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1. Google old start menu. It's literally the top result. 2/3. Sigh. I didn't realize setting up Classic Shell was so much harder than setting up a Linux box fo

1. Google old start menu. It's literally the top result. 2/3. Sigh. I didn't realize setting up Classic Shell was so much harder than setting up a Linux box for a power user, I'm sorry. Power users definitely should be the ones to expect their OSes to be perfect for them out of the box, and it's definitely nuts to expect they'd be the ones to customize their systems.

rleigh 8y ago
The problem with this is primarily that it's not the default. It's a remedial action to make a poorly functional system usable at a basic level. People in the know are aware of Classic Shell. Most people aren't. Most people won't take any remedial actions or even find out that there are options; they'll live with it, hating it, and despising Windows even more. The number of people who go to the effort of installing Classic Shell is a tiny minority of the total userbase.
rincebrain 8y ago
Classic Shell is now unmaintained because MS kept iterating and breaking the APIs being used for it.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  The maintained version is Open Shell: https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu
  - acqq 8y ago
    Looking their commit history, all the last "fixes" were rebranding. If I see it right, the latest substantial fix that is an actual improvement was: https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu/issues/53 https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu/issues/53 A patch by Ivo Beltchev himself! In the just world the man would be paid by Microsoft until the end of his life just for what he did up to now. The critical fix before that was important and made by the new maintainers: https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu/pull/33 https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu/pull/33 It also shows that it's a real work keeping everything functioning with each Windows release.
    - rincebrain 8y ago
      The problem is, Microsoft Does Not Want to support people using older versions or things which permit emulating older versions. They saw what happened when they let people drag their feet on XP to avoid change, and are seeing it happen with 7, and have been scorched-earthing everywhere to avoid this recurring. That and being fed up with {customers coming to them having cherry-picked individual patches they thought were important from WSUS and then having unreplicable issues, users who just outright disabled updates of any severity} were why 10 is now a rolling release One Big Patch you cannot permanently disable updates for. It's a shame, because from a technical standpoint, Windows 10 has a lot of things I like, but from a usability standpoint, it's sometimes worse than Vista.
dmitriid 8y ago
> it's definitely nuts to expect they'd be the ones to customize their systems. Power users are the ones who actually get tired of customising shit because nothing has sane configuration by default. I have better uses for my time and brain power.

rleigh 8y ago

The problem with this is primarily that it's not the default. It's a remedial action to make a poorly functional system usable at a basic level. People in the know are aware of Classic Shell. Most people aren't. Most people won't take any remedial actions or even find out that there are options; they'll live with it, hating it, and despising Windows even more. The number of people who go to the effort of installing Classic Shell is a tiny minority of the total userbase.

rincebrain 8y ago

Classic Shell is now unmaintained because MS kept iterating and breaking the APIs being used for it.

dragonwriter 8y ago
The maintained version is Open Shell: https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu
- acqq 8y ago
  Looking their commit history, all the last "fixes" were rebranding. If I see it right, the latest substantial fix that is an actual improvement was: https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu/issues/53 https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu/issues/53 A patch by Ivo Beltchev himself! In the just world the man would be paid by Microsoft until the end of his life just for what he did up to now. The critical fix before that was important and made by the new maintainers: https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu/pull/33 https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu/pull/33 It also shows that it's a real work keeping everything functioning with each Windows release.
  - rincebrain 8y ago
    The problem is, Microsoft Does Not Want to support people using older versions or things which permit emulating older versions. They saw what happened when they let people drag their feet on XP to avoid change, and are seeing it happen with 7, and have been scorched-earthing everywhere to avoid this recurring. That and being fed up with {customers coming to them having cherry-picked individual patches they thought were important from WSUS and then having unreplicable issues, users who just outright disabled updates of any severity} were why 10 is now a rolling release One Big Patch you cannot permanently disable updates for. It's a shame, because from a technical standpoint, Windows 10 has a lot of things I like, but from a usability standpoint, it's sometimes worse than Vista.

dmitriid 8y ago

> it's definitely nuts to expect they'd be the ones to customize their systems. Power users are the ones who actually get tired of customising shit because nothing has sane configuration by default. I have better uses for my time and brain power.