6 ms·

How on god's green earth is a 30 year old operating system more customizable and user-friendly than any of the modern interfaces (that includes both windows 10

How on god's green earth is a 30 year old operating system more customizable and user-friendly than any of the modern interfaces (that includes both windows 10 and gnome)

RedShift1 4y ago
God don't get me started, I've really come to hate how Windows 10 looks. I come from a time where 8 extra bits of color depth cost you an arm and a leg (1,5 arms and 2 legs adjusted for inflation) and you were willing to fight a war for 5 extra pixels of screen real estate. Anti-aliasing was just a dream. Now we have full HD screens with 32 bit colors and HDR, powerful GPUs to draw edges as smooth AF and what did we decide to do with all of that? Use 4 colors, fill it up with whitespace and cram everything into squares. I think the Windows 10 UI was created by a group of depressed people and it really shows.
- grepfru_it 4y ago
  Meanwhile I upgraded (downgraded?) from Neon to windows 11 on one of my laptops. On more than one occasion I assumed I was using KDE plasma. Firefox renders basically the same between the two, all of my apps run on windows and Linux (steam, VLC, etc).. it’s the nuance in notifications that threw me into uncanny valley. Also made me realize the two things that I need from a desktop are a solid notification system (kde is ok, I like how it’s done in windows 11 and on macOS) and a smooth mouse experience. Everything in the UI is just a skin and can be emulated or replaced
- nikanj 4y ago
  The Windows 11 UI is telling the same people ”now imagine everyone has a tablet”. You’ll likely get some pushback along the lines of ”We already tried that with Windows 8 and everyone hated it”, but keep pushing - quote something about Henry Ford and horses if neccessary
  - grishka 4y ago
    Microsoft keeps trying really hard to make touchscreens happen. Except they aren't going to happen. It's a desktop OS for mice and keyboards first and foremost, it's about time they acknowledge that by designing everything with these input devices in mind.
    - johnwalkr 4y ago
      I think Windows 11 is trying to unify the settings etc to something similar to mobile OSs, but at the same time is ditching the lingering remnants of touch interfaces from Windows 8. IIRC, they now have guidelines to not assume spacing, icon sizes, etc optimized for touch unless touch is the only interface available.
      - trinix912 4y ago
        Yet the settings are far from unified, every now and then you just have to pop up some Windows 95-era dialog box and so on.
        ale42 4y ago
        Worse, some advanced settings are just unreachable now with the new interface. It's a disaster.
        grishka 4y ago
        Can you still create that magic shortcut pointing to some UUID that would open the old control panel?
      - grishka 4y ago
        I think they should just roll the UI back to what it was in Windows 7 and then stop working on it (the UI, not Windows itself), forever. Yes, I'm serious.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- SkeuomorphicBee 4y ago
  > Use 4 colors, fill it up with whitespace and cram everything into squares. For me the worst of those is the prevalence of whitespace, and the loss of the grey background. Grey was the greatest color for UI background, it wasn't overly bright, it won't burn your eyes like modern UIs that shine like a thousand suns, no need for separate "dark theme" because a grey theme is comfortable in all light conditions, it allowed the content color to go in two different directions (if your background is white then your content can only get darker, but if your background is grey your content can be darker or brighter than the background), and it has a clear visual separation between the grey app UI (menus, toolbars, ...) and the white content (E.G. document being edited).
sreekotay 4y ago
No concern for security helps a lot...
userbinator 4y ago
"Designers" happened. Also the trend of forcing users to fit the tool rather than the other way around.
- pjerem 4y ago
  Holly sh.. Exactly this happens every time in my company. Designers and PMs wants to « educate » the user and force a strict workflow for them. They never take into account that power users exists. Sure, most of our users are happy this way because our product replaces shitty and complex excel sheets. But I always wonder about the 1% who took the time to learn and master excel and were fast with their tool. For those people, our product must be a PITA, because their is no other (faster) way to work than the path PMs and designers decided.
viraptor 4y ago
You can still do the same thing on modern windows. Alternative shells were a thing for quite a while. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alternative_shells_for_Windows https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alternative_shells_for... for a list. Unfortunately people don't seem to be that interested anymore and the options that remain are Cairo https://cairoshell.com/ https://cairoshell.com/ and blackbox. But in theory: It's as customisable as you want. You "just" need to write it. The linked 3.11 project is not just a customisation - it's a whole shell just like Cairo.
- pjerem 4y ago
  Isn’t blackbox dead ? The latest release on the website is from 2009 and is proudly announcing Vista compatibility.
  - viraptor 4y ago
    Don't know. I'm going by Wikipedia here. Xoblite works with win10 and I'm sure there's more forks out there.
90sguifan 4y ago
Gnome is disgustingly restrictive, and the general reddit trend of "ricing" unix windows managers is no better. It feels like we lost the plot on user-friendly expandable GUIs around the Vista era.
happymellon 4y ago
Isn't this the same as replacing Gnome with a different shell?

How on god's green earth is a 30 year old operating system more customizable and user-friendly than any of the modern interfaces (that includes both windows 10 and gnome)

RedShift1 4y ago

God don't get me started, I've really come to hate how Windows 10 looks. I come from a time where 8 extra bits of color depth cost you an arm and a leg (1,5 arms and 2 legs adjusted for inflation) and you were willing to fight a war for 5 extra pixels of screen real estate. Anti-aliasing was just a dream. Now we have full HD screens with 32 bit colors and HDR, powerful GPUs to draw edges as smooth AF and what did we decide to do with all of that? Use 4 colors, fill it up with whitespace and cram everything into squares. I think the Windows 10 UI was created by a group of depressed people and it really shows.

grepfru_it 4y ago
Meanwhile I upgraded (downgraded?) from Neon to windows 11 on one of my laptops. On more than one occasion I assumed I was using KDE plasma. Firefox renders basically the same between the two, all of my apps run on windows and Linux (steam, VLC, etc).. it’s the nuance in notifications that threw me into uncanny valley. Also made me realize the two things that I need from a desktop are a solid notification system (kde is ok, I like how it’s done in windows 11 and on macOS) and a smooth mouse experience. Everything in the UI is just a skin and can be emulated or replaced
nikanj 4y ago
The Windows 11 UI is telling the same people ”now imagine everyone has a tablet”. You’ll likely get some pushback along the lines of ”We already tried that with Windows 8 and everyone hated it”, but keep pushing - quote something about Henry Ford and horses if neccessary
- grishka 4y ago
  Microsoft keeps trying really hard to make touchscreens happen. Except they aren't going to happen. It's a desktop OS for mice and keyboards first and foremost, it's about time they acknowledge that by designing everything with these input devices in mind.
  - johnwalkr 4y ago
    I think Windows 11 is trying to unify the settings etc to something similar to mobile OSs, but at the same time is ditching the lingering remnants of touch interfaces from Windows 8. IIRC, they now have guidelines to not assume spacing, icon sizes, etc optimized for touch unless touch is the only interface available.
    - trinix912 4y ago
      Yet the settings are far from unified, every now and then you just have to pop up some Windows 95-era dialog box and so on.
      - ale42 4y ago
        Worse, some advanced settings are just unreachable now with the new interface. It's a disaster.
        grishka 4y ago
        Can you still create that magic shortcut pointing to some UUID that would open the old control panel?
    - grishka 4y ago
      I think they should just roll the UI back to what it was in Windows 7 and then stop working on it (the UI, not Windows itself), forever. Yes, I'm serious.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
SkeuomorphicBee 4y ago
> Use 4 colors, fill it up with whitespace and cram everything into squares. For me the worst of those is the prevalence of whitespace, and the loss of the grey background. Grey was the greatest color for UI background, it wasn't overly bright, it won't burn your eyes like modern UIs that shine like a thousand suns, no need for separate "dark theme" because a grey theme is comfortable in all light conditions, it allowed the content color to go in two different directions (if your background is white then your content can only get darker, but if your background is grey your content can be darker or brighter than the background), and it has a clear visual separation between the grey app UI (menus, toolbars, ...) and the white content (E.G. document being edited).

sreekotay 4y ago

No concern for security helps a lot...

userbinator 4y ago

"Designers" happened. Also the trend of forcing users to fit the tool rather than the other way around.

pjerem 4y ago
Holly sh.. Exactly this happens every time in my company. Designers and PMs wants to « educate » the user and force a strict workflow for them. They never take into account that power users exists. Sure, most of our users are happy this way because our product replaces shitty and complex excel sheets. But I always wonder about the 1% who took the time to learn and master excel and were fast with their tool. For those people, our product must be a PITA, because their is no other (faster) way to work than the path PMs and designers decided.

viraptor 4y ago

You can still do the same thing on modern windows. Alternative shells were a thing for quite a while. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alternative_shells_for_Windows https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alternative_shells_for... for a list. Unfortunately people don't seem to be that interested anymore and the options that remain are Cairo https://cairoshell.com/ https://cairoshell.com/ and blackbox. But in theory: It's as customisable as you want. You "just" need to write it. The linked 3.11 project is not just a customisation - it's a whole shell just like Cairo.

pjerem 4y ago
Isn’t blackbox dead ? The latest release on the website is from 2009 and is proudly announcing Vista compatibility.
- viraptor 4y ago
  Don't know. I'm going by Wikipedia here. Xoblite works with win10 and I'm sure there's more forks out there.

90sguifan 4y ago

Gnome is disgustingly restrictive, and the general reddit trend of "ricing" unix windows managers is no better. It feels like we lost the plot on user-friendly expandable GUIs around the Vista era.

happymellon 4y ago

Isn't this the same as replacing Gnome with a different shell?