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Comment by naikrovek | Hacker News Reader

I don't think you can fairly compare XP and Windows 11 given how much more Windows 11 does than XP. even just looking at enterprise management alone, XP is uncontrollable by comparison. forget all the end-user features that didn't exist in Windows XP.

might as well compare Win11 to MS-DOS if you're thinking along those lines.

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For a regular home user, what does Win11 do that WinXP couldn't? Everything I can think of (drivers, screen res, multiple monitors) is incremental improvements to what we already had, I can't think of a feature they've introduced since XP than I want.

edit: This is probably too glib; certainly more recent Windowses are superior for application developers, which end users benefit from indirectly. It's the user-facing parts of the OS that seemed to have gone in the other direction.

> "Everything I can think of (drivers, screen res, multiple monitors) is incremental improvements to what we already had"

All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us? (Besides, they're just improvements on what we had before so they don't count).

Apart from the drivers, screen res, multiple monitors, virtual desktops, Windows Defender, updated DirectX, newer hardware support, hypervisor isolated secure password store, app store, WiFi, audio stack with per-program volume control, OCR engine, voice recognition engine, Cortana, online backup and file and settings sync, touch UI and the $8Bn/year Surface line it enabled, improved security, hypervisor backed WSL Ubuntu and Android engines, Windows Sandbox, SSD TRIM support, Bitlocker full disk encryption, ClearType and improved fonts for screen reading, GPU accelerated compositor, face recognition biometric login, QR codes on BSODs, all of...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_7

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista#New_or_changed_f...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_8

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_10

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_11

... what have Microsoft added or changed in Windows since XP? btw I don't even use windows and I didn't want any of those things anyway.

Right, the problem is the difference between the DirectX/hardware support stuff on that list and the Cortana/app store stuff - I want the first part, and will pay for it, but I'm complaining that getting stuck with the second part is part of the price.

On the other hand, we have...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Wi...

That isn't really "the other hand". The claim I was rejecting was "Microsoft haven't done any development on Windows since XP". I say they have, and you also say they have.

Honest question - what features does Windows 11 have that I would want? I've never tried Windows 11, but I already hate how invasive Windows 10 is. What is your definition of "better" because if I weren't forced to upgrade to play modern games I would have never bought 10 (and I hate it even after years of using it and spending countless hours tweaking it to suck less but it still fucking sucks balls).

I feel like every time I "upgrade" Windows I hate it. And that hatred doesn't go away, it just gets normalized.

By better they mean it enables them to be more controlling and invasive in their employees' actions and personal lives.

so far the two features I would lack in older versions would be:

- “copy file path” in the context menu

- More Window tiling options

"Copy as Path" is definitely available in Win10, and probably older, just hidden under the Shift-RightClick context menu.

Windows keeps taking away useful features too though so either way you lose.

They took it away a long time ago, but i missed the option to arbitrarily arrange icons in folders (as you can on the desktop). It used to be very easy to sort through lots of files by moving them into piles of icons and then moving the piles into folders for example.

Also the ability to move items in the taskbar wherever you want. (for example, I want one of 8 open notepad documents moved to the end of the taskbar next to one of the 6 browser windows while all other notepad and browser windows are on the other side)

I don't know what you want, you might be happy with MSDOS for all I know. But Windows 11 has support for the 6ghz spectrum for WiFi 6(e) and WSLg support for doing ML/Cuda in WSL. Those are both of high interest to me. Otherwise Win 11 feels like a large step backwards.

I am curious, what games do not work on Windows 7 any more ?

Any games requiring directx 12.

Except WoW because Windows 7 is still popular in China and WoW is still not banned in China. Money talks, Dx 12 walks.

I am pretty sure that WoW, a game from 2004, doesn't require DirectX 12 ? (Heck, even with engine upgrades, they probably still support DirectX 9 ?)

>Blizzard added DirectX 12 support for their award-winning World of Warcraft game on Windows 10 in late 2018. This release received a warm welcome from gamers: thanks to DirectX 12 features such as multi-threading, WoW gamers experienced substantial framerate improvement. After seeing such performance wins for their gamers running DirectX 12 on Windows 10, Blizzard wanted to bring wins to their gamers who remain on Windows 7, where DirectX 12 was not available.

>At Microsoft, we make every effort to respond to customer feedback, so when we received this feedback from Blizzard and other developers, we decided to act on it. Microsoft is pleased to announce that we have ported the user mode D3D12 runtime to Windows 7. This unblocks developers who want to take full advantage of the latest improvements in D3D12 while still supporting customers on older operating systems

This doesn't say that Blizzard was about to abandon support for DirectX versions earlier than 12.

wow! nice

A2DP AAC support was my reason to upgrade. I hate taskbar.

From my anecdotal experience, Windows 11 works faster on the same work PC I used (up-to-date) Windows 10 on. And I didn't clean install, so it's not that kind of placebo.

> I don't think you can fairly compare XP and Windows 11 given how much more Windows 11 does than XP

Considering how much work it took to get wrangle 10 LTSE into a usable Win environment I'd much prefer the simple OS that stayed out of my hair than one that "does so much more" I didn't ask for.

I hope someday software is regulated as tightly as other consumer goods. Abusing one's position as the issuer of security updates to force choices, undesired changes, and bloat down user's throats shouldn't be possible; users should have the option to separate the two.

I'm aware that that seems like a tall ask given the state of "modern" software development, but that's its own can of worms.

There are zero features I need from Windows 11 that Windows XP didn't already have. The only reason I'm not still running XP is that security vulnerabilities in it are no longer being fixed.

Windows 2000 was peak Windows.

This. 2000 was perfect. No bloat except solitaire and minesweeper. Fast and stable <3

This ^^^ I miss Windows XP. I was one of the last holdouts, forced off because XP lost security updates and apps just wouldn't install on it anymore.

is that security vulnerabilities in it are no longer being fixed.

Are there? MS even released a fix quite recently for it.

On the other hand, I bet there are plenty more vulnerabilities in Windows 11 that still haven't been discovered yet.

> On the other hand, I bet there are plenty more vulnerabilities in Windows 11 that still haven't been discovered yet.

There probably are, but I'd rather have a bunch of vulnerabilities that nobody knows about yet, and that will be patched once people do learn, than slightly fewer vulnerabilities that everyone is constantly trying to exploit and that will be there forever.

and that will be there forever.

Don't be so certain --- the enthusiast community will fix them if they're important enough, even more so if they're ones that "everyone is constantly trying to exploit". Also, no one who knows what they're doing is going to be facing the Internet without a NAT or firewall that blocks incoming connections by default.

That means vendors should be legally forced to publish source code of any software they abandon / stoped providing support. Hope this will happen soon. Regarding Windows XP, full source code has been leaked already (not SP3 but close to recent).

The vast majority of security issues with XP (and some with 7) are architectural. E.g.: you can't fix some security vulnerability relating to GDI on XP without essentially replacing it with Vista/7's DWM. Conversely, 7 has a few security weaknesses compared to 8/8.1 due to missing kernel security features that are, essentially, a binary diff between 7 & 8 rather than a small patch.

"Updates" for XP POS Edition and the like are mostly support filler and don't bring it up to the same security level as a modern OS. I.e.: There's still a bunch of logical vulnerabilities present.

Local "vulnerabilities", if that's what you're referring to, are really not.

Privilege escalation is definitely a vulnerability, the same way you'd consider a Docker escape a vulnerability.

Can you give specific examples of these sorts of vulnerabilities?

Well XP didn't have HiDPI. I would have missed that with my 4K screen at 200% scaling. Even though they still screw it up to this very day.

Indeed, these lame comparisons are just as bad today as I remember them over 20 years ago when I was a young lad and Windows XP launched and everyone hated it thinking it would bomb (including me) because "why do I need this bloated OS with a colorful paintjob when Win98 does everything just fine?"

It's pretty hilarious to see history repeat itself at every new Windows launch. Rinse and repeat.

"Am I so out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong!"

What features would the average user miss out on? I'd go back to win7 in a heartbeat if I could, and I really don't remember a great difference between XP and 7 to begin with.

> XP is uncontrollable by comparison.

You could have an Active Directory domain full of Windows XP machines in 2001.

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