Technology

So I'm forced to use windows at work like the majority of my industry.

The start bar is still a thorn in my side since we switched from 10 to 11.

Standard office set up is 2 x 1920x1200 monitors and a 1920x1080 laptop. Some just leave the laptop shut when docked.

I preferred having it on a stand and using the lap top screen real estate.

In windows 10 I could make a monitor the primary and have a start bar only on the laptop. Not being able to do that in windows 11 is fucking annoying. They also fucked up auto hide start bar, it's always jumping up for bullshit I don't care about and not hiding when it should. I gave in and accepted I can't have those bottom few lines of screen real estate because they are Microsoft's.

As an engineer I do sometimes get feelings of imposter syndrome. But then I look at what Microsoft did to the start bar in windows 11 and think well at least I didn't do that.

Join team Linux!

It really seems like Windows really needs KDE to come back to the platform...

My screen is 2160px tall and 3840 pixels wide. If it’s at the bottom, I waste nearly 1.8 times the number of pixels.

Microsoft’s excuse about app design and layout is straight bullshit because I can make application windows any size and ratio I want.

Is the explanation, “Because Windows 11 is shitty”?

I honestly just want my old right mouse click back.

Most windows products get slightly shittier with each new release.

Jokes on them I decided to give macOS a shake when it was time for a new laptop.

What’s funny here is that in Microsoft’s Feedback Hub, the feedback related to “taskbar”, with the highest number of upvotes, is the one that asks the company to “Bring back the ability to move the taskbar to the top and sides if the screen on Windows 11”. We are not sure which data Microsoft used to get to such a conclusion…

The one they get from their ~~spyware~~ telemetry, probably.

Imagine letting your computer decide how you're gonna use it 😖

For anyone interested, Google the app called WindHawk. It makes it extremely possible to push the taskbar up.

I’ve been using ExplorerPatcher to correct this and it works pretty well.

Because microsoft sucks at ux

I guess the AI writing windows 11 code keeps getting the taskbar wrong.

You also can't add folders as toolbars anymore.

Simple solution is to switch to Linux. Ubuntu Cinnamon 24.04LTS had worked great for me so far.

If you absolutely can't or won't switch look at openshell https://open-shell.github.io/Open-Shell-Menu/

Notably, Windows 10 could do the same thing without any visible issues. And that’s probably because Windows 10 was a much lighter OS than Windows 11.

There is nothing wrong with being lightweight.

Maybe, just maybe, making the startmenu in React is not the best idea.

You can move taskbar to any side in Windows 98 (or earlier), but this abomination can't, that speaks volume. BTW older windows also had crazy granular theme customization, no more, that's apparently nuclear science or smth.