- Jun 12, 2021
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Disclaimer - I am primarily a Windows guy and all of my career has been 80% centered on the Microsoft world of software for small businesses, enterprises and the like. Over the past year I've been primarily using Manjaro Linux with Gnome3, Plasma5, XFCE and i3 as well on my personal laptop. I must say - I'm impressed. Linux in 2021 is far improved vs Linux in 2011 and prior. The list of improvements to the user experience in Plasma 5 and in Gnome 3 is quite numerous and in many aspects has leap-frogged past Microsoft's UX of Windows 10.
This isn't going to be a rant as much as a bulleted list of things that I strongly wish we had in Windows 10, right out of the gate. I know that many 3rd party vendors exist solely because of these missing features that should already exist in Windows - Classic Shell, Stardock, etc etc.
This isn't going to be a rant as much as a bulleted list of things that I strongly wish we had in Windows 10, right out of the gate. I know that many 3rd party vendors exist solely because of these missing features that should already exist in Windows - Classic Shell, Stardock, etc etc.
- Keyboard shortcuts - at least a help pane to list all the possibilities in the OS, but especially an option to customize current shortcuts in favor of your own. I know you can create shortcuts on a per-shortcut basis... but there is no easy way to view what shortcuts exist for all apps, etc.
- Modular start / application launcher. Gnome, KDE (and now Plasma), heck even XFCE and i3 are opened up to let the user decide how they want to use their OS. I can decide to go with a classic Gnome2 style application menu, a Windows 98 stylized start menu, change the skin on the background of the taskbar, etc. These kind of options aren't something that general users would want or desire, but the options should still exist for a user to select a classic start menu, Windows 10 style, etc. I like that I can opt for the fullscreen start menu, which is nice... but what about the classic style, what about other options that KDE or Gnome have had for years?
- Window behavior modifications - similar to how Plasma works. Custom rules can be made to enable transparency on all apps that match a specific title, function, etc. Example - I have all my apps in Plasma blur with transparency like how it is in MacOS. I then made exceptions to not blur the browser, remmina (rdp), and other apps that won't be useful to have transparent blur turned on for. This feature alone is like the swiss army knife of customization, allowing the user to truly mold the OS into how they want it, rather than Microsoft forcing the user to comply with their predetermined experience that you didn't know you should have. (ok that was a rant).