Hacker News Reader

Comment by rkangel | Hacker News Reader

I was really hoping that we were past having to think about different versions of Windows. Microsoft hyped Windows 10 as the 'last version of Windows' and that's how it should be. But now we have to go through this stupid cycle again, wasting user and IT department time doing upgrades, as well as developer time worrying about version support.

View on HN

Within Windows 10, the updates really were versions in several significant ways.

- They have support end dates!

- Hardware support can vary between version (updates). I could not even get Windows 10 Build 1903 to boot with a newer GPU. I had to boot using the iGPU and update to 21H1, and then I could boot. Trying to install the driver on 1903, the installer said this version of Windows was not supported (!)

- The UI can be changed. Just one small example, early versions of Windows Hello did not support using a PIN to login. Later versions started to roll back all the pushes to use Cortana.

> I could not even get Windows 10 Build 1903 to boot with a newer GPU. I had to boot using the iGPU and update to 21H1, and then I could boot. Trying to install the driver on 1903, the installer said this version of Windows was not supported (!)

but this is a driver/software issue. you can pinpoint your software to higher versions.

I was hoping Windows 11 would be substantially different under-the-hood and not just rounded corners. I know backwards compatibility is Windows' under-acknowledged killer feature, but there is a on of cruft and inefficiency that is included as a result. The typical Windows user is not going to need to run programs from the 90's and 2000's. Why not make Windows 10 the compatibility focused platform and make 11 the slimmed down version? I suppose a rough parallel would be how Apple transitioned to OS X.

I concur. At this point, it's probably better to create some kind of virtual machine as a compatibility layer. That way it can be updated separately and it doesn't need to be part of the actual system. Alternatively, it could probably be a sub-system like WSL - and completely optional.

Interestingly enough, this has been done before!

Windows 7 introduced "Windows XP Mode" which was a container running a virtualized Windows XP for applications that didn't work correctly in 7. But since they also had the per-application compatibility settings, it wasn't the first pick for most users.

While it's a good idea on the surface, it still means they have to maintain compatibility code within that virtual system. Perhaps if they separate it well enough, and it has a dedicated team, while the core OS team can focus on a slimmed down, "current stuff only" version... but I suppose it's also hard to know where the line is drawn in the sand.

I ran the Windowx XP Virtual Machine (in Windows 7) for at least one LOB app - it wasn't all that it was cracked up to be. Fairly complex to setup.

I’m pretty sure that’s how it works.

Windows 8 tried to isolate Win32 to a delayed loading sub-system and got lambasted for it. Admittedly, they hit the rough part of the chicken and egg gamble where they didn't have enough apps in the new/fresh/modern side with less compatibility cruft for enough people to see why it was worth it to delay load Win32.

Still a lot of reason to wonder if they had found a way to deliver the UWP platform earlier to Windows 7 ahead of 8's launch and got more applications up front of the transition if that attempt might have gone much smoother.

Careful what you wish for, old software had to perform well on very slow hardware, meaning it's blazingly fast on modern hardware. I doubt that (for instance) the NT kernel would magically become faster or better if it would be replaced with a "modern" rewrite, the opposite is much more likely.

I think that is what they were trying to do with Windows 11 (especially given how much it resembles what they demoed of "10X" and that was 10X's plan to be a slimmer 10).

Unfortunately for them, most of my biggest complaints about Windows 11 are the places where they most broke backward compatibility and dropped "cruft" that I loved. The biggest example is that the inability to move the taskbar to a different side alone is a stupid removal that I'm sure removed a lot of ancient backwards compatibility cruft in the taskbar code, but that's something I've used on every machine under my control since Windows XP and its loss really doesn't make sense to me.

>The typical Windows user is not going to need to run programs from the 90's and 2000's.

They very much do. Windows software use all sorts of legacy Win32 APIs, even if they have trendy new GUI on top. (and UWP is practially dead and not used by anyone)

I have to assume Windows 11 basically only exists because of pressure from OEMs who want to be able to slap a big mark on the box of their new laptops highlighting that it runs a new OS that your old machine can't run.

And this idea is supported by the fact that Windows 11 is only officially supported on the very latest CPUs for more or less arbitrary reasons.

> I have to assume Windows 11 basically only exists because of pressure from OEMs

Maybe partly, but I suspect that is only a small piece of the puzzle.

OSX and Android being at version 11 might make Windows 10 look old to the clueless (and there are a lot of clueless out there), and not having bumped up a version in over half a decade is something disreputable marketers (i.e. most marketers) could use to cast shade on it to make it look old-hat.

It also frees them from IE11 a bit more. There were promises to support IE versions for as long as any OS version that was release with them included, so IE11 will need to be supported (not in online apps, it is already deprecated in many including Office365, but at least receive security updates) as long as Win10 if they are to keep their word. Win10 will be around for quite some time so they still have a bit of that ball & chain, but Win11 means they have some sort of exit strategy for the legacy browser other than simply saying “fuck it, people can try sue us if they really care about IE”.

I'm sure there are other considerations that an officially clean dividing line (even though the difference between this and the usual Win10 feature updates may not be huge) makes better too, from marketing perspectives if not technical ones.

I think moving away from supporting really low end hardware is a reason as well. They're ditching 32-bit processors entirely, so no need for a separate Windows 32-bit anymore. Dropped support for less than 4GB of RAM (which Windows runs badly on). Dropped support for sub 720p displays, which most software won't work properly on anyway. Etc

Certainly the OEMs (and retailers) have been having a field day with shareholders over this, but I think the obvious flaw with this conspiracy theory being the actual plan is that they could not have timed it worse. 2020 was one of the best years of PC sales (ever; one of the industries that did quite well with the shift in "safe at home" needs) and the OEMs weren't in that much need of another one just so soon. On top of that, the banner year of sales in 2020 created the largest semiconductor shortage in recent history, which we are still dealing with the repercussions of (the automobile industry almost entirely shut down and has huge stock of cars waiting for chips, for one big for instance; the continued lack of available supply of the Xbox Series X/S in stores despite Microsoft's promises to shareholders this year for another that should be obvious to Microsoft), and combined with the Great Logistics Crisis of 2021 every OEM should have a pretty good idea right now that Holiday sales are going to be extremely cramped right now in terms of possible supply.

We already have different versions of Windows 10, it's just that people don't realize it. Microsoft lists separate hardware requirements for 14 different versions of Windows 10: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/min...

There can be breaking changes to new builds, too. A previous version of Windows 10 trashed performance of the AddFontResource Windows API - loading dozens of fonts went from near-instant to 15+ seconds from an SSD - so we had to adjust the way it's handled in LibreOffice Portable and the PortableApps.com Platform and steer users away from it.

Windows 10 didn't get rid of any of that. If anything it accelerated the rate of new OS versions.

You're going to have more differences comparing the initial release of Windows 10 with the current release of Windows 10 vs the current release of Windows 10 and the initial release of Windows 11.

You really thought Microsoft would never overhaul the UI of Windows ever again? Or that they would do it, but continue to call it Windows 10? "The last version of Windows" was pure marketing BS.

I honestly didn’t think they would do something like this either. I figured they were simply moving to an Apple model of giving away new versions for free since the enterprise subscriptions would be more than enough to pay for the development.

Maybe people will never leave Windows, but I think this is a mistake on Microsoft’s part. We’ve had them as great business partners for the past several decades in the public sector. Not only do they understand Enterprise better than their competitors, their monopoly also produced a generation or two of workers who knew how to use a PC for office purposes.

That last part isn’t true for the next generation to enter the workforce. If they know anything non-mobile it’s Mac OS/X. Once enough people stop being good at Windows it’ll no longer make sense for Enterprise organisations to keep paying the licenses. It’ll be decades before it becomes a threat to Microsoft and I’m sure they already know more about this than me, but I really don’t see where they are heading with Windows 11 in the private market except from out of it because nobody wants to buy an OS in 2021.

Windows 11 is free for Windows 10 users.

We've been getting some pretty major changes in each of the spring/fall updates anyway. I expected they'd keep going that route and eventually just drop the 10, and keep the update version available for documentation/support.

Market it as "Windows" and report the version as "Windows (21H1)" on the system information.

> Microsoft hyped Windows 10 as the 'last version of Windows' and that's how it should be.

Except that was a transparent marketing lie from day 1.

>I was really hoping that we were past having to think about different versions of Windows.

A varying level of support for Windows 10(21H2) extending up to five years has been pledged before sunset; slash and burn is a well known phenomenon in the tech world.

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2021/07/15/intro...

I also distinctly remember Microsoft saying they would never wait as long between releases as XP to Vista. I always wondered which promise would be kept, guess we have our answer.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com