News - Windows 8.2 ‘Threshold’ to bring Start Menu back?

[TheAnimus]

I suppose I should be grateful to MUI. It's been a wonderful motivator .... to get me to shift to Linux.

How do you find unity?

[crossy]

How do you find unity?

Actually I'd be interested to hear that too Saracen. (Although there's no guarantee that he's not using Mint, raw Debian, etc).

Me, I tried Unity in a couple of other versions and hated and loathed it with a passion. So I approached the 12.04LTS upgrade with a LOT of trepidation.

First couple of days were "fun", but to be honest, I ended up using it pretty much the way I use Windows 7. I don't both to use any kind of app menu. I've got the main apps I use (Chrome, Thunderbird and terminal) pinned to the bar, all other apps are done via app search (lens?), it's just far faster and easier. I can tile my app windows the way I want, and even the controls on the left and the unified menu bar didn't turn out to be a big deal.

Only problems I've had since switching, to be honest, have been when Unity doesn't want to "play nice" with the NX remote desktop software that I use all the time, (my Linux box is headless). I find Unity "obvious" in the way that I don't find Windows 8's implementation of MUI. And no, I'm not a MUI hater - it's actually pretty decent on Windows Phone 8 or XBox 360.

[Saracen]

Unity? Hmmm.

Okay, some scene-setting.

I'm not very comfortable with it, with the mindset, BUT .... I haven't given it much attention yet. And, of course, it's a default, not the only choice.

My Linux experience isn't huge, so my process of transferring was to consider, first, can I do what I want? Second, what configuration do I go with? Well, I happened to have a few old Linux distros here, so I loaded the latest of them, and ended up deciding that, yes, I can do what I want. That distro happened to be still under Gnome. Natty Narwhal, I think.

So, I thought, fine. Download the current stable release. And that's when I got my taste of Unity. Initial impressions? Not keen. BUT .... I'll give it a fair crack of the whip. My preference would be to stay with the default, but if I really can't acclimatise, then there's Gnome to try, of Xfce, or of course, switch to Mint. Or, I understand, a "Classic Menu" add-on for Unity. And I can kick Unity around a bit, move the launcher, etc, or hide it and use a different launcher.

If I had been a long-term Linux user when Unity became default, I might be a bit miffed, because the mindset isn't that different to that of MS management in foisting MUI. The big difference is, it's not a choice of one from a set of one.

So, right now, I'm still in the "giving it a fair chance" phase. And, conscious of the facts that, first, it does take a while to get used to significant change, and second, most people are, to varying degrees, change-averse, I'm determined not to be influenced by a fairly loud anti-Unity campaign, even though I understand the gripes.

If, eventually, after a decent period of acclimatisation, and a fair crack of the whip, I can't get on with it, I'll exercise the ability to not use it and to switch back to Gnome, or KDE, or .... the rest of the list. Would that MS had given Win7 upgraders the option to do the same with MUI.

[Saracen]

... And no, I'm not a MUI hater - it's actually pretty decent on Windows Phone 8 or XBox 360.

I don't hate it, exactly. I just don't like it, and find it just gets in the way. In fact, I don't like it because it just gets in my way. On Windows Phone, it might be just fine, for all I know, but I don't have one, and I'm annoyed enough at MS over forcing MUI on us as desktop users that no way will I buy either a phone or tablet that runs it, because that's why MS foisted it on us. As for XBox 360, I don't know. Mine doesn't have it, and won't be getting it.

[bdaniel7]

I always wondered why Microsoft didn't borrow the "windows manager" concept from Linux world. This way they could provide a newer kernel, like W7 or W8 and let people still use the older UIs. Like XP for users of W7 or W7 for users of W8.
There could have been a Windows XP desktop manager (or skin), a Windows 7 one and a Windows 8.
And they could have been integrated in the OS without the need of a 3rd party software, like ModernMix or WindowBlinds.

[User110]

Just download an application to get the start menu back. You cannot rely on Microsoft after 8.1.

[TheAnimus]

I always wondered why Microsoft didn't borrow the "windows manager" concept from Linux world. This way they could provide a newer kernel, like W7 or W8 and let people still use the older UIs. Like XP for users of W7 or W7 for users of W8.
There could have been a Windows XP desktop manager (or skin), a Windows 7 one and a Windows 8.
And they could have been integrated in the OS without the need of a 3rd party software, like ModernMix or WindowBlinds.

I think you are missing the best thing about windows.

I know that I can say to a client, you need Windows 8.1 or server 2012 R2 I know that means I have a whole set of APIs to work with.

Linux is a bit of a pain at times, you can happily get stuck in an interoperability package hell, where one app wants version X of lib, but another is still on Y, this means the apps can't easily interact as their contract requires certain bits of those libs.

Windows has the huge benefit of brilliant compatibility.

However MS have messed up the migration of Desktop + Touch. They have forced desktop users to move to a paradigm many find jaring.

Myself I greatly prefer the new start menu. I see it as something really simple, I've got loads of pixels, a couple of 30" panels. If I hit windows key and start typing, I want you to use the whole space. Not a tiny fraction of it.

But in the same way many people felt the introduction of the Vista/7 start menu was bad compared to the XP one. These people are wrong and terrible luddites. Yet they shouldn't be forced!

[crossy]

I always wondered why Microsoft didn't borrow the "windows manager" concept from Linux world. This way they could provide a newer kernel, like W7 or W8 and let people still use the older UIs. Like XP for users of W7 or W7 for users of W8.
There could have been a Windows XP desktop manager (or skin), a Windows 7 one and a Windows 8.
And they could have been integrated in the OS without the need of a 3rd party software, like ModernMix or WindowBlinds.

Yes, but that is a side effect of how the two OS's were developed. Windows is a tightly integrated whole, with nice unified API's. In effect the UI is the OS.

On the other hand, Linux's UI is merely another application. Use what you got supplied with, replace it with something more suitable, or remove it and go command line hardcore. It's YOUR choice. Downside of this though is an application vendor has to be a lot more prescriptive about pre-requisites for their apps, because you never know what those evil users have done to the host your software is just about to be dropped on! Devs who are more into that kind of low level detail also tell me that any kind of graphical content is a pain on Linux, but straightforward on Windows (WPF presumably).

It's so nasty apparently that one dev said to me that he'd refuse to do any Linux user-app programming unless there was a decent 3rd party framework available. Then again, Linux is getting better since Darwinism seems to be killing the less-than-excellent development tools/libraries. Makes me glad that I'm doing server style apps, which need no UI.