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In favor of what? I still have to use control panel because some things are seemingly unreachable by the “settings” menus.
Yeah. This sounds a lot like some PM type thinks they’re gonna get rid of control panel, and they just don’t know what all is actually in there.
And not to mention the custom control panel applets hanging around out there from who-knows-what vendors.
I don’t think that the PM is wrong. They absolutely can get rid of the control panel. It’s the user who will suffer ✌
I wonder if there would be a way to “embed” those old panel applets into the new settings somehow.
I bet they at most remove control.exe or make it open the Settings app, but still allow launching old vendor .cpl items just like they already can be opened in Control Panel.
This is already implemented on a lot of the settings pages on 11.
Edit: just wanted to add I don’t think well. I use it at work.
Windows is king at being inconsistent 🔥
If only they had trained advanced users to use the CLI that would never change unlike the GUI
And not to mention the custom control panel applets hanging around out there from who-knows-what vendors.
AMD FirePro and Catalyst users are going to probably stay on an older version of the OS, considering most of those users are going to be educational institutions, engineering workshops, makerspaces/hackerspaces etc.
Can’t think of any other vendor products that integrated quite as much into the legacy control panel area
I’m thinking of highly niche industrial and embedded products who are likely to be left behind.
A major traditional selling point for Windows has always been the backwards compatibility.
That’s M$ intention, to hide some settings from users and lose control of Windows.
Right, I forgot, MS doesn’t want you to have control what programs are doing or how your computer works. Corporate way or…linux.
I may be technologically challenged but Microsoft has been steadily selling me on linux ever since windows 10.
Linux is just straight up easier to use than an unfucked windows.
See, that may be the case. Or it might not be. It’s a risk vz reward right now. I am not good with computers and have had my PC, laptop, phone and smart watch, inexplicably break, get stuck on boot and had to have them repaired. I just know my mistakes are easier to screw up my computer and data on linux. So the worse MS gets, the more I am willing to risk it.
I wonder if you’re talking about the windows 10 or windows 11 version of the settings app?
Yes. I have win 10 and 11 devices. They both lack certain options and I’ve had to go around them, like using control panel. In this case only the win 11 device is at risk of getting much worse.
It’s probably all in the registry somewhere.
honestly I still cant figure out how to configure a network interface properly without using the old control panel.
You literally can’t.
There’s a ton of stuff you can’t do with the new garbage settings.
Let’s not even mention that on an operating system called “Windows” you can only have one “window” of settings open. And opening new settings will just replace where you just where. Which is extremely rage inducing.
opening new settings will just replace where you just where
I don’t use windows super often anymore, so I don’t really have that usecase, but man. Just imagining it makes me annoyed and angry
You probably should never use a Mac then.
yup. The couple of times I had to use one, the bad UX absolutely annoyed the hell out of me
I honestly don’t understand why macs are so popular in IT. Flexibility and configurability are not the words that can be used to describe their system.
Then you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Understood, thank you for your thorough contribution.
no u
Got reminded yesterday when trying to find a way to clear and apps cached information.
Windows was a simple path, but osx needed 5 steps to find where osx decided to put it.
I’m pretty positive on mac OS, as an OS it’s technically quite good, but their preferences app has always been atrocious almost entirely for this reason, I want to have two preferences windows open to different pages please…
I hear you. I have always been a power user so I was pretty shocked when you could not open two file managers at once in OSX.
The thing about Apple devices is they work great, as long as you do it they way they want.
You can have multiple finder windows in OSX, thats perfectly normal, but you cant have the network settings open next to the printer settings.
Well that was not the case with the last time I used OSX. You click on finder and it would not open a second window. This is not how Windows or Gnome/Kwin work.
As admin and tech support, I use the control panel constantly. I use the settings app… for display configuration, I guess?
It’s not you. There are many things you simply cannot do in the settings app.
And if you can do it, it’s complicated and convoluted. I miss Win32 settings panels, everything was so well organized and simple to manage.
Yeah the new interface has restrictions it doesn’t tell you about until you try to apply new settings.
You can now reach the network connections folder, using an option on the network status page. It’s something like advanced network options. Still all the classic stuff, but avoids “control panel.” I’m going to guess links like that are not going to be removed.
If they just outright remove all of that, you really will need to learn how to do everything in powershell.
The goal is to move you to powershell
Are you on windows 10 or 11?
Mostly 11 now. I honestly prefer it to 10 now, but that’s with quite about of decrapification done to remove all of Microsoft’s bullshit.
At home I’m mostly using Ubuntu, but it’s basically covering firefox as all of my self-hosted stuff runs in thevbrowser and I don’t game much.
Hmm, then I’m a bit confused, since my experience with Windows 11 settings app has been good enough to not need to go into the control panel for setting up basic networking, unlike with Windows 10’s setting app.
Thus why im moving to 11. Lots of the PCs I work with are still 10 though.
Great. So managing printers, network settings and quickly comparing settings from two places becomes a weird game of screenshots and guessing.
Remote support workers of the world collectively shake their fist in despair.
No way on this planet I will be able to explain the new UI to your average office worker.
It’s as if they intentionally were making their products unusable for ADHD and especially AuDHD people.
I wonder sometimes, maybe they are. Maybe there’s some policy coming from some macchiavellian cokehead in a suit, that people like us spoil their big, important social mechanisms and introduce a measure of chaos they don’t want, so we have to be suppressed.
I just don’t understand why Windows is such an ADHD torture today. Even XP wasn’t.
It really seems sometimes as if they were going out of their way to make it such, not only MS, but also Google, Apple and who not.
Its not good. Control panel is consistent and precise. Settings is not consistent lacks many settings and many are dumbed down
I know, I still have to touch Windows at work.
I know, I still have to touch Windows at work.
Windows: Only when paid to touch it.
The first thing I did after getting my work laptop was to install Linux. I am so glad that my work allows it.
I too am limited by the technology of our time
Definitely an issue. I can’t count the times I’ve slammed my head because the stupid settings screen “conveniently” switches from the previous item to another while I still expected it to open a new window just like the command panel.
I have friends who work in IT and would probably slam their head against the wall if they had to deal with Control Panel being removed.
Are Microsoft deliberately trying to make the fabled Year of the Linux Desktop finally become a reality? Because I feel like we’re two or three more dumbfuck business moves away from this…
I have a PC at home that works perfectly fine. Browses the internet, emulates GameCube and Dreamcast, runs any app I need.
It’s not eligible for Windows 11. In about a month MS will just stop supporting my PC, and it will not have the option to be a Windows PC despite still having plenty of service time to offer.
Microsoft is basically forcing that PC to run Linux instead.
Windows 10 is being supported until next October, you’ve got more than a month. That said, I’ve been on Linux for just over a month and I’m so much happier with it. I really like KDE Plasma as a desktop environment. I made the leap because I was unhappy with Windows, but at this point I genuinely prefer Linux.
Ah. Thank you!! I was planning to disconnect the computer from wifi next month until I got around to setting up Linux. Nice to know there is more time.
I used Mint like 15 years ago trying to set up retropie on a cheap netbook. It felt really smooth, but I couldn’t get something to work and just never had time to research a resolution.
I’m sure it’s more user friendly now or at least the tools are more successful on first install. Going to find out sooner or later. I really just use that old PC to store pictures and play retro games, so it shouldn’t be hard to convert with a little time for research.
If you’re coming from Windows I recommend Fedora KDE Spin. If has a similar look and feel and is very up to date while remaining stable.
Thank you for the recommendation!
KDE really is nice. It can be a little bit buggy when messing with themes and panels and stuff but overall its nice. I’ve got it looking like waybar and I’m really enjoying it.
Which distro are you on? Plasma has reached it’s 6.0 version I think now. I used it back in the day and KDE apps are really more powerful than their GNOME counterparts.
Don’t sweat “what distro” so much. All the major distros offer the same desk tops. So pick a distro you like and just download the KDE Plasma spin of it and enjoy.
Bazzite, it’s based on immutable Fedora. But it made sense for my use case because it’s one of the more consistent at working out of the box with Nvidia graphics cards and I wanted the gaming stuff, but Plasma should be more or less the same everywhere. I’m not sure which version of Plasma it’s running but Bazzite is generally pretty up to date with everything but I can’t check right now.
Can confirm, want to change your domain or computer name? Windows 7/10: control panel , system , computer name tab. Windows 10 /11: control panel, system, windows settings, advanced system settings, old system control panel, computer name tab.
Why add a middle man??
That many steps? WindowsKey+Break > Change computer name.
If you’re okay with three steps, on Windows 10 and newer, you can right click the start menu and generally open system. Just about any version supports right clicking “My Computer” or “This PC” and selecting properties, as well.
win+X, then the letter for system. probably s or y but not sure. i use win+x, a all the time for an admin ps window
But that would require effort to learn to do something different. And a lot of users are firmly against that notion.
Just like the new shitty right click menu. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel just because.
And there is no reason not to either. You would still be looking at the cli in Unix with that attitude.
I don’t know about that one, It would be really hard to teleconference though the terminal.
Especially considering we still have (more or less) the same CLI for decades at this point.
Bourne was from 1977-1979, bash which was heavily inspired/designed to replace was from 1989. It is still the default shell in ubuntu.
I use powershell for this. I was just stating the click through steps.
Open Start or hit Win+R- type sysdm.cpl. Done. They kill off the easy to click icon in Control Panel, but they leave the stuff in still. I doubt they’ll remove them. Or at least hope not, lol. Settings is such a cluster to go through.
Next time I write my ver 5 of my admin program I’ll add that in!
slam their head against the wall
I already do that enough as it is with Windows 11…
I’ve been using linux for about a decade. I only know how to maintain my system and google when troubles arise. I’m pretty comfortable with my setup and would love to see many make that jump as well. However, I have to concede that corporate environments add a whole another dimension to the problem.
Control panel largely accrued content - it is generally navigated via left and right click which works great and is stable. Things don’t vanish.
Settings, on the other hand, is left click only navigation mostly. It also changed constantly (usually for the worst) - tutorials written 2 years ago are no longer valid because access to that setting was removed. This makes using settings to fix things a real nightmare.
But luckily each item has a lot of “maybe you were looking for X or Y” at the bottom since you can’t find anything in there. So just click anywhere, and scroll to the bottom and you’ll find what you want in 2 or 3 screens.
Unless it’s been removed. Then you just ask the resident IA.
Windows is so easy!
I run SuSE btw.
RIP. It’s been coming for a while, and Control Panel will likely be on hospice for a few more years, but it will be a sad day when control panel is gone.
Gone in favor of a less useful interface. Fantastic!
It is Windows…
Gone in favor of
a less useful interfacePowershell commands. Fantastic!Great, now I’ll have to
GoogleBing for a four-line command when before I could just dig through a few menus.I mean, if there’s still gonna be command line commands for all the features then there’s no reason why a 3rd party couldn’t make a gui app for them and recreate the control panels app
they should call it, get this, control panel
For the investor’s sake, I think it should be called the HyperPanel
Good point … unless MS manages to cripple that capability somehow.
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Nah, PowerShell is just a shitty bash wannabe
Actually PowerShelll is basically a wrapper for .NET classes… and it doesn’t really emulate Bash in any functional way.
The little time I have spent on powershell, I found it to be very slow. The input is also very verbose. I’m sure someone will say it allows one to be specific but I can be equally specific in bash as well. It’s like the Java Enterprise of scripting language.
Ah, so it sucks even harder
Powershell has a completely different approach of working with commands than traditional Unix shells. You pretty much don’t know what you are talking about.
Look, if it’s not a file, I don’t want to have anything to do with it.
Powershell at first seems to be weird and clunky, but after you get used to its syntax you can quickly look up and use its commands without much guessing.
Finally linux will have parity in useability with windows.
No, it’s already more usable. You’re not bound to a GUI or hidden, indiscoverable incantations.
I felt the /s was implied but clearly enough people actually believe that linux is only for people who master arcane command lines that it could be taken as a genuine belief.
There are PowerShell fanboys here. Anything is possible.
…and after a decade accuse Linux community for copying their great innovations.
Well then it’s guess which is the one to use now or which os those commands are naively installed and which need to be installed
No. Don’t worry, they moved the controls to the edge browser! Isn’t that great 😃? 👍👍👍.
This will bring so many people to Linux and will force so many others to start their own OSes.
Unfortunately, most Windows users are not tech savy and will never move to Linux, regardless of how user-friendly Linux becomes. It would take large-scale retailers switching their computers to have Linux pre-installed instead of Windows before any meaningful transition happens.
Not tech savy person here who’s interested in switching to Linux but afraid of fucking it up and the one guy I knew in real life who used Linux and would’ve helped me out died during covid so I’m on my own.
My old computer won’t support windows 11 and I’m not in a position to upgrade my hardware. I’ve been poking around trying learn about linux but I’m more of a hands on learner so basically I’m going to have to learn as I go which is quite scary for someone who’s never even seen a computer running it.
Got an extra USB stick and an old laptop kicking around you’re okay with wiping? Ideally 4GB RAM but 2GB would be okay. Start with Linux Mint and follow their installation guide - verifying the ISO image in Windows is probably the toughest part.
Or make absolutely certain you’re on the official Mint website, torrent it and don’t bother checking, I’m not your mother. “Who the f**k checks those anyway?” (Mint hasn’t been hacked since, but it’s part of why they’re pushing verifying, they know that their users have been targeted before. Also if something goes wrong with the download the install will fail and you’ll waste more time than if you just checked.)
If you don’t have a spare computer, a live USB can let you try Linux without making changes to your computer, but it’s going to be slow - a proper install is going to be a much nicer experience. If you’re okay without persistence (ie you can’t change anything or install additional programs for the next time you boot into it), just follow the Linux Mint website’s installation guide and stop before the actual install step. For persistence, try this method instead, but you really don’t want to use it long term, USB sticks aren’t designed for this.
Once you’ve tried it live and you think you like the desktop environment, but if you’re not sure you’re ready to fully commit, if your computer has an extra slot for an SSD you could buy a second one and dual boot, that’s what I did. (Dual booting on the same drive is doable but more of a headache, and even on a different drive Windows doesn’t always play nicely.)
Thank you much for this! I really appreciate that you took the time write all of that out
I do have an old laptop I can use for learning on, don’t know why it didn’t occur to me to try linux on that first, but I’ll definitely do that, follow your instructions and see how it goes.
I genuinely want to switch, just didn’t have the confidence to actually try. Thank you again for the great advice! I gotta go dig out that old laptop.
If you aren’t ready to fully commit to installing it on a hard drive, you could probably make a live USB stick of Linux. There are installers built to run on windows that will install Linux onto a USB drive, which you can boot from after turning off your PC. That way, you don’t need to worry about wiping or resetting an old computer just to see if you like it.
Thank you for the info! Thats a great way to get an introduction to linux so can I poke around and get used to it. Appreciate the advice!
Ask ChatGPT. 3.5 should know it. I know I could install FreeBSD because of it.
I’ve finally made one tiny step into the Linux pool: Replacing my little old Plex server & NAS (mini PC, Windows 10) with… an even tinier Raspberry Pi 5.
It’s been nice to finally have an excuse to start learning Linux: commands, bash scripts, ssh, samba shares, etc. I’ve always admired lean, portable FOSS, so it’s way overdue.
I honestly wouldn’t mind the new interface if it at least has all the options and functionality from the control panel, but it doesn’t - there’s so much functionality you can only access via control panel
And this is my gripe.
They can just make an AI called “Control” that will handle all the settings for everyone.
Control Panel will likely be on hospice for a few more years
And I’ll keep visiting Control Panel in hospice. Bite me Microsoft.
WTF why did I misread your comment as “Chris Parnell”
Probably because we were just watching Archer bro
No, I’m watching Cars 3
Windows “god mode”: https://www.howtogeek.com/402458/enable-god-mode-in-windows-10/
What is god mode?
it’s simply a special folder you can enable that exposes most of Windows’ admin, management, settings, and Control Panel tools in a single, easy-to-scroll-through interface
It’s very easy to set this up, and it also works in Windows 11. Even if Microsoft removes access to the normal Control Panel, I seriously doubt this will be taken out.
I used to love HowToGeek, but I sadly see that now that’s also enshittified (not the article you linked, but the most recent ones).
Worse, if you go to their articles via their newsletter, it redirects to aws.me domain in the middle which uBlock Origin blocks. You need to manually allow that subdomain to let it run. Plus, they now and then nudge you to create a free account to read more articles.
Oh, did I mention there is a Premium tier of their site as well? Ironical that as the site’s editorial quality is coming down, the shittiness is increasing. I think originally one guy used to run it and write articles there. It was relatively frugal (compared to the churn of articles that they process today) and higher quality.
Yes, I remember the guy writing there. That was a serious website! But maybe he sold it to somebody else before Google completely killed their search engine.
Now, if you want to rank well on Google, you either have to churn out stupid articles filled with SEO junk every single day.
I know this but they can break it as well if they do remove it not only hide it ( class ids ). For me it’s plain as the new windows settings are dead slow and it won’t be usable if your computer is under very heavy load. Only cmd, maybe powershell and maybe sys internals will be what’s left for you
I hate to be that guy, but why don’t you just move over to Linux already? Games work. It’s incredibly easy now. A nine year old could install and use xubuntu.
Why is this argument so common? “Games work on Linux now so you can switch over”. As if games is the only thing holding people back. My laptops are finally running Linux full time now, but I’ve been looking to switch my workstation over to Linux for 25 years now and I’m still not able to fully do it due to limited software and hardware support, and I barely play any games.
It’s almost like people don’t care to realize there’s requirements that are out of my/their/your control. I have to run windows for my SCADA vms to work. I have to run the exact software the company uses. I am 100% not in control of the requirements.
My home lab is 100% windows free. Proxmox, truenas and basic Debian everywhere. Dual booting fedora and Arch on my personal laptop.
It’s becoming such an inarticulate argument that I’ve just taken to ignoring everyone who rattles that off as if it’s just black and white.
From my experience it’s still a common misconception and I think it’s the largest potential group that can switch. Sucks that your usecase is unsupported, though. Just out of interest, what software can you still not run?
You’re right that it’s a common misconception that games don’t work on Linux, and that misconception needs to be addressed. But playing games occasionally is such a common thing that you can’t treat them as one homogenous group. “Everyone” plays games. But many many of them do other things as well on their computers, and many of those would consider the other thing more important than the games.
People who use the Abobe suite for example. Digital media creation in general (massive group of people btw) is subpar on Linux. Personally my biggest hurdles right now are DTP software and a specific piece of music production software+hardware combination from Native Instruments.
Not to mention that most people are not ready to deal with a Linux installation that is having issues.
Yep, I really hope a future will become reality where Adobe has some competition and/or an incentive to port the suite to Linux. I just can’t help but cheer on the sounds against Stockholm syndrome. So much of these “it doesn’t work on Linux” is just the company intentionally trying to prohibit integration with open systems (looking at you HDMI forum). In the end I agree, though, when giving advice, it’s best not to assume the “only gaming” use case.
Yeah don’t get me started on Adobe. But I guess I should thank them for opening my eyes to exactly how bad SaaS really is with their ransomware. Sorry, I mean Creative Cloud subscriptions. Thanks to them I’m trying to move to FOSS as much as possible, but when you’re talking about alternatives for advanced top tier commercial software, and sometimes hardware… It’s a barren landscape thus far. And I’m putting a hopeful emphasis on thus far.
Wow. Locking up a Cloud really is ransomware when you look at it like that.
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What are you on about, I answered. DTP software and Native Instruments software that uses their proprietary hardware (Maschine if you need to know).
Ah crap, was replying on an old tab that I hadn’t refreshed.
They did, and 3 hours before you made this comment.
Ah crap, was replying on an old tab that I hadn’t refreshed.
“Games work on Linux now so you can switch over”
Gaming was at one point a serious hurdle. Back in 2007 when I was forced to switch from Windows XP to Ubuntu due to a former friend’s IT fuck-up, the only Windows game I could legitimately get running was World of Warcraft, and even then the installation process was arduous.
Valve deserves much of the credit for getting Linux into the state where it can play a vast majority of Windows games with comparable or even better performance.
The true hurdle now is with anticheat.
Why is this argument so common?
Because for decades every sincere attempt to suggest Linux as the solution to some problem was 80% of the time met with “but muh games”, so now people make the assumption that it will be the likely objection when it comes up.
You seem to have a corner case that requires you to use Windows even if you did prefer not to, and that’s totally valid.
I’m 17 years in running Linux on everything at home while being paid to support and deploy Windows at work, and my trajectory has been that each and every one of those 17 years MS has given me reason to be really happy I left them behind. Lots of other folks have similar stories, and it’s only natural that they want to share that enthusiasm with folks who are pearl-clutching about however MS has shit on their users this month.
Personally I think there are more users who could go my way than who are likely to have a corner case such as yours. (I barely even consider HW compatibility anymore for common devices except of course avoiding a very short list of wifi vendors.) But I also recognize that is my perception and anecdote and I couldn’t support that assertion with any particular data.
Because, it is really the last thing that windows did better than Linux. There are many reasons to switch Linux. Having control over your computer is the primary one in my opinion. Maybe I made a poorly worded argument, but the fact that windows can just change your system is on you is incredibly frustrating. I haven’t used Windows in almost 10 years, and I don’t think I’ve missed much. Recent advances in wine and proton make it incredibly easy to run windows software, and for the few things that don’t work there are arguably better alternatives.
There are a lot of games that work. Still some that hold out, mainly due to their shitty anticheat software.
The other day I solved my problem with one of my games from Steam not working in Linux by downloading a pirate version and installing it in Lutris, which worked without a hitch.
I thought I would share this on account of it being slightly ridiculous.
Not curious at all. Pirates remove or circumvent the DRM.
Edit: since wine’s dll’s are reverse engineered and are not allowed to have original code of leaks, DRM and Anti Cheat tools often have issues with it. Aside from the point that the more intrusive DRM want kernel level access, which fails with Linux of course.
Yeah, that’s what I see as the most likely explanation: it was a AAA game from some years ago.
The funny bit is that if indeed DRM was to blame, it actually results in less revenue for them: the pirate version packages ALL DLCs whilst I own just the base game and a few DLCs - without that problem I would’ve kept using the version I owned and probably buy more DLCs from them, but now I don’t need to (PS: and aren’t especially inclined to do either, since the official version doesn’t even work for me). It’s funny because DRM is claimed to help increase revenue rather than decrease it.
I’ve been daily driving Linux for a long time. It’s honestly still not for everyone.
Anti-cheat is still a problem Roblox is still a problem. There are still plenty of programs that people are intimately married to the don’t run well under wine. You can’t just tell them you can’t have Photoshop Premier and Outlook anymore. Arguably a number of the people who don’t fall under that criteria could be running Chromebooks.
And honestly we’re not going to properly support them when their autocomplete software doesn’t run under Wayland or parsec doesn’t support server mode.
It’s great that you either have the chops to fill in the gaps or don’t run the software that has the gaps, but you really can’t ask everyone to do that right?
I am past the point of having “a” computer with “an” operating system… the concept of “moving” to another OS is basically irrelevant… I use different environments for different purposes and there’s no good reason to leave potential functional value unused for the sake of ideological convictions or fanboyism or whatever. My problems now revolve around having a useful cross-platform account that has access to my files on any/all of my platforms/VMs. I do lean heavily on open source software, I prefer it to proprietary.
More basically, an OS is not a food that you might like or dislike, it is a tool that you use when it is suited to the task. Discriminating against tools doesn’t make sense, it only limits your capabilities.
Please read this older comment of mine, it explains my point of view on this more… and if you want to do something really interesting then try to implement Qubes and actually use it for awhile.
Windows literally makes an effort to break Linux distros installed alongside it.
More basically, an OS is not a food that you might like or dislike, it is a tool that you use when it is suited to the task. Discriminating against tools doesn’t make sense, it only limits your capabilities.
Only if you want capabilities that you can only achieve with the tool you dislike. I’ve had plenty of shitty screwdrivers, and it was totally reasonable not to like them. And I’m not going to deal with all the safety risks of a table saw when I really only need a hacksaw.
That’s all great for you to be platform agnostic. There’s literally zero things I want to do that I can’t do with Linux, and as someone who does get paid to use, deploy, and support Windows, the only things I find easier with Windows are goals that exist only because MS created them (such as AD integration).
Nah, you do you, but I’m quite comfortable discriminating against Windows, and with defending the fact that I do so. I’ll continue using it only when paid for that purpose, and will absolutely not voluntarily put myself in a position where I need to rely on the mess that is windows or the surveillance company that is Microsoft for anything that is important to me personally.
I am past the point of having “a” computer with “an” operating system… the concept of “moving” to another OS is basically irrelevant…
And man the entire tone of your post is early 2000’s “I don’t even own a TV” level.
I use linux at home everyday but I’m stuck with windows at work. I just wanna scream.
It’d be fine if 1) everything from Control Panel is implemented and properly working and 2) everything stays consistent (because otherwise, as other folks have mentioned, at one point written tutorials even with screenshots quickly become obsolete). I don’t see this happening any time soon.
Maybe instead of that they can start encouraging people to use the command line, although even fewer settings are reachable though there.
Their settings pages are the worst; full of white space, finding what they considered “advanced” settings is usually a pain in the ass, and everything is dumbed down to a mind-numbing extent.
I’ve hated Settings pages with a passion since they were introduced, and always typed the full .msc I was looking for.
I really hate that you can only open one settings page at a time. There is no justification to making you lose your place you’re working on just because you want to adjust another minor setting. With the old interface I can e.g. have network and sound settings open at the same time and I don’t know why they took that away.
I have been able to live with everything else, but this is the one that kills me every time.
the loss of info density in favor of making everything fingerable has been one of the worst things to happen to anyone slightly inclined at managing systems. i hate trying to manage things in a touch based UI. so much fucking scrolling and wasted space. it does look nice , but fuck is it a productivity killer.
I also dislike the design layout. Eg. I much prefer the control panel version of Disk Management than the settings purely from an aesthetics stand point. Each disk and their partitions are just easier to see and differentiate from others.
I guarantee you they’ve only ported over about half of the Control Panel’s features. The common stuff, sure. The rest…
Maybe instead of that they can start encouraging people to use the command line
LOL, there’s no more common phobia among Windows users than the CLI. EVERY Linux discussion “BUT ZOMG CLI COMMANDS!” (when realistically a novice user can avoid them most of the time, and they absolutely are more efficient for helping someone via lemmy post or similar than figuring out what version of what DE they have and trying to tell them the 12 clicks they need to do for the same task)
No joke. Opening a command line from windows by itself is considered hacking by many. Even toggling dark mode in websites triggers that fear.
“OMG. Are you a hacker?”
“…I’m just using Powershell.”
between the powershell push, wsl, and sudo for windows they are pushing command line usage for advanced users though
I can’t argue with that, but I still take exception to the idea that only advanced users should be willing/able/unafraid to use the CLI. (not that I’m suggesting that you personally are pushing that viewpoint)
When you click a button, you have to read and interpret the label on that button, then hope the person who programmed it actually did program it to do what it is labeled to suggest, and sometimes even well meaning devs make this ambiguous. Plus, you have to FIND the button, which is kinda the subject of many of the discussions here in this very thread.
You go learn what ls does one time, and now you know how to list the contents of a directory. Spend two minutes each learning ps aux and grep, and now you know how to find process info for firefox (or whatever), plus you don’t need to know more than the very most basic things about grep to use it to search a text or conf file for a particular string. Or learn the ffmpeg command that you use most often for recursively processing a directory full of video files, and now you don’t spend 20 minutes mucking around with handbrake or whatever when prepping files to toss onto your Kodi box (I’m just pulling that one out of my butt). Hell, yt-dlp for downloading videos from just about anywhere is better than any gui tool I ever used.
I think it’s totally valid for people to prefer a gui, but I find it a little foolish that so many people just seem to intentionally shut off their brain when presented with a CLI - it’s different than clicking buttons, and it’s not always superior, but it should absolutely not be the bogeyman that many treat it as. You can probably learn less than ten commands to just a minimal level of proficiency and get a LOT done.
Gotta brush up on the ol’ powershell
Talking about consistency, technically Windows still has UI elements from 3.1 era at Atleast couple of obscure places.
the control panel they’re taking away is largely just antiquated and not used anymore in favour of settings app anyway
There are still things that don’t work in the new UI. A common example for me is changing the output of speakers on my htpc. Sometimes after an update it reverts to 2.0. Need to launch the old sound control panel to set it back to 7.1.
Or some network settings are not in the new “sinple” ui.
The only positive setting I can think of for the new settings ui is proxy settings finally being moved out of IE.
Or advanced power plan.
except any advanced user relies in that instead of the garbage settings menu
Users complain about changes being made and then they complain that change doesn’t happen enough.
This is never going to happen fully, because there is a ton of software and also device drivers that hook into the OG Control Panel system and install their own .cpl’s there, which are required for that hardware/software to work. The system to support those is going to have to remain in place, otherwise Microsoft is going to have a lot of very angry corporate customers and hardware vendors up their noses in short order.
In fact, this is most likely the exact reason the Control Panel still exists behind the scenes the way it does today in Win10 and Win11. They’ll probably go to ever-greater lengths to hide it from home users, but I’d doubt they can actually remove it completely at this point.
In fact, from TFA:
Tip: while the Control Panel still exists for compatibility reasons and to provide access to some settings that have not yet migrated, you’re encouraged to use the Settings app, whenever possible.
I’m sure they could keep the backend and just update the look and UI frontend though, no?
Maybe, but they can’t change the look of all those third party .cpl applets.
And sure, anyone could theoretically do anything. But this is Microsoft we’re talking about. They’ll just put another layer of cruft on top of the five or six layers of cruft they’ve already got and then call it job done.
The whole point of the Settings “app” is to remove the user’s ability to do anything on their own computer. The old (and far more functional) UI of the Control Panel won’t get updated because Microsoft wants users to get scared when the unpretty UI appears.
That‘s like my bank saying „Hey, use our new website, the old one will be phased out in 6 werks“.
Me: „Ok, show me my bank statements“.
Bank: „That‘s only possible on the old site“.
Not a joke, sadly.
I’ve had a similar experience with my bank. There is no legacy site to fall back to anymore, sadly. I am still figuring out how to do things on the new site. Years after it was launched.
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Well, one less, because the place where they all are won’t be there anymore.
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Each setting you will have to type into the windows search that is progressively getting worse.
So in six months, someone will have written a third-party Windows Control Panel.
Nah it’ll just be shoved into PowerToys.
Which is becoming a must have on windows.
Honestly wouldn’t even be that difficult to build. Windows is just a GUI for Powershell anyway.
If they actually move all the settings over to the “new” settings app (it’s actually 12 years old now): good.
It’s an absolute joke that there are multiple settings apps in windows, with design inconsistency across them, and it being a crapshoot whether the screen you look at will support dark mode or not (can you tell I’m tired of being blinded on evenings by unexpected white windows? Lol).
If they don’t move all the settings over: bad.
Yeah they’re usually niche, but some of those options are needed!
Since this is Microsoft we’re talking about, it’s probably going to be the latter, unfortunately. “Oh you want to adjust some network settings? That’s not in our settings app, and we’ve retired the control panel – you actually need to open Run and type ncpa.cpl”
It truly made no sense to me when they started the process of migrating stuff from control panel to the “new” Metro-style Settings, then just kind of… gave up and left everything as a spread-out mess. I can’t believe they’ve left it this long to address, it’s an awful user experience.
The entire point of the “new” Settings app is to be dumbed down. To include all the settings from the control panel would go against the entire point of the Settings app.
If we’re talking about the latest version of Windows 11, I would say it’s dumbed down, but everything I personally need is still there.
That’s okay because Windows will be gone entirely from my PC in a month.
This doesn’t say they’re removing it, just deprecating it. I thought it had been deprecated for ages
I can’t imagine that they won’t be removing it eventually though.
Why would they? They still have dialogues from Windows 95, if not before. Microsoft pretty much never removes anything, they just hide it and add new stuff on top because they’re terrified of breaking backward compatibility.
That ODBC window has been there since about Win 3.1 I think. Watching those completely unresizeable forms pop up in the middle of my 1440p monitor is always amusing.
I can just see some guy coding that, thinking “why would it need to be bigger? It’s practically the full screen!”
I’m not sure if regedit has changed much either, certainly seems like it’s the same since using it in xp? Odbc windows are 100% 3.1 though.
Feel like task scheduler, event viewer and partitioning tools have been relatively static as well, but they’re not as old as the odbc window. Tbh I’m not surprised that administrative/dev tools haven’t had a ui change.
that’s fading though. it’s coming as they push towards the walled garden.
Sure, but they’ll still be available because Windows Server customers use them, and it’s easier to just leave it in for both than to remove it for the retail release. So they’ll probably hide it more, but I’m guessing it’ll still be accessible for power users.
Fine. Next desktop build is linux.
Windows 10 is RIP October 2025 anyway, so might as well.
