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Microsoft in their infinite wisdom has replaced the Hide Desktop icon with Copilot.
(programming.dev)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
You can still re-enable it in the taskbar settings. Personally I like asking an AI to do stuff, so I like the Copilot icon in my taskbar, BUT NOT ON THE FREAKING BOTTOM RIGHT CORNER GODDAMMIT THAT'S FOR LIKE NOTIFICATIONS
AND NOW NOTIFICATIONS GO OVER COPILOT BUT NOT QUICK SETTINGS FOR SOME REASON AND IF YOU BRING UP QUICK SETTINGS IT SHIFTS TO THE LEFT AND HIDES NOTIFICATIONS??
at least I won't accidentally hide my desktop while clicking copilot in a place where it shouldn't have been
except oh no signing in to unlock copilot doesn't even fucking work
time to grind on my giant arch migration checklist and hunt for a good foobar2000 alternative which i'll likely never finish
For a Foobar2000 alternative have you seen Deadbeef . It doesn't replace everything but has the same sort of modular interface.
I'm personally more of a fan of Audacious
Also worth noting that foobar2000 works in WINE.
Audacious only has the playlist and library stuff, from what I can see.
Wining it is still going to stick out of place and the external window plugin thing I want is probably gonna be weird.
I've actually asked about alternatives in the EndeavourOS forum and talked about it there:
For me, there are 2 on the top left and too right of the start menu pop up and they don't even look the same. Whoever is in charge of UI/UX needs to be shot. Holy shit. Windows just feels like a taped together heap of shit. The competition is way better.
I thought that was pretty much an open secret since Windows ME. As a begrudging Windows user who loves Linux infinitely more, my impression has been that they’re just dialing that shit to 11 (hah) while they complete their transition to being the high-margin SAAS empire known as AzureCopilotGithubOfficeGamepassSoft. I kind of doubt that Windows revenue is even worth labeling on their pie charts anymore.
It felt less taped together (in the UI sense, anyway) before Windows 8, honestly. Mainly because they didn't do semiannual or annual (or whatever the schedule is now) feature updates.
Windows 8 was... Windows 8.
Windows 10 never felt finished, especially whenever they shifted the UI design between updates. Some things would follow the new look, while others wouldn't.
And now they're repeating that with Windows 11.
Windows 7 was alright, except for nearly every aspect of its 64-bit infrastructure. But it was also basically a $100 patch for Vista that took 2.5 years to make so they could put that house fire in their rear view mirror while there were still people inside. Oh, and probably to fuck up government work for the better part of a decade.
Yeah, it definitely wasn't perfect, but I was primarily focusing on the UI since that's what the others in this thread were focusing on.
I personally really like StartAllBack. I just want a clean classic Windows experience.
Not sure if it'll help with OP's rage issues (I skipped over the all-caps and punctuation-free stuff), but I've long been a fan of Open Shell. Makes the Windows experience extremely customizable.
What's wrong with foobar?
It has no version for Linux.
WHAT.
I swear foobar is what I used to use... I'm having the memory bad.
Well, you could maybe Wine it, but it's still going to stick out of place and the external window plugin thing I want is probably gonna be weird. You may have also confused it with Guarapiranga.
Naw, I'm pretty sure I just have it confused with when I was switching between windows and Linux a lot. I vaguely remember going crazy trying to find a decent player on Linux to match. I think I went with Amarok.
I've used ncmpcpp and more recently Cantata to replace foobar, not as much customization but it gets a lot of stuff right for me.