6 ms·

The first apps I need to replace on any new windows machine (after installing FF) are Paint, Notepad, Photo/Image viewer and MediaPlayer. The funny thing is the

by skeeter2020 2y ago

The first apps I need to replace on any new windows machine (after installing FF) are Paint, Notepad, Photo/Image viewer and MediaPlayer. The funny thing is their replacements are all ancient as well, and still awesome because they've been thoughtfully upgraded over the years without destroying their conceptual integrity, or they've just been "done" for decades. Paint.Net (v3), Notepad++, IrfanViewer, Foobar2000 & VLC

DCH3416 2y ago
I ended up just compiling notepad from wine and tossing that into the windows directory. Among other things.
iknowstuff 2y ago
My main OS is macOS but I use Windows for gaming. The reliance on crusty old ass applications like those on Windows is actually kinda depressing. Everything newer is garbage for various reasons, and everything old is ugly as hell. Macs have Pixelmator and Preview for images, Apple Notes is actually very decent for actual notes, Zed for nerdy text files, QuickTime/IINA for video (or hell even VLC looks much nicer than on Windows). All of them are modern, beautiful, and work well
- tmpz22 2y ago
  Apple Notes on MacOS have been crashing for me constantly since shortly after Apple Intelligence beta started rolling out. Even though I'm not even on the beta.
- kylebenzle 2y ago
  Mentioning all these programs and seeing the trouble people have I will never really understand why there are any men at all that still use Windows and Mac.
  - DCH3416 2y ago
    I mean Haiku is the best OS in my opinion. But nobody really uses it because it lacks the software support. Sometimes you got to put up with the BS to get what you want done.
- yazantapuz 2y ago
  The ugliness is a nice feature.
- mikae1 2y ago
  > The reliance on crusty old ass applications like those on Windows is actually kinda depressing. macOS is the most consistent OS and Windows the least [1]. With the exception of IrfanView I find neither of those apps particularly crusty though. There's https://imageglass.org https://imageglass.org I personally moved from macOS to KDE Plasma and I'm a happy camper as long as I stay with Plasma/Qt apps. [1] https://ntdev.blog/2021/02/06/state-of-the-windows-how-many-layers-of-ui-inconsistencies-are-in-windows-10/ https://ntdev.blog/2021/02/06/state-of-the-windows-how-many-...
  - BobaFloutist 2y ago
    VLC is pretty damn crusty, especially to anyone not familiar with that particular....design ethos. Don't get me wrong, it's an incredible endeavor and the developers deserve endless praise, but for people that aren't already familiar with navigating things like GIMP, KDE, Open/LibreOffice, it's not especially welcoming.
    - DCH3416 2y ago
      You critics stay away from VLC. I swear if I have to deal with another "modern" UI implementation.
    - JohnFen 2y ago
      > for people that aren't already familiar with navigating things like GIMP, KDE, Open/LibreOffice, it's not especially welcoming. This is true for all complex software, though. People who have never used Apple's software also struggle with it until they become more familiar.
      - dmurray 2y ago
        Is VLC really "complex software" if you just want to use it as a media player? Double click your media file, it plays. Play, pause, volume controls are where you'd guess they are. There's plenty of complexity underneath, but the happy path is simple. By contrast, "open this image and draw a single red circle in it" in GIMP is as challenging to a newbie as quitting vi. Even for an intermediate user - I use GIMP a handful of times per year and I absolutely could not tell you from memory how to do that.
- jpalomaki 2y ago
  I have always thought the decision to keep Notepad and Paint as they are is a nod towards the developer community. Thanks to this, there's a large market for affordable and better alternatives.
- couscouspie 2y ago
  What is depressing about old tools? I love the GNU coreutils and am really passionate about them. They are old, but near perfect.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    I don't know about depressing, but eg grep is slow and lacks some quality of life features working with modern toolchains (aka git, but also codebase size). ag and rg both read .gitignore if there is one (disable with rg -uuu); for today's multi-language repos, ag can look inside a specific language's files eg ag --go or ag --js.
    - jraph 2y ago
      I need to try ag. I usually use rg, which is way faster than grep for searching many repositories at once. But one of my tasks involves searching things in a single XML file of hundreds megabytes, or even several gigabytes, and for this, grep is way faster than rg apparently. So under the right conditions, grep is actually quite fast and you may be missing out if you never try using it.
- goosedragons 2y ago
  Pixelmator is over 15 years old, Preview predates OS X as it was a part of NeXTStep.
  - iknowstuff 2y ago
    To be clear, i’m not saying they’re new, but rather that they are beautiful because they have been continuously modernized to match the look and functionality of the OS.
- makeitdouble 2y ago
  If you care about beautiful interfaces macos and linux will always be way ahead, for sure. The choice to go for windows as main OS kinda includes prioritizing advanced features and versatility over the UX. Even firefox is not as nice on windows than on mac.
- _smfg 2y ago
  the lack of consistent UI experiences in windows was a thing that really bugged me and why I've never looked back after switching to MacOS
satvikpendem 2y ago
I never understood the need for Notepad++. If I want to edit text quickly, notepad works fine, maybe I'll use vim or something if needed. If I want to view code, again vim works fine, and maybe VSCode if I know I'll be actively working on it. I don't see the usecase for Notepad++ personally speaking.
- badsectoracula 2y ago
  Notepad++ is an alternative to Vim, so if you are using Vim you are covering most use cases of Notepad++ already. In Windows i use Notepad++ so i don't have to use Vim (which is for me the only viable alternative of a lightweight "programmer's editor" and what i used for a while before learning about Notepad++ - everything else, like vscode, emacs, etc feel much more heavyweight) since i dislike its modal nature and non-standard[0] shortcuts. [0] i know that technically they predate whatever Notepad++ uses but pretty much everything else (including on KDE, GNOME, most X11 toolkits, etc) uses the same or similar shortcuts and keys as Notepad++ so who came first is moot, it is what i am used to that matters
- Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
  > I don't see the usecase for Notepad++ personally speaking Then don't use it. For sure regular notepad works fine for quick text edit. The use case for notepad++ is for when you want to do more than that. I, for example, frequently have to do a bunch of more complicated things to plain text files and notepad++ works great for those where notepad has no chance.
- hyperdimension 2y ago
  Try notepad2. It's an decent improvement from notepad while not going full notepad++. I install it on new Windows boxes and have it replace notepad.exe (there is an option to do this in setup.)
- 0x073 2y ago
  I dont trust notepad to edit configs, \n is no problem anymore but there is always a way to corrupt files with notepad. Never had this issues for notepad++. For text it's fine.
reportgunner 2y ago
They don't make the paints and notepads like they used to.
pajko 2y ago
Be careful with Irfanview and XNView as these are free strictly for personal use (non commercial). An open-source alternative I've been using is: https://nomacs.org/ https://nomacs.org/

DCH3416 2y ago

I ended up just compiling notepad from wine and tossing that into the windows directory. Among other things.

iknowstuff 2y ago

My main OS is macOS but I use Windows for gaming. The reliance on crusty old ass applications like those on Windows is actually kinda depressing. Everything newer is garbage for various reasons, and everything old is ugly as hell. Macs have Pixelmator and Preview for images, Apple Notes is actually very decent for actual notes, Zed for nerdy text files, QuickTime/IINA for video (or hell even VLC looks much nicer than on Windows). All of them are modern, beautiful, and work well

tmpz22 2y ago
Apple Notes on MacOS have been crashing for me constantly since shortly after Apple Intelligence beta started rolling out. Even though I'm not even on the beta.
kylebenzle 2y ago
Mentioning all these programs and seeing the trouble people have I will never really understand why there are any men at all that still use Windows and Mac.
- DCH3416 2y ago
  I mean Haiku is the best OS in my opinion. But nobody really uses it because it lacks the software support. Sometimes you got to put up with the BS to get what you want done.
yazantapuz 2y ago
The ugliness is a nice feature.
mikae1 2y ago
> The reliance on crusty old ass applications like those on Windows is actually kinda depressing. macOS is the most consistent OS and Windows the least [1]. With the exception of IrfanView I find neither of those apps particularly crusty though. There's https://imageglass.org https://imageglass.org I personally moved from macOS to KDE Plasma and I'm a happy camper as long as I stay with Plasma/Qt apps. [1] https://ntdev.blog/2021/02/06/state-of-the-windows-how-many-layers-of-ui-inconsistencies-are-in-windows-10/ https://ntdev.blog/2021/02/06/state-of-the-windows-how-many-...
- BobaFloutist 2y ago
  VLC is pretty damn crusty, especially to anyone not familiar with that particular....design ethos. Don't get me wrong, it's an incredible endeavor and the developers deserve endless praise, but for people that aren't already familiar with navigating things like GIMP, KDE, Open/LibreOffice, it's not especially welcoming.
  - DCH3416 2y ago
    You critics stay away from VLC. I swear if I have to deal with another "modern" UI implementation.
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    > for people that aren't already familiar with navigating things like GIMP, KDE, Open/LibreOffice, it's not especially welcoming. This is true for all complex software, though. People who have never used Apple's software also struggle with it until they become more familiar.
    - dmurray 2y ago
      Is VLC really "complex software" if you just want to use it as a media player? Double click your media file, it plays. Play, pause, volume controls are where you'd guess they are. There's plenty of complexity underneath, but the happy path is simple. By contrast, "open this image and draw a single red circle in it" in GIMP is as challenging to a newbie as quitting vi. Even for an intermediate user - I use GIMP a handful of times per year and I absolutely could not tell you from memory how to do that.
jpalomaki 2y ago
I have always thought the decision to keep Notepad and Paint as they are is a nod towards the developer community. Thanks to this, there's a large market for affordable and better alternatives.
couscouspie 2y ago
What is depressing about old tools? I love the GNU coreutils and am really passionate about them. They are old, but near perfect.
- fragmede 2y ago
  I don't know about depressing, but eg grep is slow and lacks some quality of life features working with modern toolchains (aka git, but also codebase size). ag and rg both read .gitignore if there is one (disable with rg -uuu); for today's multi-language repos, ag can look inside a specific language's files eg ag --go or ag --js.
  - jraph 2y ago
    I need to try ag. I usually use rg, which is way faster than grep for searching many repositories at once. But one of my tasks involves searching things in a single XML file of hundreds megabytes, or even several gigabytes, and for this, grep is way faster than rg apparently. So under the right conditions, grep is actually quite fast and you may be missing out if you never try using it.
goosedragons 2y ago
Pixelmator is over 15 years old, Preview predates OS X as it was a part of NeXTStep.
- iknowstuff 2y ago
  To be clear, i’m not saying they’re new, but rather that they are beautiful because they have been continuously modernized to match the look and functionality of the OS.
makeitdouble 2y ago
If you care about beautiful interfaces macos and linux will always be way ahead, for sure. The choice to go for windows as main OS kinda includes prioritizing advanced features and versatility over the UX. Even firefox is not as nice on windows than on mac.
_smfg 2y ago
the lack of consistent UI experiences in windows was a thing that really bugged me and why I've never looked back after switching to MacOS

satvikpendem 2y ago

I never understood the need for Notepad++. If I want to edit text quickly, notepad works fine, maybe I'll use vim or something if needed. If I want to view code, again vim works fine, and maybe VSCode if I know I'll be actively working on it. I don't see the usecase for Notepad++ personally speaking.

badsectoracula 2y ago
Notepad++ is an alternative to Vim, so if you are using Vim you are covering most use cases of Notepad++ already. In Windows i use Notepad++ so i don't have to use Vim (which is for me the only viable alternative of a lightweight "programmer's editor" and what i used for a while before learning about Notepad++ - everything else, like vscode, emacs, etc feel much more heavyweight) since i dislike its modal nature and non-standard[0] shortcuts. [0] i know that technically they predate whatever Notepad++ uses but pretty much everything else (including on KDE, GNOME, most X11 toolkits, etc) uses the same or similar shortcuts and keys as Notepad++ so who came first is moot, it is what i am used to that matters
Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
> I don't see the usecase for Notepad++ personally speaking Then don't use it. For sure regular notepad works fine for quick text edit. The use case for notepad++ is for when you want to do more than that. I, for example, frequently have to do a bunch of more complicated things to plain text files and notepad++ works great for those where notepad has no chance.
hyperdimension 2y ago
Try notepad2. It's an decent improvement from notepad while not going full notepad++. I install it on new Windows boxes and have it replace notepad.exe (there is an option to do this in setup.)
0x073 2y ago
I dont trust notepad to edit configs, \n is no problem anymore but there is always a way to corrupt files with notepad. Never had this issues for notepad++. For text it's fine.

reportgunner 2y ago

They don't make the paints and notepads like they used to.

pajko 2y ago

Be careful with Irfanview and XNView as these are free strictly for personal use (non commercial). An open-source alternative I've been using is: https://nomacs.org/ https://nomacs.org/