3 reasons people are moving from Windows 11 back to Windows 10 | Hacker News Reader

3 reasons people are moving from Windows 11 back to Windows 10

xda-developers.com

31 pointsthunderbong46 comments

This is surprising to me considering Windows 10's EOL is set to October 14, 2025. I was interested in upgrading to Windows 11 but unfortunately my PC's processor is apparently not capable of running it (Intel Core i7 4790K).

Any idea if Microsoft will extend the EOL? If they don't I'm strongly considering switching to Linux. Totally fed up with what Windows has become.

EDIT:

Looked it up, and Microsoft is willing to extend the security updates beyond 2025, for a price [1]

> Microsoft says an Extended Security Update (ESU) license for businesses will cost $61 per device for one year. That price will double every consecutive year, for up to three years.

[1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/microsoft-extends-security-update...

I stayed on Windows 7 well after Windows 10 was around. The real issue is not security updates, it's drivers. The last time I installed windows 7, I had to make my own custom boot disk to allow it to recognise my SSD drive, and I couldn't make it work with NVMe at all.

but unfortunately my PC's processor is apparently not capable of running it (Intel Core i7 4790K)

I have to wonder if there is some aspect of bluffing on their part. If the W11 image is burned with Rufus [1] some of the hardware checks can be disabled along with disabling the requirement for Microsoft accounts. What I also found interesting is that the Microsoft download page used to link to Rufus but then they removed the link. I am curious what conversation occurred internally.

[1] - https://rufus.ie/en/

Doesn't the CPU capability check come back and bite you when doing major (i.e. full image) updates, though, with Windows Update refusing to proceed? That's according to my experience when fiddling with a Windows 11 install on an outdated system, at least, but it could've been some other problem.

> Any idea if Microsoft will extend the EOL? If they don't I'm strongly considering switching to Linux. Totally fed up with what Windows has become.

I would suggest that you should just jump to Linux. Even if Windows 10 stays supported for longer, that's a temporary solution on an OS that already hates you, even if it's less blatant than 11.

>This is surprising to me considering Windows 10's EOL is set to October 14, 2025

Why would regular users really give a shit what a company says the EOL is for their operating system? They just want something that works.

I like some of the changes in Windows 11, I dislike others. I will keep it on my laptop (where the improved pen support makes it an easier decision) but I'm not entirely sure which I'll use for my next desktop.

Microsoft will announce new windows version before Windows 10 reaches EOL. They know what they are doing cause otherwise they'd be losing market share.

Protondb says that 99% of my games will run OK on Linux now, so when I build out a PC later this year, I think I'll finally make the leap to Linux on the desktop. I have to use Win 11 at work and I find it frustrating.

A very high percentage of my game collection works on proton (and a decent amount natively even) but my problem is that last couple of percent tends to be big games with the most play time which don't work because of anti cheat instead of technical reasons :/.

Go for it. I'm sure it depends on the games that you play, but for me, everything "just works" under Steam and Linux. I'm mostly 4G or builder-games, with some RPG like Baldur's Gate.

Work does use Microsoft stuff, and I do work from home a lot. However, everything is in the cloud now, which works just fine from Linux and Vivaldi or Firefox.

tl;dr: When I put together my new machine about 1-1/2 years ago, there was no longer a Windows partition. Haven't missed it...

I moved to Linux (Manjaro KDE) as my primary desktop OS about 3 years ago and it's been great. I'm a casual gamer and all of my Steam games run good on Linux. I run Windows 10 in a VM that I use occasionally for work stuff using MS Remote Desktop.

Serious question. I thought Windows 10 was supposed to be the last Windows? What happened that they are EOLing it and replacing it with Windows 11 and breaking processor compatibility on very capable processors?

XP was already the last one, yet we are up to 12 soon ;)

It's the last in the sense that it's mostly a rolling release with some major upgrades.

Thanks! Makes sense. The irony is in 2024, I have spent more time in Windows 3.1 in a QEMU virtual machine lovingly restoring retro games than I have in any modern Windows. I think I will soon have one of the few copy tower capable of reading 5.25 inch floppy disks when I build that system out with parts that have been stored in an air conditioned basement all these years. I'll eventually have to blog about this.

It is for at home, I bought a new mini PC that came with Windows 11 and I installed Ubuntu straight away.

Next step: request a refund for the Windows licence fee. I did this many years ago for a "Windows Home Server" licence, it took a while but I did get a refund. I had to send in the licence stickers and other Windows-paraphernalia that came with the machine and did so gladly, I already had a "designed for Windows XP" sticker on the toilet lid and a "designed for Windows Vista" one for the garbage can so I did not need more of such. The refund was around €60, not insubstantial for a device I bought for around €350,-. As said this is many years ago but I assume there is still some form of Windows licence fee included with your purchase?

Companies often say things and then some years later do something different than what they said. It’s not like these are legally binding statements.

Microsoft walked that claim back years ago.

Weird. Why is there not a fourth reason: integrated advertising everywhere?

Mentioned under point 3 in the piece.

Other than the approaching 14-Oct-2025 EOL (unless we want to pay for another year or two of support/patches), I'd definitely consider it

They've made the Start menu far less usable. Worse, they eliminated the ability to move the task bar to the Top (for me) or Side positions of the screens; it's still noticeably inconvenient years after switching — VERY annoying. And the cruft on the desktop, force-pinning XBox (which I have never used even once) to the taskbar... I'm fairly locked into Windows with some CAD software, but turning it into their advertising platform is becoming a serious problem

AI? I subscribe to ChatGPT and use it frequently. But I want it to stay in it's own sandbox, not be spread all over the OS. Unless they make some extremely innovative and useful app for it, keep it there; I don't want the hit it'll take on the CPU, memory, or my attention.

Yeah, the taskbar changes remain most upsetting to me. I've used a right hand task bar since Windows XP, so it's constant, weird upset every time I'm on a Windows 11 machine and can't put it back "where it is supposed to be".

It is alleged that one of the reasons to lock the taskbar to the bottom was to make it feel more like the Mac OS X Dock, but the Dock has allowed you to move it to either of the sides (but not the top, I don't think? Because of the weird old Menu bar?) for a long time. If Microsoft is trying to badly copy cat the Mac, I'm half wondering if it is time to invest in a "real" Mac.

> AI? I subscribe to ChatGPT and use it frequently. But I want it to stay in it's own sandbox, not be spread all over the OS. Unless they make some extremely innovative and useful app for it, keep it there; I don't want the hit it'll take on the CPU, memory, or my attention.

I'm something of a skeptic about AI, but the upcoming AI changes in Windows 11 don't currently scare me. Windows Copilot is just the new, more boring name for Cortana. Same keyboard shortcut. Same button location. Newer, uglier icon. Many of the old features, plus some new LLM features. Way less of it runs on your physical hardware than Cortana did (Microsoft can't ship a full LLM model with Windows, that would be a massive number of GBs that people would yell about if they tried), so most of the "hit" on CPU/memory is in the "Cloud". I can't speak to how much hit it'll take on your attention, though.

Yes, on the AI, I'm not so worried about the UI (as you say, it'd piggyback off Cortana), unless they make it an aggressive form of Clippy, always trying to "help". I'd be OK with a local version as long as the multi-GB download was optional (I'd prefer it to having to login to a MS acct, which I've so far avoided). One thing I did think of, is if they could have an intelligent super-search, it'd be really cool, like "find the pictures of my nephew playing tennis" or "who was the person I emailed a few years ago about the suspension upgrades for my car" or "find all my spreadsheets with weight workouts on volume D:".

> unless they make it an aggressive form of Clippy

I'm starting to think that I'd prefer that to Copilot branding. It started as a joke, but the more I think about it the more I think the LLMs should be represented as cartoonish idiots with a face you want to punch, and that we are going exactly backwards in the branding from Clippy to Cortana to Copilot. As the text gets too easy to anthropomorphize as "human-like" I think we need the visual reminder that it is still a grandiloquent idiot. We should have been making the visual brands of these things more cartoonish and less serious, rather than the other way around.

Now is the time for a Bonzi Buddy to reign.

Of course, I'm a bit of an Microsoft Agent apologist having programmed quite a few weird things with it in High School that obviously didn't survive bit-rot. I really want to see the fun (and maybe unhinged) things that an LLM would do if it was trained to produce scripts for the Agent cartoon characters.

I generally smile, sourly, to people "coming back" to some software project, no matter witch. Sw is not a product, it can't be, sw is not an isolated thing, it works with the rest of the world so it's not possible to "switch back" or "stick with the old" for more than a certain, small, amount of time.

The way to get nice sw for our needs is being part of it, Windows is a Microsoft game, so it's designed for Microsoft needs and targets, people have to learn that's one of the main reason we need FLOSS. Commercial sw is a product or a service and so it's something can't match the users interests for more than a casual amount of time.

We can deny that, it's decades so many deny, and we see the horrific results but sooner or later change happen anyway, and the more people wait the long they suffer.

I see Windows 10 support ending October 14, 2025

If the Windows 10 base is growing, will they extend this? My machine is capable of running Windows 10, but because of some bios setting, Windows says my machine is not capable.

I am happy to stick with Windows 10 as long as possible.

I never witnessed a new Windows version being faster than the previous one.

It did happen when migrating from Windows 7 to Windows 8. At least in terms of boot times, I'm unsure about general performance.

windows 8 lasted about a week for me, then was the prompt that i took to toss it all away and swig deeply of the gnu koolaid.

i still have one w7 system to work with older machines, but its no more interesting than a screwdriver.

Same experience here. On a little netbook, Windows 8 had a small but noticeable performance boost over Windows 7.

I don't know. I'm not a heavy Windows user, only boot it from time to time to play some game or fiddle around in Photoshop.

On my 4th gen-equivalent Xeon I saw a noticeable increase in perceived snappiness. This wasn't even a fresh install, but an upgrade from win10 with a "patched" installer that would allow me to use my "unsupported" pc.

Even on a newer laptop it feels very snappy for most desktop interactions.

Windows 10 was a clear downgrade compared to 7, everything just felt laggy. I've never used 8 to be able to compare.

Now I'm not saying windows 11 is great, mind. There are still are a boatload of rough edges, especially around the new UI. It's just that "it's slow" is not one of the reasons why I'd never daily drive windows.

Upgrading to Windows 7 from XP on my netbook surprisingly ran a lot smoother, also fixed a driver issue I had with the audio. In general though I notice no changes to performance between Windows versions, partly because the system requirements for Windows is so tiny to begin with (since it's designed to run on even old laptops).

Wait for windows 12 as is the norm.

I don't see the point. Windows 11 offers additional features over 10 and it feels very slightly faster.

If I wasn't gaming, I would just use Linux anyway.

Depending on how you game and what games you play, steam + proton works really well on Linux.

The issue for me is that Microsoft is increasingly desperate for Windows to become a tablet OS. This is leading to a lot of design choices that make it annoying to use on the desktop.

This is on top of desperate monitization schemes that cram advertising in the start menu.

I only keep it around for games at this point. It’s been thoroughly enshittified

My computer doesn't meet the requirements for Windows 11 so I opted to stay on Windows 10 until support ran out. Then, as Windows does, the performance and reliability of my computer just started to deterioate more and more. A few weeks ago I completely wiped the system drive and did a fresh install of Ubuntu 24.04. Microsoft can pound sand I'm never buying a Microsoft product ever again.

Proton has been playing the steam games I've tried either just as good or even better in certain cases than Windows, which was the only thing keeping me on Windows anyway. Good riddance.

I got a Steam Deck last year and it really opened my eyes to how far along gaming on Linux has come. Even a crash-riddled game like Fallout: New Vegas runs more smoothly than it ever did in Windows.

Yeah, I"m planning on getting one as well - the switch has made me realize how great having "real" games on a portable platform is - just waiting for a hardware refresh.

I was contemplating to upgrade to Windows 11 but I took the plunge and moved to Linux instead. No issues whatsoever - the games I play work with Steam compatability mode or just natively. The work I do is mostly in the browser.

I have an Alienware system and the Bluetooth on Windows is driving me insane. It's been a quarter century, Microsoft - get it to work.

Just yesterday I spent about 25 minutes and gave up. "Oh, so it's paired but there is no sound? I need to dig up that legacy settings window where I force the headphones to be the output device. Where did that thing go? It used to work. Hmmm... Let me try removing the device and then going into Sound settings and ADDING a new output device. It worked!"

A few seconds later it just disconnected again. Tried that like six times.

Overall, Windows enshitification has been hard and fast.

This is the main reason I haven't upgraded my headset that included a USB dongle.

I've been trying to use my Google pixel buds and it's the same garbage experience you're mentioning. Random disconnects, output/input device swapping, and if you're using MS Teams or a video game that controls the devices it's a nightmare...

The state of Bluetooth on Windows is just an absolute nightmare. My job is building a widget that streams realtime data over Bluetooth from a Windows system. It's so bad that we've totally given up on thr native Bluetooth drivers and are implementing our own stack with an external Bluetooth chip over USB.

If you build an application which scans for Bluetooth devices, the native windows Bluetooth pairing menu no longer functions. We have to stop our application before Windows will show or pair anything. Many functions just don't work, like some of the device descriptor messages. We had to do a thing where we connect to any device that appears to be ours and ask it what it is. If a device disconnects, windows takes up to 15 seconds to fire a disconnect event. There's no way to tell if a device is actually present, you just try to connect to it and catch the exception when it fails.

Windows also can't do Bluetooth audio sink and source simultaneously. On Windows 7 or any Linux distro since 2010 you cab play music on one device, pipe it into your computer and back out through a different bluetooth device.

It would be laughable if it weren't costing me money and sanity.

Well, to be fair, bluetooth is pretty shit on Linux as well. I've spent many hours over the last 10 years specifically tinkering with bluetooth on Linux. Admittedly, it's gotten better, but definitely not great.

Years of work wasted because it is not better than nothing.

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