The Windows OS Thread - Formerly THE OS for gamers and normies, now sadly ruined by Pajeets

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These words have been typed exactly five times in the history of the internet.

There... there are others?
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That's why I liked the Windows 8 Start Screen. Instant full screen organised list of all my installed programs that served as a reminder - given I have a lot of regularly used software - then I'd just start typing what I wanted. Best of both worlds.
I have heard of a Windows 8 Defense Force but it seemed to be centered on true believers of the Surface tablet concept an having a true tablet OS for that type of hardware. Not heard of anyone using a desktop that liked the start screen.

Just for some bait Vista SP1 was good, I've been playing around with skinning Win7 to look and feel more like Vista and after 16 years I have come to the conclusion that the small taskbar without grouping is superior, we got it right in 1995 and have been living in sin since 2009.
 
How did it not delete your filesystem with that high of GB removed?
A fresh Windows 11 install is about 30gb, so for 60gb to be purged there either has to be something seriously wrong, or he did not account for the fact that when doing an upgrade install his previous Windows 10 install will not be immediately deleted but be moved to windows.old. so when he compared the disk usage before and after the debloater was run he didn't account for how much was from previous installs that got removed at the same time.
 
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I have heard of a Windows 8 Defense Force but it seemed to be centered on true believers of the Surface tablet concept an having a true tablet OS for that type of hardware. Not heard of anyone using a desktop that liked the start screen.
My logic is thus:

Either I get the program/file/folder I want via typing or via clicking on it. If get it via typing the amounts of clicking and typing are the same either way but the start screen gives me a clear display of most programs I am likely to use. Yes, I can remember Excel but I might hesitate over the name of that file encoder app I only sometimes use. Either way, it's at least neutral in terms of what I go do to launch a program and provides more initial info. I can quite easily get 40+ items on the Start Screen all with logical grouping. The outlier case I'm using something beyond that is not something I want to optimise for.

If I get what I want via clicking on it, then what matters is amount of mouse movement, fiddliness of mouse movement and delays before options appear. With the Start Screen the average starting position of my mouse is in the centre of the screen so things are nearer, more importantly the target area I click on is larger (a square rather than a scrunched line of text) thus requiring less precise aiming - I just swing the cursor across the screen and click; Finally, everything I want is displayed in groupings already revealed rather than going to an option, waiting for a sub-menu to appear (E.g. Office -> Excel) and then further precise navigations to move to that sub-menu, etc.

So if I type to get what I want it's marginally better, if I use the mouse to get what I want, it's significantly better. The only case in which it isn't better is someone who uses arrows keys to navigate about through their options. And who does that?

I genuinely believe it was better, believe I can make a solid case for that and I believe online haters who love to tear stuff down for their own enjoyment were responsible for losing it. The only argument for keeping the old menu that is objective is one of familiarity. And familiarity is an argument when under severe time constraints or huge retraining costs. But learning to use the Start Screen was trivial for me so neither applies. And I'd be ashamed to say I found it difficult to use.
 
Just for some bait Vista SP1 was good
It always looked better than 7. With 7, the Aero look got watered down, and then bloated with all the thick borders. Vista had a lot of contrasting colors and was more compact like XP so it was more visually pleasing. Also, Vista introduced just about every under the hood improvement that people sucked off 7 for, but because of the negative stigma surrounding Vista it never got the recognition it deserved. It was Vista that laid the groundwork to make sure you won't fuck over your entire OS by clicking the wrong link. 7 was just Vista SP3.
My logic is thus
Here's my take on this:
-I want to run a game. I know it's called "Saints Row 2". I hit the Win key, or Right Alt+Space, I type sr2 and I hit Enter. It starts the game.
-I want to open Photoshop. I know it's called "Photoshop". I hit the Win key, or Right Alt+Space, I type "photos" and I hit Enter. It runs Photoshop.
-I want to open a folder. I know it's called "modloader" and is located in D:\Games\Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. I hit the Win key, or Right Alt+Space, type "*andreas\modloader", and hit Enter. I can now either refine which subfolder/file I want to open or hit Enter again to open the folder in my file manager of choice.

That's my experience with Flow Launcher. I already know what I want to open, it's significantly faster for me to type what I want to do as, again, I already know what I want to do, thus being able to type it out and do it is way better than any form of mouse GUI navigation.

As for the file search, Flow Launcher integrates with Everything in the best way from all the keyboard launchers. You don't need to invoke a file search with a prefix, they're global. You have previews as well as drag-and-drop. Once you've found a folder you were looking for you can navigate it within Flow. Then, Flow can be configured to open stuff in your preferred file manager, in my case Total Commander.

Keyboard launchers turn your understanding of efficient UI upside down. It's a single search box that can do just about everything thanks to plugins. Calculation, translation, currency conversion, unit conversion, case conversion, string conversion, date conversion, switching between windows, killing processes, ejecting USB drives, powering off the system, adjusting the screen brightness, adjusting the volume, you name it. It's significantly faster once it's just a mnemonic keystroke sequence than a specific "click this, drag that" clusterfuck.
 
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A fresh Windows 11 install is about 30gb, so for 60gb to be purged there either has to be something seriously wrong, or he did not account for the fact that when doing an upgrade install his previous Windows 10 install will not be immediately deleted but be moved to windows.old. so when he compared the disk usage before and after the debloater was run he didn't account for how much was from previous installs that got removed at the same time.
Yeah I take that back, I moved some files from the C drive before installing 11 and forgot about it, so it was more around 20 GB. I just deleted windows.old and that folder was 43 GB though.

Still, there's a lot of dumb shit included in a standard install of 11 that I don't need. Also thank fuck OpenShell still works on 11.
Apart from that the upgrade was painless though, although Windows got confused with my speaker setup for a moment (playing sounds from the front on the speakers in the back), but disconnecting them, restarting and reconnecting them fixed it.
 
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Have you all moved over to Windows 11 at this point?
I've been using it for a few months and it feels like I have to install a billion tools just to make it usable, doesn't help that every couple of months there'll be a feature update and it'll restore all of microsoft's shitty telemetry and "features". Lord knows what fresh hell win12 will be although people speculate that it'll basically be a cloud OS yipee.
 
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Have you all moved over to Windows 11 at this point?
Recently bought a laptop which can only run 11. Its just a slightly worse version of 10 which I hated anyways so nothing changes.
Wish the days of Jeetsoft giving a shit and making a good product come back, but I doubt it.
Have been tempted to go back to Windows 7, I have an old Thinkpad T420 running on 7 really nicely.
Using it just makes me hate Windows 10 and 11 even more. I forget how nice Windows once was to use.
Lord knows what fresh hell win12 will be although people speculate that it'll basically be a cloud OS yipee.
If Jeetsoft really is retarded enough to make Windows 12 cloud only, might have to jump back to Linux.
I bet money that someone will find a way to get it running on a typical PC anyways even if they try that.
People get around Jeetsoft's BS in 11 just fine.
 
At the very least they seem to finally be getting the dicks out of their asses and working on some enhancements for x86 handhelds, if recent reports are to be believed.
I guess the SteamDeck plus the newly released steamOS has lit a fire under their ass when it comes to handhelds but they really should've been doing this years ago.
 
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I've been using it for a few months and it feels like I have to install a billion tools just to make it usable, doesn't help that every couple of months there'll be a feature update and it'll restore all of microsoft's shitty telemetry and "features". Lord knows what fresh hell win12 will be although people speculate that it'll basically be a cloud OS yipee.
I don't even want to think about 12. There was talks of them storing your actual user account on the cloud as opposed to the C: drive as they currently do (and have for literally ever).

I main Mac's now mostly but still require Windows for work and it's such a bitch. On 10 still and we have LTSC so we're good for the foreseeable future but yeah, 12 will be a fucking jeet nightmare.
 
I guess the SteamDeck plus the newly released steamOS has lit a fire under their ass when it comes to handhelds but they really should've been doing this years ago.
Just like Apple lit one with iPad, and later M-series processors, forcing them to work on Windows on ARM. How many years did it take for them to make it usable?
 
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