Nice, take away the only tool that sometimes fixes what your engineers destroyed
I’m not sure what to say. Settings just doesn’t let you get anything done. Are they going to add all the missing functionality to settings before getting rid of control panel? We all know the answer.
If my company didn’t have a windows mandate I would fully abandon it at this point. What a joke.
Yup. I have 1 app that requires window. That’s all that’s keeping me. That one app. And we’re migrating away from it towards a webif, so it’s only a matter of time.
I’m curious about how this impacts the buttons in the settings app that just open the appropriate control panel applet. Like “additional sound settings” for example.
Good god, this is sad to witness. As long as I’ve been using windows, they’ve added duplicates of every single thing, but presented differently, each version being slightly more incapable in slightly different ways. How can a piece of software be so utterly lacking in design and forethought is beyond me, for real.
I find it funny they’ve been trying to kill the Control Panel for 12 years now and still haven’t been able to do it. Microsoft, here’s an idea you can have for free: Put an “Other” section in the Settings app that opens the Control Panel inside the app, QED.
On brand. Settings is like control panel but dumber.
I love how in settings all the different miuse options are spread out in different places!
Want to change mouse speed, cursor size, and color? We are going on an adventure!
Even more frustrating is that different releases and builds recategorize where certain settings are entirely. To the point where search is the only reliable way of knowing for sure you’ll get to the right place. They haven’t changed things too drastically recently but they kept moving shit around in Win10 throughout its lifetime.
The older and older I get in life, the more and more I want my digital product interfaces to remain as static as possible. I’m not anti new features, but I want the ability to persist the OG interface I’m used to, the state in which I know WHERE things are, and HOW to utilize them.
I don’t want app icons to change without my consent. I want zero rebranding, name or color changes. I don’t want to be forced to change services due to enshittification, and learn how to fit new ones into my workflows.
One of the core problems with the modern world is confusion of information. Our brains were not designed to handle the infinite layer of abstractions, dozens/hundreds of separate systems, each with potentially hundreds or thousands of different configurations. Every time a major update occurs it breaks my mums tech illiterate brain more and more, and she stops using digital products more and more.
I get the feeling, but in my experience it has more to do with the windows UI actual getting worse. When I use Linux, I’m happy to try out different desktop environments and shells, but they have one thing in common: they have designs that are created more thoughtfully.
It’s not just us growing old, it’s the world of technology growing shittier too!
I don’t care if things stay the same, I just want an intuitive interface.
This is how I feel as a software engineer. I’m sick of learning new libraries every time fashions change.
My uncle can navigate windows xp with his eyes closed. It took me years to get him there. He was fine with vista and 7. When 8 hit, it was over and it has been since.
This is a religious man who I’ve only ever heard cuss twice in his life before, and they were the milder words. “What the fuck is copy as a path? I’m just trying to copy and paste a file to my Zip drive! I can’t find computer, I can’t find my computer. I can’t find copy and paste! I’m gonna throw this thing across the room! Seriously, show more options? Why not leave the options I’ve had since 1996 where they were? Do people just not copy and paste any more?”
I have given up and I just remote connect and do it for him. He tried for a few years with the “slow down and let me learn” thing but he’s almost 70 and he’s given up.
He calls his usb drives “zip drives”. He was the only person I knew who had an actual Zip drive when I was a kid and I loved it.
I bet AI would be helpful here!!
There a lot of non AI implementations that would be more reliably logical, like presenting options in multiple groups instead of only having a single location buried in submenus.
Like mouse color and size could be in an appearence AND in a general mouse settings that includes mouse appearance and behavior. They could design it so the setting itself is self contained, so it can behave the same way no matter how it is grouped for presentation.
I would expect AI to make up illogical groupings, because it doesn’t understand context.
You’re not around a lot people that joke, are you?
Ever heard of Poe’s Law?
It isn’t a story that the Jedi would tell you.
“I’m New Clippy. I’m here to help you, like it or not!”
Hey, Clippy! Change the settings so that I can view hidden files . Clippy: Ok. Shutting down the nuclear reactor.
I know people in IT who only use control panel. This will piss people off.
Ew. They should expand their skill set to using terminal/powershell.
I’m not knocking on GUIs but I will call out “IT professionals” who ONLY know how to use GUIs.
Any time on Linux, but the windows shells are unusable. And configuration databases are much more convoluted things on windows than text files
If you want Windows without a GUI, you should be using MS-DOS. The whole point of Windows is that it has a GUI.
To be fair powershell is more recent and windows has always used the control panel for most configuration, they are kind of rug pulling everyone who learned to use it and there arent clear terminal alternatives, for instance, how do I calibrate a game controller’s axis with the terminal?
Hot take, not everything should be powershell or cli. Control panel is pretty straightforward and even I use it from time to time. Because trying to find stuff in Settings is a nightmare.
Hot take but anyone who refuses to rethink how things work during their lifetime causes changes to happen at the pace of 1 change per generation.
Of course, in this case, the new thing really is inferior.
I have no problem with change. But I do have a problem with Microsoft’s lack of QC or proper design methodology.
Yeah if the settings panel had feature parity with control panel but with a better user experience nobody would mind but it’s less features AND a worse experience.
I remember trying to change some mouse settings on windows 10 but they removed the ability to get to the old mouse options from the desktop. I drilled down through the settings app and eventually buried deep I found where it would let me open up that same old mouse settings modal to get to what I wanted to change. More clicks, more searching, and less features = poor user experience
I really love how many of the buttons in settings either open an edge web page where Microsoft shrugs at you or just opens the control panel for you to actually get something done…
But hey when I need to turn off transparency effects cause it’s making all my taskbar icons disappear every time I swap desktops the new settings page works great. Sometimes.
God they needed actual competition. Or something.
I mean I use windows and Linux for home and work. I’m happy with a changing ecosystem. The control panel is, often, the best tool to get shit done on windows.
Nice screenshot, nobody will recognize by this what did they remove
If Microsoft had actually moved all the settings over to the “new” settings app (it’s 12 years old, btw), I’d be supportive of this.
It’s a joke that windows has 2 settings apps, and searching for specific settings in the start menu will take you to either, or to both.
But as we all know, Microsoft won’t do this properly. They’ll likely just continue with their 75% finished settings app while hiding the control panel, and if you need something not in the settings app you’ll have to open some old menu using a run command or some other terrible convoluted step that makes you feel like you’re running a half-baked Linux distro from 2003.
MacOS, Android, iOS, Linux distros don’t have this issue. Fucking TempleOS doesn’t have this issue. Microsoft is a $3.2 trillion company!
The absolute lack of effort they put into Windows is pathetic. They’re a shining example of why monopolies should not be allowed to happen.
I hate the settings app so much that I’ve just learned the powershell commands for setting up printers and changing NIC settings. Honestly it wouldn’t be as bad if a. It didn’t take forever to load on occasion and b. I could have two settings windows open at once.
It’s so hard to find settings there that jumping between network center and add device is not intuitive. If they remove control panel from servers too I might quite my msp job and go work at a grocery store.
Does Linux have good support for VR yet? Specifically my HP Reverb g2 that seems to be reliant on windows mixed reality…
I’ve never tried VR on any OS, but from what I’ve heard it’s hit and miss on Linux right now - certainly not as good as Windows at the moment.
I know that KDE has a lot of stuff for VR (unsurprising given Valve is pushing for it), and Gnome has just merged a lot of the same, so if you give it a spin I’d recommend an up-to-date distro (say Fedora or OpenSUSE Tumbleweed) with either KDE or Gnome.
I imagine that when Valve releases their new headset, progress will accelerate, but that’s just a guess
Interesting, thank you
Also was unaware Valve was working on a new headset! That’s good news as it feels like the market has really stagnated outside of the Meta headsets.
I wouldn’t get too excited. Supposedly the next headset is internally called Deckard, and it’s been “about to release” for like 3 years now? Pretty much everything people think they know about it is conjecture based off code Valve has tucked away in SteamVR; zero public statements of intent.
As for VR on Linux… kinda? I’ve only read terrible things about it online. I have an Index and tried to use it with Mint a few months back, and while it mostly worked without any configuration issues, there was a weird white ring around the edge of the screen that I couldn’t figure out.
zero public statements of intent
To be fair, when has Valve ever done this?
I have the same headset, and as of a few weeks ago when I last checked, there is not complete support. I think the display works mostly, but the controllers don’t so it might depend on what you are doing.
Interesting - I rarely use the controllers, so could be do-able at least as a dual boot
Just a curious question - Is there any VR sets that work with Linux Distros? I’m not much of a gamer to need or want one. Just want to learn for learning’s sake.
the thing that most grinds my gears is that there are settings that appear in both control panels and settings, appear to be changeable in both, but only one or the other actually changes anything.
I thought it said “decapitates” at first and I lol’d
Just yesterday I wanted to disable sound devices. The button in the settings app even says „turn devices on/off“, but once inside the menu, there is no option to enable or disable sound devices.
Had to use the control panel again.
Mmsys.cpl is the only way for me
This clearly calls for Windows God Mode.
Let’s wait for CEOs to learn about the mess of Program Files\Program Files (x86), and how the user directory is filled with links replacing deprecated folders making it unusable. Windows is more of the inverted Babylon tower of hell than a consistent and complete vision of a product, one layer is built on top of another like a patchwork of a clinically insane. That’s with all their $billions, millions of workhours and a market monopoly.
That’s mostly because of backwards compatibility, and it’s a blessing imo.
Or a forward compatibility, since they weren’t obliged to create these new paths, and they did, thus creating a problem for themselves.
Microsoft is so ridiculously out of touch with its users demands.
Am i the only one who just presses the windows button and types the setting thry want? I havent looked at control panel forever…
That’s fine when you want a setting that exists in the settings app. Let me know if you find a place to adjust your audio device speaker configuration, or toggle live monitoring of an audio input.
It’s not really fine, though. It’s much more sparse on information, and the animations slow you down because buttons are not clickable until the animation ended. And then there’s when the menu gets populated in chunks through a few seconds, don’t even try to click the button because it will jump away and you’ll click something else. No, this is not on an old machine: Ryzen system with SSD.
