Ask HN: Good things about Windows 11 | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Good things about Windows 11

16 pointsTomte36 comments

I've read all about the grating, insufferable, half-baked and annoying things that Windows 11 brings. Taskbar changes, start menu changes. Etc. pp.

But what good things are there in Windows 11 over Windows 10?

I find it hard to get a reasonable overview with pros and cons, because seemingly every review goes straight into ranting.

I think I've heard about WSL improvements? Something you noticed and really liked?

Please don't try to convert me to Linux, I'm asking for a new Windows installation inside KVM/virt-manager on Debian, I already know the upsides of Linux :-)

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Windows 11 is not very different from Windows 10. The UI is a bit more polished and don't think it has any unique user facing features over windows 10. That's the good part.

The bad part is that is all the missing features especially regarding the start menu and taskbar.

It is to an large extend just a normal windows 10 service pack that MS Marketing Department has chosen to call Windows 11.

For Microsoft, the critical part is the new hardware requirements, that eventually will allow them to removed old parts of the windows code base and maybe that is why it is called 11 instead 10 Service Pack 1

In your scenario it doesn't make much of a difference if you install 10 or 11.

I asked our own Microsoft account manager this, and they gave us a list of security features that we, in the enterprise, would use to upgrade.

Looking at the list featuring Credential Guard, Virtualization based security, LSAPPL and TPM 2.0 support, it became pretty clear it was a list of feature we had in Windows 10.

Once you "fix" the start bar with a shell mod, bring back the right click menu, and so on. I genuinely, really, really, really like the rounded corners on windows. That made it feel really fresh to me. Window management got a slight upgrade (maximize button hover to position etc), which is quite nice. Some of the control panel options that you still need are slightly less buried in the "new" settings app. I use start menu classic and firefox, I dont even bother with the start menu or edge. Im looking forward to tabs arriving in file explorer, next. I feel the OS is less intrusive and less prone to unexpectedly update at the worst possible times too, where win 10 required just a little extra tweaking in that regard. For the most part it stays out of the way and lets me do my thing.

Agreed! The rounded corners and the polish are very refreshing from Win 10. The Settings app is worse in my opinion but luckily I'm not there often. And the Windows updates certainly feel better than before

What mods are you using to bring back functionality?

Start menu classic for the start menu replacement, probably not that important, but I like how it works.

For getting the start bar back to a windows 10ish state (essential): https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher

Then there was just a key via regedit to restore the old right click menu: https://pureinfotech.com/bring-back-classic-context-menu-win...

I switched to 11 mostly just because why not. I only use Windows in my free time to work on some personal stuff. Nothing new has really annoyed me, except for if something is in a folder in the start menu it will never come up in search. Ever. But that could have been in 10 for all I know.

There is a long list of things that no longer annoy me though… here’s the top ones:

1. My .git folder no longer gets corrupted after a reboot in WSL. That used to drive me insane and I lost hours of work several times. Hasn’t happened once since upgrading.

2. I feel like WSL integration has gotten light years better. Nothing specific comes to mind, but I basically work in WSL. (Still no native ipv6 support though. Sigh)

3. It feels like a smoother/snappier experience overall. Especially when it comes to gaming.

I’ve had a not so great experience and could use some advice. I opted to install WSL using the command line but there was a problem, so I removed it and reinstalled the app titled simply ‘Ubuntu’ from the Microsoft Store but the problem still persists.

The problem is whenever I run any command in WSL, the progress bar/status stalls or never updates itself. Installing a new language, non package, Ubuntu stuff, whatever, doesn’t seem to work on first try. Once I ‘Ctrl+C’ and re-enter the command, it works flawlessly.

——

Besides that, I think Windows 11 has been great so far! I like it.

Might be the terminal? I’m using Terminal Preview and never had an issue.

I've been using the new Terminal ever since it was first announced. It was fine before I upgraded to Windows 11 from 10.

I ended up doing a fresh install of 11, now that I think about it. IIRC, I did an upgrade first and all kinds of crap was messed up.

WSL2 and WSLg, graphical linux apps on windows.

Everything else is a backwards step. The start menu is even more obtuse than Gnome and thats saying something.

Honestly, if you don't have any specific issues with Windows 10 why do you care about 11?

My philosophy if things work I don't change them. For every new feature you may find a bunch of things no longer work or now missing completely.

* I'm hardly noticing the taskbar change - "it's different now, okay, let's move on important things" - may be it'd be better if I can put it on right side of the screen, not on the bottom, but so far so good * Windows (literally Windows of Applications) management became much better - the mentioned Groups by others, in general ability to snap them to parts of screen with mouse or by Win+Z shortcut * Windows management with external monitors - when you detach it and reattach (say I often take my laptop from workdesk and come back) - Windows just move things automagically for me. * WSL is evolving, while I'm not using much of new features - say WSLg has no practical value for (yet?) - I'm not a ML/AI developer and have no interest of running Linux GUI apps, but I see others around me really find it useful on daily basis. * Notepad can read both UNIX & Windows style endings * Start menu looks a bit more usable now - I often open files/folders just by invoking menu (with Win key) and typing like "some_notes_file.txt" and usually it brings it to me after just "some" part of file name. * keep being rock solit - both of my laptops are on Insider Builds (and I was on Win10 too) - one on Dev channel (alpha versions), main one (where I type this) on Beta channel - seen BSOD may be 3 - 4 times.

If it’s important taskbar can be pinned to top using Registry, I did that.

Not touching this OS with a 10 foot pole. Will probably switch to Linux before trying Windows 11.

Every time windows comes out people say that. It’s hilarious. Why are you using windows 10? Why does 11 make a difference?

If you think change in tools is bad, I’d agree, I like consistency. Linux doesn’t offer that though - vim upgraded from 7 to 8 a few years back and caused major changes to various defaults. Rxvt recent changed and sucked tons if time trying to fix paste (they put some ridiculous “security” thing so if I pasted a line from another terminal I had to then press “yes” to accept the paste.

Developers are never “done”, they fiddle, they make changes, and they set those new changes as default because they consider it better.

Personally I like the fact my screwdriver or saw or hammer works the same way as it always has, I don’t like to think about tools, I learn how to use it, and then I can concentrate on other things. Developers break that.

I'm for reals this time. I only touch Windows when necessary. If a game I'm playing is supported on Linux I can go months without touching Windows.

Agreed.

For me, XP was the boost to get off the bloated platform. Ugly skins, mandatory junk apps (Movie Maker or whatever) that you can't remove, mandatory IE for Windows Update... So many little things.

The one gain over Win2K was faster bootups/resume-from-hibernation. That I liked. That was the only thing.

But it was clear that MS would play its usual trick: compel upgrades by killing support for the well-loved older product.

So you couldn't really stay on W2K.

So I switched. Mac OS X on the desktop, Linux on laptops.

And frankly, the continued gutting of the UI in macOS, which has been going downhill since 10.6, is making Linux everywhere look appealing... Even with the shiny Arm chips...

It leverages Thread Director on the latest Intel CPU's to be smarter at juggling threads between performance and power-efficient cores:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16881/a-deep-dive-into-intels...

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16959/intel-innovation-alder-...

Intel and MS worked together on the feature. A microcontroller embedded in the CPU monitors each thread's instruction stream along with other metrics, and feeds hints back to the OS scheduler about whether it should be on a P vs. E core. It can also detect when a thread is constrained by something other than frequency and temporarily throttle down the clock on that core to save power. I gather the microcontroller runs an ML algorithm pre-trained on "millions of hours of data" to help with thread classification.

I'm trying Windows 11 and Visual Studio 2022 using a free evaluation virtual machine from Microsoft:

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/virt...

I like Snap layouts very much. [1]

[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/desktop/modern...

+1 for Snap Groups

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/snap-your-window...

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/tutorials/gui-a...

Native WSL Gui apps.

I noticed that the start menu appears a lot more quickly on my i9 laptop.

I think there was some network access going on in the start menu for windows 10. I once had my mobile internet drop out while opening it and it was unresponsive until it timed out a minute later.

Very few except enhanced security but many drawbacks. For me, A2DP AAC support is big as an AirPods user. Remembering window location is also good.

Does that mean you lost support or gained support?

Gained for both

The best thing about Windows 11 is upgrading and getting on with life.

Let your cheese move a little.

It's not a deep technical choice.

Good luck.

It plays video games better, but it needs to be on bare metal for that to happen.

Really? Can I expect FPS increase on Win 11 if I switch from Win 10?

Possibly? It seems like it's more aggressive about prioritizing the focused application to me. This is bad in my case because it's doing so to the point where I can't play games on one monitor and also watch a YouTube video on the other. The browser window gets starved and the video freezes until I focus the window.

AutoHDR and HDR in general definitely works much better than Windows 10.

Nothing, windows 11 is the beginning of trusted computing and the end of local applications that are text based binaries, they are building denuvo levels of drm into the os and hardware in future intel/amd cpu's and plugging the "digital hole" (i/o) to finally kill piracy, they are turning the PC into an iphone.

They are changing the executbale model to signed binaries and soon there will be no "Good old games". The idea that any software is "incompatible" is nonsense.

The "security features" are actually just content protection drm tech Netflix/google and game industry like sony has been working on.

It won't matter if you can copy files infinitely if they are signed and encrypted by an OS and CPU that won't execute the bits.

So no, windows 11 is the end of the PC as an open platform.

See here:

https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html

From 20 year ago, they've been working with hardware vendors to tpm the shit out of all the components for shit like this:

https://www.theregister.com/2001/03/23/ms_plans_secure_pc/

So thats why windows 10+ will be shit, and you no longer own your pc.

This is true, unfortunately.

Here's an example of things to come:

https://www.arch13.com/ms-windows-defender-decss/

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27914752

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