Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Most of those are actually features.

1. Old control panels: Drivers may overlay or modify the window, so you can't really change them (don't forget: Windows supports many obscure devices like DAWs and heavy machinery, many things Linux users have never even considered connecting to a PC, and all of those have custom drivers from the device manufacturer that Microsoft doesn't control)

2. Telemetry, ads: Yes, this is a serious "bug" that Microsoft needs to fix, how do they keep accidentally adding fully-featured invasive telemetry and ad platforms into their OS? I guess that's what copying code from StackOverflow gets you!

3. Package management: NuGet?

4. Sandboxing: All modern OSs support lots of sandboxing options, not sure what you mean by this



> 1. Old control panels: Drivers may overlay or modify the window, so you can't really change them (don't forget: Windows supports many obscure devices like DAWs and heavy machinery, many things Linux users have never even considered connecting to a PC, and all of those have custom drivers from the device manufacturer that Microsoft doesn't control)

The bigger issue is that a fuckload of native Windows settings can only be changed through the old Control Panel dialogs. I hate the new Settings app, but they need to make up their minds about what they want to do instead of arbitrarily splitting everything up between the new shitty hotness and the old dialogs.


they're migrating things to Settings over time. do people not know this?


no, I didn't. I just assumed they were slow to do the migration.


Windows Sandbox is a thing as of this year: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/threat-pro...

Ephemeral, clean, windows instance on demand enabled by hypervisor tech. Only on Pro though. :-/


> 3. Package management: NuGet?

WinGet is their answer to this one:

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows-package-m...

It's not proper package management, but it's a start.


Powershell + ChocolateyGet (+ DSC if you want) does a pretty good job already. Apart from specialized software it's been years I had to install via tedious hunt for link + download + execute + go through wizards or similar. That being said, the meat of it is 3rd party so not having package management builtin is a valid complaint. Then again, if you think about what that would take: non-trivial.


I meant broken more in the sense of "anti-pattern" practices. It's been a while I used Windows to develop anything, so I might be outdated on points 3 and 4.

I understand the driver conundrum, from a user perspective, though, it's unbelievable how confusing and scattered Windows settings are by default (settings app / control panel / registry / AppData) and doesn't seem to exist a firm curatorship of that.

On the telemetry, it's baffling that it may happen even on a paid license and we just put up with it.


1 is widely broken then by Win11 not supporting 32 bit machines anymore.


It's possible that having invested effort into integrating with these old control panels, the hardware manufacturer wants to keep reusing that code, and is willing up recompile for 64-bit to do so, rather than throw it all away and start over.


uhh... 64-bit hardware can run 32-bit software just fine.

that old software will run fine and so will any connected hardware.


Imagine you have a 32 bit machine that drives something else with a controller board soldered on to the motherboard. Will it be able to run windows 11?


never have I seen anything like that that wasn't an appliance. as in vendor-managed.

so, even if you COULD upgrade to Windows 11 on something, don't, because you'll break it. I can't even think of a good reason to consider it.

if it needs to be on the network, isolate it, and let it do its job. it doesn't need to be fiddled with.

I'd also be having a long conversation with the vendor about using standard expansion interfaces and why soldering to the motherboard is a good way to end my relationship with them as a customer.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: