Reply to post: Re: Desperation

Re: Desperation

I'm "still" using Windows 8.1, though it's only been about two or three months now since I migrated from 7. It takes some aftermarket programs to get it usable, but even 7 needs most of those same programs to be its best, so there's not much difference there.

I'm a traditionalist when it comes to UI, and to me, the archetype of an ideal UI is Windows 2000. I strive to make my UI look and feel as much like that as possible. This whole "one UI to rule them all" has been one of the dumbest trends to hit computing to date, and I applaud Mark Shuttleworth for realizing this. GNOME and Microsoft, we're waiting.

So with all that said, I use Windows 8.1 and am pretty satisfied with it. Windows 10 isn't even in the running... it's so far from being usable that it may as well not even exist to me. A lot of that doesn't have anything to do with UI, but even if the spying, the forced updates, the unwanted installations and uninstallations of various things, the ads, the changes of user settings with every major update, the permanent beta status of the rapid update cycle, and all that other stuff was stripped from 10, it would still be crap.

Windows 8.1 as I have it is very close to Windows 7. I'm using the same theme I was in 7; I just had to port it to 8. There's no ribbon, no apps (removed, not merely hidden), no tiles, no charms... just Win32 desktop, with only a few widely scattered Metro-styled intrusions. The Windows login screen is Metro looking, and so is the "these programs are preventing the PC from shutting down" dialog. The "How do you want to open this file" dialog is in that hideous style too. The task switcher (alt-tab) has a vaguely Metro look to it, but it's just a plain background with text on it, as is the Ctrl-Alt-Del menu. That's about it, though.

The Settings app is essentially gone (it's still there, but it's locked out), as the Win 8.1 control panel is still fully functional (with only a very few exceptions, for which I use other tools... like the inability of the Control Panel "Users" applet to create Windows accounts. I just use the Computer Management snapin of the MMC instead).

I have to wonder at those people who say that 10 is like Windows 7-- it only bears the most passing similarity. Windows 7 doesn't have that hideously flat UI with vast seas of retina-burning white (just a theme, but it's a really bad one), those tiles in the start menu, the ribbon, a Settings app, or any other apps for that matter. Windows 7 doesn't have "folders on this PC" in the content pane of Windows Explorer, and it doesn't have the jarring discontinuity between Win32 and UWP-themed bits of the OS.

All of the few remaining Metro bits that still exist in my Windows 8.1 are also in 10, but 10 adds a lot more of them, and that gets worse with every new update. Microsoft's intent is for all of the Control Panel to end up in the Settings app eventually, and that means a lot of system dialogs are going to be UWP ugly, with nothing you can do about it.

Windows 7 has a coherent UI that's clearly meant for desktop PCs, through and through. Windows 10 is a poorly-executed mess that is half Win32 and half phone, and unlike Windows 8, you can't easily wall off the phone bits and live in the Win32 portion. MS has moved too many essential things into the phone part; it can't be avoided. You can kill the ribbon, replace the start menu, apply a better theme, and other assorted stuff like that, but you will still be stuck with a large portion of the system dialogs that are in that ugly, inappropriate phone UI style.

I also don't know how Cinnamon still sucks "big time" from the perspective of one who thinks the "one UI to rule them all" idea is stupid (as I do, and as you appear to). I've tried a lot of DEs, including MATE, and Cinnamon is the one I like the best. I've had to learn to edit Cinnamon and GNOME themes to get it just how I want, but the same's true of Windows (from Vista on), and doing it in Linux has been a far easier task.

Linux Mint 18.1 Cinnamon has a very traditional UI, and Mint's "X" project is working on removing the stupid UI (hamburger menus, for example) from as many GNOME programs as possible and replacing it with desktop-PC style traditional menu bars and pulldowns (rather than simply maintaining much older pre-GNOME 3 versions of these programs that never had the touch crap in the first place).