It's all relative. Best match for their user analytics. So they get good numbers to show user engagement in their board meetings.

Accidental clicks are engineered to juice those numbers too.

One pays MS per click.

What is more infuriating is that they frequently don't show the app / applet you are actually looking for until after they load a web result - which results in your muscle memory and just hitting enter working against you.

The sort order is Microsoft profits

Problem that powertoys are becoming bloated too. Before switching my 8gb RAM laptop to Linux, it was constantly swapping memory. I investigated and it was powertoys slowly eating everything. The two almost identical launchers, 300mb each. The eyedropper that you gonna use once a month 200mb, the help that comes out when you long press the windows key, another 80mb. Same for the screen ruler. Then the accent helper, and so on. My 8gb laptop only had 1 GB free Memory After a clean boot

Lol, I remember power toys from freaking tucows.com (it used to be a software repository of sorts) in the nineties.

Windows and power toys, two relics from the ICQ age.

Winutil automated scripts in powershell is awesome.

Is there a word for “a thoughtless action by someone else so incidentally awful that you can’t help but wonder if it’s intentional”?

I mean, I don’t think they’re intentionally engineering it to delay EXACTLY the amount of time it takes for me to begin the process of clicking. That would take thoughtfulness, strategy, research, etc…… right?

…right?

Yes but this doesn't generate ad revenue!

/S

I like that if I type an application (the main reason I type in that window) that I don't have yet, rather than some nonsense like this it gives me a shortcut to the application IN the package manager.

KRunner is awesome

Even macos spotlight knows to prioritize system apps over web searches and such. Iirc it’s like if the query exists as a system app that will be the top result, if two system apps share the query the most recent result selected will win (eg typed “ter” and last used terminal that will be the autocomplete and top choice but if you also have an app called like terminex or something you can down key to it), and web results are only if queries have no match in the spotlight db for files, contacts, etc (which would be in the match list after system apps. I don’t know what the hierarchy is but there is one iirc). So if you type in “phantom menace” and have no apps, files, contacts, etc matching that it’ll prompt to query google.

What you describe is far greater in functionality (and of course spotlight doesnt have plugin support, though it can be outright replaced at least (for now)) but it’s absolutely insane microsoft is going this way with ad nonsense. It’s just disrespectful and greedy. Who is even left using desktop OS anymore? It’s like power users and office workers. The power users are gonna switch to linux or m series macbooks (which doesn’t rule out linux). So is this just a play to get the administrative assistants and other office drones of the world to become a captive audience they can sell?

i have a couple of QR codes with "qr" in the file name... guess im not allowed to use 'em anymore

That was when they broke it.

I was working at MSFT when they rolled out Windows 8.

Basically broke all internal workflows for a month or two.

Then quickly had to re-enable the 7 UI they told even us employees did not exist in 8.

They did some kind of hackjob, called that 8.1, and fast forward a decade, Windows 11 had, last time I checked at least 4 different 'eras' of UI schemes/frameworks, if you dig far enough into all the settings menus.

I am not even joking when I say that people literally screamed at me when I used the word 'refactor' in a sentence, while on the MSFT campus.

Kinda yeah

https://youtu.be/LRq_SAuQDec

Windows: has lightning fast native indexing with ntfs Also windows: implements worst out of the box GUI search tool possible

Everything is what I use for files

Windows search is what I use for applications

Debian or Gnome seem to have some kind of semi usable search in the gui. It can find files in multiple places by name, wildcard etc but I'm not sure what it can see. Everything is great on Win.

AutoKey is an alternative to AutoHotKey, from what I understand. Haven't gotten around to it yet, but at least it uses a proper programming language instead of the abomination that is AutoHotKey's scripting lang.

But nothing beats Hammerspoon which is the analogue for MacOS. Lua programming, sizeable library of OS integrations, built-in http server. Ah, what a beauty it is.

man locate

How common it is across distros I couldn't tell you, but it's been a staple on Mint for a good long while and ought to be available everywhere. Basically wherever I'd use find I try locate first, unless it's for a file that's expected to be very new and hasn't been indexed by the daemon yet.

... You need Windows to use government websites? What kind of dystopian nightmare is this

I have a machine in my garage that gets used for music and the random football game. Starting it up after being down even a few weeks starts the churn of updates. It's annoying.

Just in case you don't know, unless it changed last time I checked, some organizations like Comptia didn't allow computers with dual boot to be used to pass a cert exam.

tbf if you didn't update fedora for 6 months you may aswell downlaod a new iso and they also do the windows reboot screens for no reason

Thinkpad is the tank of laptops.

It's like, I get the idea of saying "this user is searching for a program they don't have, let's link to it" but then they're like "oh what if we searched for everything?" and then someone else is was like "And what if we put ads in to monetize it!" Then that last person probably got a bonus.

I honestly don't mind the fact there's search there. I do mind the fact that there are any circumstances in which it would default to the web search over a correctly-spelled (or even a correct partial-match) application on my computer. That should never happen.

Its pumping up those Edge numbers!

Adding websearch to the start bar’s search was solving a problem that didn’t exist.

Maybe the average user is so ignorant and bad at computers they don't understand this. They don't know what a browser is. They don't know what a website is. They don't know what a program is. It's all just stuff.

Personally, I'd rather spend billions on education than AI slop and other patches on "people are kind of dull"

Just use copilot to write a powershell script to disable all the crap Windows 11 ads.

What the fuck are they at changing that.

Ads. These are sponsored results, and they want them to show up first. Sure, you bought to OS (probably), but...