I keep telemetry enabled in Firefox in the hope that they see that I use all of the features that they later remove anyway. It seems like nobody is using metrics to prove that it's not safe to remove a feature. Or they say "oh, it's only 1% of users using that feature", not realizing how much 1% really is.

Not working well so far.

- Word, PowerPoint, Excel, all one style - Teams, different style - Notepad, different style - Paint, different style

That's just within the MS ecosystem, leave that ecosystem and you rapidly find the same style mess that you get on Linux. It's basically due to the many different GUI frameworks, not the OS itself, hell MS supplies a whole list of frameworks that look different from each other.

Even MacOS/iOS which are _really_ good at having a cohesive UI style suffer from this problem.

I'd argue that if this is a valid complaint with Linux DEs (be it GNOME/KDE/what have you) then it's an equally valid complaint for Windows.

And it has even less configurability than Windows.. Add-ons don't count because they often break.

The borders don't seem that much bigger than the ones in Windows 10. As for the extensions, I've been enabling those via extensions.gnome.org and have no problems so far on Buster or Bullseye.

This is the one that makes Gnome useable for me:

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1160/dash-to-panel/

Cinnamon suffers from the same problem, FWIW.

edit: google says "british". In fairly common use in Australia.

The only thing Windows has going for itself is backwards compatability.

So I switched to Rectangle, which has optional Spectacle-compatible keybindings. https://github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle

I also add RightZoom: https://www.blazingtools.com/right_zoom_mac.html

With them, window management becomes basically as good as any other desktop I use, and delivers most of what I like from tiling WMs.

I'm still using programs daily that I acquired in the 90's,some of which was last updated in the 90s.

Updating the OS is one thing, there will be change, and none of us likes change, but it doesn't cascade down to having to change every detail of my work flow.

So maybe it's the only thing Windows has, but for me anyway it's a pretty big "only".

It's also the bane of its existence, because it means that they can NEVER retire anything, because by doing so they would break backwards compatability.

And that's actually how we ended up here. They can never get rid of even Win16 GUI (let alone Win32) because it would break shit written for Windows 3.1 (yes, there are still some dialogs in Windows 11 that use Windows 3.1 file select dialog, namely the ODBC Data Source Administrator (32-bit)[0].

So they are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Win32 isn't being used for anything they are making now, but it's used by other people, and more importantly it's used by all the old apps.

So now they have to justify ETERNAL support for an essentially deprecated API. Which they obviously aren't doing, which is why we're here.

> I'm still using programs daily that I acquired in the 90's,some of which was last updated in the 90s.

Unless they are extremely domain specific, surely there are modern alternatives?

[0] https://i.imgur.com/MrvLCSr.png

Yes there are probably alternatives, but that's the point, I like the way it's working now - I don't want to find new equivalents and then discover what's missing from them.

But I'm not sure what the existance of win32 has to do with anything - it's not like it stops win64 from working.

Same with Windows Explorer. Finder in macOS is still terribly crippled compared to it:

-It can't even perform folder merges in many cases, only allowing you to "Replace" the entire folder.

-You can't pause/resume file transfers.

-Cancelling large transfers is like canceling a print job in the 00's - it might cancel, but if it does it will be when 95% of the job is done anyway and you're screwed.

-You aren't shown metadata of any files you are prompted about.

-Batch management of file conflicts/actions not possible.

Most of these features were added to Explorer all the way back in Vista 15 years ago.

Plasma Gnome MacOS Windows

That would be my pick top to bottom of best UIs

Windows is a shambles and it mentally destroys a piece of me everytime I use it

The people who worked on the design use Macs. Seriously.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30019307

I personally believe the reason that chrome/edge/firefox and apps in general have become so resource hungry is because all the devs have been given beefy machines to allow them to compile on-device and this has lead to the devs basically ignoring the app's resource budget. The ultimate "it works on my machine" shrug. imo windows OS and browser devs should be given i3s w/4gb of ram, let them optimize their code for that experience.

And slow HDDs. The gains of going from an HDD to an SSD have been squandered. The time it takes my computer to boot to a usable desktop feels the same as the bad old days with spinning HDDs.

I remember when SSDs where new and YouTubers were making videos of booting into Win7 with Office, etc. open in seconds. WTF happened?

The way I usually describe Win11's UI is as the worst of GNOME 3, MacOS, and Windows bundled up in a wrap of spyware.

They've spend the last few decades undoing all that work piece by piece until nobody actually knows how to use it anymore.

But it's hard for a company to justify "paying to leave shit alone" so even if a maximum was reached, it will recede.

Or they focus on new users and not on the amount of things people have already learned.

Yes, Apple doesn’t care about backwards compatability, so you might have to update your application so that it runs on the latest macOS version, but there’s no way around it.

You either have a gazillion competing frontend APIs to maintain compatability with shit that was written for Windows 3.1, or you don’t care about any of that and end up with almost entirely consistent visual styles across the entire OS.

They killed the butterfly keyboard in 2019 (almost 4 years after it was introduced), and they killed the touch bar last year.

Yes, it took them some time, but they sorted these things out.

Or the ever more locked down environment, or the iOS style dumbed down apps they prefer now..

I think it was pretty much downhill after leopard :(

This is literally the first thing I do on a fresh install. What the hell were they thinking

> start menu further ruined

but whyyyyyyyyyyyy

I honestly never had a problem with Microsoft Windows over its UI decisions until Windows 8.

Windows up to and including Windows 7 were actually ok, because you could put the start menu on the side, switch to classic UI, turn off the graphical embellishments that your shit laptop didn't like, and so on.

Windows 8 became very tabletified, but with options to switch to classic UI, and Windows 10 is the same but arguably a bit more bizarre.

Neither UI was really consistent or knew what it wanted to be, and worst of all, the user can't decide what it should be.

But whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

    Windows 8 became very
    tabletified, but 
    with options...

    Windows 8 became very
    tabletified, but 
    without options...

Windows 8 -> Windows 10

Windows Vista -> Windows 7

and even before that:

Windows Me -> Windows 2000 -> Windows XP was a pretty solid chain that shows it over three releases (personally I think XP was buggier, I don't know what the idea was there other than to make some more money?).

This isn’t a transition which existed.

Windows ME didn’t get replaced by 2000, they were both released around the same time.

In terms of OS evolution, there were two separate branches, Windows NT and Windows 95.

On the 95 branch: 95 > 98 > ME > Discontinued

On the NT branch: NT 3.5 > NT 4 > 2000 > XP > Vista > 7 > 8 > 10 > 11

Non-business users were originally only ever on the 95 branch, then when it was discontinued they were transitioned to Windows XP, but the neutered home edition, which has been the model since.

From a technology stack side I realize you are right, but I did not experience the UI of Windows ME as a successor to 98 and instead experienced it as a proto-win2k. I'm talking about the UI evolution more than the kernel, which I realize is more subjective.

I do think there is a "paid forced beta -> better after overton window shift" pattern from for instance Vista to 7 and 8 to 10. Those were extremely obviously intended to be the same UI, the first with an extremely questionable UI and the second with a stabilized UI.

From a UI perspective, in the context of a useful work computer, Windows 8 was an absolute failure. Windows 10 I only tolerate because it's gotten most of the bugs worked out and Windows 7 is no longer getting security updates... I fully intend to skip Windows 11 and wait for the next one if I can possibly do so.

It will I'm sure still have a UI mess that makes it even less pleasant than Windows 10, as (in my opinion) Windows 7 was better than Windows 10 and I would have preferred they just keep fine tuning that UI.

I just want my OS to be an OS instead of an experience, and for things to just iterate better rather than see massive overhauls for what they must know is mostly a business OS. It's such a strange approach, I guess they're just worried about going the way of Sun or IBM by not adopting the latest trends. Or maybe they have a business team and a home computer team and the latter is trying to keep up with Apple while the prior is begging them to stop...

Windows me - bad

Windows xp - good

Windows vista - bad

Windows 7 - good

Windows 8 - bad

Windows 10 - good

Windows 11 - bad

For a bad release windows 11 is pretty good. This gives me hope that windows 12 will be their best ever.

This is why it would have been smart of them to stick to windows 10 like they planned, but like picking at a scab they just couldn’t let go of the idea of rearranging the deck chairs and rechristening the ship as windows 11.

Nice idea but it just doesn't fit.

Windows 95/98/Me were all poor.

XP was widely panned when it came out because existing hardware wasn't quite good enough and it was riddled with security issues. Rememebr SP2?

Where did 8.1 go?

Windows 10 is full of the stuff people are complaining about in this thread.

95 good. 98 bad.

2000 good, XP bad (for me), Vista bad, 7 good, 8 bad, 8.1 better but not great, 10 OK, 11 bad.

As always: https://www.badscience.net/wp-content/uploads/complicatedcov...

("I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that." -- Ben Goldacre)

...and for a good release Windows 10 is pretty bad.

Despite all the flak it got at the time, Windows 8.1 (plus StartIsBack to hide metro crap) is still the best Windows released in the last decade.

The Win9x/ME (please read as DOS based) series of OS was intended for home users.

The NT/2K was intended for business users.

Only as an example most games at the time would not have run on NT/2K, and Win9x/Me was essentially single-user only.

For some reasons with XP the good MS guys decided to force down the throat of pro/business users (that were very, very, very happy about Windows 2000) the bells and whistles and graphics they didn't ask for and force down the throat of home users (that were very, very happy about Windows 98, not so much about ME [0]) the complexities of the NT, user access, permissions, NTFS, and other things that at the time made no sense whatever.

Basically they (the MS guys) unified the two branches into one and the result was (of course) a compromise.

[0] I know it is hard to say this, but ME, beside some quirks that there was no time to fix, was not as bad as it has been depicted, as a matter of fact the "best" bastard retro system you can make today is a Windows 98 with selected components of ME integrated/backported or a ME with some features of 98SE brought back, the failure of ME (not entirely unlike the later Vista one) was greatly induced (IMHO) by two factors, underpowered hardware and issues with drivers, both - if you want - essentially the responsibility of OEM's.

I disagree somewhat. The 9x family didn't handle multitasking well and had driver issues, frequently leading to lock-ups and BSODs. The architecture didn't handle isolation well, but NT did. Windows NT mostly stayed out of people's way in XP unless they looked for those menus. It was a huge problem for Vista, though.

1) free (in the sense of included in the price or their new PC) a somewhat unstable OS with lower requisites (particularly about RAM) where most software somehow ran (including games)

or:

2) a more stable, paid (costing if I recall correctly more than the equivalent of 2-300 US$ of today) OS needing double the RAM (think of 128 vs. 64 MB), definitely slower, where they could not run many games

for some reasons many chose #1, and BSOD's (on the 9x/Me) were so common that it was perceived by many (that had not any occasion to experience the stability of NT and of 2000) as a "normal state of things".

I wasn’t aware that XP was meant to be an upgrade for 98/ME (home users) as well as for 2000 (business users). Talk about posing off both set of customers at the same time.

I personally didn’t mind ME and liked XP, but then it was as a student who didn’t do anything serious with computers so it doesn’t count much.