It has a lot of incomplete ideas and feels really unfinished. I think Windows 11 could be worthwhile next year after it is more finished/polished and the Amazon/Android app store is available; but as of today you're just volunteering to be an unpaid tester for unfinished software.
Pretty obvious Microsoft just rushed it out in time for Christmas, so their OEM partners could sell "Windows 11 Compatible" PCs. Feels like they didn't learn much from Vista in that the stigma an OS ships with hangs around its neck forever.
I see the same thing literally all the time with Google products, every revision of YouTube/Google photos/drive/android/Gmail just shuffles thing around without any obvious reasoning behind it, it's just "well, time for a new update, let's move things around again".
At least looking at people I've worked with in design, fighting your client constantly is not a good idea if you want to have a roof over your head. They'll just find someone willing to say yes.
From working with designers and in frontend, it is probably management or executive level keeping up with the Joneses.
This has gotten so much worse now that everything is a subscription web service and you can't continue using the product unless you accept whatever crappy redesign they have pushed out this time that took away the feature you liked using or the workflow you are used to.
I actually can't remember the last game I tried that didn't work. You may want to look up the compatability of the last few you played though just to make sure your genre(s) won't get a lot worse milage than what I play.
Corporate security has been fine for years: TPM 1.2 (if I remember the versions correctly) alongside bitlocker and sensible corporate policies render computers all but impervious to everything. However, this implies a competent IT division in your company... I've worked in plenty without them!
Social engineering or clicking a dodgy link/download is probably a bigger threat than someone hacking your computer and that can be mitigated to a huge extent by restricting access to only the things that the user needs, locking down apps, running with low privileges, auditing relevant things etc... again, competent IT division needed for this too.
Now, if your threat matrix includes nation-states then one could argue that any device is hackable.
My take is that hardware vendors saw the writing on the wall with the pandemic-buying about to ease-up and worked with Microsoft (or pressured them...) to help out. We're already seeing Chromebooks on the wane[0].
From my perspective (long-time Windows guy now on Fedora) I see nothing of value in Windows 11 that 10 didn't have already.
Edit: Forgot the answer I was gonna write :)
[0] - https://chromeunboxed.com/canalys-report-chromebook-sales-do...
Microsoft.
Remember, you run Linux on modern hardware only because Microsoft allows you to. Microsoft signed the Red Hat shim, and if you disabled Secure Boot, it's only because a Microsoft policy gave you the ability to disable it -- a policy they can later reverse.
Factually wrong.
Any regular PC owner can run Linux on modern x86 hardware in at least three ways:
- Legacy BIOS MBR boot
- UEFI boot
- UEFI secure boot
Only the last one of those three options requires a signed shim, and only if you don’t enrol your own keys.
> Microsoft signed the Red Hat shim, and if you disabled Secure Boot, it's only because a Microsoft policy gave you the ability to disable it -- a policy they can later reverse.
This FUS has been repeated the last 10 years+ and it gets less convincing every year.
No OEM or PC vendor wants to limit their amount of potential in what is already a cut-margin business.
Taking away the ability to disable secure boot or taking away the legacy BIOS boot option will only cost them customers, and they literally have nothing to gain.
I definitely recall Microsoft killing hardware manufacturers putting Linux on the machines that they sold by mandating that if they put Linux on any consumer desktop they would not get the OEM discount for a Windows licence for any computer they sold. It stopped new non Windows PC sales dead at the time IIRC. This was something like over a decade ago.
Operating systems with "signed binaries or GTFO" policies are not really protecting the user. Any protection the user receives is a secondary concern to the fact that the OS vendor wants to control what the user runs on the device.
So far, users did not use their shitty store because they had alternatives.
But if you're looking for groundbreaking features you just have to move over for there aren't any. It's really more a "standard 6 month Windows update that happens to represent the next compatibility/support group" than "a brand new Windows version after the last one sat stale for many years" type upgrade. As Windows 10 nears its end of life I suspect the disparity will grow more but as of now I'd take Windows 11 as heralding what is going to be supported for new features for the next 10 years not as an instant revolution in features you're missing out if you don't jump to it immediately at release.
As such these projects will become much more useful/interesting in about a year or two but it's good they have been started now.
This is the killer feature IME. I'd pay for a new license even if this was the only new feature since I get so much mileage out of it in my setup.
I thought I was going to be a die-hard 10-or-linux person but then when I learned that rufus has an install option to by-pass the checks I decided I wanted to try it out and I continue to use it because of cosmetics, and because I'm assuming it will be supported (at least for security -that's all I care about) longer than windows 10.
10 will expire before 11 so I'd rather get used to 11 now.
The WSL graphics capability is nice too -in theory. In practice I haven't used it ...yet.
Otherwise, it's the same as it always is: new software or new modes for software will increasingly become incompatible with Windows 10 and earlier over the next few years. Some future directx feature will be win11 exclusive and will be critical to performance sooner or later.
It probably wasn't worth it, since now I just have a worse version of Windows 10.
An option you can consider by sticking with Win10 is to either wait for Win10 21H2 or join the Insider Program Preview to get it now. Win10 21H2 gives you GPU compute access (no graphics or pulseaudio). On an older machine, I was able to build opencv-4.5 and leverage CUDA+DNN just like on Win11.
EDIT: Win10 21H2 should be released this month. The fact that it is in the Preview Channel means it's most likely a final build.
I'm sure it was something simple I was doing wrong, but everyone I asked just went "just use Linux, Windows isn't recommended".
It's been smooth sailing, apart from that they reorganized the UI a bit, mostly in nice ways, and upgrading didn't seem that much different from a normal windows update.
I expect they will end up with what they deserve, i.e. nothing.
You might wonder, why they don't just make 10 louder.
But it goes to 11!
I'm confused by your statement. Were you trying to be snarky or were you commenting without actually informing yourself regarding the two OSs? Because the difference in features between Win 10 and 11 is just a quick Google search away.
Most proeminent features for Windows 11 are an updated scheduler tailored to big.little architectures like the new Alder Lake from Intel and Direct Storage for games, a rebranding of the same feature from Xbox One and PS5.
Yes, Windows 11 is pretty useless over Windows 10 if you have a previous gen system, but if you're buying a brand spanking new PC with Alder Lake or Direct Storage and are a hardcore gamer then it makes sense to go directly to Windows 11 to get the new shiny features (provided you experience no bugs on 11 that haven't been ironed out yet).
There are some other nice touches in Win11 like WSLg and the OS restoring your windows positions on multi monitor setups as they were between an undock - dock cycle of your laptop.
Let's be honest here though: those could easily have been added to Windows 10 as they will be on the same kernel... they added them to Windows 11 so that people would buy the new shiny!
I'm not saying it's wrong, companies need to get new money in to keep going, but those features hardly merited a "new" OS :)
Makes no sense there is nothing to buy. Win11 is a free "update". Not adding it as update to win10 but give it a new name I purely marketing. Stuff like that happens if new people are in charge and want to have a new thing "made by them". It does not cost the users anything.
It does: Try creating a a local account on the Home version! You can't. You must create a Microsoft account which ties you Microsoft. You may not be physically handing over $ but you are using their ecosystem. Your actions are now recorded, categorized, analysed and then M$ make more money from them.
There is no way in hell they will give you an OS for $0 unless there is a way to make money from you. None.
Look, I'm not being cynical or negative about it! I'm just putting it in perspective. If people wanna do it then go for it. It's not for me.
This isn't just a Microsoft thing, companies that give you something for nothing are making money from you somehow! Or else they won't be around long.
They aren’t apple. And Microsoft has randomly shut down hotmail/outlook accounts of mine for using a different IP (ie: proxying through a linode when on public wifi) and then made it so recovery wasn’t possible. It locked me out of an Xbox account
Years later I was able to recover it, but I will not rely on any of their services for anything I deem important. Ever again.
Beside that Windows 10 Home "requires" an account too since the May 2019 update but it can be bypassed and so can the account "requirement" to install windows 11 home, its all just one search away for the people who care. Most dont but that's another topic.
Except for the bit that's the entire point of this tool: they dropped support for a ton of systems.
For a lot of people, to "upgrade" to Windows 11 means "buy a whole new PC." This drives additional sales of Windows 11 PCs (of which MS will take a cut).
>For a lot of people, to "upgrade" to Windows 11 means "buy a whole new PC." This drives additional sales of Windows 11 PCs (of which MS will take a cut).
How so? You dont need to upgrade nor buy a new hardware. If you want to that's entirely on you and has nothing to do with windows 11. The only reason to buy new hardware is if the old does not work for your use-case anymore or if support runs out in 5 years but chances are you replaced the hardware due to age long before that.
Well yes of course, obviously, but I was not trying to defend Microsoft's choice here, just pointing out the feature difference between them as great-grandparent was being vocally critical without doing any prior research beforehand or he was just being intentionally snarky to score karma points from the Microsoft/Windows 11 hate mob.
0:https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/7/8568473/windows-10-last-ve...
and then.. they changed the touch keyboard and it is WAY shittier now, the taskbar is constantly weird and ugh. I just wish I could choose what features I want without updating everything
* FOMO.
* "Modern"