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0 pointslousken5d ago0 comments

What about bringing back old notepad and improving admin apps?

MMC snapins haven't been touched in years and still can't even sort those columns properly, search and filtering is terrible

Control panel is still not migrated over to settings after 12 years nor you can open two settings apps.

Error messages in modern apps are just the worst, how about printing valuable error messages than "something is wrong"?

Fixing dark patterns like taking over your screen with popups and taking over the application header so you can't close windows unless you go to the task manager. First time opening edge shows a really annoying splash screen + home page is filled with ads.

Also where are 5 second boot times on NVMe SSDs? Anything more is just sloppy.

Just to list a few pet peeves

But let's see if they can even fix things they've mentioned in the post, though that's like 1/4 of the issues that should be fixed.

0 comments

jiggawatts5d ago

> improving admin apps?

They have a bunch of replacements, all of which are slow as molasses and not feature complete.

1. Server Manager.

2. Windows Admin Centre.

3. Settings App (same as desktop).

4. PowerShell

5. DSC

6. Azure Arc

There's also Active Directory Administrative Center which never replaced dsa.msc for me or anyone I've ever worked with.

Similarly, there's like half a dozen performance monitor tools for Windows Server, and they're all terrible and are missing critical features.

pathartl5d ago

PowerShell is slow or not feature complete? It's arguably one of the best shells out there.

jiggawatts5d ago

It is reasonably feature complete, but not 100%, so some things are absurdly difficult to automate on Server Core, such as changing the ACL of the private key of a certificate (i.e.: to give a service account access).

It also takes a solid two seconds to launch even on a high-end PC with a fast SSD. It takes much longer on a small VM with overpriced cloud remote storage.

louskenOP5d ago

i've stopped administrating windows some time ago so hopefully my response is still accurate -

1. deprecated lol

2. i think it can't be run on things like AD, so for very small companies this is annoying

3. ... that's not really an admin app?

4. sure, but then i might as well switch to linux if i have to stick to cli (and i did)

5. last time i checked there were two versions, incompatible with one another, not great alternative to ansible

6. if you have hybrid and are in azure already, maybe? haven't used

I mean it's not like there are not 5 alternatives in azure/intune for every thing as well that are half baked. And 365 and azure is worse with terrible migration guides, ms graph with a combination of commands and json inputs and defaults from 2016.

It's really time for microsoft to fully commit to one thing, make it good, finish it and deprecate everything else.

jiggawatts5d ago

> 1. deprecated lol

It launches by default on new installs of Windows Server 2025!

> 2. i think it can't be run on things like AD, so for very small companies this is annoying

In "Preview", which is a sad state of affairs: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/manage/wind...

> 3. ... that's not really an admin app?

I was just listing stuff that generally replaced the old MMC consoles. Things like regional options can be set through the Admin app, and is weirdly difficult with other mechanisms even on Windows Server. Some critical aspects are still MMC-only or require half a page of PowerShell scripts.

> 4. sure, but then i might as well switch to linux if i have to stick to cli (and i did)

Ironically, you're missing out on PowerShell, which is more UNIX than UNIX, and blows every legacy shell on Linux out of the water.

> 5. last time i checked there were two versions, incompatible with one another, not great alternative to ansible

There are three now, all incompatible and incomplete: https://dsccommunity.org/blog/what-is-microsoft-dscv3/

> 6. if you have hybrid and are in azure already, maybe? haven't used [Azure Arc]

It's supposed to replace Group Policy, Windows Update, and bits and pieces of SCCM and SCOM.

It is incredibly, hilariously bad at all of those things.

It's a level of failure that simply boggles the mind, and I can only surmise that it was developed by a small army of junior outsourced Indian developers that had never seen any of the tools they were replacing and did everything "to the letter of the spec".

1 more reply

userbinator5d ago

Old notepad is still there, you just need to remove the new abomination.

Control panel is still not migrated over to settings after 12 years nor you can open two settings apps.

I wish they'd migrate back to the old Control Panel...

Error messages in modern apps are just the worst

...as the new one is a "modern app" and about as horrible as they come.

EvanAnderson5d ago

For anybody who wants to get rid of the new abomination:

From an elevated Powershell prompt:

Get-AppxProvisionedPackage -Online | Where-Object { $_.PackageName -like 'Microsoft.WindowsNotepad*' } | Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage -Online

snarfy5d ago

You can uninstall it from apps.

One bit of cruft with this - I downloaded an alternative app that is simply notepad.exe and put it in my path in the first folder in the path.

I could not create a file association to any files to it - Explorer would throw an error about Store app. Even after uninstalling it, a notepad.exe still remains and supercedes my path which is a stub to launch the Microsoft Store.

This is the type of slop that needs desperately fixed but I doubt ever will.

ZeWaka5d ago

I actually like the features on new notepad (like dark mode and markdown, not the Copilot garbage), but 300MB of memory for notepad.exe is fucking hilarious.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

jiggawatts5d ago

> improving admin apps?

They have a bunch of replacements, all of which are slow as molasses and not feature complete.

1. Server Manager.

2. Windows Admin Centre.

3. Settings App (same as desktop).

4. PowerShell

5. DSC

6. Azure Arc

There's also Active Directory Administrative Center which never replaced dsa.msc for me or anyone I've ever worked with.

Similarly, there's like half a dozen performance monitor tools for Windows Server, and they're all terrible and are missing critical features.

pathartl5d ago

PowerShell is slow or not feature complete? It's arguably one of the best shells out there.

jiggawatts5d ago

It also takes a solid two seconds to launch even on a high-end PC with a fast SSD. It takes much longer on a small VM with overpriced cloud remote storage.

louskenOP5d ago

i've stopped administrating windows some time ago so hopefully my response is still accurate -

1. deprecated lol

2. i think it can't be run on things like AD, so for very small companies this is annoying

3. ... that's not really an admin app?

4. sure, but then i might as well switch to linux if i have to stick to cli (and i did)

5. last time i checked there were two versions, incompatible with one another, not great alternative to ansible

6. if you have hybrid and are in azure already, maybe? haven't used

It's really time for microsoft to fully commit to one thing, make it good, finish it and deprecate everything else.

jiggawatts5d ago

> 1. deprecated lol

It launches by default on new installs of Windows Server 2025!

> 2. i think it can't be run on things like AD, so for very small companies this is annoying

In "Preview", which is a sad state of affairs: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/manage/wind...

> 3. ... that's not really an admin app?

> 4. sure, but then i might as well switch to linux if i have to stick to cli (and i did)

Ironically, you're missing out on PowerShell, which is more UNIX than UNIX, and blows every legacy shell on Linux out of the water.

> 5. last time i checked there were two versions, incompatible with one another, not great alternative to ansible

There are three now, all incompatible and incomplete: https://dsccommunity.org/blog/what-is-microsoft-dscv3/

> 6. if you have hybrid and are in azure already, maybe? haven't used [Azure Arc]

It's supposed to replace Group Policy, Windows Update, and bits and pieces of SCCM and SCOM.

It is incredibly, hilariously bad at all of those things.

1 more reply

userbinator5d ago

Old notepad is still there, you just need to remove the new abomination.

Control panel is still not migrated over to settings after 12 years nor you can open two settings apps.

I wish they'd migrate back to the old Control Panel...

Error messages in modern apps are just the worst

...as the new one is a "modern app" and about as horrible as they come.

EvanAnderson5d ago

For anybody who wants to get rid of the new abomination:

From an elevated Powershell prompt:

Get-AppxProvisionedPackage -Online | Where-Object { $_.PackageName -like 'Microsoft.WindowsNotepad*' } | Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage -Online

snarfy5d ago

You can uninstall it from apps.

One bit of cruft with this - I downloaded an alternative app that is simply notepad.exe and put it in my path in the first folder in the path.

This is the type of slop that needs desperately fixed but I doubt ever will.

ZeWaka5d ago

I actually like the features on new notepad (like dark mode and markdown, not the Copilot garbage), but 300MB of memory for notepad.exe is fucking hilarious.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse