Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 09:42:20 PM

Login with username, password and session length

Windows is bad in some ways

Started by Zetetic, August 01, 2021, 05:26:40 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Zetetic

Some of you might remember my posts along the lines of "PowerShell is pretty neat actually" and "I love Windows now, it's wonderful, I submit to with the whole of my person".

Having touched C:\Program Files\WindowsApps (because I wanted to get at some game files) and then progressively nuked my whole Windows install (apparently irrevocably)[nb]A load of cunting nonsense around esoteric ACLs and interaction with "authz conditional checks", all made deliberately painful to mess around with I suspect.[/nb], and then discovered that I didn't have a 5GB+ USB drive (because this isn't the fucking 1920s and I don't need physical media to move stuff around), and then discovered that the latest Windows 10 installer ISO shits itself when loaded via PXE+TFTP (or at least did on my hardware)... I'm less of a fan of Microsoft Windows.

Being positive, I've learnt how to install Windows using diskpart and dism[nb]disgusting[/nb], got Memtest86+ served via PXE and discovered how to boot various Linux live images over the internet using https://netboot.xyz/ (which is kind of neat).


Zetetic

It's surprising how dogshit the Xbox Game Pass on PC experience remains, broadly.

Zetetic

Fuck pig christ there's a good chance that the problem wasn't even that I'd touched WindowApps, but some fucking nonsense about Gaming Services just silently crashing because it didn't like my network setup (IPv6/4 issue? DNS? who the fuck knows).

evilcommiedictator

I like that Xbox gamespass requires the xbox toolbar installed........which is it, but if you're like me and have gone through the control panel and disabled everything not nailed down you can't start anything up. It's not easy to add friends, or to join their games, it's shitful.
And they're still trying to make the Microsoft Store happen, which is even more hilarious

The Mollusk

I thought I could feel my 2012 MacBook Air starting to expire a few months ago and I wanted a more recent machine to use as a music making laptop with some hardware which is also a decade old, so I bought a refurb Dell laptop from 2019 and was astounded to discover it's somehow slower than the MacBook which is nearly a 10 years older than it. I was using a 2012 MPC Studio with its original software on the Windows laptop and the delay between me hitting the pad and hearing a sound was seriously like a quarter of a second. Set it up on the MacBook and there's no delay whatsoever, runs like a dream.

I used Windows constantly from like age 12 to 25 and didn't know any better. When I switched to Apple it took a while but I gradually noticed a world of difference in how intuitive its operating system is and how smoothly everything runs without issue. On returning to Windows (which I only did because in terms of good spec I could get more bang for my buck, and following extensive research on what would be the best machine for my budget and needs), I immediately noticed how fucking abysmal that system is.

I constantly find myself asking, "why the fuck is it doing that?" to many of its baffling processes. Why does it tell me it's installing Spotify every time I open it and takes about 30 seconds to fully load it up ready to use? Why does the screen brighten/dim depending on the brightness of the tones of whatever's currently on the screen and why does it seem like I have to rummage in the gubbins of the coding just to fucking disable that absolute garbage feature? Why does it point blank refuse to connect to an external display with an HDMI cable? When I'm typing and want to delete/replace a word, when I double click that word, why does it also select the space after it? WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF DOING THAT? I hate it.

Sonny_Jim

I clicked 'rollback driver' on my joystick in Device Manager and it completely hosed my Win 10 install.  The best part was having to type in the insanely long bitlocker password[nb]that I don't even remember turning on, is it on by default now?[/nb] every time I wanted to try and repair.  In the end I had to backup all my stuff and reinstall Windows.  I thought we were past shit like this.....

georgetaylor

Windows as a user interface reached completion with XP, everything added / taken away since then has made it worse.

1) Forward button in file explorer, serves no purpose.
2) Lack of 'up a folder' button, breaking the mental map of the file system.
3) Control panel spread all over the place, just where is the 'allow this device to sleep' setting, it's not attached to the device properties.
4) A text list of programs is perfectly adequate, no need for tiles.
5) Breadcrumbs, not required, nobody asked for that.
6) Hiding the file extensions is a terrible idea, but it's the default.
7) No delete button in file explorer, have to right click, but the right click menu can appear in one of 4 different places so you have to wait for it to appear and then move to the delete icon
8) Disappearing scroll bars, WTF!
9) Update is not an important function, go away.
10) Menus should not animate, open NOW, I'm in a hurry.
11) Folders need a number in the 'size' column, a blank space is not acceptable.
12) intelligent menus that show you 'most used' commands and hide everything else, eventually leading to...
13) The fucking ribbon
14) I don't need a button to 'show desktop', I'm not an idiot that keeps things on the desktop.
15) etc

I use file explorer a lot, and the deliberate limitations based on what presumably they think people do with it can be frustrating. I often open two folder windows so I can copy things here to there, but windows insists on opening the two windows directly on top of each other, hey this is where the last window was opened, that must be where it needs to go, bang, directly on top.

Oh yeah, different windows should be easy to tell which one is active, making everything ever so slightly different shades of grey is a shit idea and you should be fired.

seepage

Quote from: georgetaylor on August 02, 2021, 03:37:19 PM
Windows as a user interface reached completion with XP, everything added / taken away since then has made it worse.

2) Lack of 'up a folder' button, breaking the mental map of the file system.

6) Hiding the file extensions is a terrible idea, but it's the default.

10) Menus should not animate, open NOW, I'm in a hurry.
11) Folders need a number in the 'size' column, a blank space is not acceptable.
14) I don't need a button to 'show desktop', I'm not an idiot that keeps things on the desktop.


Up a folder is there.
Easy to turn off animated menus. However, performance settings for an administrator will override a normal user, so have to set again for normal user
size easy to add
Windows paradigm is to drag & drop documents from the desktop onto a program icon, hence the desktop is backed up to OneDrive.

weird one recently was the last Windows Explorer search repeating all by itself on its own. The apparent cause was outdated video driver (eh!). Updated the video driver and that's gone away so apparently true.

evilcommiedictator

Quote from: georgetaylor on August 02, 2021, 03:37:19 PM
Windows as a user interface reached completion with XP, everything added / taken away since then has made it worse.

1) Forward button in file explorer, serves no purpose.
3) Control panel spread all over the place, just where is the 'allow this device to sleep' setting, it's not attached to the device properties.
4) A text list of programs is perfectly adequate, no need for tiles.
7) No delete button in file explorer, have to right click, but the right click menu can appear in one of 4 different places so you have to wait for it to appear and then move to the delete icon
14) I don't need a button to 'show desktop', I'm not an idiot that keeps things on the desktop.

I use file explorer a lot, and the deliberate limitations based on what presumably they think people do with it can be frustrating. I often open two folder windows so I can copy things here to there, but windows insists on opening the two windows directly on top of each other, hey this is where the last window was opened, that must be where it needs to go, bang, directly on top.

Forward button is useful say if you've just used the back button on your mouse and have your thumb right there.......
There's a search now in the control panel, sure, everything in there is there in two places, a Win 10 menu and an XP menu
4 & 14 - have you seen what happens at the bottom of a Mac screen?
Imagine if there was a "delete" key......

You also know Win 10 can snap windows very easily, and if you snap the first window, the second won't be on top of it?

pigamus

Quote from: georgetaylor on August 02, 2021, 03:37:19 PM
14) I don't need a button to 'show desktop', I'm not an idiot that keeps things on the desktop..

Oi

JesusAndYourBush

Ok, while we're talking about windows, maybe someone can solve this...

So I'm converting .m4a files to wav.
To do this I open a dos box, navigate to the folder with the audio in and copy & paste this from a txt file
for %i in (*.m4a) do ffmpeg -i "%i" "%~ni.wav"
and that converts all the m4a's into wav (I have a copy of ffmpeg in the folder).

I tried saving time by putting it in a batch file in the folder so I could just click it each time I need to convert more files but the fucker doesn't work.  Is there something else I also need to put in the batch file in order for it to work?


Zetetic

Stick "pause" at the end of the batch script, maybe, to get a hint as to why it's not working.

Blumf

Try

for %%i in (*.m4a) do ffmpeg -i "%%i" "%%~ni.wav"

Note the doubled up % everywhere. Batch scripts are fucking stupid like that.

JesusAndYourBush

Pause did nothing, but the doubling up thing worked, thanks Blumf!


Sebastian Cobb

cutting through the shit the reason nearly all microsoft products are shit is because they keep adding code when they should be removing it.

evilcommiedictator

Powershell is amazing and I'm sure a lot of admins cum in their pants every day when they can use Linux commands in Windows

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: evilcommiedictator on August 04, 2021, 12:06:59 AM
Powershell is amazing and I'm sure a lot of admins cum in their pants every day when they can use Linux commands in Windows

I basically see high use of Microsoft suites as a big red flag when considering potential employers now. Not necessarily because of the tools themselves (although I can't say I'm a fan) but because it usually goes hand-in-hand with laborious administrative processes and top-down management and I just don't want to work in such environments any more.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on August 03, 2021, 09:31:57 PM
cutting through the shit the reason nearly all microsoft products are shit is because they keep adding code when they should be removing it.
Isn't one of the big problems with Windows that it still has bits of old versions at its core, because they insist on keeping support for old programs? Apple tend to have more of a "rip off the plaster" approach to modernising.

Windows 10 is a right mess, with old and new style programs and menus piled on top of one another willy nilly. It has 3 or 4 built in apps for viewing video files and I still had to install VLC.

All that said, maybe I'm just set in my ways, but I've never found Apple stuff more intuitive.

Zetetic

Looks like the problem with GamingServices silently crashing (and thereby breaking most game installs from the Microsoft Store/Xbox beta app) was because I was DNS-blocking a telemetry domain.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth on August 04, 2021, 12:55:09 PM
Isn't one of the big problems with Windows that it still has bits of old versions at its core, because they insist on keeping support for old programs? Apple tend to have more of a "rip off the plaster" approach to modernising.

Windows 10 is a right mess, with old and new style programs and menus piled on top of one another willy nilly. It has 3 or 4 built in apps for viewing video files and I still had to install VLC.

All that said, maybe I'm just set in my ways, but I've never found Apple stuff more intuitive.

Yes, because windows made its way into business in a way Apple didn't they have to keep all the old legacy apis that all sorts of bespoke software relies on, some of which won't be in active development, if they removed it their big corporate users would get a bit upset.

But they do it to things this doesn't apply to - sharepoint and teams for instance. What the fuck even is teams supposed to be? And why isn't it that rather than some monstrosity that's doing several jobs badly and why did nobody stop it?

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth


Sebastian Cobb

Clicked that expecting to see Steve Ballmer jumping around.

Blumf

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on August 04, 2021, 01:50:08 PM
Yes, because windows made its way into business in a way Apple didn't they have to keep all the old legacy apis that all sorts of bespoke software relies on, some of which won't be in active development, if they removed it their big corporate users would get a bit upset.

I'm wondering if Windows Subsystem for Linux is some kind of warm up for a Windows Subsystem for (Old) Windows

However, even if they do manage a break with the past, MS always adds shit to their products, so we'll be back to square one in no time.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Blumf on August 04, 2021, 07:25:17 PM
I'm wondering if Windows Subsystem for Linux is some kind of warm up for a Windows Subsystem for (Old) Windows

However, even if they do manage a break with the past, MS always adds shit to their products, so we'll be back to square one in no time.

It looks like they can do windows in docker containers now, if that would hold for legacy apps at least you can lock them down, only expose necessary ports etc and hopefully if done right limit the chances of host exploits. That would be preferable imo.

It would mean the surrounding stuff (e.g. whatever you're running your db in) can still be patched and kept up to date too.

touchingcloth

Quote from: The Mollusk on August 02, 2021, 07:46:06 AM
I thought I could feel my 2012 MacBook Air starting to expire a few months ago and I wanted a more recent machine to use as a music making laptop with some hardware which is also a decade old, so I bought a refurb Dell laptop from 2019 and was astounded to discover it's somehow slower than the MacBook which is nearly a 10 years older than it. I was using a 2012 MPC Studio with its original software on the Windows laptop and the delay between me hitting the pad and hearing a sound was seriously like a quarter of a second. Set it up on the MacBook and there's no delay whatsoever, runs like a dream.

I used Windows constantly from like age 12 to 25 and didn't know any better. When I switched to Apple it took a while but I gradually noticed a world of difference in how intuitive its operating system is and how smoothly everything runs without issue. On returning to Windows (which I only did because in terms of good spec I could get more bang for my buck, and following extensive research on what would be the best machine for my budget and needs), I immediately noticed how fucking abysmal that system is.

I constantly find myself asking, "why the fuck is it doing that?" to many of its baffling processes. Why does it tell me it's installing Spotify every time I open it and takes about 30 seconds to fully load it up ready to use? Why does the screen brighten/dim depending on the brightness of the tones of whatever's currently on the screen and why does it seem like I have to rummage in the gubbins of the coding just to fucking disable that absolute garbage feature? Why does it point blank refuse to connect to an external display with an HDMI cable? When I'm typing and want to delete/replace a word, when I double click that word, why does it also select the space after it? WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF DOING THAT? I hate it.

Regarding audio stuff in particular, Macs benefit from Apple controlling the whole system from sound cards to OS, so there's usually miles less latency compared with Windows needing to go through layers of third party drivers.

If you're still using the Windows thing for audio work, it'd be worth looking for "ASIO" drivers compatible with your sound card, as in my experience this cuts latency down by a significant amount, though I switched to Macs for home use 10+ years ago so my knowledge of audio on Windows is only relevant up to Vista but, y'know, it's Windows so I imagine that's pretty current.

The Mollusk

Ta for the advice but nah I fucked it off. Old MacBook is handling things way better just by default so will be sticking with that!

Honestly really regret spending £450 on this Dell laptop which I absolutely hate. Wish I could frisbee it into the sun but my fiancée has got used to us having two machines now so she can plan wedding stuff and Skype her family while I'm being a reclusive hip hop genius.

Sebastian Cobb

what the fuck is up with windows 10 copy?

I have a windows 10 vm running in virtualbox (actually the image is the one provided by Microsoft for testing IE11) and have mounted a directory pointing to a git repo on my host machine, I copied the files out, set everything up in Visual Studio on the c:\ copy (since it didn't like using the mount point from my host, which appears as a samba share) and then tried to copy the files back to update version control.

Copy just kept giving up and not copying everything. It also didn't seem to ask about overwriting files. In the end I had to use robocopy. Bag of wank.

Capt.Midnight

I've currently got 3 Linux server based devices at home (2 Pi's and a Mac-mini) but I still use Windows as my main PC purely due to software compatibility (music software and Adobe suite stuff which I use every day). WSL2 is a great bridge between the two however.

Quote from: The Mollusk on August 02, 2021, 07:46:06 AM
I thought I could feel my 2012 MacBook Air starting to expire a few months ago and I wanted a more recent machine to use as a music making laptop with some hardware which is also a decade old, so I bought a refurb Dell laptop from 2019 and was astounded to discover it's somehow slower than the MacBook which is nearly a 10 years older than it. I was using a 2012 MPC Studio with its original software on the Windows laptop and the delay between me hitting the pad and hearing a sound was seriously like a quarter of a second. Set it up on the MacBook and there's no delay whatsoever, runs like a dream.

I used Windows constantly from like age 12 to 25 and didn't know any better. When I switched to Apple it took a while but I gradually noticed a world of difference in how intuitive its operating system is and how smoothly everything runs without issue. On returning to Windows (which I only did because in terms of good spec I could get more bang for my buck, and following extensive research on what would be the best machine for my budget and needs), I immediately noticed how fucking abysmal that system is.

I constantly find myself asking, "why the fuck is it doing that?" to many of its baffling processes. Why does it tell me it's installing Spotify every time I open it and takes about 30 seconds to fully load it up ready to use? Why does the screen brighten/dim depending on the brightness of the tones of whatever's currently on the screen and why does it seem like I have to rummage in the gubbins of the coding just to fucking disable that absolute garbage feature? Why does it point blank refuse to connect to an external display with an HDMI cable? When I'm typing and want to delete/replace a word, when I double click that word, why does it also select the space after it? WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF DOING THAT? I hate it.

appols if this has already been said, but re the delay in pad sound, are you sure you have ASIO drivers installed and that you're using them?  On a mac no drivers are required, which is why audio stuff "just werks"