This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
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...
Control panel largely accrued content - it is generally navigated via left and right click which works great and is stable. Things don't vanish.
Settings, on the other hand, is left click only navigation mostly. It also changed constantly (usually for the worst) - tutorials written 2 years ago are no longer valid because access to that setting was removed. This makes using settings to fix things a real nightmare.
But luckily each item has a lot of "maybe you were looking for X or Y" at the bottom since you can't find anything in there. So just click anywhere, and scroll to the bottom and you'll find what you want in 2 or 3 screens.
Unless it's been removed. Then you just ask the resident IA.
Windows is so easy!
I run SuSE btw.
Linux users be like:
If they actually move all the settings over to the "new" settings app (it's actually 12 years old now): good.
It's an absolute joke that there are multiple settings apps in windows, with design inconsistency across them, and it being a crapshoot whether the screen you look at will support dark mode or not (can you tell I'm tired of being blinded on evenings by unexpected white windows? Lol).
If they don't move all the settings over: bad.
Yeah they're usually niche, but some of those options are needed!
Since this is Microsoft we're talking about, it's probably going to be the latter, unfortunately. "Oh you want to adjust some network settings? That's not in our settings app, and we've retired the control panel – you actually need to open Run and type ncpa.cpl"
It truly made no sense to me when they started the process of migrating stuff from control panel to the "new" Metro-style Settings, then just kind of... gave up and left everything as a spread-out mess. I can't believe they've left it this long to address, it's an awful user experience.
I am curious where I’ll find the touch screen configuration utility when they do.
Thank fuck I'm in the process of moving to Linux. I loathe the Settings app. Will be sad to not be able to say I know how to properly use Windows anymore, when I used to know it like the back of my hand. Not being able to give support to friends and family will feel really weird.
ROFL, you naive sweet child. Once you're a computer expert, you'll always be so. Friends/family will still harass you and think your lying if you try use an excuse.
Not being able to give support to friends and family will feel really weird.
I see it as being liberated. Besides, while it'll suck to be unable to fix their problems, if it gets bad enough that they consider other operating systems, you'll be right there to help them switch!
I'm in the process of getting a family member over to Linux (again. didn't work that well last time), but still, I like to help friends and family with computers when I can and I've always taken pride in being the go-to guy who know how to fix the thing. Ah well.
Waiting for the day the headline reads “Microsoft officially confirms its killing Windows.”
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
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 used to love HowToGeek, but I sadly see that now that's also enshittified (not the article you linked, but the most recent ones).
