13 ms·

What Microsoft got right about power users, but not quite

66 points by konchunas 6y ago

therealmarv 6y ago
that are actually the small little things which are fast on a Mac. This seconds of thought are also clearly visible on some Ubuntu machines... Gnome is not always optimized and Snap programs make you think your laptop is frozen.
- konchunas 6y ago
  Contrary to release notes latest Gnome 3 in Ubuntu 20.04 is slower on my machine compared to the previous one in 19.10. That's why I switched to XFCE which is super snappy. Not i3 snappy, but really close. I've also experienced increased startup time with Snap, Flatpak and AppImages regardless of DE.
  - danieldk 6y ago
    That must be some Ubuntu-related issue, GNOME 3.26 on Wayland on NixOS is as snappy as it always was. Pretty much everything is instant.
  - Dayshine 6y ago
    > Not i3 snappy i3 isn't even snappy, the default application launcher can take up to 10 seconds to open on my old laptop. There is a faster application launcher you can use instead, but you have to hunt through github issues to find out about it. The i3 project maintainers seem to actively object to telling users about 3rd party components and simultaneously refuse to integrate them or improve the default behaviour.
    - NullPrefix 6y ago
      Are you talking about dmenu?
    - snazz 6y ago
      Are you talking about dmenu? That's always been fast on my machine (sway, not i3).
      - Dayshine 6y ago
        Yup, although it's i3 not dmenu causing the problem. https://github.com/i3/i3/issues/949 https://github.com/i3/i3/issues/949 Reported 7 years ago...
  - Grumbledour 6y ago
    I find Gnome in general to be terribly bloated. There are so many other options on linux that get you minimal looking desktops without eating your resources in the background. Of course, the problem is often that with other options some assembly is probably required. But looking at the mess gnome extensions are, that might actually be not that much of a difference.
- chesimov 6y ago
  I have recently moved to a macbook pro for work, having used Ubuntu on my prior machine. In my experience, the mac (despite having significantly more modern specs) is more buggy and just not quite as snappy for these little things. Opening windows, menus, terminals takes longer (even with the swoopy animations turned off). Wake from sleep also takes longer, and a few times a week it is frozen for a few minutes on wake. Maybe I have a lemon.
  - nl 6y ago
    That sounds like something is wrong. I'm a heavy Ubuntu and Mac user, and wake from sleep is much quicker on Mac (as in it wakes before I open the lid completely). Multiple Macs, multiple Ubuntu machines (although I've given up trying to get a perfect Ubuntu laptop, so that's desktop only these days)
  - joyj2nd 6y ago
    Try Bodhi Linux. Then you learn about "snappy"
snazz 6y ago
If you have VS Code installed, the JSON configuration for the Windows Terminal won't open in Notepad.
- benbristow 6y ago
  The config file still seems like a cop-out for "we couldn't be arsed to build a GUI settings editor". Excusable at alpha/beta, not a final release. Command prompt & Powershell both have GUI settings editors.
  - AshleyGrant 6y ago
    Or.. "We haven't built a GUI settings editor yet" VSCode didn't have a GUI settings editor for quite a while.
  - snazz 6y ago
    VS Code's configuration is a GUI skin over JSON, so that's probably what they should do with the terminal as well.
    - Already__Taken 6y ago
      they probably will but code did not launch with that GUI. if it's going to be like the other modern settings UI I'm in no rush for them to either.
    - genr8 6y ago
      Yea. But that was added later, and theres still important JSON build-system files that you need to edit manually to this day. JSON isnt descriptive enough to auto-translate the raw files into a functional GUI. They seem to think its better off as text, but that goes against everything else on Windows mentality, and its not documented properly.
  - Someone1234 6y ago
    People have been complaining for years that Microsoft's stuff isn't configurable enough for power users/developers. Now they're following VSCode's lead and offering "infinite configurability" that's also wrong because it is "too hard!" This would almost be funny if it weren't so obnoxious. Now, I will fully cop to out-dated docs being annoying, particularly when most of the configuration isn't really obvious or self-documenting. But complaining about Microsoft of all people offering highly flexible text-based configurations is hugely ironic to me.
ChrisLTD 6y ago
It'd be nice if it were faster, but considering the usefulness of WSL, I'm cool waiting ~3 seconds for the terminal to load the first time after boot.
- yadco 6y ago
  3 seconds for a virtual machine (wsl2 under the hood is hyperv) is quite good.
Grumbledour 6y ago
I actually don't get Powertoys at all. They provide basic functionality I would not even class as for power users. Yeah, they are nice, they were nice in win95. Why do I need a separate Program 25 years later to rebind some keys or switch windows, yet every new win10 version tinkers with cortana? People say it would add "bloat", but somehow basic functionality beneficial to many users is bloat while candy crush and xbox whatever is not? It is just so weird that after decades, basic functionality like bulk renaming files that should be in explorer is still considered a "power user" feature.
- ChrisLTD 6y ago
  Agreed. My guess is that's an organizational issue. Some developers at MS would really like these features, but can't get them approved to be in the official Windows roadmap.
- dgellow 6y ago
  I’m not sure why it’s important for features to be in the base install (so not in a separate package). Having theM packaged separately makes it easier to push updates, and you only install the power tools if you care about them. That’s quite nice IMHO.
  - Grumbledour 6y ago
    Basic Features in separate packages means, many users will never use them, because they don't know they exist. Bulk renaming files for example is not something only power users do, it is something only power users can do because it just does not exist and/or is not discoverable for a normal user. And also as a power user, it is annoying to find a program for every basic thing the system should be able to do. On the other hand, maybe we should hand it to MS that they so greatly embrace the Unix Philosophy on that point?
    - dgellow 6y ago
      > Basic Features in separate packages means, many users will never use them, because they don't know they exist. If people want/need to do something such as bulk renaming, they can online search for it, as they do for everything else, which will tell them they can install a package from the windows store. Doesn’t seem that crazy to me as an expectation from end users. Also, I don’t think that when Microsoft says “power users” they mean developers or equivalent, more like people who would feel “I want more from my system than just consuming content”. Having a single package to install for those users is a quite flexible approach.
projektfu 6y ago
I think this site might want to reconsider using Medium. All of the animated screenshots were covered with ads in Safari on iOS, with no apparent way of getting past them. I had really no idea what they were talking about.
- amw 6y ago
  Seconded. I had no choice but to say, "Well, I guess I'll just imagine what was in that image".
- genr8 6y ago
  You might want to reconsider using Safari on iOS...
  - llampx 6y ago
    Why?
piggycurse 6y ago
Why is this blog post so negative? Microsoft are trying and giving all of the developers the tools to help affect the project along the way. The Terminal project was only announced 1 year ago[0]. As I understand it, they had to more or less split how the whole conhost.exe work in order to allow Terminal to even exist. The settings UI is far from sexy, but they're working on it[1]. I think it's impressive to know that 6 people did that in a year[2]. Regarding the slow startup of WSL2, yes it is slow to start, but would you rather have to wait 5x for a git clone command[3]? They even have a deep dive into how files are save in WSL1 which can be related to how it works in WSL2[4] I completely disagree with the conclusion of performance is not Microsoft's concern. The comparison is to GNOME3 which was released in 2011. 9 years of development compared to 1 year. "The polish just isn't there" [0]: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/introducing-windows-terminal/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/introducing-windo... [1]: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/1564 https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/1564 [2]: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows-terminal-1-0/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows-terminal-... [3]: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/announcing-wsl-2/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/announcing-wsl-2/ [4]: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/a-deep-dive-into-how-wsl-allows-windows-to-access-linux-files/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/a-deep-dive-into-...
- dleslie 6y ago
  I switched from WSL2 back to WSL1 because the git action times on the NTFS shared drive were _minutes_ long in WSL2. I didn't use WSL2 for too long and so I wonder: are processes in WSL2 manageable by Task Manager and Windows Defender as in WSL1? That integration with Windows tooling made WSL1 killer for deploying tools to non-programmers; give them a powershell script and they can run the app and manage it in a familiar way.
  - munchbunny 6y ago
    are processes in WSL2 manageable by Task Manager and Windows Defender as in WSL1? I haven't tried (just installed Windows 10 v1909 last night) but I don't think so, given that WSL2 sits in a VM, which WSL1 didn't. I liked WSL1, but it had a lot of the same drawbacks that Cygwin had, which was that Windows and Linux are different enough under the hood that you start running into issues with file system performance and containers, and WSL2 fixes that at the cost of being clumsier with file management. The solution I recall for WSL2 is to put the shared files inside the Linux instance instead of putting it in NTFS.
temac 6y ago
> But the first launch of the Linux subsystem after system reboot is unbelievably slow. Proceeds to provide a video showing a 3s startup time to illustrate the unbelievable slowness that happens once after a reboot. I suspect the favorite activity of the author is therefore to reboot their computer, and to quickly rush to WSL2 after that. In which case I agree the user experience is not ideal.
- temac 6y ago
  Continuing to read: > Why is it animated? Or, even if it is, why is animation so slow? Given it is not animated on my computer, I suspect it is animated when Windows is configured to have animations... (and it if this theory is good, it is nice that they respect the disabling of animations, by the way, in contrast with the... Start Menu!)
  - signal11 6y ago
    Yes, if you disable animations in Settings, the menu doesn't animate[1]. [1] https://gfycat.com/bowedleftarctichare https://gfycat.com/bowedleftarctichare
  - trnglina 6y ago
    > by the way, in contrast with the... Start Menu! Well, good news! I don't know when this might've changed (I have animations enabled), but I just tested it on Windows 10 2004, and the start menu doesn't animate with animations off.
kfk 6y ago
We are 30+ years and Windows Task Scheduler is still broken. Compare that to simple .txt files to schedule anything you need in Linux. Windows took the UI path for users and that's OK, but most of Power users are still much better off with text files and simple utilities (like crontab) that work. This type of ecosystem is completely broken on Windows, I don't think it can be fixed, it is too much of a paradigm shift. On the same token trying to do good UI/User experience is still too hard on Linux. I take no issue with Windows, business users, friends and my parents are probably better off with it, but the "power" stuff? Please don't.
- fetbaffe 6y ago
  How is Windows Task Scheduler broken?
  - amw 6y ago
    Can't bulk-kill processes, for one. Not searchable, for two.
    - Someone1234 6y ago
      You can bulk kill with e.g. Get-ScheduledTask -TaskPath "\UpdateTasks\" | Stop-ScheduledTask That also demonstrates search too, by the way.
    - fetbaffe 6y ago
      Haven't used it in a long time, but looking at it now, the GUI is definitely clunky and those features are missing. Wasn't there another GUI during the Windows XP days?
      - WorldMaker 6y ago
        That MMC snap-in hasn't changed much in the NT era of Windows. You might be recalling 95-ME's even worse task scheduler?
  - josteink 6y ago
nmeofthestate 6y ago
This seems like a joke article. The 'long' startup time appears to be a second or two. The slow animated menu is quick - I'd like to see someone actually select a menu item in the time it takes for it to drop down. The animation doesn't impact usability. All a bit bizarre.
- Analemma_ 6y ago
  The article sucks. I was hoping for a serious critique of Microsoft's new direction and the architecture of WSL2, .NET Core, etc., but it's just a handful of very trivial performance gripes, along with things the author simply doesn't understand, like the default application registered for *.json files being Notepad only until you install something better. I wish there was a higher bar for upvoting articles besides "it bashes Microsoft, to the top with it"
- burnte 6y ago
  I felt the same way. They were ridiculous nits.
- alpaca128 6y ago
  > The 'long' startup time appears to be a second or two. Good to know. But sad that I had to look in the comments for this information, because for some reason the video doesn't play. I'm not sure how the article author thought it'd be a good idea to embed a video containing the same amount of information as a single number, but I guess that's considered a feature in the modern web.
alex_duf 6y ago
Comparing with my current macos build, it seems like a bliss to use really.
cm2187 6y ago
Can windows terminal be used remotely? The only remote terminal I am aware of in windows is remote powershell but it sucks badly. It takes ages to come online after a reboot, is unencrypted by default, and because of security issues cannot interact with windows update.
- mickeypi 6y ago
  Yes, you can do that with ssh even from cmd.exe. Windows ships with an ssh server too, you just have to enable those features.
  - cm2187 6y ago
    Thanks. I wasn't aware of that. But it looks like it is a recent thing only available on the latest version of windows server.
alkonaut 6y ago
> That is how long it takes to start WSL terminal for the very first time after reboot That speed extremely impressive. Not sure why he's comparing it to how long it starts to run a linux terminal on his linux machine? Shouldn't he be comparing it to how long it takes to e.g. start a different type of VM on windows, or how long it takes to cold start a Wine thing on Linux?
whywhywhywhy 6y ago
You can't whinge about time spent on animations and then also complain about flickering. Teams being told that design doesn't matter is why so few developers on windows and linux care about flickering at all. Although I definitely agree that it's absurd that in 2020 an operating system doesn't have a standard built in way to reconfigure key shortcuts in any application installed.
_bxg1 6y ago
What an incredibly petty set of complaints. - "It takes ~3 seconds for WSL2 to start up the first time" - "Windows Terminal [gasp] has animations" - "The new spotlight search isn't already flawless" - "File explorer right-click menus have... too many things in them" (Paraphrasing, of course) And I honestly wonder if the flickering thing is a problem with the author's GPU or something. Seems to happen everywhere and I've never seen it on my machine.
- genr8 6y ago
  I agree, but its a personal blog that got self-posted to HN, its just his opinion man. You can disregard it if you want.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
badsectoracula 6y ago
> Open or save file Dialog is just the worst in all regards. I guess the author never used any Gtk+ 3 file dialog :-P. Honestly the fact that you can perform actual file manipulation, use shell extensions (e.g. version control overlay icons), etc put it above pretty much every other file dialog except perhaps KDE's (but AFAIK even that doesn't have all the functionality you'd see in a regular file manager window). Having said that, yes, it is unnecessarily slow and not because of the features above since some applications use older versions of the dialog that still have these features but appear instantly. Not sure why the "full fledged" version is slow.
4cao 6y ago
The history of Microsoft is the history of workarounds on top of workarounds, year after year, rinse and repeat. Here's a novel thought: instead of providing yet another iteration of workarounds for the power user, how about just fixing it for every user. Take for instance the Start Menu. When the Win-X "quick access" menu was added years ago, it was essentially an admission that the Start Menu is not the best way to start at least some things. It didn't really get much better since but the Search and Run functionality was integrated into it. Now one of the PowerToys replaces the Win-R menu as a yet another clumsy attempt at fixing the Start Menu by bypassing it. And it seems no new functionality beyond what is already implemented elsewhere is being added, except everything will of course get a different alternate look. Some more discussion about it here: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/44 https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/44 It looks like there isn't anyone at Microsoft who can take a look at the big picture and decide what they actually want to accomplish with the UI in the medium run. Different groups of people come and go, keep adding different things, abandon them, after a while somebody else starts off with yet another approach in parallel without drawing any conclusions from the failed previous one, etc. The lack of co-ordination really amazes me. Microsoft used to once advertise with the slogan "Where do you want to go today?" These days it seems to me they're not going anywhere, just running in circles.
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  I think it's an interesting refutation to Google's "one search box to rule them all" philosophy. Over the course of Windows Vista through 8.1 Microsoft attempted just that at a consumer scale that Google could only wish they could impact "where they live". (As much as people assume people live in the browser, Windows is still Windows.) The evidence mounted up overwhelmingly that people didn't want just one search box, that Google is wrong (they've yet to unify their search boxes like they claim to philosophically anyway), and that the context of where a search box appears matters, and so Windows 10 has seen the re-separation of search boxes. One of those "context" switches that Microsoft finds is a useful context to know is "power user" versus "regular user": regular user Start Menu versus power user Win+X, regular user Search and Run versus power user Win+R/PowerTopys Run. (At one point in Windows 8 Microsoft tried to use the Win+R shortcut for something that wasn't "power user run a thing" and nearly saw a revolt.) It becomes a self-selecting "reveal" of different feature sets to match what features the user thinks they are ready for.
ceronman 6y ago
I tried WSL2 for about six months. I'm really glad that MS is investing in this and it's an aspect that has been long neglected. If you're a developer, and unless you're using MS stack (.NET), the experience has been always subpar. I have to agree with the author that the experience is not quite there yet. But a lot of progress has been done. And I hope the progress continues and maybe in the future I'll try it again. For me there is not a single deal breaker, but it's just a thousand paper cuts. Removing those will take time. Some of the annoying things I encountered: 1. Overall slowness. It's not only startup, it's in general. Not only on heavy tasks like parallel compiling, but even for lightweight stuff, you immediately notice when you try a real linux. 2. Some config like setting up ssh-agent correctly are hard and different than a real linux. No idea why. 3. Windows Terminal development is quite fast, and sometimes things change or break. For instance, the background color of my terminal suddenly changed and I had no idea why. After some googling and modifying config, it was fixed. 4. The fact that it required to sign in for Windows Preview program. (I think this is not required anymore) but it was very annoying as it requires very long updates that require like a million reboots. No idea why Windows has to reboot so many times for a single update. Additionally, after every update there was always surprises. From the harmless Edge popping up from nowhere asking you to become default browser for the nth time, to some hardware misconfiguration. Nothing too bad, but annoying. 5. (This one very subjective of course) The windows UI overall is, how to say it, a mess. Font rendering is awful. The mix of old style UI with new style UI is horrible. Some settings will be in new style, some other settings will be in old style. As I said, I might try again in the future. But now I switched to Fedora and I'm really really happy with Gnome 3 and good old real Linux. I still have the Windows partition just in case, but I haven't booted in a while.
- konchunas 6y ago
  I like your points. People all over the comments accusing me of nitpicking. I can agree with that. But I also feel like this happens because of what you call "a thousand paper cuts". It works, but feels surprisingly unpleasant. Allowing us to run Unix command line in Windows is a great achievement for Windows team, props to them. But it isn't yet comparable to the real deal like Linux or OSX. The speed, the looks, the integration. I'm actually surprised that (subjectively) Linux UI with all that fragmentation looks a bit more consistent than one of Windows. I hope Microsoft addresses all these problems, but guessing from previous experience it make take a while.
caribousoup 6y ago
Putting ads in your 3 second blog animations? Really? Comes across as incredibly trashy. Unrelated to the article, sorry. I have never seen this before...
- konchunas 6y ago
  I'm sorry for that. As Streamable states: ads will be shown as soon as video becomes popular. But they didn't state exactly how popular. I couldn't find any other convenient method to embed small animations with fine quality and ability to pause them. Any recommendation is appreciated.
bromonkey 6y ago
"It doesn’t have no syntax highlighting," ...[scrolls down] (Blockchain engineer): ahhhhh, ok All jokes aside, author: "no" should be "any" in this sentence. Double negatives are rarely used in English.
- konchunas 6y ago
  Got it, thanks!
CawCawCaw 6y ago
For such a powerful power user, it seems that the author never had any JSON editors set up on his environment, removed the default keyboard shortcuts from Terminal, and couldn't figure out how to customize the context menu. Hmmmm.
schoolornot 6y ago
> Recently Windows team made a few stunning announcements More and more telemetry in each subsequent OS release. The fact I had to flip 6 switches off during OOBE on a brand new MS Surface followed by a "hosed" Windows Update run tells me they still haven't figured out what their power users want.

66 points by konchunas 6y ago

that are actually the small little things which are fast on a Mac. This seconds of thought are also clearly visible on some Ubuntu machines... Gnome is not always optimized and Snap programs make you think your laptop is frozen.

konchunas 6y ago
Contrary to release notes latest Gnome 3 in Ubuntu 20.04 is slower on my machine compared to the previous one in 19.10. That's why I switched to XFCE which is super snappy. Not i3 snappy, but really close. I've also experienced increased startup time with Snap, Flatpak and AppImages regardless of DE.
- danieldk 6y ago
  That must be some Ubuntu-related issue, GNOME 3.26 on Wayland on NixOS is as snappy as it always was. Pretty much everything is instant.
- Dayshine 6y ago
  > Not i3 snappy i3 isn't even snappy, the default application launcher can take up to 10 seconds to open on my old laptop. There is a faster application launcher you can use instead, but you have to hunt through github issues to find out about it. The i3 project maintainers seem to actively object to telling users about 3rd party components and simultaneously refuse to integrate them or improve the default behaviour.
  - NullPrefix 6y ago
    Are you talking about dmenu?
  - snazz 6y ago
    Are you talking about dmenu? That's always been fast on my machine (sway, not i3).
    - Dayshine 6y ago
      Yup, although it's i3 not dmenu causing the problem. https://github.com/i3/i3/issues/949 https://github.com/i3/i3/issues/949 Reported 7 years ago...
- Grumbledour 6y ago
  I find Gnome in general to be terribly bloated. There are so many other options on linux that get you minimal looking desktops without eating your resources in the background. Of course, the problem is often that with other options some assembly is probably required. But looking at the mess gnome extensions are, that might actually be not that much of a difference.
chesimov 6y ago
I have recently moved to a macbook pro for work, having used Ubuntu on my prior machine. In my experience, the mac (despite having significantly more modern specs) is more buggy and just not quite as snappy for these little things. Opening windows, menus, terminals takes longer (even with the swoopy animations turned off). Wake from sleep also takes longer, and a few times a week it is frozen for a few minutes on wake. Maybe I have a lemon.
- nl 6y ago
  That sounds like something is wrong. I'm a heavy Ubuntu and Mac user, and wake from sleep is much quicker on Mac (as in it wakes before I open the lid completely). Multiple Macs, multiple Ubuntu machines (although I've given up trying to get a perfect Ubuntu laptop, so that's desktop only these days)
- joyj2nd 6y ago
  Try Bodhi Linux. Then you learn about "snappy"

snazz 6y ago

If you have VS Code installed, the JSON configuration for the Windows Terminal won't open in Notepad.

benbristow 6y ago
The config file still seems like a cop-out for "we couldn't be arsed to build a GUI settings editor". Excusable at alpha/beta, not a final release. Command prompt & Powershell both have GUI settings editors.
- AshleyGrant 6y ago
  Or.. "We haven't built a GUI settings editor yet" VSCode didn't have a GUI settings editor for quite a while.
- snazz 6y ago
  VS Code's configuration is a GUI skin over JSON, so that's probably what they should do with the terminal as well.
  - Already__Taken 6y ago
    they probably will but code did not launch with that GUI. if it's going to be like the other modern settings UI I'm in no rush for them to either.
  - genr8 6y ago
    Yea. But that was added later, and theres still important JSON build-system files that you need to edit manually to this day. JSON isnt descriptive enough to auto-translate the raw files into a functional GUI. They seem to think its better off as text, but that goes against everything else on Windows mentality, and its not documented properly.
- Someone1234 6y ago
  People have been complaining for years that Microsoft's stuff isn't configurable enough for power users/developers. Now they're following VSCode's lead and offering "infinite configurability" that's also wrong because it is "too hard!" This would almost be funny if it weren't so obnoxious. Now, I will fully cop to out-dated docs being annoying, particularly when most of the configuration isn't really obvious or self-documenting. But complaining about Microsoft of all people offering highly flexible text-based configurations is hugely ironic to me.

ChrisLTD 6y ago

It'd be nice if it were faster, but considering the usefulness of WSL, I'm cool waiting ~3 seconds for the terminal to load the first time after boot.

yadco 6y ago
3 seconds for a virtual machine (wsl2 under the hood is hyperv) is quite good.

Grumbledour 6y ago

I actually don't get Powertoys at all. They provide basic functionality I would not even class as for power users. Yeah, they are nice, they were nice in win95. Why do I need a separate Program 25 years later to rebind some keys or switch windows, yet every new win10 version tinkers with cortana? People say it would add "bloat", but somehow basic functionality beneficial to many users is bloat while candy crush and xbox whatever is not? It is just so weird that after decades, basic functionality like bulk renaming files that should be in explorer is still considered a "power user" feature.

ChrisLTD 6y ago
Agreed. My guess is that's an organizational issue. Some developers at MS would really like these features, but can't get them approved to be in the official Windows roadmap.
dgellow 6y ago
I’m not sure why it’s important for features to be in the base install (so not in a separate package). Having theM packaged separately makes it easier to push updates, and you only install the power tools if you care about them. That’s quite nice IMHO.
- Grumbledour 6y ago
  Basic Features in separate packages means, many users will never use them, because they don't know they exist. Bulk renaming files for example is not something only power users do, it is something only power users can do because it just does not exist and/or is not discoverable for a normal user. And also as a power user, it is annoying to find a program for every basic thing the system should be able to do. On the other hand, maybe we should hand it to MS that they so greatly embrace the Unix Philosophy on that point?
  - dgellow 6y ago
    > Basic Features in separate packages means, many users will never use them, because they don't know they exist. If people want/need to do something such as bulk renaming, they can online search for it, as they do for everything else, which will tell them they can install a package from the windows store. Doesn’t seem that crazy to me as an expectation from end users. Also, I don’t think that when Microsoft says “power users” they mean developers or equivalent, more like people who would feel “I want more from my system than just consuming content”. Having a single package to install for those users is a quite flexible approach.

projektfu 6y ago

I think this site might want to reconsider using Medium. All of the animated screenshots were covered with ads in Safari on iOS, with no apparent way of getting past them. I had really no idea what they were talking about.

amw 6y ago
Seconded. I had no choice but to say, "Well, I guess I'll just imagine what was in that image".
genr8 6y ago
You might want to reconsider using Safari on iOS...
- llampx 6y ago
  Why?

piggycurse 6y ago

Why is this blog post so negative? Microsoft are trying and giving all of the developers the tools to help affect the project along the way. The Terminal project was only announced 1 year ago[0]. As I understand it, they had to more or less split how the whole conhost.exe work in order to allow Terminal to even exist. The settings UI is far from sexy, but they're working on it[1]. I think it's impressive to know that 6 people did that in a year[2]. Regarding the slow startup of WSL2, yes it is slow to start, but would you rather have to wait 5x for a git clone command[3]? They even have a deep dive into how files are save in WSL1 which can be related to how it works in WSL2[4] I completely disagree with the conclusion of performance is not Microsoft's concern. The comparison is to GNOME3 which was released in 2011. 9 years of development compared to 1 year. "The polish just isn't there" [0]: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/introducing-windows-terminal/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/introducing-windo... [1]: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/1564 https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/1564 [2]: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows-terminal-1-0/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows-terminal-... [3]: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/announcing-wsl-2/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/announcing-wsl-2/ [4]: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/a-deep-dive-into-how-wsl-allows-windows-to-access-linux-files/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/a-deep-dive-into-...

dleslie 6y ago
I switched from WSL2 back to WSL1 because the git action times on the NTFS shared drive were _minutes_ long in WSL2. I didn't use WSL2 for too long and so I wonder: are processes in WSL2 manageable by Task Manager and Windows Defender as in WSL1? That integration with Windows tooling made WSL1 killer for deploying tools to non-programmers; give them a powershell script and they can run the app and manage it in a familiar way.
- munchbunny 6y ago
  are processes in WSL2 manageable by Task Manager and Windows Defender as in WSL1? I haven't tried (just installed Windows 10 v1909 last night) but I don't think so, given that WSL2 sits in a VM, which WSL1 didn't. I liked WSL1, but it had a lot of the same drawbacks that Cygwin had, which was that Windows and Linux are different enough under the hood that you start running into issues with file system performance and containers, and WSL2 fixes that at the cost of being clumsier with file management. The solution I recall for WSL2 is to put the shared files inside the Linux instance instead of putting it in NTFS.

temac 6y ago

> But the first launch of the Linux subsystem after system reboot is unbelievably slow. Proceeds to provide a video showing a 3s startup time to illustrate the unbelievable slowness that happens once after a reboot. I suspect the favorite activity of the author is therefore to reboot their computer, and to quickly rush to WSL2 after that. In which case I agree the user experience is not ideal.

temac 6y ago
Continuing to read: > Why is it animated? Or, even if it is, why is animation so slow? Given it is not animated on my computer, I suspect it is animated when Windows is configured to have animations... (and it if this theory is good, it is nice that they respect the disabling of animations, by the way, in contrast with the... Start Menu!)
- signal11 6y ago
  Yes, if you disable animations in Settings, the menu doesn't animate[1]. [1] https://gfycat.com/bowedleftarctichare https://gfycat.com/bowedleftarctichare
- trnglina 6y ago
  > by the way, in contrast with the... Start Menu! Well, good news! I don't know when this might've changed (I have animations enabled), but I just tested it on Windows 10 2004, and the start menu doesn't animate with animations off.

kfk 6y ago

We are 30+ years and Windows Task Scheduler is still broken. Compare that to simple .txt files to schedule anything you need in Linux. Windows took the UI path for users and that's OK, but most of Power users are still much better off with text files and simple utilities (like crontab) that work. This type of ecosystem is completely broken on Windows, I don't think it can be fixed, it is too much of a paradigm shift. On the same token trying to do good UI/User experience is still too hard on Linux. I take no issue with Windows, business users, friends and my parents are probably better off with it, but the "power" stuff? Please don't.

fetbaffe 6y ago
How is Windows Task Scheduler broken?
- amw 6y ago
  Can't bulk-kill processes, for one. Not searchable, for two.
  - Someone1234 6y ago
    You can bulk kill with e.g. Get-ScheduledTask -TaskPath "\UpdateTasks\" | Stop-ScheduledTask That also demonstrates search too, by the way.
  - fetbaffe 6y ago
    Haven't used it in a long time, but looking at it now, the GUI is definitely clunky and those features are missing. Wasn't there another GUI during the Windows XP days?
    - WorldMaker 6y ago
      That MMC snap-in hasn't changed much in the NT era of Windows. You might be recalling 95-ME's even worse task scheduler?
- josteink 6y ago

nmeofthestate 6y ago

This seems like a joke article. The 'long' startup time appears to be a second or two. The slow animated menu is quick - I'd like to see someone actually select a menu item in the time it takes for it to drop down. The animation doesn't impact usability. All a bit bizarre.

Analemma_ 6y ago
The article sucks. I was hoping for a serious critique of Microsoft's new direction and the architecture of WSL2, .NET Core, etc., but it's just a handful of very trivial performance gripes, along with things the author simply doesn't understand, like the default application registered for *.json files being Notepad only until you install something better. I wish there was a higher bar for upvoting articles besides "it bashes Microsoft, to the top with it"
burnte 6y ago
I felt the same way. They were ridiculous nits.
alpaca128 6y ago
> The 'long' startup time appears to be a second or two. Good to know. But sad that I had to look in the comments for this information, because for some reason the video doesn't play. I'm not sure how the article author thought it'd be a good idea to embed a video containing the same amount of information as a single number, but I guess that's considered a feature in the modern web.

alex_duf 6y ago

Comparing with my current macos build, it seems like a bliss to use really.

cm2187 6y ago

Can windows terminal be used remotely? The only remote terminal I am aware of in windows is remote powershell but it sucks badly. It takes ages to come online after a reboot, is unencrypted by default, and because of security issues cannot interact with windows update.

mickeypi 6y ago
Yes, you can do that with ssh even from cmd.exe. Windows ships with an ssh server too, you just have to enable those features.
- cm2187 6y ago
  Thanks. I wasn't aware of that. But it looks like it is a recent thing only available on the latest version of windows server.

alkonaut 6y ago

> That is how long it takes to start WSL terminal for the very first time after reboot That speed extremely impressive. Not sure why he's comparing it to how long it starts to run a linux terminal on his linux machine? Shouldn't he be comparing it to how long it takes to e.g. start a different type of VM on windows, or how long it takes to cold start a Wine thing on Linux?

whywhywhywhy 6y ago

You can't whinge about time spent on animations and then also complain about flickering. Teams being told that design doesn't matter is why so few developers on windows and linux care about flickering at all. Although I definitely agree that it's absurd that in 2020 an operating system doesn't have a standard built in way to reconfigure key shortcuts in any application installed.

_bxg1 6y ago

What an incredibly petty set of complaints. - "It takes ~3 seconds for WSL2 to start up the first time" - "Windows Terminal [gasp] has animations" - "The new spotlight search isn't already flawless" - "File explorer right-click menus have... too many things in them" (Paraphrasing, of course) And I honestly wonder if the flickering thing is a problem with the author's GPU or something. Seems to happen everywhere and I've never seen it on my machine.

genr8 6y ago
I agree, but its a personal blog that got self-posted to HN, its just his opinion man. You can disregard it if you want.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

badsectoracula 6y ago

> Open or save file Dialog is just the worst in all regards. I guess the author never used any Gtk+ 3 file dialog :-P. Honestly the fact that you can perform actual file manipulation, use shell extensions (e.g. version control overlay icons), etc put it above pretty much every other file dialog except perhaps KDE's (but AFAIK even that doesn't have all the functionality you'd see in a regular file manager window). Having said that, yes, it is unnecessarily slow and not because of the features above since some applications use older versions of the dialog that still have these features but appear instantly. Not sure why the "full fledged" version is slow.

4cao 6y ago

The history of Microsoft is the history of workarounds on top of workarounds, year after year, rinse and repeat. Here's a novel thought: instead of providing yet another iteration of workarounds for the power user, how about just fixing it for every user. Take for instance the Start Menu. When the Win-X "quick access" menu was added years ago, it was essentially an admission that the Start Menu is not the best way to start at least some things. It didn't really get much better since but the Search and Run functionality was integrated into it. Now one of the PowerToys replaces the Win-R menu as a yet another clumsy attempt at fixing the Start Menu by bypassing it. And it seems no new functionality beyond what is already implemented elsewhere is being added, except everything will of course get a different alternate look. Some more discussion about it here: https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/44 https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues/44 It looks like there isn't anyone at Microsoft who can take a look at the big picture and decide what they actually want to accomplish with the UI in the medium run. Different groups of people come and go, keep adding different things, abandon them, after a while somebody else starts off with yet another approach in parallel without drawing any conclusions from the failed previous one, etc. The lack of co-ordination really amazes me. Microsoft used to once advertise with the slogan "Where do you want to go today?" These days it seems to me they're not going anywhere, just running in circles.

WorldMaker 6y ago
I think it's an interesting refutation to Google's "one search box to rule them all" philosophy. Over the course of Windows Vista through 8.1 Microsoft attempted just that at a consumer scale that Google could only wish they could impact "where they live". (As much as people assume people live in the browser, Windows is still Windows.) The evidence mounted up overwhelmingly that people didn't want just one search box, that Google is wrong (they've yet to unify their search boxes like they claim to philosophically anyway), and that the context of where a search box appears matters, and so Windows 10 has seen the re-separation of search boxes. One of those "context" switches that Microsoft finds is a useful context to know is "power user" versus "regular user": regular user Start Menu versus power user Win+X, regular user Search and Run versus power user Win+R/PowerTopys Run. (At one point in Windows 8 Microsoft tried to use the Win+R shortcut for something that wasn't "power user run a thing" and nearly saw a revolt.) It becomes a self-selecting "reveal" of different feature sets to match what features the user thinks they are ready for.

ceronman 6y ago

I tried WSL2 for about six months. I'm really glad that MS is investing in this and it's an aspect that has been long neglected. If you're a developer, and unless you're using MS stack (.NET), the experience has been always subpar. I have to agree with the author that the experience is not quite there yet. But a lot of progress has been done. And I hope the progress continues and maybe in the future I'll try it again. For me there is not a single deal breaker, but it's just a thousand paper cuts. Removing those will take time. Some of the annoying things I encountered: 1. Overall slowness. It's not only startup, it's in general. Not only on heavy tasks like parallel compiling, but even for lightweight stuff, you immediately notice when you try a real linux. 2. Some config like setting up ssh-agent correctly are hard and different than a real linux. No idea why. 3. Windows Terminal development is quite fast, and sometimes things change or break. For instance, the background color of my terminal suddenly changed and I had no idea why. After some googling and modifying config, it was fixed. 4. The fact that it required to sign in for Windows Preview program. (I think this is not required anymore) but it was very annoying as it requires very long updates that require like a million reboots. No idea why Windows has to reboot so many times for a single update. Additionally, after every update there was always surprises. From the harmless Edge popping up from nowhere asking you to become default browser for the nth time, to some hardware misconfiguration. Nothing too bad, but annoying. 5. (This one very subjective of course) The windows UI overall is, how to say it, a mess. Font rendering is awful. The mix of old style UI with new style UI is horrible. Some settings will be in new style, some other settings will be in old style. As I said, I might try again in the future. But now I switched to Fedora and I'm really really happy with Gnome 3 and good old real Linux. I still have the Windows partition just in case, but I haven't booted in a while.

konchunas 6y ago
I like your points. People all over the comments accusing me of nitpicking. I can agree with that. But I also feel like this happens because of what you call "a thousand paper cuts". It works, but feels surprisingly unpleasant. Allowing us to run Unix command line in Windows is a great achievement for Windows team, props to them. But it isn't yet comparable to the real deal like Linux or OSX. The speed, the looks, the integration. I'm actually surprised that (subjectively) Linux UI with all that fragmentation looks a bit more consistent than one of Windows. I hope Microsoft addresses all these problems, but guessing from previous experience it make take a while.

caribousoup 6y ago

Putting ads in your 3 second blog animations? Really? Comes across as incredibly trashy. Unrelated to the article, sorry. I have never seen this before...

konchunas 6y ago
I'm sorry for that. As Streamable states: ads will be shown as soon as video becomes popular. But they didn't state exactly how popular. I couldn't find any other convenient method to embed small animations with fine quality and ability to pause them. Any recommendation is appreciated.

bromonkey 6y ago

"It doesn’t have no syntax highlighting," ...[scrolls down] (Blockchain engineer): ahhhhh, ok All jokes aside, author: "no" should be "any" in this sentence. Double negatives are rarely used in English.

konchunas 6y ago
Got it, thanks!

CawCawCaw 6y ago

For such a powerful power user, it seems that the author never had any JSON editors set up on his environment, removed the default keyboard shortcuts from Terminal, and couldn't figure out how to customize the context menu. Hmmmm.

schoolornot 6y ago

> Recently Windows team made a few stunning announcements More and more telemetry in each subsequent OS release. The fact I had to flip 6 switches off during OOBE on a brand new MS Surface followed by a "hosed" Windows Update run tells me they still haven't figured out what their power users want.