Obsidian and Digital Garden

So, in a lazy attempt at making a basic blogging website, for free might I add, I came across digital garden. It seems like a decent way to keep my posts and notes organized so everyone can read them. Though I lack the webdev experience to call it my own so I'm just using the defaults. Throughout the universe this blog I'll likely make changes and hopefully not break anything. Like with all programming that's just a fever dream and will likely cause me some headache. I'm not sure how I want to organize all of this. There seems to be a general consensus on how to organize things, but I seem to have missed the memo on how to do that. I think I'll have to add comments in the near future incase some stragglers may want to voice their opinion.

Operating System Shenanigans

I swear no one knows how to make a consistently good OS outside of apple but they micromanage their own hardware and that is a pain in of itself. I would rather not be forced into their ecosystem since I value the freedom to use my device to do whatever I want to it and reap the consequences. I suppose Microsoft is similar in that both companies really adore the idea that you shouldn't be able to rip out parts of the OS and replace it with something that works better for you. A few examples of minor things that I really hate about the windows platform is ClearType, window scaling, their ability to half ass the taskbar., and drivers.

ClearType used to be alright circa Windows 7 but after using the platform for next to a couple decades I've realized that it could be better. Its main competitors Freetype (used in linux) and Quartz engine (used in Apple devices) look superior in almost every way. If given the option I would completely remove ClearType and replace it with its competitors. I know what you're thinking, just use MacType! I have but either due to a configuration error or user error it doesnt seem to have any great affect on the OS as a whole.

The other feature I strongly dislike is how window scaling works on Windows. I understand that, like linux applications, its not going to work consistently between applications. What I do have a problem with is how its implemented on the general OS. For example, I'm using KDE a windows adjacent Desktop Environment and am allowed to lower the scaling so I can effectively achieve the same scaling as if a screen with a 1440p resolution even with a 1080p display and the fonts still look great. If I try to do the same on windows I have to open the nvidia panel, change the render from my display to a GPU, and super sample at 1440p to achieve similar effects. Now you might be thinking this isn't really that bad its only a few steps. Well, you are right its not that bad only now Cleartype refuses to render fonts in a readable manner. What I speculate is happening is Cleartype attempts to align the fonts to the pixels on your screen, unsuccessfully might I add, and ends up with antialiasing completely ruining any readability. To put it another way it looks like it fails to implement good font rendering when used in such a way.

Much like the AA problem, WIndows did some weird stuff the the task bar after updating to windows 11. You can no longer have it on the sides or on top of the screen without using some kind of hack to get it to display properly. I have had my taskbar on the top of my screen, and hidden, since windows XP and have enjoyed the having it feel like an extra context menu. Now its not possible to manage/interact with the tops of windows if you do end up using a hacky solution since windows believes that the entire bars hitbox, if you will, takes up the entire space despite being hidden so you end up with a taskbar where the window controls are.

Lastly the big one, drivers. Its no secret drivers are generally a mess on every platform. Apples ecosystem is not immune to this due to their requirement on keeping itunes + xcode up to date to do literally anything with newer hardware. I cannot count how many times Windows has abruptly decided to ignore drivers for hardware that has worked fine in the past. Recently, my networking drivers either got removed or refused to work after updating to the latest patch. This would not be the first time its done this either and I'm not sure what fixed it as after I left windows alone for about a week they magically fixed themselves.

Windows continues to be frustrating in its design philosophy despite being run by a multibillion dollar company. With how stable linux has become since I started using it in 2009 I hope more people either dualboot it or even switch over. Heck, I'm using Arch which is a bleeding edge distribution and have had fewer problems that were not directly caused by me in the last couple years than I have had using windows.
#windows #linux #apple

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