Windows 11 runs on fewer than 1 in 6 PCs | Hacker News Reader

Windows 11 runs on fewer than 1 in 6 PCs

theregister.com

30 pointsBender80 comments

This isn't surprising. The launch-time requirement of a TPM imposes an artificial bar (artificial in the sense that it's purely Microsoft-imposed -- it's usefulness is certainly more debatable to the average user) which instantly locked out people who either:

- Didn't know what that was and didn't care to learn (probably most people); or

- Understood what it was but either didn't have a CPU with a built-in TPM, which is a fairly recent feature, or didn't have a motherboard with a TPM socket.

For the second category of people, Windows 11 is an expensive proposition beyond the base OS itself, and can be involved at the hardware level.

Combine that with some questionable UI choices and ever more ads, and I'm not shocked that Windows 11 hasn't seen widespread adoption.

E: formatting

> Understood what it was but either didn't have a CPU with a built-in TPM, which is a fairly recent feature, or didn't have a motherboard with a TPM socket.

I'm definitely in the latter. I was running an insider's build of Win11 on my home desktop for quite a while just fine, until they seemed to have actually made the TPM a hard requirement, and I rolled back to Win10. It's a shame because it's an 8 year old beefy PC that otherwise runs perfectly fine and I didn't have any issues with Win11 otherwise on it.

People in general presumably don’t know and don’t care about the requirements. Most, I’m guessing, wouldn’t even be able to tell which OS version they are running. If their computer with Win10 is compatible it’ll eventually nag them to upgrade. If not, they’ll run it to the grave and the next one they buy will be Win11 - whether they want to or not.

> Understood what it was but either didn't have a CPU with a built-in TPM, which is a fairly recent feature, or didn't have a motherboard with a TPM socket.

Or, like me, understood what it was and realized it is not what they want on their machine.

Also totally plausible. I had a TPM fail on me earlier this year (fortunately on a machine without anything irreplaceable on it), and it was enough of a hassle to recover that I'm just going to pass on using one for the foreseeable future.

I'm always upgrading to Windows 11 after some big release and then quickly reverting back to Windows 10.

Things I can't live without:

- Ungrouping programs on my taskbar. For the love of god. I can't use a desktop without this;

- The right click on explorer is still beyond dumb with that absurd two step to go to the useful stuff.

- I "really" don't like how they grouped the icons on the traybar. On Windows 10 you can click on the wireless icon and then immediatly change your wifi. On windows 11 you need to activate that group settings and then click on the wifi item.

I'm well aware that I can install third party options to aleviate these painpoints, but it doesn't make a lot of sense install a bunch of third party software to fix things that I shouldn't be fixing anyway.

So, for the time being the plan is to use windows 10 until EOL and then hope that Linux is in better shape for my Hardware by 2025.

You can fix the right click in explorer via registry change. But I agree it is dumbest thing in Windows 11 and I am not sure who approved such stupid change

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/restor...

I'm still using Win7 Pro for most things. The pc is a dual-boot with Win10 Pro the other OS. I use Win10 Pro when I do GIS or geophysical stuff that is only licensed for that OS. I have a lot of legacy software that runs on Win10 or better but was purchased before those were options. I prefer the interface over any of that 10 or 11 bullshit.

My main workstation is a 2008 Dell T5400 that is trying to die. The mobo has a couple dead RAM slots and a dead PCIe slot. Whenever it powers down it is difficult to get it to reboot since it fails in POST due to some issue that is always resolved by removing the cover and blowing all the dust out of the case, even if there is only a small amount. I think the thing just appreciates an occasional blow job. LOL

I do have another machine waiting to take over that has Win10 Pro and PopOs on it and if I have to I can fall back to my other workstation, a Dell T7500 with CentOS7 and Ubuntu xxx on it. It's a power hog though with those Xeons so I leave it off most of the time.

I have so far managed to avoid upgrading any of my family's devices to Win11. They all run Win10 Pro right now AFAIK. I don't like Win10 but, like my old Windows phone which I just replaced a couple months ago (iPhone 12), I will probably migrate to that over the next couple of years.

I'll watch posts here on HN to keep me informed about all the suck.

I'm in the same camp as you. Once Win7 really becomes unusable, I'll drop it and probably move on to a dual boot W10/Linux.

It took my years to get Win 7 just the way I like it and I have 0 interest in spending the same amount of effort on W10 or any other for-profit OS.

Agreed. I have managed to get a good bit of experience with several OSes over the years and have always migrated back to Windows but all that changed when Win8 showed up and the direction of the platform became obvious. I am not a SaaS person except for isolated packages that are required for work.

It's kinda sad, I remember when every windows release was an event in itself, I would try to get a hold of early releases and marvel at all the changes (except the tiles of windows 8... that was a step too far).

But it's not even that I don't like windows 11... I genuinely don't care. Windows 10 works, a _lot_ of my apps are in the browser or in a browser-ish environment anyway (electron). There are no new exciting features in the desktop space? Thinking about it, I have a mac at work and I don't care about the OS updates either way. It's all incremental now.

For a while the mobile OS were exciting but it's getting boring as well.

Windows 11 is just Windows 10 with a different look. As for mobile OS, last time I cared was for Android 4-to-5.

Windows 10 annoyed me with its forced restarts. But I liked the idea of never installing another new OS which was the promise.

Suddenly, Windows 11.

I went out and bought a MacBook as an absurdly overpowered thin client and set up the Windows box as a Linux server running my code.

Microsoft’s user experience was so bad it was literally worth it for me to drop $thousands and spend time learning a new OS.

FWIW one can take back some control over this with O&O's ShutUp10 [1] There are also some github gists with powershell scripts to do the same thing, just use care as some of the powershell scripts by random people can leave a system in a wonky state.

[1] - https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

Improved telemetry!

Higher hardware requirements!

Worse performance!

More ads in your start menu!

Two clicks to do anything in your context menu!

Grouped taskbar!

Upgrade now!

I was really disappointed to find out that you can no longer setup a new Win11 machine without creating a MS account. No internet connection during Win installation? Too bad, can't install Windows 11. I had to buy a USB to network adapter since I couldn't install any of the MB network drivers, since ya know, I was still trying to install Windows...

FWIW: Once logged in, you can create a local account and remove the MS linked account. A small consolation.

I have a desktop with an Intel i7 from around 2014. Its still fast for everything that I do at home. However, I can't update it to windows 11, no TPM. I'm not trashing perfectly good hardware just for that. I'll just keep using Linux.

Same here, I understand that for non-developers ChromeOS Flex is a great (and incredible responsive UX) option [1]. For some developers it could be an option too, last time I tried (the beta) Visual Studio Code didn't installed well and the Linux subsystem stopped working but time will come.

https://chromeenterprise.google/os/chromeosflex/

Last I checked, I still couldn't drag an object onto the task bar to move it or open it in my selected program, so it's still a downgrade for me.

Can you don that on MacOS? Because the "new Windows" is now designed by Mac users[1] internally in Microsoft and they are seemingly trying to make everything Mac-y.

[1] I'd love to find a reference for that, but I've searched for 15 minutes straight now, and I just can't find the link. Someone help me, please?

I've actually never used this Windows feature, but in MacOS you've been able to drag a document to an application icon in the dock to open it as long as I can remember.

Windows seems to be slowly succumbing to touch-screen-itis, where the interface is designed for touching first. Dragging on a touch screen can be kind of janky at the best of times so I'm not surprised they didn't bother making this interaction work in Windows 11.

this is a huge issue for me as well, really dumb

I will be avoiding Windows 11 for as long as possible. From my understanding, the issue is that you can only install Windows 11 on computers with a TPM, which they then plan to use to shove DRM down your throat. No thank you. I should not have to "cam" my own computer, because my own computer wont allow me to capture whats visible on the screen. Fuck that.

What happens if you remove/disable the TPM once windows 11 is installed? Will your computer become unusable?

Of course, it's no longer trusted - it can't query the TPM to verify that the firmware image it's trying to load matches the encryption key, so it will not boot. Depending on your settings, you may also be unable to decrypt the hard drive. That's the whole point of the TPM.

Whether you think this is great because it protects you from really scary state-level actors modifying your firmware to log your keystrokes, or from yourself trying to install Ubuntu, depends on your threat assesment. Same with whether full-disk encryption protects you from Mossad determining what OS you're running or whether it prevents you from recovering your files after a software update wrecks the graphics driver.

Fortunately, most new machines ship with UEFI secure boot disabled at this time, but that may change in the future. In theory you can use systemd-cryptenroll to add self-signed keys to the TPM so it boots only your Linux image (or your Linux image and your dual-booting Windows image) in practice it's a massive pain and a big risk of bricking your machine and almost no one bothers.

No, if you don't have drive encryption enabled.

Maybe, maybe not. I managed to disable TPM when installing Windows 11 on a virtual machine using a guide from Oracle of all places.

> https://blogs.oracle.com/virtualization/post/install-microso...

Don't know if this works for bare metal.

Skipping every other Windows release has been the tradition for decades

Install Windows 98 (You installed 95 too, so here is the beginning of the tradition)

Skip Windows Me

Install XP

Skip Vista

Install 7

Skip 8

Microsoft skipped 9

Install 10

Skip 11

There must be a word for people who complain relentlessly about a brand or company but keep going back to it anyway.

Helpless? Not having a choice?

Stockholm Syndrome.

People with absolutely no other option.

Linux is fine if you're a developer, but if you're a gamer or artist that needs real GPUs then you're stuck on Windows.

Gaming is changing very rapidly now that Valve is investing real resources into the platform to support the steam deck.

I think what Valve achieved is amazing, but we're nowhere near major publishers targeting Linux as SOP. That means that if Valve loses interest in the Steam Deck you're probably going to see game compatibility for newer titles start to degrade.

I think there's kind of an ironic downside to Valve's approach as well. Proton is so good that there's little incentive for developers to support Linux natively - they can just target Windows and rely on Valve to fix it.

Still, this is the best that Linux gaming has been in my lifetime.

> Linux is fine if you're a developer

Eh. I still don't want to waste my time fixing boot issues. And still prefer multiple screens to 1, which does not work well yet.

> And still prefer multiple screens to 1, which does not work well yet.

I see people say this all the time, but I use multiple screens on linux on multiple distributions, across intel/AMD/nvidia, and on voth X and Wayland without issue.

Am I missing something?

Do they have the same DPI?

They don't, in any of the cases.

I do get annoyed occasionally by the difference in window size between monitors, but I ~ never have a window overlapping the boundary so it doesn't impact me.

> but if you're a gamer or artist that needs real GPUs then you're stuck on Windows.

The Steam Deck would disagree with the first half of that, and I spend an awful lot of time gaming on Linux with the exact same "workflow" as Windows gamers.

Can't speak for artists, though my understanding is that it's Adobe, not Windows which has them stuck.

SteamDeck is a step in the right direction but let’s not pretend it’s even 1% of PC gaming.

> Adobe

Adobe, Maxon, Autodesk, etc before we even get into the plug-in ecosystems.

Believe me I’d be running Linux if I could.

"Consumers".

This is the difference between "consumer" and "customer".

A customer has control over their money. They make choices that benefit themselves and producers must compete with one another for their money.

A consumer is just somebody whose job is to not only eat the shit shoveled at them, but work their ass off and live in debt for the joy of eating it.

But, don't worry, the government will step in and give you "consumer rights" and protect you. Lol.

Your absurd quote usage does not give words a new meaning, you know?

Like the HN commenters?

Abused.

Morbid codependency is a common enough pattern in domestic situations. What happens in tech sometimes looks a lot like that.

"Trapped" I believe is the word you're looking for.

I've been building computers for decades and still had to search online for the obscurely-named BIOS setting that enables TPM so that I could upgrade to Win11.

So I'm sure that's a stumbling block for a lot of people whose machines are technically capable of upgrading.

That's 1 too many for that spyware ridden nagging piece of crap.

Its the hardware, stupid. I have a far worse running Windows machine and its Windows 11 ready, and my more powerful tower PC cannot run Windows 11, even when I have the TPM module enabled. Microsoft only has itself to blame.

If they widen the hardware support, even if it means software TPM, there will be more Windows 11 users. I'm also half sold on going to Arch Linux as Proton has gotten a lot better. The hardware support is there.

There's a problem here that I think people (devs) aren't really aware of yet - Microsoft have practically stopped working on Windows 10. For quite a long time now, all new bug fixes go into 11 and they aren't being reliably back ported. It used to be that if there was a bug in Windows, and Microsoft fixed it, you could remove your workarounds after a year or three because Win10 updates do get applied and nearly everyone would have upgraded. Now Win10 is being frozen in time modulo security updates, that won't happen anymore. Bugs in Win10 are bugs ~forever more or less, because users won't upgrade.

I hope that at some point Microsoft wakes up and realizes that after years of effort to heal previous userbase forks, it's just gone and done it again. Apps will have to test and support Win10 as the baseline and will basically ignore Win11 only features, or APIs that have bugs in Win10. This situation will last for a very long time now - and for what? Being able to say you have a TPM? Who cares, apps won't be able to target Win11 TPM or not for many, many years.

I'm glad I'm running Linux on my PC.

Windows 11 is kind of like Metaverse. Nobody wants this except Microsoft deluded executives.

Why couldn't they keep improving the Windows 10 and listen to what people actually want?

What's wrong with Windows 11?

the centered taskbar

As an ultrawide monitor user, I love the centered Taskbar. I only use Windows for gaming, but I couldn't use it for work if I didn't have the task bar centered.

You can probably do this with Windows 10 using TaskBarX[0].

[0] https://github.com/ChrisAnd1998/TaskbarX

There is a setting to left-align the taskbar

Still cannot drag an object onto the taskbar to move it or open it in my selected program - something I do dozens of times a day, and something for which there is no feasible workaround.

Forced TPM and all of the subsequent practical and philosophical knock on effects

Forced Microsoft accounts and all of the practical and philosophical knock on effects

Adds nothing but adverts and obfuscation to windows 10, despite previous claims it would be the last OS increment and many people have built tools and working around windows 10 on that basis

Copying apple has reached a new low with UI and taskbar

Audio and wifi increased in complexity

The main question is whats the benefit of windows 11 over windows 10? I only see disadvantage where we need to have TPM so we can accept their DRM in future, or useless taskbar where dragging and dropping doesn't work etc.

Not to mention that additional bloats that will be added in windows 10.

Windows Xp could run in 128MB and that was perfectly fine for people like me. But now even 4gigs is not sufficient to run pc smoothly.

I think it has WSL GUI, so you can run Linux graphical applications.

https://youtu.be/kC3eWRPzeWw

Anyone can run graphical Linux apps on Windows 10 too, or even on XP/Cygwin. You just have to install the X Server (VcXsrv) separately.

Android compat layer.

The new taskbar is the most visible - it can't be on the sides, can't be resized, and breaks a large number of workflows around right clicking, dragging, and more.

Context menus are a mess, hiding most options multiple levels deep when there's plenty of space.

Every quarter they get more intrusive trying to get you to click on the wrong button that will change your browser and default apps, and they use every antipattern short of moving the window under your cursor to try to convince you not to change away from their defaults. Yes, Win10 had a "are you sure you don't want Edge" popup but Win11 is far worse.

It's also harder than ever (maybe impossible now?) to create a local user account.

Right click on taskbar + Task Manager ... Gone.

Move taskbar vertically to left or right ... Gone.

Desktop right click menu extra clicks ... No thanks.

Edge shoved down my throat ... No thanks.

TPM, Secure Boot ... No thanks.

Need Microsoft account ... No thanks.

Xbox Game bar and other bloatware ... No thanks.

The point of Windows 11 isn't to provide new features to the end user, it's to establish "security" (read: DRM) APIs as a core part of the OS and ensure they are guaranteed to be available as a baseline feature on every Windows 11 machine, something Microsoft could not do simply by releasing a Windows 10 update due to the TPM hardware requirement. The end goal is to enable developers, including Microsoft themselves, to ship software that can refuse to run if you installed a driver not blessed by Microsoft or have otherwise tampered with the OS.

And yes, many companies definitely want this. Some anti-cheat solutions have already jumped on the remote attestation bandwagon and make use of the TPM when running on Windows 11, with Windows 10 being temporarily exempt from the requirement (not unlike what happened with SafetyNet and the "basic" attestation fallback/loophole). It's only a matter of time until Windows 10 is left behind and everything starts requiring remote attestation. After all the McDonald's Android app requires SafetyNet, so why shouldn't <insert expensive software suite here> also make sure you are not having too much fun with it?

Windows 10 is fine, so Windows 11 upgrades for most of our customers are based off a timeline working forward from Windows 10’s EoL date. Testing - deployment - procurement - full migration just in time for security updates to 10 to end.

We’re yet to discuss if we will recommend using a utility to allow upgrades on any officially unsupported hardware. Knowing our customers most would be very happy to roll the dice and avoid hardware upgrades.

I've been a Windows user from Win98 until Win10, until I finally migrated to Linux and had to use mac for some time as well. The good, bad and ugly of windows:

The good:

- It works out of box in many more cases than Linux. Mac is, of course, better, but only because it only works on strictly controlled hardware. Linux is much harder to setup on a random hardware, especially if it's new (I'm having real trouble with my Fedora on Amd Zen4 7950x and Nvidia Rtx 4090 right now).

- Many games only work on windows. This is changing, fortunately, but for the moment Windows is the only platform to play many titles.

The bad:

Using windows is becoming harder and harder in each release. What was nicely organized in a control panel is now a maze of many windows. When you click an option, you are usually taken to a window with very few options. If you need something else, there is no clear way to know where to go. You might click a link and a legacy control panel item shows up. Or this window might navigate somewhere else. You cannot have multiple instances of settings window open. If I'm experimenting with something and I need to make a change to sound settings, I need to start over and find that page. I can go on and on, but using Windows 11 is many ties more complex than 7. It seems they want to mimic Mac, but what they forget is that their users are those who did not choose Mac for one reason or another. Becoming a less interesting copy of Apple has failed MS times and times (RIP Windows Phone), but they keep insisting on it. Give me any Linux desktop, or mac, or a phone, and ask to make a change to a setting. It's much faster than doing the same on Windows 11, even if you've been an experienced Win 10 user.

The ugly:

Windows is hostile to its users. It installs many apps that I cannot uninstall some. Forces me to use a Microsoft account. I want my machine to be predictable and transparent, it is not: I don't know what my online account is sharing with MS. I don't know how to turn things off. Even things such a preventing a web search in start menu requires going to regedit (or gpedit). You don't feel that you are paying a company to serve you. This would be good for a free OS. But one that costs multiple hundreds? No, I should trust you, I can't.

So on my new machine I tried Win 11, but I'm not convinced to buy it (cost is not a problem after spending 5k+ on hardware).

It is unacceptable but I wonder if Microsoft now should prioritize a future new OS cutting the monstruous legacy aspects of Windows.

Since few devices will run Windows 11 and big organizations will be forced to spend more in their "modernization" projects it can be time to cut the umbilical cord to the past (e.g. Win32).

Microsoft did that already years ago. Win32 hasn't been their recommended API for a very long time. They have WinRT now, which is in many ways a much nicer API except that nobody cares, it's too late already, hardly anyone writes Windows specific apps anymore and when they do it's mostly "legacy" .NET WPF stuff.

So, Windows isn't being held back by Win32 specifically. What's killing them is the combination of:

- General inability to implement new tech that can be used to pay down old tech debt (not specific to any particular API). This is largely due to ...

- A barely competent team that clearly checked out mentally years ago and doesn't care. Supposedly they lost so many people to Google and Azure that Windows hardly has any experienced seniors anymore, and if you try to use anything they did in the last 10 years then really, it shows. Worse the Windows team never shook its C++ centric culture despite badly needing the productivity and hirability boost that comes from modern GCd languages.

- Extremely poor team coherence, prioritization of projects etc. Why are they re-designing the task bar when basic initiatives flail around, unadopted for lack of bug fixes or quality docs?

None of those problems would be fixed by MS doing a new OS project because they are primarily management problems, not technical problems.

Win 10 tried to update 10+ times but always rolls back just to nag me again/and or do an upgrade on its own.

I've been able to install Windows 11 on "unsupported" 10-year old laptops with no issues. Use Rufus to download and create a bootable Windows 11 USB stick. It also has the option to bypass the hardware checks.

https://rufus.ie

I run windows on ~4 computers. All are on windows 10.

I haven't actually seen anything from Windows 11 that seems like an improvement worth upgrading for, and two of the machines would need me to purchase a TPM module to get it to install. Some features and lack thereof are baffling. It's been out a year and you still can't move the taskbar, and you can't stop it from combining applications in the tasbar. wtf?

Windows 11 will happen over time as regular users buy new computers and they come with windows 11.

> two of the machines would need me to purchase a TPM module to get it to install

Most of the older PCs have firmware TPU built-in, but for some weird reason disabled in BIOS. Are you sure it is not the case for you?

they're both i5-7600k which officially windows 11 doesn't support. even if I installed a tpm or found one in the motherboard bios, I'd be on an unsupported hardware configuration which doesn't sound like a good long term stability thing.

Maybe I'll take a look and see if its in the motherboard bios but I don't think that will solve my problem of minimum requirements being 8th gen and up.

There are some "quality of life" improvements such as a redesigned Task Manager that has a better UI and finally supports dark mode.

Tabs in Windows Explorer, etc.

These sorts of things.

My only issue so far is that you can't drag a document onto an open program on the taskbar (even Explorer) and have it open. You get the "can't do that!" cursor. I don't understand that change at all.

Windows 11 was released in Oct 2021. In Oct 2022, its market share was 15%.

Windows 10 was released in Jul 2015. In Jul 2016, its market share was 28%.

Not all that much of a story here, when you look at the numbers.

I hope that after 2025 Linux will be the right way to go without compromises

So what?

Stick with Windows 10. It is still supported until October 2025

Another way of seeing this is that, for people who think Windows is the only operating system for PCs, Microsoft just turned 5 out of 6 devices into e-waste.

And I've seen the evidence with my own eyes. Literally skips full of "old" PCs being scrapped at a university because they are not "powerful enough".

That's actually quite disgusting and shameful

Nobody wants windows 11. Everyone will wait till 12

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