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Every Windows user I know hates the new control panels. (I use plural because they've been trying to replace the actual good control panel basically every versi

Every Windows user I know hates the new control panels. (I use plural because they've been trying to replace the actual good control panel basically every version of Windows since 7 and it's an incredible mess). Enterprise users put up with Windows because it's better to administrate than anything else, so taking away that stuff really is murdering windows.

nickelpro 3y ago
I did enterprise administration of Windows boxes, ~400 seats. We did not manually muck with control panels per station. I could not care less what the settings UIs for home installs of Windows are. And that's the real truth, power users and these small fry IT install bases are not major markets. The most prominent markets are OEM installs for non-technical home users (who hate complex panels and love the push-button UIs), and large 3/4/5 digit enterprise installs that do not give a damn about this stuff because they're using MDT (or whatever) to deploy images to all their stations and not playing with this per-station configuration stuff.
- overgard 3y ago
  I dunno man, with Steam on linux and most of the major game engines making porting easy (or at least moving in that direction) I have very few reasons to stick with Windows anymore. At this point it's basically Photoshop and Fusion 360, otherwise I'd abandon it completely. If they lose gamers, I think they'll have a real issue.
  - nickelpro 3y ago
    You're a power user unable to understand the needs of non-power users. We all go through that stage, it's natural. I once installed Linux on all my siblings' desktops because I had convinced my parents it would lead to "less viruses" (Fedora 13, I think, GNOME 2, those were the days). The nightmare of providing support for that over the rest of my high school years provided me with a powerful and important lesson. You have few reasons to stick with Windows, you are a very, very tiny droplet in an ocean of users with different needs than you. Judging what such markets will do based on your personal needs is unwise.
    - overgard 3y ago
      Here's the thing though, the desktop now really is about power users or corporate users, because everyone else just uses cell phones or tablets. So ok, sure, your sales people and your secretaries probably aren't going to care about the control panel, but people that use computers outside of work are mostly going to be power users and they're starting to have options. (I can use all the software I need on macOS, and linux is rapidly getting there too) And honestly, breaking Printers is a thing that everyone is going to care about, especially people in a workplace.
      - nickelpro 3y ago
        As explained above this is irrelevant to enterprise users, corpo installs don't play with per-station configuration like this or care about consumer-facing UIs, the needs of that market revolve around things like image management, deployment, and active directory administration. You're right that the home market is shrinking though, the OEM install market is down billions in revenue and has been dropping by double digit percentages each fiscal year, but you're wrong in your assumption that the power user market is worth anything. Power users, represented by direct license installs, are a rounding error of Windows revenue. There's nothing worth fighting for there. Convincing Mom that she should buy a Windows laptop instead of an Apple laptop is still worth ~$750M/Q, and Mom doesn't ever want to see the old Windows panels, she loves the "Add Printer" button. Convincing Timmy Q Hacker that he should buy a Windows license key instead of installing Arch Linux is worth squat.
        overgard 3y ago
        I think you're overestimating the importance of the revenue generated and underestimating the importance of mindshare and people caring about their system. If the next generation of creators (IE, coders, designers, etc.) grow up on macOS and linux then Microsoft has a real problem down the line. The Windows monopoly has been VERY good to them, they would be foolish to lose it by angering their most passionate users even if in the short term they don't see an effect on their bottom line.
  - rolph 3y ago
    things are happening: https://www.gimp.org/ https://www.gimp.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMP https://github.com/cryinkfly/Autodesk-Fusion-360-for-Linux https://github.com/cryinkfly/Autodesk-Fusion-360-for-Linux https://gist.github.com/probonopd/0fab254aa0b6fc371d8db641822bd530 https://gist.github.com/probonopd/0fab254aa0b6fc371d8db64182... https://www.freecad.org/ https://www.freecad.org/
makeitdouble 3y ago
TBF I don't think there's any control panels people are in love with. Apart from the issue of needing control panels mostly to solve problems, they're just not great. Windows legendarily keeps multiple versions of them, while for ios/macos it's a game of finding which image is actually a clickable button or understanding that wi-fi hotspot is under sharing and not networks. The FA was about command line incantation to fix printers and of course at every new macos version there will be a set of new defaults to get back behaviors. I think that's just the way of life at this point.
- overgard 3y ago
  Sure, but here's the thing, all they really have to do is... nothing. Just leave the old control panel alone and stop making new ones. Make small evolutions, not redesigns. It might not have been brilliant, but once people learned where things were there's very little upside to changing it and all sorts of downside.
  - makeitdouble 3y ago
    I think we're underestimating the amount of stuff going on in Windows and the amount of settings that are globaly needed after decades of trial and error. Right now, we have machines that basically do what macs do (traditional "computing", a mouse, a keyboard a screen, office or image related work). Then you have tablets (the whole Surface Pro line + 2 in 1 convertibles) and their touch options, including the impact on existing settings (you now have two or more sets of keyboards that might be in different mappings with different interlocked behaviors. Same for screens. and so much more) Then thin clients, mirroring and remoting. For mac it's remote desktop or screen mirroring at most. Windoes gets a flurry of inbetweens. Then all the hardware that only works on Windows and need some way to be managed relative to the system. All in all, mac made the choice to only cater to the proverbial 20 of the 20/80 power law. Windows fundamentally can't just pile on the existing chaos, even if it means bringing new layers of chaos. I don't even think a full rewrite in a new layer would be humanly possible at this point.
- Nition 3y ago
  > I don't think there's any control panels people are in love with. Not in the modern era, but I do love this one from Mac OS 1: https://i.imgur.com/XKfnGMl.png https://i.imgur.com/XKfnGMl.png
Propelloni 3y ago
I disagree with this notion. Enterprise GNU/Linux environments with a configuration management system like Salt are easily on par (if not superior) to Enterprise MS Windows environments in all regards. Add a 389 or Samba4 domain controller on top and off you go. The difference is obviously that you need people who can administer such systems. 389 is just as part-time admin friendly as AD, but Salt actually requires you to understand a little bit about the computers you are administering. Will the 10 person SME run such an setup? Unlikely. Can a 100 person SME that employs four MSCE run such a setup? Yes, but you only need two RHCE or LPIC-2 admins now (for vacation and somesuch). Those are rare, I know, but they will scale to 1000 persons, no problem.

nickelpro 3y ago

I did enterprise administration of Windows boxes, ~400 seats. We did not manually muck with control panels per station. I could not care less what the settings UIs for home installs of Windows are. And that's the real truth, power users and these small fry IT install bases are not major markets. The most prominent markets are OEM installs for non-technical home users (who hate complex panels and love the push-button UIs), and large 3/4/5 digit enterprise installs that do not give a damn about this stuff because they're using MDT (or whatever) to deploy images to all their stations and not playing with this per-station configuration stuff.

overgard 3y ago
I dunno man, with Steam on linux and most of the major game engines making porting easy (or at least moving in that direction) I have very few reasons to stick with Windows anymore. At this point it's basically Photoshop and Fusion 360, otherwise I'd abandon it completely. If they lose gamers, I think they'll have a real issue.
- nickelpro 3y ago
  You're a power user unable to understand the needs of non-power users. We all go through that stage, it's natural. I once installed Linux on all my siblings' desktops because I had convinced my parents it would lead to "less viruses" (Fedora 13, I think, GNOME 2, those were the days). The nightmare of providing support for that over the rest of my high school years provided me with a powerful and important lesson. You have few reasons to stick with Windows, you are a very, very tiny droplet in an ocean of users with different needs than you. Judging what such markets will do based on your personal needs is unwise.
  - overgard 3y ago
    Here's the thing though, the desktop now really is about power users or corporate users, because everyone else just uses cell phones or tablets. So ok, sure, your sales people and your secretaries probably aren't going to care about the control panel, but people that use computers outside of work are mostly going to be power users and they're starting to have options. (I can use all the software I need on macOS, and linux is rapidly getting there too) And honestly, breaking Printers is a thing that everyone is going to care about, especially people in a workplace.
    - nickelpro 3y ago
      As explained above this is irrelevant to enterprise users, corpo installs don't play with per-station configuration like this or care about consumer-facing UIs, the needs of that market revolve around things like image management, deployment, and active directory administration. You're right that the home market is shrinking though, the OEM install market is down billions in revenue and has been dropping by double digit percentages each fiscal year, but you're wrong in your assumption that the power user market is worth anything. Power users, represented by direct license installs, are a rounding error of Windows revenue. There's nothing worth fighting for there. Convincing Mom that she should buy a Windows laptop instead of an Apple laptop is still worth ~$750M/Q, and Mom doesn't ever want to see the old Windows panels, she loves the "Add Printer" button. Convincing Timmy Q Hacker that he should buy a Windows license key instead of installing Arch Linux is worth squat.
      - overgard 3y ago
        I think you're overestimating the importance of the revenue generated and underestimating the importance of mindshare and people caring about their system. If the next generation of creators (IE, coders, designers, etc.) grow up on macOS and linux then Microsoft has a real problem down the line. The Windows monopoly has been VERY good to them, they would be foolish to lose it by angering their most passionate users even if in the short term they don't see an effect on their bottom line.
- rolph 3y ago
  things are happening: https://www.gimp.org/ https://www.gimp.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMP https://github.com/cryinkfly/Autodesk-Fusion-360-for-Linux https://github.com/cryinkfly/Autodesk-Fusion-360-for-Linux https://gist.github.com/probonopd/0fab254aa0b6fc371d8db641822bd530 https://gist.github.com/probonopd/0fab254aa0b6fc371d8db64182... https://www.freecad.org/ https://www.freecad.org/

makeitdouble 3y ago

TBF I don't think there's any control panels people are in love with. Apart from the issue of needing control panels mostly to solve problems, they're just not great. Windows legendarily keeps multiple versions of them, while for ios/macos it's a game of finding which image is actually a clickable button or understanding that wi-fi hotspot is under sharing and not networks. The FA was about command line incantation to fix printers and of course at every new macos version there will be a set of new defaults to get back behaviors. I think that's just the way of life at this point.

overgard 3y ago
Sure, but here's the thing, all they really have to do is... nothing. Just leave the old control panel alone and stop making new ones. Make small evolutions, not redesigns. It might not have been brilliant, but once people learned where things were there's very little upside to changing it and all sorts of downside.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  I think we're underestimating the amount of stuff going on in Windows and the amount of settings that are globaly needed after decades of trial and error. Right now, we have machines that basically do what macs do (traditional "computing", a mouse, a keyboard a screen, office or image related work). Then you have tablets (the whole Surface Pro line + 2 in 1 convertibles) and their touch options, including the impact on existing settings (you now have two or more sets of keyboards that might be in different mappings with different interlocked behaviors. Same for screens. and so much more) Then thin clients, mirroring and remoting. For mac it's remote desktop or screen mirroring at most. Windoes gets a flurry of inbetweens. Then all the hardware that only works on Windows and need some way to be managed relative to the system. All in all, mac made the choice to only cater to the proverbial 20 of the 20/80 power law. Windows fundamentally can't just pile on the existing chaos, even if it means bringing new layers of chaos. I don't even think a full rewrite in a new layer would be humanly possible at this point.
Nition 3y ago
> I don't think there's any control panels people are in love with. Not in the modern era, but I do love this one from Mac OS 1: https://i.imgur.com/XKfnGMl.png https://i.imgur.com/XKfnGMl.png

Propelloni 3y ago

I disagree with this notion. Enterprise GNU/Linux environments with a configuration management system like Salt are easily on par (if not superior) to Enterprise MS Windows environments in all regards. Add a 389 or Samba4 domain controller on top and off you go. The difference is obviously that you need people who can administer such systems. 389 is just as part-time admin friendly as AD, but Salt actually requires you to understand a little bit about the computers you are administering. Will the 10 person SME run such an setup? Unlikely. Can a 100 person SME that employs four MSCE run such a setup? Yes, but you only need two RHCE or LPIC-2 admins now (for vacation and somesuch). Those are rare, I know, but they will scale to 1000 persons, no problem.