I don't know why I even bother opening the settings app
You go deep enough and very Windows 95 looking menus pop up. Like are they building over the old system? It's all very strange.
yes they are, actually. Backwards compatibility is a huge thing in Windows, it's why you can't name files certain names such as CON, and why you can find things from 3.1 etc. still.
Fun Fact: Every single Exe today still checks prior to running whether it is Barbie Riding Club (1998) or can it run normally?
Because when you update your OS and your game breaks - you don't blame Hasbro, you blame Windows every time. You can't just call up Sierra Games and ask them to update - they don't exist anymore and so you must carry everything forward - bugs included.
That fact does seem really fun and interesting. Why barbie? Got any links so I can read up on it?
I googled a bit, and perhaps this statement comes from this old Reddit thread here in the first comments.
There it's mainly used as a joke to describe how Windows is just very backwards compatible in general. The story might have stuck and warped a bit as like it really had a reference to that Barbie game.
it's why you can't name files certain names such as CON
To expand on this: The reason you can't name files CON, etc., is because of a program from the 1960s called Peripheral Interchange Program (PIP), a program used in Digital Equipment Corporation's computers. The overall OS that PIP was part of was called CP/M.
DOS, which came out in the 80s and was made for IBM computers, was modeled after CP/M, and it kept and expanded the capabilities of PIP.
Then Microsoft came along and created a modified version of DOS called MS-DOS which IBM started using.
Eventually, Microsoft created Windows 95, merging two initially separate products: MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows. Microsoft left in the code for handling CON, etc., but they hadn't put in any limitations for filenames, which caused some bugs. So, from the next version of Windows onward, they disallowed the ability for anything to name a folder or file "CON", among other related things.
So the reason you can't name a file or folder "CON" is because of a 60-year-old file-copying program nobody uses anymore.
There's some even older UI bits buried around in there:
At some point last year I had a Japanese program launch a popup window that was clearly from pre-NT Windows. So bizarre.
"Wait- It's all Windows NT?"
🌍🧑🚀🔫🧑🏽🚀
Always will be
It's actually insane how difficult it can be to find settings in windows. Especially when the indexing breaks for the 1000th time and you can't just search for it in the start menu.
Hey, maaaaaybe you wanted to search how to do that in Bing!
-Windows
This is the start menu experience:
"Photoshop"
*Wait 15 seconds *
"Here are some results from bing:"
😡😡
Mac and Linux it's instant, and not some garbage AI/ads/web search results.
Especially when you start typing something and it already started searching with your partial input and you your further and notice the thing your search for is first so you press enter, for it to now place another thing first with the extra input 😡
How can "displ" open display settings, but "display" opens a help page in Edge
I'll have you know windows has changed.
Now you can't move the task bar
Seriously, the speed in which windows is getting worse since after win 7 is almost comical.
Win 7 was peak. Bonus points for giving option to make it look like Win9x by disabling all eye candy options.
Windows had 3 peaks. 95, xp, and 7.
Now I just use Linux. I know not everyone can, but for everything I do or need to do it all works just fine there so I couldn't be happier.
Remember when they planned to move over all the Control Panel settings to the Settings app?
In Windows 10?
I still extensively use:
Win+R
ncpa.cpl
It's still the only way I know how to easily and quickly change my NIC settings.
The worst part is to change some things it adds like an extra 4 clicks to the old method.
Windows 11 had a link to that in under the advanced network options.
I say had as a recent update just took it away. They added a new advanced settings to replace the network connections part you linked to, but it is still missing options. Almost 10 years of the new settings and still no way to enable split tunneling on a vpn in the new UI.
The worst part is to change some things it adds like an extra 4 clicks to the old method.
And then at the final click, it takes you to that control panel screen anyway lol
Only 23 years?
I don't think this bad lad has changed since Windows 3.1
3.11 as 3.1 had no networking capability.
Whenever I saw that old dialog it felt like a comfort blanket... that won't ever let you go and entangle you in it's comfy iron grip.
I am really going to miss the old settings when they finally remove what is left of Control Panel. So far they have removed things or moved shit to force the Settings app. But they keep failing to make the new things have anywhere near the level of control. The power settings from Control Panel still matter way more than Settings and seem to actually stick when applied. And I just really have no idea how they have made stuff like resetting networking/connection issues worse over time. Fucking right-clicking on the networking icon on the taskbar and picking "repair" would actually get shit working again 8 times out of 10. But just seems to be a placebo at this point. There are still so many times that using different resets in Internet Options fixes more stuff I see regularly than the resets in Settings->Networking.
And the newer Troubleshooting options never fix any of the Windows Update issues I come across. Just a glorified verification of the failures I already know are happening. I never thought I would so badly miss being able to tell Windows Update to ignore updates if they were bugging out (not to avoid them all together but at least stop the OS from just constantly going through the motions of installing and failing during each reboot/shutdown). So many of the updates that used to give me issues were really either down to them trying to install out of order or due to a fuck-up on MS's end that pushed bad updates.
The push to so deeply embed these AI models into everything so fast is really pissing me off. Shit is known to have issues with just outright making shit up. Which is IMO reason enough to not be adding them to end-products (especially since the end-products are also still not finished with removing old versions of things). One thing that really worries me in my job with fixing people's PCs is the AI and search that pushes web content (and the now inescapable placement of ads) above local resources/programs/settings/etc. The main issues people have aren't actual viruses like in the past. It is the massive levels of scams and fake alerts followed by fake "repair techs." If the average person is so easy to trick when it is people scamming them. AI is going to blow shit up waaaaaaaay worse and will be able to do it so much faster and completely. Average people are still under the impression that these AI chats are giving completely real and accurate information (reminds me of how people used to believe that if something was said on TV that it was real).
Shit is fucked and going to get much worse at a dramatically faster rate due to rushing things in order to make as much money as fast as possible. Even Microsoft used to ship things in a more complete state. But gaming has made shipping broken products completely normal. So no reason to care about keeping any level of quality.
It's like Windows is devolving into really, REALLY early Linux, where a single Control Panel application is broken up into a half dozen separate parts and scattered throughout the interface in a dozen separate sub-sub-sub menus.
You should NOT have to hunt for the "print" button in a freaking word processor.
Like why is it so hard for them? The underlying settings database doesn't have to change, only the UI. Unless it's all so messed up nobody dares touch it.
Based on the progress from Win7 to Win8 to Win10 to Win11, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" doesn't seem to be a prevailing mantra at Microsoft.
Never doing a code rewrite gives you stuff like this: a 15ft long nerve that should only have to travel a few inches
Sure, but you can refactor code without completely changing or removing functional and widely used features. Especially looking at Win11 vs. Win10, it just feels malicious at this point. "How can we shoehorn in more advertising, AI and telemetrics?"
Wait till you see the enterprise side where you may find a panel that is virtually identical to something from windows 2000
I wanted to open "devices and printers" and it opened some bullshit in the settings app and it didn't tell me the model of PC I have, then I clicked on "more information" or something like that and it opened the old "devices and printers" like I wanted in the first place.
Not all new things are good, Microsoft. Don't fix what isn't broken. I know new features make the shareholders jizz in their pants, but I want my system to continue working the way I need it to work. I've had to go out and get quite a few third party apps just to get around all the bullshit you keep changing for no reason.
Because Microsoft went full Apple and adopted the "we know what's good for you so don't defy our decisions" philosophy of UX design.
The difference is that Apple usually executes it well, and Microsoft doesn't.
You set a Windows PC to dark mode, half of the system is still bright white. Apple wouldn't dream of doing that shit.
You start searching in the start menu, it's slow, gives you different results each day, misses a bunch of stuff, and tries to send you to Bing. Apple wouldn't dream of doing that shit.
Microsoft comes up with a new UX, but it's only a thin veneer, most of the system doesn't even use it and instead uses Win7 or earlier menus. Apple wouldn't dream of doing that shit.
For all their flaws (and believe me I know they have many. I don't intend to ever own an Apple product), Apple actually gives a shit about having a polished and consistent UX.
They wouldn't have a dark mode that still leaves half the system white, they wouldn't have 20+ year old UI cruft, etc.
The issue is that Apple had that mentality from the start. Microsoft tried to Frankenstein it in after the OS had already matured under a different UX philosophy, not only that, they also didn't commit all the way to changing the philosophy since they still wanted legacy support. They basically ended up with the drawbacks of both philosophies and very little of the benefits of either.
Install Linux, be done with the Microsoft windows shit.
Wow, I had to scroll past 5 comments to see a Linux circlejerk. What's happening to Lemmy??
This is a post complaining about an operating system. Someone else recommends an operating system that doesn't have this problem. Where's the circlejerk?
Meanwhile the KDE settings panel has been designed and redesigned like 20 times in the past 20 years. Much better, but also... Dude, please focus more on stability and less on "let's redo this from scratch again!"
I assumed they would try for feature parity at some point, but I think they forgot.
21st century Windows developer: "Hey! You know what people REALLY want in a text-based Office Suite? VERY very light gray text on a white background!"
Dude I got fucking livid yesterday because Alt keyboard shortcuts no longer work in Paint.
You have to interact with the ribbon before the alt key works.
And then there’s no key shortcut for “Save As” or “Exit”.
The fuck Microsoft. They weren’t hurting anyone and you’re wrecking 30 years of muscle memory. You know how frustrating that is?
The guy who made it has a YouTube channel called Dave's Garage
The dude who made the Task Manager? God damn, this dude singlehandedly carries Windows holy shit.
According to Dave Plummer, a retired Windows Engineer, there are actually bugs in some of the windows components because he intended for them to be temporary solutions, like the CPU or Hard Drive usage numbers had to be Massaged to be lower than 100%, for example. When the Task Manager doesn't respond you can actually use Ctrl+Shift+Esc to queue up a new Task Manager if the old one doesn't revive itself. That stuff hasn't changed since 1996.
He also wrote the File Formatter, which has a file size limit of 32Gb for the Fat32 format for the same reason: it wasn't supposed to be permanent, but it hasn't changed for over 20 years. The concept at the time was that Cluster Slack would make a large drives like a terabyte more than 99% wasted space in the format, so 32Gb was arbitrarily chosen as a limit.