Windows 12: Savior of PC makers, or just an apology for Windows 11? | Hacker News Reader

Windows 12: Savior of PC makers, or just an apology for Windows 11?

theregister.com

31 pointsLinuxBender57 comments

Windows 11 could cause one of the biggest environmental disasters in recent computer industry history.

I have a 2013 desktop which can't run Windows 11, it's still on 10. What will happen when 10 is end of life? The desktop is plenty for non-professional usage - 4c/8t, 32 GB RAM, SSD.

There are tons of computers like this one, very few actually need the power of a recent computer.

> Windows 11 could cause one of the biggest environment disasters in recent computer industry history.

That would be the case if there was vendor lockdown on the hardware to only ever support Windows. Thankfully, for most people, this isn’t the case and Linux exists.

It's delusional to think that people will move to Linux. Not calling you out specifically, but this common refrain "move to Linux" will not happen on aggregate. Just as it didn't happen until now.

It happened for some of us. The arrival of Windows 10 coincided with most of the essential business software we need having at least a web-based version if not being entirely online. That was enough to drop Windows after 7 and move to Linux for our next generation.

As always the availability and quality of the required software to run on your chosen OS is what really matters. Luckily we're in development where the tools on Linux are easily comparable to and frequently better than the tools on Windows. I doubt people working in some of the other creative industries would say the same though.

It's a shame the free and open nature of Linux is also its Achilles heel because it creates a reputation - which is at least partly justified - that trying to sell commercial Linux applications isn't likely to work out. If we look at what happened after Adobe went subscription-only with Creative Suite/Cloud we see that several credible competitors arrived within a few years on Windows and macOS but none of them has been ported to Linux. Even relatively small and fast-moving commercial software companies don't think there are enough potential paying customers on Linux to justify the investment.

That's a huge problem for greater adoption because it creates a chicken-and-egg paradox. Maybe a more free and open business model like crowdsourcing could at least cover some of the bigger gaps like graphics software. But if anything some of the recent developments in Linux - like the X/Wayland fragmentation - might be making it a harder target for GUI applications that would have the necessary mass market appeal to shift users in larger numbers and not just attract the techies.

Adobe is on record saying something like "people say to us they want Photoshop on Linux, but when we ask them how much they would pay they say 'what do you mean pay? software is free on Linux'"

Sure, but some people will.

For the rest though, they'll either stick with their old computer past the EOL of Win10 or they'll get a different computer. Or maybe install a USB based TPM.

That disaster won't happen. MS and everyone knows that if the limit was hard, then people would just stay on win 10, making them look bad.

But of course it turned out that the limits are artificial, not a hard technical requirement. A few registry hacks, and Win 11 is happy on old hardware.

It is more a security nightmare than an environmental one.

I have no idea what MS will do when 20% of online computers no longer recieve security patches, but most people won't throw out unsupported machines.

What is also interesting is that somehow this is a giant outrage (6-7-8 years of support, a few more if you consider that for a new 11 install the reqs are not as strict), but Apple has been doing this for basically the last 10 years for Macs more or less.

Unpopular opinion: I like Win11 (that district which is bloatware-lite) and running shutup10 to fully uninstall Cortana, ShatGPT, and disable the extra sneaky telemetry and privacy nightmares… can’t complain.

>> fully uninstall Cortana

>> disable the extra sneaky telemetry and privacy nightmares

Does that require a rinse and repeat at every monthly Windows Update?

The article isn't very critical of Windows 11. It simply points out that many consumers didn't feel like it was a compelling upgrade if it meant upgrading their computer as well. Then you have the usual inertia with Windows. This isn't the first time Microsoft has put out a less than compelling upgrade.

As a rule of thumb, every second release is a turd. Windows 8 was a turd. Windows 10 was quite good. Windows 11 seems to walk, talk, and smell like a turd.

I too like windows 11. From a UX perspective it's much better than Windows 10. Chop out the unnecessary bits and it's a solid contender.

What makes Win11 bad is precisely those unnecessary bits, though. Sure, Win11 is perfectly fine if you take the time to de-crapify it. But the point is that your OS should not come with crapware out of the box! Windows used to not need that, and there's no excuse for MS adding all the consumer hostile crap they have added in recent years.

In practice, for most people who had an OEM install, it did. Now the crapware is standard, which makes automated removal tools viable. This is an improvement over googling processes you didn't recognize to see if it had an uninstaller.

There are a lot of improvements in 11, but for me, the bad outweighs the good. My primary computer is a Mac, but my primary Windows machine runs 7 and I have 10 and 11 in VMs only for testing.

Win11 has lots of handy features, the font rendering is better than win10 which makes things very nice. The only thing that really ticks me off is the toolbar, but theres many replacements to fix that issue.

You really shouldn't need to run replacements which, from an OS perspective, mean that there's a critical UI / UX failing.

Eh you’ll never satisfy everyone. Every major OS has UI tweak tools available from third parties

The fact that you have to de-bloat and strip the telemetry is really at odds with saying Win11 is a "good" operating system.

Enjoy things that are bad, nothing wrong with that, but don't try to convince that they're actually good.

You've had to debloat Windows for multiple versions now. The argument isn't Windows vs Linux here. It's windows 10 vs 11.

No, the argument was whether Win11 is "good" or not - that's independent of whether Win10 is "good" (or better), or whether some flavor of Linux is better than either one.

> shutup10

"Microsoft Partner"

Windows 11 was tough in the beginning - the loss of customization points compared to 10, specifically the start menu, but they slowly started adding that stuff back in (folders, adjustable real estate for pinned apps) after we cried loudly and long enough. On the whole I prefer Windows 11 current build over Win 10. The one thing that still seems like massive technical debt is the control panel vs. settings. Clearly that must be harder to clean up than you’d think.

My guess is that settings panel is a case of no one knows how the old code works due to decades of backwards compatibility, so it’s been a slow port to new code.

The pattern of MS releasing badly received OS every other major release is well known. XP -> hit, Vista -> miss, Windows -> 7 hit, Windows 8 -> miss, Windows 10 -> hit, Windows 11 miss. With this track record, it's not surprising people expect Windows 12 to be good...

I love this meme. It's one of my favorites. But Win10 was actually a turd and Win11 was a polished turd with a stinky one of an ad-on: more ads and more fingerprinting.

I xpect Win12 to be more turd and Win13 to be diarrhea.

I was going to post the same. Calling Win10 a hit is a gross exaggeration. It was pretty much universally hated at release.

And largely still is. There was mass resistance to leaving windows 7 which was the last release they basically worked like people had learned to use it.

Getting stuff like user mode drivers and bitlocker and all the is nice but almost nothing had been added to the core product that users themselves much cared about.

3d object collections pinned to opening labels and the only way to get rid of it is registry hacks. Who was that "feature" ever even for?

I think you guys must be in an echo chamber of Windows 10 hate. By and large almost everyone I know who is remotely techy, and even some who aren't actually like Win 10

My work laptop has been on 10 LTSC for years. I don't "hate it" but I've never heard anyone talk about liking it so much as tolerating it to run the stuff they care about.

Maybe it's super great on those surface tablets but all the techy people I know using tablets on are iPads.

It was less hated than 8 at release, so by comparison it was loved

Does 10 really have less ads and telemetry, though? 10 is still getting updates and a lot of annoying "features" seem to get back ported (like the "fact of the day" thing in the search bar that always opens Bing), and I've never seen any proof that 11 actually does collect even more data than 10.

Not defending 11 here, it's just that 10 was pretty ill received here an hn and ever since 11 came out, the opinions suddenly changed, which seems a bit weird to me.

Was XP really a hit? I remember rejecting it in favour of SP4 for Windows 2000 for the longest time. It was only once XP SP2 dropped in 2004 that it became usable

Compared to Windows ME, I remember it as a hit. Windows 2000 was a homerun though

The student edition was particularly well received around campuses

XP SP2 was a huge hit. And it had a long run after it dropped until 7 was released (many people skipped vista)

For consumers, XP had most of the stability of 2000 but the drivers and game compatibility of 98. While I loved 2000 as a huge improvement over 98, I really liked XP and found it (relatively) trouble free and resource light.

Yes, XP was a hit. It was perfectly usable, and quite popular, well before SP2.

I remember similar things. Running Windows 2000, even going back to Win98 on my first PC (shipped with XP before SP1) and also running Windows 2003 Server at some point, all just to avoid XP. After SP2, it was fine.

This conveniently misses out versions such as 2000, ME, and 8.1. The "miss" of Vista can also be largely attributed to lazy hardware manufacturers that didn't want to rewrite their device drivers.

2000 -> hit, ME -> miss, XP -> hit, Vista -> miss, 7 -> hit, 8 -> miss, 10 -> hit, 11 -> miss

8.1 is more like a SP for 8.

That should cover all the major desktop releases for the past 23 years.

XP needed a few service packs to be really good. It broke everything at launch because of the kernel switchover. By SP3, most software was caught up or covered by compatibility layers.

Windows 2000 doesn't really count any more than WinNT 3.x or WinNT 4 do as they were for business use and weren't very popular on desktops.

Win1 -> miss, Win2 -> miss, Win3 -> better, Win3.1 -> hit, Win95 -> ok, Win98[SE] -> hit, WinME -> miss, WinXP -> hit, ...

The tragedy here is that there's nothing particularly wrong with Windows 11.

Unless you give a hoot about keeping control of your own equipment and the consequent effects on security, privacy, reliability, and usability?

Win 12 is neither of what the title posits. It's just the next branded bundle of the same Windows rolling release that they are doing since they decided to run with the NT kernel and make that the main one. The rest of it is just fluff, branding, business deals, PR and things like that.

Linux is the savior.

None of the software I use runs on it, and no equivalents are available for it. No, not even the list you want to rattle off if I name specific tools.

I don't want to rattle off any list. Works for me for my needs.

Wake me when Windows offers a real-time kernel.

Then why overstate it?

It isn't an overstatement when there's countless Linux-first hardware brands popping up lately. Likewise when the Steam Deck happens and major brands start offering first-party Linux support and even an install option out of the box for Linux. You're understating and downplaying what's happening.

Valve dropped support for macOS on Steam. There are more Linux users than there are macOS users.

The few Windows apps I need can be run on Linux using Wine or a VM. There is no need to put up with Microsoft Windows' crap to run a few Windows apps. You should like someone who has only ever used Windows and are afraid of trying something else in case it's better.

I've used Linux for decades and still use it where it's the right choice. I do actually know what I'm talking about.

they will bloat it more with copilot/edge/online/office/onedrive services so it will be shit like everything else. why can't they focus on core windows making it stable, fast and everything else optional, ah, it's MS, it's impossible to have it my way, they will do it their way, that's why I asked for M2PRO this year in my company and I'm delighted how good it is. Middle finger to MS.

> why can't they focus on core windows making it stable, fast and everything else optional

Could it be that Linux makes competing on core stability a losing game?

When I started seeing sports scores on the Windows start menu was my last straw.

Haven’t looked back since.

> The consensus seems to be that Windows 12 will arrive sometime next year. Microsoft's hardware partners are expecting it.

Going to need to see some evidence on that one, chief.

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