You can have at least Win 7 start menu on Win 10: https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu

It's fast, reliable and highly configurable.

Do you know if there's something similar but for the task bar?

I really really hate the stock Windows taskbar. The design? Whatever, I can live with that. But it constantly refuses to unhide, it drives me crazy.

> I really really hate the stock Windows taskbar.

Plus in Win 11, we lost the ability to put the taskbar vertically on the left or right side of the screen. When coding on a laptop, I want the max vertical screen space. Taskbar at the bottom means I see 10% less source code.

Boo Win11!

StartAllBack

I use open shell and 7+ Taskbar Tweaker (https://ramensoftware.com/7-taskbar-tweaker) + also disable all pinned apps and reenable quick launch - this makes it look like win7/XP pretty closely (though I also disable windows updates so it doesn't get reverted randomly)

I know and I do use it! Unfortunately there's lots more to the OS than the start menu, that can't be changed :(

Personally I like Windows 11 fine except I want my taskbar on the side.

My biggest gripe is they finally removed the option to have windows not combined with labels in the taskbar. I guess it was bound to happen eventually.

That is the biggest feature stopping me from upgrading. I generally have 20-30 windows open, usually 4 or 5 browser windows with tabs grouped by what I'm doing with them. Combined labels would destroy my workflow.

It's pretty clear they're moving towards MacOS.

Right click taskbar > taskbar settings > taskbar behavior > taskbar alignment: Left

This functionality was removed in Windows 11 and as far as I know has not yet returned.

I literally went through those steps in order to write that comment. The functionality is not gone.

Are you talking about aligning the icons to the left or the whole taskbar?

We're talking about moving the whole taskbar to the left (or right) of the screen similar to how Ubuntu looks for example.

You used to be able to move the taskbar to any edge of the screen but that functionality was removed in Windows 11.

I thought Windows 8 was pretty good at the time, in hindsight because I had a Surface Pro and that was the computer that it was entirely designed for. Their three-column splitscreen layout was neat, if you could look past only having about 5 of the newfangled-touchscreen-UI-apps worth installing in the entire store. Or if you treated the OS as mostly being a OneNote launcher.

These days I'm inclined to agree with you. Windows 7 was the peak, newer versions have gone far downhill with trying to make me accidentally open Bing everywhere and automatically installing Candy Crush products that no one asked for.

When this computer dies, decent odds I replace it with a Steam Deck. Doubly so if they can stuff Thunderbolt into the next one and sell me a GPU dock with it.

But someone made the Bing metrics go up for a few years, so surely that's worth burning any customer goodwill to the ground.

The drawing app that shipped with windows 8 and early windows 10 was also fantastic on a surface -- it's a pity that it's gon

Why does customer goodwill matter at all? Even if they make everyone absolutely hate using Windows, what are customers going to do, switch to a different OS? Decades of experience has shown that people will whine and complain endlessly about Windows, that this is the last straw, and how they're going to switch to Linux "real soon now", and they never do.

These days? They won’t lose all their business users immediately, but the shitty $300 laptops with 15” 1366x768 displays are being chipped away at by iPads and Chromebooks, and the less shitty laptops could mostly be replaced by a MacBook Air which is a frighteningly capable computer. I do think making their OS worse is accelerating this.

I for one, couldn't go back to a laptop without a touch screen, and for current purposes, Id be unhappy without the pen input to go with the multi touch.

While the UIs look bad, the touch and pen UX together in windows 10 is fantastic

Different folks different strokes. I worked for a client that requested using a compliant windows 10 machine assigned by their IT.

My first request to their IT was to get a mate screen reflector because of how glossy the screens on touchscreens are.

My second request was to disable the touchscreen because of all the accidental taps.

If I am at home reading the news give me touch. If I am on a keyboard working keep it away.

Loved this comment.

There was a time when we used to say the same about Windows Xp. And Windows 2000.

I wonder if each next generation of user prefers the new layouts each time?

I’m sure (or at least, I imagine) MS put a lot of resources into testing these UI overhauls.

XP was fine. 2000 was good. Nobody pines for Windows ME. People said those things and they meant it. Windows 8-11 feel pretty bad, overall. 7 was okay.

The Windows 2000 UI was not "good," at least compared to what they have today.

Personally, I consider 2000 the version where windows peaked. They did add some good things since then, but did more damage than good in total.

So as we differ this clearly in opinion: What makes you appreciate the windows UI more today?

Adding a search to the start menu is huge and completely changed how I use it -- I almost never do anything besides hit the Windows key and start typing a search query. Besides that, the way nested menus worked was frustrating and I'd frequently waste time doing things I didn't intend trying to navigate them.

That explains it. I use win+R (the hotkey for run) the same way since I think win95.

When I search the start menu, it does the weirdest things, e.g searching notepad via bing instead of starting it, or preferring the uninstaller above the real program. So I learned that the start menu is basically broken for search, and became harder to use as a menu. I mostly abandoned it.

Meanwhile, the gui widgets, built in windows and control panels became much worse and dumbed down. It pretends to be a helpfull assistant, but behaves more like an arrogant drunk. I want to do some work on the machine, not be told about some experience it really wants to shove in my face.

Well, the difference is Windows + R I would need an exact command and the search bar I don't. I share some of your frustrations about the relevance of the top result but still, partial matches are important to me.

What they have today is an UI disaster: cannot tell which window is active, scrollbars are so 90s - nobody cares about them, settings would make Google proud - one cannot know if the text is only a description or it starts a config dialog, 1 px window border - good luck resizing on a 4k monitor, gray on gray, titlebar highjacking, hard drive hidden in explorer beside virtual folders etc.

XP was fine because you could throw it into 2000 mode, though looking back the fisher-price UI was just the UI.

Windows Vista wasn't terrible if you had a beefy machine and well-supported hardware. 7 was basically Vista but with newer machines and better hardware support. 8+ has been meh.

IMO, Vista was actually the best-looking Windows of all time.

Heck I still say that about Windows 2000. Clean, minimal interface, with all the power options easily available.

How much money, exactly? I feel similarly, but when I start to probe that idea, it tops out at some point...

I don't notice much difference between experience in Windows 7 and Windows 11, aside from needing to manage more policies to prevent their cloud based services. Windows 11 isn't bad if you disable the adware portion. The terminal app is pretty good now and WSL works, albeit not as pleasant as something more native like Linux or even macOS terminal, but the adware is what cripples it IMO.

The terminal app and functional WSL are both available in Windows 10, though. 11 didn't add either of those.

Windows 11 adds other features that are useful though. I agree, Windows 10 is sufficient but if you know what policies to use then Windows 11 feels pretty much like Windows 10 with some new features.

In 11, the terminal app can be set as default console app, so you won't see conhost.exe, ever. That's not possible in 10.

That's a very marginal improvement, since the only time you'd see conhost in 10 now is when a program explicitly launches it.

and when you launch any random .bat file.

Or you just change your default program for batch files.

batch files are handled by cmd.exe, not by conhost.exe. Cmd.exe in turn opens default console. Similarly for powershell, python, farmanager and other console-based apps.

early windows 10 had enough of win7 simplicity, but yeah i agree, 7 left a nice taste in everybody's mind

> I would pay so much money to just be able to use Windows 7's UI with Windows 10's performance improvements

Windows 8.1 complemented with StartIsBack (https://www.startisback.com/) was exactly what you're looking for.

Unfortunately Windows 8.1 is very soon to be EOL and Windows 10 is unrecoverable even with StartIsBack.

Win XP sp3 was also great, usability-wise.

I'm not paying them shit though. For the gaming system I use, I'm running my own activation emulator and point the system there.

Windows 7 was the last MS operating system I've used on a personal computer of mine. Once I did some work for a local ad tech company, they dictated I should use a windows computer for work. I discovered the hell of WSL and lasted about 12 weeks on that gig. The fact that I had to train tech leads on Git and was having arguments about "pushing directly to production is bad, we should have a staging environment at the very least" did not help.