3 ms·

When U moved to Czechia in 2014, I was amazed to find everyone used this app. In my 2nd job, the company had a site licence and it was preinstalled on all PCs.

When U moved to Czechia in 2014, I was amazed to find everyone used this app. In my 2nd job, the company had a site licence and it was preinstalled on all PCs. I'd not used or seen a 2-pane file manager since about 1993 and I never missed them. It's ubiquitous in central Europe and most people sneer at OS file managers. I was amazed and baffled. I am perfectly capable of using them and occasionally did in the late 1980s, but I don't normally use them and have no need. My Czech friends and colleagues are as amazed and baffled as I am by them. I easily do this stuff in the Windows Explorer or Mac Finder, but mostly I work on Linux in Nemo. I can do all this stuff and sometimes I have shown people how and they are amazed that I can do stuff that they think impossible. My overall conclusion is that a lot of FOSS development is driven by people who don't know how to properly use the tools that the OS came with. I keep hearing about "editing at the speed of thought" in Vim and so on. Users have to learn the keystrokes because that's the primary UI. Result, when you know it, it's fast. Well, newsflash. Windows 3 had keystrokes for everything and by Win95 it was very customisable and extensible as well. If you learn to use the keyboard, the entire OS and all apps work as fast as Vim. When I see the many Windows-like desktops for Linux that can't do a vertical taskbar properly (MATE, LXQt, Cinnamon, Enlightenment) then I know they were cloned from Windows by someone who didn't know how to use Windows. When I see a hamburger menu on a computer with a keyboard, I know that that developer didn't know how to use a GUI properly. When I see CSD window decorations, I know that that developer didn't know how to use a windowing GUI properly.

gumballindie 3y ago
This is a little bit like saying that people wearing different types of trousers do so because they can't all wear the same identical type due to lack of knowledge on how to wear them. People have varying tastes and use cases. To me eveyrthing you described as "proper" in windows looks the way you described linux - done by someone who doesn't know how to properly build an OS ui. I don't understand why someone would even want to use windows explorer with a keyboard. But the beauty of life is that we are free to like whatever we like, and there's nothing wrong with that.
- lproven 3y ago
  I am a bit baffled by the general comment as a whole, TBH. I mean, as an obvious canonical example, there is an extremely common frequent example of wearing clothes wrongly that is so obvious you actively invite the comparison. Baseball caps. Caps have a reason for existing: the visor is to shade your eyes. That's its purpose. For reasons, it became trendy for kids to wear them backwards, and now the majority are worn backwards. It makes them futile for the original purpose but that's fashion for you. (Arguably it was Michael Jordan: https://hatheaven.com/blogs/news/the-beginning-of-wearing-caps-backward-as-a-trend https://hatheaven.com/blogs/news/the-beginning-of-wearing-ca... ) The bigger pictures here are two fold. > I don't understand why someone would even want to use windows explorer with a keyboard. I carefully spelled it out. Because it's faster. But you expose a more general point: not everyone has your choices. Windows is the mainstream. It set the standards. Most people use it. More people use it than Macs and Linux put together. And some people are disabled. Lots of people can't see. If you can't see you can't use a pointing device, so you have to use a keyboard. Commercial companies making commercial OSes have to make them accessible to people with disabilities as a matter of law. So, they do. So, the commercial OSes have lots of keyboard controls and other disability assistive measures, and they are open to everyone and if you learn them you can work your computer faster. That is good and it's free and it's for your own benefit. If there is something that makes life easier and faster and it's free then if you choose not to use it, you are a fool. But not everyone knows stuff. Some people don't know. That's OK. But if you set out to copy something, learn what you are copying first! Free OSes are not under any such pressures and do not have to conform to the laws because they are not being sold. But the standards are still there. There is a standard for PC UIs. It's called CUA. Everyone should know some of it because it makes life faster and easier and knowing stuff is free. Unix folks historically ignore it because it's cool to hate on Windows and proprietary stuff. So they adopt obsolete junk like Emacs keystrokes or Vi keystrokes, not knowing that there are better, more standardised versions used by billions of people. Then they reinvent the standards, because they don't know them. And they do it badly because it's a dozen hackers in their spare time, not a billion dollar corporation complying with 1000 laws in 100 countries and working stuff out. And then there's a crappy amateur version built by people who bodged together their own amateur copy of a pro tool and they are proud of it because they made it. And some old a$$h0le (that, for clarity, is me here) comes along and says, hey, this isn't much good, and here is this better thing that, y'know, a few billion people have been using for 30 years now. And I look like the bad person because I know something and point out that a bad reimplementation by ignorant folks isn't as good. If I said "hey, if you turn your cap around, it'll shade your eyes" that doesn't make me a bad person. It may make me less cool but if I don't get dazzled I am OK with that. (I do not wear baseball caps outside the house, because I am old. But I do wear hats, and I wear them to keep my hair dry and keep my glasses dry, and for that, the same principles apply.) Saying "hey grandad we all wear our caps backwards and shade our eyes and if you don't you are less cool" is fine. Silly but fine. I don't care much about cool and I have my own standards for it. But saying "hey grandad we all wear our caps backwards and shade our eyes and if you don't you are stupid" is not fine, because there is a reason for wearing them forwards, and if you don't know that reason it's your problem not my problem, and me pointing out that cap bill forwards is useful because it shades your eyes doesn't make me a bad person. This is an extended metaphor for me saying "there is a standard for keyboard shortcuts and your life will be improved if you know it".
pacifika 3y ago
Total commander isn’t FOSS. Ironically windows 11 can’t do vertical taskbars. And where in windows can you change the system shortcuts?
- lproven 3y ago
  > Total commander isn’t FOSS. I'm aware of that. There are lots of FOSS equivalents, though. Including, I believe, on Windows. Wikipedia lists 23 of which I think -- haven't checked -- the majority are FOSS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_manager#Orthodox_file_managers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_manager#Orthodox_file_man... > Ironically windows 11 can’t do vertical taskbars. True. Easily fixed with Explorer Patcher, though. Which, ironically, is FOSS. > And where in windows can you change the system shortcuts? I don't use it much any more and stopped early this century, so my knowledge here may be out of date. When I do, I use SharpKeys to put a GUI on editing the relevant registry keys for keyboard remapping. https://github.com/randyrants/sharpkeys https://github.com/randyrants/sharpkeys In the NT 3.x era, it was the properties of every EXE's PIF file. So I set Crtl+Alt+(initial) to open my most used apps. Ctrl+Alt+D for DOS, E for Excel, W for Word, etc. This still works with limitations under Win9x through to XP, which is when I jumped off the Windows ship. But mostly it's about learning the many many built-ins.
  - hulitu 3y ago
    Some of us are forced to use Windows in a corporate environment where your exaple programs to "fix" the wonderful OS are forbidden by IT policy.
nunez 3y ago
Windows Explorer keybindings are _nothing_ like a proper tiling window manager, like XMonad. There was (is?) a program that brought some of this to Windows. Can't remember it, but I remember it being a downgrade of sorts.

gumballindie 3y ago

This is a little bit like saying that people wearing different types of trousers do so because they can't all wear the same identical type due to lack of knowledge on how to wear them. People have varying tastes and use cases. To me eveyrthing you described as "proper" in windows looks the way you described linux - done by someone who doesn't know how to properly build an OS ui. I don't understand why someone would even want to use windows explorer with a keyboard. But the beauty of life is that we are free to like whatever we like, and there's nothing wrong with that.

lproven 3y ago
I am a bit baffled by the general comment as a whole, TBH. I mean, as an obvious canonical example, there is an extremely common frequent example of wearing clothes wrongly that is so obvious you actively invite the comparison. Baseball caps. Caps have a reason for existing: the visor is to shade your eyes. That's its purpose. For reasons, it became trendy for kids to wear them backwards, and now the majority are worn backwards. It makes them futile for the original purpose but that's fashion for you. (Arguably it was Michael Jordan: https://hatheaven.com/blogs/news/the-beginning-of-wearing-caps-backward-as-a-trend https://hatheaven.com/blogs/news/the-beginning-of-wearing-ca... ) The bigger pictures here are two fold. > I don't understand why someone would even want to use windows explorer with a keyboard. I carefully spelled it out. Because it's faster. But you expose a more general point: not everyone has your choices. Windows is the mainstream. It set the standards. Most people use it. More people use it than Macs and Linux put together. And some people are disabled. Lots of people can't see. If you can't see you can't use a pointing device, so you have to use a keyboard. Commercial companies making commercial OSes have to make them accessible to people with disabilities as a matter of law. So, they do. So, the commercial OSes have lots of keyboard controls and other disability assistive measures, and they are open to everyone and if you learn them you can work your computer faster. That is good and it's free and it's for your own benefit. If there is something that makes life easier and faster and it's free then if you choose not to use it, you are a fool. But not everyone knows stuff. Some people don't know. That's OK. But if you set out to copy something, learn what you are copying first! Free OSes are not under any such pressures and do not have to conform to the laws because they are not being sold. But the standards are still there. There is a standard for PC UIs. It's called CUA. Everyone should know some of it because it makes life faster and easier and knowing stuff is free. Unix folks historically ignore it because it's cool to hate on Windows and proprietary stuff. So they adopt obsolete junk like Emacs keystrokes or Vi keystrokes, not knowing that there are better, more standardised versions used by billions of people. Then they reinvent the standards, because they don't know them. And they do it badly because it's a dozen hackers in their spare time, not a billion dollar corporation complying with 1000 laws in 100 countries and working stuff out. And then there's a crappy amateur version built by people who bodged together their own amateur copy of a pro tool and they are proud of it because they made it. And some old a$$h0le (that, for clarity, is me here) comes along and says, hey, this isn't much good, and here is this better thing that, y'know, a few billion people have been using for 30 years now. And I look like the bad person because I know something and point out that a bad reimplementation by ignorant folks isn't as good. If I said "hey, if you turn your cap around, it'll shade your eyes" that doesn't make me a bad person. It may make me less cool but if I don't get dazzled I am OK with that. (I do not wear baseball caps outside the house, because I am old. But I do wear hats, and I wear them to keep my hair dry and keep my glasses dry, and for that, the same principles apply.) Saying "hey grandad we all wear our caps backwards and shade our eyes and if you don't you are less cool" is fine. Silly but fine. I don't care much about cool and I have my own standards for it. But saying "hey grandad we all wear our caps backwards and shade our eyes and if you don't you are stupid" is not fine, because there is a reason for wearing them forwards, and if you don't know that reason it's your problem not my problem, and me pointing out that cap bill forwards is useful because it shades your eyes doesn't make me a bad person. This is an extended metaphor for me saying "there is a standard for keyboard shortcuts and your life will be improved if you know it".

pacifika 3y ago

Total commander isn’t FOSS. Ironically windows 11 can’t do vertical taskbars. And where in windows can you change the system shortcuts?

lproven 3y ago
> Total commander isn’t FOSS. I'm aware of that. There are lots of FOSS equivalents, though. Including, I believe, on Windows. Wikipedia lists 23 of which I think -- haven't checked -- the majority are FOSS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_manager#Orthodox_file_managers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_manager#Orthodox_file_man... > Ironically windows 11 can’t do vertical taskbars. True. Easily fixed with Explorer Patcher, though. Which, ironically, is FOSS. > And where in windows can you change the system shortcuts? I don't use it much any more and stopped early this century, so my knowledge here may be out of date. When I do, I use SharpKeys to put a GUI on editing the relevant registry keys for keyboard remapping. https://github.com/randyrants/sharpkeys https://github.com/randyrants/sharpkeys In the NT 3.x era, it was the properties of every EXE's PIF file. So I set Crtl+Alt+(initial) to open my most used apps. Ctrl+Alt+D for DOS, E for Excel, W for Word, etc. This still works with limitations under Win9x through to XP, which is when I jumped off the Windows ship. But mostly it's about learning the many many built-ins.
- hulitu 3y ago
  Some of us are forced to use Windows in a corporate environment where your exaple programs to "fix" the wonderful OS are forbidden by IT policy.

nunez 3y ago

Windows Explorer keybindings are _nothing_ like a proper tiling window manager, like XMonad. There was (is?) a program that brought some of this to Windows. Can't remember it, but I remember it being a downgrade of sorts.