Windows 95 was better than Linux distros are now in 2024, 29 years later, especially those infested by GNOME

One of the most basic aspects of user-programmability in real-world computing is being able to say "open this file type with that application".


In Windows 95, in the file manager application, which I think was called Windows Explorer, this was easy.  There was "open", and "open with".  "open" used the default application for the file type, and was also the action performed by just clicking or double-clicking on the file.  Other applications, capable of opening that file type, were under "open with".  The right applications tended to end up in the list.  I'm pretty sure there was a way to choose a different one, anyway.  The default application for the type could be changed easily enough; I don't remember the details.

Fast forward three decades, and change OS to GNOME/Lunix.

Well, "Videos" (bad name for application) just failed to open it, giving a big error message about codecs.  I know mplayer is installed, so I'll just choose that.  But no, "open with" gives just "Default Application" of "Videos" (bad name), which can't do it, NO LIST AT ALL for other applications it thinks can actually play video, and "Other Applications", which is just a rando list of lots of applications.

There is no "let me choose", like, just somewhere to type in the executable on the path eg "mplayer".

I remember in a previous version, one could choose, but instead of being able to type (eg) "mplayer", one had to type or navigate a full path to the executable such as "/usr/bin/mplayer".  It's so painfully badly designed.

GNOME is much, much, much worse than Windows 95 was.

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