The Windows Control Panel joins the ranks of the undead Microsoft has updated its Windows system configuration tools document and excised all references to deprecating the venerable Control Panel in the wake of an outcry from Reg readers. The support document originally included the text, "The Control Panel is in the process of being deprecated." Yet just days later, the latest …
What I absolutely detest is this fashion to make changes with no confirmation.
There is no "Cancel" to undo something, everything is in real time and I don't understand the benefit. It is too easy to make a change and not know it has been done.
Just why is is too difficult to add "Okay/Save" and "Cancel"?
Pretty much every other application that exists is a clickfest of utterly pointless mouse actions to do the simplest of tasks. This is not just Microsoft but everything regardless of platform. OS or vendor.
Maybe you meant, “Power Shell?”
(I actually don’t care what they’re doing to the Windows, I run “legacy” versions anyway. Once you run Virt-Manager, all other operating systems become just more programs you can run within Linux. Kind of like redefining all Imperial measurement systems in terms of S.I. — in one fell swoop the whole world is metric, whether they knew it or not!)
Yep, referring to a shell as "the command line" just shows ignorance of what a shell actually does. It is (at least the unix-style ones, can't comment on the M$ "object shell"!) a sophisticated programming environment, not just a bloated way of getting arguments into a program!
The Unix shell was conceived as a means of separating the low-level OS user interface from the kernel. As the only option at the time was a character-based interface using teletypes it was implemented as commands issued as lines of text, hence a command line.
Because os the layered nature of Unix it was possible to replace one shell with another so although you might be thinking of the Bourne shell or, possibly more likely, bash there were many others, ksh and csh being a couple I've used. Although, as you say, they have become programmable (and also implement some commands as built-ins) the essence has always been invoking other programs and providing parameters to them. If one wanted to be unkind (which I wouldn't) it would even be possible to describe that programmability as bloat.
With the arrival of GUIs we new have GUI-based shells. But if it's a text based shell interpreting lines of text as commands, then it's a command-line shell. What else could it be?
I disagree. As well as providing logical constructions: loops, conditionals, they also provide argument processing, background execution, high-level IO/redirection, error trapping etc.
Interactive shells provide even more (although I wouldn't run a batch script in bash unless I _really_ needed the one or two text substitutions it provides over dash).
The term "command line" is more suited to the data that a program receives, than what a shell provides. You can see a list of command lines in the output of "top -c".
Calling a shell a "command line" is a travesty! Because that is now all that most people think it can do.
Most people are cushioned by high level applications and don't work at the pointy end of making computers do things directly (no safety net!). It was called a command line because originally after the computer powered on it sat waiting for commands (entered one line at a time) and anything the operating system could do was accessible from there (via teletype or VDU terminal). previous to it's invention the operator couldn't do a lot more than flip switches to read a pre-prepared card stack/tape reel do do anything.
The DOS CLI had (has?) a very limited range of functions only because the original underlying hardware was very limited, it occupied a desktop not an entire room. My guess is that the term 'Shell' originated from the fact that Unix was providing a not too robust common looking CLI to the actual working parts of different systems.
By the early '80s minicomputer CLIs had a level of complexity that allowed near programming language levels of control and MS 'PowerShell' is just a marketing change of name now that it does have the full blown capabilities of other 'shell' named systems.
You can call it a Shell or CLI, to my old brain they're utterly interchangeable
At this stage, what ever Microsoft decide to do, I will reverse with a ddofferent piece of software.
Screw the start menu, screw you, I'll get a program to bring it back.
This is no different. As with all MS OSs, the old version is still in there if you dig deep enough. I remember there still being 3.11 dialogue boxes in 10 if you went far enough. So the options will just be gathered up an repackaged into a control panel again by someone else.
Nuts to the and their ideas about how I should work.
Quite probably, but it wasn't just picked up here. Ars Technica also ran the same story. At the time of writing this, that article had nearly 300 comments, mostly saying pretty much the same thing as here: Settings is shit, and only contains a fraction of the functionality of Control Panel.
I find it amusing how the last several versions of Windows have prettied up the management screens. But if you go deep enough Windows will throw you dialogs straight out of Windows 95 once you get to the point they never got around to fully implementing replacement interfaces.
I love how Windows 11 shows this nice new pretty right-click context menu in file manager, complete with "share & enjoy" icon at the bottom.
Then you click "Show more options" and it's replaced by the old standard Windows menu.
I think someone got one over on his manager at Microsoft.
Wait until you see the failover cluster "move storage" screen on Server 2019 (and I think 2022?).
It's like something out of Windows 95 and you can ONLY drag and drop your extremely critical VMs and their storage individually onto the new location ***in a treeview*** for where you'd like them to move to.
I haven't used Excel for a long time but the same thing happened as MS introduced the ribbon menu to much wailing and cries of anguish.
So many users knew the old Alt-... menu shortcuts that they left them in there, even though they didn't actually activate the menu any more. If you pressed Pivot Table on the ribbon menu then you got a stupid new version with loads of features missing but Alt-D, P would pop up your old friend.
It worked for years and years. Probably still does but I've escaped now and refuse to use it anymore.
" in the wake of an outcry from Reg readers."
Er creative licence or just opur b$ there fella...
the CP wont go anywhere untill Micro$haft have fully working alterntives and atm, that isnt happening anytime soon. Look at the state of the sound control in win10/11 its farce boarding on a comedy, wrapped in a pigs ear.
"the CP wont go anywhere untill Micro$haft have fully working alterntives and atm, that isnt happening anytime soon."
I would not be so sure about that.
Remember the start menu win8 brought. That was not a fully functional alternaticlve to what we had and they did it any way.
Had to release a whole new is to fix that one, but try to cover it up by calling it 8.1 like it was not a complete overhaul.
I would not for one second put it past them to try removing it at least, before having a month or two of outrage and eventually having to walk it back but not in an easy fashion.
This is just typical of Microsoft's behaviour. They’d *much rather* we used the new settings. Therein lies the problem. It’s always Microsoft “preferring” in some way that we did X. And this leads to higher cognitive load on the user, friction and annoyance. They do it with everything, from Microsoft Accounts, to the control panel, to ribbon menus. It’s just relentless. Why don’t they concentrate on making Windows and Office feature complete even if it’s for a couple of years and concentrate on making it work? It seems that we have for too long had to put up with partially complete features and we can feel the pressure to gradually start using them. Such as Outlook > New Outlook, Teams > New Teams etc. etc.
Because there are UI Devs and art majors that need jobs. Can't just get it right the first time and put yourself out of the lucrative job.
Make a functional but annoying UI and you will have a job forever fixing it. Drag in your art friends to make concepts and you can spin a good sliver of gold for yourself.
"It seems that we have for too long had to put up with partially complete features and we can feel the pressure to gradually start using them."
And....yet another of the arguments put forward by the obsessive Windows fanbois when denigrating Linux. They always used to claim that Linux wasn't "finished" :-)
(Note, I don't mean you, I'm referring only to the fanbois :-))
Sounds like the utter disaster that Networking has become. I really struggle to find anything, but in the old days, I could walk a user remotely through the screens without even being in front of a PC, now I get as far as open networking settings, and the settings I want to change could be anywhere. There's no logic to it.
And MS wonders why people are not moving to 11
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