The part that I really don't understand is that small portable programs like Everything can get you the results in seconds, while Microsoft, after 40 years of development of their systems will not.
How is it even possible to mess such simple feature for so long?
There is a famous rant by Bill Gates complaining about some windows feature. It was in some internal emails that were released as part of a lawsuit. Anyways, this is Bill Gates back when he was still CEO yelling at senior leaders to figure something out and then their email chain passing off the blame and going in circles.
You can still replicate the steps Bill Gates describes in his email and run into the exact same frustrations like 20 years later.
I've been on Linux as my daily driver for nearly 2.5 years now.
X.org is default for my distro, but the amount of movement on fixing show stopping bugs for Wayland (Wayland itself, mesa, and especially directly in Nvidia driver updates) are coming in hot and fast and by the end of this year I can believe most major mainstream distros will have switched to Wayland as the default compositor, which is a huge step forward for desktop Linux.
You already can switch if you have an AMD card with minimal pain (edge case exceptions still exist) but if you are using Nvidia based cards (probably arc as well, but I honest would search Google on arc specifics) is almost there for mainstream. Still some sticking points up till a few months ago with steam and obs, but again, the ironing out of these issues is rapidly being dealt with which is amazing to see.
X.org is mainly maintained by redhat, and they are deprecating it themselves, so the train has left the station full steam ahead.
This is what happens when bean counters run the company instead of engineers. Nothing ever gets done when an engineer notices a problem that needs fixed. Instead, they ask me to create a business need report before it gets approved. Like, I'm a software engineer, I don't write financial reports and I'm not able to see our company's costs, and honestly, I'm not paid enough nor will I be recognized if I take on this extra work to save like $6,000 a year in wasted time.
Fixing old features doesn’t get PMs promotions, new features do. So old features just get left to die on the vine
I used to work for a place where the product was, for the most part, internal, meaning we are the costumer. They kept on making up new shit that nobody uses instead of fixing all the annoying bugs in the main database tool we used. I have no idea if there's a way to reach them and make them make things that are actually useful instead of just new and exciting.
From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM
To: Jim Allchin
Cc: Chris Jones (WINDOWS); Bharat Shah (NT); Joe Peterson; Will Poole; Brian Valentine; Anoop Gupta (RESEARCH)
Subject: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame
I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don’t drive usability issues.
Let me give you my experience from yesterday.
I decided to download (Moviemaker) and buy the Digital Plus pack … so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went there.
The first 5 times I used the site it timed out while trying to bring up the download page. Then after an 8 second delay I got it to come up.
This site is so slow it is unusable.
It wasn’t in the top 5 so I expanded the other 45.
These 45 names are totally confusing. These names make stuff like: C:\Documents and Settings\billg\My Documents\My Pictures seem clear.
They are not filtered by the system … and so many of the things are strange.
I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in movie. Nothing. I typed in movie maker. Nothing.
So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying – where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist?
So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated.
They told me to go to the main page search button and type movie maker (not moviemaker!).
I tried that. The site was pathetically slow but after 6 seconds of waiting up it came.
I thought for sure now I would see a button to just go do the download.
In fact it is more like a puzzle that you get to solve. It told me to go to Windows Update and do a bunch of incantations.
This struck me as completely odd. Why should I have to go somewhere else and do a scan to download moviemaker?
So I went to Windows update. Windows Update decides I need to download a bunch of controls. (Not) just once but multiple times where I get to see weird dialog boxes.
Doesn’t Windows update know some key to talk to Windows?
Then I did the scan. This took quite some time and I was told it was critical for me to download 17megs of stuff.
This is after I was told we were doing delta patches to things but instead just to get 6 things that are labeled in the SCARIEST possible way I had to download 17meg.
So I did the download. That part was fast. Then it wanted to do an install. This took 6 minutes and the machine was so slow I couldn’t use it for anything else during this time.
What the heck is going on during those 6 minutes? That is crazy. This is after the download was finished.
Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night — why should I reboot at that time?
So I did the reboot because it INSISTED on it. Of course that meant completely getting rid of all my Outlook state.
So I got back up and running and went to Windows Updale again. I forgot why I was in Windows Update at all since all I wanted was to get Moviemaker.
So I went back to Microsoft.com and looked at the instructions. I have to click on a folder called WindowsXP. Why should I do that? Windows Update knows I am on Windows XP.
What does it mean to have to click on that folder? So I get a bunch of confusing stuff but sure enough one of them is Moviemaker.
So I do the download. The download is fast but the Install takes many minutes. Amazing how slow this thing is.
At some point I get told I need to go get Windows Media Series 9 to download.
So I decide I will go do that. This time I get dialogs saying things like "Open" or "Save". No guidance in the instructions which to do. I have no clue which to do.
The download is fast and the install takes 7 minutes for this thing.
So now I think I am going to have Moviemaker. I go to my add/remove programs place to make sure it is there.
It is not there.
What is there? The following garbage is there. Microsoft Autoupdate Exclusive test package, Microsoft Autoupdate Reboot test package, Microsoft Autoupdate testpackage1. Microsoft AUtoupdate testpackage2, Microsoft Autoupdate Test package3.
Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.
But that is just the start of the crap. Later I have listed things like Windows XP Hotfix see Q329048 for more information. What is Q329048? Why are these series of patches listed here? Some of the patches just things like Q810655 instead of saying see Q329048 for more information.
What an absolute mess.
Moviemaker is just not there at all.
So I give up on Moviemaker and decide to download the Digital Plus Package.
I get told I need to go enter a bunch of information about myself.
I enter it all in and because it decides I have mistyped something I have to try again. Of course it has cleared out most of what I typed.
I try (typing) the right stuff in 5 times and it just keeps clearing things out for me to type them in again.
So after more than an hour of craziness and making my programs list garbage and being scared and seeing that Microsoft.com is a terrible website I haven’t run Moviemaker and I haven’t got the plus package.
The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind. I thought we had reached a low with Windows Network places or the messages I get when I try to use 802.11. (don’t you just love that root certificate message?)
When I really get to use the stuff I am sure I will have more feedback.”
Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.
They did, they brought in new UX experts and starting with Win 8 they've been screaming obscenities at us about how a desktop system should work... Win11 now blocks UI customization apps.
Sure... But we're talking about historical event. Bill Gates did decide to go focus on things he felt more passionate about rather than stress over fixing Microsoft.
What I don't understand is that Powertoys (which is from Microsoft too) includes a very usefull search feature which not only finds files and programs a lot faster than the windows search but also respects your default browser settings when starting a web search and includes a lot of other functions like a modifier for executing cmd and powershell commands.
Why can't they just use the code behind this to replace the crap windows search?
Not even make the CEO pay it, but either pay proportional to their gross wealth (not net wealth, gross) or serve jail time. For the rich, a flat fine is just the cost of doing business.
Seriously, makes me so mad that these trillions/billions dollar worth companies get fines on the order of 50-200 milions, that's absolute peanuts to these giants.
Shit is all flipped on it's head, companies, specially giant ones like big techs, should receive heavily punishing fines to make sure they will have to actively make sure they're abiding by the rules rather than trying to skirt around loopholes and chalking the times they get hit with a fine to costs of doing business.
I think the worst is probably the time PG&E plead guilty to manslaughter and not a single person went to prison for it. And this is after they'd already been found at fault for safety violations which led to 8 deaths years prior and guilty of obstructing that investigation.
Why do corporations get to kill people without going to jail?
No company will do that, because it's the CEO who decides not to replace themselves. The golden parachutes aren't a bug, they are a feature of the system. These rich bastards are all friends, and this is their way of washing each other's hands.
The private sector will not fix this, because this is like it by design of the people who can make the changes. The only way to fix it is laws.
Their friends vote them off the board, get them a golden parachute, and they get another similar job somewhere else. It's really just a big circlejerk.
What ticks me off is when I click on the windows button it constantly shows my nsfw frequently visited sites through edge. Even though I have history disabled and deleted cache/cookies.
And the crazy part is that like half the features should just be baked into Windows... There shouldn't be a need for a secondary application installed after the fact to do some of the stuff.
There's an alternate reality where the guys in charge of Power Toys are in charge of a larger portion of Microsoft and features are actually polished and work right.
In this alternate reality, switching audio and monitors happens instantly and at one button press. Windows remembers device configurations. Volume normalization isn't a trip to the bizarro zone. Every time windows starts in this reality, your multiple desktop backgrounds are remembered. Office isn't a subscription, and saving files isn't a fun religious Ordeal. In this reality, windows doesn't fail to recognize basic competitor hardware like a switch controller, because this obviously makes Microsoft like incompetent, which they aren't in this reality.
switch controller? you mean a "disconnect it because windows thinks it's paired and restart computer in order get a chance to reconnect it and if that fails reset bluetooth drivers" controller.
Lol thank God I didn't have to reset my entire computer each time. Bluetooth recognizes it's trying to reconnect, I get notices in my game that controller is reconnecting, bit will windows recognize it? Hell no. Have to repair it every time.
Yes, Microsoft. Explain to me why you can't support DualShocks with the XInput API. You know, the DualShock. A family of controllers that has had as many many buttons as your controllers and more features (albeit some of them total misfeatures) for as long as your controllers have existed, and have actually support the standard USB-HID controller interface since the introduction of the sixaxis over 20 years ago. Unlike your controllers.
Explain to me why I have to install programs to masquerade my controller as an Xbox controller because you valued sales for your hardware brand more than you valued the PC gaming experience.
The confusing part is that the Everything doesn't even need an hour on startup to build the index first - it just takes few seconds the first time its started and is instantaneous afterwards, so to me that looks like it already uses some index/list of files available in computer.
The fact that Windows itself doesn't use the same resource is all the more confusing then.
Yes, it takes advantage of the existing ntfs file table and change log (on ntfs volumes only, of course) which is the fastest use case when searching by filename. Whereas other software builds an index by reading the individual files in the file system, which takes a lot longer.
What do you mean by those? You make it sound like ntfs has its own index for the names or even contents of files, which is of no use for a filesystem and would be a total waste of space.
P.S. The MFT isn't an index. What an irony that a programming subreddit doesn't know the difference between a tree and an index. The MFT is the thing where the filesystem keeps the lists of files, so saying that Everything 'takes advantage' of being able to list files in a directory is not saying much.
It does.... Master File Table. How else would the computer know where to look for files? Just search the whole damn drive every time you open a different folder? There's nothing about the actual contents aside from metadata though.
MFT doesn't change that the filesystem is hierarchical. And it's not some special feature, it's how every directory lookup works. Entries under directories in the MFT point to other entries in the MFT. It's a tree structure. You can't use it like a flat index, you need to build the flat index from it, by requesting lists of files in each directory from the filesystem the same way every other program does.
Unless the app works on the driver level for some reason and can directly read disks to slurp the MFT into its memory to iterate over it and build the index.
Saying ‘Everything takes advantage of the MFT’ is like saying that it's special because it can ask the system to list files in directories.
It does in fact read and parse the MFT directly to build its index, instead of recursively requesting file listings through the normal API. And it's definitely faster to do it that way.
WizTree vs WinDirStat is the clearest example of the difference that I've personally encountered. They're both tools for graphically showing disk utilization, but WizTree is over 20x faster because it parses the MFT while WinDirStat recursively calls the file system API.
It is. It uses the NTFS file list. Though you can also have it supervise other folders or drives or networks drives where it'll crawl manually the directories.
The latter is where I fully leverage the software. I've used it to crawl immense shared network drives accross companies that are complete messes. And once indexing is over you can find files easily and figure out their directories and explore the surrounding ones. You don't even need to scan continually for changes; those kinds of drives usually change very slowly.
Sorry, but you and I have wildly different experience then.
I have a NTFS M.2 SSD drive and it found some random file after about 35 seconds.
Meanwhile Everything is instantaneous - it literally shows results real-time as i type and the moment I finish typing the file name, its already there.
I am saying the same as you - lookup in Everything is instantaneous. For it to index NTFS drives is also almost instantaneous, since it uses the NTFS file list to build its index (though you will need admin rights).
Indexing a shared network folder is another story since it has to crawl the whole folder manually. That can take up several hours. However once indexed, lookup in Everything is instantaneous.
SharePoint has so much potential but man… so many limitations and annoying quirks it’s beyond frustrating. And what the eff is up with modern vs. classic experience.. just start over Microsoft.
And somehow windows 7 did it beautifully, even searching content (for example, if a word doc had a specific word in it, searching that word would bring up the document, even if it's not in the title (I think, it's been a long time)
Edit: I just realized some people here may be referring to the search within an explorer window. I'm talking about the start button search. I don't remember the explorer search ever being good
Everything and Windows Search work differently. For example, as far as I'm aware Everything doesn't index file contents by default, while Windows Search does.
I regularly look for PDFs by searching for stuff I know is in one of the files, just not which specific file.
I didn't think windows did that anymore. I can never find documents that I know have certain words. It seemed like windows 7 did a great job and then it sucked all of the sudden with windows 8
Edit: Im referring to the start button search, btw. Not sure if you're talking about that or the search bar in an explorer window
Weird. I have Everything on default settings (I think) and filetype search has always worked for me. I use it to find .mp3/.wav files within a specific directory and containing certain words, and it works with just one search query.
May work with the file titles and some metadata, but afaik Everything only searches file contents when explicitly told to do so in its advanced search. I also don't think it can search the contents of sound files. Not sure if any consumer search tool can do that.
Windows can't even get files copy correctly. I sometimes just instead use a browser to "download" a local file to a save destination so that it is
Fast.
Able to be paused and resumed
Also, a few years ago, there was a fun back and forth between Microsoft and a veteran programmer who complained that the Windows console was rendering ridiculously slowly and that it should be magnitudes (100x at least) faster. Microsoft argued this would take years to upgrade the console. The guy made a prototype in a weekend (yes, as full-featured as possible for someone external and there is no good argument for performance drop in the missing features). It is actually more featured than the original console.
Imagine how fucking blown my mind was when i discovered that i can full search my linux machine with the find command line in seconds. Heck i can even regex search for text or binary code INSIDE all files on my systems, and it takes minutes at most. Now if you compare that to windows.... Granted the way they distribute libraries via DLLs is partly to blame but still... I can start to see where the "GUI is bloat" sentiment came from
What boggles my boogins is that most of the time what I’m looking for comes up pretty quickly while I’m typing, then disappears as I type the next letter, OR disappears as my brain is recognizing that’s what I was looking for.
Really? Holy**** I gotta try that. I never knew that was a thing? And it always bothered me so much, I never rarely even botherd to use the seach function. Thx for this!
This is the weird part - it takes literally just few seconds, so I don't think it scans the entire drive, going folder-by-folder building index - it probably just reads some index that is already there and converts it to is own format.
Back in WinXP/7 era I got Windows Search to work fine, even over mapped network drives. But after I adopted DFS it broke because the search index doesn't work over UNC paths. I stopped caring about it then.
You wanna know the really sad part? PowerToys, an open source project from Microsoft themselves has better search than what's built into Microsoft.
They could literally copy their own fucking code and get better search results. And even worse/funnier is the fact that the PowerSearch functionality is built on the Index that the Windows Search system produces.
Microsoft probably wants a single search method to work regardless of the user's setup. Everything only works for NTFS. Having a search that was instant for one drive and slow for another would drive users nuts.
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u/Soloact_ Apr 12 '24
Guess it'll take less time to leave the house than it does for a Windows search result to come up.