Microsoft Is Finally Ditching Its Windows 95-Era Icons (theverge.com) 108
Microsoft is now planning to refresh the Windows 95-era icons you still sometimes come across in Windows 10. The Verge reports: Windows Latest has spotted new icons for the hibernation mode, networking, memory, floppy drives, and much more as part of the shell32.dll file in preview versions of Windows 10. This DLL is a key part of the Windows Shell, which surfaces icons in a variety of dialog boxes throughout the operating system. It's also a big reason why Windows icons have been so inconsistent throughout the years. Microsoft has often modernized other parts of the OS only for an older app to throw you into a dialog box with Windows 95-era icons from shell32.dll. Hopefully this also means Windows will never ask you for a floppy disk drive when you dig into Device Manager to update a driver. That era of Windows, along with these old icons, has been well and truly over for more than a decade now. These new changes are part of Microsoft's design overhaul to Windows 10, codenamed Sun Valley. "We're expecting to hear more about Sun Valley at Microsoft's Build conference later this month, or as part of a dedicated Windows news event," notes The Verge.
No God Spare Us! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Microsoft, doing what they have been doing since XP - re-painting a turd.
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They have to give all those overpaid PHB's something to manage, or else they break real shit.
Re:No God Spare Us! (Score:5, Interesting)
All that has happened when it comes to UI design is to make the user interface even more confusing. No improvements since Windows 2000 appeared, just more and more confusion added.
The following quote from Douglas Adams applies to Windows as well as the Universe:
“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”
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Re:No God Spare Us! (Score:5, Insightful)
just more and more confusion added.
Curiously what is it which confuses you? I still get my programs by clicking the bottom left most icon. I still interact with the window manager with the same three icons. I still find my documents in a place called Documents (they dropped the My but that was implied), my active apps are still on the bottom, my active background apps are still in the task bar, I still have a desktop, I still access files by clicking on Computer, and ...
As someone who provided service to others I can tell you with 100% certainty there was nothing clear or not-confusing about how Windows 2000 had its settings. It's something we learnt to deal with. Change is hard when you've put the effort in to learn something, but aside from the fact that the current Settings applet in Windows isn't feature complete, what is in there is far less confusing than trying to manage a windows 2000 system.
So what advanced high level technical thing do you do that makes you interact with your OS to the point where this window dressing confuses you? The only truly confusing thing (the damn tiles) was massively rolled back showing that MS actually recognizes and reverts something when it doesn't have the intended effect.
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just more and more confusion added.
Curiously what is it which confuses you? I still get my programs by clicking the bottom left most icon. I still interact with the window manager with the same three icons. I still find my documents in a place called Documents (they dropped the My but that was implied)
When I click the bottom leftmost icon I just get a garble of psychedelically colored squares that presumably are pointing out programs but it takes a lifetime to figure out the right one because a kiloton of scrolling around.
Today "Documents" are placed in a fuzzy location that might be on my hard disk but the path to the actual location is often garbled and can as well be pushed into some cloud service.
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Today "Documents" are placed in a fuzzy location that might be on my hard disk but the path to the actual location is often garbled and can as well be pushed into some cloud service.
If you enable OneDrive. But that's a feature (of debatable value, sure) not the consequence of a UI refresh like the changes to the Start menu.
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When I click the bottom leftmost icon I just get a garble of psychedelically colored squares
Oh god really? Dude enable windows update and get rid of Windows 8. Clicking the Windows icon has produced an alphabetical vertical text based list of software for over 6 years now!
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Uhm, no.
Win2000 was a fine OS, one that I would still use if it had been patched to manage recent hardware (large capacity hard drives being #1).
WinXP was a Fisher-Price repainting, yes. Although WinXP had the good idea of having a 64 bits version.
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XP almost looked quite great (check windows whistler watercolor), but then for some reason they decided to make it look more like some sort of generic 90's interface than someting classy.
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There you are again repeating the same memes over and over in order to make a few dimes, you revenue stream hogging disgusting fat sexist tube of lard, Christopher Dale Reimer!
All of this for your stupid youtube venture for a channel that will always have less daily views than videos online. I told you so, but no you won't listen! My pheromone revenue stream website is much more profitable!
Now, I told you I was out of meds last week and you didn't even care to contact me you lazy fucker.
How many times do I
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Calm yourself. Have a look at TFA and then look at your computer and see if you even seen any of the icons referenced. Windows 10 doesn't even use these, all they are doing is updating an old dll to use the Windows 10 icons.
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I also think an honest appraisal of the changes here would be they are mixed. It makes lots sense to update things like the hibernate icon to feature a PC with a IPS panel display rather than CRT - because CRTs are not what most users are going to be looking at at this point.
On the other hand the drive icon changes are dumb, much harder to distinguish the type of drive in the drive empty versions. Its less visual information. While you probably don't have one a 5.25" drive, a 3.5" drive and CDROM drives al
Re: No God Spare Us! (Score:1)
Re: No God Spare Us! (Score:1)
let me guess (Score:1)
How about letting files be named con? (Score:2)
Re: How about letting files be named con? (Score:1)
Given many of the DOS-Windows ME guts are still in use and the command line still exists, I would say, yes, that will remain a limitation, but the limitation is only implemented in UI (basically a ton of if-statements). You can technically create those files/folders, and they will work (for most UI-driven programs). PowerShell and Batch scripts may have issues with it though.
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There are no DOS/ME guts in place. XP grew out of NT, a distinct path from DOS/95/98/ME. Shims to mimic functionality were added in Win2000.
Twilight memories. (Score:2)
Should have been sun-set since it's the end of an era.
In other words (Score:5, Interesting)
More pale, contrastless, unrecognizable shit.
It's bad enough you can't find a scroll bar to save your life, let alone the top edge of an open window so you can move it, now we're going to have pull out the magnifying glass and squint really hard to find an icon.
Re:In other words (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought Windows XP was a great OS when configured for the Windows Classic desktop, not the ugly default one, and I still use it as a VM on my Linux daily driver machines now.
Windows 7 did nothing for me, it was "change for change's sake" with the ugly and unconfigurable Aero interface that was a downhill step for Microsoft - but it was at least "bearable" to use.
Unfortunately, my company considers Windows 10 to be the "corporate standard" which seem to be lower than my own personal standards given that that terrible OS is not allowed in my home - except for one of my work-provided laptops where I have to use it for 30 minutes each week for a timesheet app and, at that point, it gets put in its own VLAN on my home network where it can't talk to my "proper" machines running adult Linux OSes.
I've worked with computers for almost 40 years now, I started my computer knowledge programming machine code on Z80 CPUs back in 1982 and I've deployed and supported all manner of UNIX, Linux and Windows OSes through that time. I can honestly say that Windows 10 is the first OS I have come across that actually has slowed down my productivity - the interface is horrific, it is far too wasteful of screen real estate, and there are so many unnecessary features in Office that ultimately I just do all my work in LibreOffice on a Linux laptop and move it over to Windows if I have to check it there. I simply do not care to learn it because it's interface makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever.
I genuinely feel sorry for the poor schmucks that are forced to use it and who don't have the escape route to a proper Linux OS.
Re:In other words (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows 2000 was the peak for me. The NT kernel and professional, boring looking UI. The ugliness of XP was one of the things that kept driving me to give Linux a try.
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Windows 2000 was the peak for me.
Yes! I have said the same thing many times. Windows 2000 was so easy to use, so easy to find things, so easy to get things accomplished. Even better, it didn't get in your way.
If I wasn't so lazy and cheap, I'd get a power supply for my Win2K system, fire it up and it would just work.
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Totally agree here. I still run my home desktop as a dual boot with this and use it when I want to do audio work or recording (with networking OFF, of course). I even resisted as long as I could when the company I worked for back in the 2000's was moving computers from XP to 7. For me, that was a downgrade, as has been every Win version since then. Unfortunately, you know the story. Businesses have to go with the version(s) getting
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The XP icons were designed to match the garish XP UI. They didn't look good with Classic Desktop. Windows 2000 was a more consistent experience.
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It is not internet connected. I do not have any other Windows machines in the house, and if I did I definitely would not allow them to be networked.
Currently busy avoiding the "Internet of Turds".
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Windows 2000 was the peak for me. The NT kernel and professional, boring looking UI. The ugliness of XP was one of the things that kept driving me to give Linux a try.
You do know that in Windows XP, Vista, and 7 you can still go back to the Win95 ripoff-of-NeXTStep look, right? Just with a little clicky clicky?
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Unfortunately, my company considers Windows 10 to be the "corporate standard" which seem to be lower than my own personal standards given that that terrible OS is not allowed in my home
IT is almost certain to agree with you.
Enterprise licensing has become barbaric in the last few years. It's a license violation to use any Windows client version before 7 and any window server before 2008r2.
To gain e2 license access, you have to agree to some stupid penalties for having any older OS joined to active directory.
If IT was found using a retail XP VM or an OEM of XP on some old computer that came with it, it's a $15k/month fine each, and Microsoft can revoke your e3 access at their whim.
We don'
Re:In other words (Score:5, Informative)
I'm in the same boat as you. I started in the mid 80s with Z80/S100 and of course Radio Shack. Did a stint in one of their "Radio Shack Computer Centers" fixing Trash80s. Then in 1991, I moved to Novell/Win311, I retired in 2010 after nearly 20 years doing "Windows janitorial services" during my then employer rolling out Win7, replacing XP. I kept my main system dualboot, Win7 and Linux for a while, but found that I MUCH preferred my daily use system to be Linux. Since I'd started using Linux back in the mid 90s, this was not a big change. So one day I decided to yank the bandage off, so to speak. I converted my data drive from NTFS to ext4 and killed the Win7 partition, and never looked back. Since I'm retired, and have quite a bit of time on my hands, I decided to play with the early versions of Win10. It did not take very long to see what a steaming pile of rat droppings it was. Now I cringe everytime I hear of more abuse heaped on the poor schlubs that either don't know any better or, for one reason or another, are REQUIRED to use Win10. Since I am retired, I've become "tech support" for my family/neighbors, and everytime I have to deal with the screwball UI that Win10 shoves down your throat, I can only shake my head.
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and I still use it as a VM on my Linux daily driver machines now.
Why? I'm genuinely curious.
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1. There are a few older games that I play that run perfectly fine in an XP VM.
2. I have a very large CD music collection that I rip myself to my home server - two registered applications that I use to do that are "Tag&Rename" and "MediaMonkey" which I have used for years, enjoy using, and both work well in Windows XP. "foobar2000" is also an extremely good and free Windows audio format conversion tool that I also like using.
3. I repair and rebuild "classic" IBM and Lenovo Thinkpads and enjoy installing
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Now that's some nerdy shit, and I don't mean that as an insult.
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I thought Windows XP was a great OS when configured for the Windows Classic desktop, not the ugly default one, and I still use it as a VM on my Linux daily driver machines now.
Windows 7 did nothing for me, it was "change for change's sake" with the ugly and unconfigurable Aero interface that was a downhill step for Microsoft - but it was at least "bearable" to use.
Unfortunately, my company considers Windows 10 to be the "corporate standard" which seem to be lower than my own personal standards given that that terrible OS is not allowed in my home - except for one of my work-provided laptops where I have to use it for 30 minutes each week for a timesheet app and, at that point, it gets put in its own VLAN on my home network where it can't talk to my "proper" machines running adult Linux OSes.
I've worked with computers for almost 40 years now, I started my computer knowledge programming machine code on Z80 CPUs back in 1982 and I've deployed and supported all manner of UNIX, Linux and Windows OSes through that time. I can honestly say that Windows 10 is the first OS I have come across that actually has slowed down my productivity - the interface is horrific, it is far too wasteful of screen real estate, and there are so many unnecessary features in Office that ultimately I just do all my work in LibreOffice on a Linux laptop and move it over to Windows if I have to check it there. I simply do not care to learn it because it's interface makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever.
I genuinely feel sorry for the poor schmucks that are forced to use it and who don't have the escape route to a proper Linux OS.
And get off my lawn while you're at it!
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Not at all. If you're a Linux user, you are more than welcome to use my lawn.
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Like any commercial vendor, MS have to sell new products to continue having a revenue stream. They are primarily competing with themselves - their own old versions.
If they come out with a new version that's faster and more secure, but looks exactly the same people will think it is exactly the same and won't easily be able to tell it apart from the old version when they see it. In order to sell the new version, they have to provide visible changes, which is why they foist significant UI changes on people reg
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Unfortunately, my company considers Windows 10 to be the "corporate standard" which seem to be lower than my own personal standards given that that terrible OS is not allowed in my home
What a weird and narrow sighted take. Windows 10 is the only version currently supported with security updates. No business will willingly use an older release due to the risk. I know you don't like Windows 10 but advocating for using unsupported legacy software in production is stupid and unprofessional.
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It's "narrow-sighted" in your view because you don't know any better. But it's still the opinion from "a stranger on the Internet" that probably will have zero impact on any change of strategy going forward.
Windows 10, particularly for home use, does not meet my security standards, and my job for the past 12 years in a career of almost 4 decades in IT and telecoms has been solely in cybersecurity and hardening (mostly Linux) servers and telecoms solutions.
Windows 10 updates itself when it wants to, and it i
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What you choose to run at home is your own business. Bitching about your employer following industry practice is narrow minded and unprofessional. The only version of windows appropriate for production use in business today is windows 10 full stop. Some may be forced to use older version for compatibility reasons in certain niche cases but you don't do so willfully.
It's "narrow-sighted" in your view because you don't know any better.
Lets attack the arguments not the person eh?
Windows 10, particularly for home use, does not meet my security standards, and my job for the past 12 years in a career of almost 4 decades in IT and telecoms has been solely in cybersecurity and hardening (mostly Linux) servers and telecoms solutions.
Windows 10 updates itself when it wants to, and it installs the bloatware it wants to on itself when it feels like. It has horrific telemetry processes running on it, I do not want it sat on my home network where it can see what else I am running on it and phone it home to Microsoft.
Yeah no shit. We all know this. It doesn't change the fact that all previous versions are no longer
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What you choose to run at home is your own business.
Good. So therefore don't comment on it in the first place so that you don't contradict yourself now and therefore kindly mind your own business. We agree on something.
Bitching about your employer following industry practice is narrow minded and unprofessional.
And had I given any indication as to the name of my employer, you would of course be correct. But I didn't, and given that I've worked solidly for almost four decades now with an extremely good reputation as an SME in my chosen fields, I will pass on any further "moral guidance" from a stranger on the Internet - especially one that could well
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But by all means describe "that guy" here and if I haven't fallen asleep or lost interest in you by that time,
I suspect you wont. Because you're that kind of person who absolutely must be right and must always have the last word. I'm pretty sure you will continue to reply and insult me as long as I reply. Because you cant let it go. So I'm going to keep replying. I started this with honest intentions pointing out your error and you've gone full neckbeard on me. Which means I get to have fun.
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Since you've been so wrong throughout our dialogue, I am going to now bid you "Adieu!" and grant you the gift of the last word here - you may thank me later.
So write away to your heart's content below, and just pretend to yourself that I hung around long enough to read it.
Do have a most pleasant weekend, "not that guy but the other guy" signing off.
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Since you've been so wrong throughout our dialogue
Just keep telling yourself that.
So write away to your heart's content below, and just pretend to yourself that I hung around long enough to read it.
Oh I will, you cant help but insult people and correct them. I could break it all down for you but you would clearly ignore it and just insult me more like you did before when I quoted the specific line where you criticized your employer for using the currently supported version of windows instead of your clearly better Windows XP in a VM solution. Good thing /. doesn't let you edit posts once submitted. Not sure how you can rationalize that in your head while also saying you
Re: In other words (Score:2)
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You're one of the Z80 guys? Heathen! Spoken by a C64 guy.
I think most of depends on where you were in the world at the time - US and Germany (and a few other places), you were a C64 person. UK (where I am) and Spain, you were a ZX Spectrum person. I did go to the Amiga after the Spectrum, if that helps.
Hey, we're "just 8-bit guys" anyway, that's good enough.
Re: In other words (Score:2)
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Are we looking at the same thing? The image in TFA shows the new ones have slightly more saturated colours and to me look more like the things they are supposed to represent.
My main criticism is that some of them are redundant now, but I suppose they need to be there for legacy compatibility.
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More pale, contrastless, unrecognizable shit.
It's bad enough you can't find a scroll bar to save your life, let alone the top edge of an open window so you can move it, now we're going to have pull out the magnifying glass and squint really hard to find an icon.
Did you not read TFA or can you actively find a place where the icons in question are visible to you as a Windows 10 user.
I mean it's fun and all to rant about things which have nothing to do with the change in question, but when did Slashdot become a replacement for therapy?
Boo (Score:2)
You can take moricons.dll from my cold dead hands.
Are the legacy icons going to still be available? (Score:2)
If the icons are changed out from underneath (by releasing a new .dll) then existing documentation will be slightly broken. All those instructions that say "look for this icon or screen" will now be different.
Not a huge deal, but inconvenient for literal-minded people.
Some new icons. Is this really news? (Score:1)
A lot of M$ "news" on here.. more ads than news (Score:1)
Re: Some new icons. Is this really news? (Score:2)
Re: Some new icons. Is this really news? (Score:2)
You misspelled Satyr Nutella. [Insert emojy of horse, followed by emojy of poop.]
Now we're talking! (Score:3)
Man, I wasn't too excited about moving to Win10 but now, boy howdy! Also a good reminder to install Resource Hacker, and mess around with shell32.dll
Just in time for a new total makeover of the icon (Score:5, Interesting)
Windows has gone from flat icons to 3D icons to 3D icons facing the other way, then back to flat icons. This has always represented a vast improvement, according to Microsoft, so it's just fine that it's cost companies millions in pointless redesign work.
I figure we're well overdue to go back to 3D icons, now tilted in a completely new and exciting direction.
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With text only literate people can use computers. With icons, no one can use the computer.
Even if they can, after 3 months, the icons will change to make sure they can't any more.
The answer is Kanji ... it has stayed the same for 4,000 years, and will be the same
long after Google and Microsoft are dead and buried.
Re:Just in time for a new total makeover of the ic (Score:4, Informative)
Excuse me?
Even if If we put aside modern (ChiCom) versus classic (Taiwan) chinese characters, you also have pre-WWII japanese kanji versus Touyou Kanji (post WWII).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
And then in 2010, the Jouyou Kanji :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Likely Replacing with Unrecognisable Crap (Score:3)
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I recently went looking system-wide for an icon because the video player I have installed has a really bothersome-looking one that ends up being the icon for all mp4's and mkv's on my system. The ones already installed on the system were all terrible looking also.
What a video file icon should be today is not the same as what it once was. Once upon a time if y
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Oh well, using ResourceHacker to swap them out will be item #97422 on the list of changes to make on the day I'm finally forced off Win7 on my home machine.
Re: Likely Replacing with Unrecognisable Crap (Score:2)
Sounds like shit icon design. Icons should stand in for what something is, not where you got it from. You don't put your Blu-Rays in Amazon Prime wrapping before putting them away.
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No - that is what Kanji is for!
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Well good news then, the new ones have more contrast and more saturated colours, and are not outlines.
Not 95 era (Score:4, Informative)
These are not Windows 95 icons, as Windows 95 was restricted to using 16 colors.
Some of the icons on that screenshot appear to be from Windows 2000.
Re:Not 95 era (Score:5, Informative)
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And more importantly they aren't actively used in Windows 10. A floppy drive, CD, drive, the PC icon, none of that has used shell32.dll as an icon source for a long time. Though you may find some of these icons when if you do that hacker thing and figure out how to open the control panel.
more fun (Score:2)
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As long as I can get it in cornflower blue, I'll be alright.
Icons? (Score:2)
How do how do type an icon into the terminal?
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In Windows, Win+; brings up the emoji picker, and the new terminal app from the Microsoft Store supports emojis which include a number of icons.
You probably thought this was a joke, but yes, this feature has been implemented. Maybe there is a use case for it, but I can't think of it right now.
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It is just a Unicode thing, any terminal that supports unicode supports emoji, including terminals on Linux.
Re: Icons? (Score:2)
Everything is a file. :)
I remember using COOL.DLL to replace icons (Score:3)
I remember using COOL.DLL to replace icons. It came with Microsoft Plus! back when Windows 95 was released.
*sigh*
Please don't turn us into oversimplified logos... (Score:2)
It's literally a meme, guys!
https://m.youtube.com/results?... [youtube.com]
Meh (Score:1)
Windows 10 mouse and keyboard jitter (Score:1)
Idiocy (Score:2)
Why do I need a new unfamiliar symbol for something that already has a symbol that is familiar to me? Does the US Treasury change the dollar sign every couple of years just to be more modern? As for me, I just revert all new icons to icons I am familiar with. It can be done in most cases. Sometimes the win 95 ones are actually the clearest, because they were not designed by frustrated artists who want to show how creative they are.
Can we finally ditch our 14-inch screens? (Score:1)
Its even worse (Score:2)
Re: what is windows? (Score:1)
2021 is going to be Year of Linux on the Desktop.
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I guess if ChromeOS counts as Linux, and Chrome Books count as "desktops", then it probably is.
Re: what is windows? (Score:1)
Oh kid. Linux killed the desktop. It was a stupid idea to begin with. Your computer is not an office desk.
You're currently using Linux, by the way. Probably twice, if you write this on an Android device, before postinf it to a Linux server, by sending it across a bunch of Linux-based networking equipment. And even if you use Windows, you got Linux as a built-in feature.
Re: what is windows? (Score:2)
In the family have five Macs (including kids laptops, and a headless music Mac Mini), a opulent of iPads, a Windows laptop for gaming, and couple of Switches and PS4.
Oh, I think the Google WiFi router hi. might be running Linux, or maybe the Samsung TV but I donâ(TM)t care.
Definitely no Linux on anything like a desktop here, thanks. Nor for any human Iâ(TM)ve ever met.
Re: what is windows? (Score:2)
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So what you are saying is that you deliberately restrict yourself to new experiences and knowledge because you only do things that are popular with lots of other people? How can someone actual live under that kind of philosophy?
Sonny, Linux has been on my desktop for the past 20 years and I plan for it to be there for the next 20, assuming I live that long. I couldn't give a flying fig about who also runs it on their desktop.
Re: what is windows? (Score:2)
Regarding using "popular" operating systems, apart from a Windows gaming laptop, we use macOS. That is almost as unpopular as Linux (5% vs 1%). Furthermore, Iâ(TM)ve been using macOS (or its previous names) for decades, even when it was extremely unpopular and Apple nearly went bankrupt.
Regarding whether I am "restricting" myself, well it sounds like I use twice as many operating systems as you do! (me macOS+Windows vs you Linux) Not including mobile, tablets or gaming consoles.
Re: what is windows? (Score:2)
Well that would definitely be a first. Most Linux users literally can't STFU about Linux and are even more evangelical than a god-botherer with a megaphone handing out pamphlets on the street.
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Most Linux users literally can't STFU about Linux
It's not most users in my experience - but ever community has its zealots.
I've never considered a computer to be a fashion statement - it's a tool to get jobs done and provide entertainment when I am not doing jobs. For me, Linux does most of what I need a computer to do, and I can configure it to keep my identity away from evil empires as much as possible. Plus I can fiddle with it on tiny SBC computers like the Raspberry Pi or 20 year old laptops. I am "happy as a pig in wossit" doing what I do, I could c