4 ms·

One thing I appreciate about Windows is (in my experience at least) you almost never have to go into the command line to change a weird setting. There's always

by ayaros 11mo ago

One thing I appreciate about Windows is (in my experience at least) you almost never have to go into the command line to change a weird setting. There's always a toggle in the GUI somewhere. I mean, I'll use the command line if I have to... I just like the fact that the supported options are enumerated visually; I don't have to worry I'll break something. Also, I can peruse through a place like the group policy editor to find settings I would have otherwise never considered changing.

kevstev 11mo ago
The equivalent in the win world to obscure command line settings is the registry. There is a whole heap of documented and undocumented config in there. 99% of the time you don't really need to go in there, but its often the more automatable way and occasionally you will find some fun options.
- NooneAtAll3 11mo ago
  and unsuprisingly that's considered one of the worst parts of windows
  - Two9A 11mo ago
    Mm, I still recall the time my Windows 98 installation corrupted its registry somehow. The only fix was to reinstall, and the machine had no floppy or CD drive... getting Windows back on there was a task.
    - kevstev 11mo ago
      No floppy or CD? You were just asking for trouble then IMHO. It was common to have to reinstall windows every 6-9 months in the win9x days. That didn't even really work for ME, but by then win2000 came in to save the day. Software was primarily distributed on CD those days, being without a CD drive must have been a huge hardship.
      - askonomm 11mo ago
        I vividly remember having to reinstall Windows also in the XP days at least once a year due to malware or due to anti-malware software slowly strangling the OS.
  - rincebrain 11mo ago
    Once upon a time, someone at Microsoft wished on a monkey's paw for a way to replace thousands of undocumented INI files throughout the filesystem. It curled, and we got the registry.
knome 11mo ago
I appreciate linux for the inverse reason. Because everything is either a nice text based config file or a command line tool, scripting changes to settings and automating things is a breeze.
- psunavy03 11mo ago
  That works for technical folks, but it's also a barrier to Linux adoption when too many things require dropping to a Bash terminal and dorking around. Try getting Grandma or Katie from HR to be able to do that . . .
  - diggydog 11mo ago
    Frankly, scripting makes it easier form me to help users: "double click on this when you return home. It will put your computer on the correct wifi, give it a fixed ip address, and poison your hosts file so that stupid NAS works and then setup a guest mount for the two SMB share that are still using SMB 1.0"
  - Daviey 11mo ago
    It's a barrier not because it is hard, but because people are not familiar with it. Ask a non-technical user using the GUI to edit their display settings and they'll be equally flummoxed.
  - smegger001 11mo ago
    Grandma, if she is on linux I probably set it up for her and left myself ssh access so I can update/fix it for her. Katie from HR shouldn't touch settings she should file a ticket and wait for the helpdesk monkey or IT to fix it.
  - jasonvorhe 11mo ago
    Grandma gets her computer setup by family, Katie probably has tech support or a managed device. I've been setting up Linux for friends and relatives and apart from 1-2 niche issues I didn't even have to do any support because stuff just works.
NooneAtAll3 11mo ago
I agree as a long time windows user, I wish linux copied this feature more
- bena 11mo ago
  I think the issue with that is that linux is the kernel. Everything around it is how you interact with it. So how to change settings would be the responsibility of the shell used. And there are several shells and even window managers on top of those. I forget if there's a graphical shell, but it's irrelevant. And that's not getting into the issue of whether or not something is a kernel issue or not. And it could be the responsibility of the distro to provide the tools to change the settings. Basically, it's a lot of people with no obligation to each other trying to work in concert. The situation on Windows is different. Windows is both the kernel and the shell and the window manager and the provider for a lot of the core tools. Apple sidestepped the issue with OSX. They took a robust kernel, FreeBSD, and created a GUI and tools on top of that. I think they also essentially took over FreeBSD or at least forked it internally.
  - skissane 11mo ago
    > They took a robust kernel, FreeBSD, and created a GUI and tools on top of that. I think they also essentially took over FreeBSD or at least forked it internally. They used NeXT’s XNU kernel which was a merger between CMU’s Mach and Berkeley’s 4.3BSD. They later refreshed it with code from OSF’s MK derivative of Mach (which also incorporated some code from the University of Utah) and code from FreeBSD, and have added a huge amount of new code of their own. They continue to pull new code from FreeBSD every now and again, but it isn’t so much a plain fork of FreeBSD as a merger between parts of FreeBSD and a lot of other stuff with a completely different heritage
Daviey 11mo ago
Interestingly, I feel polar opposite to you. Digging through a clunky GUI, going multiple levels deep, to find a tick box is annoying.. When I can just run a single one-line to achieve what I need. I suppose different strokes..
- QuercusMax 11mo ago
  MacOS has the best of both worlds - you can interact with propertylists through the gui, or you can use the commandline.

by ayaros 11mo ago

kevstev 11mo ago

The equivalent in the win world to obscure command line settings is the registry. There is a whole heap of documented and undocumented config in there. 99% of the time you don't really need to go in there, but its often the more automatable way and occasionally you will find some fun options.

NooneAtAll3 11mo ago
and unsuprisingly that's considered one of the worst parts of windows
- Two9A 11mo ago
  Mm, I still recall the time my Windows 98 installation corrupted its registry somehow. The only fix was to reinstall, and the machine had no floppy or CD drive... getting Windows back on there was a task.
  - kevstev 11mo ago
    No floppy or CD? You were just asking for trouble then IMHO. It was common to have to reinstall windows every 6-9 months in the win9x days. That didn't even really work for ME, but by then win2000 came in to save the day. Software was primarily distributed on CD those days, being without a CD drive must have been a huge hardship.
    - askonomm 11mo ago
      I vividly remember having to reinstall Windows also in the XP days at least once a year due to malware or due to anti-malware software slowly strangling the OS.
- rincebrain 11mo ago
  Once upon a time, someone at Microsoft wished on a monkey's paw for a way to replace thousands of undocumented INI files throughout the filesystem. It curled, and we got the registry.

knome 11mo ago

I appreciate linux for the inverse reason. Because everything is either a nice text based config file or a command line tool, scripting changes to settings and automating things is a breeze.

psunavy03 11mo ago
That works for technical folks, but it's also a barrier to Linux adoption when too many things require dropping to a Bash terminal and dorking around. Try getting Grandma or Katie from HR to be able to do that . . .
- diggydog 11mo ago
  Frankly, scripting makes it easier form me to help users: "double click on this when you return home. It will put your computer on the correct wifi, give it a fixed ip address, and poison your hosts file so that stupid NAS works and then setup a guest mount for the two SMB share that are still using SMB 1.0"
- Daviey 11mo ago
  It's a barrier not because it is hard, but because people are not familiar with it. Ask a non-technical user using the GUI to edit their display settings and they'll be equally flummoxed.
- smegger001 11mo ago
  Grandma, if she is on linux I probably set it up for her and left myself ssh access so I can update/fix it for her. Katie from HR shouldn't touch settings she should file a ticket and wait for the helpdesk monkey or IT to fix it.
- jasonvorhe 11mo ago
  Grandma gets her computer setup by family, Katie probably has tech support or a managed device. I've been setting up Linux for friends and relatives and apart from 1-2 niche issues I didn't even have to do any support because stuff just works.

NooneAtAll3 11mo ago

I agree as a long time windows user, I wish linux copied this feature more

bena 11mo ago
I think the issue with that is that linux is the kernel. Everything around it is how you interact with it. So how to change settings would be the responsibility of the shell used. And there are several shells and even window managers on top of those. I forget if there's a graphical shell, but it's irrelevant. And that's not getting into the issue of whether or not something is a kernel issue or not. And it could be the responsibility of the distro to provide the tools to change the settings. Basically, it's a lot of people with no obligation to each other trying to work in concert. The situation on Windows is different. Windows is both the kernel and the shell and the window manager and the provider for a lot of the core tools. Apple sidestepped the issue with OSX. They took a robust kernel, FreeBSD, and created a GUI and tools on top of that. I think they also essentially took over FreeBSD or at least forked it internally.
- skissane 11mo ago
  > They took a robust kernel, FreeBSD, and created a GUI and tools on top of that. I think they also essentially took over FreeBSD or at least forked it internally. They used NeXT’s XNU kernel which was a merger between CMU’s Mach and Berkeley’s 4.3BSD. They later refreshed it with code from OSF’s MK derivative of Mach (which also incorporated some code from the University of Utah) and code from FreeBSD, and have added a huge amount of new code of their own. They continue to pull new code from FreeBSD every now and again, but it isn’t so much a plain fork of FreeBSD as a merger between parts of FreeBSD and a lot of other stuff with a completely different heritage

Daviey 11mo ago

Interestingly, I feel polar opposite to you. Digging through a clunky GUI, going multiple levels deep, to find a tick box is annoying.. When I can just run a single one-line to achieve what I need. I suppose different strokes..

QuercusMax 11mo ago
MacOS has the best of both worlds - you can interact with propertylists through the gui, or you can use the commandline.