[pbz]

These kinds of changes just make the OS look cheap (like a bazaar of sorts). They're visually ugly, but easily ignored (I rarely open the start menu).

What I'm more concerned / annoyed by is the trend of Windows fighting with you. For example, try to disable the real-time antivirus protection. The UI makes it look like it's off, but then it turns back on by itself. Then you go to group policy to make it explicit that you don't want it. It's off for a bit and then it freaking changes the group policy (resets it back).

First time I noticed it do this I though I got hacked because I couldn't imagine the OS doing something so malware-ish, but it does. What's the point of having a setting at all?

[yarg]

I tried to play spider solitaire not too long ago.

It used to be a clean simple application, now it's adware - literal adware in the professional version of a non-free OS.

Utter fucking madness.

I quit in disgust and had another go at Tumbleweed.

Windows 11 made KDE better.

[ThatMedicIsASpy]

Valve (Steam Deck) using it and paying devs to fix things also helps.

[yarg]

Special thanks to whoever fixed the damned wireless.

[MaxikCZ]

Or when using the calculator asked you to rate it in Windows Store..

[shrimp_emoji]

It is cheap.

It's a neglected heap of legacy garbage, maintained just superficially enough to maintain profitability from its inertial marketshare (i.e., how everything runs on it already and how it's a massive coordinate problem to ever change that).

The KDE Dolphin file manager is way better than Explorer, feature-wise, and has been for probably over a decade. Dolphin was made for free by like five Dutch guys. Explorer is from a multi-billion dollar corporation that's buying every service and other company you know. I guess it's not profitable to improve user UX, so you have ridiculous artifacts like how much Explorer still sucks and how long it's sucked. :D (I think it only got a dark theme, like... 5 years ago? Linux file managers have had those for decades.)

If you're lucky enough to experience a change in your priority matrix such that things Windows is bad at (like programming) become more salient to your well-being than things Windows is good at (like playing AAA games), I recommend trying Linux (shout out to Manjaro) out. I'm glad I experienced that change, allowing me to flee to Linux and never look back.

[hef19898]

Maybe time fro another, huge, anti-competitive fie from the EU, like when back when MS did all those shenanigans around internet Explorer? I wouldn't be surprised of we see similar proceedings in the next years around cloud services (everything from OneDrive to Azure and equivilants, Office, you name it) once the EU is done with mobile devices.

[CRConrad]

> Maybe time fro another, huge, anti-competitive fie from the EU, like when back when MS did all those shenanigans around internet Explorer?

ITYM pro-competitive. It was Microsoft's behaviour that was anti-competitive.

[jxramos]

that's an interesting strategy to use alternate routes to the same information. Might be an opportunity to use more of the WIN+R shortcut to launch applications from that lil dialog. Makes me daydream of a day when Microsoft gets into a cat and mouse and starts slipping ads in many other dialogs that currently lack them.

[rafark]

“These kinds of changes just make the OS look cheap“

Windows has never been an elegant OS.

[CRConrad]

Maybe not exactly elegant, but certainly much more neat and tidy, clean and consistent than it is now. From W95/NT4 up to at least W2K it was quite OK.

And using the old-style “theme” or whatever it was called, you could use that tidy and consistent UI throughout XP in stead of the garish “Fisher-Price” look, via Vista in stead of the annoying and distracting transparency, and well into Windows 7 in stead of whatever the “native look” of that version may have been like (I have no idea, switched to the old look first thing I did).

It only finally went to shit with Windows 8, and unfortunately restoring the Start Menu wasn't enough to make 10 good again.

[biofox]

I have to disagree slightly. The default for Windows 98 had a consistent aesthetic, consistent short-cuts across applications, and a sensible menu system (even if things were janky on the backend).