Comment by wewewedxfgdf
5 hours ago
State of Windows?
It's so out of touch, people hate it.
People want a simple, clean, minimal, consistent OS that does not have anyone's interests first except the user. Windows 11 is a very, very long way from this.
Honestly Windows 95 is closer to ideal than Windows 11.
The state of Windows is: disaster.
The amount of research that went into making Windows 95 a user friendly OS is actually quite impressive. They didn't have all the kinks ironed out, and they couldn't foresee everything, but it's was a pretty solid effort.
I wonder how much research went into Windows 11, or 10 or 8 for that matter, and to what ends that research was made.
There actually is a concrete reference for the Windows 95 era research. Microsoft published detailed results from their usability work in the mid-90s, including task based testing with real users, error analysis, and iterative design changes.
Article title: The Windows® 95 User Interface: A Case Study in Usability Engineering (1996)
Link: https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/238386.238611
Fortunately for Microsoft, macOS 26 (Tahoe) is an even bigger disaster. Even John Gruber won't upgrade. So Microsoft is under no pressure at the moment.
The complaints about Apple are from decades of excellent design and about a pixel being off or other small items that people with well trained eyes spot. The problems with Windows are forcing you to run Onedrive and then deleting your files
I use Linux for home and both Windows 11 and Tahoe for work. I personally find Windows 11 actively hostile while Tahoe is mostly just whatever. I'd much rather be using Tahoe.
I have been using Tahoe since it came out, and I really don't understand all the hate on it. Some of the aesthetics are a little off, but not burdensome. The only thing I really don't like is the large, rounded corners on windows.
Fair or not, we could lump in application regressions that came along with Tahoe.
One glaring example is Music, where the playback controls were moved from the top of the window (which is now empty space) to a "transparent" panel that overlaps the content in the browser. I mean... WTF.
Tahoe UI sucks and is a dumpster fire but for the most parts it's still just normal MacOS. Windows 11 on the other hand actively hinders my productivity.
You said that as if Linux desktop weren't a thing.
...and you're mostly right.
Isn't Chrome OS "the Linux Desktop" for most non-developer people?
90% of the people I know don't need any software that isn't either delivered via the Web, or limited for purely business reasons to an 'APP™' for mobile phones only.
The remainder of the possible uses of a "computer" are mainly video editing and non-casual gaming.
So if Windows and macOS continue to drag their reputations through the mud, Chrome OS, the Linux Desktop, is the most likely beneficiary.
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Well, with the help of Microsoft and Apple, who knows? This might just be the years of the Linux desktop!
Valve has made Linux gaming a thing. So, even normies are trying it…
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Hey wait...there are...er...dozens of us!
::sigh:: Windows is an AI slop hellhole, and MacOS is way more interested in being flashy than being good. It should be Linux's time to shine as a general-audience desktop OS... but the usability just isn't there.
As everyone points out when talking about Linux usability, it's fine for your grampa who just uses the email client and browser, but those users are switching to tablets, en masse, anyway. It's obviously fine for technically savvy users who are willing to deal with the periodic breakage or other hassle.
Importantly, It's just a bad experience for users who require hardware, software or something else that tablets don't facilitate, but aren't interested in looking through stack overflow posts and reddit threads to see why the 6 year old tutorial for getting their video editing software to work doesn't apply to the distro they just installed because they couldn't figure out how to install their video card drivers on the other distro. And why does that program they used to use to control their firewall not change anything anymore (which to them just looks like the firewall doesn't work, so they can never research their way out of the problem?) And how do I [insert the bazillion other problems that are non-issues for people with the background knowledge, but for everyone else, frustrating, time-wasting brick walls that probably cost them more in lost billable time than multiple copies of Windows 11 Pro.]
I've been using Linux since the 90s but I still don't use it for a lot of my media work. It's just too much of a PITA when I just need to satisfy my use case, which has nothing to do with the OS.
Even the commercial distros like RHEL are just, comparatively... janky. I really wish it was easier to integrate more interface design expertise into FOSS development. The workflows are just super different. This is why commercial products have product managers that can objectively balance and coordinate the efforts between design and development. I think we've gotten to a point where more of the FOSS crowd sees the benefit of competent expert UI designers, but making that practically useful is a tough nut to crack.
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Completely incomparable! It is not a bigger disaster. John Grubber is being an aesthetic stickler -— “comically sad icons”, “indiscriminate transparency” leading to things that are ugly, hard to grab-to-resize rounded window corners, icons in menus “ruining Mac’s signature menu system.”
If you think that adding icons all over the place to menu items RUINS it, I think you’re either in a MacOS “purist stickler” category (which John Gruber is in), or you’re hyping things up for clicks. Because no sane person would call this ruining the menu system.
And new icons “comically sad”? Someone call the whambulance. I saw the new icons, and they are fine. Sure, they are different. But I am not laughing and/or crying about them, and I bet most people don’t find them comically sad either.
Mac is all about premium experiences. Not everyone cares about premium experiences, and that's okay! But those that do aren't going to settle for small degradations such as the ones you mention that in aggregate significantly downgrades the experience.
macOS (not iOS) used to be this. POSIX underpinnings. Iconography and visual language designed for clarity and simplicity. Balances between customizability and system stability with deactivatable gatekeepers.
Now, the same way Windows serves Microsoft’s AI investments, Apple serves a nebulous corporate goal for inimitable (read: too unpredictable/unreliable for competitors to copy) Liquid [Gl]ass user interfaces at the expense of clarity, and launch speed at the expense of stability.
I’m not sure if Steve Jobs would have complained about the market capitalization - but he certainly would have executed product improvements more cleanly.
It’s not yet the year of Linux on desktop, I don’t think - but we get closer every year.
> It’s not yet the year of Linux on desktop, I don’t think - but we get closer every year.
It is if you want it to be. For me it was 1996 - been doing great on Linux since then.
> It’s not yet the year of Linux on desktop, I don’t think - but we get closer every year.
For me it is. I was already considering going back to Linux for a while, and MacOS Tahoe pushed me over the fence. Got a Thinkpad with Linux as a replacement for my MacBook some months ago and don’t regret it yet.
Yeah, the regressions in Mac OS are particularly ill-timed and infuriating because there is no real competition now. I consider Windows unusable. It's not even worth talking about anymore; and I was a big Windows fan (and developer) into the 2000s. Now I don't have a single instance of Windows running in my house.
If Apple's slide continues, computing will recede back to its hobbyist/academic roots, I guess.
I always find some things that doesn't work with my PC on windows 11. Sometimes things as simple as moving files in explorer makes it hangs where I had to restart explorer.exe. This is embarrassing really that windows can't get this right. There are so many times where I was frustrated and wished that I can just use my macbook pro as my only workstation. I just wish that steam on linux has full support for most games that are it supports in windows then i'll make the switch
my pc is not even that old, its ryzen 9 5900x with rtx 3080 and 32gb ram. however it is sluggish compared to my m1 pro macbook pro
> I just wish that steam on linux has full support for most games that are it supports in windows then i'll make the switch
That day is today (assuming you don't play games with kernel anti-cheat).
I'm anxiously waiting for a slightly better Nvidia support. It'll either be Bazzite or CachyOS, it seems.
Id rather have something mainstream, like Fedora i dislike but know its daemons better, but tough luck, it seem.
Still, it's so fragmented. If I want a server, I have two families to chose from and two exactly solid choices. I'd I want a desktop for work - 2-4 solid choices.
But desktop for gaming? Well, it's where "well, it depends" starts.
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Steam on Linux is great. I'm playing Deadlock and Arc Raiders on my 3070 Ti without issue, highly recommend it if you're not playing FaceIts or Valorant.
Windows 2000 was peak. All improvements from XP onwards were negligible.
Improvements? Windows has suffered an ever-accelerating slide into the toilet, starting with Vista.
It was all downhill from 3.11
That was the best. With sound drivers
Have you actually used Windows 95? It was awful. Crashed every four hours, driver hell, etc
Windows 95 has some legitimate problem but one thing that was nice is that Microsoft (and Apple) were doing Skeuomorph, so training users to use it was a joy. It was designed to be easy to learn. Today they don't really care how users are trained, and just assume they'll figure it out.
PS - Yes, Skeuomoric concepts age out, like Floppy Disk-Save Icons, but the concept still has merit. It can help "ground" the experience.
They were not doing skeuomorphism. They were using simple visual clues, like "bevels" on buttons, to convey the existence of a control and its state. They weren't disguising controls as "paint" on "felt" on a gaming table, as Apple Game Center did at the peak of their cheesiness.
The overreaction known as "flat" design (AKA no design) has fortunately started to recede. Still... some derelict "designers" are still deliver Advent calendars instead of usable applications.
I have. Blame the drivers, not the OS. Vista wasn't great for the same reasons. Sure, Windows 11 mostly doesn't have driver problems, but that doesn't mean the OS is great. It's largely irrelevant to the point being made.
I remember those days. Thankfully Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 had a Windows 95/98-style desktop but used the rock-solid NT kernel. Unfortunately they were not marketed to home users.
I feel similarly about the classic Mac OS: excellent interface and UI guidelines hampered by its cooperative multitasking and its lack of protected memory.
Windows XP and Mac OS X were major blessings, bringing the NT kernel and Mach/BSD underpinnings, respectively, to home computing users.
I have. Also windows 98, Me (I loved it), NT 4.0, 2000, 2003 (as a workstation), XP, 7, (loved 7; skipped Vista, skipped 8), windows 10 is my last one.
I really really liked windows 95. It rarely crashed on me even though I used and abused it extensively. It lived running smoothly, tolerated tinkering and uni files shenanigans.
The i loved 7. To me it was a pinnacle. All comfort, no crap. Win 10 was less convenient (even if safer), and it was a constant struggle with the subversive, hostile vendor.
Windows 95 is closer to the ideal, I agree with GP, although to me the closest is Windows 7 tbh.
Nonsense. And 98 was even better.
This was back when you'd hook up a new printer or other device to a Windows computer, and it would detect it and prompt you for a driver disk. During that same era (and well past it, into the 2000s) if you plugged something into a Mac... nothing would happen. You had to go hunt down a driver for it and initiate the installation process yourself.
How times have changed.
I was doing tech support through the Windows 95/98/ME period and it was hell. Everything either crashed the OS or required a restart if you touched it.
When Windows 2000 rolled around and I saw how stable it was, I went out and bought it to put on my gaming PC. Another friend from work laughed at me and told me how terrible "Windows NT" was for running games until he saw how smooth Starcraft ran on it.
Yeah, Windows 95/98/ME were terrible.
It was unstable but it was nice to use. It introduced a lot of UI elements that are now taken for granted. I remember starting to build a window manager that replicated the win95 look.
I wouldn't be so certain of this. People on HN hate it for sure, but this is a bit of an echo chamber.
Non-technical users aren't fans of random UI changes either. On the contrary, they hate having to re-learn shit every whatever-the-fuck years.
Welcome to Hacker News 26! I know you're trying to read a comment now, but would you like to take a tour of new features?
[ ] — Yes, I'd welcome a half-hour distraction from the thing I need to use the computer for right now!
[ ] — No, I want to get my thing done now but then be confused about missing or new buttons at random intervals for the next six to eighteen months!
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No,lots of people hate it. The biggest haters I know in real life are non technical users.
However, they will continue to use it so MS does not need to worry about them.
At least in the comment sections on tech/PC gaming YouTube people are frustrated with it there too.
On the other hand YouTube tries to serve me content I want so maybe thats just the algo talking.
people tend to complain more than comment on being content. A fraction of a percent of windows user base is a lot of people. ( given around 500 million.... 1 percent is 5 million people ish, it would seem to me much much less than 5 million people are generally complaining)
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I don't have an issue with it and I started with 98. There are somethings I'd change, but I do feel like I read a lot of hyperbole.
Provided I only largely use my PC for gaming.
HN users are the global thought leaders and (hate the term) influencers in technology and what they think has massively outsized impact on the way the tech world works.
and other hilarious jokes we can tell ourselves :P
There's a fast-follow "You're absolutely right!" from Claude pending here. :)
If this is a joke, it was a very good one.
God. The pretentiousness.
Clearly leading something alright
If that were the case, every single project would be hosted on Hetzner with a Postgres database and everyone would be running Linux desktops everywhere. It's not happening.
>"HN users are the global thought leaders and (hate the term) influencers"
I've no idea about leaders as those do not write here much. As for "influencers" - my golden rule is to research subject I am having doubts about and pay zero attention to what so called "influencers" say.
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I think that I struggled much less with Window 95 as a child than I struggle with Windows 11 today, as I near 40.
what evidence do you have that people hate it? keeping in mind that a fraction of a percent of their user base is going to be a LOT of people so at any given time you can find a lot of people complaining.
> Around 500 million PCs are holding off upgrading to Windows 11, says Dell.
> “We have about 500 million of them capable of running Windows 11 that haven’t been upgraded,” said Dell COO Jeffrey Clarke on a Q3 earnings call earlier this week, referring to the overall PC market, not just Dell’s slice of machines.
And that's ignoring the 500 million that can't upgrade due to TPM requirements or whatever.
https://www.theverge.com/news/831364/dell-windows-11-upgrade...
what's that evidence of? it's also an estimate of all PCs that can upgrade, of 1.5 billion, 500 million still haven't upgraded. Certainly not evidence that people hate it. Many reasons why IT departments may not have upgraded things or why people haven't. In fact, the ones who haven't upgraded kind of are the people who are least likely to know about what windows 11 is like.
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OP is certainly a metaphorical as well as a technical question