I had been using Windows 8.1 and consider it to be one of the worst
   desktop operating systems I've used in the last 10 years.

Why?

It's Windows 7 with a few improvements. I'm vaguely aware that there's this "Metro" stuff that people dislike, but aside from dismissing the 'start screen' when you reboot - and there may very well be a configuration setting to bypass it and go directly to the desktop - you otherwise literally never have to deal with it.

My biggest issue was the metro stuff; mostly the default apps that would open in full screen mode.

Opening a PDF or an image in a new Windows 8 installation was always a frustrating surprise.

The start menu was confusing, and anytime you'd go into a metro-type application it was jarring.

Ah. I guess my experience was different because I installed apps that I preferred over the built-in ones and found a start menu replacement.

Wow. Sounds like Microsoft really nailed the experience on that one. Step 1: replace everything with something else.

I don't know what you mean.

There are pre-installed apps on OS X, Linux, and Windows. If you don't care for the pre-installed ones, you can install ones that you prefer. Same with the kind-of default 'controls' like the Start Menu, or the Dock, or what various Linux distros call their equivalents.

Windows 8/8.1 is Windows 7 with a few improvements and some "Metro" stuff that you can almost entirely avoid.

Needing to replace the start menu, which is an integral part of the desktop manager hardly qualifies as a standard practice for a consumer-grade operating system.

I found the shipped state of Windows 8 unusable as a power user so I needed to replace it as well. I consider that a complete failure.

   Needing to replace the start menu, which is an integral part of the desktop
   manager hardly qualifies as a standard practice for a consumer-grade operating system.

And I find the OS X Dock to be an utter abomination. I took advantage of the power I have to install software and installed a replacement.

   I found the shipped state of Windows 8 unusable as a power
   user so I needed to replace it as well. 

Good on you.

Though, I still don't understand what the comment I was replying to meant by, "Step 1: replace everything with something else."

> Though, I still don't understand what the comment I was replying to meant by, "Step 1: replace everything with something else."

If you have to replace things like the "start menu", the built in pdf reader, the built in settings app, etc. etc. all because of the same UI design flaw it starts to feel like you are fighting with the OS to get to the level of productivity with which you were previously accustomed. If you feel the need to have to do that, then something is wrong with the design of the OS. Obviously this is a subjective opinion that can differ for each individual, but considering the horrible adoption rate of Windows 8 it seems likely that this is an opinion shared by many.

Objectively, forcing apps to run in fullscreen mode can be a huge waste of real estate for large computer monitors. The gestures required to summon the "charms" bar and the app switcher are completely unintuitive and awkward for a desktop UI. Things like that make far more sense for mobile devices, but it appears like Windows 8 tried to combine mobile and desktop UIs in a confusing, frustrating, an inefficient way. It's quite telling that these were major design errors as Windows 10 backtracks from that philosophy almost completely.

This type of complaint needs highlight the fact that "design flaws" are a matter of course for any major operating systems. Without doing that, it comes off as a fairly one-sided, myopic point of view.

Plenty of people hate the built-in components of OS X like the single Menu bar, the Dock, the Finder and lots of other things. That's why there have always been apps to (attempt to) replace them (unfortunately, Apple typically doesn't give you the same degree of control that Microsoft does).

Apple has also back-tracked on many things in OS X, like finally (finally!) giving people the ability to resize a window by any edge or corner (after years and years of telling everybody that having only "one true way" of doing it was somehow better. Just like "one mouse button" was better for everybody until it wasn't. Just like so many things with Apple. They seem to be fond of buttons with no text and just an icon these days. And I've seen a ton of people complain about it. Unfortunately, that would too difficult to replace with a third party app.)

The OS X Dock is the crappiest integral part of OS X and I'd love to replace it, but it simply cannot be done properly because Apple is the only one allowed to access a certain key API (the one that changes NSScreen.visibleFrame).

I'm not sure if you're disagreeing with me, agreeing with me, or just providing additional commentary. I think OSX got some things right (cmd tab/cmd tilde behavior, app install/uninstall, spotlight), and other things less right.

Ultimately, I'm primarily a linux user who does cross platform dev so I end up dealing with everyone's crap (linux included, I'm looking at you X11).

When you call something a complete failure without also mentioning that other OSes are also considered complete failures by the same standard, it seems a little one-sided.

You have to add and replace all sorts of things to make OS X usable. Apple just added the ability to resize a window by it's edges a couple of years ago! And there still is no tiling. And the finder still sucks. But it's got the all-important Unix underpinnings and it's not from Micro$oft.

This can often apply to Linux, too. So every major desktop OS requires replacing stuff here and there. Not sure what conclusions we can draw from that, though.

It is true that this can apply to Linux as well. There are plenty of distros available that package as little as possible or provide choice during initial installation.

That is where I know that Linux wins over everything else. A huge number of applications, where there is always at least 1 good alternative. Microsoft and Apple can't compete on choice.

The conclusion that you can draw from this is that the person I was replying to has no point.

These comments are always like this, but the 'aside from XXX its not bad!' is different every time, and writing off a horrible user experience like solitare not being in a freaking window is not a minor thing. Its a huge fucking annoyance

True - and every operating system has these little niggles that are huge annoyances to some people - c.f. the person who switched to Linux because one version of Minesweeper in Windows needs an internet connection.

But if solitaire not being in a window leads one to the conclusion that the solitaire-containing version of Windows is one of the worst desktop operating systems a person has used in the last 10 years - or that it's indicative of a horrible overall user experience... well then I think one is being at best hyperbolic, and at worst complaining about something that would get a person run out of a discussion about any other operating system - after you're given a selection of about a hundred different solitaire programs to try.

>True - and every operating system has these little niggles that are huge annoyances to some people - c.f. the person who switched to Linux because one version of Minesweeper in Windows needs an internet connection.

That was what 'caused the "screw this" moment', i.e. it was the straw that broke the camel's back.

So you don't mind that when you right click on something the contextual menu appears at the bottom of the screen, far far away on a 4k display. Or that if the system wants to tell you something, instead of a discreet notification on the bottom right of the screen, a big banner will cover half the screen while you are in the middle of something.

This system was full of moronic design decisions, only some of which have been reversed in windows 10.

> there may very well be a configuration setting to bypass it and go directly to the desktop

You're right, there is. The ability to configure this was one of the updates in 8.1 from 8.0 and was included presumably because of so many complaints in user feedback about it forcing you to click through the metro screen to get to desktop on every reboot.

My "screw this" moment was when I discovered you needed an internet connection to play Minesweeper.

You don't. It works without internet. As Minesweeper is simply a program you can use the old one in Windows 10.

The Windows Store version does, IIRC.

Win8 wasn't properly finished. Vista failed but it was a massive change from Xp and they couldn't, I believe, tailor it properly. Win8 was a reactionary attempt at following multidevice OS / smartphone UX trend with the new found creativity of Metro, but really it felt like a demo, things were too big, too frail, too crude. Win10 doesn't convey that for me, they took the nice elements of Metro design language, adjusted and integrated them into a flat win7 UX.

Don't you have to deal with Metro when the control panel applet or app you need is Metro-style? I have to see that screen when I hit the Super key to search for an application by name.

Control Panel accessed from the desktop in Windows 8 is the normal Control Panel from previous Windows versions.

Tried searching for control panel in the start menu and it launch the desktop control panel for me in 8.1

I was trying to uninstall something and I hit the Super key and started typing "programs" and up came some Metro app that showed a few apps sorted by size. It didn't show all installed programs. For that I had to find the old Add/Remove Programs control panel which has a regular desktop interface.

If I remember right it's because the Metro app was called "Settings" but the control panel still existed as well. I would always just do Win+E then click on the control panel icon in the ribbon.

IIRC, some settings were only accessible through the metro settings and not the normal control panel. (user config maybe?)

From looking for front end jobs for the last few months, so far as I've seen, everyone not running C# is on a Mac

I haven't seen anyone at all running Node or Angular/React using a Windows environment

That's a very big long term problem for MS

That's just your filter bubble then. About half the developers I know personally run Windows, and only about 20% of them do C#.

FWIW, node.js and most frontend tooling (like webpack, gulp, etc) works excellent cross platform. It's very easy to build a frontend dev setup that works great on Linux, OSX and Windows without any hacks or testing if you choose to fully depend on Node for scripting. Use NPM scripts that call .js files instead of using .sh files and you're basically there. Node's somethingSomethingSync API is great for scripting anyway (plus, any frontend devs can now hack on your automation as well, without learning bash).

So there's good advantages to scripting your stuff in JS anyway, and an extra bonus is that you can be quite sure that everything will work out of the box on any platform. Node's cross platform support is really that good.

> I haven't seen anyone at all running Node or Angular/React using a Windows environment

This is what we run in part of my company...

I don't see any issue with developing in NodeJS in Windows (except compiling native bindings and Visual Studio issues with long paths). Microsoft is incorporating more and more plugins in Visual Studio to help web developers. It is just a matter of time.

Their tooling is definitely pretty great, but the hard part is winning people back over if they somehow feel jaded. I think gaining loyalty once isn't as hard as trying to re-earn it. But people often love the underdog.

Windows an underdog? Please tell me another joke.

Owning the majority market share in general does not exclude it from being an underdog within a smaller subset of users. Now how that subset is defined is another issue altogether.

Obviously not but communities such the .NET one using React or Angular is underrepresented in HN.

Well that might be because you are only looking at web development jobs. There's more to software development than making websites. Anyone making drivers/firmware will probably have to work on a Windows machine since a lot of hardware need to be compatible with Windows. The whole gaming industry is purely Windows. Most engineering software are written to run on Windows. Any "internal tool" in non-tech enteprise will probably be written for Windows.

C/C++ are still some of the most used language in the world, and a significant share of all c++/c software have been written on Windows machine.

My experience of Windows 8 is good, it is a little better than Windows 7.

But my experience of Windows 10 is so bad. The Edge browser is full of bugs, crash often, slow. Windows 10 itself is also full of bugs, these bugs are reported in the two days after the releasing of Windows 10, but most of them are still not fixed yet now.

   these bugs are reported in the two days after the releasing of Windows 10,
   but most of them are still not fixed yet now.

It was released a month ago. Does any operating system have that kind of turnaround?

Yes. You are right. But it was refreshing to see microsoft releasing patches for 10 within days of its initial release. I hope they maintain the momentum in future also.

I am on ubuntu (gnome ubuntu). Sometimes, I have a crash report. In general, the same day or the day after, I have an update of the component causing the crash.

That seems like a recipe for regression nightmares.

Do these fixes go into 'main' and get pushed out immediately to all Ubuntu users?

Or are you on the bleeding edge?

I am on Ubuntu gnome LTS. This is half bleeding edge ;-)

Do you find it superior than Windows 7 as well? In what ways?

The improved multi-monitor window management (snapping to any corner of any monitor, variable width snapping, 1-click to snap another window to the other side, etc) is the best I've seen on any OS.

Powershell and cmd are so much nicer to work with now with many of the features you'd expect from a modern terminal. Still lacking compared to some competitors, but much nicer than ever before.

Some of the Universal apps are actually quite pleasant to use now that they can be rearranged freely like any other window. I've been using the Mail app as my main mail client and the Office apps instead of the Office desktop suite since the tech previews and haven't really found myself missing much.

There are some genuinely great improvements in Windows 10. If only it also had sensible defaults and a better privacy policy...

> The improved multi-monitor window management (snapping to any corner of any monitor, variable width snapping, 1-click to snap another window to the other side, etc) is the best I've seen on any OS.

I'm mostly neutral on this because I don't really use window snapping, and I very rarely use Windows as it is (KDE's multi-monitor handling is OK, probably not the best, but it works well enough for me). That said, I do feel Windows 10 is a moderate improvement over 7, but I still wind up using DisplayFusion since I like its taskbar features better.

The 6-pixel "snag" point between monitors (top and bottom) is infuriating to me, and I've yet to find a registry fix that actually works to get rid of that nonsense, neither can I find any obvious settings for it. Any suggestions?

So I just decided to do a bit more sleuthing, and it turns out this is a known issue that may not presently have a fix:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum/insider_win...

Bummer.