- cross-posted to:
- windows@sopuli.xyz
- hackernews@lemmy.smeargle.fans
- cross-posted to:
- windows@sopuli.xyz
- hackernews@lemmy.smeargle.fans
TLDR: StartAllBack, ExplorerPatcher and some other projects are being blocked on 24H2.
One more reason to switch to Linux
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The Microsoft devs have time to do shit like this, but haven’t yet gotten the Settings screen as functional as Control Panel was two decades ago…
Do NOT blame the devs for this. They are not the ones to decide the direction of the product or the priority of the tickets they work. Blame upper management for making these poor decisions and the product managers for being spineless and not pushing back.
But Steve Ballmer told me “Developers Developers Developers Developers”
Are you saying that was a lie?
He also squealed IIRC
Does anyone else wonder which medication Steve Ballmer was prescribed but didn’t take? He always struck me as a walking check engine light.
Relevant XKCD:
Oh was he an alcoholic? See I got more cocaine vibes out of the man.
Maybe they are pushing back, which is why Control Panel still exists?
Meanwhile the new settings panel is telling me my network is peivate while control panel and network share settings tell me it’s domain authenticated.
…while you’re sitting in an internet café
It would be funny if true.
Sadly the reality is me calling with a client because this one single PC refuses to apply the damn GPOs… :(
I’m pretty sure everybody knows it’s not just a couple of developers by themselves churning out windows. Even the project managers are just following orders. Marketing sets the tone upper management picks the path.
Yeah . . . marketing – the department famous for being able to steer the flagship product of a trillion-dollar company.
He said marketing sets the tone (not the path), and that is absolutely true. Many products are killed or poorly received due to the tone poor marketing set.
This is just nonsense that internet denizens tell themselves because they don’t like decisions made in board rooms and can’t conceptualize a business development team. Marketing is following orders just as much as some rando code monkey.
Thank you. The one arena where the fault really does lie in few enough hands they fit around a biggish table, and the Internet instead makes a nebulous boogeyman out of “marketing” (don’t get it twisted either y’all, I condone zero of the bullshit marketing practices we all hate, but that’s also the same table of people) instead of the board.
It’s not even secret information. The decision came from the minds of these folks (as they understood what they asked to be measured and think to steer to measure higher numbers of whatever they’re measuring):
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/corporate-governance/board-of-directors.aspx
The scary truth is: The CEO scribbles “CLOUD 1ST”, “FOCUS ON ENTERPRISE” and “WIN AS A SERVICE” on a napkin during a 5-star dinner and everyone below them tries to make sense of it and translate it into a business strategy. No one is really in charge.
Unfortunately, blaming the devs seems to be a recurring problem. I remember seeing this in a YouTube comment thread (paraphrased):
why can’t i insert a bible reference without it becoming blue? i write proverbs 14:23 and youtube turns it into a damn timestamp. f-cking lazy developers, they removed dislikes, now keep preventing adblock and cannot detect a simple quote??
I replied with something like:
Hey, stop blaming the devs. It was not their decision to make the unpopular changes, and making a system for detecting if a comment is referring to a book with chapter:verse syntax (not just the bible, and all their versions & translations) is not something they would pay for. For the record, you can refer to Proverbs 14:23 or any other verse without making it a link. I can show you how but first repent and apologize for undervaluing people’s hard work.
(Yes, there’s just a ZWSP after the colon. It can be mapped to a key combo if one uses it often.) He did not answer but maybe didn’t see my reply buried way underneath – it was YouTube comments, after all. Legend says that bible references in his video description keep messing up his worship chapters.
You overestimate the agency of a developer.
I really hate having the taskbar permanently affixed to the bottom of my screen. I’ve had it on the left side for decades now. They are really throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Someone at Microsoft “Customization is the enemy of progress!”
I’m on 10 and been a top taskbar guy for rear. Are you Saying 11 forces you to have taskbar only on bottom?
Correct
Welp fuck. Guess I’ll start looking at Linux but every company I’ve worked for in the past 10 years is ALL Microsoft all the way
Wine does a Lotta shit. I know I have an NTFS drive running on my debian-family machine.
I have no idea what you’re trying to say
Basically, they like to drink wine.
No. I’m kidding. WINE stands for WINE Is Not an Emulator, and it allows you to run Windows applications on a Linux machine. It’s far from perfect, but it can be a lifesaver when switching from Windows to Linux. What user melpomenesclevage is trying to say, is that you can use WINE to significantly blunt the blow / daily usability learning curve when switching, to keep some of your familiar applications as is.
Edit: here’s their site https://www.winehq.org/ the also explain it much better than I.
How you explained it helped a lot. So it basically is a windows emulator but isn’t for legal reasons? Lol
In Win98 we were able to put the taskbar anywhere natively and even could split those quick launch toolbars out of it and put it on another side by itself. I can’t believe MS is constantly removing features. I’m a Linux user for decades now, but I still also use Windows at work and it’s always bothered me MS re-invents the wheel so often and every time the wheel looks a bit more like a rectangle.
The taskbar was movable since it was first introduced in Win95. I’ve always had a top taskbar, and will continue to do so in Linux.
I have been missing the ability to split the quick launch and dock it since XP was the last time you could. I had a dedicated auto hiding bar on the right where I put shortcuts to all of my most used folders and applications. I have looked for solutions that brought that functionality back off and on, but never found anything.
Most things are close, but not quite right, and/or very “bloated” (for what I want it to do, not necessarily for what it was designed to do). It’s so dumb.
Really, did they actually take that feature away. Every executive to touch windows 11 needs fired.
Hmmm, maybe Windows hired some of the GNOME developers
Gnome is nothing like Windows. I honestly can’t think of a DE further away from how windows works than Gnome lol
Is this just one of those gnome=evilsuperbad comments
Not the person you replied to, but I think I get his meaning.
Windows/MS obviously has strong opinion on how the desktop should look like and behave and they’re shoveling it to the user hard. Gnome tends to do the same thing, although the UI/UX is completely different. Yet the similarity is in the forceful pushing said concept to the user whether user likes it or not.
Sure there are plugins for gnome so you can customize it a lot after all, but it requires some tinkering and your regular not tech savvy user won’t ever find a way to do so.
//edit: not hating on gnome. I kind of like its concept and used it for some time, although I don’t use it myself as my daily driver now.
The difference being that people go out of their way to use Gnome. People opt in to the developers vision because they see it as a good one.
Nothing is forced. Gnome doesn’t “force” you to do anything, or to use their product. And they allow any customisation you want, they’re just clear that they don’t provide any support for stuff that you mess around with.
Windows isn’t like that at all.
I don’t really agree. Imagine you were happy user of old Gnome 2, like e.g. my father. Then out of sudden Gnome 3 came, totally different in every aspect. What were your options? Either deal with it or get something different. Experienced users might (easily) overcome this, but regular user struggle. In case of my dad it meant return to windows…
Sure gnome doesn’t force you to use it. Neither does MS with windows. You’re free to install whatever you like, even TempleOS if you want.
Well you could also disagree that the earth revolves around the sun, but it doesn’t make it so.
MS does force you to use windows. They used anti-competitive practices to place themselves in a monopoly position. They forced their products into schools and governments, they forced it on OEMs, etc.
Gnome devs aren’t your slaves. It’s their project and they’re allowed to have preferences. If you don’t like their decisions, cool. Don’t use it.
If you don’t like what they do, don’t install gnome. The same goes for anything else in the FOSS world.
What a novel idea. I’m also allowed to have preferences and post them on the Internet. I’m also allowed to have bad takes.
It doesn’t change the fact that GNOME and Windows are defaults in certain spheres of computing. Which tends to people bitching about the choices those projects make. Certainly as a home user I’m not forced to use them but what about as an employee or student. But I’m your worldview I should opt to be homeless and uneducated.
Anyway, my comment wasn’t entirely fuck GNOME. Their design philosophy is minimalism and simplicity sometimes at the behest of options. Which is not unlike the choice Windows made here. However, that’s not too say that it’s always a bad choice, KDE may have too many options. But, yes, I was being a bit tongue in cheek.
Thanks,
Original guy you replied to
deleted by creator
Eh, I admit my comment is kind of tongue in cheek and it isn’t my favorite DE but I used it for a while (esp 2.0). I think it’s kind of a stretch to call it shitting on though. Their design philosophy is literally simplicity and consistency. Which sometimes comes at the behest of customization. That’s not shitting it just is what it is.
Gnome’s demented ideas make it into apps I run in KDE. I don’t need buttons, drop-down menus, and text input fields in my title bar lol. I’m lookin at you, LACT.
Look, I appreciate you want a Windows imitation, but not everybody does, ok
Gnome is copying windows by putting buttons on the title bar lol
Lol, no.
Just keep using your “but we have windows at home” imitation.
Gnome has amazing ideas, that’s why they’re so successful. If you don’t like the software that’s being provided to you for free, don’t use it.
And yes, we get it, you use KDE btw. How about you just accept that different people want different things and that FOSS developers are free to make what they want, and you’re free to not use it.
Well let’s not forget the corporate sponsorship from the biggest player in Linux, preferable release cycle, and preferable license back in the day.
The fact you’re getting downvoted for this is insane lol
Some people structure their entire personality around hating a random successful Linux DE. It’s fucking weird.
This submission is about Microsoft being bad, but apparently it’s Gnome’s fault lol. The Linux community is so ridiculously toxic lmao
Same. Not being able to move the taskbar, alongside all the other downgrades to it and the start menu is what got me to check out Linux as a desktop OS for real, and not just out of curiosity. So far, I don’t see going back.
And I was even one of the few dozen people who loved Win8. At least there the points that got criticized were due to sweeping and bold changes. Win11 on the other hand feels like the same as 10 but with arbitrary features removed in the core part of the OS.
I’ve had it up top for years. Windows 11 is unusable in the current state. The new shell is utter garbage. And they messed up the control panel even more than I thourght possible.
They’re not exactly “being blocked” but rather the legacy ability to tell explorer.exe to load the older style Taskbar, which those apps load then modify, is going away. I’m not defending this nor do I like it, but it would be like saying some Linux distro is BLOCKING customization because some legacy app dependent on Xorg will not work after they switch to Wayland.
They’re not exactly “being blocked”
Simply renaming the executable works to re-enable Start All Back. They are being intentionally blocked by Microsoft.
Like in the case of StartAllBack, you can bypass the block by simply renaming the executable to something else. If you want to upgrade to a newer build, delete the app, update your system, and then launch it using a renamed executable.
Not if you’re using the preview build, where the entire functionality is removed. The warning is just a preemptive preparation for beta users. The bottom of the article indirectly mentions this.
But sure, downvote me.
The bottom of the article you mentioned:
Windows 11 version 24H2 may cause some headaches for those relying on third-party apps for user interface customization. The latest builds ship with the flag that prevents restoring the old taskbar from the Windows 10 era enabled by default. This could be a sign of Microsoft wanting to remove old components from Windows 11 as it moves forward. (emphasis mine)
Having a function loaded and present but prevented from use “enabled by default” is NOT at all the same as what you claimed, that “the entire functionality is removed.” Find the flag and switch it back on: the functionality was there all along.
Microsoft may well do as you say in the future, which the article does support, but even the text you cited does not support your claim that it has already been removed entirely from the preview builds.
They are, to the best of Microsoft security professionals’ abilities
Just kidding, the devs are probably using ExplorerPatcher themselves and are sabotaging this asshole move
sounds like a 21st century version of quack3.exe.
Turns out they don’t like people disabling their adware.
I don’t get people reacting to Windows critique with that “there are scripts and tools to disable anything”, some even have the gall to compare it to how I use Linux.
When we are talking about adware and spyware right from the vendor, who has the figurative “make shit really mandatory” button. Who is all-powerful there.
Wow, now I’m really glad I switched to Linux. Windows? Never again.
A Microsoft representative (?) opened an issue for Explorer Patcher:
Hi Team,
This is to let you know that Win10 taskbar code is removed. And if use continue to use ExplorePatcheron Windows GE Build, they will see a crash. You only need to adjust the setup exe name to get around the block in your new version. We will continue to block ANY version that crashes Explorer.
Please let me know if you have any question.
Thanks Michelle
Makes sense to me.
Shame somebody removed that code. At least RetroBar will still work. Hopefully.
If only there was a way to know who removed the code
it is a mystery 👻
Aaand another reason to stay with 10.
I give until 2027 for win 10 pc that cannot upgrade to become large botnet
Windows 10 is filled with shit decisions too. And it won’t be supported much longer anyway. If you want to keep using Windows, but not 11, it’s going to be advisable that you use it offline only.
You’re right on all counts.
And I am not happy about about any of this.
Of yeah, and then there is this: Microsoft’s draconian Windows 11 restrictions will send an estimated 240 million PCs to the landfill when Windows 10 hits end of life in 2025
Amazing how Windows die-hards will go to literally any lengths not to switch to Linux.
I can’t use win11 without explorerpatcher, if it stops working I won’t know what to do
--------------------------------- / Got a problem with your PC? \ \ Want to make that NaN problems? / --------------------------------- \ \ .--. |o_o | |:_/ | // \ \ (| | ) /'\_ _/`\ \___)=(___/
Micro$oft are being dicks again, film at 11 but here’s the thing - if you’re interested in customizing Windows - just grab that live distro and get to it man. Linux is here and it’s ready for prime time.
At this point Windows is just for businesses who don’t know better (or refuse to learn) and people who haven’t been told The Good News yet.
This will be true when Linux supports anticheat (well, when anticheat supports Linux).
Sure, not everyone uses their computer for gaming, but I’m sure a lot would like the option.
well, when anticheat supports Linux
It certainly does in many games. Helldivers 2, Hunt: Showdown, and Warframe are rated gold on Linux, Guild Wars 2 is rated platinum. Those are the first four multiplayer games that came to mind.
Those are all great games, but the unfortunate truth is that you’re still going to be limited. Some people may be totally okay with only playing the games that get support but I feel like I’d always feel like I’m missing out if a game I’m really interested in doesnt.
only games you’ll be missing is games with invasive kernal level drm/anticheat.
most people with common sense tend to avoid those games and their rootkits to begin with, so you’re really missing nothing by switching.
Sometimes theres a game that doesnt run great at the moment but within 3-6 months runs like a dream.
You have my attention, as someone who’s been considering switching my main to a Linux.
Sorry, it’s not ready for prime time.
It’s great for advanced users who are willing to put in the effort to work for them as a desktop.
It’s also great as a host for services.
And is dogshit in a business environment.
As some background - I had my first UNIX class in about 1990. I wrote my first Fortran program on a Sperry Rand Univac (punched cards) in about 1985. Cobol was immediately after Fortran (wish I’d stuck with Cobol). So I was in IT working before Linux existed.
I run a Mint laptop. Power management is a joke. Configured it as best as possible, walked in the other day and it was dead. Windows would never do this, unless you went out of your way to config power management to kill the battery.
There no way even possible via the GUI to config power management for things like low/critical battery conditions /actions.
There are many reasons why Linux doesn’t compete with Windows on the desktop - this is just one glaring one. So many run-of-the mill things that take effort to deal with.
Now let’s look at Office. Open an Excel spreadsheet with tables in any app other than excel. Tables are something that’s just a given in excel, takes 10 seconds to setup, and you get automatic sorting and filtering, with near-zero effort. No, I’m not setting up a DB in an open-source competitor to Access. That’s just too much effort for simple sorting and filtering tasks, and isn’t realistically shareable with other people.
There’s that print monitor that’s on by default, and can only be shut up by using a command line. Wtf? In the 21st century?
Networking… Yea, samba works, but how do you clear creds you used one time to connect to a share, even though you didn’t say “save creds”? Oh, yea, command line again or go download an app to clear them for for you. Smh.
Someone else said it better than me:
Every time I’ve installed Linux as my main OS (many, many times since I was younger), it gets to an eventual point where every single thing I want to do requires googling around to figure out problems. While it’s gotten much better, I always ended up reinstalling Windows or using my work Mac. Like one day I turn it on and the monitor doesn’t look right. So I installed twenty things, run some arbitrary collection of commands, and it works… only it doesn’t save my preferences.
So then I need to dig into .bashrc or .bash_profile (is bashrc even running? Hey let me investigate that first for 45 minutes) and get the command to run automatically… but that doesn’t work, so now I can’t boot… so I have to research (on my phone now, since the machine deathscreens me once the OS tries to load) how to fix that… then I am writing config lines for my specific monitor so it can access the native resolution… wait, does the config delimit by spaces, or by tabs?? anyway, it’s been four hours, it’s 3:00am and I’m like Bryan Cranston in that clip from Malcolm in the Middle where he has a car engine up in the air all because he tried to change a lightbulb.
And then I get a new monitor, and it happens all damn over again. Oh shit, I got a new mouse too, and the drivers aren’t supported - great! I finally made it to Friday night and now that I have 12 minutes away from my insane 16 month old, I can’t wait to search for some drivers so I can get the cursor acceleration disabled. Or enabled. Or configured? What was I even trying to do again? What led me to this?
I just can’t do it anymore. People who understand it more than I will downvote and call me an idiot, but you can all kiss my ass because I refuse to do the computing equivalent of building a radio out of coconuts on a deserted island of ancient Linux forum posts because I want to have Spotify open on startup EVERY time and not just one time. I have tried to get into Linux as a main dev environment since 1997 and I’ve loved/liked/loathed it, in that order, every single time.
I respect the shit out of the many people who are far, far smarter than me who a) built this stuff, and 2) spend their free time making Windows/Mac stuff work on a Linux environment, but the part of me who liked to experiment with Linux has been shot and killed and left to rot in a ditch along the interstate.
Now I love Linux for my services: Proxmox, UnRAID, TrueNAS, containers for Syncthing, PiHole, Owncloud/NextCloud, CasaOS/Yuno, etc, etc. I even run a few Windows VM’s on Linux (Proxmox) because that’s better than running Linux VM’s on a Windows server.
Linux is brilliant for this stuff. Just not brilliant for a desktop, let alone in a business environment, or for most users who are used to Windows/Office.
If it were 40 years ago, maybe Linux would’ve had a chance to beat MS, even then it would’ve required settling on a single GUI (which is arguably half of why Windows became a standard, the other half being a common API), a common build (so the same tools/utilities are always available), and a commitment to put usability for the inexperienced user first.
These are what MS did in the 1980’s to make Windows attractive to the 3 groups who contend with desktops: developers, business management, end users.
As a very advanced user, I just don’t have the time to play fuck-fuck with Linux on a desktop - I have work to do with what little time I have.
Here’s a question: if Linux truly competes with Windows, why don’t massive organizations that have the IT manpower/expertise use it for their desktops? They’d save millions in licensing alone. Why is it they feel those tens of millions are better spent on contracts with MS?
Curiously, for me it’s more or less the other way around, in a sense. I run Linux on both my Desktop and my Laptop, and feel that after setting them up the way I like, I am more productive than under Windows. In Windows, I oftentimes had the feeling that I had to work against the OS whenever I wanted to configure it in a way that wasn’t quite standard, while I tend to feel that I can work with the OS when using Linux. Especially Win11 introduced lots of things that detracted from the user experience for me, and where only changeable by editing the registry, which isn’t great.
I do recognise that parts, or even most of that probably isn’t applicable to the standard user, but as what could reasonably be called a power user, I never really had any problems working with Linux.
I’d also say that for non-power users, people who mainly work within Word processors, or their browser, a stable LTS distros can in some cases be less hassle than Windows.
Regarding Excel - gotta give that to you, I always felt that Excel in isolation was good software, and I am not aware of any replacement that’s equally as friendly to non-programmer users, while also being equally as capable.
Regarding your last point - Dunno, I don’t work there. I would however raise that inertia can be quite powerful. No one ever got fired for buying IBM, no one ever got fired for licensing Windows. Doesn’t mean that there aren’t other, possibly good, reasons.
Good for you I guess but good luck with commercial software development when your whole toolchain is Windows only. Same for video games, and Proton only works properly if you have a new GPU which supports all the Vulkan features.
I’ll switch to Linux when Visual Studio Community (NOT Code) works on it and I never have to touch the command line ever again.
Just switch to code.
I put in the effort to redesign my work flow from VS (Enterprise license) to VS Code (totally free) earlier this year. I thought it couldn’t be done, but it was easier than I thought. I’m super happy with the result as I hated what they did with recent VS versions. Microsoft just can’t stop fucking up perfectly fine UIs in the name of “progress”.
As someone who genuinely loves the command line - I’d like to know more about your perspective. (Genuinely. I solemnly swear not to try to convince you of my perspective.)
What about GUIs appeals to you over a command line?
I like the CLI because it feels like a conversation with the computer. I explain what I want, combining commands as necessary, and the machine responds.
With GUIs I feel like I’m always relearning tools. Even something as straightforward as ‘find and replace’ has different keyboard shortcuts in most of the text-editing apps I use - and regex support is spotty.
Not to say that I think the terminal is best for all things. I do use an IDE and windowing environments. Just that - when there are CLI tools I tend to prefer them over an equivalent GUI tool.
Anyway, I’m interested to hear your perspective- what about GUIs works better for you? What about the CLI is failing you?
Thank you!
Not OP. Used Linux since the late 90s. My daily driver is NixOS. GUI here is synonymous with TUI.
What about GUIs appeals to you over a command line?
I like the GUI because I can see what options the tool can execute in this state. I don’t have to pass
--helptogrepor keep several man page sections open. The machine knows what it’s capable of and I direct it.With CLIs I feel like I’m always relearning tools. Even something as straightforward as ‘enable a flag’ has different syntax. Is it
-flag?--flag?--enable-flag? Oh look, a checkbox.Not to say that I think a window environment is best for all things. When using an IDE, I have the terminal open constantly. Programmers are as bad at visual interfaces as they are module interfaces. If no UX designer was involved in displaying complex data or situations, I’m likely to try to fall back to the commandline. Just that - when there are GUI tools I tend to prefer them over an equivalent CLI tool.
tl;dr GUIs can represent the current state of a complex process and provide relevant context, instead of requiring the user to model that information (with large error bars for quality of the UI).
Anyway, I hope you take this in good humor and at least consider a TUI for your next project.
I hope you take this in good humor and at least consider a TUI for your next project.
Absolutely. I see what you did there… 😉
But seriously, thank you for your response!
I think your comment about GUIs being better at displaying the current state and context was very insightful. Most CLI work I do is generally about composing a pipeline and shoving some sort of data through it. As a class of work, that’s a common task, but certainly not the only thing I do with my PC.
Multistage operations like, say, Bluetooth pairing I definitely prefer to use the GUI for. I think it is partially because of the state tracking inherent in the process.
Thanks again!
A wasted opportunity to natively support these features and make the user base happy.
What? You tell me that Windows won’t be customisable any… Sorry can’t do it with a straight face. Fuck you Microsoft! Linux ftw
Well at least finally after three long years Microsoft added the option to combine icons on the taskbar.
Without that option, explorerpatcher was a forced install on w11
Now it’s possible to live without it
TL;DR: One more reason to switch to Linux
“WINDOWS DID A BAD. EVERYONE JUMP SHIP, PRETTY PLEASE? No, we didn’t put into consideration any of the many reasons why one would use Windows over Linux. Linux good, Windows bad, black-and-white!”
Completely irrelevant. Eff off with the Linux proselytizing, mate.
Nah fuck that, call Microsoft out. Fix the fucking Control Panel/Settings nonsense. Stop fucking doing things just because I didn’t say not to. Stop adding all Microsoft apps to startup by default. There’s plenty of reasons to egg corporations and this bullshit is very light-handed. They have the resources and power to make great things, they chose to chase this dragon and leave their OS a fucken mess. They deserve it. Especially with all these Linux distros that are free popping up left and right. At one point we have to fight back against these huge ecosystems that become complacent, fall into dark patterns, and that point was yesterday.
I didn’t say I wasn’t calling Microsoft out. I just said I didn’t want to be proselytized with Linux, that Windows is still a more viable OS. It’s not zero sum— Microsoft can be shitty while still being more viable than Linux.
I just said I didn’t want to be proselytized with Linux, that Windows is still a more viable OS.
Why did you say that when that’s false?
Why did I say what when what’s false?
That Windows is a more viable OS. That’s clearly false. It’s a mess from fresh install and doesn’t get better after a few months.
This argument is so disingenuous and/or dumb that it’s not even worth addressing.
Imagine simping this hard for a monopolistic, spying, anti-consumer company with a market cap of $3,200,000,000,000
Seriously, why get this fucking butthurt about a person expressing the opinion that MS deliberately sabotaging people’s workflows is a bad thing? Pathetic.
Hey OP, may I ask if this is actually news and not an sensanionalized post with an opinion in it.
One more reason to switch to Linux
Isn’t this fucking propaganda?
