I tried to get to the printer settings today on a users machine and it kept redirecting me to the settings menu… 😠
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.
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.
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.
The entire point of the “new” Settings app is to be dumbed down. To include all the settings from the control panel would go against the entire point of the Settings app.
If we’re talking about the latest version of Windows 11, I would say it’s dumbed down, but everything I personally need is still there.
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 It also changed constantly (usually for the worst) - tutorials written 2 years ago are no longer valid because access to that setting was removed.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.
Waiting for the day the headline reads “Microsoft officially confirms its killing Windows.”
It was October 20th 2014.
Fine. Next desktop build is linux.
Windows 10 is RIP October 2025 anyway, so might as well.
Linux users be like:
Can someone explain to me the difference from Control Panel to Settings? It seems like more of a name change and of course, the UI will be different, but won’t it effectively be a hub to control your personal settings just like control panel?
Currently the Settings app in windows doesn’t have the same level of features as the control panel does. It’s definitely got most features that normal users will need, but if you’re a power user or a system admin, you’ll quickly find yourself having to swap over to control panel to configure anything past the very basics for quite a few different parts of windows. This change will be fine if Microsoft achieve feature parity between settings and control panel, so that there’s no lost functionality when they get rid of control panel.
I think most people are a bit upset at the idea of the control panel disappearing because they don’t trust that Microsoft will end up reaching that feature parity, leaving people with less options to control their own devices effectively.
I don’t think feature parity is the only problem here. Power users need information density and quick reactivity, two things that the new settings – with their huge buttons and useless animations – dearly lack.
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 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.
I know, I still have to touch Windows at work.
Windows: Only when paid to touch 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 work on an application that went through multiple iterations of UIs. Each superseded the previous one and a new admin UI was built into them. The oldest one was using Flash.
Occasionally I still have to drill down through four layers of “open legacy UI here” to get to some obscure, long forgotten setting. Manipulating shit with half-working elements in a VM running a flash-capable browser. Day to day I just go back one iteration though, because the admin UI has everything I need there. Unlike the latest iteration.
Some day we play on killing off the flash UI version completely. We already have planned workarounds in place to manipulate those obscure settings through endpoint calls. Won’t be missed. But I’d miss the second to last admin UI that has everything where I need greatly.
This is what ms is killing off now. A good UI in windows where you can find everything. And all it’d have taken to make it better is give it a robust search functionality. No one cares about going back and forth in convoluted loops between sleek UI pages. People that care to manage stuff in windows at depth will be forced into shallow shit.
XP file search was great then it all went to shit
XP file search was slow as shit.
Everything for life! (
locate(package:mlocate; runupdatedbto get the initial load) for terminal on Linux, or I just usefind)
The oldest one was using Flash.
I’m so sorry my dude, no one deserves that kind of suffering.
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In favor of what? I still have to use control panel because some things are seemingly unreachable by the “settings” menus.
That’s M$ intention, to hide some settings from users and lose control of Windows.
Right, I forgot, MS doesn’t want you to have control what programs are doing or how your computer works. Corporate way or…linux.
I may be technologically challenged but Microsoft has been steadily selling me on linux ever since windows 10.
Linux is just straight up easier to use than an unfucked windows.
See, that may be the case. Or it might not be. It’s a risk vz reward right now. I am not good with computers and have had my PC, laptop, phone and smart watch, inexplicably break, get stuck on boot and had to have them repaired. I just know my mistakes are easier to screw up my computer and data on linux. So the worse MS gets, the more I am willing to risk it.
I wonder if you’re talking about the windows 10 or windows 11 version of the settings app?
Yes. I have win 10 and 11 devices. They both lack certain options and I’ve had to go around them, like using control panel. In this case only the win 11 device is at risk of getting much worse.
Yeah. This sounds a lot like some PM type thinks they’re gonna get rid of control panel, and they just don’t know what all is actually in there.
And not to mention the custom control panel applets hanging around out there from who-knows-what vendors.
And not to mention the custom control panel applets hanging around out there from who-knows-what vendors.
AMD FirePro and Catalyst users are going to probably stay on an older version of the OS, considering most of those users are going to be educational institutions, engineering workshops, makerspaces/hackerspaces etc.
Can’t think of any other vendor products that integrated quite as much into the legacy control panel area
I’m thinking of highly niche industrial and embedded products who are likely to be left behind.
A major traditional selling point for Windows has always been the backwards compatibility.
I wonder if there would be a way to “embed” those old panel applets into the new settings somehow.
I bet they at most remove control.exe or make it open the Settings app, but still allow launching old vendor .cpl items just like they already can be opened in Control Panel.
This is already implemented on a lot of the settings pages on 11.
Windows is king at being inconsistent 🔥
If only they had trained advanced users to use the CLI that would never change unlike the GUI
I don’t think that the PM is wrong. They absolutely can get rid of the control panel. It’s the user who will suffer ✌
RIP. It’s been coming for a while, and Control Panel will likely be on hospice for a few more years, but it will be a sad day when control panel is gone.
Control Panel will likely be on hospice for a few more years
And I’ll keep visiting Control Panel in hospice. Bite me Microsoft.
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WTF why did I misread your comment as “Chris Parnell”
Probably because we were just watching Archer bro
No, I’m watching Cars 3
Gone in favor of a less useful interface. Fantastic!
I honestly wouldn’t mind the new interface if it at least has all the options and functionality from the control panel, but it doesn’t - there’s so much functionality you can only access via control panel
Gone in favor of
a less useful interfacePowershell commands. Fantastic!Great, now I’ll have to
GoogleBing for a four-line command when before I could just dig through a few menus.deleted by creator
Nah, PowerShell is just a shitty bash wannabe
Powershell has a completely different approach of working with commands than traditional Unix shells. You pretty much don’t know what you are talking about.
Look, if it’s not a file, I don’t want to have anything to do with it.
Actually PowerShelll is basically a wrapper for .NET classes… and it doesn’t really emulate Bash in any functional way.
Ah, so it sucks even harder
The little time I have spent on powershell, I found it to be very slow. The input is also very verbose. I’m sure someone will say it allows one to be specific but I can be equally specific in bash as well. It’s like the Java Enterprise of scripting language.
I mean, if there’s still gonna be command line commands for all the features then there’s no reason why a 3rd party couldn’t make a gui app for them and recreate the control panels app
Good point … unless MS manages to cripple that capability somehow.
they should call it, get this, control panel
For the investor’s sake, I think it should be called the HyperPanel
Finally linux will have parity in useability with windows.
No, it’s already more usable. You’re not bound to a GUI or hidden, indiscoverable incantations.
I felt the /s was implied but clearly enough people actually believe that linux is only for people who master arcane command lines that it could be taken as a genuine belief.
There are PowerShell fanboys here. Anything is possible.
Powershell at first seems to be weird and clunky, but after you get used to its syntax you can quickly look up and use its commands without much guessing.
…and after a decade accuse Linux community for copying their great innovations.
It is Windows…
No. Don’t worry, they moved the controls to the edge browser! Isn’t that great 😃? 👍👍👍.
This will bring so many people to Linux and will force so many others to start their own OSes.
Unfortunately, most Windows users are not tech savy and will never move to Linux, regardless of how user-friendly Linux becomes. It would take large-scale retailers switching their computers to have Linux pre-installed instead of Windows before any meaningful transition happens.
Not tech savy person here who’s interested in switching to Linux but afraid of fucking it up and the one guy I knew in real life who used Linux and would’ve helped me out died during covid so I’m on my own.
My old computer won’t support windows 11 and I’m not in a position to upgrade my hardware. I’ve been poking around trying learn about linux but I’m more of a hands on learner so basically I’m going to have to learn as I go which is quite scary for someone who’s never even seen a computer running it.
If you aren’t ready to fully commit to installing it on a hard drive, you could probably make a live USB stick of Linux. There are installers built to run on windows that will install Linux onto a USB drive, which you can boot from after turning off your PC. That way, you don’t need to worry about wiping or resetting an old computer just to see if you like it.
Got an extra USB stick and an old laptop kicking around you’re okay with wiping? Ideally 4GB RAM but 2GB would be okay. Start with Linux Mint and follow their installation guide - verifying the ISO image in Windows is probably the toughest part.
Or make absolutely certain you’re on the official Mint website, torrent it and don’t bother checking, I’m not your mother. “Who the f**k checks those anyway?” (Mint hasn’t been hacked since, but it’s part of why they’re pushing verifying, they know that their users have been targeted before. Also if something goes wrong with the download the install will fail and you’ll waste more time than if you just checked.)
If you don’t have a spare computer, a live USB can let you try Linux without making changes to your computer, but it’s going to be slow - a proper install is going to be a much nicer experience. If you’re okay without persistence (ie you can’t change anything or install additional programs for the next time you boot into it), just follow the Linux Mint website’s installation guide and stop before the actual install step. For persistence, try this method instead, but you really don’t want to use it long term, USB sticks aren’t designed for this.
Once you’ve tried it live and you think you like the desktop environment, but if you’re not sure you’re ready to fully commit, if your computer has an extra slot for an SSD you could buy a second one and dual boot, that’s what I did. (Dual booting on the same drive is doable but more of a headache, and even on a different drive Windows doesn’t always play nicely.)
Thank you much for this! I really appreciate that you took the time write all of that out
I do have an old laptop I can use for learning on, don’t know why it didn’t occur to me to try linux on that first, but I’ll definitely do that, follow your instructions and see how it goes.
I genuinely want to switch, just didn’t have the confidence to actually try. Thank you again for the great advice! I gotta go dig out that old laptop.
I’ve finally made one tiny step into the Linux pool: Replacing my little old Plex server & NAS (mini PC, Windows 10) with… an even tinier Raspberry Pi 5.
It’s been nice to finally have an excuse to start learning Linux: commands, bash scripts, ssh, samba shares, etc. I’ve always admired lean, portable FOSS, so it’s way overdue.
I am pure linux for personal use and mac for work but:
Good. One of the biggest problems Windows has had for the past decade or so is having like three different versions of every menu and needing to figure out which one let you do what you want. Consolidate that shit
They already had that shit consolidated. It’s called “Control Panel” and has been around for forty years.
And for twenty or so years they have added features that aren’t in there. Hence the problem.
So unless you have a time machine, the answer is to consolidate.
Honest question as I only use Windows every once and a while. Can you get to that disk management thing from the Control Panel? The one that looks like gparted.
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Yep, depending on the version it was under either administrative tools or system tools option in control panel. It’s now also in the menu when you right click the start button.
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it louder
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.
