Windows 11 may not be as popular as Microsoft had hoped | Hacker News Reader

Windows 11 may not be as popular as Microsoft had hoped

techradar.com

50 pointsjamesdco136 comments

I'd really like to know how much Microsoft's behavior with recent Windows versions pays off. Specifically bundling lots of unwanted apps, forcing Edge and Defender down people's throats, removing basic UI customization features, etc.

The fact that they are still doing this today suggests that they get something out of these decisions. Or at least they think so.

I can only imagine that the part of customers being alienated this way is/appears insignificant to them. I still believe Microsoft has the necessary resources to put out a truly great OS, but it looks like they don't want to.

Gotta have some bad versions of windows so when we get an ok version we think it is good!

It isn't like you're going to use Linux ;)

theres MacOS. Thats the real immediate threat of Windows 11.

And honestly with recent development of Apple's hardware, and gaming on Linux, Microsoft should be worried. Windows 11 feels like Microsoft make a step forward and 2 steps backward

In many countries there isn't, at least not at the same 300 euro price range many families manage to get by.

Since Windows XP that we are going to have everyone switch in droves to Linux, because Microsoft did X.

What gaming, running Windows games on Wine and Proton, because studios can't still be bothered to this day, even when they are already using POSIX like (PS/Switch/iOS) or Linux based OSes (Android/Stadia) ?

Regarding gaming: in fact a lot of the big studios don't really care about PC as a platform in general, not specifically about Windows. See Elden Ring for example, it has a PC 'port' that is about the bare minimum you can get by nowadays (locked at 60, no ultrawide support, performance issues on non-high-end systems etc.). And that for a AAA title.

One would think that a modern game engine takes care of all the issues, allowing a studio to port their game from console to PC with the click of button. But reality has shown that this is not the case.

While modern consoles and cloud service (like Google Stadia) may use POSIX like OSes under the hood, you'd still be using a proprietary API to interface with the platform. Porting a game from PlayStation or Nintendo Switch to Linux is not easier than porting it over from Windows.

I've worked on a Google Stadia port in the past and are currently working a Nintendo Switch port, along with a PC port. If I had to port to native Linux, without Wine/Proton and DXVK, I'd take the PC version as basis.

Right, because consoles provide a known target, and there is more to do a port than clicking on export button.

Middleware hasn't killed the porting business exactly because of that.

Windows defender is better than almost evrything out there. Edge is as annoying as chrome or safari is on their respective os’s and no basic ui stuff has really been removed that tons of freeware and addons didn’t allow one to customize and they’re releasing a new update to continue to refine the UX/UI

Defender may be better but I still don't like that you can't completely disabled it without breaking other parts of the system, like Windows Store.

Edge itself, as a browser, might only be equally annoying as Chrome, but my point is about Microsoft forcing you to use it.

Using third-party applications to restore functionality is not something we should consider acceptable.

I am using Windows 11 on a Microsoft Surface Go 3 and the UI is big issue at the moment. Some of the issues have been around a while now and are not entirely related to the Surface Go 3:

- Using 125% DPI scaling causes the right-click menu to be incorrectly sized, showing a scrollbar. If you scroll down, explorer crashes. [1]

- Rotating the Surfaces changes screen brightness. Also happens when attaching the type cover. [2]

- If you open too many applications to the point where the taskbar overflows, you cannot access overflowed elements. This easily happens when using the Surface in portrait mode, while having pinned a hand full of applications.

[1]: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/report-an-issue/repro... [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=30901634&goto=item%3Fi...

using 3rd party applications to customize windows is the beauty of windows.

i run it on a ryzen5 and surface pro 8 and it’s been great

Edge is definitely worse, I was making an Amazon purchase on Edge and it started popping up offers for the same product. The last thing I want is my browser trying to insert itself into my transactions.

the people who voluntarily leave telemetry "on" are probably skewing the results

do they use telemetry on who disables telemetry to balance the data :P

There is no practical way of turning of telemetry completely.

Since telemetry is enabled by default, I doubt the portion of users turning it off is significant. I think the bigger problem is that you just can't derive meaningful data from telemetry to make the necessary decisions for improving user experience.

Windows 10 Enterprise and group policy to disable telemetry? Agree it's not exactly "practical" though for non-business settings.

I think we keep hearing complaints but they come from a vocal minority. I use both Windows 10 and 11 daily and the issues people are describing are exaggerated most of the time. Not saying they don't exist but personally other than the task bar regressions everything else is actually a lot more polished in 11 than 10.

Windows defender is pretty good and edge is a decent browser but the same way Windows annoys you to use it Google uses its services to force chrome on you (for example I get a popup on Gmail every time I open it asking me to switch to chrome no matter how many times I dismiss it, I assume Firefox gets the same).

So maybe as users we got used to the idea of the big corporations trying to fight for our attention.

I somewhat agree, because as an end user all I had to do is disable the bundled apps (teams, etc) and switch the default browser to firefox. I agree with the criticism though, it really leaves a bad taste in my mouth to see all the extra prompts encouraging me to keep Edge, and the social media links (instagram, tiktok) in my start menu. But for someone who experienced bloatware, this stuff was pretty easy to remove / change. The main difference is that this "bloatware" came directly from Microsoft and not third parties.

> yet another start menu

> yet more ads

> requires modern hardware

> more surprise updates breaking things

Win11 not as popular? Imagine my shock and dismay.

A sizable portion of my non-tech peers had bad experiences and one by one switched to Linux and the elder two switched to MacOS.

Frankly I am baffled.

Me too. I’ve been reading comments like this since the Year of Linux first began.

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/3038d4/when_was_the_...

Image my shock to find out Windows still has 87% market share.

I’m still unhappy that they took my Sun workstation and gave me a Windows PC.

Brenda in accounting isn't going to run Ubuntu even with the cute animal names. Until that happens,there will be stacks upon stacks of windows optiplexes being sold every day.

Also nobody misses sloaris. I'm going to chalk that remark up to a misfired punchline.

I doubt Brenda would care much if she was running something like RHEL for work since it can run a browser as good as anything. I assume the main thing keeping Windows around in her case is all the IT endpoint management stuff built around the MS ecosystem. Personally, I'd probably be all in on Ubuntu or some derivative if not for gaming.

In my experience people balk when they realize they’re not using Windows or Office. I’ve literally had someone sit in front of a Linux computer with OpenOffice and work fine on it until they realized “hey the title bar says OpenOffice Calc - it’s not excel! I don’t know how to use this!” Despite the fact they were using it just fine. At this point no amount of convincing made them give it another try - they’d just cross arms until they were put back in front of their known, trusty Windows computer.

So I agree they don’t care but there’s also the “I’m not trained for this” fallacy.

I was wondering how much native MS Office matters these days. I've been using OWA and Office 365 via browser for the better part of a decade on a Linux workstation because that's the compromise it took, but the experience was never good. I wonder if native would make much difference.

For basic usage the browser variants are good enough but Excel application is significantly more powerful. If you are an excel power user there is no non native alternative at the moment.

Kyriakos Grizzly?

It's a very common Greek name

Ah OK thanks. I'm still going to assume you have an 800lb deadlift though, because surely it is something in the water there haha. If you haven't heard the name before, you should check him out. Nothing short of a specimen.

>I’ve literally had someone sit in front of a Linux computer with OpenOffice and work fine on it until they realized “hey the title bar says OpenOffice Calc - it’s not excel! I don’t know how to use this!” Despite the fact they were using it just fine.

I guarantee that this won't happen with "brenda in accounting" (ie. typical excel jockey). The mismatching shortcuts/formulas/feature set will immediately tip them off. For someone who's viewing a few spreadsheet and/or doing some basic editing (ie. entering cell values), I can imagine it happening.

Really the experience supporting users across lots of organisations is at odds to that.

Coming from a place where changing the Windows background from the default XP theme resulted in people stating they literally weren't able to work and actually refusing to work for several days, having to hack up the Chrome deployment so the shortcut uses the IE icon and calls it "Internet Explorer", Brenda in accounting absolutely cares that she's on a Windows machine running Office unfortunately.

Depends what Brenda is using at home these days too

I, for one, genuinely miss Solaris--though when I think hard about it, I miss Sun hardware with SPARC in it more than Solaris itself.

Nobody misses Solaris, why are you trying to play me

> requires modern hardware

*in a time when new hardware was so freakishly expensive that 4-5 year old hardware was being sold for more than it's original MSRP

And even hardware capable of it often has TPM disabled in BIOS by default

I'm actually glad that they had the modern hardware requirement. It means that Microsoft can't suddenly surprise update me into Windows 11.

I have modern hardware but I chose to disable certain bios features for exactly this reason. Now Win10 informs me that my PC is not Win11 capable, and that's a thing less to worry.

My gaming PC, which isn't that old (Skylake / GTX 1080) isn't compatible with Windows 11. It still works fine, but given that it will inevitably be out of date with something that requires Windows 11, and the current impossibility of buying reasonably priced GPUs, I bought an XBox instead.

Microsoft gets my money anyway, I suppose, but all my real work is done on a Mac.

It's funny how Microsoft is basically just a gaming company for me, now.

>which isn't that old (Skylake

To be fair, Skylake is pretty old. 2015 was 7 years ago which is quite significant in consumer tech years.

As I remember it, Skylake machines were pretty thin on the ground in 2015 due to early issues; 2016 or 2017 would be a more reasonable origin date. Most SKUs didn't even launch til 2016, and Kaby Lake desktop processors only seem to have shown up in mid-2017.

macos also dropped support for 2015 hardware in Big Sur..

Eh? No it didn't. Compatibility list: https://support.apple.com/kb/sp833

It works on anything with a Haswell or later and Intel or AMD graphics, essentially.

(Note that the MacBook is 2015 because there was no product called that between about 2009 and 2015; the iMac Pro is 2017 because that's when it was introduced).

Windows 11 works too, the workaround is official and at the same time windows 10 still receives updates so it's not like Microsoft killed older hardware by setting new requirements for Windows 11.

Sure, but the issue is uptake of Windows 11. Virtually no-one is going to use a workaround, official or not, so the low uptake is unsurprising, due to poor hardware support.

Yeah, Apple obsoletes a product 7 years from when they last offered it. The 2014 models of Macbook Air/Pro go obsolete this year and won't get the next macOS. The 2015 models will go obsolete next year, 2023. Windows 10 will still be supported on the grandparent's skylake vintage 2015 PC until 2025 when Apple will be obsoleting the 2018 Mac hardware.

You might consider trying something like Ubuntu or Linux Mint.

Steam's Proton compatibility layer has come a long way in the past couple of years. It supports most titles without any special configuration, including resource-hungry 3D games like Elden Ring and modded Fallout 4.

Do note that the gpu shortage is somewhat ending,finally. Doesn't mean prices are back to decent amounts, but we went from "no gpu available" to "there are gpus on amazon"

Hopefully I can buy a PS5 soon.

Today gpus are showing up below msrp, so if you still want a pc, you are good

The worst mistake was removing the ability to ungroup taskbar items! Opening more than one instance of an application is a terrible experience right now. The icons are often unresponsive, the indicator that something is open is literally just a tiny dot.

Instead of addressing this I feel like Microsoft is just going to continue to add tabs to all their applications as justification for it. Edge, VS Code, Windows Terminal, and now File Explorer.

Some Windows 11 GUI customization tools:

Start All Back https://www.startallback.com

Explorer Patcher https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher

Open Shell https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu

I use ExplorerPatcher and it works well.

I do find it unacceptable that an OS needs 3rd party customization expose options to make the interface usable.

If I wanted that experience I'd just buy a Mac.

>I do find it unacceptable that an OS needs 3rd party customization expose options to make the interface usable.

GNOME sweating nervously.

Definitely the taskbar and start menu was rushed out before it was feature complete. Unfortunately looks like it takes them way too long to fix it too.

The only reason I was excited for Windows 11 was the Android integration.

When the news about Windows 11 came out I had just recently upgraded to a new PC, the first pre-built pc I've used for myself since the 90s in fact. It was nice to see though that Dell/Alienware was among the first to be able to get Windows 11 so I was ready to go on launch day.

Launch day came and went and windows kept saying it wasn't ready yet. Then one day (Jan?) the update finally came. It started the install.. but failed. After the failure it popped up a message saying it wasn't ready yet for my device.

From that point on about once a week the update popped up in windows update and automatically started downloading, but after about 12% it failed and kept repeating the not yet ready message.

I'm wondering if the low number is less about who wants it, but more about who they've released it to so far... which seems very very low.

Also, the android integration.. though it works... does not work very well.. For example I wanted to be able to control a smart device that only has an app from my pc. It works at first, but then just reloads over and over again and is unusable until I reinstall it.

Also with the keyboard I have I often fat finger and put a tiny little of pressure on the windows key when I hit ctrl-t. Ctrl-windows-t turns on and off the subsystem for android reader so I get to hear it telling me about that all day long.

Long story short, windows 11 isn't bad.. at least when you get some third party tools to fix the task bar.. but not at all surprised the numbers are so low. But again, I think its more Microsoft's upgrade system's fault then users choosing not to install it.

A huge number of consumers who can't upgrade to Windows 11 due to unsupported hardware will instead opt for an iPad or Chromebook. Everything is either web- or app-based, and people don't want the complexity of Windows. Microsoft will lose a big chunk of the Windows user base this way.

i know more people with chromebooks and ipads they never use who went back to pc and enjoy windows 11..

My wife has never owned a windows laptop; she's been on Chromebooks exclusively since 2017.

I don't know how far apart the ratio is, but now you know one more ;)

Chromebooks are an US phenomenon.

In Europe you hardly see them on sale across traditional chains.

And when they happen to be there, regular shop visitors will notice how their section gets increased promotions until they finally manage to get rid of them.

I think a big driver of US Chromebook adoption is schools purchasing fleets of them, introducing Chrome OS to families. Are European schools not buying Chromebooks?

As an Australian, I think you're wrong :).

Why wouldn't they just stay on win10? It's not like it's going anywhere?

And this is exactly why people complaining about not being able to upgrade is not the mainstream opinion. The issue with backwards compatibility is coming up from people feeling left out.

I would happily upgrade, but MS has decided that none of the systems I own will support it.

Windows has never been better. WSL2, wsl/g, android (hope it gets better store but you can side load), xbox gamepass, game bar, better security, better app store, powershell, windows terminal and of course all the other apps, games, onedrive locker..

sure quirks along the way but to me it’s been a fine experience..

i don’t tend to customize my iphone or mac either and just use the experience native and it’s been fine..

best times ever on all platforms. love new mac… love new surface pro 8. all great..

I’ve disabled telemetry and such, but I really like Win11 so far. Had to jump through some hoops to get android apps up and running, but otherwise it has been smooth sailing. I’m a MacOS fan though so perhaps what I’m enjoying is the new things that make the UI more like Mac imho.

So, maybe I'm misremembering, but wasn't Windows 10 meant to be the forever-Windows? I'm almost sure there was some marketing to that effect from Redmond at the time.

AFAIK there's no official corporate communication to that effect. The whole "windows 10 will be the last windows" thing can ultimately be traced back to something that a evangelist/dev said at a microsoft event. That didn't prevent tech blogs/media from parroting it far and wide though, so that's probably why you might have "remembered" it.

Hrm.

> "Right now we’re releasing Windows 10, and because Windows 10 is the last version of Windows, we’re all still working on Windows 10." That was the message from Microsoft employee Jerry Nixon, a developer evangelist speaking at the company's Ignite conference this week.

So it was a Microsoft employee. But presumably not speaking ex cathedra, then.

The thing is they didn't deny it either, they were quite happy to let people think that was the case.

>So, maybe I'm misremembering, but wasn't Windows 10 meant to be the forever-Windows?

It was, until Mac OS moved to version 11 (now 12, and counting). Microsoft couldn't risk being seen as less advanced.

Same reason why Chrome is at version 100 and Firefox is right behind at 99.

I know people who still use Windows 7 and hate 10. It gets the job done, and modern browsers still run on it because there were no serious API changes between 7 and 10.

Keeping a windows 7 system connected to the internet is a bad idea in 2022.

And keeping a Windows 10 system connected to the internet exposes it to what amounts to RCE that's only exploitable by Microsoft.

You can get extended security updates. They cost money, but there's ways around that, and Microsoft probably won't audit your 3 PCs. For a business though, yes you'd better pay or upgrade.

> They cost money, but there's ways around that

I checked out what one well-known torrent tracker has to say about these extended updates, and sure enough, I found a torrent called "Windows 7 Ult + KB3125574 by killer110289 (х64) (Ru) [10/04/2020] + авторский загрузчик + Office 2019 (2020.03) RePack by KpoJIuK + ESU Update март 2022" and several others which apparently have those updates applied.

I also wonder what would happen if you build a windows image out of 7's shell/explorer but 10's everything else.

Put it behind a good firewall and don't run any wide open services on it and you'll be fine. I have Vista, MacOS 10.4, and Windows ME machines all running at home without issues.

I guarantee if these numbers keep trending downward, Microsoft will just find ways to force you into upgrading, or trick you into upgrading like they did with windows 10 and the weirdly phrased update prompt options.

They "tricked" my little sibling into upgrading, by essentially threatening that "this message will keep popping up until you upgrade".

Windows 11 was the straw that broke the camel's back for me, and I no longer have any Windows PCs at home. I also had a friend ask me recently if he should upgrade his Windows 10 PC to Windows 11 and I told him to stay on Windows 10 as long as possible.

Microsoft only have themselves to blame for a whole raft of boneheaded decisions. Starting from when they changed course from: "Windows 10 will be the last version of Windows ever...", to then releasing a buggy and incomplete Windows 11. And since then a constant stream of hostile decisions relating to default browsers, more invasive adverts, and the unescapable MSN gossip articles that seem to pop up all over the place (e.g. you can't get rid of the MSN "news" articles from the widget sidebar thing they added to Windows 11).

This is the first time I've ever held off on a Windows update; I didn't even mind Windows 8

From what I've seen, this one is so bad that I'm assuming they'll be forced to walk it back and/or dramatically rethink it, so I'm just holding out for that

Tbh I like it. Except that I've disabled most of the telemetry, the ads, the handholding and new "features" (lots of github PS scripts available to 'optimize' the initial install). I've also installed StartAllBack to disable the new taskbar which I hate. Now its behaving just the way I like it and it's lean and fast. This, together with WSL2 I don't feel I need anything else as a daily driver.

> I've disabled most of the telemetry

How can you be sure about this? They patch and update the telemetry code frequently, for example, when they updated it to get around hostfile blocking, or moved their servers to new addresses for the same reason. The Windows 10 upgrade assistant that was installed without warning on Windows 7 included telemetry that regularly scanned all the executables on your drives and sent the list to Microsoft (ostensibly to check for compatibility, but I'm sure they kept the data around). If you can't trust the OS and they can update it at will, you have no hope of privacy.

It's not easy but it is possible. You'd have to disable Windows update, IE and Edge, SMB, MRT, Defender, AutoLoggers, WMP DRM, GWX, SmartScreen, WER and change a bunch of registry keys. Disable certain services and scheduled tasks.

DiagTrack and all of it's sub-components have to be completely disabled and replaced with decoy files.

To verify, you'd have to monitor certain APIs via WinDbg and trace certain EventProviders using Windows Performance Recorder over a period of 24 hours to make sure there are no escalation issues (DiagTrack).

Pro-tip: if the EventLog (view them using Event Viewer) is not full of errors that constantly reappear you haven't disabled Telemetry properly.

Windows ME was pretty bad too

Windows adoption is largely driven by corporations.

Most corporates align on a common policy of migration to every second major Windows release following this pattern:

Windows NT 4, Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 10

With Windows 2000, Windows Vista, and Windows 11 skipped.

Which is a shame as these same corporates who have fleets of Apple Mac computers normally migrate annually about 6-9 months after each major annual MacOS release.

I hypothesis the reason may be that Windows upgrades tend to be major IT projects with historically large testing and remediation activities, whereas MacOS upgrades are small, introducing a small number of feature enhancements. New Mac computers also are only compatible with the latest MacOS release further encouraging rapid corporate adoption.

You forgot Windows 8. Don't worry, so did everyone else - probably for the best.

They forgot it in the list of skipped Windows versions, but didn't forget to skip it from the list of used versions!

Rather a shame, as Win2k was a reasonably stable, low-bullshit release.

Windows 2000 was peak Windows UI. Explorer was a hot mess, often crashing within the first hour of a clean install, but yeah, Win2k was a fine version.

> Which is a shame as these same corporates who have fleets of Apple Mac computers normally migrate annually about 6-9 months after each major annual MacOS release.

Those have a much longer support period, though. MacOS 11 works on any Mac from 2013 (or occasionally 2014) on. Windows 11 appears to require at least a Kaby Lake processor; those mostly showed up in mid 2017. Many corporates would still have Skylake or earlier machines knocking around; my work machine is a Skylake MacBook Pro, and that's in a large _software_ company.

This is particularly a problem because Intel has been in a bit of a rut; there's not that much difference between a Skylake chip from 2016 and an Ice Lake one from 2020, particularly on the desktop, so there are a lot of Skylakes still in circulation.

Which is all a bit odd, really; traditionally it has been the opposite. But as Apple's support periods have grown, Microsoft's seem to have shrunk.

I've never come across a corporate who's policy is to skip every other release.

Well, there are many issues with Windows 11. Aside from large stuff already discussed over and over again, it's the little things. Alt+Tab current selection is really hard to see. Action center is weird - sometimes it even won't open after clicking, but will pop up at a later time. Clock does not have the seconds counter anymore. Bluetooth devices cannot bee connected via Win+K anymore - it now takes four clicks to reconnect them. Resizing windows to snapping areas (a new feature) is not available on all app windows. Teams app which comes bundled with Windows 11 is only for personal accounts. Video rendering is slow - on my i7/16GB youtube, for example, almost always lowers resolution automatically, thinking that computer cannot render video even in 720p.

Some design decisions are making me roll my eyes.

System altogether seems more prone to become slow over time and requiring reboot.

And don't get me started on enterprise stuff. We're amidst an open support ticket to investigate 2fa and azure interop issues, which are not moving along swiftly enough.

PS This is a report from a single person (n=1), so take it with a grain of salt. But Windows 11 just seems to be following tradition of one good Windows generation, and then one really bad (like win95 ok, win98 not, win2k ok, winme not, winxp ok, vista not, win7 ok, win8 not, win10 ok, win11 not).

Windows 95 was a complete turd. Windows 98 was pretty good.

As coming from windows 3.11, at the age of 16, Windows 95 has a very special place in my heart. So I might be a little nostalgic.

Windows 95/98/Me were all bad.

I used Windows 95 for about 6 months before switching to NT 3.51, which was rock solid. I ended up using Windows 98 for my kids' computers, and it was fine for playing games, etc. I never did anything serious on it.

Windows 11 being how it is is what finally pushed me to switch to Linux.

I'm running Windows 11. Its just like Windows 10 but with many annoying UI changes.

I've been waiting for MS to start pressuring me. When I look at the Windows Update control panel, they aren't even trying to encourage the upgrade to 11, even though they say my computer meets the requirements.

i.e. "Some Windows 10 features aren't available in Windows 11. Certain apps and features may have additional requirements"

Wow, that sounds great. Literally the only thing they have to say is that it's a downgrade. I think that deserves a pause to consider how weird that is. I might even be a bit put out if I was an employee who worked on 11.

Because it is Windows 10 but with the taskbar/start from the failed Windows 10x

I basically only have a windows PC to test compatibility of apps I make, and occasionally play games. MS told me I can’t upgrade so that’s the end of it for me. I don’t really care enough for any of the new features to go buy a new PC

I'm waiting for them to fix all the broken crap in an sp1 release before I upgrade. I'm talking the basic stuff, like switching windows. It's beyond me that they broke this somehow. Or character map. What the hell.

How is character map broken?

On Win10, if I hold alt and on the number pad type 0153, the character ™ is input. This has worked on every version of windows since 3.1. It does not work on Win11.

I always thought that was a BIOS thing. This functionality was built into the original IBM PC, and was definitely a BIOS thing back then as a way to enter character codes you couldn't generate from the keyboard otherwise. I always assumed it remained the same ever since.

I haven't been following Windows development really, but wasn't 10 supposed to be "last version of Windows"? Anyone knows what happened to that, or if that statement has always been just overblown by tech media?

The answer comes to us through humour as it turns out the jester is usually the one telling the truth.

https://www.theregister.com/2011/11/11/bofh_2011_episode_18/

macOS updated to 11, can’t have another os with a higher number or others might want it instead.

I've been using Microsoft as my primary OS since I migrated from my Apple II clone during the days of MS-DOS (mostly for gaming issues and the configuration hassles of Linux). Windows 11 is finally the straw that breaks the camels back. I'll keep one machine running with Windows 10 for as long as it is supported and then take the full plunge away from Microsoft all together. I'm sure I won't be the only one.

Feels like Microsoft is shooting itself in the foot with Win11 as far as consumers are concerned, and instead sees the future of Windows in enterprise.

I think Microsoft has given up on consumers for Windows. I don't believe it cares about them any more. The Windows tax is still around, but I'm pretty sure computer sales in general are a lot lower than they used to be. Hardware upgrades aren't so rapid any more. You're not seeing clock speeds double every couple years like you did in the 90s and early 2000s. Sure, they're adding more and more cores, but that has little or no benefit to someone who doesn't run serious software. I replaced my laptop last year, only after the previous one, which I'd had for at least 8 years suffered a motherboard death. I left Windows 10 on it, but I'm thinking about switching to Linux Mint. I will definitely do so when I have no other option to avoid Windows 11.

FWIW, as a lifetime Windows users, Windows 11 has finally made me switch to using Linux (Zorin OS) as my main system. I retain Windows 10 on a dual boot hard drive for some games but otherwise the switch has been much easier than I expected. Despite being a .Net developer, Microsoft has lost me as a customer for good.

I wish they'd follow the rest of the nostalgia industry and give us what we really want: Windows 2000 Remastered Edition

I mean, it's literally what Windows 10 would be if they continued iterating on it, as they initially said they would. And to be honest, I see no compelling reasons to upgrade, especially with how badly they try to push Microsoft Edge and intentionally make the experience of switching the web browser a chore.

No wonder, so far it has been another Vista, the way managed screw all devs that bought into UWP reboot, and the hardware requirements, there are no reasons left to upgrade other that getting it with new hardware.

I will be waiting for Windows 11 Creators Edition [0] or Windows 12, whatever comes.

[0] - The first Windows 10 version that was actually usable.

>No wonder, so far it has been another Vista

I beg to differ. Vista had tons of stability and performance issue, plus breaking many things. Windows 11 for me was smooth sailing so far, even on older hardware that isn't officially supported.

Window management and tiling is far better and boosts my productivity, docking and undocking your laptop finally doesn't mess your window layout, fractional scaling is better, WSL, Terminal, PS and other power user creature comforts just work nicer out of the box, HDR support is there, windows-key search works faster, notifications are better implemented, windows defender has extra security features like core isolation, etc.

I still hate the new taskbar UX that groups everything together in icons, requiring multiple clicks to pick your desired task vs the classic Win 9x way I've been using for over 20 years, but other than that, I haven't found any performance issues, bugs or any other kind of deal breakers that get in my way or kill my productivity.

I can still play my modern and most importantly to me, my vintage video games natively, without any kind of hacks, emulation or extra VMs, so it gets a pass for me since I don't want extra hassle in my life. Hell, I'll even recommend Edge despite the uproar on HN, since if you're on a thin and light laptop with a small battery, it really gets you significant better battery life than Chrome or FF if you do a lot of browsing away from the wall.

I guess you aren't doing Windows development....

i'm surprised that they are surprised

they still haven't learn from their past mistakes

- hiring problem

- culture problem

- lack of testing

- bloat driven development

- tasteless when it comes to UX

- they follow gnome, mobile-first UI/UX for a desktop OS that nobody use on mobile, the irony

management will still get their fat bonuses, so nothing will change, they missed 2 opportunities to reboot windows

their lack of vision and courage prevents them from unbloating their OS

"legacy bits" that holds back windows, things that nobody use anymore, and even if they get rid of them, the harm is done, and they lack taste and vision to make something proper anyways

EDIT:

I almost forgot the poor state of native windows development.. no proper modern GUI frameworks, they are still stuck with XAML, a joke compared to Swift/SwiftUI/Universal apps (mobile/ipad/desktop)

They won’t to arm twist people off Win10 to 11 and force you to buy a new PC. No. This is why we have choices and Linux Mint.

windows 11 is better for requiring the modern cpus..it suffers greatly in performance if you install it on unsupported chipsets..

What changed between a 7th and 8th gen intel cpu that made it not work?

Lots of articles on this.. i suspect similar issues of security and performance for the reason mac deprecated that hardware too on current os.

Macos 12 runs on Ivy Bridge 2013 mac pro's and haswell mac minis, so on their side it wouldn't appear to be a technical limitation of the older CPU's. Apple does their trusted stuff on the T2 rather than the Windows generic TPM 2.0 requirement, but interestingly the 2013 mac pro lacks a T2 as well. I think TPM 2.0 was a 6th gen skylake onwards thing?

Don't see any that explain what specifically changed that made it not work.

What features did they add that required newer chipsets? It made sense sense for windows vista because of all the 3d/glass effects. For windows 11 all they add was... rounded corners.

This is just them being lazy or trying to set a baseline of TPM 2.0 based systems. There's no technical reason to not support those chipsets already supported in Win11.

last I checked I would need to login to my local machine with a Microsoft account to do a clean install. deal breaker.

I just set up a clean install with only a local account. It isn’t the first option presented, but it was available

Before installing windows disconnect from the Internet. Otherwise it forces you to use a Microsoft Account.

Windows 11 for ARM cannot be installed at all without an internet connection. I imagine it's only a matter of time before this applies to Intel as well.

Or just tick the "I don't have Internet" blurb on the account screen.

Sorry, what did they think was going to happen when people saw just how blatantly Microsoft said, "You know, the problem with Windows 10 is that we just haven't expressed enough disdain for our eyeballs? The ones we can't really sell to our real customers yet because we wrote Windows 10 as an OS..."

I will not run Windows 11 on any personal computer. I will discourage anyone else from doing so. Reasons, in no particular order:

- Windows 10 has been getting harder and harder to install with a "local account only" over the years. You used to opt out. Now you have to disconnect the physical network connection to pull it off, and then it badgers you until you find the checkbox for the notifications. Windows 11 Home explicitly didn't support offline accounts, and as of some recent updates, Windows 11 Pro doesn't support offline accounts. You have to use a Microsoft Account to log in - which tells me that the value of having a particular computer's used tied to a particular email address with insert handwave privacy policy barriers here in the way is worth a lot of money to Microsoft. I'm not sure what exactly they are and aren't snorfing up for app data and such, but clearly, knowing which exact human is behind the screen is worth a lot, which tells me they're doing something on the big data backend. Or, at least, plan to - if they're not doing it now, it will likely sneak in at some update.

- The integration of advertising into the deepest cores of the UI (Explorer) are clear from the fact that during the beta, a bad blob of advertising JSON delivered to end user computers literally rendered them unusable. The JSON, to display an ad, broke Explorer. Those two should not be remotely at the same privilege level for a variety of reasons, but when "displaying the ads" is at the same level as "me deciding which programs to launch," it tells me something about the priorities of the company releasing the system. It's no longer about running programs, it's about pushing the limits of just how much you can shove in front of a set of monetized eyballs before they revolt. My limit is quite low.

- The "Oh, yes, yes, we need modern hardware to run this... oh, what's that, one of the machines we're selling right now won't run it... right, except for that bit of hardware we whitelisted on an older chip..." thing is rubbish. It's a way to try and juice the PC hardware industry, which is struggling for a variety of reasons, but it's a clear money grab (all those new OEM licenses!) with very real environmental consequences (gobs of ewaste that otherwise would work fine - I've got an i7-970 with a 7970 at a relative's place and it works perfectly fine for their needs, including some light gaming). They're weirdly non-committal about anything "Unsupported" too - "Well, yeah, you can install it... and it works, but, you know, we might not deliver security updates forever..." Not confidence inspiring.

And the reality is that for an awful lot of people, the "computer" is "the thing that runs the web browser." Or "the thing collecting dust in the corner because the phone is the primary device."

I hope this whole Win11 thing blows up in Microsoft's face. It's a user-hostile money grab, because apparently they couldn't get Windows 10 to do quite enough data collection for their desires.

I'll run Win10 in random corners of computers until such point as it's no longer supported, and then I'll just expand my Linux partitions over it. If I can't play certain games, well, so be it. Windows 11 is not for me.

Is it practical to run either 10 or 11 in a VM for doing ordinary chores on the Internet?

Windows 10, at least, is a perfectly well behaved guest of KVM - you can even get the various virtio drivers that improve performance significantly. I think Red Hat makes the ISO available.

I just don't know why you would, though. Just about anything one can do on the internet works fine on Linux. Or, I suppose, just isn't worth doing. I've not been Windows heavy for multiple decades now.

I'm confused by stories like this. I've installed both Windows 10 and 11 recently, and never had to create a Microsoft account for either one. It felt a bit like going to the old toilet with "beware of the leopard" on the door, but the option was there. Never had to forcibly disconnect the network, just repeatedly confirm that I really wanted the "limited experience". (Better yet, create an online account!)

Is there a difference between countries or architectures or something? Are they serving a different pile of bullshit to Americans thinking they're already numb to this kind of crap?

Setup a new laptop for someone (early this year I think?) with the semi-preinstalled Win10 and I absolutely had to disconnect from wifi before I could use a local account. Maybe a secret key combo exists but I don't know it).

Been about two years since I installed it clean from an USB stick, so I don't remember if it was the same there.

Windows 10 Pro works fine with an offline account.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com