What a fucking piece of shit company. What’s the eta to fully learn Linux, and learn how to set up a dual boot os where Linus is daily driver but a local windows account is on its own drive for emergencies and gaming.
If you have a USB stick handy, you could probably be dual booting into Linux Mint within an hour.
No need to fully learn Linux before moving to that. You can do your research using Firefox on your Linux desktop. And by “research” I mean googling/DDGing things as you need to know how to do them. It starts to stick.
Windows “god mode”: https://www.howtogeek.com/402458/enable-god-mode-in-windows-10/
What is god mode?
it’s simply a special folder you can enable that exposes most of Windows’ admin, management, settings, and Control Panel tools in a single, easy-to-scroll-through interface
It’s very easy to set this up, and it also works in Windows 11. Even if Microsoft removes access to the normal Control Panel, I seriously doubt this will be taken out.
I know this but they can break it as well if they do remove it not only hide it ( class ids ). For me it’s plain as the new windows settings are dead slow and it won’t be usable if your computer is under very heavy load. Only cmd, maybe powershell and maybe sys internals will be what’s left for you
I used to love HowToGeek, but I sadly see that now that’s also enshittified (not the article you linked, but the most recent ones).
Worse, if you go to their articles via their newsletter, it redirects to aws.me domain in the middle which uBlock Origin blocks. You need to manually allow that subdomain to let it run. Plus, they now and then nudge you to create a free account to read more articles.
Oh, did I mention there is a Premium tier of their site as well? Ironical that as the site’s editorial quality is coming down, the shittiness is increasing. I think originally one guy used to run it and write articles there. It was relatively frugal (compared to the churn of articles that they process today) and higher quality.
Yes, I remember the guy writing there. That was a serious website! But maybe he sold it to somebody else before Google completely killed their search engine.
Now, if you want to rank well on Google, you either have to churn out stupid articles filled with SEO junk every single day.
I hate to be that guy, but why don’t you just move over to Linux already? Games work. It’s incredibly easy now. A nine year old could install and use xubuntu.
I am past the point of having “a” computer with “an” operating system… the concept of “moving” to another OS is basically irrelevant… I use different environments for different purposes and there’s no good reason to leave potential functional value unused for the sake of ideological convictions or fanboyism or whatever. My problems now revolve around having a useful cross-platform account that has access to my files on any/all of my platforms/VMs. I do lean heavily on open source software, I prefer it to proprietary.
More basically, an OS is not a food that you might like or dislike, it is a tool that you use when it is suited to the task. Discriminating against tools doesn’t make sense, it only limits your capabilities.
Please read this older comment of mine, it explains my point of view on this more… and if you want to do something really interesting then try to implement Qubes and actually use it for awhile.
More basically, an OS is not a food that you might like or dislike, it is a tool that you use when it is suited to the task. Discriminating against tools doesn’t make sense, it only limits your capabilities.
Only if you want capabilities that you can only achieve with the tool you dislike. I’ve had plenty of shitty screwdrivers, and it was totally reasonable not to like them. And I’m not going to deal with all the safety risks of a table saw when I really only need a hacksaw.
That’s all great for you to be platform agnostic. There’s literally zero things I want to do that I can’t do with Linux, and as someone who does get paid to use, deploy, and support Windows, the only things I find easier with Windows are goals that exist only because MS created them (such as AD integration).
Nah, you do you, but I’m quite comfortable discriminating against Windows, and with defending the fact that I do so. I’ll continue using it only when paid for that purpose, and will absolutely not voluntarily put myself in a position where I need to rely on the mess that is windows or the surveillance company that is Microsoft for anything that is important to me personally.
I am past the point of having “a” computer with “an” operating system… the concept of “moving” to another OS is basically irrelevant…
And man the entire tone of your post is early 2000’s “I don’t even own a TV” level.
I’ve been daily driving Linux for a long time. It’s honestly still not for everyone.
Anti-cheat is still a problem Roblox is still a problem. There are still plenty of programs that people are intimately married to the don’t run well under wine. You can’t just tell them you can’t have Photoshop Premier and Outlook anymore. Arguably a number of the people who don’t fall under that criteria could be running Chromebooks.
And honestly we’re not going to properly support them when their autocomplete software doesn’t run under Wayland or parsec doesn’t support server mode.
It’s great that you either have the chops to fill in the gaps or don’t run the software that has the gaps, but you really can’t ask everyone to do that right?
Why is this argument so common? “Games work on Linux now so you can switch over”. As if games is the only thing holding people back. My laptops are finally running Linux full time now, but I’ve been looking to switch my workstation over to Linux for 25 years now and I’m still not able to fully do it due to limited software and hardware support, and I barely play any games.
Because, it is really the last thing that windows did better than Linux. There are many reasons to switch Linux. Having control over your computer is the primary one in my opinion. Maybe I made a poorly worded argument, but the fact that windows can just change your system is on you is incredibly frustrating. I haven’t used Windows in almost 10 years, and I don’t think I’ve missed much. Recent advances in wine and proton make it incredibly easy to run windows software, and for the few things that don’t work there are arguably better alternatives.
Why is this argument so common?
Because for decades every sincere attempt to suggest Linux as the solution to some problem was 80% of the time met with “but muh games”, so now people make the assumption that it will be the likely objection when it comes up.
You seem to have a corner case that requires you to use Windows even if you did prefer not to, and that’s totally valid.
I’m 17 years in running Linux on everything at home while being paid to support and deploy Windows at work, and my trajectory has been that each and every one of those 17 years MS has given me reason to be really happy I left them behind. Lots of other folks have similar stories, and it’s only natural that they want to share that enthusiasm with folks who are pearl-clutching about however MS has shit on their users this month.
Personally I think there are more users who could go my way than who are likely to have a corner case such as yours. (I barely even consider HW compatibility anymore for common devices except of course avoiding a very short list of wifi vendors.) But I also recognize that is my perception and anecdote and I couldn’t support that assertion with any particular data.
It’s almost like people don’t care to realize there’s requirements that are out of my/their/your control. I have to run windows for my SCADA vms to work. I have to run the exact software the company uses. I am 100% not in control of the requirements.
My home lab is 100% windows free. Proxmox, truenas and basic Debian everywhere. Dual booting fedora and Arch on my personal laptop.
It’s becoming such an inarticulate argument that I’ve just taken to ignoring everyone who rattles that off as if it’s just black and white.
From my experience it’s still a common misconception and I think it’s the largest potential group that can switch. Sucks that your usecase is unsupported, though. Just out of interest, what software can you still not run?
Just out of interest, what software can you still not run?
They never answer this, out of fear you may help them.
They did, and 3 hours before you made this comment.
What are you on about, I answered. DTP software and Native Instruments software that uses their proprietary hardware (Maschine if you need to know).
Ah crap, was replying on an old tab that I hadn’t refreshed.
You’re right that it’s a common misconception that games don’t work on Linux, and that misconception needs to be addressed. But playing games occasionally is such a common thing that you can’t treat them as one homogenous group. “Everyone” plays games. But many many of them do other things as well on their computers, and many of those would consider the other thing more important than the games.
People who use the Abobe suite for example. Digital media creation in general (massive group of people btw) is subpar on Linux. Personally my biggest hurdles right now are DTP software and a specific piece of music production software+hardware combination from Native Instruments.
Not to mention that most people are not ready to deal with a Linux installation that is having issues.
Yep, I really hope a future will become reality where Adobe has some competition and/or an incentive to port the suite to Linux. I just can’t help but cheer on the sounds against Stockholm syndrome. So much of these “it doesn’t work on Linux” is just the company intentionally trying to prohibit integration with open systems (looking at you HDMI forum). In the end I agree, though, when giving advice, it’s best not to assume the “only gaming” use case.
Yeah don’t get me started on Adobe. But I guess I should thank them for opening my eyes to exactly how bad SaaS really is with their ransomware. Sorry, I mean Creative Cloud subscriptions. Thanks to them I’m trying to move to FOSS as much as possible, but when you’re talking about alternatives for advanced top tier commercial software, and sometimes hardware… It’s a barren landscape thus far. And I’m putting a hopeful emphasis on thus far.
Wow. Locking up a Cloud really is ransomware when you look at it like that.
“Games work on Linux now so you can switch over”
Gaming was at one point a serious hurdle. Back in 2007 when I was forced to switch from Windows XP to Ubuntu due to a former friend’s IT fuck-up, the only Windows game I could legitimately get running was World of Warcraft, and even then the installation process was arduous.
Valve deserves much of the credit for getting Linux into the state where it can play a vast majority of Windows games with comparable or even better performance.
The true hurdle now is with anticheat.
There are a lot of games that work. Still some that hold out, mainly due to their shitty anticheat software.
The other day I solved my problem with one of my games from Steam not working in Linux by downloading a pirate version and installing it in Lutris, which worked without a hitch.
I thought I would share this on account of it being slightly ridiculous.
Not curious at all. Pirates remove or circumvent the drm.
Yeah, that’s what I see as the most likely explanation: it was a AAA game from some years ago.
Fine. Next desktop build is linux.
Windows 10 is RIP October 2025 anyway, so might as well.
That is good news - I assume they are done with the replacement as they announce this, otherwise they are just stupid. The problem is - why did it take this long time for a trillion dollar company to archive it?
If they are they haven’t pushed it to general release yet. Unless someone can point out where in the settings app I can adjust my audio device speaker configuration.
Software is really hard. Replacing something that needs to continuously have new features added to it because it’s not been replaced yet… You’re running to stand still
So in six months, someone will have written a third-party Windows Control Panel.
Nah it’ll just be shoved into PowerToys.
Which is becoming a must have on windows.
Honestly wouldn’t even be that difficult to build. Windows is just a GUI for Powershell anyway.
If I hadn’t already migrated to Linux after the insider crapshow, this probably would have forced me off.
Okay, we get it. You run Linux. Got it. Why are you posting on a thread discussing Windows control panel?
The alternative is to just keep getting fucked by Microsoft…
To gloat at morons still using windows.
I left Windows because of the Settings nonsense.
12 years later you rubes are still getting fucked by this garbage. That’s why I’m here. 😂
Welp time to go back to Linux…
Hate to break it to you but Linux doesn’t have the Windows Control Panel either. :P
I’ll just open the play store and download the addon… that’s how this computer stuff works… right?
That’s okay because Windows will be gone entirely from my PC in a month.
I tried to get to the printer settings today on a users machine and it kept redirecting me to the settings menu… 😠
Windows 8 came out in 2012. I switched to Linux shortly after.
If you’ve been suffering through this as a home user you have nobody but yourself to blame.
You’re not so busy you can’t learn a new OS in 12 years!
Plebs.
Any bet the control panel is the only thing holding my dad back from switching to Linux for home use, because he absolutely hates the windows 10 and 11 settings apps.
Just kill all of windows already
My god, the amount of legacy crap in Windows.
They ought to just start over at some point.
On the flip side, this is what makes Windows generally very good at backwards compatibility. They do update the codebase for stuff, but still generally very backwards compatible with software and games designed to run on previous versions of Windows.
Fun Fact: Backwards compatibility is the reason you can’t name a file or folder CON.
We need Windows NNT - New New Technology
How about Windows NEW ALL (in reference to Tantacrul)?
Is that a real concern?
While I haven’t diven into their codebase, that kind of thing tends to severely limit what developers can do to improve the product, slow them down, etc.
Be it new features, deeper UX improvements, performance optimizations… Basically anything you want to do with your progress, generally speaking, it’s going to get harder the more legacy stuff you need to deal with.
Isn’t that what wine is ?
I don’t understand
Wine (wine is not (an) emulator) is a reimplementation of the windows api set. It’s literally starting windows again from scratch.
I have friends who work in IT and would probably slam their head against the wall if they had to deal with Control Panel being removed.
Are Microsoft deliberately trying to make the fabled Year of the Linux Desktop finally become a reality? Because I feel like we’re two or three more dumbfuck business moves away from this…
I have a PC at home that works perfectly fine. Browses the internet, emulates GameCube and Dreamcast, runs any app I need.
It’s not eligible for Windows 11. In about a month MS will just stop supporting my PC, and it will not have the option to be a Windows PC despite still having plenty of service time to offer.
Microsoft is basically forcing that PC to run Linux instead.
Windows 10 is being supported until next October, you’ve got more than a month. That said, I’ve been on Linux for just over a month and I’m so much happier with it. I really like KDE Plasma as a desktop environment. I made the leap because I was unhappy with Windows, but at this point I genuinely prefer Linux.
KDE really is nice. It can be a little bit buggy when messing with themes and panels and stuff but overall its nice. I’ve got it looking like waybar and I’m really enjoying it.
Ah. Thank you!! I was planning to disconnect the computer from wifi next month until I got around to setting up Linux. Nice to know there is more time.
I used Mint like 15 years ago trying to set up retropie on a cheap netbook. It felt really smooth, but I couldn’t get something to work and just never had time to research a resolution.
I’m sure it’s more user friendly now or at least the tools are more successful on first install. Going to find out sooner or later. I really just use that old PC to store pictures and play retro games, so it shouldn’t be hard to convert with a little time for research.
If you’re coming from Windows I recommend Fedora KDE Spin. If has a similar look and feel and is very up to date while remaining stable.
Thank you for the recommendation!
Which distro are you on? Plasma has reached it’s 6.0 version I think now. I used it back in the day and KDE apps are really more powerful than their GNOME counterparts.
Don’t sweat “what distro” so much. All the major distros offer the same desk tops. So pick a distro you like and just download the KDE Plasma spin of it and enjoy.
Bazzite, it’s based on immutable Fedora. But it made sense for my use case because it’s one of the more consistent at working out of the box with Nvidia graphics cards and I wanted the gaming stuff, but Plasma should be more or less the same everywhere. I’m not sure which version of Plasma it’s running but Bazzite is generally pretty up to date with everything but I can’t check right now.
Can confirm, want to change your domain or computer name? Windows 7/10: control panel , system , computer name tab. Windows 10 /11: control panel, system, windows settings, advanced system settings, old system control panel, computer name tab.
Why add a middle man??
That many steps? WindowsKey+Break > Change computer name.
If you’re okay with three steps, on Windows 10 and newer, you can right click the start menu and generally open system. Just about any version supports rught clicking “My Computer” or “This PC” and selecting properties, as well.
win+X, then the letter for system. probably s or y but not sure. i use win+x, a all the time for an admin ps window
But that would require effort to learn to do something different. And a lot of users are firmly against that notion.
Just like the new shitty right click menu. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel just because.
And there is no reason not to either. You would still be looking at the cli in Unix with that attitude.
I don’t know about that one, It would be really hard to teleconference though the terminal.
Especially considering we still have (more or less) the same CLI for decades at this point.
Bourne was from 1977-1979, bash which was heavily inspired/designed to replace was from 1989. It is still the default shell in ubuntu.
Open Start or hit Win+R- type sysdm.cpl. Done. They kill off the easy to click icon in Control Panel, but they leave the stuff in still. I doubt they’ll remove them. Or at least hope not, lol. Settings is such a cluster to go through.
Next time I write my ver 5 of my admin program I’ll add that in!
slam their head against the wall
I already do that enough as it is with Windows 11…
I’ve been using linux for about a decade. I only know how to maintain my system and google when troubles arise. I’m pretty comfortable with my setup and would love to see many make that jump as well. However, I have to concede that corporate environments add a whole another dimension to the problem.
honestly I still cant figure out how to configure a network interface properly without using the old control panel.
As admin and tech support, I use the control panel constantly. I use the settings app… for display configuration, I guess?
You literally can’t.
There’s a ton of stuff you can’t do with the new garbage settings.
Let’s not even mention that on an operating system called “Windows” you can only have one “window” of settings open. And opening new settings will just replace where you just where. Which is extremely rage inducing.
opening new settings will just replace where you just where
I don’t use windows super often anymore, so I don’t really have that usecase, but man. Just imagining it makes me annoyed and angry
You probably should never use a Mac then.
I’m pretty positive on mac OS, as an OS it’s technically quite good, but their preferences app has always been atrocious almost entirely for this reason, I want to have two preferences windows open to different pages please…
I hear you. I have always been a power user so I was pretty shocked when you could not open two file managers at once in OSX.
The thing about Apple devices is they work great, as long as you do it they way they want.
You can have multiple finder windows in OSX, thats perfectly normal, but you cant have the network settings open next to the printer settings.
Well that was not the case with the last time I used OSX. You click on finder and it would not open a second window. This is not how Windows or Gnome/Kwin work.
yup. The couple of times I had to use one, the bad UX absolutely annoyed the hell out of me
Got reminded yesterday when trying to find a way to clear and apps cached information.
Windows was a simple path, but osx needed 5 steps to find where osx decided to put it.
I honestly don’t understand why macs are so popular in IT. Flexibility and configurability are not the words that can be used to describe their system.
Then you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Understood, thank you for your thorough contribution.
no u
Are you on windows 10 or 11?
Mostly 11 now. I honestly prefer it to 10 now, but that’s with quite about of decrapification done to remove all of Microsoft’s bullshit.
At home I’m mostly using Ubuntu, but it’s basically covering firefox as all of my self-hosted stuff runs in thevbrowser and I don’t game much.
Hmm, then I’m a bit confused, since my experience with Windows 11 settings app has been good enough to not need to go into the control panel for setting up basic networking, unlike with Windows 10’s setting app.
Thus why im moving to 11. Lots of the PCs I work with are still 10 though.
It’s not you. There are many things you simply cannot do in the settings app.
And if you can do it, it’s complicated and convoluted. I miss Win32 settings panels, everything was so well organized and simple to manage.
You can now reach the network connections folder, using an option on the network status page. It’s something like advanced network options. Still all the classic stuff, but avoids “control panel.” I’m going to guess links like that are not going to be removed.
If they just outright remove all of that, you really will need to learn how to do everything in powershell.
The goal is to move you to powershell
Yeah the new interface has restrictions it doesn’t tell you about until you try to apply new settings.
