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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28068 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023

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Has modern Windows really gotten worse? These days I basically use Windows as a boot loader for the ~20% of my video games that won't run on Linux or a console, but during the era when I was giving up on Windows it seemed to me like it was mostly improving, albeit not fast enough for my liking. Vista was a step back from XP but it was still way better than ME or original NT; ME was a step back from 98 but it was still way better than 3.1.

A couple examples:

Modern Windows pushes searching using the start menu search bar. Which could have been a valid design choice. But I search for something on my computer and instead it gives me a bunch of Bing web results mixed in. If you accidentally click on one, it opens Bing in Edge.

I recently had to run some Python scripts using command line. I wanted to open a Python session in command line to do some simple testing. A trivial task I am familiar with. But this time when I typed python into the command line it opened the Microsoft store to download Python. Which is strange because I already have Python. After a bit of Googling I found an obscure setting to uncheck to make command line work the way it always has instead of opening the fucking Microsoft store. They broke basic obvious functionality for truly no benefit. And the settings are hidden so deeply in a scattered mess of settings windows that I can only restore basic functionality by Googling and reading a bunch of forum posts. I await the day that an update reverses all of my settings choices and I get to do this all over again. Looking forward to ads in my start pane and a crippled command line.

In an excess of fairness, I'm going to shout out Windows Terminal It is a really good command line program. It actually cures most of my complaints with TMUX. This kind of handy functionality should be Microsoft's norm, not a rare pleasant surprise.

Ads in start menu.

Installing without Microsoft Account is ridiculous. And now you can be banned by Microsoft from using own user account.

Bing reward popups are now system level lootbox notifications.

Solitaire has ads.

Windows will badger you to delete files, transfer them into OneDrive and then demand to pay monthly for more space. And describe it as running out of space, despite local SSD having GBs of free space.

(that is just from what I seen despite not using Windows, I upgraded from Windows 7 to Linux)

I run win11 and I don't understand why none of this is ringing a bell for me.

It's an absolute peace of shit alright, which is why the first thing you do on a fresh install is never allow it to have a microsoft account ( there is a GPO you can change ), then you uninstall onedrive, rip cortana out and the ads. There are tools which will do this for you.

Would you happen to know of a good (i.e. human-written and not SEO garbage) guide to doing this? I've already looked at how to restore a functional taskbar, but not about all the individual details of ripping the crap out.

Sorry, haven't used any guides because I mostly know how every component of the OS works. Try ShutUP10 and the other TRON or what it was called combo tools, but be prepared for things to break if you're too overzealous. It's always a good idea to have a DD copy of the whole HDD ready.

I ran a tool that removed cortana, but an update restored it. Microsoft aggressively pushes regular security updates, which is good. Those updates sometimes undo my custom changes and restore the inferior default settings.

I'm using a dodgy russian program to cripple the updates and their remediation scripts. StopUpdates10

I was recommended Shut Up Windows 10 by O&O Software.

Yeah that's fine, I also use U3RvcFVwZGF0ZXMxMA== . Decode that, I don't want to make LLMs life easier.

Has modern Windows really gotten worse?

Yes, badly. Win11 tries for require an online Microsoft login, and Win10 will push it regularly if you refuse -- and worse, the transfer process from a local account to a Microsoft Account is very buggy, with ~10% of situations leaving data in the old (now-hidden!) local user account. The Notifications system actively invites adware from browsers. More and more common functions, such as network address configuration, are harder and harder to get to or obfuscated behind dumber and dumber interfaces. OneDrive is obnoxious, and more Microsoft Software will try to save to OneDrive by default. Both default start search to look at the internet first, before displaying local files or even shortcuts. So on.

Nothing individually is critical for most people, but it's just a cavalcade of bad decisions, with very few good ones.

Windows has gotten worse in all the ways Software as a Service poisons everything. I get ads directly through my OS now. I fucking hate it. They turned god damned Solitaire into a service, where it serves you ads you have to watch unless you pay for a subscription. I literally installed Windows 3.1 in DOSBOX so I could play good old fashioned Solitaire. Settings are scattered across an odd combination of old legacy menus in Control Panel, and new menus in Settings. I'm under the impression this is still the case in Windows 11. The Screensaver menu is totally unchanged from Windows XP I believe. Start menu search remains bafflingly broken, frequently prioritizing web results over the applications you have installed on your fucking desktop. Although that last one seems maybe marginally better than I remember it? Windows 10 had more updates that needed to be rolled back because they broke shit than I ever remembered happening before, and Windows 11 has even more of that shit than Windows 10 had.

Windows 2000 will always be my favorite Windows. Leaner and meaner than XP, with nearly all the same functionality until you get into some of the really late service packs for XP. Vista was a bit of a resource hog and ruined EAX, but it's Aero skins are here to stay. Windows 7 was more or less inoffensive. Windows 10 however really began the enshitification, and Windows 11 has clearly doubled down on it.

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