Great. So managing printers, network settings and quickly comparing settings from two places becomes a weird game of screenshots and guessing.
Remote support workers of the world collectively shake their fist in despair.
No way on this planet I will be able to explain the new UI to your average office worker.
It’s as if they intentionally were making their products unusable for ADHD and especially AuDHD people.
I wonder sometimes, maybe they are. Maybe there’s some policy coming from some macchiavellian cokehead in a suit, that people like us spoil their big, important social mechanisms and introduce a measure of chaos they don’t want, so we have to be suppressed.
I just don’t understand why Windows is such an ADHD torture today. Even XP wasn’t.
It really seems sometimes as if they were going out of their way to make it such, not only MS, but also Google, Apple and who not.
Its not good. Control panel is consistent and precise. Settings is not consistent lacks many settings and many are dumbed down
I know, I still have to touch Windows at work.
I know, I still have to touch Windows at work.
Windows: Only when paid to touch it.
I too am limited by the technology of our time
The first thing I did after getting my work laptop was to install Linux. I am so glad that my work allows it.
Definitely an issue. I can’t count the times I’ve slammed my head because the stupid settings screen “conveniently” switches from the previous item to another while I still expected it to open a new window just like the command panel.
I hope they don’t make that update to windows 10 as well 😭 control panel feels faster to use than windows settings
Half of windows settings is a button that says “additional settings” that opens up the full settings window that hasn’t changed since Win95. It’s absolutely insane that in a decade they haven’t managed to even replicate full functionality.
This is never going to happen fully, because there is a ton of software and also device drivers that hook into the OG Control Panel system and install their own .cpl’s there, which are required for that hardware/software to work. The system to support those is going to have to remain in place, otherwise Microsoft is going to have a lot of very angry corporate customers and hardware vendors up their noses in short order.
In fact, this is most likely the exact reason the Control Panel still exists behind the scenes the way it does today in Win10 and Win11. They’ll probably go to ever-greater lengths to hide it from home users, but I’d doubt they can actually remove it completely at this point.
In fact, from TFA:
Tip: while the Control Panel still exists for compatibility reasons and to provide access to some settings that have not yet migrated, you’re encouraged to use the Settings app, whenever possible.
I’m sure they could keep the backend and just update the look and UI frontend though, no?
Maybe, but they can’t change the look of all those third party .cpl applets.
And sure, anyone could theoretically do anything. But this is Microsoft we’re talking about. They’ll just put another layer of cruft on top of the five or six layers of cruft they’ve already got and then call it job done.
The whole point of the Settings “app” is to remove the user’s ability to do anything on their own computer. The old (and far more functional) UI of the Control Panel won’t get updated because Microsoft wants users to get scared when the unpretty UI appears.
That‘s like my bank saying „Hey, use our new website, the old one will be phased out in 6 werks“.
Me: „Ok, show me my bank statements“.
Bank: „That‘s only possible on the old site“.
Not a joke, sadly.
I’ve had a similar experience with my bank. There is no legacy site to fall back to anymore, sadly. I am still figuring out how to do things on the new site. Years after it was launched.
I use to keep all my windows MGMT tools on a custom MMC screen. So organized.
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.
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…
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. 😂
To gloat at morons still using windows.
What is the benefit? The name? Call control panel “Settings” and be done with it.
You could phase it in. “Control Panel Settings”, then “CP Settings”, then just “Settings” and Bob’s your mother’s brother!
Eeeeeh maybe not “CP settings”…
Shoulda thought that out a bit more…
Yeah dude, Club Penguin Settings is a whole different app.
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.
My god, the amount of legacy crap in Windows.
They ought to just start over at some point.
We need Windows NNT - New New Technology
How about Windows NEW ALL (in reference to Tantacrul)?
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.
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.
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.
Just kill all of windows already
I’m NEVER moving away from Windows 7.
Please for the love of god move off windows 7 to a secure OS like Linux or BSD
we ride or die windows for workgroups in this house dawg
Windows 3.1 was what I cut my teeth on
I don’t understand linux. I have a raspberry pi that I haven’t used in 2 years because I did an update all, which caused the fan to stop working. Which in turn mezns I can’t use the thing, for fear it overheats. But I spent 20 days all day every day, just trying to figure out how to turn the fan on.
If I can’t turn the fan on, and reinstalled the fan countless times, pouring hundreds of hours into something so simple, I’m not going to understand the OS.
On the opposite end of that, no way in hell I’m upgrading to windows 10 or 11.
And I’m not rich enough for a mac.
So, Windows 7 forever!
Why not back up your win 7 installation and try a different Linux variant? Or even just fuck around with Linux in dual boot/vm before transitioning? I’d have to imagine that’d be preferable to either not using the internet or risking every device on the same network it’s connected to. I swear I read an article where fresh win10 installs were getting infected within minutes of connecting to the net. Let alone 7.
About 10 years ago I remember I had to turn off the firewall to do something. To this day, I can’t remember if I ever even turned it back on. And have never checked. Oddly enough, the only website that DOESN’T work on that computer, is Lemmy. Which I guess is because I haven’t updated the browser since before covid.
If you’re trolling these cats you’re doing a fantastic job. I hope youre not tho. I love picturing what this computer looks like
It’s a little dusty because I lost the side plate to the case YEARS ago.
And the desktop has icons overflowing into display #2.
She’s Beautiful. Thank you.
Raspberry pi is not going to be representative of running something like Linux Mint on an x86 machine. Raspberry pi is a unique piece of hardware that not all OSes are going to test against. As the other poster said, there are things you can do to ease yourself into the transition. But I’m… Baffled by your lackadaisical attitude towards updates. Your browser not being updated since before covid makes me hope to god you’re not downloading any media files or logging into any websites
Is your computer networked? If so, that’s a bad idea
I hope your firewall is up to scratch.
For all I know it might be turned off. From like 10 years ago.
You’re letting the internet bareback you.
Eh, it hasn’t caused issues yet.
Your PC could be part of a botnet that sends phishing mails, mine crypto and send all your keystrokes to Irkutsk, without you noticing.
Didn’t they learn that taking away what people grew up with for more than two decades already will result in outraged customers? (Windows 8 - start menu removed and replaced by start screen)
Not if they improve it. But I doubt they will.
We improved it by making it always available! Just sign into your Windows365 account in Edge and…
TL;DR - It’s being
replacedrenamed to “Settings”TLDR, the settings app does not fully incorporate all the minutia of the control panel and power users are naturally going to be upset about the change assuming they stick around that long.
Too many specialized companies still make Windows-only software, e.g. chip vendors.
100% true.
Why put up with their abuse?
Each one has different specialized components that aren’t at full parity with their competitors, but that doesn’t even matter since it’s the case with literally all of them.
But not really. The Settings menu has never been as useful as Control Panel and there’s still a ton of functionality that can only be accessed from the Control Panel. This and many other moves by MS recently are why Windows 10 is the last version of Windows I’ll be using. With the work Valve has done to support SteamDeck I can finally go 100% Linux.
honestly I still cant figure out how to configure a network interface properly without using the old control panel.
The goal is to move you to powershell
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.
As admin and tech support, I use the control panel constantly. I use the settings app… for display configuration, I guess?
Yeah the new interface has restrictions it doesn’t tell you about until you try to apply new settings.
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.
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.
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.
yup. The couple of times I had to use one, the bad UX absolutely annoyed the hell out of me
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
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’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.
It’d be fine if 1) everything from Control Panel is implemented and properly working and 2) everything stays consistent (because otherwise, as other folks have mentioned, at one point written tutorials even with screenshots quickly become obsolete). I don’t see this happening any time soon.
Maybe instead of that they can start encouraging people to use the command line, although even fewer settings are reachable though there.
Maybe instead of that they can start encouraging people to use the command line
LOL, there’s no more common phobia among Windows users than the CLI.
EVERY Linux discussion “BUT ZOMG CLI COMMANDS!” (when realistically a novice user can avoid them most of the time, and they absolutely are more efficient for helping someone via lemmy post or similar than figuring out what version of what DE they have and trying to tell them the 12 clicks they need to do for the same task)
between the powershell push, wsl, and sudo for windows they are pushing command line usage for advanced users though
I can’t argue with that, but I still take exception to the idea that only advanced users should be willing/able/unafraid to use the CLI. (not that I’m suggesting that you personally are pushing that viewpoint)
When you click a button, you have to read and interpret the label on that button, then hope the person who programmed it actually did program it to do what it is labeled to suggest, and sometimes even well meaning devs make this ambiguous. Plus, you have to FIND the button, which is kinda the subject of many of the discussions here in this very thread.
You go learn what ls does one time, and now you know how to list the contents of a directory. Spend two minutes each learning ps aux and grep, and now you know how to find process info for firefox (or whatever), plus you don’t need to know more than the very most basic things about grep to use it to search a text or conf file for a particular string. Or learn the ffmpeg command that you use most often for recursively processing a directory full of video files, and now you don’t spend 20 minutes mucking around with handbrake or whatever when prepping files to toss onto your Kodi box (I’m just pulling that one out of my butt). Hell, yt-dlp for downloading videos from just about anywhere is better than any gui tool I ever used.
I think it’s totally valid for people to prefer a gui, but I find it a little foolish that so many people just seem to intentionally shut off their brain when presented with a CLI - it’s different than clicking buttons, and it’s not always superior, but it should absolutely not be the bogeyman that many treat it as. You can probably learn less than ten commands to just a minimal level of proficiency and get a LOT done.
No joke. Opening a command line from windows by itself is considered hacking by many. Even toggling dark mode in websites triggers that fear.
“OMG. Are you a hacker?”
“…I’m just using Powershell.”
Their settings pages are the worst; full of white space, finding what they considered “advanced” settings is usually a pain in the ass, and everything is dumbed down to a mind-numbing extent.
I’ve hated Settings pages with a passion since they were introduced, and always typed the full .msc I was looking for.
I really hate that you can only open one settings page at a time. There is no justification to making you lose your place you’re working on just because you want to adjust another minor setting. With the old interface I can e.g. have network and sound settings open at the same time and I don’t know why they took that away.
I have been able to live with everything else, but this is the one that kills me every time.
the loss of info density in favor of making everything fingerable has been one of the worst things to happen to anyone slightly inclined at managing systems. i hate trying to manage things in a touch based UI. so much fucking scrolling and wasted space. it does look nice , but fuck is it a productivity killer.
I also dislike the design layout. Eg. I much the control panel version of Disk Management than the settings purely from an aesthetics stand point. Each disk and their partitions are just easier to see and differentiate from others.
Talking about consistency, technically Windows still has UI elements from 3.1 era at Atleast couple of obscure places.
Gotta brush up on the ol’ powershell
the control panel they’re taking away is largely just antiquated and not used anymore in favour of settings app anyway
Users complain about changes being made and then they complain that change doesn’t happen enough.
There are still things that don’t work in the new UI. A common example for me is changing the output of speakers on my htpc. Sometimes after an update it reverts to 2.0. Need to launch the old sound control panel to set it back to 7.1.
Or some network settings are not in the new “sinple” ui.
Or advanced power plan.
The only positive setting I can think of for the new settings ui is proxy settings finally being moved out of IE.
except any advanced user relies in that instead of the garbage settings menu
I guarantee you they’ve only ported over about half of the Control Panel’s features. The common stuff, sure. The rest…