4 ms·

I've been having to use Windows a lot more lately (after barely touching it for 15 years) and the word "nightmare" is an apt description. I think, though, I've

I've been having to use Windows a lot more lately (after barely touching it for 15 years) and the word "nightmare" is an apt description. I think, though, I've come to realize why: backwards compatibility. I've seen videos where people have installed Windows 3.1 and then upgraded the OS from there and pretty much everything continues to work. I think in one video I saw, Quake or Doom stopped working after one upgrade (probably Vista) and then started working again after a patch release or something. I have to hand it to Microsoft that they honor backwards compatibility as well as they do. However, at some point, you have to just make a clean break. You have to acknowledge that what you have is bad and broken and should no longer exist in this world. Microsoft finally did just that with Internet Explorer and then (to a lesser degree) with replacing Edge's rendering engine. For Apple, backwards compatibility isn't a sacred cow. They're more than willing to throw something out that is old and/or doesn't work as well as it should. They handle breaking that fairly well, all things considered. They give plenty of notice (sometimes not as much as they probably should have -- https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/01/apple-prepares-macos-users-for-discontinuation-of-32-bit-app-support/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/01/apple-prepares-macos...) so average and power users alike have the time to transition. Sure, it's never as smooth as we would like but what transition ever is? Still, Apple users don't have to deal with things like Windows users do. Microsoft needs to start making a clean cut with Windows, probably starting with the Explorer shell. It's old. It's obnoxious. It actively gets in the way and makes me less productive. They can do this if they just put their shoulders into it a little. (Christ almighty why does the scroll bar have to jump back to where it was if my mouse veers away from while scrolling? "Because that's how we've always done it!" is easily the worst answer to any question ever asked) Also, for the love of all that is holy they need to reverse the decision to have ads built into the OS. How can they not see how bad an ad-centric model is becoming for Google and Facebook? Having a whole OS where the user is the product? That's a privacy nightmare that makes Google and Facebook look like little league.

arvinsim 6y ago
If they are going for a clean slate Windows, might as well build it on top of linux like MacOS
- Zelphyr 6y ago
  I don't know much about the NT kernel. Is it really as bad as the shell such that they should throw it away? I kinda don't want to see that happen for the same reason I lamented them switching Edge's rendering engine the same one Chrome uses. I feel like not everybody should build on top of Linux/Unix. It's good that there are other options.
  - jolux 6y ago
    It’s not, the problem is all the legacy compat stuff they are forced to support forever now. NT and Windows without legacy would be an amazing operating system but also nobody would use it.
  - kllrnohj 6y ago
    Not at all. NT is a fantastic kernel. In many ways the core system of Windows is much better than Linux. Largely because you just don't have the pointless fights about systemd vs. not, or X vs. Wayland, or foo vs. bar - you have a cohesively designed, unified base platform instead. Lots of very fantastic edge-case scenarios that are so trivial & seamless, and with functional GUIs & tooling so you can discover on your own more easily. Run out of disk space? Pop in another drive and just say "extend" and your existing partition is instantly expanded across both drives - no reconfiguration, no broken fstabs, no "well since you didn't anticipate this originally you now just can't do that", etc... Hell, Window's can handle a GPU driver crashing so quickly & seamlessly that you wouldn't even realize it happened if it didn't give you a little notification saying "hey something might be wrong with your GPU since it just crashed, take a look maybe?" It won't even kick you out of a game when it happens. Similarly you typically don't need to reboot to update drivers. Heck, converting from a "bare metal" install to a hypervisor is a matter of checking a box & rebooting. But Microsoft then throws a bunch of stupid crap on top of it like Candy Crush ads for a piece of software that costs $200 and kinda ruins it. Or with all the deep hooks for Windows Defender & friends that just cripple process launching & file creation performance.
    - whereistimbo 6y ago
      > Heck, converting from a "bare metal" install to a hypervisor is a matter of checking a box & rebooting. Can't the same be said with Linux too? Major distros has Linux with KVM kernel module built-in. I never had to do anything rocket science to run KVM, for example.

arvinsim 6y ago

If they are going for a clean slate Windows, might as well build it on top of linux like MacOS

Zelphyr 6y ago
I don't know much about the NT kernel. Is it really as bad as the shell such that they should throw it away? I kinda don't want to see that happen for the same reason I lamented them switching Edge's rendering engine the same one Chrome uses. I feel like not everybody should build on top of Linux/Unix. It's good that there are other options.
- jolux 6y ago
  It’s not, the problem is all the legacy compat stuff they are forced to support forever now. NT and Windows without legacy would be an amazing operating system but also nobody would use it.
- kllrnohj 6y ago
  Not at all. NT is a fantastic kernel. In many ways the core system of Windows is much better than Linux. Largely because you just don't have the pointless fights about systemd vs. not, or X vs. Wayland, or foo vs. bar - you have a cohesively designed, unified base platform instead. Lots of very fantastic edge-case scenarios that are so trivial & seamless, and with functional GUIs & tooling so you can discover on your own more easily. Run out of disk space? Pop in another drive and just say "extend" and your existing partition is instantly expanded across both drives - no reconfiguration, no broken fstabs, no "well since you didn't anticipate this originally you now just can't do that", etc... Hell, Window's can handle a GPU driver crashing so quickly & seamlessly that you wouldn't even realize it happened if it didn't give you a little notification saying "hey something might be wrong with your GPU since it just crashed, take a look maybe?" It won't even kick you out of a game when it happens. Similarly you typically don't need to reboot to update drivers. Heck, converting from a "bare metal" install to a hypervisor is a matter of checking a box & rebooting. But Microsoft then throws a bunch of stupid crap on top of it like Candy Crush ads for a piece of software that costs $200 and kinda ruins it. Or with all the deep hooks for Windows Defender & friends that just cripple process launching & file creation performance.
  - whereistimbo 6y ago
    > Heck, converting from a "bare metal" install to a hypervisor is a matter of checking a box & rebooting. Can't the same be said with Linux too? Major distros has Linux with KVM kernel module built-in. I never had to do anything rocket science to run KVM, for example.