Microsoft Windows 10 'Sun Valley' to deliver significant UI updates

[HEXUS]

Could see big changes to the Start menu, Action Centre, File Explorer - touted to arrive in Q4 21.

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[spacein_vader]

That's good. Users are famously enthusiastic about changes to the Start menu.

[Saracen999]

That's good. Users are famously enthusiastic about changes to the Start menu.

Oi. You broke my Sarcasm-o-meter. I'm just not sure if it's steam or smoke pouring out of it.

[Saracen999]

"Panos Panay wants people to go from needing Windows to loving Windows, and a modern refreshed interface that's intuitive and design-driven is a great start,"

That's simple. Give USERS the option to turn the "refreshed stuff" off if they don't like it. And, to easily turn off tiles and the interactive guff, and to turn my preferred option off the old W7 structured Start menu back on so I can work the way I want to.

MS, you will get a LOT less backlash over UI changes if you give users the option, without the UI equivalent of telling Arthur Dent where the HHGTTG planning department is, to decide for themselves if they want it. Or not.

You will even find that any reasonable person will give that "modern refreshed interface" a fair crack, if they know they can easily turn it off if they decide they don't like whatever your designers were smoking when they created it. But try to ram it down our throats and we resent it, and you.

If the above makes it sound like I'm still #&@!-ed off about the last major UI changes, that would be quite right. All I want is the choice, not having it rammed down my throat.

And before someone tells me, I know about Start8, Start10, "Classic" options, etc.

/rant ends.

/for now.

[Kato-2]

Might finally be time to switch to Linux Mint.

[DanceswithUnix]

Might finally be time to switch to Linux Mint.

I made the move to Linux in, what, 1992? It is so nice to be outside these problems looking down on them

I will no doubt boot into Windows later this evening to use it as a games launcher. Can't get stressed about what they do to the Start menu when I have a Steam icon on the desktop and usually launch stuff from there!

[Corky34]

Might finally be time to switch to Linux Mint.

The biggest problem with Linux, coming from someone who tried to swap to it as a daily driver, is the chicken and egg situation. New hardware support can be problematic because vendors often don't release low level information to the public and trying to fix or change something can be a nightmare simply because the information is either out of date of really hard to find because so few people have done X before and fewer still have bothered to put how too's in writing.

Example: I tried to get the sensors working on X570 and while it could be done it was all a bit hacky and there wasn't much in the way of software support for easily seeing and adjusting fan speeds (CPU fan would ramp up and down despite setting higher hysteria levels).
The other thing that bugged me was how disjointed things can be, having /dev /proc and /sys was annoying and just as confusing as having /home and /usr (although that latter one makes more sense), and then there's systemd vs SysV. Don't get me wrong having loads of ways to get things done is fine and all but there were times when i just wished there was a bit more direction.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing Linux as Windows has plenty of problems itself, it's just i found there to be a massive gulf between it just working and wanting/needing to do extra stuff, i guess people with experience of Linux forget how hard doing something simple can be for new comers.

[GravJunk]

I still prefer Windows 2000 or XP days when it comes to the GUI. It was simple, unified, and easy to read/focus on.

The whole having two different forms of programs like control panel and the normal settings app, it's dysfunctional how you have to go from one GUI style and then hop onto another if you want other settings.

The way Windows 10 is, it's just so soo.. flat! There's no contrast at the edges of windows either.

[DanceswithUnix]

i guess people with experience of Linux forget how hard doing something simple can be for new comers.

But similarly people with a background in Windows forget how utterly baffling just about anything can be in Windows to those outside it.

For example life is just too short for me to work out what the storage manager is up to when things get a bit tricky.
I recently wanted to send a customer a zipped SD card image for an embedded device (which is ARM based and boots into Linux). Took all day to come up with some Windows friendly instructions for what tools to download and how to use them. I created the image in Linux with a one line "dd" command that I know is going to be on any Linux pc I go near.

"Just click in the GUI". Yeah, which bit of which gui? Is that in Settings or do I have to try and find my way to the old Control Panel by knowing exactly what to type in the search box?

I've been doing this stuff since DOS 3.0, and whilst at least CONFIG.SYS and all that himem shenanigans is gone it doesn't feel like Windows has got any easier. Stuff does seem to move randomly around though. I'm sure that is what some of the resistance to Windows 10 comes from, the feeling of "That was fine where it was, just stock dicking around for pete's sake".

... and with that my work is done for the week. I shall reboot my workstation here into Windows 10 2004, click the Steam icon and play some Crysis 3. None of that moves much

[Corky34]

But similarly people with a background in Windows forget how utterly baffling just about anything can be in Windows to those outside it.

True but that's where the chicken and egg thing comes into it, if there's problem with doing something on Windows you're more likely to find clues or solutions online simply because of the amount of users, whereas trying to find a solution to some Linux problems online can take ages, for example it took me a week of searching to discover NVME drive temperature reporting wasn't possible at the time because it wasn't in the kernel (at the time).

Like i said I'm not oblivious to the problems with Windows, there are many and they only seem to be adding more oddities, however IMO Linux is stuck in an awkward place in that *support is lacking because of low *user numbers and user numbers won't increase until it gets better support.

*Support as in finding out how to do X, Y, or Z and support from hardware vendors.
*Users as in desktop type users.

[AGTDenton]

Hopefully they put everything back into the Control Panel and ditch Settings. Now there's no Windows mobile we don't need the Settings nonsense anymore.
But no they'll create more chaos

[Jonj1611]

Hopefully they put everything back into the Control Panel and ditch Settings. Now there's no Windows mobile we don't need the Settings nonsense anymore.
But no they'll create more chaos

Can't you just access the control panel by type control panel in search? Or did you mean something different?

[Saracen999]

.... whereas trying to find a solution to some Linux problems online can take ages, for example it took me a week of searching to discover NVME drive temperature reporting wasn't possible at the time because it wasn't in the kernel (at the time).
...

While I get your point, and agree, that example might be a tad unfair, deriving from something that isn't there in the first place.

For some reason, it made me smirk because it reminded me of Donald Rumfeld's famous speech about known and unknown unknowns. That's kind-of in thee unknown unknown category.

I have to say, though, I didn't find switching from Windows (7) to Linux (Ubuntu, initially) that hard or confusing. To put that in context, I have about 50 years background of messing with computers but more at the user end than OS internals. I'm not a complete novice at muching about under the bonnet (hood) but a long way from an expert. And by "converting" to Linux, I mean as a user.

I would advise anyone considering it to do some research first. It starts out very confusingly, due to the vast array of different builds, usually dine with different objectives in mind. Then, try to get straight in your head the different UI packages, because that can greatly affect how comfortable the switch from Windows is. Get a grip on those two, and pick your flavour of Linux carefully, and you're half way there. The other half is finding applications to replace familiar Windows software, but Libre Office is a damn good start .... and much better that Open Office was, IMHO. One let-down, I guess, is that while v7 software is very good, the documentation project has yet to catch up and is mostly still v6. That said, the documentation is very good, and very extensive. And at free, we can't moan about the price, compared to either fixed or subscription costs from MS.

Oh, and by "documenration" I mean the printable PDF's, not the online help.

My biggest problem with switching a lot of my usage to Linux was finding suitable software for lots of the other things I use. Support for older hardware is patchy, as it is with W10 to a degree, and some of my older software just doesn't have Linux variants, like the genealogy software, and I'm NOT wasting who knows how many hours and days of my life finding an alternative and rebuilding all the data. So .... I still have Windows systems I can boot into. It would be much cleaner to switch entirely to Linux, but given that my "tablet" type device is an MS Surface Pro, I'm kinda stuck with W10 on that. Which is pretty much the only reason I care about what MS do with Start menu, etc.



Oh, and the "you" I mention in this post is a generic you, not you, Corky. I know you know all the above anyway.

[badass]

True but that's where the chicken and egg thing comes into it

And that's the problem for me. Whether some variant of Linux is "better" than windows or not, every time I have given it a try, getting even simple things done resulted in the same convoluted, long winded research with incomplete instructions. Whilst for me, Windows for some of the simpler stuff "just works"*


By just works, of course I mean "works well enough that I can't be bothered to spend the substantial amount of time to get linux doing things I consider pretty basic. Windows 10 is an unreliable POS that requires constant intervention to keep "working"

[Corky34]

I have to say, though, I didn't find switching from Windows (7) to Linux (Ubuntu, initially) that hard or confusing. To put that in context, I have about 50 years background of messing with computers but more at the user end than OS internals. I'm not a complete novice at muching about under the bonnet (hood) but a long way from an expert. And by "converting" to Linux, I mean as a user.

Totally agree that installing and using Linux is easy, easier than Windows in many respects, however like i said there's a sort of vacuum in the middle ground between just using it and knowing about the inner working. From a users perspective I'd say Linux is easier than Windows because typically you don't have to go searching for drivers and finding and installing software is way easier, it's way more install and go than Windows, the part i found most frustrating is trying to go from simply using it to getting the most out of it like is feature X of hardware Y supported or how do i install software Z that's not in a repository.

For someone familiar with Linux installing an out of tree module is probably a breeze, it took me days, admittedly a large part of that was probably down to getting sidetracked and installing an updated IT87 wasn't in anyway necessary but that's sort of what i mean about the gap between simply using the OS and understanding how to make the OS do what you want.

And that's the problem for me. Whether some variant of Linux is "better" than windows or not, every time I have given it a try, getting even simple things done resulted in the same convoluted, long winded research with incomplete instructions. Whilst for me, Windows for some of the simpler stuff "just works"*

By just works, of course I mean "works well enough that I can't be bothered to spend the substantial amount of time to get linux doing things I consider pretty basic. Windows 10 is an unreliable POS that requires constant intervention to keep "working"

Just curious was that some time ago as i found the basic getting stuff done really simple, and when i mean basic i mean the stuff that's got GUI's, i found it's when you needed to dig a little deeper that things started to become tricky.

[Saracen999]

Totally agree that installing and using Linux is easy, easier than Windows in many respects, however like i said there's a sort of vacuum in the middle ground between just using it and knowing about the inner working. From a users perspective I'd say Linux is easier than Windows because typically you don't have to go searching for drivers and finding and installing software is way easier, it's way more install and go than Windows, the part i found most frustrating is trying to go from simply using it to getting the most out of it like is feature X of hardware Y supported or how do i install software Z that's not in a repository.

For someone familiar with Linux installing an out of tree module is probably a breeze, it took me days, admittedly a large part of that was probably down to getting sidetracked and installing an updated IT87 wasn't in anyway necessary but that's sort of what i mean about the gap between simply using the OS and understanding how to make the OS do what you want.

.....

For tinkering with the internals, I'd certainly agree it's different. And perhaps, a different mindset, too. A bit like the brainache going from a linear programming environment to an object-oriented one was for me. But I wonder if, had you used Linux first and become thoroughly familiar with tinkering, would you have had the same issues switching to Windows with what would then have been it's unfamiliarity?

Most people, IMHO, won't need to tinker with the internals, and of course, the others that do need to tinker are probably the best equipped to get used to a new tinkering environment.

In other words, the learning curve for users is, IMHO, fairly modest, but yeah, for tinkerers, it's .... different.