Unofficial Windows 11 requirements bypass tool allows disabling all AI features | Hacker News Reader

Unofficial Windows 11 requirements bypass tool allows disabling all AI features

neowin.net

220 pointspinewurst172 comments

There is something so fundamentally gross about Microsoft's vision of what role an operating system should serve. That there is an aftermarket of software that attempts to disable (but cannot remove!) the invasive dark patterns is alarming enough, but Microsoft may simply just... undo that, with the next unstoppable update.

Then again, this is the company that answered complaints about Windows being bad for development by embedding an OS that is good for development and calling that an innovation rather than an acknowledgement that Windows is bad.

> answered complaints about Windows being bad for development by embedding an OS that is good for development and calling that an innovation

Well, they actually did it twice in recent history: WSL 1 was relatively innovative, integrating Linux application compatibility into the Windows operating system itself. But that turned out to still be bad for development because it meant Linux software was now subjected to the performance problems of the Windows IO stack. So they responded with WSL 2, an ordinary Linux VM. And separately they also introduced the "Dev Drive" feature to let you create a filesystem that bypassed the worst parts of the Windows IO stack.

> WSL 1 was relatively innovative, integrating Linux application compatibility into the Windows operating system itself

Both FreeBSD and Illumos were running Linux applications (at various levels of compatibility) many years prior to wsl v1. Joyent even went as far as re-implementing the Docker api to allow running OCI images natively in LX zones. Hence, it wasn't even that novel of an idea.

Achieving it on Windows was fairly novel, though: we hadn't had something like that since the XP days.

Even that’s not true. cygwin, mingw, and others have been around for decades.

Those are runtime environments provided by DLLs (requiring recompilation), not Wine-like translation layers. WSL 1 was something special, and it says something that Microsoft ditched it in favour of "we've invented virtual machines for the very first time!!!".

It’s been a while since I’ve played with Cygwin and I do recall there were a lot of stuff compiled for Windows, but couldn’t it also run Linux software run natively too?

Admittedly back then I was working for a place that mainly developed in Perl, so I didn’t port a whole lot of ELFs across. So maybe I’m misremembering

I had to confirm this, but you are misremembering. https://www.sobyte.net/post/2021-11/cygwin-mingw-msys/ gives a good rundown.

Ahhh. It must just have been shell scripts, Perl and the likes that I ran under cygwin then.

Thanks for correction

When I was on the team migrating datacenters, we got ahold of tcpdump.exe which didn't need winpcap presumably because it was staticly compiled under cygwin - I'm fairly certain someone didn't write the entire thing including winpcap from scratch.

It was nice because getting anything approved by the windows sysadmin group was like changing the tire on a moving truck.

It was more than a godsend, because when a windows server was plugging into "the wrong vlan" we could just give them the tcpdump command to capture a CDP/LLDP packet and tell us which switch and port the box was physically connected to.

A lot of software from the Linux/UNIX world will have macros to support Windows even without cygwin.

For example with tcpdump:

https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Athe-tcpdump-group%2Ftcpdu...

So it’s not quite the same thing as what we were discussing further up the thread. Though it’s still an interesting anecdote in its own right.

What's interesting is that the syscall-compatibility layers in the BSDs began with SunOS binary compat on NetBSD m68k/32-bit sparc-- which was created by Theo de Raadt.

https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=161435521906992&w=2

https://github.com/NetBSD/src/commit/6ce3f21

https://github.com/NetBSD/src/commit/1a68594

He also came to the same conclusion compat layers were a dead end (OpenBSD removed all compat_*(8) support, including Linux).

That’s arguably an easy task though because there is more commonality due to POSIX.

But there are plenty of examples of compatibility layers like this throughout computing history. WINE, cygwin, Linux compat, etc.

Microsoft even went down this road already in the 80s with Xenix before abandoning the idea of Unix.

The only novel part of WSL was the marketing folks

Microsoft had a POSIX personality on NT since its release in 1993.

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

Then with the release of XP it was replaced with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX

NT running POSIX applications pre-dates the existence of FreeBSD by a handful of months.

The interesting thing about WSLv1 is the pico process concept, not the syscall compatibility.

This begs the question of why Microsoft doesn’t just transition Windows to being a commercial Linux distribution, especially now that Windows licenses are so much less important to Microsoft’s business than they used to be.

That'd be a lot of work for no gain and substantial loss of control (due to GPL). How are they going to force adverts onto people if it becomes easy to just run a script to remove them?

Android is technically Linux, but you still can't remove the ads because it's all very locked down.

You can remove the ads from Android in a similar fashion to how you'd remove ads in Windows (e.g. DNS blocking). However, if you've got root access to Android, then there's other methods available to you. Some phones don't allow you access to root mode, but presumably a Windows version of Linux wouldn't be running on locked hardware (or at least I wouldn't buy something like that).

It’s just as easy to run a script to remove them on Windows but most people don’t do that.

I would say that this vision of Windows would involve Microsoft essentially producing a Linux graphical shell similar to Gnome and KDE with a bunch of convenience tools that are typical to the Windows experience. It would have defaults like the Bing brower and all the typical Windows revenue-generating stuff.

I don’t think the GPL requirement to release code is a problem for the business model. Not all of the tooling has to be released as GPL and even if some of it does, the brand and commercial partnerships of Windows will mean that most people don’t go out and replace Windows with the hypothetical de-commercialized version.

We see this with VSCode where Microsoft is totally fine to release the code with an even more permissive license than the GPL, but they keep the extension marketplace gated. If you want Microsoft’s extensions you have to use VSCode.

What people are asking on this thread, that Microsoft just move everything to a Linux distro, is a gargantuan task. It will not happen in 10 years. It might not happen in 20 years but mark my words. Windows will switch to Linux within our lifetime.

The realistic way I see it happening is more like a product split rather than an explicit migration, or leveraging compatibility layers.

One day Microsoft would say, hey, Windows 15 is Linux-based. It'll run most of your Windows stuff either natively with some nice developer tooling to make a transition or using a compatibility layer (which, as we know, Linux already has!)

But you can keep using Windows 14 for a very, very long time.

They allow these aftermarket products to work/exist as long as they remain niche. It keeps a select audience that would have jumped ship on Windows.

The moment these 'solutions' would get mainstream traction they will be shut down.

The ability to change the installed components or configuration of Windows via OOBE has been around since NT4, at least. These tools are nothing new nor novel; they're required for companies that want to have a custom image and removing default components is one of the more common things to do.

…except for the inconvenient fact that Windows is the most developed-for (and thus developed-on) desktop OS in the world.

Linux is catching up (mostly in gaming) but nothing comes close to the amount of engineer-hours poured into building Windows desktop apps.

It's interesting you have to hedge it with "desktop" OS and the reason that's interesting is that desktops are mostly irrelevant.

Microsoft has their niche, which is offices. This used to be the main application of computers, but now it is just a very large niche.

The overwhelming majority of computer interactions are Android clients talking to Linux servers.

Desktops aren’t irrelevant. Desktops run llvm and Xcode and Excel and Autocad and Blender and Premiere and After Effects and a thousand others that are absolutely essential to designing, producing, testing, and marketing the thousand complex products you use daily.

Just because lots of people use their phones primarily doesn’t mean that desktop computers aren’t responsible for producing literally trillions of dollars of shit every month. All those mobile apps? Developed and built and tested on desktops. The mobile phones themselves? Designed and built and QA’d using desktops. The payroll for the 200,000 people in the supply chain to get them to you? Desktops.

The power grid. Airline reservation systems. CNC mills. MRI machines. Mortgage underwriting. Computer factories. Pick-n-place machines. These aren’t run off phones.

You get the idea. Real business runs on real computers, still, no matter how many billions spend how many hours playing Candy Crush.

True. And it’s baffling to see the flak it gets on here

It’s not baffling. The OS was always sort of bad, and under the current Microsoft leadership of the last dozen years it has gone to absolute and total shit.

It’s bordering on unusable. There is no amount of money you could pay me to daily-drive the current release of consumer windows.

I have no opinion on Windows Apps, but as a Developer, Windows Applications gives me nothing that is better than what Linux has. In fact, for development Linux (or BSD) is what developers should use.

In fact, I was trying to convince developers at work (fortune 500 company) to move from Windows to Linux for a long time, only 1 person moved.

For a bit of cruel fun, have a Finance person use Libreoffice scalc instead of Excel. Doing that is probably the worse thing you can do to a Finance person, I think after a few days of that, they will end up in ICU.

FWIW, we were allowed to use RHEL, Fedora or Ubuntu on our workstations instead of Windows.

Win32 gives you a stable ABI.

The Linux kernel also has a stable API, glibc has it, most proper libraries have it. The problem on Linux is not that a single tool doesn't have a stable API, but that the tool changes. But that's kind-of like complaining that Windows doesn't have a stable API, when you replace it with macOS.

glibc does not have a stable api on the timescales we are speaking about it here, and neither do any of the GUIs on linux. you are sort of moving the goalposts here.

you cannot take a compiled gui app for linux from 20 years ago and run it on a modern system and have it work. on windows it will work just fine.

not to bring out that old trope, but windows is an OS (and desktop environment) - linux is a kernel. you know what they meant, and your rebuttal isn’t one.

also, GP clearly said ABI and you jumped to API - one is much harder than the other.

So does ReactOS.

This pattern is actually how I decide whether or not a piece of software is worthwhile. First Windows install, what do you do? spend an hour or so attempting to disable or remove all the junk being pushed on you and fix terrible default settings. It's been a while for me with Windows, so I haven't had to battle with the online account requirement, Onedrive, etc. But, the general pattern remains. If an OS or software is just packed with stuff that's hostile to you, then it's either got to go (Windows) or be minimized as much as as is feasible. (smartphones & apps) This is actually what turned me off Ubuntu. It's not even close to being as bad as Windows, but I realized that on a fresh install I was attempting to get rid of snaps and the "buy premium" message when running apt, and a couple of other things.

If something is being pushed on me, it's obviously bad for me, and good for the pusher.

I don't think the notion is always true of something being pushed on you automatically being bad for you. I agree that Windows is very user hostile, but something like mandatory updates where you cannot defer forever are good for less technical folks who, prior to this policy, were never updating and we had huge problems with botnets and malware running on people's machines. In a way it is like herd immunity where you benefit a bit from these botnet malware rings being less prominent than the past thanks to aggressive auto updates, even if you personally hate the policy and it's an annoyance to you. Or for another similar example, people going to remote parts of the world to vaccinate people to eradicate diseases like polio - things can be pushed on you, sometimes aggressively, and they can be a net benefit.

That being said, I do agree that windows is user hostile and i won't run it myself.

> I agree that Windows is very user hostile, but something like mandatory updates where you cannot defer forever are good for less technical folks

Maybe if those were only security updates. Windows pushes new features, new crap, and re-enables and re-installs (!) stuff you've removed via this path as well.

I sometimes wonder what's really in that Candy Crush binary.

Honestly, probably just Candy Crush. Lets be real, if Microsoft wanted to hide code somewhere, the world is literally their oyster, they don't need to Trojan Horse it into a game.

at least for now, I just make sure that any internet connection is "metered" to avoid updates + use an LTSC build + use a bunch of winhawk + openshell to make it...usable :(

ms is def at the point of major enshitification

Microsoft should create a new windows option in addition to Home, Professional and Pro and call this one "Windows OPTIMAL" They can price this 3x if they want but it has 0 bloatware, 0 telemetry or atleast everything can be disabled at the time of installation. It is literally windows designed from the ground up for maximum performance, runs as smooth as windows 7 or xp used to back in the good old days

They wont as it would be admitting their 'normal' offering is anti-consumer.

Also, this is also the case with ad-disabling subscriptions, the people who have the disposable income to buy non-ad versions are the most interesting to a lot of advertisers.

While I agree, when was the last time you bought something because you saw it advertised in Windows?

Never. I haven't used Windows since... 3.11 :p.

Most people think ads don't make them buy things, but they still do. It's just not as direct as seeing the ad so you click on the ad and buy the thing. (Sometimes it's that direct and advertisers love it, but not usually)

You're thirsty. Do you want a Coke or an Africola? Coke obviously - what the heck is Africola? Why do you want a Coke? Because you saw the Coke logo everywhere since birth.

To be fair, I've taken part in blind tests here and coke is by far the best option, though that is definitely partially due to it having been the default correct option for all my life

That might be true, for very specific market dominating companies, but these wouldn't really need any new advertisement. I'm not going to forget anytime soon, that CocaCola exists.

For all the other companies its exactly the other way around. I will see products of a company, I know bothers me when I want to do something else, and a bunch of products I have no (negative) opinion yet. Guess which products I will evaluate?

For an ad to leave a good impression it must be actually good, otherwise it achieves exactly the opposite. People used to buy advertisements, the ad industry destroyed this, by forcing people to look at ads. People don't like being forced.

for no telemetry and half the bloatware you can always use the enterprise version. it's also (n)x the price. there also the iot version which is more stripped down and get only security updates, no features updates or other craps.

I don't think we will ever see a new version the way you described it, the amount of information Microsoft get from spying and telemetry is so much more profitable they even gave 10/11 for free.

i want to be able to run games on it without a 100 programs running in the background. if Microsoft engineers really put their mind to it, they could create such an OS offering dedicated for gaming with literally nothing consuming your CPU and FPS except the game you are running

BigTech arent interested in developing efficient products while they have a captive audience.

Have you seen the Xbox handheld os? They said they had incredible performance uplift just from tweaking windows.

Have you tried gaming on Linux? There really isn’t much reason not to these days. I find it difficult to find games that don’t work in Linux these days.

Much as it bothers me, this is not remotely true for the most popular online multiplayer games. Invasive anti-cheat rootkits being okie doke on Windows.

Many anti-cheat tools are available on Linux, more than you might think.

Is this whatever they are running on the Xbox you are looking for?

isn’t this IoT LTSC?

thats what i use it for, comes with no new feature updates (which is sometimes annoying as some software depends on some Windows feature updates) and you have to buy 5x licences- and its more expensive. but it works.

I just searched and it appears that contrary to what I thought, it is possible to individually acquire Windows 11 Enterprise (IoT or non-IoT) LTSC licenses from some redistributors.

The price varies a lot from suprisingly cheap ($7.7, is buykeysoft.com legit?) to a bit expensive but acceptable (~200 CHF). I'll definitely use these when I'm setting up my new desktop in the future.

The issue I tend to have with redistributors is that ultimately: it might not end up being a valid license.

What's the difference between outright piracy and buying an invalid (but functioning) CD key? Legally: nothing.

If a key is minted to be used only in certain areas or for certain purposes (healthcare, education) and it's sold to me- I don't have a right to use it.

That's the really annoying thing about these CD key online things, they give the illusion of doing the right thing but ultimately it's the same issue.

Truthfully I don't think any of us will be audited, but it's an annoying situation I continually see. People think just because money changed hands that they're legal.

I was thinking a lot about it as I don't want to put anything illegal on my computer. OTOH, the only way to buy an older version (in my case, Office 2016 for Mac) is to use a reseller. I try to do a research, I try to find a reputable one, I receive an invoice, I install and active the software, it works, but in the end it's as you say - there is no certainty at all.

But in the end I'm fine with that. First, the vendor is no longer selling this product, second, there is only that much one can do.

I mean this in the nicest possible way: why do you care so much about not putting something illegal on your computer?

Just morally I feel like MS do deserve to be compensated for me using what they developed, unless there is really no way to make it happen.

There's always https://massgrave.dev/

Already exists, just not to the normies.

IoT LTSC.

Works like a charm and no bloat.

Can I run this on my laptop?

Yep!

It will also miss feature upgrades and so can be slower than the main distribution. It's probably fine if you don't play games.

If anything feature upgrades will make your computer slower.

There is no universe in which LTSC is slower than the regular release.

Feature updates only add more bloat and slow down the system.

no-one wants "feature upgrades"

windows was feature complete with Windows 2000

It's fine even if you play games. When the time comes, you'll get the update and do the update manually.

This is what I use in a VM on my Linux host whenever I need to run something Windows.

I don't game and all my software is cross platform. Windows still has a few things I miss, programs like notepad++ (for which there's no true Linux equivalent), and portable apps (with Linux equivalents not really coming close, but understandably so).

Windows really is a broken OS solely set up for spying on users.

Notepad++ is seems like it has a pretty high Wine compatibility? https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=applicatio...

Wine has a very small font in interface. Can something be done with it?

Not that I’ve used Wine recently, but this seems to be the exact problem and solution? https://askubuntu.com/q/1313791

If you like the KDE tools, Kate is a pretty good replacement for Notepad++. It's a very fast native Qt program with a familiar look and feel.

Notepad++ can only exists on OS like windows (I think macos has bbedit?). By the time people really need all the feature in Notepad++, they’ve already learned Vim or Emacs. And the basic editors in Linux DE are way more useful than Notepad.

NotepadNext is a damn near perfect Linux clone of NP++.

>programs like notepad++

Sublime text

CudaText is replacement for NP++. Main disadvantage - Spell Checker plugin is much slower. But many advantages.

I have to use Windows for some things, and that's the version I have installed for that. I was a bit concerned at first, I thought I would find that some things didn't work. I've had zero issues though, highly recommend it. (No idea how it works for gaming.)

LTSC Enterprise IoT. Using this for workstation for years.

Creating bootable install disc via Rufus gives you an options to set up offline account, skip secure boot requirements, skip privacy options, etc., Installation is then a matter of few clicks.

There are already some such oddities between Home and Pro; to my knowledge, Home will only allow disk encryption if you let Microsoft ""back up"" your key by signing into a Microsoft account. Pro has no such requirement.

> windows designed from the ground up for maximum performance

They are fundamentally incapable of doing this. The senior management are incapable of even imagining in a dream of a windows that didn't spy on its users while also forcing them to use the software managers want in the way managers want.

Even if some dev team managed to make one (it would have to be on the sly), and guerrilla marketed it, and it was a giant hit, the managers would just force all the spyware and bloat and restrictions over time. They can't help but do it.

It would fit into the product matrix where Vista and Win7 Ultimate did: explicitly targeting enthusiasts, parts-builders and boutique shops where they want to convey that you're getting a cost-no-object build.

Or being able to sell it as an aftermarket license upgrade would be a way to get more revenue from people who were otherwise going to ride an OEM Home license for which MS had a negotiated rate of 34 cents per machine.

OTOH, one thing about the ongoing advertising/enshittification bubble is that it seems to distort people's understanding of revenue and NPV. They'd rather have the possibility of infinite future ad/spyware revenue even when people are clamoring to offer up-front real cash instead.

Link to repo as the article fails to even mention it: https://github.com/builtbybel/Flyby11

Allowing this on Github means that Microsoft silently approve it?

mas is on github too

Microsoft would probably rather you pirate Windows (and ideally keep sending them telemetry and other data) than use Linux: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38295819

It will probably actually cause them less problem then a system that never update though. Remember Wannacry? Those pirated system with windows update completely disabled?

Im assuming MS will always have one secret good version of windows for enterprise? Eg. I have Win 10 LTSC 2021 which runs out in 2032.. I assume when that runs out there will be some replacement good version of windows?

I also installed Linux Mint which I am trying to do as much as possible on. Its really fantastic, its crazy how it "just works".. The most intuitive and user friendly OS ive ever used.. I just do a lot of weird game and game-dev stuff that I still need Windows for.. If I didnt do that stuff I would 100% be on Mint.. And that is changing with Steam, Wine, Bottles, Proton, Lutris, the amount of stuff u cant do keeps shrinking and it keeps getting easier and easier. Most people on earth should be using Linux, it would be objectively better and easier to do everything they want to do on their computer compared to all the other popular OSes.

Mint is in a good place right now. I enjoy it immensely on most of my daily devices. Still stuck with MacOS for work which I lament.

The new 'good' (more like less worst) version of Windows is Windows 11 iot ltsc. It's as clean as windows 11 gets (https://massgrave.dev/windows_ltsc_links#differences-between...).

Still, I've been using computers for 30 years and I'm starting to feel the itch to look for Linux alternatives and I'm pretty old. Change does do not comes easily to old people. This is bad for ms.

If you want to switch to linux but not feeling overwhelmed at first, you can stay on windows and work with something like Virtualbox running your linux distribution of choice alongside.

You keep on testing/experimenting daily, slowly getting the hang of it one software at a time. And once you found how to do everything you have to on linux, you're just ready to switch.

Thanks for your insight, I might go and try something like that.

The same. I used Linux a lot a decade ago, and all this MS mumbo jumbo with Win11 is totally disappointing and irritating, to the point that next OS will definitely be Mint. I envisioned that this might happen eventually, so I never locked in to any Windows tools, I use exclusively cross-platform tools. I live most of my OS time in powershell, vscode and firefox, so no problems there.

Constantly fighting MS irresponsible decisions makes no sense any more.

> Most people on earth should be using Linux

I don't think the current state of the Linux desktop is ready for that. Linux desktop still loves to show its sharp edges from time to time. Sure, I do also think most of Windows stuff now "just works" on Linux; Proton & Wine already cover a lot of "Windows-only" app I need and I only boot to Windows when I need to change some proprietary driver config.

However, I think "just works" here is different from the general population definition of "just works". HN folks probably don't even mind writing their own patches or compiling stuff for themself. But for the general population, people don't even change the default settings, let alone follow a tutorial or type in some commands on their terminal. People delegate this stuff to more "techie" people around them or dial customer support.

I don't think there will be a mass adoption of Linux desktop until this part gets ironed out or somehow everyone is forced to install Linux by their employer/school.

What would a normal person need to open terminal for though? In my recent experience with Mint I never needed it for anything normal.. eg wifi and bluetooth on laptop all just worked perfectly after install.. for installing software there is a gUI app store type thing.. for games u just install steam and it works exactly like on windows.

Installing stuff with your package manager?

In my experience, it's still quite annoying and fragmented in Linux desktop to install stuff here. GUIs like KDE Discover exist, but sometimes it doesn't do the things I expect them to do. For example Wine. Last week I tried to install it from Discover but it doesn't work like expected for apps I need. After figuring things out, it was some kind of regression bug, and I had to open a terminal to install the version I needed.

Games, sure. I think Steam + Proton does a very good job making things seamless; you don't even need to do anything other than press the install button on your library. This is what I expect if you try to sell Linux to the general population.

Drivers, it's kind of a mixed bag. I've had some bad experiences with Nvidia drivers lately, and it just got fixed in the latest patch. Proprietary drivers also rarely support Linux distros. It might be useless, but some people might find their RGB mouse and peripherals not working anymore to be a dealbreaker.

Work issued me a Windows 11 laptop and even clicking on a window in the task bar does not reliably bring it to the front. There's sharp edges and there's wtf

Windows 11 can't even reliably work out how big a maximised window should be, forcing me to have to restart explorer multiple times a day.

Yeah, sure, I have a fair share of complaints on Windows too. Since Win XP, I think there has always been some kind of jank around Windows auto-hide taskbar, and it still persists on Win 11 which irritates me quite a lot.

Closed-source doesn't help for a poweruser; I'm fine with fiddling around with the code or config, just give me the code and manpages.

But again, my argument is that all of this is not applicable for the general population. Excluding loud internet forums, people seem fine sacrificing this kind of jank behavior as long as it doesn't interfere with their task that much.

I think Apple's recent Liquid Glass is a kind of stupid attempt to try to copy Win Vista-7 Aero style with terrible execution. But as long as it still allows Apple users do their things, I don't think they're going to switch to Linux just for customization.

Recently it's got really bad though. The taskbar is badly broken.

* If you use auto-hide, it won't show when some applications are open. Edge in particular is bad.

* Some applications simply don't show on the taskbar at all. Teams is one. It's in the alt-tab list.

* Sometimes it stops working entirely.

The testing and QA of this stuff appears to be largely absent.

I've said this once because we've already had discussions "Windows bad", but I jumped ship too. My experience is different though. I installed Linux Mint - it doesn't work and it won't work. Quick search shows that Fedora KDE is the only distribution that actually supports graphics stack from current century, and doesn't have community drama around it (Ubuntu). I installed it. I keep running into weird issues like graphical glitches, devices randomly not working, shit needing fixing with complicated terminal commands, programs not behaving in expected ways, update regressions, and all the good stuff that Linux on desktop is known for. But we're definitely way closer to Linux being a working desktop system than we've ever been, and it gives me an impression that a dedicated tech-savvy person could potentially actually use it. I haven't booted into Windows for two weeks, and I think there's a decent chance I won't need in the foreseeable future.

Your experience with Mint is definitely discouraging.

My screen expects HDR signal and when it receives SDR signal, it caps maximum brightness at "you can't see shit during the day". And that's what I had on Mint.

Ironically the more "user friendly" a distro is, the more issues I seem to have with it. I'm running Arch with a window manager, the only issue I ever had was a kernel regression, after which I switched to LTS.

Meanwhile whenever I had to deal with Ubuntu or other such distros, I keep getting issues in the most basic functionality even on fresh installs. Can't launch firefox, random non descriptive errors from package updates, poor device support...

Yeah the Windows 11 IoT LTSC version is excellent. Better than Windows 10.

The UI and reliability is still generally better than Linux, although KDE is getting pretty close.

Windows is technically very interesting. It offers a very different approach to operating systems compared to the UNIX-like competition. I genuinely like it because unlike Linux, it's quite nice to develop desktop applications for, because the vendor supports everything.

It's such a pity that said vendor is a giant American megacorp that decided to throw all that in the bin and stuff Windows with ad-infested light Web apps. It irritates me that the user-mode applications and experience is so cancerous, because everything below is pretty decent to work with.

You may be interested in ReactOS.

Ubuntu.

Fedora.

Arch.

Open Suse .

Pick one, stop trying to make Windows look like a decent os. My local Windows install just gave up. I'm very close to trying Windows 11 in a VM on top of Fedora or whatever, can't really do that on my 16gb ram value laptop though.

If Maschine offered official Linux support, that's what I make music with, I'd be 100% Windows free.

Pick KDE if you want the same integrated experience.

The Desktop on Linux has come pretty far already and most of the complaints are from people that made the wrong choice for their UX.

Sometimes setting up a WINE environment is worth it, but I'd argue that as long ss you still need to use the CLI to create environments, it's not there yet. Proton has been amazing for better support.

Also, don't pick Arch when you come from Windows, it's not the right choice for you. Pick a beginner friendly distro, everyone has to start somewhere. Debian, LinuxMint, or Ubuntu are incredibly easy to learn.

Debian based distros lag in hardware support.

KDE is heavy, but that's the magic of Linux. It's to you to figure out your perfect combination.

I'd argue that if you don't care how computers work, buy a Mac. If you actually enjoy the process Linux is great.

The Mac is so much simpler. I just want a big screen iMac again. 27” with Apple silicon and no more of this inability to be used as a big dumb monitor when it’s ancient and slow.

I think for users who don't want to learn about their computer and just use it a (new or used) Mac is the best option if you want cover many use cases.

Linux on Desktop is especially great for used Laptops. In that case the Linux community had a bit of time to adjust to the hardware.

Laptop also offer a well defined hardware environment where you know exactly what's inside.

Once you additional devices the range of hardware that needs to be supported is so much wider and so is the risk that something does not work.

However, especially for more casual users to just use your Laptop and not connect anything ever is in my opinion a quite common use case. There you can optimise to support some Laptops really well. And that is where Linux can shine.

Target display mode on the old iMac 27" was nice. But why not get a Studio Display now? It's pretty much the same thing, but not burdened by having an old Mac inside and having to fiddle with target display mode.

They are overpriced for 2025 (especially because the height-adjustable stand costs quite a bit extra). But they wake very fast from sleep and work fantastically with a Mac.

Because there is no reason to throw away a beautiful 27” display that works?

> KDE is heavy

In terms of install size, performance is usually higher than on lightweight DEs.

>Sometimes setting up a WINE environment is worth it, but I'd argue that as long ss you still need to use the CLI to create environments, it's not there yet. Proton has been amazing for better support.

Go grab an installation of Bottles and prepare to be amazed.

Or if you'd prefer not to contribute to linux monoculturalization, FreeBSD is available in addition to the other BSD variants and even illumos-based systems.

I prefer to contriubute to linux monoculturization

A few months ago I switched from Windows 11 to Ubuntu on my laptop. Coming from a decade of experience running servers with various flavors of Linux it's not much of a learning curve for me.

And look, I love Ubuntu. I'm sticking with it (although kinda wish I'd been less safe and chosen Fedora or OpenSuse). But, to be honest, I've had, and continue to have, a ton of problems related to hardware. Problems waking from sleep (I gave up trying to fix this and just restart every time now), problems with external monitor not reawakening after screen timeout, problems with the wifi speed suddenly dropping until I restart (apparently Linux doesn't play well with Intel Killer 6e laptop wifi), problems with my Brother printer (won't wake from sleep over wifi, works fine on Android and Windows though).

None of these are quite deal breakers. Sure, I have to open and close my laptop lid three or four times to get the external monitor to switch back on, and and the login prompt will only show on my laptop screen which gets set to 1% brightness every restart, so if it's sunny I have to stick my face right against the screen to see it.

Nevertheless, I persevere. I've fixed 70% of the initial issues. But you know what I will not do? Recommend Linux desktop to a non-technical person. My mother, my sister, my girlfriend, most of my acquaintances. They would hate to deal with this stuff, and simply don't have to on Windows, for all it's faults.

I think that people who recommend Linux desktop nearly all started by buying a laptop that officially supports Linux, or at least is known to not have issues like these. Then they forget how important this step was and go around recommending it to everyone.

Most people shouldn't install a Linux desktop on any normal Windows laptop. Not a decade ago when I last seriously tried it out, and not now either. Although the experience definitely has improved, so maybe in another 5 or 10 years.

Very similar to my experience. I also still use it because benefits for me as a developer are much more important, especially 30% docker performance win over wsl on same hardware.

Just to present my anecdote, I'm using Lenovo Thinkpad Gen 4 Intel with Arch Linux and I don't have a single issue with hardware. Literally everything works. Suspend works, my laptop connected to the display via USB-C cable which also delivers power to laptop. My laptop stays with closed lid (clamshell mode). Sony BLE headphones work. Even fingerprint sensor worked when I tried it (but I don't use it, as I'm working with external keyboard).

My only issue is that this CPU is a bit too slow, I should have bought laptop with a performance line CPU. And of course I have a lot of issues with Linux approach to usability, but that has nothing to do with hardware support, more like opinions.

I don’t actually use Linux on my Thinkpad, but aren’t they considered the best Linux-friendly laptops out there?

Non-developer, don’t need Linux but sometimes need a Windows machine and this is it.

I've not found anything better. I still use my 2019 X1 Carbon, it still gets firmware updates frequently and has been rock solid.

Everything worked out of the box with Linux except the fingerprint reader. About a fortnight after I bought it, it received a firmware update and the fingerprint reader just started working and has since.

Been running Linux on laptops since around 97 (Dell Inspiron 4000 clone, PII-400 I couldn't afford the PIII-450, Red Hat 5.x); over many years and laptops it comes down to: use a Thinkpad T-series or a Dell Latitude/Precision (modern times, not the XPS or Inspiron) and your Linux experience will be quite smooth. (sometimes card reader hardware doesn't work if they used some weird chip, which Dell seems to like to do with those devices)

> Most people shouldn't install a Linux desktop on any normal Windows laptop.

My personal experience was completely the opposite. I had two ordinary Windows laptops that I decided to install Linux on, all hardware worked perfectly. Even on the most niche distros like Void Linux, the touchscreen, pen pressure sensitivity, everything worked. The beauty of having hardware that is supported in mainline Linux kernel.

So it entirely depends on the hardware you choose to buy. Most people don't think about Linux when purchasing hardware, neither did I, and I only got lucky. But now it's at the front of my mind, and I think other people should also keep it in their minds if they don't want to forever be stuck with whatever Microsoft decides to stick on their computers

I think linux laptops also tend to be cheaper because windows now has higher system requirements, so if you want something inexpensive but still eligible for web browsing, you might accidentally buy a linux laptop, but still worth to check that linux is installed on it.

Maybe the year 2100 will finally be the year of the Linux desktop.

> None of these are quite deal breakers. Sure, I have to open and close my laptop lid three or four times to get the external monitor to switch back on, and and the login prompt will only show on my laptop screen which gets set to 1% brightness every restart, so if it's sunny I have to stick my face right against the screen to see it.

I know there are tradeoffs everywhere in life but man, these are deal breakers. I'd install windows in my brain before I put up with having to push my boulder uphill just to log in.

I guess it says a lot about Windows that it reached the point where I don't consider these deal breakers.

Usually I can use muscle memory to bypass the login screen so it's not quite as bad. It's only if I do something wrong that I need to see it.

I don't understand this comments on forums like this one.

Who do you think you are addressing with this? People here are either on Apple, already on some other X or do use Windows because they have to.

Most of the rest of the people on this planet won't use either of your recommendations because they have no idea how to work this, how to fix errors, how to find programs they need, jump over compatibility issues with other Windows users, or don't even have a PC at home and have to work with windows at their workplaces.

So what is the point of your comment?

You seem to be under the misconception that everyone is at the same point in their life journey as you are.

Plenty of people here on this site are right on the edge of a major change in operating system and benefit from that slight peer pressure to go ahead and make that change.

What is the point of your comment? Just use the downvote button.

Edit: see? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45155975

A lot of cool music software is running natively it not better on Linux like reaper. After some config pain I am also surprised to see mixxx being a serious alternative to Rekordbox. It's not impossible, and everything is better than booting into windows just to be surprised with a new updated and new bloatware, every fing time.

Bitwig too. Pain point for me is hardware support. My Native Instruments interface works great, due to the in kernel drivers supplied by NI. My other one with loads of IO sadly won't.

You forgot Slackware :)

Now try be windows free when you need Adobe software for living... Impossible.

If you have enough USB host controllers, you can pass one into a Windows VM and it will have direct access to the connected audio interface (no latency issues). And if on top of that you have two GPUs, you can pass one into Windows VM as well. If you have only one GPU, passing it around will be tricky (you need to terminate all apps working with GPU before taking it away).

If you plan to run a single application in VM, you can allocate just 3-4 Gb to it.

> If Maschine offered official Linux support

That's exactly the reason why people use Windows. Hardware and software support.

Once already I got an automatic update start the next day with a full screen unskippable SET UP A MICROSOFT ACCOUNT. I dont even recall what i did in the haze of anger, but i think just restarting a couple of times, eventually removing the internet cable, it eventually just went away?

These animal fucks are going to force people away

I recently decided to try running Windows as a daily driver. WSL is pretty good but just feels wrong. It has a slow cold start and sometimes just completely crashes or freezes for a few seconds. Basic operations in general (outside WSL) often take several seconds. The Copilot button feels forced but I decided whatever I'll try it - the copilot window takes almost 10 seconds to start up on first press. What is going on? It's just a chat interface..

Then there's that super old problem where the settings app opens in a tiny window and cannot be resized.

What's interesting is the feedback app once asked me about how long things take and if I'm satisfied. So it seems they're kind of aware. But the problem is probably too deep to dig out of.

> Then there's that super old problem where the settings app opens in a tiny window and cannot be resized.

It still amazes (and infuriates) me when I try to use Windows for something and see a non-resizeable window pop up. Often it's for things that really need to be resized (e.g. iSCSI LUNs) so instead you have to scroll around lots and maybe write things down as the GUI is so old and unusable.

> seconds to start up on first press. What is going on? It's just a chat interface..

It might be an electron app. Which would be strange but I wouldn’t put it past them.

I achieved the same and more by installing Linux. Highly recommended.

"Bypass windows telemetry with this 1 cool trick!"

I'm honestly still shocked there isn't some kind of lawsuit or federal investigation on how Microsoft is able to get away with dropping support for CPUs that are only a few years old. Thus forcing unknown millions of people worldwide to upgrade an ENTIRE CPU and Motherboard just for the next version of Windows. What are we supposed to do with all that e-waste?! People who spent thousands on a 32 core threadripper from 5 years ago are now suppose to just... throw it away and buy another 32 core threadripper?!

None of the 7 computers in our house have processors that are supported. Just the AMD Threadripper 2000 series and earlier that launched in 2018 (just 7 years ago) are not supported. That's a massive amount of CPUs about to hit ebay probably at huge discounts.

I'm hoping the Linux community takes advantage of this moment and focuses heavily on converting Windows users to Linux + Bottles.

I'm honestly still shocked how much of this malarchy users will just lay down for.

the way MS gets away with it is by making people think they have no other choice.

This.

The worst death is from fright. So let’s keep calm. Because Win 10 will work after October 2025.

I wonder if MS will extend the deadline, especially since there's unofficial tools bypassing their restrictions.

I remember last year when they announced removing a major MS Teams connector around webhook integrations.

In July 2024 they said in August 2024 this feature would be disabled for new apps and then in October 2024 all integrations would stop working. This would effectively break a ton of 3rd party integrations. Think how crazy that is considering their top market is enterprise companies being sold on Teams through O365 licenses.

For context, this would be the equivalent of Slack saying they are going to remove all OAuth / webhook integrations and replace it with something else when "something else" wasn't even properly documented with practically no notice.

A few weeks after that announcement MS decided to extend that deadline to December 2025. I don't know the current state of things since I no longer work at the place using Teams.

MS will absolutely extend the deadline, or otherwise make it meaningless. The install base of windows 10 is too high.

My prediction is that instead of extending support forever like XP and 7, Windows 10 will be “unsupported” but it’ll still get security patches for a long time.

The “unsupported” nature of the OS will only matter to corporate auditors. Consumers will be using Windows 10 for years longer.

That's me, I stayed on Win 7 at home out of principle against enshittification. Worked as beautifully as ever for light browsing and gaming. Then Chrome support stopped, including Steam. Can't upgrade any Electron app, either. Still holding out but soon I'll relegate it into a box running under linux. Well, it had a good 30+ year run.

Firefox is not updated for W7 too. Brave seems to be supported. And Chrome has annoying note that I need to update system.

Linux Mint is said to be good for usage.

But what I will miss is Outlook tuned to perfection. I don’t know how to transform 30+ GB pst file to something different. :)

It sucks but it's not illegal? Private business has made the choice to not support a set of processors on their os.

Run Windows 10 ltsc or move to Unix or Linux if that's an issue

If you’re talking about Threadripper 2000 series, just grab the official ISO and install it. Should work despite not being on the officially fully supported list.

> I'm honestly still shocked there isn't some kind of lawsuit or federal investigation on how Microsoft is able to get away with dropping support for CPUs that are only a few years old.

There is no law that requires a company to make their new product compatible with a different company’s 7 year old hardware. I don’t know why you’d expect this to become a lawsuit or federal investigation.

I’m honestly surprised that anyone with 9+ year old hardware would want to run Windows 11 at all.

This kind of user isn’t exactly jumping on the latest Windows version. They’re going to be using Windows 10 until their hardware dies and they’ll “upgrade” when their next machine comes with the current Microsoft OS.

I personally don’t think the end of “support” for Windows 10 will have any meaning. There are too many users still using it for Microsoft to stop patching it. The “unsupported” status will only matter to companies who want to pass audits.

>dropping support for CPUs that are only a few years old

Isn't it only 2017 CPUs and older? So that's at least ~9 years of free updates (free updates stop at the end of 2026 with the extension), which is frankly better than most other OSs.

If you include paid ESU updates it's at least ~11 years and if you include LTSC it's even way longer than that.

There are many things we can complain about when it comes to Windows, but I wouldn't say long term support is one of them. It's generally better than macOS or Linux distros, not to mention smartphones.

> Isn't it only 2017 CPUs and older? So that's at least ~9 years of free updates (free updates stop at the end of 2026 with the extension), which is frankly better than most other OSs.

That's the indictment of the industry, not a praise for Microsoft.

AMD themselves ended support for these CPUs a year ago, so it is reasonable for third parties to also do so.

Unsurprisingly, my point still stands

> Isn't it only 2017 CPUs and older?

MSFT lies to our face about not supporting Kaby Lake, except the one single CPU that was sold in Surfaces when W11 was announced. What an coincidence.

"Thus forcing unknown millions of people worldwide to upgrade an ENTIRE CPU and Motherboard just for the next version of Windows"

I don't know why you must come conclusion at this point, no one force you to upgrade into next version

as far as I know, when you buy windows 10 license, you tied into certain edition that would work for that edition. nothing mention next OS (in this case windows11) should backward compatible with last edition

if you think 7-8 years is bad, think how much smartphone that not receive update for years, most often that this phone didn't receive update at all

and google and apple literally making new edition of android/ios that break depedency every year

Windows has always been backward compatible with old hardware. There has never been a big problem where you couldn't just upgrade to next version on the same computer. This big jump is not a good one for MS, it is locking out a lot of people that would be customers and are now getting Linux Mint instead. I have several friends that are non-techies and installed Mint on their own without any problems. No support needed even, nothing close to how they need support for Windows. They have dualboot so their old games work on Windows and everything else on Linux. Sooner or later that will be gaming on Linux and Windows never get booted again.

"Windows has always been backward compatible with old hardware."

mac os always have been backward compatible with old intel hardware, nothing changes or stopping you to still use your old intel mac either

"Sooner or later that will be gaming on Linux and Windows never get booted again."

that never gonna happen

> I don't know why you must come conclusion at this point, no one force you to upgrade into next version

Security updates are necessary and regular Windows 10 users won't get them anymore.

Haven’t seen anyone mention it yet but 11 runs perfectly fine on older provided your CPU has POPCNT - which apparently was introduced in 2008.

Rufus can create a bootable USB drive with the 11 installer modified* to bypass the other artificial requirements like TPM and bypass the stupid “need internet access to force you to make a Microsoft account” requirement too.

https://rufus.ie/en/

*change some flags in the installer

just for the next version of Windows

...which you probably didn't need either, so just refuse to upgrade and start pushing back that way.

Those older CPUs don't support Virtualization-based Security[0] which is a significant upgrade in the Windows security posture.

[0] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/de...

Can they also completely disable Onedrive and any automatic cloud storage from Windows and Office? That’s just the minimum for me to consider moving back to Windows from Mac.

It's good to see that there still are some modders left in the community; there are others creating unofficial "distros" of Windows with most of the crap stripped out, and often useful additions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34654649

From my experience, Windows has always been somewhat modular (see 98lite for an early example), so it's not too difficult to pick and choose what pieces you want, but the main worry is that one of these hostile features is a dependency of a core component.

but do keep in mind that there is a risk associated with customizing your Windows installation in unintended ways

Of course there is this obligatory FUD from the Microsoft-fansite. In contrast to the risk associated with letting Microsoft absorb all your data and take control of your computer?

"Works for now"

There's been many such tools for other anti-features, they eventually stop working.

Still better than nothing. It's no secret maintainers need to play catch-up with Microsoft. This is the entire value-add of all those cool pro-consumer/user tools which use private & undocumented APIs, like yt-dlp.

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