In favor of what? I still have to use control panel because some things are seemingly unreachable by the “settings” menus.
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.
That’s M$ intention, to hide some settings from users and lose control of Windows.
This doesn’t say they’re removing it, just deprecating it. I thought it had been deprecated for ages
I can’t imagine that they won’t be removing it eventually though.
honestly I still cant figure out how to configure a network interface properly without using the old control panel.
You literally can’t.
There’s a ton of stuff you can’t do with the new garbage settings.
Let’s not even mention that on an operating system called “Windows” you can only have one “window” of settings open. And opening new settings will just replace where you just where. Which is extremely rage inducing.
opening new settings will just replace where you just where
I don’t use windows super often anymore, so I don’t really have that usecase, but man. Just imagining it makes me annoyed and angry
You probably should never use a Mac then.
I’m pretty positive on mac OS, as an OS it’s technically quite good, but their preferences app has always been atrocious almost entirely for this reason, I want to have two preferences windows open to different pages please…
I hear you. I have always been a power user so I was pretty shocked when you could not open two file managers at once in OSX.
The thing about Apple devices is they work great, as long as you do it they way they want.
You can have multiple finder windows in OSX, thats perfectly normal, but you cant have the network settings open next to the printer settings.
Well that was not the case with the last time I used OSX. You click on finder and it would not open a second window. This is not how Windows or Gnome/Kwin work.
Any bet the control panel is the only thing holding my dad back from switching to Linux for home use, because he absolutely hates the windows 10 and 11 settings apps.
If I hadn’t already migrated to Linux after the insider crapshow, this probably would have forced me off.
Just kill all of windows already
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.
Gone in favor of a less useful interface. Fantastic!
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.
Ask ChatGPT. 3.5 should know it. I know I could install FreeBSD because of 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.
That’s okay because Windows will be gone entirely from my PC in a month.
Didn’t they learn that taking away what people grew up with for more than two decades already will result in outraged customers? (Windows 8 - start menu removed and replaced by start screen)
so who’s gonna build us a control panel widget. I can only code C
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.
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.
Welp time to go back to Linux…
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…
slam their head against the wall
I already do that enough as it is with Windows 11…
Can confirm, want to change your domain or computer name? Windows 7/10: control panel , system , computer name tab. Windows 10 /11: control panel, system, windows settings, advanced system settings, old system control panel, computer name tab.
Why add a middle man??
That many steps? WindowsKey+Break > Change computer name.
If you’re okay with three steps, on Windows 10 and newer, you can right click the start menu and generally open system. Just about any version supports right clicking “My Computer” or “This PC” and selecting properties, as well.
But that would require effort to learn to do something different. And a lot of users are firmly against that notion.
Just like the new shitty right click menu. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel just because.
And there is no reason not to either. You would still be looking at the cli in Unix with that attitude.
I don’t know about that one, It would be really hard to teleconference though the terminal.
Especially considering we still have (more or less) the same CLI for decades at this point.
Bourne was from 1977-1979, bash which was heavily inspired/designed to replace was from 1989. It is still the default shell in ubuntu.
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.
