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Comment by doubled112 | Hacker News Reader

I'd run (probably pay for) an 2K/XP style Windows 10 for sure.

Just leave me WSL and Winget. Put the control panel back in one window.

Most of that other junk can go - UI framework of the day, Cortana, Bing in my start menu, Windows Store, enhanced error reporting? Don't need it. Don't want it.

There are reasons I run Xfce on Linux desktops. Fast, has the features I need (which isn't much) and the features it has work reliably. I'm looking for a way to move and switch windows and launch programs. Everything else is just distraction.

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The control panel situation is astounding. It's clear that there are a bunch of different silo'd teams in MS doing all this work, because I can't really think of why they would do this "transition" over years of half-baked lavaflow features. It seems like there are 2 or 3 places to access any given setting. Some of them have the same UI toolkit from 2000, and others look like an Xbox application.

In Linux/BSD it always blows my mind that you can do "crazy" configuration changes like bring a LACP/LAGG interface online with essentially one command and zero downtime, while on Windows you will peck around 23 different UI's like a chicken in the sandbox only to break yourself.

I think it's more to avoid complaints and compliance issues than anything.

If they refactored everything in a single update, which I believe they are very capable of doing, I can't imagine how much shit they would get from users and businesses, look how much fuss was generated over the start menu.

By doing the snail pace transitions they can rebuff anything with a "you had years to get used to it / it's been there for ages and we didn't hear anything about this". I just don't have a clue of why they decided control panel needed to go, settings is absolutely subpar.

The irony is they get hate and complaints no matter what they do - so I believe they are optimizing the wrong metric. It's bureaucracy at work: make fuss, busy work, spend lots of money, spin wheels, start big projects then abandon them etc...

Or just make good software. Do it right the first time. Accept responsibility when things go south. If your mission is righteous the rest will fall into place.

I don't buy that one bit. They could update the UI in one go, but that's not what they decided to do. When you look at what has been brought over to the new whitespace-everywhere settings, they have decided that what needs modernisation isn't only the UI, but also the preferences themselves. That means it's really hard to change, and not everything can be changed.

Whenever something is brought to that forsaken app, the old functionality is simplified and changed. Sometimes everything makes it through to the new app, sometimes breadcrumbs are left in the back of the couch, meaning you can click on stuff and end up in XP land.

With this current strategy, I do not believe Windows will ever have one single UI for its settings like macOS.

I believe it's because important businesses literally have scripts that do things like "open the network control panel and click at the button at position (123px, 456px)". Backwards compatibility is hard.

> Most of that other junk can go - UI framework of the day, Cortana, Bing in my start menu, Windows Store, enhanced error reporting? Don't need it. Don't want it.

You are not expected to. Most people believe the new features in proprietary operating systems are for them. Sure, a few of them are (although in the case of Windows 11 they might not be obvious). But today most of these are aimed at extracting value from the existing position - hence tons of adware on a fresh copy of your OS.

Windows Store is kind of useful, as it manages the installed software and keeps it updated, same as a *nix package manager.

And that’s about it. It is completely infested with low quality apps, almost as bad as the Kindle App Store.

https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 Windows 95 theme for XFCE

It's just not quite right.

Why not?

A few minor things stick out to me:

- the bold window title font is wrong

- the window border chrome is too thick

- the border around the desktop icon text is too big and off center

All together it gives me an "uncanny valley" feeling.

Would ReactOS work for you? Or Wine on a *nix?

It has been a long time since I've tried ReactOS. It wasn't something I consider daily driver, real hardware ready.

WINE and Proton have made the situation better. My desktop remains Windows and I more or less treat it like a game console. It runs games, some recording/modelling software, Adobe Reader for some terrible gov't PDFs, and my wife's cutting machine. The rest are my Linux distro choice of the week.

We get closer all the time.

I am yet to play with Proton. Truth is there isn't much, if any, Windows software I want to run.

I've just upgraded to a Ryzen 4300GE and tried some games under either plain WINE or Playonlinux with success; I didn't even need to overclock it. I've also used extensively WINE in the past for electronic simulation and music software with success. Before being also ported to Linux, Reaper for Windows run perfectly with very low latencies without using ASIO drivers, and MicroCap is now free as in beer, and runs great under Linux using WINE. http://www.spectrum-soft.com/index.shtm The number of software that run great under WINE is getting bigger and bigger, and I can understand why Microsoft is so concerned that they had to create their anti-WINE (WSL) which does exactly the same in reverse.

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