I can’t move the Windows 11 taskbar because I’ve been running Linux for over 20 years. Recommended fix!
Imagine letting your computer decide how you’re gonna use it 😖
The whole explanation about screen size is telling.
The entire point of Windows being named Windows is that apps can run inside these resizable rectangles nicknamed windows.
Yet the rectangular taskbar is apparently impossible to handle…
Meanwhile KDE:
Put the taskbar wherever you want it’s even floating if there isn’t a window nearby.
Can you have different taskbar setup depending on the number of monitors and have it change automatically when you connect/disconnect external monitors?
Yes, my work laptop has this with a 1, 2 or 3 monitor setup. It adapts as it detects the screens.
Yes! I’m not sure about it changing when you connect monitors (since I’m usually using desktop PCs), but you can have a different setup per monitor.
I have three monitors at work. My main monitor is configured to show all open apps in the taskbar, while the secondary monitors only show the apps opened on those monitors. You can totally change any of the configuration though… the layout, the position, the settings, or even just not have a taskbar on some monitors.
Different design pressures. KDE knowing they put in the work to keep it versatile now, they will always have more options in the future.
Microsoft is basically admitting they have no future.
the reason is literally “because we decided not to implement it”
Saved you a click.
I’m one of the few who has had it at the top for as long as I can remember. It absolutely infuriated me to find out the feature had been removed.
Apps then need to constantly reflow their layouts, resize content, adjust snapping behavior, and handle edge cases across different screen sizes, DPI settings, and multi-monitor setups. Also, this reflow logic has to work perfectly for legacy Win32 apps, modern UWP apps, and everything in between.
You mean the apps that were already handling this for decades when windows wasn’t a vibe-coded and ad-infested vehicle for AI slop?
Yeah this doesn’t make sense. Docked bars have worked fine since Windows 95. You could have the task bar on any side, and apps would handle it fine. You could have multiple docked bars too, as some third-party apps used to be dockable. For example, Winamp has a view that was a short bar stretching the entire width of the screen, stuck to the top of the screen. The windowing system handled it fine.
Windows 11 is a bloated disaster. I urge everyone to switch to Linux or one of the BSDs.
Also switch away from Microsoft Office and use LibreOffice.
Using BSDs is for Unix fetishists, honestly. I’ve been such. It’s very pleasant to use FreeBSD on supported configuration, or OpenBSD on supported configuration and when you don’t need anything impossible (like Wine).
But when you are a normal person who just wants to do normal things and live, Linux is more likely to be the thing, and Fedora will do.
In practice. In theory you might think you’d like GuixSD or NixOS, but in practice you won’t spend the time on setting them up. Or Slackware, but it’s even more bother. Or Arch, but it’s too messy, stuff breaks and it’s normal. You either want experience similar to BSDs or lack of bother similar to BSDs. For the former, there are plenty of distributions with ideology to spend days on setting up. For the latter, just install Fedora.
I’m using Void because that’s what I installed the last time and forgot. But if I were choosing now, I’d probably, yes, just install Fedora.
And it’s a shame they are slowly killing Windows. It could have been a nice desktop OS. There’s some cultural similarity to Amiga that isn’t felt under Unix-likes. And NT is interesting to read about.
I hope we’ll have more pluralism in future. On the humus of today’s tech.
New taskbar from ground up. And despite all the requests to bring the feature back, their reasoning amounts to “we’re too lazy”
Hey copilot, code me a new start menu that restores classic functionality.
Copilot: “I can’t do that, Dave.”
My screen is wider than it is tall. I have more horizontal screen real estate than vertical, why are you forcing me to waste vertical space? I wanna move it to the left again…
For anyone interested, Google the app called WindHawk. It makes it extremely possible to push the taskbar up.
building the taskbar from scratch meant that they had to cherry-pick things to put into the feature list first, and the ability to move the taskbar didn’t make the cut, for several reasons that Microsoft values.
Translation: Nobody really knows (or wants to take the blame), we probably just forgot to put on the feature list. Anyway, I’ll just use the usual vague weasel-words that don’t really mean anything.
This is written as if a taskbar were a complex piece of software. It has to display a window list, a start button, a few shortcuts and a tray, right?
Nothing is trivial, but they are a company that can buy some nation-states with their citizens as slaves. Surely they can buy that much labor.
This is written as if a taskbar were a complex piece of software.
Google for stories about how it is configured or built. The old taskbar was endlessly complex.
"Window’s is built on many layers of shit and we dont know what will or won’t break things.
Also co pilot was really expensive"
Also, please use copilot… please
Just one more ai tool bro just one more.
Please bro its so good you gotta use them all to make it worth it.
This almost makes me want to move my panel in Plasma just because I can.
My Plasma Panel is on the top and I wouldn’t want it anywhere else.
Is this what hearing Vogon Poetry is like?
Why can’t they just ask copilot to program that for them?
If it takes so much effort to move the taskbar, why did it need to be fully rewritten in react native when everything worked before?
