...
| dmitrygr wrote:
| and even before:
|
| 9x - please no!
|
| 2000 - great
|
| ME - oh god, make it stop!
| genewitch wrote:
| 95 was a paradigm shift, 98 had batteries included for the
| internet, but 98se and 2000 server are the best OSes MS
| ever put out.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| 95/98/ME were operating on a different kernel than the NT
| line (which 2000 fell under). The difference really being
| that the NT kernel was targeting pretty much exclusively
| businesses, while the 9x line was targeting home users and
| some business users. They merged (with the NT kernel
| winning out) in XP, which targeted both home and business
| users.
|
| ME was _not_ an upgrade path from 2000 even though it came
| out after 2000, it was an upgrade path for 98.
| Paianni wrote:
| Eh, I don't agree.
|
| NT 3.51 -- solid
|
| NT 4.0, 2000 & XP -- less, less and less solid
|
| Vista -- premature
|
| 7 -- ok
|
| 8 -- borked
|
| 10 & 11 -- untouchable
| gpvos wrote:
| 2000 was pretty good really, more solid than 3.51 even
| GnarfGnarf wrote:
| I migrated from Win32 to Qt two years ago. Never looked back.
| Much easier to program dialogs & UI. Qt gives you macOS as
| well. ( _And_ UWP if you insist).
|
| WinRT is the OS/2 of the 21st century.
| Sunspark wrote:
| I have some concerns with Qt. Not the functionality, but the
| implementation of some of it. My primary concern is that it
| doesn't respect the OS's anti-aliasing settings. It defaults
| to making fonts anti-aliased, even if you don't want them to
| be. Because of this, last year I stopped updating an app
| using Qt.
|
| The higher resolution a display is, the less and less you
| need anti-aliasing so it's unnecessary in the 4K and up era.
| Also while I am not on a 4K display, I find AA fonts blurry
| compared to nice crisp hinted non-AA fonts.
| pjmlp wrote:
| WinRT looked great, finally .NET being like Delphi and a C++
| stack that looked like C++ Builder, for those moments that
| .NET alone won't do it.
|
| On one side .NET Native is left to stagnate in C# 7, and
| C++/CX got replaced with C++/WinRT, which to this day (4
| years later) still doesn't offer any kind of IDL tooling on
| VS (lets forget for a second that IDL exists since OLE 1.0),
| and requires manually merging generated files.
|
| Then to top that, we get MAUI on top of WinUI, but with the
| XAML format used by Xamarin.
|
| Anyone following the now 2100+ issues on Github, community
| calls, change of roadmap of what WinUI 3.0, Reunion and XAML
| Islands were supposed to be originally, and where they are
| going after Windows 11 announcement, can only be dismayed.
|
| They don't seem to either get the complaints, or most likely,
| are stuck in a position where they cannot publicly
| acknowledge them.
|
| OS/2 was actually much better than this with CSet++, while
| SOM had metaclasses and implementation inheritance, with
| Smalltalk and C++ support.
|
| Still, I can equally well rant about other platforms, it is
| all a matter of which flaws we are willing to put up with.
| EMM_386 wrote:
| > Multiple teams are fighting UI politics over WinUI, MAUI on
| top of WinUI, React Native with WinUI, and classical UWP is not
| going away (Windows 11 Store is written in it), then ASP.NET
| team is pushing Blazor everywhere including on Web Widgets.
|
| Great point.
|
| As a developer in the Windows sphere for decades, I'm used to
| change.
|
| However, at this point I have no idea what I am supposed to be
| developing user interfaces in. Honestly, using VS Code daily as
| part of my stack I'm leaning towards just accepting that
| WebView2/Electron/etc is the future.
|
| I have read the complaints, but VS Code is a solid piece of
| engineering and it "just works". If that's an example of what
| we can easily get cross-platform, so be it.
| pjmlp wrote:
| I would rather see them rewrite VSCode in React Native, given
| all the love it is getting from Office and XBox teams, but
| lets see if it ever happens.
| v413 wrote:
| React is slow for the perf targets of VSCode.
| pjmlp wrote:
| React Native != React.
|
| Also do you consider that VSCode has higher performance
| requirements than XBox dashboard, or Office plugins?
| arriu wrote:
| I'm going to get down voted for this, I realize it isn't for
| everyone... If it's not for you, no problem. Let me know what
| you prefer.
|
| Anyways, try golang with imgui.
|
| You can make imgui look like anything. Ontop of that, you get
| true cross platform binaries with native speeds with only a
| couple dozen lines of code and amazing dependancy management.
| If you've never done immediate mode front-ends, you'll be
| delighted.
| kertoip_1 wrote:
| From what I see it's the kind of library for people
| preferring usability over good looking appearance. Of
| course you can make it "look like anything", but sane
| defaults are also important for rapid software development
| and this definitely lack them
| thrower123 wrote:
| VS Code is like the absolute greatest Electron app that has
| ever, or will ever be written.
|
| And yet it had an issue for quite some time where animating
| the cursor flashing was taking an enormous percentage of CPU.
| pjmlp wrote:
| It is also one that has big chunks of C++ and Rust code,
| and WebGL based rendering to make it actually usable.
| 0-_-0 wrote:
| Oh you can do that with Electron? This is not my area of
| expertise... Are there any other ways to have GPU
| acceleration?
| pjmlp wrote:
| Here how WebGL is used for the terminal in VSCode,
|
| https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/85971
|
| Or how Rust is used for search via ripgrep.
|
| https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-ripgrep
| greggturkington wrote:
| To be fair it was partially related to a bug in Chromium,
| and was fixed in 2017
|
| https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/22900
| tacker2000 wrote:
| Yea vscode is really great! Could someone knowledgeable give
| a rundown of the exact stack/frameworks/etc they are using?
| thrower123 wrote:
| Winforms will never die. If I was looking to make an investment
| into a skillset that will still be really useful in thirty
| years, I would go deep on WinForms.
| js4ever wrote:
| Hum, my last winform app is from 2009, after that all
| projects ordered from customers where in web ui instead (same
| customers)
| pjmlp wrote:
| My last one is from 2016, now I am mostly doing other
| stuff, but there are plenty of places that still are quite
| into this kind of frameworks.
|
| Just as example, companies that buy this kind of software,
|
| https://perkinelmerinformatics.com/
| thrower123 wrote:
| All of my real products are web-based.
|
| But WinForms is immensely useful in building tools, and
| configuration utilities, and little one-off GUI things for
| various reasons. Anything that would take less time to slam
| together soup-to-nuts than just getting webpack working for
| a new project would take.
| strictnein wrote:
| > To me Windows 11 feels like Vista
|
| If they bring back Aero I'll be happy.
| N00bN00b wrote:
| Wouldn't surprise me if you reboot your computer one day and
| surprise! It's windows 11 now!
|
| Remember, they did the same thing with Windows 10 a couple of
| times.
| amyjess wrote:
| Welp, time to start dropping every packet from any Windows
| Update-related IP block in my router...
| chasil wrote:
| I wonder if ReactOS will hit 1.0 by the time that Windows 10
| goes out of support in 2024.
|
| It would be interesting to see older systems retasked to a free
| clone OS, potentially running most/all of the same software.
|
| https://reactos.org/project-news/reactos-in-2020/
| amyjess wrote:
| I'd settle for being able to delete explorer.exe from my
| system and put the ReactOS shell in its place.
|
| I want to play modern games but with the Windows 98 desktop
| experience.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| They won't let it happen. For now they decided to just ignore
| the project and not give it any publicity, but the moment it
| gains popularity, they will definitely react. Until now they
| attacked it indirectly through their kernel developer saying
| ReactOS stole his code - in spite of the fact they took all
| necessary measures not to and underwent an audit. This is the
| same old strategy Microsoft supported during the SCO trial.
| aliswe wrote:
| i thought reactos contained portions of windows NT code?
| itronitron wrote:
| I like Windows, and I would prefer to keep everyone in my
| family running Windows, but Windows 10 just doesn't work as
| smoothly as it should considering the resources that Microsoft
| should be able to throw at it. Due to various latency issues in
| Windows 10, it feels like it was written by a couple of
| developers that don't fully understand the api/framework they
| are using. This should be their wheelhouse, since it is their
| OS, but it feels cobbled together. So I am slowly migrating my
| family to Linux as I don't have much confidence that MS will
| fix their shit.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Mostly, I'm simply not interested in upgrading because what I
| have works. I spend so little time thinking about my operating
| system itself these days that I'm a hard sell on value-add in
| replacing any aspect of it.
| Animats wrote:
| Windows - just say no.
|
| I bailed out of Windows when Windows 7 reached end of life.
| Windows 10 has ads, and that's unacceptable.
| gruez wrote:
| >Windows 10 has ads, and that's unacceptable.
|
| just use enterprise/ltsc.
| bananabiscuit wrote:
| What if they lock the next version of DirectX behind Windows 11?
| aseipp wrote:
| That's how it's worked forever, basically; Windows 10 was the
| minimum requirement for DX12 and Vista with DX11 before that,
| with 6-7 year time gaps. The APIs also evolved slowly and
| incrementally with features between those years, but I don't
| think all of them were available in every operating system.
| DirectStorage for instance (allowing P2P DMA between your GPU
| and SSD) is only going to be available in Windows 11
| apparently. So when/if they release DirectX13, yes, it will
| surely be Windows 11 only.
|
| Speaking from personal PC gaming experience though, I don't
| expect this to be some major blocker, based on my experience
| with DirectX12 uptake in games today 5-6 years after it was
| introduced (it's not high outside of AAA titles, and all of
| them have fallbacks/alt renderers.) Not to mention the fact
| Windows 11 will only work on very recent hardware, so you might
| as well just target the "old" APIs for a good while and have a
| vastly larger userbase. I don't plan on upgrading for a bit and
| I don't think I'll miss much, game-wise, in the mean time.
| pitterpatter wrote:
| >DirectStorage for instance (allowing P2P DMA between your
| GPU and SSD) is only going to be available in Windows 11
| apparently.
|
| Pretty sure they backtracked on that. "As such, games built
| against the DirectStorage SDK will be compatible with Windows
| 10, version 1909 and up"
|
| https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directstorage-
| develop...
| phone8675309 wrote:
| Then people will probably spend time trying to get the
| Wine/Proton implementation of that version of DirectX running
| on Windows 10.
|
| Windows 11 is going over like a lead balloon in the enthusiast
| gaming community, so the will is there.
| beebeepka wrote:
| I have a couple of almost identical Ryzen 3700x machines. One has
| an Nvidia card, the other has a radeon 5700. One runs Ubuntu, the
| other is Manjaro. The Radeon was barely usable for anything
| vulkan until well into 2020. Even Valve's own Half-Life: Alyx
| needed a month until it was just as good on Linux
|
| It is Q4 2021 now and can't remember the last time I felt the
| need to boot from my windows SSD.
|
| My wife used to be against Linux but even she doesn't want to
| deal with windows 10 these days. She has noticed how bad the
| software on her laptop is and agrees our Linux desktops are
| easier to deal with.
|
| I would've completely given up on windows a decade earlier if it
| wasn't for gaming. What it took was to for MS to scare Gaben. Oh,
| the irony
| lostmsu wrote:
| Windows is still superior if you do anything on GPU beyond UI.
| Linux desktop basically freezes when GPU is at 100% load. It's
| like Win98/Me and CPU before 2000.
| Wavelets wrote:
| Maybe it has better security, but it has worse privacy. Windows
| 10 is my last MS OS. Heading back to Linux as my daily driver
| with a System 76 machine.
| techrat wrote:
| Windows 10 was what pushed me to start using Linux full time.
| It just broke me, how nonsensical it was. Going through several
| layers of new UI style sidebars, submenu items just to end
| up... in classic Control Panel with configuration elements
| divided up between new and old?
|
| Windows still has an insanely convoluted installation process
| whereas Ubuntu boots straight into a usable desktop from
| installation medium and has less prompts before your one single
| reboot into the installed OS.
|
| Windows honestly needs to be burnt to the ground and redone
| from scratch before I'll consider using it again.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| > Windows honestly needs to be burnt to the ground and redone
| from scratch before I'll consider using it again.
|
| Preferably without requiring a LiveID and all the idiotic
| "Send to Grandparents" social media features. I want
| something to run programs and games, not a Facebook wannabe
| that tracks my every eye movement to show me more relevant
| ads or suggests content. If I want news and ads, I'll open a
| fucking browser (like that's not bad enough already).
|
| I lived with Windows 10 for a few years, but eventually got
| tired of every update reverting my privacy and update
| settings. Jumped ship to linux and haven't looked back once.
| autoliteInline wrote:
| I just fired up a Win10 machine for the first time in some
| while in order to run specific software.
|
| Good gawd. It was finally useful about 4 hours later after all
| the updates and tomfoolery. Never again.
| obloid wrote:
| I've been using Linux as my primary OS for about a year now and
| have had a great experience [Manjaro KDE on a ThinkPad T14s
| AMD]. It's really so much more pleasant to use than windows
| these days.
|
| On rare occasion I need to be able to use RemoteApp for work,
| and have a win10 VirtualBox machine for those situations.
| Though I actually boot into windows even less than I thought I
| might when I first switched.
| Aperocky wrote:
| > so much more pleasant to use than windows
|
| Is there anything in contention with windows in that regard?
| Maybe the mobile OSes?
| mikestew wrote:
| In what regard? In being unpleasant to use? No, I believe
| modern Windows to be singular in its unpleasantness.
|
| In seriousness, though, try as I might I can't seem to
| parse your first sentence even using my "native English
| speaker" plug-in.
| userbinator wrote:
| The security is better in that it's more secure _against_ you.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Got my first Linux machine because of that, partially at least.
| I like an OS, for which I don't need an account, that just runs
| on hardware I own.
| CitrusFruits wrote:
| Found this out the other day: you can have local only
| accounts for Windows, although it's pretty hidden nowadays.
|
| https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/can-i-sign-in-
| to...
|
| (Search in the page "Switch from a Microsoft account to a
| local account")
| hef19898 wrote:
| Good call! Too late for me now so, especially since the
| majority of my Steam library is running just fine under
| Linux. Maybe for some online stuff, Teams for potential
| home schooling and so. The fact that local accounts are
| hidden sucks in itself so. I will keep Windows on my
| private laptop so, just in case. Not that I am going to
| upgrade to Win 11 so.
| jdlyga wrote:
| I would upgrade to Windows 11, but my 5 year old desktop doesn't
| support it apparently.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| Just buy a brand new computer and throw your old one in a
| landfill. Easy!
| darthvoldemort wrote:
| i just upgraded my Windows 7 PC from a 2012 desktop to a modern
| 2021-level Windows 10 desktop with i7 CPU, 32 GB memory, etc.
|
| I honestly can't tell the difference between the two systems. I
| don't play games which is probably the biggest thing driving
| upgrades, but for everything that I need to do, which is an
| advanced use, my 10 year old Windows 7 system was more than good
| enough.
|
| The only reason why I did end up upgrading was because I bought a
| 10Gbe switch, and the motherboard in my Windows 7 PC didn't
| support the bus speed required for 10 GBe speeds.
|
| I'm pretty sure that it's not worth $1000 just to change my
| compiles from 30 seconds to 5 seconds so I'm not sure what the
| compelling reason to upgrade is for the hundreds of millions of
| other users except a fake Windows 11 upgrade forcing a hardware
| upgrade.
| thrower123 wrote:
| The biggest difference I noticed in upgrading from a
| 2011-vintage desktop to a 2020 desktop is that npm and all the
| JS-heavy compiling and bundling operations were much faster.
| That's got to be almost entirely CPU-based, because I kept the
| same SSDs and graphics card when I built the new machine.
|
| If it weren't for Gulp and WebPack, I could have kept using
| that old machine, even for my moderate gaming purposes, until
| it wore out.
| muststopmyths wrote:
| To be completely fair, there were significant upgrades to the
| networking stack in Windows 8, so you probably got more support
| for your 10Gbe switch than just the motherboard change.
|
| Between 8 and 10, though.. yeah. The only reason to upgrade
| between those was if you hated 8 (I loved it on tablets/phone,
| not on desktop).
|
| There are many Microsoft-hatred-driven reasons to not upgrade
| from 7 to 10, but lack of progress in the underlying OS is
| definitely not one of them. People confuse the shell with the
| OS all the time (and yeah the shell is atrocious and gets worse
| every iteration), but it's not the entirety of what makes a
| Windows version.
|
| NB: "shell" here means the thing hosting the UI (including
| Explorer), not a unix shell.
| toss1 wrote:
| Taskbar can no longer be moved.
|
| That single "improvement" will keep me away for as long as
| possible. It's the first thing I change when setting up a new
| Windows environment, and have done it for over a decade. I'm
| enough not alone that I've seen in mentioned in multiple
| articles.
|
| MS makes all kinds of noise about "reworking the UI from the
| ground up for true usability" or some such. Yet I have no idea
| what could possibly be the benefit to removing such
| functionality. MS says they listen, but obviously not.
|
| Sheesh, another Windows 8 debacle coming at us.
| contingencies wrote:
| 2022 - year of the Linux desktop
| theduder99 wrote:
| I made a similar joke in front of some coworkers recently and
| nobody got it. Reminds me how small some of the bubbles we live
| in are.
| top_post wrote:
| Where is Satya lately? The last few years his face was
| everywhere, doing some very common sense things that got MS back
| to being a leading player. What the fuck is with Windows 11? Some
| common sense judgement could be used here.
| rishav_sharan wrote:
| For me, the lack of a "Never combine" option for the taskbar has
| made win11 unusable for me. I have already reverted back to 10
| and will not be updating again till this option is made available
| again. Its a huge productivity hit for people who are used to
| multitaking between dozens of open windows
| Ronson wrote:
| No "Never Combine"? :( Tell me it isn't so. I can't remember
| when that combine thing was added but the first thing I do is
| get that binned straight away. I haven't used it long enough to
| even understand how it works.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Never combine, drag files onto taskbar items to open window,
| clocks on secondary monitors, taskbar in positions other than
| the bottom, small taskbar, option to always show all tray icons
| instead of having to set it per app, right click not having
| most of the options unless you right click the start button. A
| lot of the functionally focused options are gone.
|
| Not that it's 100% bad. Ability to fully disable the show
| desktop region at the end of the taskbar, the combined
| volume/network/quick settings icon region, the general redo of
| the popout for quick settings, the search not being larger than
| everything else in the taskbar by default, the notification
| region merging with the clock region, and the general styling
| update are good. It's just heavily outweighed by the bad... and
| the broken.
|
| The still broken even though they rewrote the whole thing
| including things like the new menus often getting stuck open
| even when you click away from them, auto-hide taskbar on
| secondary monitors still having issues popping up, the start
| menu always opening on the primary monitor when you press the
| win key even when you're active in another monitor, the new
| "Chat" Teams client that integrates with the taskbar still not
| supporting corporate accounts, sudden rapid fire 1 by 1 bursts
| of notifications about the emails I've gotten and already
| responded to in the last hour despite focus assist being
| disabled, and I'm sure more I can't think at the moment.
|
| Also the dislikable additions which are of course preference
| based but I think most people will find things that received a
| lot of effort like widgets and chat useless.
|
| .
|
| All that being said it's still livable for me but it is a
| definite downgrade and a bit disappointing.
| nirav72 wrote:
| I've been using win 11 for the past couple of days. Biggest
| annoying thing is the right click context menu in explorer. First
| you right click when selecting a file and then have to pick
| additional options in secondary menu to get to things like 7-zip
| or any other context registered app. If Microsoft doesn't provide
| an option to disable it , then I'm staying with win10.
| marktangotango wrote:
| Am I alone in assuming they'll just do the Windows 10 unwanted
| upgrade, again, when 11 adoption rate isn't where they want it to
| be? Choice doesn't matter to these mega corps, so long as we use
| their stores and view their ads. Thank god for Gnu and Linux!
| KeyBoardG wrote:
| I agree. There is a lot of fear mongering coming out of
| Microsoft now, like their "we can't promise security upgrades"
| for people who ISO install on unsupported hardware.
| pndy wrote:
| That's the most probable scenario and I wouldn't be surprised
| that in the end they'll lower the requirements for 11 even
| more. Back then, the marketing tactic of "hurry up, limited-
| time offer only" was in the use for this free Windows 10
| upgrade but people were still able to get the upgrade after the
| deadline; then, some used the obscure way of getting the
| upgrade by special offer for people with accessibility issues.
|
| > Choice doesn't matter to these mega corps
|
| Choice doesn't matter and it's an OK policy to annoy user
| periodically with options, suggestions, offers, up until it
| gives up and agrees for something it didn't want in first place
| but wants to get rid of the annoying notifications or whatever
| form this _harassment_ takes. The permanent "No, thank you,
| I'm not interested" doesn't exist in corporate world too -
| there's only place for "Fine but we will ask you again and
| again", sadly.
| jcranberry wrote:
| Ive been using win 11 on my laptop for a couple months now.
|
| I like the new UI, it feels simpler and less gaudy. The drop down
| menu expansion thing is fine. I also prefer the redesign of the
| settings app. I find casting my screen and bluetooth works
| better. Windows has been missing something decent window snapping
| features forever and although it's a bit clunky I appreciate that
| it's there.
|
| The only thing that has annoys me is the taskbar not disappearing
| when its supposed to, leading to it covering the bottom of
| maximized applications. Most of the time its not there but
| sometimes it'll just stick after coming up.
|
| I didn't know about the android apps feature but I might give it
| a shot when I go home. Widgets I just haven't used at all despite
| being aware of them.
|
| I still have win10 on my desktop. I don't remember the switch
| being painful when I went to the rolling release windows insider
| on my laptop. Frankly win10 is fine too, so unless there's an
| android app I want to play around with I wouldn't bother
| switching.
| drKarl wrote:
| The elders of the tribe know you always have to skip one version
| of Windows every two. They publish a good version followed by a
| bad one.
| olah_1 wrote:
| Proton[1] is the reason my next machine will be Linux.
|
| [1]: https://www.protondb.com/
| Kenji wrote:
| Why not your present machine? Don't delay, install Linux today.
| Jach wrote:
| Between Proton and WSL we're getting closer to a true "write
| once run anywhere" world where host platform won't matter so
| much. Devs will be free to develop with whatever tech stack
| they like most, make a canonical build, and other platforms
| will be able to run it.
|
| What's going to be hilarious is that much like dosbox became
| the best way to run old dos programs even if they might still
| technically run on windows, wine/proton will be (and sometimes
| already is) the best way to run many older windows programs.
| Particularly I'm in love with proton's fullscreen magic that
| doesn't actually mess with your display mode, so e.g. I can run
| Touhou games fullscreen in proton with my display at 4k despite
| them only supporting 480p fullscreen -- running on Windows will
| try to set my display mode to that with varying success. At
| some point we'll be running old Windows programs on Windows
| with wine/proton through WSL.
| seph-reed wrote:
| Yup. I've been running EOS (https://elementary.io/).
|
| It's almost as pretty as my MBP, and vastly more usable than
| Windows. And I have everything I really need (with first class
| Linux support):
|
| * Gaming - Steam + Proton
|
| * Digital Audio Workstation - Bitwig
|
| * Video Editing - DaVinci Resolve
|
| * 3d Modeling - Blender
|
| * 2d Image - Gimp (this one could be a lot better)
|
| -----
|
| The only thing I can imagine dual booting into Windows for is
| Oculus Link. But I don't really think it's worth it.
| jason0597 wrote:
| Honestly, the Linux desktop experience has come _so_ far in the
| past 10 years. Sure I don 't think it's perfect, but it's
| nowhere near as bad as it was in 2008 where Windows was still
| king and Linux had bugs everywhere in every distro and every
| desktop environment. I think people should seriously consider
| Linux now if they can't take anymore of Microsoft's shit
| AQuantized wrote:
| I totally agree. There are still times you will need to
| investigate why something isn't working on linux. But the
| upside is when you do, there's almost always a way to make it
| work the way you want.
|
| In stark contrast with Windows 10 which has had features like
| window snapping at edges when dragging something across the
| boundary between monitors that you just can't turn off. Or
| updates that seem to obey their own arcane rules instead of
| requiring a simple sudo [package-manager] [update-command]
| krona wrote:
| Anecdotal, but I have a 2015 Lenovo X1 Carbon running Ubuntu
| 20 (gnome 3.38), a 2020 MBP and a 2019 MS Surface Laptop 3
| (windows 10).
|
| The recent Gnome experience on hardware half a decade older
| than the Surface laptop is so much snappier than Windows. I
| dred MacOS and Windows updates these days but I'm generally
| very pleased with updates to Ubuntu/Gnome.
|
| Furthermore everything just works, too, which is what I grew
| up to expect from Windows, but literally yesterday the
| Surface laptop _bricked itself_ installing an update. I have
| daily problems using Windows with WSL, too. It 's
| infuriating.
|
| I used to feel stable and assured using Windows, but these
| days Windows is an endless labyrinth of dialog boxes, it's
| hard to comprehend how anyone could take it seriously any
| longer. Maybe I'm getting old.
| partiallypro wrote:
| 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.
| babypuncher wrote:
| 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.
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| I really feel like these system requirements came from top down.
| I work on SQL Server from home and the machine I use to connect
| to my work machine is not even close to meeting the Windows 11
| requirements despite being a solid machine. It has a 2014
| processor that still does great and the GPU is a 1080. The only
| parts that really need an upgrade in my opinion is the RAM (since
| it only has 16GB).
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Allow me to vent: yesterday windows cumulative update wouldn't
| install. Fine, Google error code
|
| "we recommend an in-place upgrade"
|
| I have no belief Windows 11 is going to be better just more of
| the same.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Windows 11 is half-baked.
|
| But it isn't _just_ half-baked because it was rushed out while
| ignoring all the feedback (although it absolutely was). It is
| also half-baked because Microsoft 's management has no particular
| strategy or plan for what they want Windows to be.
|
| So Windows 11 just feels like an "and kitchen sink" where someone
| picked up an iPad, noted down a bunch of random features without
| rhyme or reason and then told the people below them to shove them
| into Windows for _some_ reason.
|
| Then you step back and realize that very "101" features on
| Windows are still incomplete like the migration to Settings,
| Windows Search being objectively worse than the Power Toys Run
| (let alone Google Desktop Search RIP or FileLocator Pro), and UI
| elements that haven't been updated since Windows 2K.
|
| As cliche as this sounds, Microsoft needs someone with a vision
| for Windows at the helm, someone they trust enough to go hands
| off and let them materialize that vision. Regardless of what that
| vision is, at least then Windows would be a _something_ , rather
| than a whole host of competing ideas and contradictions i.e. a
| mess.
|
| PS - Ironically the "Windows 11 PC Health Check" app symbolizes
| Windows 11's problems: Released in a half-complete state, pulled,
| then re-released as a "Preview" also in a half-complete state.
| The app to check if you're ready for Windows 11 is a "preview"
| less than 30 days before the FULL retail release of Windows 11...
| It is almost too perfect.
| pjmlp wrote:
| As I commented in another parts of this thread, you see that
| quite clearly in the mess of multiple teams, each advocating
| their own UI framework as the future of WIndows UI, as if they
| were the only team doing it.
|
| It is like management let them all roam free and let the best
| one win.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| That might have worked, if they had let the best one _win_.
| Instead, they treated the teams like a buffet - I 'll take
| this app from this team, and that app from that team... and
| the result is, as you say, a mess.
| userbinator wrote:
| _and UI elements that haven 't been updated since Windows 2K._
|
| Also known as "the good part"... Everything else about Windows
| UI since then has only gotten less usable and more hostile.
| ineedasername wrote:
| I hate the UI after Win 7. For years all users that needed to
| dig into setting knew exactly where they were. Now they
| expose some through a clunky UI and you have to go digging
| for that that are, in fact, just the same old UI. Which has
| to create confusion for many users presented with their new
| UI only to be thrown into a totally different UI style.
|
| The new UI should 1) actually expose all of the settings and
| 2) offer a toggle to default to the UI that sits behind
| everything anyway.
|
| Otherwise, I just don't understand the need to tweak with UI
| design that roughly 20 years of Windows users have already
| learned.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Took the words out of my mouth. I'd prefer a UI element
| designed for Windows 2K over most anything designed later
| (with some, but few, exceptions).
|
| I'm not sure I would characterize newer UI as more hostile.
| Some better adjective might be infantilizing, dumbed-down -
| for the most part; or there's a dichotomy between the UI for
| dummies part and arcane, not-well-documented, difficult-to-
| locate parts. This dichotomy was somewhat less pronounced in
| the past.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Quite frankly, the ONLY new UX element I like out of
| windows post 95 is the search bar. Everything else has been
| just annoying.
|
| That 95 interface is STILL there, buried under 1000 clicks
| through an unnavagable interface..
| OminousWeapons wrote:
| I agree, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.
| Windows is legitimately confusing for noobs, so I don't see
| a problem with making the noob learning curve less steep as
| long as all the "real" functionality that a power user,
| dev, or admin would regularly use is left alone on the same
| paths, with the same UX or syntax.
| gjvc wrote:
| > and UI elements that haven't been updated since Windows 2K.
|
| Windows 2K + cleartype would be perfect.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Plus individual screen dpi scaling from whenever that was.
| And the usb handling from win10. Oh and the audio device
| switcher is so much better in w10 than w7.
|
| Actually people seem to focus a lot on UX but in terms of
| the core features (handling my hardware and managing
| processes) windows has improved _a lot_. I also fondly
| remember win2k but I think it would be absolutely awful to
| use now.
| gjvc wrote:
| fair points, which i was going to mention, but was
| feeling too wistful. (it does happen)
| cogman10 wrote:
| This is what drives me nuts. Why do they keep messing with
| the UI? Nobody wants that! Even Apple and Google have both
| figured out that screwing around with UX every release is a
| recipe for making your customers HATE you.
|
| What I, and probably non-power users want out of windows is
| for it to be faster and use less power. I'd honestly be happy
| to go back to a Win95 interface with the latest kernel.
|
| Microsoft needs to fire the idiots that keep messing around
| with the UX. It's not broke, stop trying to fix it.
| wruza wrote:
| 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
| negotiations.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| > Why do they keep messing with the UI?
|
| UX folks don't get paid to leave things alone.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| There is plenty of other UI things to be touched.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Nobody gets paid to leave things alone and maybe that's a
| big problem with the world.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Farmers can get paid to not grow crops.
| saurik wrote:
| Damn... the idea that maybe we should be banding together
| as a democracy and cutting deals to subsidize the
| engineering work of companies that are willing to "lay
| fallow" their design teams is fascinating.
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| I've been doing UI for 20+ years and most of what I've
| worked on is determined by marketing & engineering. I
| understand & totally sympathize with not liking the
| results, but in my experience the designers rarely choose
| what (ui) problems need to get solved. Also I have never
| worked in an org that shipped "the design", it's
| inevitably compromised by high level management's
| personal feelings or lack of engineering attention to
| detail (I don't blame eng's for this, anytime the project
| schedule gets tight, they immediately cut resources to
| UI/UX). Anyway, I agree most updated UI's fail to deliver
| improvements to end users and let me tell you how shitty
| it feels to take the blame for stuff you didn't like
| either.
| squarefoot wrote:
| > Why do they keep messing with the UI?
|
| The UI that remains unchanged in a few years is perceived
| as old and obsolete, hence the purely marketing driven need
| to change it even when it works. And then there are new
| courses and new support contracts. Governments are a
| significant part of MS customer base; every time MS changes
| something, it's new money pouring in. As someone once said,
| Windows is not an operating system, it's a business
| platform.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I think I've seen an old article by a Microsoft employee
| saying "if you didn't change the UI, you changed
| nothing".
|
| They used the calculator as an example, saying that it
| saw several improvements but since it always looked the
| same, people thought nothing had changed. Improvements
| included things like better arithmetics, so that
| (10/3-3)*3=1.
| mypalmike wrote:
| Dream job: full time engineer on Windows Calculator team.
| II2II wrote:
| Developing a calculator that one could be proud of would
| be a pretty sweet job. By that I mean producing a product
| that consistently produced correct results, offered
| useful features, and had a user interface that is more
| pleasant to use than a four function calculator.
| munchbunny wrote:
| Did that at an earlier point in my career, and it
| absolutely was, but calculators pretty quickly reach a
| point where "less is more", and at that point it's just
| better to leave it alone.
| kruxigt wrote:
| Windows used to be good UI but unstable and slow. Now it's
| stable and quite fast with bad UI.
|
| Kind of like how apple was a company with so and so
| hardware but very appreciated software and are now a
| company with state of the art hardware and so and so
| software.
| alkonaut wrote:
| > 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.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The Win32 widgets _are_ scalable, actually. They support
| device-independent units out of the box, even in Windows
| 95.
| foobiekr wrote:
| NT 3.1 (that is, the _first_ release of Windows NT in
| 1993) supported Unicode, at least as far as the UI
| elements were concerned (that it was UTF-16, well, ...)
| corty wrote:
| Nope, UCS-2. Which is UTF-16, but just the BMP, so only
| the first 65k codepoints and all characters are fixed-
| length 16bits. Only later windows versions at some point
| learned UTF-16.
| SllX wrote:
| Apple does not have this figured out, and if they do, they
| don't care.
| toss1 wrote:
| Yup
|
| Taskbar can no longer be moved.
|
| That single "improvement" will keep me away for as long as
| possible. It's the first thing I change when setting up a
| new Windows environment, and have done it for over a
| decade. I'm enough not alone that I've seen in mentioned in
| multiple articles.
|
| MS makes all kinds of noise about "reworking the UI from
| the ground up for true usability" or some such. Yet I have
| no idea what could possibly be the benefit to removing such
| functionality. MS says they listen, but obviously not.
|
| Unless a developer has a massive and utterly revolutionary
| improvement in the way we interact with the machine, and it
| yields 10X productivity improvements (or even 3X) for 90%
| of the user base - fkn leave it alone!!
|
| Marginal improvements are the worst - the time spent
| relearning, or fumbling while using a different machine is
| never recovered, and it just makes people annoyed at you.
| Even if the improvements are "free" the price is too high.
| hulitu wrote:
| Google has not yet learned.
| grishka wrote:
| I mean Android 12... Some project manager wanted a
| promotion this desperately.
| danielrpa wrote:
| I'm enraged by the new UI where you can't have multiple
| instances of the same application side-by-side in the
| taskbar. It's one of the things I hate in chromebooks,
| which Windows decided to adopt as their only (non hidden)
| option.
| nunez wrote:
| Seriously. Windows Classic was perfect. Fast, functional, and
| extremely easy to learn.
| hughrr wrote:
| 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.
| prox wrote:
| Looks like the "every odd release is terrible" tradition
| is still strong in Microsoft.
| kodeninja wrote:
| Not been on Win for a long time, but isn't Win 7
| generally regarded as the best/most stable?
| handrous wrote:
| 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.
|
| [EDIT] oh, and two of those three probably would have
| been at least as good as high-quality add-ons (like the
| Spectacle example is, on macOS), so as far as really
| vital stuff goes, making drivers suck a lot less is just
| about it.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Consistency would be good.
|
| Also some of the old elements don't work well anymore. Like
| new menus that appear in certain folders, except you'd never
| know because the menu bar is hidden by default. Or forms that
| were never designed to resize.
| seph-reed wrote:
| > Microsoft needs someone with a vision for Windows at the
| helm,
|
| Is it possible for a project to be abused for long enough that
| it becomes irrecoverable from any financially sensible
| perspective?
|
| I mean this seriously: I've heard the codebase for Windows is
| really, really ancient and making updates is a nightmare. It's
| almost like trying to revive a lost language.
|
| What if Windows has passed the threshold where the cost to fix
| it is beyond its potential for revenue? What if it's slowly
| approaching the threshold where simply maintaining it is beyond
| its potential for revenue?
| jjoonathan wrote:
| > Windows Search being objectively worse than the Power Toys
| Run
|
| Oh no, that's the one feature I was looking forward to, and
| only because I was hoping it would be better than Power Toys
| Run.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > ... someone picked up an iPad...
|
| Love the burn.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Google Desktop Search RIP or FileLocator Pro
|
| I don't use such apps, not because I don't like them, but
| because these days I just don't trust them to not
| surreptitiously send an index of my system to them.
|
| I wrote my own file search programs. It's not hard, just a few
| lines of code. I use them every day.
| nunez wrote:
| Metro was fucked up on many levels, but Steve Sinofsky had a
| really good vision for Windows that I just don't think he had
| enough time to see executed.
| heurisko wrote:
| I was trying to check Disk Partitions on Windows 10, so typed
| this into the search.
|
| It gave me a website with some freeware tool. I had to search
| around again until I found the actual system tool. I don't know
| what a regular user would have done.
|
| I'm not really a Windows user.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| It's diskmgmt.msc, you can just run it the unix way.
| dylan604 wrote:
| By editing a text file?
| 0-_-0 wrote:
| Use a terminal, or just Win+R
| da_chicken wrote:
| A regular user would have said, "What's a disk partition?"
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| It is still available by right-clicking on the start button.
| This will almost certainly go away in 11, because MS hates
| us.
| watermelon0 wrote:
| I've needed it enough time that I won't ever forget
| "diskmgmt.msc" command, and AFAIK it works since Windows XP.
|
| I'm not really sure what's so problematic with searching
| settings, but other platforms I use (macOS, iOS) are not
| really much better in this regard.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Disk Management is also in the Power User Menu, just right
| click the Start Menu orb or Win+X.
| genewitch wrote:
| mmc.exe and you can snap-in diskmgmt, and it will save that
| in the menu for next time.
|
| Since diskmgmt is mmc with that snap in already snapped in.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| My favorite is when I see the result I want flash by and then
| I accidentally type the next character -- correctly -- due to
| momentum, and the result disappears. Then I delete the last
| character in an attempt to bring back the result, and then I
| try retyping the whole thing, but the correct result never
| reappears. It is gone. Only useless web results remain.
| deeplowdock wrote:
| Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
|
| [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersio
| n\Search] "BingSearchEnabled"=dword:00000000
| "CortanaConsent"=dword:00000000
|
| ^ put this into a .reg file, run it, and never see those
| bullshit web search results again. Have been doing this
| first thing after a fresh install on every PC.
| gregmac wrote:
| Much simpler is to just paste to a terminal:
| REG ADD
| HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search /v
| BingSearchEnabled /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f REG ADD
| HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search /v
| CortanaConsent /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
| dleslie wrote:
| You need carriage returns.
| mikevm wrote:
| Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
| [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows
| Search] "ConnectedSearchUseWebOverMeteredConnection
| s"=dword:00000000 "AllowCortana"=dword:00000000
| "DisableWebSearch"=dword:00000001
| "ConnectedSearchUseWeb"=dword:00000000 [HKEY_C
| URRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Sea
| rch] "CortanaConsent"=dword:00000000
| "BingSearchEnabled"=dword:00000000
| "AllowSearchToUseLocation"=dword:00000000
| syntheticnature wrote:
| This! It's infuriating.
|
| I also find that at first it pulls up File Explorer when I
| type "exp", but in a flash it switches to Edge. Just wanted
| a file management window, please.
| 369548684892826 wrote:
| In case you're not aware: Windows Key + E for a file
| management window.
| syntheticnature wrote:
| I live in other OSes most of the time, so thank you for
| this.
| oynqr wrote:
| Unrelated, but that last part of your comment tingled my
| Litany Against Fear sense. At least I know with which
| mindset I should encounter Windows 11 now.
| kodeninja wrote:
| This happens on Spotlight as well.
| hbn wrote:
| 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
| mmerlin wrote:
| Thanks "Everything" looks like something I will install
| and use.
|
| I previously used a manually-triggered disk search
| indexer called Cathy.exe which works well [1]
|
| For "real time (i.e. without the pre-cached index) live
| searches of filenames and/or contents by keyword/grep I
| like "Agent Ransack" [2]
|
| It's one of the few things I always use on every windows
| machine I login to
|
| [1] https://cathy.en.lo4d.com/windows
|
| [2] https://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack/
| aqfamnzc wrote:
| 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.
| wazzaps wrote:
| fsearch replaces "Everything" for me
| jarjoura wrote:
| This sounds good in theory, but when Microsoft did just that in
| 2011 with Windows 8, it ended up backfiring on them big time.
|
| It's pretty clear Windows has organizational and structural
| problems. Mainly because every product they release is always
| only 80% there. For some reason, whatever it is, it gets mostly
| finished, shipped and then abandoned and moved into maintenance
| mode.
|
| Yet, it works for them. They usually always win in whatever
| market they go after. So I can't say they are incentivized to
| fix those structural problems.
| dstaley wrote:
| > The app to check if you're ready for Windows 11 is a
| "preview" less than 30 days before the FULL retail release of
| Windows 11
|
| Unless something has changed recently, I believe the release of
| Windows 11 will only be for newly purchased devices. The update
| from Windows 10 to 11 won't be until sometime next year.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Why does this sound eerily familiar to Vista?
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > and UI elements that haven't been updated since Windows 2K.
|
| I use WindowBlinds to skin my Windows 10 to look like Windows
| 98. >.>
|
| It doesn't work for programs that create their own title bars
| or remove them entirely (like Chrome, Firefox, and Discord),
| but I love having 3D buttons on my task bar and windows.
| gruez wrote:
| can you provide a screenshot (or link to a theme) so I can
| see how it looks like? All of the windows classic themes I've
| seen for windows 8.1+ have been pretty meh.
| rejectfinite wrote:
| >UI elements that haven't been updated since Windows 2K.
|
| This is good.
|
| mmc.exe and its apps is used for actual work in IT.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| I get it but mmc and services still lack basic features like
| filter/search, which is a daily pain point for me.
|
| Is the service named "Microsoft [thing]" "Windows [Thing]" or
| just plain old "[Thing]" (e.g. "Microsoft Defender Antivirus
| Service," "Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection
| Service," or "Security Center")?
| garaetjjte wrote:
| They should make it DPI-aware, though...
| svnpenn wrote:
| Honestly, I would have just stayed with Windows 7, if not for
| Windows Terminal [1]. The Unicode support and ANSI escape code
| support is a big improvement. However I was not eager to upgrade,
| as people reported over and over all the privacy and telemetry
| issues. I have turned off all Windows Updates, and ideally I wont
| be upgrading Windows for a long, long time.
|
| 1. https://github.com/microsoft/terminal
| beardyw wrote:
| Windows 7 was OK.
| rejectfinite wrote:
| >I have turned off all Windows Updates
|
| You mean you have turned off automatic updates?
|
| Or you NEVER run Windows updates? - do not do this. Even on an
| airgapped machine. Insanity.
| the_solenoid wrote:
| I... have been using win11 on a few machines (gaming and a
| work/coding computer included) and... it's just a reskin with
| some long overdue features. The way MS does updates now means no
| more huge monolithic releases and also means the update is smooth
| and mostly problem free.
|
| It even updates the windows sandbox (which has needed an update
| for YEARS) which might be worth it by itself.
| jbuhbjlnjbn wrote:
| I thought way longer about the _subtext to the_ headline then I
| 'd like to admit...maybe, as a non-native speaker, I'm missing
| something? But no. It's just mixed up.
|
| This fits really well to all the horror stories about date driven
| software release, like this one:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28548613
|
| Even the market leader is apparently doing it wrong.
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| It isn't mixed up, but it is idiomatic and somewhat provincial.
| "Just say no" is a reference to an anti-drug campaign from the
| mid-80s, instantly recognizable to just about anyone from the
| United States.
| Zanni wrote:
| I think they're referring to the subhead, "In a few weeks,
| Windows 11 will arrive. Should you upgrade to it? Let me
| answer with a question: 'Should you stop hitting your head
| against the wall?'" which is not only challenging to parse
| but (as I read it) contradicts the headline.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| I understood it as you should say no to the question
| whether you should stop hitting your head against the wall.
| jbuhbjlnjbn wrote:
| That's what i meant, thanks.
| CitrusFruits wrote:
| (Native U.S. English speaker here) As far as I cant tell,
| the subtext for that heading/sub-heading pairing would
| suggest that users currently considering upgrading to
| Windows 10 are currently doing the equivalent of hitting
| their heads against a wall, which once again I don't
| think quite fits the narrative of the article.
|
| In my opinion, it's just a poorly chosen subheading.
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| Ah, that makes sense.
| [deleted]
| ineedasername wrote:
| I'm reluctant purely on the basis of MS's track record of every
| second version since Win '98 being crap:
|
| Win 98: good
|
| Win ME: bad
|
| Win XP: good
|
| Win Vista: bad
|
| Win 7: good
|
| Win 8: bad
|
| Win 9... well, #8 was so bad they had to skip a number
|
| Win 10: good
|
| Win 11: I'm not optimistic. 20+ years predict for badness.
|
| I'll wait until either 1) proven wrong or 2) Win 10 is EOL'ed. I
| just upgraded, but if I need a new system & it comes with Win 11
| then I'll just wipe it out and install 10.
| gruez wrote:
| What about windows 2000, which was also considered "good"? As
| for windows 10 being good, I'm not so sure. It might be good
| now, but it was also panned on release and received 12 major
| updates.
| amyjess wrote:
| I'm not touching Windows 11 till someone comes out with a
| comprehensive shell replacement (i.e. it must replace _all_ of
| explorer.exe) that re-creates the Windows 98 taskbar experience.
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