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.
I know there was an old hack for simcity but I’ve never heard about barbie. I’ve checked and the claim seems to come from (now removed) @pwnallthethings twitter account. What he refers to there is that Windows indeed maintains a compatibility database, which, unlike the normal compatibility menu, allows more compatibility tweaks and works entirely automatically. On my fresh win11 install, the compatibility administrator tool lists a few hundred compatibility shims and thousands of apps listed, with “Barbie Adventure Riding Club” indeed being one of them
DesktopHorse/HorseHook.dll
Great find :)
I see PwnAllTheThings is on Mastodon:
PwnAllTheThings: Twitter was special. But it’s time to leave
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.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
That’s what happens when your entire business model is promising to support [your business name here]'s favorite feature forever. It makes a lot of money, but boy does it make for a terrible product
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.
That looks to be an Access prompt, from the MS office suite. If you’ve ever written a macro you know how ancient the UI looks behind the scenes with those apps, and this isn’t even a main line office app since it deals with databases and they push excel to work with sets of data like that.
So yes it’s a Microsoft product, but it’s not really native Windows and it’s not an app that makes a lot of sense to spend a lot of time developing.
Just for accuracy’s sake. I’m certain there are better examples.
Anyways, I’m perfectly fine with dated UI as long as it’s efficient and does what it’s supposed to do. If they perfected this stuff way back when you had one chance to ship out a working product, is it really necessary to reinvent the wheel just for aesthetics? Cause that’s how you get a neutered settings app instead of a fully functional control panel.
“Wait- It’s all Windows NT?”
🌍🧑🚀🔫🧑🏽🚀
Always will be
Yes, actually.
Well, it’s more like they update the old stuff and still add new stuff on top of it. That way, generally speaking, Windows can remain compatible with older programs.
there’s a menu in windows from windows 3.1
edit: someone already mentioned it
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
nope, they definitely wanted an AI answer.
AI answer: Type the setting into the start menu search bar. The first result will be the setting you’re looking for.
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.
Lol I installed open shell several years ago and have not looked back since. If I wanted to search the web with your shitty search engine, microsoft, I would have opened your shitty browser, now please sit down.
Probably shouldn’t have installed it on my work computer for security compliance reasons but it’s such an improvement in my workflow that I couldn’t not install it. Highly recommend. Legit cannot imagine using windows without it anymore. https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu
I have no idea why it breaks like this so often too. And it’s such a pain in the ass to try to fix that I’ve generally given up on trying. At least when something very rarely happens with the indexer on Linux I know where to look to fix it.
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
This. You seem to have to give it less. Also it is just broken. I have excel installed, if i start typing excel ( even with app filter) it can’t present it to me, it wants to hand me an ad or info page about what excel is and where to download it from
I have a dual boot machine, windows takes forever to find sometging with or without indexing in use. Boot to linux I type 2-3 letters and GNOME/tracker index hands me files instantly. if I mount the NTFS windows partition in Linux and use the aearch in Nautilus it finds files faster than windows.
I’ll have you know windows has changed.
Now you can’t move the task bar
Is this real?
ya
But why
Coding is hard I guess. Gota focus on all that telemetry.
It’s really annoying my task bar has been at the top since workbench 1.1 and I used it to differentiate work and personal pc at a glance as they often share screens for comfort at home
Because F*CK THE END USER THAT’S WHY!
For real though, the end user isn’t the client anymore. The user is just cattle in the data collecting herd that they sell to their real clients, advertising and whatnot.
Since Windows 11.
wow, microsoft is really putting all the me-repellants into windows 11 aren’t they
In 11? I know I still can in 10.
well you still can move the icon’s back to the left atleast
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
You can reduce keystrokes on that. Just tap the Win key instead of Win+R. Type ncpa.cpl and hit enter.
I’m 90% sure that is the only way to change settings past just showing what you are connected to. Does/can anyone actually use settings over the control panel tools?
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.
My favourite Windows is still 2000.
Isn’t that the one you could get to BSOD with a single ping?
Windows ME is life, only second to Windows Vista.
Everyone can, really. It’s not 2002 anymore. Linux has been ready for prime time for some time now. All it lacks is critical mass.
I mean people with tight corporate requirements cannot. Certain headaches with security designations, not all software works great in Linux, even though most do.
My point is there’s no required savvyness like it used to a couple decades ago.
A corporation is arguably best positioned to make the transition. The one I work at has all their administrative systems as cloud apps. The few production systems that run native can be run in a Citrix or RDP environment. Even now, with user stations running Windows, these systems are accessed through RDP for… reasons anyway.
Don’t forget to combine the powers of windows CE windows ME and windows NT~!
i think first release on win10 was the best, it got worse with updates
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.
Ah yes. Well when I want to modify my IP address I do:
Win+R
Then I enter:
Ncpa.cpl
And hit enter. So easy.
Not so easy is the more useful printer settings:
Win+R
Then:
shell:::{A8A91A66-3A7D-4424-8D24-04E180695C7A}
🤦🏻
its faster to change the ip using the win11 settings app than with Control panel, also DNS over HTTPS is missing from control panel and only available in the settings app
Wtf bro what does that even mean
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?”
That nerve looks like a weirdly deformed phallus
How do you know it isn’t?
Wait till you see the enterprise side where you may find a panel that is virtually identical to something from windows 2000
What do you mean? You can still open control panel from XP/Vista and basically every option menu still points to the same shit that hasn’t changed since Windows 95. Go open device manager and go to the properties of any device and you get like XP stuff at newest. Event Viewer, Disk Management, and many other high level panels haven’t changed from XP.
90 percent of windows menus are still the same as 2000, even on the consumer side. And they’re not virtually identical, they ARE identical.
You misspelled “Windows 3.1”
Lol, honestly, that’s probably fair. My memory basically ends at 95 though and I don’t remember any 3.1 menus well enough to make a call on that distinction.
Also that win32 is the basis of Windows, and most devs these days don’t understand it as it is a pre c++ kinda-sorta-in-the-right-angle Object Oriented language.
Win32 is an API, not a language.
And it’s way post-C++.
It most definitely is not, kernel is still mostly C, other components mostly c++. I wish they would be using something like Rust, that would save me from so many vulnerabilities that I need to fix :(
Edit: oops, you were talking about the api. I was talking about Windows. You can use many languages with the api, of course.I was talking about the fact that Win32 was made a decade after C++.
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.
Oh man your whole comment speaks to me.
And the newer Troubleshooting options never fix any of the Windows Update issues I come across.
I was fighting with this just last night. Ended up having to follow an official Microsoft guide on how to shrink my system partition by 250MB, remove the recovery partition and set up a new one with 250MB more space just so that windows update could actually install the newest update. Fortunately I enjoy dicking around with my computer and can afford to make a mistake that might trash my windows install but for others that rely on their machine this stuff has to be daunting and frustrating.
And I just really have no idea how they have made stuff like resetting networking/connection issues worse over time.
While I generally agree with your comment, they did add an option (don’t know how long it’s been there) where you can right-click on the Internet icon, click the troubleshooter, and there’s a button immediately right there in the troubleshooter to reset the adapter.
I was honestly excited about the new Settings when Windows 10 arrived. I was a Windows sysadmin for more than a decade and am intimately familiar with control panel and think it sucks. I hoped Settings would modernize and streamline. But here we are, so many years later, and many common tasks still lead us to control panel. Such disappointment.
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?
It’s just a well-known trope of Lemmy nowadays that whenever any issue with any OS is reported, rather than providing advice for the situation the default response is often “FUCK [OS], USE LINUX”. It’s become so common that it’s essentially now viewed by non-Linux users as Linux users just engaging in a circlejerk of their favourite OS. I know that circlejerks usually require more than one person but the Lemmy hivemind tends to respond this way, so a single comment (that is usually highly upvoted) is viewed as a circlejerk.
I mean, if you want to move away from Microsoft’s very weird UI principles and towards an operating system where you’ll never be placed in this situation, then that seems to me to be very reasonable advice?
Like, in all seriousness, what advice can anyone give to this individual? No one anticipates Microsoft making the changes OP wants. This is a problem that doesn’t exist in Linux and for cultural and technical reasons effectively can never happen within Linux. Linux is free and will remain free forever.
I live in the real world. I know that people’s employers might not support them using Linux. However, why is the anger in this situation always pointed at those who are trying to offer a better alternative and never those preventing a switch to said alternative?
I’m here to be jerked off by a Linux user, can anyone let me join in?
My manjaro install broke 5 hours after I installed it. My latop speakers never worked…
Don’t use manjaro mate. Install something stable like Debian or Fedora.
Found the problem because of which kde was not booting. Still have no speakers but that’s how it is I guess.
Is pipewire with pulse audio properly configured? Check pavucontrol and tell me if you need any more help
I got help on the manjaro forum. had to edit two different configs. Everything works now.
If you do that, people will claim that your new problems originate from slow updating OS and will say that arch is the answer.
Then people will say that the problems you experience in arch are non existent on stable distros. Forever.
Sometimes, windows is just a better OS.
That sucks. Laptops are always a bit trickier. Linux works flawlessly on most things I install it on these days. Manjaros been on my desktop for the past 4 years.
I assumed they would try for feature parity at some point, but I think they forgot.
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.
3.11 but yeah
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 kind of wish they would stop moving things around in the KDE settings. But at least the search works in submillisecond timing and I can always find what I’m looking for
On linux don’t you just google how to change some setting and copy and paste some command line from stackoverflow?
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.
He also made a lot of the other good shit iirc. He did an AMA on the other site a few years ago
Not only task manager, but the ability to open up zip files inside the regular explorer folders was him too.
Made them on his own time and sold it to Microsoft, back when that was possible.
windows 7-style control panel is one of the most non intuitive uis ever created
I agree.
We’re both going to get downvoted but the settings app has a much better UI than control panel full stop. The problem is the years of development that have gone into it only for the settings app to redirect to the control panel anyway for 50% of the things you want to do because they still haven’t been bothered to actually integrate everything directly into the app.
If you could actually do everything in the settings app that you could do in the control panel after 3 versions of windows I don’t think it would be so universally disliked.
Isn’t this what the whole post is about? Not having all the settings / info in the new settings?
If you could actually do everything in the settings app that you could do in the control panel after 3 versions of windows I don’t think it would be so universally disliked
This was my biggest gripe with the settings app when I still used Windows
I use linux now, and for someone like me who likes to tinker and script, it has been amazing
It’s the same as M365, and they’re always changing where things are located and renaming things. So stupid.
win11 settings app can do a lot on it’s own, most network settings can now be configured there (except if you need to configure some obscure protocol or sth) DHCP, DNS, static/dynamic ipv4/ipv6 options, DoH both per-adapter and per-network are there
im planning to switch from windows 11 to linux mint in 2026
Why not sooner?
because if i say it it’s gonna be 2026 then it’s gonna hard to make me say 2024
Unpopular opinion: Linux Mint sucks ass and there are so many great distros to choose from, which aren’t Linux Mint. It looks like Windows XP and functions like Windows XP. Still uses X11, which doesn’t even have proper support for 1:1 touchpad gestures and handles multiple displays with different scaling factors and refresh rates in a way that is, well, hacky and janky at best or non-functional at worst.
I get that Linux Mint is easy to use because it’s made specifically to be as convenient as possible to users coming from Windows but jeez, it looks and feels like something from 2005, especially on a laptop…
I’ve just started to daily drive Mint, after finding Fedora confusing and Ubuntu somehow slow and stuttery.
Every few years I try out Linux desktop and this is the first time I’ve found it usable enough for me. For the first time I’m not delving into forum posts from last decade to get simple stuff working.
What distro would you recommend that does desktop usability better than Mint?
I don’t daily drive Linux myself yet, but I see a lot of people talking up Pop!OS
Linux Mint might look outdated but it’s stable as hell. Especially LMDE. Any time I mess around with arch/arch-based derivatives or any rolling release distros I’m quickly reminded why I chose to run Mint as my primary OS. I’m long past my distro hopping days so having something that works without question and doesn’t require any mucking around is huge for me.
It’s s gateway drug. It’s ok to let them come in on Mint and Ubuntu, they’re scared and confused. Give them creature comforts. Once they’re warm and fuzzy, they’ll get inquisitive and branch out.
Regale to the Mint users the virtues of your better choices, but tell the windows users come on it and use whatever they’re comfortable with.
I’ll take something from 2005 as a compliment to Linux Mint. Having installed it in 2006 you are absolutely correct. It’s shockingly boring lack of constant UI paradigm shifts almost makes me forget about the OS completely. I’m at the point in my Linux journey where I see slow adoption of new things as good. I accept others have setups that mint does not work for, but I would wager there is no Linux DE better suited as a first suggestion to try depending on the newness of the hardware. If you have 5 monitors of differing resolutions and frame rates then sure, there are better DEs.
linux mint is working on wayland
