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Comment by larrik | Hacker News Reader

Seriously, I spend WAY more time fussing with Windows than Linux on my dual boot machines. Windows has also destroyed the usability of their settings screens to the point that I find configuring Linux far far easier than Windows.

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Seriously, what a fucking mess they made with the new settings screens. I find myself clicking through 5 screens just to finally arrive at the old control panel for network interfaces to toggle my ethernet off.

not defending one way or the other, but remember North Carolina, Pennsylvania

ncpa.cpl is the old network view, still very useful if i'm not in the cli :)

Thanks. Good thinking. That will almost certainly be my route in the future.

It’s so bad it now requires search to find say, the mouse settings.

Meanwhile I can't even get sound to work properly in any Linux distro on my motherboard. Kubuntu 18.04 has a problem on both my laptop and desktop where a fresh install works fine until you run apt-get upgrade then kdm breaks and both machines boot to a black screen.

That's the caveat, you need to buy hardware that was designed with Linux in mind. Throwing it on hardware where the designers only thought about Windows will always be a bad experience.

I am glad to say it seems very hard to find hardware that doesn't work on Linux.

Would you like to share some details? A lot of people that can help lurk around here and it could be a simple issue.

I've been using Linux since 2003, even though I'm a .NET engineer by trade. Most of the problems (except the audio problem on one particular motherboard) were relatively simple for me to fix. I imagine it would have been a nightmare if I didn't have 15 years of experience under my belt. My point was that this shouldn't have been a problem in the first place, and I've always found Windows to be much easier to get up and running.

I've always had to live in both worlds, and they each have their fair share of pros and cons.

Make sure that Kubuntu is giving you a stable version of KDE. My issue with Ubuntu in the past has been that it too often takes unstable snapshots of upstream software in order to accommodate it's own self-imposed release schedule.

Have you tried Fedora? It has much better hardware support in my experience.

When I was experiencing audio issues on Debian, in 2003 or so, Fedora was, indeed, better.

I think you have to remember that you are in the 1% of people that want MORE control over a computer. Most users out there want more simplicity and flashier UI. Microsoft cannot please everyone so they opt to please the average users and developers just need to adapt.

And yet, transferring files between my windows 10 computers feels like I need a network engineering degree. Half the time I need to fire up a Win7 VM and transfer from one to the other that way.

Mac isn't better in that department, though (when talking to Windows, at least).

I wish windows would adopt something similar to chrome://flags for configuration. Easy to search and all in one place.

Isn't that what the registry was supposed to be before it turned into a monster?

Personally, though, I've always preferred Firefox's (and old Opera's) about:config instead. It's far more flexible than Chrome's flags.

Quite a few years back I got a book from a friend, summarizing new and noteworthy changes in Windows 95 (you could make a good drinking game from it if you took a sip each time you encountered the expression "32-bit", it was all the rage). The registry was indeed intended to serve as a central storage for configuration, replacing .ini files scattered all over the system.

It could be easily replaced by a c:\Windows\etc folder full of .ini files and it'd be a vast improvement.

I think Windows frowned upon lots of small files for performance and locking reasons - if some app decides to hold the file hostage, you'll end up needing to restart the system to be able to save a new version.

C:\Windows\win.ini was a previous problem point, it had driver related settings, OS preferences and some non-MS applications added their own keys to the lot as well.

Of course the win.ini (and system.ini) became a mess. They should be in a folder, with each application having their own file with their own settings. And reading the file and then CLOSING IT so others could to stuff to it.

"Introducing Microsoft Windows 95" by Brent Ethington

https://books.google.com/books/about/Introducing_Microsoft_W...

You might consider trying the "GodMode" trick - still works in Windows 10 and has quick access to settings all over the place.

I just remembered it after posting about digging for the network dialog and sure enough, network settings are right there, easily accessible.

GodMode Trick:

Create a new folder and call it:

  GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

Under Windows 10, it will hide the name, but the Icon will change. Click on the icon for wonders.

The GUID is the important bit, you can replace 'GodMode' with anything, but it can't be blank.

that is excellent. Thanks for sharing

Yeah, seems the real name for this is supposed to be "All Tasks" as you can see by putting

shell:::{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

in the run dialog or address bar of an explorer window.

GodMode is just a nickname it got from some power users it seems.

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