commit d0221b3325c5e0b206d744d1ffcae0fbcb96ec2a
parent e988524cf882aecececeb3e52f3abd6758c05f36
Author: Sebastiano Tronto <sebastiano@tronto.net>
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2023 13:04:50 +0100
Added blog post
Diffstat:
5 files changed, 208 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
diff --git a/src/blog/2023-01-28-windows-desktop/settings.png b/src/blog/2023-01-28-windows-desktop/settings.png
Binary files differ.
diff --git a/src/blog/2023-01-28-windows-desktop/tiling.png b/src/blog/2023-01-28-windows-desktop/tiling.png
Binary files differ.
diff --git a/src/blog/2023-01-28-windows-desktop/windows-desktop.md b/src/blog/2023-01-28-windows-desktop/windows-desktop.md
@@ -0,0 +1,200 @@
+# The year of the Windows desktop
+
+Last year I started a new job, and my company gave me a laptop.
+This laptop runs Windows, an operating system I have used in the
+past, but that I am not very familiar with. It is a closed-source
+OS, developed by a company called Microsoft, whose main paradigm
+is letting the user interact with the system via a
+[graphical user interface](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_user_interface).
+
+I have tried Windows a couple of times in the past, but I never stuck
+with it. Around the year 2000 my family had Windows ME desktop, and a
+few years later I have used Windows XP for a while. It was not unusable,
+but I have always found it a bit abstruse. Performing basic tasks such
+as writing a shell (or *batch*) script or editing a configuration file
+was hard or straight-up impossible. Somehow, the system got slower and
+slower after a few months of use. And finally, while I recognize
+that the closed-source development process has some advantages over
+community-driven open source management, I personally prefer to use
+things that are libre and free of charge.
+
+But a long time has passed since I have last used Windows, and it would
+not be fair to judge Windows 10 based on my sub-par experience with
+older versions. In this post I'll review my recent experience with this
+operating system and I'll try to answer the famous question: Is 2023
+going to be year of the Windows desktop?
+
+## General use
+
+### Desktop and window management
+
+Let's start with a pleasant surprise: window management is actually
+quite good for my taste, much better than I remembered from my ME /
+XP times. Windows now offers virtual desktops, like any classic DE
+you are used to. Moreover, you can move your windows to the edges of
+the screen or maximize them with keyboard shortcuts (namely Super key +
+arrow keys). You can even do some (manual) tiling:
+
+
+
+The desktop looks fairly standard, similar to KDE or Cinnamon: a
+bottom bar with some launchers, some status and a menu on the bottom
+left. I approve of not changing things when they are not broken, good
+job Microsoft!
+
+The start menu now is also searchable by typing, a nice improvement.
+
+### Default apps
+
+There are some default apps installed in Windows, although I can't say
+which of them were actually included in Windows and which have been
+installed by my organization.
+
+The browser is called Edge, and it is just another Chrome fork. There
+is an email client called Outlook, a collaboration / video call app
+called Teams and an office suite called Office. In general these apps
+work... ok. They are all quite bloated and offer a lot of options.
+They have their bugs and glitches (see below), but they do their job.
+
+Honestly I am not impressed by these apps. They don't seem to offer
+much more than 20 years ago - except perhaps Teams, which is a recent
+addition. I guess users who make extensive use of their office suite
+might prefer this, but you'll need a pretty powerful machine to run
+these programs smoothly.
+
+As a positive note, the default text editor Notepad is nice and
+lightweight, a good piece of software.
+
+### Package management
+
+Traditionally, the only way to install new applications on Windows
+was getting them from a third party source (website, CD-rom, ...) and
+running an installer. Things are much better now: Windows offers both a
+graphical "app store" and a command-line tool called Winget. There are
+also third-party tools such as [Chocolatey](https://chocolatey.org/).
+
+### Bugs and sluggishness
+
+Now let's move on to some of the bad stuff. The system overall feels
+quite slow and sluggish. I would normally not complain about it - after
+all, not all software is meant to be lightweight and quick, and Windows
+is clearly opting for feature richness over speed. However, with a core
+i9 CPU, two GPUs and 64Gb of RAM I would have expected better performance.
+
+I have also noticed quite a large amount of small bugs and a few crashes
+while doing completely normal operations. They range from minor graphical
+glitches, to workflow problems (e.g. windows rearranging in position
+when resuming from screen lock, video player freezing until reboot)
+to complete crashes. The search feature in the file explorer seems to
+be straight-up broken. The list goes on.
+
+All of this is not a deal-breaker. It reminds me of the early KDE 4 days
+- you are constantly fighting with an unstable system, but you can get
+your job done. Unfortunately for Microsoft, I expect this to put off
+many new users trying out Windows for the first time.
+
+### Games
+
+Unfortunately, Windows 10 does not come with any game included :(
+
+## Advanced use
+
+### Configurability and settings
+
+One of the mistakes you can make when using Windows is trying to use it
+as if it were Linux. This applies in particular when configurina
+the desktop to your taste.
+
+First of all, Windows does not offer as much configurability as Linux
+does. I am not completely against this approach, it just feels limiting
+not being able to tune every aspect of my OS.
+
+Secondly, the only way to configure your Windows system is via a graphical
+user interface. I find this approach vastly inferior to simply editing
+a configuration file, for many reasons: things are harder to find, often
+hiding behind multiple layers of settings menus; the system is not
+reproducible, i.e. I can't copy my configuration files and move them to
+my next installation; and so on.
+
+
+
+One terrible experience I had was trying to configure the keyboard
+layout to the one I am used to, that is US layout with Right Alt as
+[Compose key](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key). It turned
+out that this is not possible at all! There is also no way to swap
+the Escape key with Caps Lock, but I was able to work around this with
+[AutoHotkey](https://www.autohotkey.com/).
+
+But again, I should not complain so much: I should use Windows as Windows
+and accept its choices, and not get mad at it for not being Linux.
+
+### Software development
+
+Although it does not look like software developers
+are a target user for Windows, it is still possible
+to do some programming in it. Microsoft even offers an
+[IDE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_development_environment)
+called Visual Studio, and its own framework called
+[.NET](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET).
+
+Personally I don't like Visual Studio, although many of my colleagues
+swear by it. I find it slow (more than one minute from launch to
+"ready"!) and its celebrated auto-completion features seem fine only
+for trivial stuff, making blatant mistakes as soon as your code has some
+bits of complex logic in it.
+
+One very positive note: Microsoft does offer some
+incredible online documentation for developers, available at
+[learn.microsoft.com](https://learn.microsoft.com). It is truly
+well-written, and a big help both for learning and as a reference
+manual. A win for Microsoft here!
+
+### The command line
+
+Although for Windows the command line is a second-class citizen, it does
+have one, called **Powershell**. It is also possible to install **WSL**
+to run a small Linux system inside Windows.
+
+The Powershell's language is different from the UNIX shell. There
+are many similarities, such as the basic commands for listing, copying
+and removing files, but internally it is much different. There is no
+[piping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipeline_(Unix)), the shell's
+interpreter is case-insensitive and even its auto-completion feature
+differs from Bash's! Overall this is not good or bad, just different.
+
+[WSL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Subsystem_for_Linux),
+short for **W**SL i**S** not an emu**L**ator, is basically a virtual
+machine with access to the host file system. It can be hit or miss with
+graphical applications (support for X was added relatively recently),
+but it generally works fine for command line tools.
+
+WSL saved my life a couple of times when I had to edit a file with a
+quick `sed` command. Working in WSL kind of defeats the purpose of using
+Windows, but if you really struggle without some of your favorite
+programs, it is at least an option.
+
+## Conclusion
+
+The first impression I had of Windows was that it is not an OS for
+everyone. Sure, if you need an advanced integrated office suite or a
+complex calendar + email + video call system, it might be the OS for
+you. But I just don't think it is suitable for a regular software
+developer like myself, and the frequent bugs and general sluggishness
+are going to put off any occasional user.
+
+But, to be fair, all software has some bugs, including Linux. People who
+complain that "Windows sucks" or "it just does not work" probably just got
+used to the stuff that "sucks" or "does not work" on Linux. Or perhaps
+they don't want to make the effort to learn a different system, or to
+spend a few hundred bucks for a Windows license.
+
+So why is Windows not so popular? I believe it is because people just
+use the OS that comes with the hardware they buy, without even wondering
+what operating system they are running. If more hardware vendors offered
+Windows instead of Linux, it would probably gain popularity. Nobody
+would complain that they can't run systemd or Vim, because most of the
+stuff people need is just a webapp nowadays.
+
+If Microsoft ever manages to convince hardware vendors to ship Windows on
+their products, maybe then the year of the Windows desktop will come. I
+wish them good luck, but I'll stick to Linux for now.
diff --git a/src/blog/blog.md b/src/blog/blog.md
@@ -5,6 +5,7 @@
## 2023
+* 2023-01-28 [The year of the Windows desktop](2023-01-28-windows-desktop)
* 2023-01-11 [Aaron Swartz](2023-01-11-aaron-swartz)
## 2022
diff --git a/src/blog/feed.xml b/src/blog/feed.xml
@@ -9,6 +9,13 @@ Thoughts about software, computers and whatever I feel like sharing
</description>
<item>
+<title>The year of the Windows desktop</title>
+<link>https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2023-01-28-windows-desktop</link>
+<description>The year of the Windows desktop</description>
+<pubDate>2023-01-28</pubDate>
+</item>
+
+<item>
<title>Aaron Swartz</title>
<link>https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2023-01-11-aaron-swartz</link>
<description>Aaron Swartz</description>
