Microsoft totters from time machine clutching Windows 10 Workstation It looks like the 1990s are back in fashion: Microsoft is, it seems, preparing another flavor of Windows 10 – the tentatively named Windows 10 Pro for Workstations. We can't help but be reminded of the Windows NT Workstation era in the early 1990s – the branding Microsoft used to distance Windows for beefy work PCs from …
I bet this one still comes with the horrible metro UI and store of shite and candy crush...
A true workstation windows10 would come with a windows7 / Windows NT shell and he strpped of all the bullshit that everyone hates about windows 10. I still can't decide if Microsoft know what everyone's hates, and just refuse to remove it, or if they are simply just clueless.
A windows7 built on window 10 core is what everyone really wants. It's almost available in the form of win10 LTSB + classic shell. But of course not available unless you are the select few..
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If I'm a dinosaur for wanting an OS with a clean, coherent, consistent and friendly UI then so be it.
Windows 10 has decent technical underpinnings, but the UI is an unfocussed mess (some bits Metro, some bits classic, two different control/settings panels, designed to be mobile friendly - despite the collapse of Windows on phones, etc). Bin all of that and give me a clean and consistent desktop UI that's designed for a desktop PC please.
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"Visual Studio (and I guess other .Net apps) insists on implementing its own window U"
I'm extremely happy that the VS team refused to dumb down it's UI to Win10 norms and gave us a good copy of the familiar, information dense interface we're used to - even though they had to implement it the hard way by rendering it from scratch. Even happier they listened to dev feedback and let us theme away most of the idiotic Win10 touches. I like being able to see where each UI element starts and ends instead of an ocean of white space and guesswork.
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By and large, though, your average corporate user doesn't want a refreshing new look. They just want it to work every minute of all day and every day in exactly the same way yesterday, today and tomorrow so they can get on with their jobs and not worry about the damn IT delivery.
"I find the Windows 10 UI to be a huge improvement over the fake 3D UI of earlier Windows"
of COURSE you do! You refer to those of us who *HATE* "the Metro" 2D FLATSO FLUGLY as "dinosaurs".
Here are some synonyms for you (I know you meant them, right?):
a) refuse to change
b) sticks in the mud
c) won't get on the bandwagon
d) old fuddy-duddy
e) NOT a millenial
that last part is the most important.
If you like 2D FLATSO, you should be able to choose it. Those of us who *HATE* it should be able to choose the OLD interface. Most of us who still have to use windows already DO that, by using 7 (or earlier).
Keep in mind, it was the 3D Skeuomorphic interface that SOLD WINDOWS 3.0 TO THE WORLD. That's where it started. It improved with '95, and went upwards from there. Back then Micro-shaft "got it" and delivered what CUSTOMERS wanted, and not SHOVING UP/INTO OUR ORIFICES what *THEY* want us to have.
In the survey results I've seen, people prefer 3D skeuomorphic to 2D FLATSO by 2:1.
The only reason Win-10-nic has THIS many users at the moment is that MICROSHAFT HAS MADE SURE WE HAVE NO OTHER CHOICE. Except, Linux. Or Mac.
You think Windows 10 is bad? Gnome 3 is worse. The Gnome guys sucked heavily on the Sinofski teat and produced a design meant for phone/tablet users who have only one finger. Provided they didn't actually want to do anything. When I first used Gnome 3 I yearned to be using Win 10 instead (even though I passionately hate everything Microsoft does).
People suggest Cinnamon as an alternative to Gnome 3. It's not as bad, but it still sucks. Big time. I still yearned for Win 10, but not quite as much.
Mate, supposedly slower than Cinnamon, is actually usable. Most of Gnome 2 is there. With Mate I can (and do) sneer at Win 10.
If you're stuck with Win 10, you have my third-deepest sympathy. Second deepest is for people stuck with Gnome 3. Deepest is for the poor idiots still using Win 8.
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).
"I'm a traditionalist when it comes to UI, and to me, the archetype of an ideal UI is Windows 2000."
Agreed. It was (compared to the current crop) highly utilitarian in its design, without the needless eye-candy that started with XP. There were some problems, but I still think it was better than anything since. IIRC, in Server2003, they gave us that annoying empty pane on the left in the Services panel, AND they twiddled the "Choose Principal" applet when assigning file permissions to require a couple of extra clicks to get it to give the list of all the available accounts. Niggling annoyances, sure. But still annoyances, and for what real purpose? Then they started really screwing with things in 2008, and by 2012, it's sometimes difficult to get things done quickly unless you create a lot of shortcuts on the desktop. But at least I CAN get things done on my Server 2012 desktop - I feel lost when I have to use Win 8.x or 10. That shit just ain't right.
It's a shame MS is such a "my way or the highway" company. If they could have kept the original 2000 interface, worked out the few kinks it had, and let us still use it with their newer versions of the OS, that would have been awesome. I mean, fuck, they're the largest software company in the world, with billions of dollars in the bank - couldn't they keep 5 or 10 programmers on staff just to keep that interface going? They could even refer to it as "Old People's Interface", so the yoof and the hipsters will never get confused and wind up staring at it's spartan utilitarianism. And the rest of us could just get shit done. But no, that wouldn't play well with their marketing thrust to always look like they are trying to be bleeding edge and pushing the back of the envelope.
Sorry, time for my meds again before I get all stirred up and start jabbering about Novell needlessly letting Netware die.
I tried CentOS 7.3 versions of Gnome 3, Cinnamon and Mint. Which may have subtle differences to those you have on Mint 18.1.
Gnome 3 I hated instantly. First thing I tried was customizing the taskbar stuff with right-click, only to find it doesn't do anything (because they want you to have a phone interface on a PC and you can't right-click on a phone). Spent a while clicking around trying to find out how to tweak things without right-clicking and nearly drove myself mad with frustration because I couldn't find how to do it.
Spent a while on a usable desktop on another computer googling how to make Gnome 3 usable, without much luck. When I went back to G3, the screen lock had kicked in. No keyboard key, or mouse movement, or click would unlock it. By accident I found the "swipe up to unlock" thingy. Accident because the theme makes it nigh-on invisible to my old eyes when running it on an old laptop. Why in hell do you need to swipe up on a desktop? In case I put the whole thing, keyboard and mouse in my pocket so I don't accidentally pocket dial? This is fucking madness.
So that was it as far as G3 went. Nuked it from orbit. Put Cinnamon on. Possibly I wasn't in the right frame of mind to judge it fairly, given that I was still seething from my G3 experience. Something about it (I don't even remember what) annoyed me because it was too much like G3 and not enough like G2, so I gave up on it.
Tried Mate. Which was close enough to G2 to feel very, very good. A "stopped banging head against brick wall" moment. Even better after adding Mozo, EOM, Caja and a few other bits. I'd take 2000, XP, Win 8, Win 10 or even Win 98 over Gnome 3. Win 10 (uncustomized) is crap, but that's tolerable because I expected it to be crap. G3 is crap and that stings because G2 was so good (in my subjective opinion) that I expected G3 to be much better than it is.
I do understand that these matters are very subjective. It's very much what you're used to. But it is absolute fucking madness to take an interface for a touch-screen phone with limited screen area and put it on a desktop. Doesn't matter if Microsoft do it, KDE do it, or Gnome do it. If they want the UI to run on desktops and tablets then it should be bimodal. Hamburgers on tablets and menu bars on desktops. Some arcane maze to navigate with one finger in order to customize settings on a tablet, right-click to do the same thing on a desktop. Yes, that means knowledge of one isn't instantly transferable to the other, and it's a lot more work for the programmers, but it means using either is as good as it can be instead of being as crap as the most restrictive of the two.
Maybe if I'd waited longer before trying Cinnamon I'd have liked it. Maybe not. Maybe I'll give it another try some time. Maybe not. What is nice about this is I have a choice. Not just of those three desktop environments, but also KDE, Xfce, LXDE, et al (if I choose to install them). Not only that, unlike your Win 10 customizations, I can switch to a different one every time I login (you can't switch between customized and uncustomized Win 10 on the same machine). So if I ever feel like giving Cinnamon another try it's just a couple of clicks next time I log in. I suspect if Microsoft had given you a way of choosing 2000, XP, Win 7, Win 8 or Win 10 at login you'd be a far happier bunny, and so would many others.
But even without those choices, a phone interface on a desktop is fucking insane. There are no justifications or even mitigations. It's just fucking insane. It's like having bicycle seats in a car. It's like having a bicycle handlebar to steer a car. It's like having a car engine in your shoes (no wheels, just the engine doing nothing). Insane.
" But it is absolute fucking madness to take an interface for a touch-screen phone with limited screen area and put it on a desktop."
That's the bottom line, and I wish I could upvote it more than once for this bit alone. Phones and PCs have different interfaces because they have different needs.
PCs can have much greater information and active UI element density not only because of the larger screen, but because of the greater precision of a mouse. A mouse has a two-stage point and select, so that you know exactly where the arrow is pointed when you hit the button. Not so with tapping... as the finger gets close, your view of the target is obscured, and no further feedback guiding the finger is possible. When it touches the screen, it covers a huge number of pixels (thousands of them on a 1080p phone), and it is up to the device's algorithm to decide which one was the hotspot. Which one? You won't know 'till you tap.
A mouse offers hover effects that aren't possible in touch devices (though they may be at some point, subject to the same lack of precision as the tap itself... and for that to make any difference, the OS and the app would have to be written to make use of it, which won't happen if the majority of devices don't have it). And of course, there's the right-click or modified click (CTRL-click, etc) too.
To get away with not having hover, right-click, modified click, or 2-stage point and click, a lot of compromises have to be made, and even more so if the screen is small (as it is in mobiles, relative to desktops and standard laptops). These compromises are pretty serious, and apps that attempt to deliver the full feature list that is normal and expected on a PC program will typically confuse and irritate phone users, as it is an unintuitive mess of options to wade through, requiring considerable drilling before reaching the option desired. Most apps, thus, won't have the full complement of features; they will be pared down to make it less confusing. Even so, it will be harder to use and less intuitive than a PC with a traditional menu bar and a reasonable amount of onscreen "chrome."
While these compromises are necessary for mobiles, they're not on PCs, so the idea that one UI can ever be appropriate for a PC is just inane. Look at the various system dialogs in Windows 10 that use the UWP style... huge, comically oversized controls, very low density of information or UI options, with vast areas of wasted space. This has NO place on a PC! Neither do those phone apps that Microsoft thinks people are eager to run on their desktops, as they will suffer from the same issue. Of course, it is possible in theory to write two complete and excellent UIs for the app, one for each usage type, but if Microsoft itself won't even do that for the OS hosting the app, I doubt any app is going to either. To do it right, the app running on the desktop should be using the Win32 common controls, as those are designed and intended for the desktop environment, but that's not what UWP is about.
The best way of doing this would be the way Apple has done it... a PC-only OS on the PC (Mac) and a mobile-only OS on the tablet/phone (iOS), but with both designed to seamlessly connect to one another and share the same data. One is touch oriented, one is not... one is x86, one is ARM. It's a nice, clean delineation between them. Both device types get an OS that is written without compromises to accommodate other devices.
The outlier in this would be the 2 in 1 that can be a tablet or a "laptop." If the keyboard unit includes a full featured pointing device, a lot of the benefit of a real laptop can be realized (precision that allows for smaller UI elements, 2 stage pointing, hover effects, control clicks, etc), but only if the software is written for it... and even with 10, it isn't when it's in the UWP mode.
This use case strikes me more of a "gee whiz, will you look at that" kind of technology demo more than a practical thing. A tablet with a display large enough to be a credible laptop when docked is not much more portable than an ultrabook with the same display type. In any case, it's not and will never be the dominant configuration of PCs or mobiles (tablets and phones both), and to have this niche of a use case form the basis of the OS that everyone uses on all PCs and mobiles is just a ridiculous idea.
You think Windows 10 is bad? Gnome 3 is worse. The Gnome guys sucked heavily on the Sinofski teat and produced a design meant for phone/tablet users who have only one finger. Provided they didn't actually want to do anything.
You mean you haven't seen the design preview of Gnome4? https://flic.kr/p/cJ2zB1
"A windows7 built on window 10 core is what every dinosaur really wants."
I remember when 7 came out and everybody moaned that it wasn't XP and when XP came out and everyone moaned it wasn't 2000. People for some reason simply don't like change. If you ask them to quantify why they actually don't like 10 most have never used it and those that have will usually come up with something like "WELL Micro$$haft shouldn't CHANGE anything without ASKING ME"
We have an office with dozens of people using 10 day to day and I have a home with three of us using it and it is the most stable, best performing and easiest to use version of windows yet according to the vast majority of them.
"People for some reason simply don't like change."
People don't like change for the sake of change when what they have is working. That's the problem here! Microsoft keeps changing things that work, things that don't need to be changed, things that people don't WANT changed. Maybe if they listened to what the customers want instead of trying to tell them what they want they would not have to force people to take the product, even when it's free.
" If you ask them to quantify why they actually don't like 10 most have never used it"
Utter nonsense. People who have never used it don't have a dog in the hunt. Why would they even care? To be concerned enough to HATE 10 requires someone to have used it. You can't appreciate what a turd it is without experiencing it first. Fans of Apple or Linux will criticize Windows in general, but when you see specific attacks on Windows 10, you're nearly always talking about Windows users (or former Windows users who are angry that MS forced them to leave Windows). It's clear that MS intends to force us all into 10, and we'd rather have something as good as what we're supposed to be giving up, thankyouverymuch.
"and those that have will usually come up with something like "WELL Micro$$haft shouldn't CHANGE anything without ASKING ME"
Utter nonsense, part 2. We've had a TON of people here and in other discussion areas describe what is wrong with 10. Not ONCE have I seen a message like the one you say people "usually" come up with. Look at Bombastic Bob's post... while his rundown is written bombastically, it's still quite clear as to what he dislikes about 10, and it's not that MS CHANGED things without ASKING HIM. I've written enough on the topic to be a small book if it were ever put together, and so have many, many others.
This idea that people who criticize 10 have never used it is often cited by people widely regarded as probable MS astroturfers. I've never seen anyone else try to sell such an obvious whopper.
Timmy B: " If you ask them to quantify why they actually don't like 10 most have never used it and those that have will usually come up with something"
If you ask questions the correct way, you'll get meaningful replies. My dislike of Windows 10 is simple to quantify. I'm a software developer and a desktop user since 1980 (yes, pre-Windows). I need a clean and consistent desktop that stays out of my way as much as possible to allow me to work. In the Windows evolution, everything from 95 onto NT 4, 2000, XP and Win 7 fit that bill. Windows 10 put in a bunch of stuff that was of no use to me as a desktop user; I've got an expensive graphics card, 2 large monitors, a keyboard and a mouse, so why force me to use a flat interface intended for small touchcreens?
If they would have a single toggle called "desktop mode" that stuck with the 3D interface optimized for keyboard and mouse, and hid all that touchscreen stuff, I would have been happy.
I'd buy it if it had a single toggle Telemetry Switch which you could set to "OFF", at which point you can then enable exactly the features you want "ON". What's so fcuking difficult about that?
You'd probably get more data out of me than you do now, as I relentlessly turn everything OFF, in every nook and cranny of Windows 10 to be on the safe side. Biggest bugbear - hidden switches, several menus deep (and they are getting worse, not better). There absolutely no consistency in Windows 10 to where you need to toggle off switches to "minimise your Privacy" options. There should be an "off" switch (especially in Europe).
Google Privacy Checkup is equally as frustrating, It takes 34 clicks/scroll clicks (to make hidden options visible) to switch off Google's Ad tracking/accept terms. And they expect us to think they are 'honest' with our data? Clearing your browser cookies, you're back to square one.
A windows7 built on window 10 core is what everyone really wants.
Actually I'd prefer a MSWin2000 shell on top of MSWn10 core. Don't even want that puffy/shiny look they had in XP/Vista/7.
Would be so much better off if we could do full shell-replacements the way we did with MSWin 3.x (Remember Norton Desktop for Windows?). In later MSWin versions there were the various hack-y attempts at replacement shells that were darned impossible to configure right, especially if you wanted them to be non-fugly.
Maybe port Cinnamon Desktop as a MSWin replacement shell?
going back just a short while, one place I was at used NT Workstation because of C2 security. (No-one ever read the bit that said "if you unplug it", but still). Will this be a system where the worker controls what it does? So, as you say, easy to disable telemetry, autoupdates, etc?
Windows 10 is all one version. All the variants are merely tweaks to registry keys. Standard Microsoft tactic. The difference between "home," "professional," and "server" is a load of dosh and a few different registry values.
Or did you really think that "2 connections only IIS for home use" and "unlimited connections IIS for server use" were completely different code?
RE: "I thought MS claimed that Win10 would be the last version? "
Ok - if Ford bought out a car - say the Mondeo and said it was the last model of car they would ever make. But you could buy say Mondeo with a range of trims, engines and colours. Would they all be Mondeos? Yes. If they never made any other models are they right? Yes. Would a Mondeo GT be as much a Mondeo as a GTR or GTS ? (I have no idea if those letters are right) Yes. They are all Mondeos all suited to different uses and budgets.
Makes perfect sense to me. Or should all Linux users use one distribution or all use Red Hat Enterprise? Choice is good isn't it?
NO. NT 4 had the 1st version of NTFS (.sys) which blew up regular and often.
Actually, Windows NT 3.1 already had NTFS, it was one of the headline "New Technology" features. The consumer Windows 3.1 (no NT) used FAT, because it still ran on top of MS-DOS, which at that time didn't even support long file names.
IIRC MS back ported long filenames to 3.11, you had to install a patch.
They also back ported much of the Win32 API, again with another patch.
Them were the days they didn't take customers for granted, they at least had to do a little bit of work to push customers further down the treadmill.
It was called Windows 95, it had no USB (that was a later Win95b). :D
Seriously, if you had on WFWG 3.11: VFW, Win32s, MS 32bit TCP/IP, 32bit disk driver, etc, the only big difference was extra APIs to run Office95, Explorer Shell and the insecure really stupid ideas of Autorun and hiding file extensions.
Windows 95 had preemptive multitasking, async I/O and and better process isolation (not at the NT level, though) which 3.x never had. Without real multithreading, even TCP/IP support was not that great.
Win32s was a subset mostly for GUI stuff, and was still limited to the 16MB limit of 3.x (95 wasn't, although many back them had less memory). 95 also introduced DirectX.
3.1x actually had preemptive multitasking and (somewhat) proper isolation, technically speaking. This is what "enhanced mode" was (as opposed to "standard mode").
It's just that all 16 bit applications ran in the same 'process'.
With 32-bit file access enabled 3.11WFG it even bypassed DOS for all disk I/O. The step from there to 95 really wasn't great. Atleast, arguably the difference was bigger between 3.1 and 3.11 than 3.11 and 95.
But you're right about Win32s - it wasn't the full Win32 API.
NTFS first shipped with NT 3.1 ... mid 1993. NTFS was quite stable (for me!) in every version of NT that I used it with, right from the git-go. NT had read/write access to HPFS starting with NT 3.1, and could even be installed on an HPFS partition (remember, NT was supposed to be a version of OS/2. Also remember that MS also wrote HPFS, not IBM). Microsoft depreciated the use of HPFS starting with NT 4.0. Both NTFS and HPFS (and every other serious FS that I am aware of) can be marked read-only. The biggest problem with HPFS is that it wasn't a journaling FS. The other major issue was that NTFS and HPFS used the same partition type (07); some badly written disk utilities didn't differentiate between the two, causing all kinds of screwups when well meaning, if ignorant, users ran the wrong tools on the wrong partitions ...
No, any Linux distro has only "versions" for CPU type. The actual OS is the same.
Since Vista, MS has been ripping people off by artificially inventing versions.
Though it sort of started with NT4.0; Workstation, Server in 1996, adding Enterprise Server in 1998.
Then Terminal server late 1998 and Embedded in early 1999.
It supported PPC, MIPS, x86 (32 bit), Alpha. There was a version for 64bit Alpha. Those are CPU versions, so don't count.
AFAIK, NT3.1: Only one version. NT3.5 and NT3.51 (Workstation and Server, the only differences was default settings and number of clients that could connect, 10 for workstation). The NT3.51 was due MS trying to force Win3.x users to upgrade to Win95 by artificially making Office 95 use some new APIs not in NT3.5
I think Win 4.x (before Win95) was Chinese version of Win3.x
Then with XP they didn't release a server version till 2003, called Windows Server 2003.
XP had Workstation, Tablet and Embedded versions at least.
Then with Vista they started the EVIL "home" vs "pro" workstations.
Interestingly 3.51 also runs Office 97.
That's why Office 97 drew its own Win95 style controls.
So you can get a fairly usable office suite, albeit with clippy, running on a system that looks like Windows 3.1 :)
(Or 95 with "NewShell", but then you might as well go the whole hog with NT4)
Windows 3.1 apps actually ran on a subsystem, Windows on Windows (WOW). A similar system is still used to run 32 bit apps on 64 bit OSs.
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