The Windows OS needs a change in priorities

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  • ExplorerPatcher

    This project aims to enhance the working environment on Windows

  • This article nails a lot of the issues with Windows 11.

    I bit the bullet and upgraded to Windows 11 late last year thinking it must be an improvement over Windows 10. It turned out to be a big step backwards.

    - I can't move the task bar to the side, even though almost every monitor nowadays has much more horizontal space than vertical.

    - All apps are not readily accessible from the start menu; I have to click another button to get to them.

    - I have a 2-in-1 laptop, and turning it into tablet mode is wonky.

    - I can't choose to not have grouped buttons on the taskbar.

    - The context menus UX is horrible. Some context menu items are now two clicks away instead of one. Also what's with the excessive rounded corners and slim selection padding?

    - The stacked notifications is confusing, and always shows the calendar when I open the notifications panel.

    - Lots of crap pushed on me, like chat (aka Teams), widgets (which require a Microsoft account), 3rd party apps that look like they're installed but actually get downloaded/installed on first use.

    I was able to fix a lot of those issues with PatchExplorer [0]. However, one day after a Windows update, Explorer didn't start at all after login (black screen, I thought Windows was hosed). This has since been fixed. But I decided enough is enough, and finally "upgraded" back to Windows 10.

    The only good thing about Windows 11 is wslg, which provides out of the box support for Linux GUI apps (not available on Windows 10). Butt I can get the same result with an X server and some work.

    [0] https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher/wiki/All-features

  • serenity

    The Serenity Operating System 🐞

  • Not Windows, but you might get a kick out of the Serenity OS project: http://serenityos.org/

  • InfluxDB

    Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale. Get real-time insights from all types of time series data with InfluxDB. Ingest, query, and analyze billions of data points in real-time with unbounded cardinality.

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  • cassowary

    Run Windows Applications on Linux as if they are native, Use linux applications to launch files files located in windows vm without needing to install applications on vm. With easy to use configuration GUI

  • My conclusion is that all mainstream operating systems are now iterative and constantly in a state of semi-breakage, just like all modern apps, in an attempt to be more "modern" and to cut down on costs. I'm especially disappointed in Microsoft for their obsessive data collection. I've never experienced the "good old days" Apple fans seem to be referring to, so I can't comment on macOS (other than that it's clearly not for me).

    It's quite absurd, really, because while the Linux desktop environment is certainly good for novices and advanced Linux users, anyone that falls between those categories (and that's a lot of people!) will definitely struggle when they try to switch to Linux. You're either content with the default setup, or need to dive into the terminal at some point, and the fact commercial operating systems are making their UX worse than Linux would be impressive if it wasn't so disappointing.

    For what it's worth, I've managed to get Fusion360 running on Manjaro with a script a friend linked me online. I can't remember where I got it from exactly, but it involved auto downloading a bunch of Wine requirements and then just running the setup.

    If you're not interested in tweaking your system, feel free to skip over the rest of the comment. If you're willing to give it a go, I've got some experience with Windows stuff on Linux that you may be interested in.

    I barely use Fusion360, but the few times I used it, it worked pretty well in Wine. Even had decent 3D acceleration, though you can probably get a lot better performance with more trickery (DXVK etc. to enhance the 3D acceleration for example). Lutris (https://lutris.net/) has an install script (https://lutris.net/games/autodesk-fusion-360/), I recommend you give it a try. Lutris can help enable performance tuning tricks for productivity software quite easily, even if it's originally developed for playing video games. Might work for you, or it might not; if it does, it might just cut down on more unnecessary reboots. If it doesn't, you'll at most lose the time it takes to download the installer and remove the failed installation.

    As for the video conferencing, you might be interested in Cassowary (https://github.com/casualsnek/cassowary), a tool to run Windows executables in a Windows VM through RDP, with suspend/resume of the VM on demand to cut down on resources used when you're not using Windows. It requires a bit of setup, but the guide is quite comprehensive in my opinion. You can forward your webcam to the Windows VM through USB forwarding to get it to work with video, and modern RDP should just be an RDP stream so there shouldn't be too much quality loss. Even if the Cassowary setup doesn't work, you can probably use the VM anyway.

  • lutris

    Lutris desktop client

  • My conclusion is that all mainstream operating systems are now iterative and constantly in a state of semi-breakage, just like all modern apps, in an attempt to be more "modern" and to cut down on costs. I'm especially disappointed in Microsoft for their obsessive data collection. I've never experienced the "good old days" Apple fans seem to be referring to, so I can't comment on macOS (other than that it's clearly not for me).

    It's quite absurd, really, because while the Linux desktop environment is certainly good for novices and advanced Linux users, anyone that falls between those categories (and that's a lot of people!) will definitely struggle when they try to switch to Linux. You're either content with the default setup, or need to dive into the terminal at some point, and the fact commercial operating systems are making their UX worse than Linux would be impressive if it wasn't so disappointing.

    For what it's worth, I've managed to get Fusion360 running on Manjaro with a script a friend linked me online. I can't remember where I got it from exactly, but it involved auto downloading a bunch of Wine requirements and then just running the setup.

    If you're not interested in tweaking your system, feel free to skip over the rest of the comment. If you're willing to give it a go, I've got some experience with Windows stuff on Linux that you may be interested in.

    I barely use Fusion360, but the few times I used it, it worked pretty well in Wine. Even had decent 3D acceleration, though you can probably get a lot better performance with more trickery (DXVK etc. to enhance the 3D acceleration for example). Lutris (https://lutris.net/) has an install script (https://lutris.net/games/autodesk-fusion-360/), I recommend you give it a try. Lutris can help enable performance tuning tricks for productivity software quite easily, even if it's originally developed for playing video games. Might work for you, or it might not; if it does, it might just cut down on more unnecessary reboots. If it doesn't, you'll at most lose the time it takes to download the installer and remove the failed installation.

    As for the video conferencing, you might be interested in Cassowary (https://github.com/casualsnek/cassowary), a tool to run Windows executables in a Windows VM through RDP, with suspend/resume of the VM on demand to cut down on resources used when you're not using Windows. It requires a bit of setup, but the guide is quite comprehensive in my opinion. You can forward your webcam to the Windows VM through USB forwarding to get it to work with video, and modern RDP should just be an RDP stream so there shouldn't be too much quality loss. Even if the Cassowary setup doesn't work, you can probably use the VM anyway.

  • macOS-Simple-KVM

    Tools to set up a quick macOS VM in QEMU, accelerated by KVM.

  • Killed by Google

    Part guillotine, part graveyard for Google's doomed apps, services, and hardware.

  • Fear not; they'll deprecate Chrome OS and Stadia in the next few years and add it to https://killedbygoogle.com/ , which I see has just added AngularJS recently. Google Cloud Print stuck out there too, since we had a big thing about rolling that out at work just a few years ago as the future solution for all our printing needs.

  • Win10-Initial-Setup-Script

    Discontinued PowerShell script for automation of routine tasks done after fresh installations of Windows 10 / Server 2016 / Server 2019

  • SaaSHub

    SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives

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  • website

    Discontinued Core code of the UUP dump website (by uup-dump)

  • What are your issues with Parallels? The only gripe I have is that I can't use Windows 10 ARM other than that I was pleasantly surprised how well it works.

    I used https://uupdump.net/ to create the .iso because I didn't want to use the Insider Edition (I use it to test PowerShell Scripts and some Microsoft Endpoint Manager stuff).

  • Rectangle

    Move and resize windows on macOS with keyboard shortcuts and snap areas

  • Amethyst

    Automatic tiling window manager for macOS à la xmonad.

  • The last time I had to use MacOS regularly, the thing that killed it for me was the lack of a tiling window manager.

    I xmonad in Ubuntu and I haven't dragged a window on my personal laptop in years. Not only was that option missing on MacOS, the underlying OS abstractions actually made it impractical to build the last time I checked; windows were owned by the application, there was no language to move another application's windows except asking the application to move its own, and doing that required the application to be frontmost. So tiling was a context-switch morass and a bad UX.

    However, it appears the Accessibility Manager may since have grown enough feature hooks to support what I want, and https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst may do the job. I'll have to test it the next time I have my hands on a MacBook of some flavor.

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