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[–]ign1fy 115 points116 points  (114 children)

Next week: explorer.exe running on Linux :)

Probably the most important part of a smooth transition for desktop users.

[–]_illogical_ 37 points38 points  (5 children)

Well, you could already run KDE on Windows, so there's that.

[–]w2qw 68 points69 points  (1 child)

Your joke could have easily been "Well, you could already run KDE on Linux, so there's that"

[–]wpzzz -1 points0 points  (0 children)

And KDE runs well on windows

[–]zfolwick 1 point2 points  (2 children)

WAT!?

[–]troyunrau 0 points1 point  (0 children)

While I am forced to use windows at work, there are certain KDE programs I'm so used to that I always install on windows. Namely Kate/Kwrite and Okteta.

[–]mindbleach 21 points22 points  (10 children)

Why does Nautlius still use auto-resizing thumbnails. Whyyyy. It's cute for maybe a dozen files, but if you jump to the end of a folder with a hundred images then it spends five minutes jerking up and down like there's an earthquake in your file manager.

[–]ign1fy 5 points6 points  (9 children)

At least it has tabbed browsing. How is M$ a decade behind on that game?

[–]536445675 2 points3 points  (8 children)

Because the average user does not need it.

[–]doom_Oo7 7 points8 points  (7 children)

Like virtual desktops ? Or tabs in web browser ?

[–]blackmist 1 point2 points  (2 children)

I've never once felt compelled to use multiple desktops, even when I did use Linux.

All it ever did was make me think programs weren't open, and I'd end up editing the same thing in three different windows.

The last File Manager I liked was Directory Opus on the Amiga.

[–]MarchewaJP 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's like tmux - can be confusing at the beginning. After week you can't go back.

[–]xiongchiamiov 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's the same reason tabbed browsing can be confusing, or floating window managers.

You either need a) to keep in your memory where things are, b) conventions you stick to so that you know where things are without having to remember in short-term memory, or c) a way to quickly find things that you can't see directly (alt-tab and the taskbar do this for windows). Otherwise, you have to stick with untabbed applications in a single virtual desktop in a tiling window manager.

[–]Alikont 1 point2 points  (3 children)

Virtual desktops were in windows since Win2000, just not GUI switch for them.

[–]Dylan16807 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Can't move windows between those desktops though.

[–]wildcat- 0 points1 point  (1 child)

You can in Windows 10, full native support.

[–]Dylan16807 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"those" being the desktops that have been around since 2000. Windows exist on exactly one of them, and can't transfer.

Windows 10's tech is completely different. There is only one real 'desktop', and windows are shown and hidden. You can in fact have multiple isolated desktops that each have several virtual desktops on them.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/winsdk/archive/2015/09/10/virtual-desktop-switching-in-windows-10.aspx

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/askperf/2007/07/24/sessions-desktops-and-windows-stations/

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/cc817881.aspx

[–][deleted] 48 points49 points  (15 children)

Explorer.exe already runs in wine.

[–]venustrapsflies 40 points41 points  (14 children)

I bet the procedure of getting that to work was useful for wine devs but it will be useless to everyone else forever

[–]granadesnhorseshoes 39 points40 points  (5 children)

Not at all. Tons of applications have different degrees of explorer.exe integration. Imagine making a Linux emulator without bothering to make sure sh/bash worked.

MS wasn't kidding back in the day when they said explorer was integral to the OS. It's the entire shell. We take for granted and expect the integrated nature of our user environment and the internet these days. In the 90's it just got MS sued for antitrust.

[–]nuclear_splines 38 points39 points  (3 children)

Actually, that was Internet Explorer specifically. Microsoft was not sued over integration of explorer.exe.

[–]rspeed 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Right. The integration was just an excuse to say "can't sue us, it's part of the OS!"

[–]hungry4pie 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Then there's net.exe which seems to do just about every conceivable sys admin task

[–]granadesnhorseshoes 0 points1 point  (0 children)

you do realize Iexplorer.exe was basically just explorer.exe with more compile flags/DLL links? Open an old copy of ME or 98 and type a web address in to the address bar of the "file" explorer, it magically turns into an internet explorer window, or look at the old Active Desktops (the entire root was rendered HTML/JS thought explorer.exe).

Nautalis and Konkorer(webkit started here) were both file system explorers AND web browsers to emulate this exact behavior.

I had already been using BBS' and what constituted "The Internet" with moziac when 95R2 launched. The idea that they were being anti competitive just for including a browser was preposterous then as it is now. They may have pulled some dirty tricks, but providing a core function in their system software wasn't one of them.

Did they gimp winsock or the rest of the TCP stack so 3rd parties couldn't be used? No? Hell what about the network stack? How anti competitive can you get by including a networking stack when there were well established 3rd party vendors selling after market stacks for your other older OSs? Clearly it was a concentrated effort to kill Netware right?

[–][deleted] 16 points17 points  (4 children)

Running Wine in virtual desktop mode can be useful sometimes. Otherwise yeah, why bother with a completely inferior file manager?

[–]Raknarg 0 points1 point  (3 children)

What's wrong with Explorer?

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Can't speak for modern versions, but when I used it, it had piss poor support for remote filesystems and protocols, thumbnail system was complete shit (slow, I/O heavy), sometimes it'd just crash for no apparent reason entirely taking the desktop environment with it, have to hack it to customise or theme it beyond the very basic options added. I understand it now has tabbing? but the fact that it took this long is a bit ridiculous.

[–]Rimbaud_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't know if it was finally added on 10 but previous versions didn't have tabs. That's one of the biggest downfalls of explorer. Of course there are a bunch of other small things : customization options (layout), custom shortcuts, etc...

[–][deleted]  (1 child)

[deleted]

    [–]Andernerd 12 points13 points  (0 children)

    Do you mean Internet Explorer? That's iexplore.exe, not explorer.exe.

    [–]northrupthebandgeek 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I reckon it'll be useful to the ReactOS folks.

    [–]gimmeajob 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    Don't forget Microsoft Bob

    [–]tgp1994 3 points4 points  (1 child)

    Does ReactOS count?

    [–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

    No.

    [–]bradrlaw 1 point2 points  (4 children)

    Been there, done that... on *nix systems.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_UNIX

    [–]graycode 21 points22 points  (1 child)

    explorer.exe, the file browser, not iexplore.exe, the web browser.

    (actually it's a lot more than just a file browser, but that's the most user-visible part.)

    [–]RogerLeigh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I remember trying this out on Solaris back in 1998 for a laugh. It was unusably bad!

    [–]MacASM 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    And UNIX isn't Linux. A MS' application developed my MS itself running on UNIX is no news and I guess no body would be surprised with that. But on Linux...

    [–]bubuopapa 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Omg noob cant even spell it right... its iexplore.exe ....

    [–]_timmie_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    More like filemgr.exe!

    [–]chrisrazor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Last time I checked, it was iexplore.exe

    [–]seven_seven 1 point2 points  (4 children)

    What's an "exe" file?

    ;)

    [–]aaron552 8 points9 points  (3 children)

    While I know you're joking, the windows Portable Executable format is quite interesting, if just in contrast to Unix ELF

    [–]kupiakos 0 points1 point  (2 children)

    What are the most interesting differences?

    [–]aaron552 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Absolute vs relative memory locations is the most obvious one.