Big Reasons Not to Upgrade to Windows 11 | Hacker News Reader

Big Reasons Not to Upgrade to Windows 11

pcmag.com

I still don't understand why Windows 11 exists in the first place.

Back when Windows 10 was announced, there was a lot of talk from Microsoft about it being "the last Windows" - meaning, that from this point on, all future versions of Windows would be delivered as updates, but the "product" from a user perspective would always be Windows 10. The user should not go through the "install new OS" experience ever again.

You can discuss whether it's a good idea to take so much agency away from the user, but it certainly shows MS was aware of the fact that users increasingly don't want to switch their OS every few years.

But then comes Windows 11 - and not just did the "last Windows" paradigm go out the window, but MS is back to making wild changes to the UI and having to nudge and pressure an unwilling userbase into switching their OS.

Why?

The “last Windows” really appealed to me. I was pleasantly surprised they’d operate that way. So naturally they soon reverse course with no coherent explanation. And of course none of my family’s PCs are allowed to upgrade. Thank you Microsoft! :-(

This.

At this point: Why does even Windows 10 exist? Does anybody know any application, that couldn't run on Windows 7 if it wasn't the "we deliberately won't support new CPUs to force people to Win10" from Microsoft? What are the critical, structural problems in Win 7 that couldn't be patched and mandated Win 10? Sorry for my bitterness, I just think Win 7 was peak usability. I never saw technical reasons for change afterwards, only forced political ones.

Windows 10 is important because it reverts the changes in Windows 8 :) . In particular, you get again a nice program files menu at the left, instead of a slow change of a isolated all screen mode. (The tiles in the manu are a nice improvement from W7 to W10.)

> I just think Win 7 was peak usability.

See, right now I agree with you, but then I remember that I said the same about XP and, before that, about Win98. When it comes to Windows releases, Microsoft has a solid streak of "a good one, a bad one".

Therefore, my non-cynical interpretation is that there is room for improvement. With Android and iPhones eating the world, it would be reasonable for MS to try something new before becoming obsolete.

Whether we'll see such an improvement before Windows 12, that's a different question.

> I said the same about XP and, before that, about Win98.

But were you wrong?

> I still don't understand why Windows 11 exists in the first place.

For me Windows 11 helped to make decision to finally switch to Linux. I always have been a Windows user, since Windows 95.

Everything has to end some time, I guess.

For me it was Windows 10 forcing itself onto user machines for months after launch, even permanently destroying user data to do so.¹ Oh, and the 260 character NTFS path limit, which bit me in surprising ways (MS published a reg hack to get around this on Windows 10², and I used rsync on MSYS2 to recover inaccessible data on Windows 7). I had been optimistic about W10 until then.

¹https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/27/12046738/microsoft-pays-1...

²https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/maximu...

My take was they get to do three things:

1. Fancy product launch.

2. Steal more control of your PC.

3. Reskin Windows 10.

They were able to do 1 and 2 for the small cost of 3. I don't know if any of this is true but that is what it appeared to me from the outside.

I think part was to drop support for older hardware. They may have feared that customers would get confused when windows 10.x.x doesn't work with their old cpu.

I think it's exactly this. IIRC the most notable change was a requirement of TPM module to have win11

TPM 1.2 has been required since Windows 10. Just not TPM 2.0.

Are you sure? I'm reading that TPM 1.2 came out in 2011, I'm pretty sure Windows 10 works on machines quite a bit older than that?

Ah. I misread the Microsoft doc.[0] It’s only required on versions 1607 and up if you want Device Health Attestation.

[0]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/informatio...

Because Windows 11 sounds way sexier than 20H2. The "last Windows" is an all-round superior approach, except when your marketing department is looking at all the fuss about the new MacOS version.

People like new things.

Probably because a large part of their workforce would have become redundant had they not has some excuse of a job to give them.

They were certainly not going to skip a version this time and go straight from Windows 10 to Windows 12.

The taskbar changes, removal of context menus, and start menu changes have stopped me from upgrading.

I am not sure why the Windows 11 designers thought that removing features that people use were a good idea.

I am using a desktop computer and I want to be productive. Please do not strip out useful features by pretending that Windows is a primarily a tablet operating system.

This is a classic case of data driven development. If users do not sufficiently “engage” with a feature, it is removed.

Nope, it is called “stupid”. If significant paying customers (>10k) are using a feature, then it should not be removed.

If feature is a power or accessibility feature, then it should not be removed even if it is not used anywhere.

Call me a simpleton but I upgraded simply because of wslg. I know that you could forward X11 before but seamless integration of graphical Linux apps is too big of a boon.

The other stuff I don’t really care. I have 0 stuff on the desktop and use Super + typing the name of the app to open anything.

I would use a gnome distro if fractional scaling worked decently, but sadly it doesn’t, at least for VSCode and IntelliJ. So WSL it is.

I upgraded for the same reason as I use WSL2 extensively and occasionally need to use something graphical like gitk.

I thought I read that it was possible without going far off the path to get this all working with Windows 10 as well just not as well known/publicized.

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

- Robert Frost

Better known by its informal title, “An Ode to Windows 7.”

I use a Mac for work, but I have a Dell Optiplex that I use for gaming. It is not officially eligible to run Windows 11 but is currently running Windows 11 quite happily. The UX improvements are welcome, especially the UI animations. The new WSL has been fun to tinker with as well. I'm not daily driving Windows 11, but in my experience the small improvements add up and it's a worthwhile upgrade from 10, maybe even if your PC isn't "supported".

Isn't WSL fully functional in W10?

Are there any palpable improvements or just subjective UI stuff?

I found out about a WSL feature specific to Windows 11 today, after exporting an image from my Windows 11 laptop to my Windows 10 desktop.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl-config#boot...

There's a few more on that page. I would not be surprised if more appeared over time.

My understanding is that WSLg (support for running graphical Linux applications) requires Windows 11.

There is lot of non-issues, especially around taskbar UI. You can switch everything as it is on Windows 10, including the file explorer choices. Only issues which are annoying to me

1) TPM necessary, from 6 PCs I have I can upgrade only 1. At least I have some PC for testing.

2) Microsoft account necessary.

However I expect that Microsoft will drop TPM request as they will find out that Win 11 market share is stagnating and will be growing only very slowly.

I've only used Windows for games or exper mentation/testing. If I can't get windows 10 for a new computer, I'll do with only Linux for personal use. For work it was always targeting Linux servers anyway.

like last year or a few years ago, laptops from dell/hp would come in a "dos" version but that is becoming increasingly hard these days.

I saw one model that had a inr 3000/$38 bump over the dos version which i don't want to pay when i am only going to buy a linux laptop but i dont see any in indian markets like the framework. they are comparable to xps line of dell which is like 3 times their cheapest inspiron series. I want dell inspiron class linux laptop, is it that hard?(currently sporting a dell e7440 + kde neon)

They listed pretty much anything that was changed from 10 to 11.

it's 2022 now, please upgrade to win22

So TLDR, is it worth upgrading to it or not? It sounds like no

Much prefer windows 11 to 10 with the following changes below. Without the changes would probably be worse.

Disabled widgets.

No longer use the windows explorer for most things as it got worse (extra clicks). Directory Opus or Total commander are fine replacements.

I keep the task manager pinned to the taskbar as it is more clicks otherwise to get to.

Switching sound to speakers / headphones is now an extra click.

I used O&O Privacy to disable a bunch of settings (Actually quite a lot of settings, this was the same on windows 10 though).

Design wise I prefer win 11. I like the centralized icons on the taskbar.

Tried start11, wasn’t for me, I use the default taskbar.

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