Compare that with the start menu. I type something, and the chosen program changes every time. I type notepad++, it shows the correct program until I type the d, then decides I really want to open edge and search notepad++ on bing. Or it launches an uninstaller instead of the actual program.

Now one of these days ms is going to optimize the win+r experience, so have fun while it lasts.

The trick is to rely on decades of acquired arcane knowledge about .exe filenames. What a great UI!

I hate windows as much as the next person, but to be fair that's kind of how command-line life works on Linux too isn't it?

So what lighting hue was best? Irrelevant, the important thing was that workers perceived that management was paying attention to their wellbeing.

I think something similar is happening in Windows (and Mac!) desktops, where they change small things "for productivity", and the majority of people will think it's an improvement, just because it's different.

Bt a small subset of us opinionated people will be upset that our carefully tuned habits are disrupted.

I feel like I've never talked to a person, techie or not, who didn't agree it was incredibly annoying to have UIs that they're used to change out under their feet.

In IT parlance, I guess lighting hues would be equivalent to the changing the window manager theme for a lighter/darker one ?

I'd say something like the "ribbon toolbar" upgrade of MS Office, which I think improved accessibility of functions, is one of the only examples I can think of. But then I'm not sure if that was just a case of getting used to the new layout.

Windows "Settings" versus the Control Panel is a counter example. It was a downgrade, it still sucks now, years later, but the Control Panel could be argued as 'dated' by some definitions.

I don't think it improves accessibility when I keep having to go hunting in different sections for the right button. (The ribbon in the Recycle Bin makes no sense to me either.)

I'll admit it can be daunting for a new user to see a lot of buttons, but if there is a tooltip or even a tutorial for each button showing where it can be useful, that shouldn't be much of a problem.

For me, the Ribbon is what made Office unusable. I've used MS apps since the MS-DOS and Xenix days. I remember the old MS menus (2 lines, bottom of screen, summoned with Esc) to CUA transition, then the horror of WinWord 1, then the passable WinWord 2, then the actually quite nice WinWord 6.

I still run Word 97 on Ubuntu under WINE. Works perfectly.

But after Office 2007, it is totally unusable for me.

I did say "But then I'm not sure if that was just a case of getting used to the new layout" - still open to that being the case.

Maybe it's like 12th edition text books, change for the sake of change. In the case of Office software, we need people to keep needing the 'basic' and 'intermediate' training sessions; we need credentials to justifiably decay with time?

> So what lighting hue was best? Irrelevant, the important thing was that workers perceived that management was paying attention to their wellbeing.

I doubt it would work if they changed the place of tools, the layout of the factory, stuff like that.

Many of the possibly meaningless desktop changes are also meaningless in the sense that they won't affect any workflow, and are therefore benign.

Sadly Microsoft is kinda forced to follow the trends, everything moves in all direction (web, phones).

Former Microsoftie here. While they are following trends, the actual impetus behind all the little changes you see all the time is that managers and ICs are incentivized to make "impactful" changes if they want good performance reviews. UI changes are a pretty easy way to have "impact". You can say something in your review like, "and X million users used the new taskbar that's in the middle of the screen".

When organizations are small, you have the resources to evaluate performance on a case by case basis because everyone works with everyone else to some degree. When organizations grow and you have layers of bureaucracy, inevitably some asshole middle manager gives someone a bad review for a bullshit reason (jealousy, racism, dislike, etc).

That's when HR swoops in and starts making processes and standards for everything to shield the company from lawsuits. Crucially, these processes and standards don't necessarily prevent the problem, but just let the company's lawyers argue that they tried to prevent the problem.

Now that you have processes and standards for everything, employees start gaming the system. The goal is no longer "do the thing that makes the company succeed". The company is so big that relatively few individuals have the power to swing the company's fortunes one way or the other. Instead, the goal is now "maximize my career growth".

Then you end up in the nonsense FAANGM situation where individual little teams are putting out crap and making decisions that make the company look dumb. Things that would be easy to ignore if a significant fraction of teams weren't doing it. All because they're doing things that maximize their "impact".

This is hard to correct because you don't want to be too harsh with your teams and hurt morale, and it's not like it's every team. So you try to be flexible, be tolerant of missteps as long as people show improvement, because if you just fired everybody who made boneheaded decisions in the name of "impact", the hit to moral would cause terrible attrition problems. And worse, some of them would sue the company, which was the problem you were trying to avoid in the first place.

s/company/university/g as needed.

It's one of those classic situations where every individual step in the process does at least kind of make sense, but the end result is bonkers.

Linux (and FLOSS in general) gives you the choice to have it the way you want it.

The only thing really changing right now is Wayland and the switch from window manager to compositors and the related support software. There are getting to be a decent amount of options in that regard with a good crop of lightweight compositors and tools starting to mature.

Also if you go past the 3 main desktops there are many many window managers, standalone launchers, panels from which you can pick up the pieces you want to build something you like.

I remember being excited when I saw the first beta test of KDE but it seemed each version got a little bit worse after that and that's been the trajectory of the Linux desktop since 1995 or so.

awk, grep, tail, nginx and all that kind of stuff is fine.

(I tried taking the 1050 card from my media server I used for AI training long ago and put it in another cheap Linux box and put SteamOS on it. They claim it can run Windows games but it won't run anything out of my steam account including the games that the proton database claims works. That's the kind of brokenness as the expected condition that is endemic to the Linux GUI)

If I found a GUI app worked on Linux I'd be so surprised I'd have to file a feature report with their feature tracker.

Xorg has worked for decades, a multitude of window managers and desktop environments have been perfectly usable for decades, and a couple of million people (going by Steam HW survey results) seem to be able to run games via proton perfectly fine.

Doesn't mean you have to think it's perfect, doesn't mean you have to use it for everything, but 'can't use any GUI app on linux' is definitely a you problem.

They attempted to make the new Settings panel the 'HQ' for everything, but in the process really buried some things (for technical people) under numerous additional clicks/sub-menus, if it's even there at all anymore. I think they've been addressing the concerns with new updates, but I still find myself floundering sometimes.

- After waking my computer from sleep, my last active window is not active any more. In fact, no window is active. I have to hit alt+tab to grab focus of the window again, or click the window (this probably wasn't caught because most people use their mouse for everything)

- There's new animations for the basic native Windows menus, including the Win+X menu I use for sleeping my computer, shutting down, etc. When you navigate to a sub-menu with the arrow keys, you have to wait for the animation of the sub-menu sliding out before you can interact with it. I've had to slow down my muscle memory to sleep my computer because otherwise I'll hit random other menu items cause the child menu didn't slide out fast enough to keep up with my inputs.

- I usually snap windows around with the Win+arrow keys shortcuts, but they added a new snap layout where sometimes when I do Win+up it brings the window to the top half of the screen. But that's also how you maximize a window, so I don't know how it decides which one it will do. In my experience it seems to be related to your key input speed.

- Sometimes I'll crop and resize images in Paint. They redid a bunch of the UI in Windows 11, and now when I use the resize menu, I can't hit enter to confirm the size I input. Again, seemingly this UI was only tested by people who use the mouse for everything.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/run and check the search commands / hotkeys

My start menu / win-r days / open a shell to execute some commands are pretty much all over now and I just use PowerToy Run

Even after using W11 for a few months ("I will get used to it"), I still noticed everyday how I felt less productive and annoyed having to hover over the icon and try to find the correct window, vs just having them all laid out in the taskbar.