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Microsoft formally deprecates the 39-year-old Windows Control Panel
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2024
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Oh no. They really want me swapping to Linux full time with this shit, ugh.
What's stopping you?
Just get it over with.
The setup, mostly. I know I can VM my mandatory work programs, at least. Dual boot has been too frustrating since Windows won't play ball.
I am glad I waited on dual boot since the recent patch broke that. So, now I'm looking for a good way to just go all in without losing too much data.
I really just need a stable kernel with a decent UI that works with Gaming/Proton AMD CPU and Nvidia GPU.
The distro choices are too expansive and I haven't had to start fresh in a new OS in 30 years.
I play games on Pop_OS (NVIDIA edition) and also run an AMD CPU. Great experience for 2 years now.
Just start with Linux mint and cinnamon or kde desktop environment. You should be good to go with that. Kernels are not something that you usually need to worry about, the default should work fine. If you need to, it’s easy to switch to another kernel by just installing it through the package manager.
Well I spent Sunday night installing Manjaro and so far so good. It's been almost 30 years since the last time I used Linux, and KDE Plasma is really easy to use.
I decided to wipe my Win 10 drive so there was no going back. I was able to install and play games like normal, and I even used the command line to pull and build the Mullvad VPN App from the Arch store, and sign the app certificate.
The best part was once I setup the steam libraries Steam pulled all the information from those drives and all my games that weren't on my Windows SSD were ready to go. All of my peripherals just worked and the Nvidia driver was fine.
I'm just missing some GOG Games, but Heroic should take care of that. Painless and simple.
It's amazing how much has changed in over 20 years.
I’m enjoying a dual boot with Nobara_Gnome_Nvidia. Just finished the game with my first character on Tiny Tina’s Wonderland without issue. My only gripe would be how that particular game takes a minute to optimize shaders at the initial game start. Glorious Eggroll does nice work.
I’d recommend looking into Bazzite. Built on top of Fedora for rock solid stability and relatively up to date kernel (with all the latest drivers).
They’re shooting for the same stability and high level gaming experience as Steam Deck, but for any computer.
I use Bluefin because I’m less bothered by gaming, but it’s been absolutely fantastic with the stability and ability to run anything I’ve tried.
Well for my work needs I require NVIDIA graphics cards and very high end multi channel audio cards and some other bits and bops. I can dream I can swap one day though.
I e had the opposite experience with my 7800x3D. With windows, my Soundblaster card’s drivers won’t install because they will cause an “unstable overclock” while it works on the Nobara installation.
What are your very high end multi channel audio cards that don't play together with Jack?
Three of these:
https://studiocare.com/products/avid-hd-i-o-16x16-analog?srsltid=AfmBOopBLvaP23FUCVyodLxYVpR_6sSgje_cDUHjzMRAnJ3Z97s3nkAs
And I got a few other rigs with various rme cards and some focusrite things,
Also there is, yeah you can see the card and it makes sounds, and there is working at a proper level of working, very different unfortunately :(
Ah. Pro Tools.
Yeah I understand Avid isn't exactly er, avid on the open source stuff.
My apologies and thanks for the education.
Oh yeah don't get me wrong, super not a fan of avid and protools whole thing, but hands are part tired unfortunately :( I am glad I ditched avid stuff for video work many years ago at least, though really am not sure Adobe is the better place to be rofl. One day I would love to have a fully working machine you can use in industry that is entirely Linux!!
Yeah, good luck getting Adobe supporting anything linux. Have pleaded both as customer and as corporate client. Not happening.
Blackmagic has stuff. DaVinci, etc. But apples and oranges.
It's crazy to me that Adobe is on the board of the Linux Foundation, yet outright refuse to support Linux with their software.
Hahaha yup and yup, we can dream!!! Sad lolling noises Haha
Do it. I will too. I'll do a QEMU Vm for my windows needs. I'm done with their behavior.
Sure, once I decide on a more permanent distro. Manjaro was ok but I keep hearing bad things and it was a gaming partition, not an all purpose partition. I'm sure lurking in Linux communities will give me some ideas, though.
Yeah, I got my samba Share setup on my temporary NAS tonight. But after I transfer my files, I'm torn what try as permanent. Been using KDE Neon on my laptop, but it does need to update every boot it seems.
I used Kubuntu on my workstation and liked it. I use ubuntu at work for all my Linux needs there. I'm also really tempted to just make it a proxmox server and turn it into a VM box essentially. Which would make the experience of trying new things or switching back to windows for that inevitable game that won't work on Linux fairly seamless. But I could also give freebsd another go too, which doesn't seem like a terrible idea
I could ramble on, but I think I'll leave it at the realization I really like Debian based distros. If you feel like it let me know what you decide!
THIS was your tipping point. control panel removal.
LMAO
it’s a very good tipping point dude. settings is so complicated to navigate and is very slow. not to mention control panel still has more features than settings
Have you used Settings?
I just hit the windows key and start typing what I want. I don't use settings as a menu option much.
https://i.ibb.co/Q6yV9YH/ig9-Ooyenpxqd-CQy-ABm-OQBZDI0du-Hk2-QZZm-Wg2-Hxd4ro-495190217.jpg
This isn't removal, is deprecation.
That seems reasonable. Especially since there's no equivalent to the already half-assed solution that is the control panel on Linux.
OSX style settings menus are far better than either the travesty that is the win 10 settings or the aging and questionably designed control panel, especially when it's all tightly integrated with the OS and utilities, and that's present in every Linux DE under the sun.
EDIT: I should clarify that by "already half-assed solution that is the control panel", I meant that the Windows Control Panel was always a half-assed solution in comparison to what OSX and Linux DEs do with proper settings manager applications.
On Linux DEs, a settings manager like Settings in OSX is usually present, and it is a far better solution.
I agree with your point about OS X style menus, they've been steadily going downhill since "macOS" though. Granted, they're still uphill of whatever the fuck Microsoft seems to think of.
My issue with Control Panel is there's no clear delineation between OS and distribution software and installed software.
On Windows, a program you install at any time may do anything like:
Bonus: App has registry entries it doesn't tell you about that address options for which there are no GUI representations.
The whole thing is extremely arbitrary and made for a very different world where programs you'd install would be fairly limited in number. Nowadays I have no idea what software runs on my Windows rig and how much of it there is. Between flight simming, racing simming and all the third party crap for all that plus the crap for the peripherals, the endless esoteric drivers for various gear I've used for audio and video recording and playback, helper utilities, virtual audio cables, virtual midi cables, virtual ethernet, virtual mouse, virtual GPU etc etc. Recently I found some kind of Sony audio driver on the control panel. Apparently it came with a Sony DAP I used to use that could be used as a DAC.
What makes this worse is that the Control Panel's actual included items are not standardized in any way. Any applet could have sixteen submenus across three windows and tabs or one. Microsoft was trying to paper over it since Vista and as always just created more barriers. Microsoft is like a slumlord painting over mold and rotting walls with each update.
This just doesn't happen on Linux.
On Linux a GUI settings manager on Gnome and KDE alike will only feature things relevant to the OS configuration and maybe some for bundled pre-installed software. All the settings menus on Gnome are uniform, and most are uniform on KDE. I talk shit on KDE's insane defaults (touchpad settings and minimize all windows applet) but I found the right settings immediately.
On Windows, I don't even know where those settings are, there are some ideas on where I could look but it's honestly faster to just Google it than to guess around where the touchpad settings are.
Windows' attempts to implement this through a unified settings menu is to paper over how the settings themselves were made to be configured through a spaghetti of menus on the control panel, and as such when displayed through a unified settings menu the order and groupings come off as completely arbitrary and nonsensical, and then some options are just outright missing from the Settings menu that are present in the control panel.
It provides neither the features existing users expect nor simplicity that would help new users.
What's worse is that Windows also has to be an ad vessel to make the line go up. Therefore to add to the confusion, the settings menu has to act as a vessel for promoting Microsoft products and thus prominently feature OneDrive, Windows Defender (not even called that anymore), to appear as if they're integral parts of the OS and not applications and services I can choose to not use.
Surprisingly this is also an issue on iOS. I frequently find useful settings for apps in the iOS settings app and not the actual app. It feels so funny that iOS is this highly polished experience, and then you get some crummy Bullshit Calculator app with "restore premium and-free VIP subscription" in the official settings app. Takes some of the sheen off, for sure.
Can you enlighten me on what is the 'already half-assed solution that is the control panel on Linux" [sic]. That you mean.
Far as I know, there are many a different approaches to half-assed solutions to control panels on Linux [sic].
I phrased that very poorly. I'll edit the above to clarify.
I meant that the Windows Control Panel was always a half-assed solution in comparison to what OSX and Linux DEs do with proper settings manager applications.
On Linux DEs, a settings manager like Settings in OSX is usually present, and it is a far better solution.
Fair enough. And I didn't mean it as a slight. Just genuinely curious about what a unified Linux Control Panel might have been like.
This is not to say that the Gnome and KDE (or Plasma) panels (f. ex.) don't have their varied and myriad shortcomings, but that's another discussion.