I would guess you updated Windows and something between Windows and your 3rd party applications modifying Windows caused something to go haywire. Never heard of graphics drivers just uninstalling, that's pretty wild.
Quick check, *how* long has it been since you ran Linux? Because currently, it runs *everything* perfectly for me.
*Sitting on Pop_OS!, with Discord, Firefox, and Steam running, having just gotten off of No Man's Sky with Crossover Wine running Windows apps at higher reliability than windows*
it’s scrivener and it has licence validation and compiling issues just often enough to be more annoying than dealing with windows fatally crapping itself once every two or three years
I check every few months because I would love to switch, but until scrivener works literally perfectly, I cannot
As part of fixing this I’ve had to temporarily remove explorerpatcher and horribly remind myself what unmitigated dogshit the windows 11 start menu and taskbar are
“yes please, I would like to see 18 apps and no more” idiocy
“yes, I have a widescreen monitor but I prefer my taskbar at the bottom of the screen, because I adore having a vast swathe of unused space for no reason”
I just discovered the default windows 11 taskbar makes it so you have to click one extra time to change audio device, a thing I do multiple times a day, because it wants the volume settings to be part of a pop-up control panel thing
I can’t wait to get this over with and go back to explorerpatcher
ohhhhhh that would drive me nuts, but hold on are you familiar with autohotkey? i have a script for swapping the audio device actually so i can just press one button to swap to my speakers. you might like it
I’ve got the single-click win10-style menu from explorerpatcher so burned into my muscle memory that I would never remember to use the shortcut lol (I do use AHK for other stuff tho)
I still remember the relief when I got a streamdeck and realized I could make buttons to activate any combination of input/output audio device I like. If it annoys you enough, it might be worth considering.
I swear this is a consistent feature with MS software. Every major UI revision just adds another layer and makes you click more to achieve the same result.
windows 12: switching from speakers to headphones requires nine clicks and a random interaction with Copilot Clippy, but there are still two control panels for some reason
Yeah I feel the same, I don't mind the current start menu on 10 but mostly because I only use the "search program" function of it and use anything else for the rest ^^
8.1 was cool and I also got to experience it 1st on a small laptop with touscreen which was honestly good
genuinely though why is every tool bar in the top of windows but then the task bar is at the bottom? Shouldn't all the controls be like... in the same place? Isn't that logical? Am I not understanding something?
i mean yeah but i'm confused as to why you'd want to move it is all haha i just put mine on the right side of the monitor just to try it and i hated it 😭
for context i use ubuntu on my laptop and i like the dock being on the left for that OS but it's not great for windows when i have a million apps on the taskbar it makes sense for it to be as long as possible 😓
Microsoft absolutely destroying the taskbar/start menu was the thing that pushed me back to macos for everything outside of gaming, it's so much worse for absolutely no reason
at this point I'd pay to have my windows 7 start menu back, like I'll gladly pay a 30 dollar surcharge so long as I don't have half my taskbar cluttered with apps that aren't even running
My start menu hasn't worked for a couple of months (goes gray when I text-search for an app or whatever). Contemplating a reinstall using Tiny11, or heading to Linux. I've successfully gotten some Windows-only games running on my hardware, but retraining muscle memory and finding replacement apps? 🥹
I'm test driving Nobara right now, since it's gaming-focused and I figured games would be the biggest hurdle (most other stuff is xplatform or browser), and base + Steam was easy.
Non-steam? Took hours, if I hadn't already known Wine and that I should look for Proton stuff, I would've given up.
It's come a long way for sure, and all hardware seems to work out of the box - once I got Lutris configured, Cyberpunk even seems to work slightly better than on Windows.
I could easily see my parents move over, since they basically just use browsers.
"but the veneer quickly cracks" we must be talking about two different things because I've never had any issues with it since I started using it in 2016
The first suggestion I found for non-steam games was "use Lutrix". Couldn't get primary GPU working. On a hunch tried 64-bit instead of auto Wine prefix. Stuff got messed up, had to remove and re-add, choosing 64-bit option before any other settings. Lots of options w/o descriptions.
Wait I just saw your post about running Windows software on it. Is that the veneer cracking you're talking about? Forcing a square peg into a round hole? Does non-ported MacOS software run natively on Windows?
As you have just discovered, all machines have a "critical detector". They work perfectly until the time when it is really, really important, and then they fail.
Windows 11 apparently has "nostalgia mode" where you would turn on your computer, and you'd maybe get the little "tada!" sound IF it decided not to Bork your drivers or default into safe mode.
Try Linux Mint with the Cinnamon interface. You can try it before installing it. Unless you force Windows software on it, you will be pleasantly surprised. And even if you do force Windows software onto it, you're gonna be pleasantly surprised.
Microsoft decided that I didn't need bluetooth protocol this morning, despite [checks desk] everything I use with my laptop is connected via Bluetooth.
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that's my plan for now, to run everything I can on wine or native linux and a small subset of stuff that's not available in a VM.
not telling you what to do, just curious about your situation!
*Sitting on Pop_OS!, with Discord, Firefox, and Steam running, having just gotten off of No Man's Sky with Crossover Wine running Windows apps at higher reliability than windows*
I check every few months because I would love to switch, but until scrivener works literally perfectly, I cannot
“yes please, I would like to see 18 apps and no more” idiocy
I can’t wait to get this over with and go back to explorerpatcher
8.1 was cool and I also got to experience it 1st on a small laptop with touscreen which was honestly good
Non-steam? Took hours, if I hadn't already known Wine and that I should look for Proton stuff, I would've given up.
I could easily see my parents move over, since they basically just use browsers.
But the veneer quickly cracks :P
😎😎😎
Windows 11 apparently has "nostalgia mode" where you would turn on your computer, and you'd maybe get the little "tada!" sound IF it decided not to Bork your drivers or default into safe mode.
Wait a minute...
If Apple hadn't made their hardware so damned expensive with their proprietary parts - Windows would've long since been dead and buried.
But that cheap hardware got them into the businesses, and here we are.
Microsoft decided that I didn't need bluetooth protocol this morning, despite [checks desk] everything I use with my laptop is connected via Bluetooth.
Just sayin.