this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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A broken clock can be right twice a day. Unless someone keeps playing with the dials.
As a former user, and an hardcore fanboy, I loved MS and Windows. They made computers accessible for the general public. The OS and the office suite were great. The sheer amount of available software for it was phenomenal. They even decided to publish games, which meant quality!
Until they decided to break things.
XP was a great OS, Vista wasn't. Then 7 was back to being good just for 8 to be not as good. Then Cortana and Edge and the push for cloud computing.
What worked, worked well and was actually useful was changed, removed, phased out...
GNU/Linux is not without its dramas and difficulties but we can expect a good degree of continuity between each version of a software (I'm looking a you, Gnome!). And if we're that hell bent on having that specific specific piece of software or OS setup, well, we can.
MS by contrast just chucks the good things out and doesn't even let them floating around as something users may add to their system.
Does someone remembers the PowerToys collection?
PowerToys is alive and well, and updated regularly. More features now too.
PowerToys is very much live and available for download. I use it daily.
PowerToys:
https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/microsoft-powertoys/XP89DCGQ3K6VLD
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/
Unpopular opinion: Vista was actually a good step forward, but the hardware of the time wasn't up for the task which made it run like dogshit, and hence the public perception. It brought in better memory management, and UAC for better security among other things.
They often replace things, e.g. the Photos app had a Video editor built in but now that's a separate and better app. I think they're doing a pretty good job of their software range actually.
What bugs me about Windows is actually their striving so much for backwards compatibility that there's at least 6 ways to edit things or data and they're all still officially supported. It's a bit bloaty and no Devs have any consensus.
The newer version is installed on my Windows 11 and is under active development.
That name rings a bell. My username is from "Tweak Tools 95", which I think was a part of that or something.
Edit: Also Windows has a long history of alternating good and bad versions.
In theory, the next version of Windows should be fairly good, or at least an improvement on 11. However I worry that MS will buck the trend now - particularly as they've pivoted away from software sales to software as a service (with additional data collection because fuck paying users).
Unpopular opinion: Win 11 works well for me, and is visually better than Win 10. Although it's a fairly recent PC. Although if they keep pushing more telemetry and ads, I'm moving over to Ubuntu.
Why does everyone keep forgetting 2000 and 8.1?
2000 was mostly NT and business stuff (which later became XP), and 8.1 by definition isn't really a new version.
Actually, 8.1 is, or at least they market it like a new version just like Windows 7.