On brand. Settings is like control panel but dumber.
I love how in settings all the different miuse options are spread out in different places!
Want to change mouse speed, cursor size, and color? We are going on an adventure!
Even more frustrating is that different releases and builds recategorize where certain settings are entirely. To the point where search is the only reliable way of knowing for sure you’ll get to the right place. They haven’t changed things too drastically recently but they kept moving shit around in Win10 throughout its lifetime.
The older and older I get in life, the more and more I want my digital product interfaces to remain as static as possible. I’m not anti new features, but I want the ability to persist the OG interface I’m used to, the state in which I know WHERE things are, and HOW to utilize them.
I don’t want app icons to change without my consent. I want zero rebranding, name or color changes. I don’t want to be forced to change services due to enshittification, and learn how to fit new ones into my workflows.
One of the core problems with the modern world is confusion of information. Our brains were not designed to handle the infinite layer of abstractions, dozens/hundreds of separate systems, each with potentially hundreds or thousands of different configurations. Every time a major update occurs it breaks my mums tech illiterate brain more and more, and she stops using digital products more and more.
This is how I feel as a software engineer. I’m sick of learning new libraries every time fashions change.
My uncle can navigate windows xp with his eyes closed. It took me years to get him there. He was fine with vista and 7. When 8 hit, it was over and it has been since.
This is a religious man who I’ve only ever heard cuss twice in his life before, and they were the milder words. “What the fuck is copy as a path? I’m just trying to copy and paste a file to my Zip drive! I can’t find computer, I can’t find my computer. I can’t find copy and paste! I’m gonna throw this thing across the room! Seriously, show more options? Why not leave the options I’ve had since 1996 where they were? Do people just not copy and paste any more?”
I have given up and I just remote connect and do it for him. He tried for a few years with the “slow down and let me learn” thing but he’s almost 70 and he’s given up.
He calls his usb drives “zip drives”. He was the only person I knew who had an actual Zip drive when I was a kid and I loved it.
I get the feeling, but in my experience it has more to do with the windows UI actual getting worse. When I use Linux, I’m happy to try out different desktop environments and shells, but they have one thing in common: they have designs that are created more thoughtfully.
It’s not just us growing old, it’s the world of technology growing shittier too!
I don’t care if things stay the same, I just want an intuitive interface.
I bet AI would be helpful here!!
“I’m New Clippy. I’m here to help you, like it or not!”
Hey, Clippy! Change the settings so that I can view hidden files . Clippy: Ok. Shutting down the nuclear reactor.
Not great, not terrible…
But it was, in fact, terrible, very terrible indeed
Not great, not terrible…
I send the gif of that scene at least once a week at work over teams
There a lot of non AI implementations that would be more reliably logical, like presenting options in multiple groups instead of only having a single location buried in submenus.
Like mouse color and size could be in an appearence AND in a general mouse settings that includes mouse appearance and behavior. They could design it so the setting itself is self contained, so it can behave the same way no matter how it is grouped for presentation.
I would expect AI to make up illogical groupings, because it doesn’t understand context.
I believe they were joking since Microsoft is pushing AI into everything these days.
You’re not around a lot people that joke, are you?
Ever heard of Poe’s Law?
It isn’t a story that the Jedi would tell you.
The only benefit is more tightly integrated Powershell commands for some of them… but even that is still lacking in a lot of areas.
If Microsoft had actually moved all the settings over to the “new” settings app (it’s 12 years old, btw), I’d be supportive of this.
It’s a joke that windows has 2 settings apps, and searching for specific settings in the start menu will take you to either, or to both.
But as we all know, Microsoft won’t do this properly. They’ll likely just continue with their 75% finished settings app while hiding the control panel, and if you need something not in the settings app you’ll have to open some old menu using a run command or some other terrible convoluted step that makes you feel like you’re running a half-baked Linux distro from 2003.
MacOS, Android, iOS, Linux distros don’t have this issue. Fucking TempleOS doesn’t have this issue. Microsoft is a $3.2 trillion company!
The absolute lack of effort they put into Windows is pathetic. They’re a shining example of why monopolies should not be allowed to happen.
the thing that most grinds my gears is that there are settings that appear in both control panels and settings, appear to be changeable in both, but only one or the other actually changes anything.
I hate the settings app so much that I’ve just learned the powershell commands for setting up printers and changing NIC settings. Honestly it wouldn’t be as bad if a. It didn’t take forever to load on occasion and b. I could have two settings windows open at once.
It’s so hard to find settings there that jumping between network center and add device is not intuitive. If they remove control panel from servers too I might quite my msp job and go work at a grocery store.
Does Linux have good support for VR yet? Specifically my HP Reverb g2 that seems to be reliant on windows mixed reality…
I’ve never tried VR on any OS, but from what I’ve heard it’s hit and miss on Linux right now - certainly not as good as Windows at the moment.
I know that KDE has a lot of stuff for VR (unsurprising given Valve is pushing for it), and Gnome has just merged a lot of the same, so if you give it a spin I’d recommend an up-to-date distro (say Fedora or OpenSUSE Tumbleweed) with either KDE or Gnome.
I imagine that when Valve releases their new headset, progress will accelerate, but that’s just a guess
Interesting, thank you
Also was unaware Valve was working on a new headset! That’s good news as it feels like the market has really stagnated outside of the Meta headsets.
I wouldn’t get too excited. Supposedly the next headset is internally called Deckard, and it’s been “about to release” for like 3 years now? Pretty much everything people think they know about it is conjecture based off code Valve has tucked away in SteamVR; zero public statements of intent.
As for VR on Linux… kinda? I’ve only read terrible things about it online. I have an Index and tried to use it with Mint a few months back, and while it mostly worked without any configuration issues, there was a weird white ring around the edge of the screen that I couldn’t figure out.
zero public statements of intent
To be fair, when has Valve ever done this?
About as often as they actually release anything
I have the same headset, and as of a few weeks ago when I last checked, there is not complete support. I think the display works mostly, but the controllers don’t so it might depend on what you are doing.
Interesting - I rarely use the controllers, so could be do-able at least as a dual boot
Just a curious question - Is there any VR sets that work with Linux Distros? I’m not much of a gamer to need or want one. Just want to learn for learning’s sake.
They need to finish Settings before doing that. Control Panel is almost always the easier way to accomplish things and still the only way to accomplish some IIRC.
And it doesn’t take years to load, specially on older PCs
And you can have more than one instance open at a time, instead of having the sound page open and when you try to bring up bluetooth next to it it changes the first one instead.
This is so frustrating when trouble shooting - trying to re-find where that one settings page was because you opened another.
It’s not a phone - it’s a windowing desktop environment. Allow multiple instances!They literally already tried and failed with the phoneification of windows when everyone shat on 8. I guess some ahole UI designer still works there and is bitter that people didn’t like their ideas.
I had to do a lot of configuration work on Win10 computers lately. The MMC, Powershell, even Regedit are faster and more intuitive than Settings. It’s fucking ridiculous.
Settings in Windows 11 is close. I rarely find myself going to control panel when it was about 50/50 in Windows 10. Still more clicks than I would like but workable.
This. Settings does not have full audio devices information and settings.
Just 3 days ago I had to use the control panel to access the settings I needed to get my parents’ printer to work right. Even tried to use the regular settings menu for maybe 10 minutes before remembering how to access the settings I needed. Here’s hoping my parents never run into printer issues again (lol).
FUCK YOU, MICROSOFT!
Spoiler: they will, because fucking printers
Yeah I see this as more of a “Printers are an antiquated technology that hasn’t changed much in the last 30+ years” problem.
In fact, they are going to remove third-party printer drivers and replace them with universal drivers. Link
Printers are fortunately “plug and play” on Linux.
Connect printer to the network. Hit the print button. Select printer from the dropdown. Boom. Done.
It’s nothing to do with printers, this is a uniquely Windows problem (and maybe Mac, I have no idea).
I recently added a printer to my PC. Having to launch that antique spooler window from like Windows 3.1 to print is a bit hilarious
I had to do this today on my wife’s laptop. The settings menu just wouldn’t do it. It just sat there for a thousand years.
Oh no. They really want me swapping to Linux full time with this shit, ugh.
What’s stopping you?
Just get it over with.
The setup, mostly. I know I can VM my mandatory work programs, at least. Dual boot has been too frustrating since Windows won’t play ball.
I am glad I waited on dual boot since the recent patch broke that. So, now I’m looking for a good way to just go all in without losing too much data.
I really just need a stable kernel with a decent UI that works with Gaming/Proton AMD CPU and Nvidia GPU.
The distro choices are too expansive and I haven’t had to start fresh in a new OS in 30 years.
I play games on Pop_OS (NVIDIA edition) and also run an AMD CPU. Great experience for 2 years now.
Just start with Linux mint and cinnamon or kde desktop environment. You should be good to go with that. Kernels are not something that you usually need to worry about, the default should work fine. If you need to, it’s easy to switch to another kernel by just installing it through the package manager.
Well I spent Sunday night installing Manjaro and so far so good. It’s been almost 30 years since the last time I used Linux, and KDE Plasma is really easy to use.
I decided to wipe my Win 10 drive so there was no going back. I was able to install and play games like normal, and I even used the command line to pull and build the Mullvad VPN App from the Arch store, and sign the app certificate.
The best part was once I setup the steam libraries Steam pulled all the information from those drives and all my games that weren’t on my Windows SSD were ready to go. All of my peripherals just worked and the Nvidia driver was fine.
I’m just missing some GOG Games, but Heroic should take care of that. Painless and simple.
It’s amazing how much has changed in over 20 years.
I’m enjoying a dual boot with Nobara_Gnome_Nvidia. Just finished the game with my first character on Tiny Tina’s Wonderland without issue. My only gripe would be how that particular game takes a minute to optimize shaders at the initial game start. Glorious Eggroll does nice work.
I’d recommend looking into Bazzite. Built on top of Fedora for rock solid stability and relatively up to date kernel (with all the latest drivers).
They’re shooting for the same stability and high level gaming experience as Steam Deck, but for any computer.
I use Bluefin because I’m less bothered by gaming, but it’s been absolutely fantastic with the stability and ability to run anything I’ve tried.
Well for my work needs I require NVIDIA graphics cards and very high end multi channel audio cards and some other bits and bops. I can dream I can swap one day though.
I e had the opposite experience with my 7800x3D. With windows, my Soundblaster card’s drivers won’t install because they will cause an “unstable overclock” while it works on the Nobara installation.
What are your very high end multi channel audio cards that don’t play together with Jack?
Three of these:
And I got a few other rigs with various rme cards and some focusrite things,
Also there is, yeah you can see the card and it makes sounds, and there is working at a proper level of working, very different unfortunately :(
Ah. Pro Tools.
Yeah I understand Avid isn’t exactly er, avid on the open source stuff.
My apologies and thanks for the education.Oh yeah don’t get me wrong, super not a fan of avid and protools whole thing, but hands are part tired unfortunately :( I am glad I ditched avid stuff for video work many years ago at least, though really am not sure Adobe is the better place to be rofl. One day I would love to have a fully working machine you can use in industry that is entirely Linux!!
Yeah, good luck getting Adobe supporting anything linux. Have pleaded both as customer and as corporate client. Not happening.
Blackmagic has stuff. DaVinci, etc. But apples and oranges.
Do it. I will too. I’ll do a QEMU Vm for my windows needs. I’m done with their behavior.
Sure, once I decide on a more permanent distro. Manjaro was ok but I keep hearing bad things and it was a gaming partition, not an all purpose partition
