It's one of the last versions where the modal dialogs ask "Yes" or "No", instead of "Yes" and "Not now", "Maybe later", or "Ask again tomorrow".
I can't tolerate windows. I put up with 10 for a while then went back to 7. 7 was good. Then some stuff wasn't supported so I moved to 11. Couldn't do it. I'd get random garbage like a notification for some "grand prize giveaway". I legit thought I'd gotten adware installed somehow. Nope, official Microsoft notification! Want to configure the system at all? Keep defender from trashing your CPU for fifteen minutes after you compile something? Stop auto-restarts that close everything? Use actual sleep not the weird "connected sleep" nonsense? Tough, you don't get to. If you do it anyway it will revert after your next update (mandatory btw!) or sometimes just at random.
I can't remember a version since 7 that doesn't make me feel like I'm in a bazaar being accosted by freaking rug merchants.
I used to hate macs. I switched to a macbook. I am much happier now despite the occasional annoyances.
I’m convinced it’s a frog in boiling water situation for people still using windows. It’s so bad.
On Windows I can't even easily copy/paste from one email to another. It strips out half the formatting and any colors that were there. Nor can I copy email recipients from an email into a new one.
I tried switching to Windows last year and I just couldn't do it. So now my expensive and fancy powerful laptop collects dust and I'm back to my 5 year old m1 (which is somehow faster, usually).
Surprise! Windows 11 likes S3 suspend just fine. Push the button, instant screen off and winking power light... push it again, instant wakeup. So if by some miracle your hardware/UEFI still supports it, you're good. This is a 5-year-old-ish Acer Swift 3 for what it's worth.
Oh, wait, you mean Windows update toggles that setting back? Whoa.
Who designs these antipatterns!?
What is an operating system? At it's core, an OS is a program to run other programs. Yet this Windows program likes to randomly kill all the programs it's supposed to keep running, at night, when it thinks you aren't looking. It literally fails at the most basic purpose of an operating system.
Not for kernel updates (Linux, by default), and not for macOS which is now RO root fs and also requires a reboot because updates are image based, a. la. Fedora Silverblue.
Also FWIW, Windows now has hotpatching, albeit not available to consumers, it's attached to enterprise licensing
That's kind of my point. Linux is free and can manage, but 40 year old Windows, which is valued to be worth more than the GDP of many nations can't?
They just aren't trying very hard because they don't have to.
It's not that it's an impossible problem, it's that Microsoft doesn't have to compete...so they don't.
If you looked into it though you'd see that you do still need to restart at least every quarter for baseline updates. If you don't restart then future hotpatch updates will not apply because they only target the current baseline update. There are also unplanned baseline updates that require a restart to patch zero-day exploits that cannot be fixed in a hotpatch.
I'm still not understanding how this is a solved problem on Linux. If there is a vulnerability in libc then you need to restart (probably) all processes to have the fix take effect.
Restarting the service that was directly impacted by the patch is preferable to the 1980's techno-brained idea of rebooting the entire system. Most of the time it isn't glibc.
FWIW - I did recently read that hotpatching is already there in 11 if you enable it in an enterprise. Fingers crossed it comes to home users.
As a user I want my computer to restart by itself and lose of my work, because its entire purpose is to collect CVE patches.
Either you've misunderstood who the customer is, or Microsoft has.
(Also, say early, save often.)
I personally liked the W8 approach to updates. You were allowed to set windows update in a mode that would notify you of new updates but you got to chose when to download/install them. That setting as also permanent and they didn't "accidentally" revert it back during an update.
Updates and unbootable systems are nothing new, to treat any OS as a unicorn in this respect is ignoring past history. Happens with Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Can't 100% say whether Windows 11 IoT LTSC is equally good, but from what I've read it also is worth considering.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-...
> after you install Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC Evaluation, you won't be able to use the recovery partition on your PC to go back to your previous version of Windows.
Yikes.
It's really selling itself...
I was already sold; you don't have to convince me.
i was going to say something similar. the fact that a version of windows that is designed for IoT devises is still usable as a desktop is absolutely ridiculous. imagine using OpenWRT as a desktop...
the comparison to OpenWRT is warranted, if microsoft expects me to run this system on devices that i would otherwise run OpenWRT on.
IoT was the buzzword of the year when W10 released.
In a way, it is for "IoT" devices...but enterprisey things. Where I work we have it on a few devices that I guess you could call an "IoT" device. Unattended driver kiosks for truck scales, manufacturing equipment that requires windows, industrial control panels, etc.
That's what it is for. A lot of this stuff uses really old software, some of which the vendor doesn't even exist anymore, and it only runs on Windows so these control panels and devices need windows (unless you manage to get some of it working on wine but that's usually not viable in these cases).
So yeah, it's supposed to be a full desktop, because these devices often require it to some extent, albeit a little slimmed down and LTS.
I think HN would be surprised to learn just how many devices run windows out there in the world outside of silicon valley. Windows is everywhere you'd hope never to see it running at.
The recovery partition has some value. But in an OS reinstall scenario Windows.old is a much more helpful feature.
However, these features won't used by someone installing Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC Evaluation (Evaluation just means that it's 90 day free trial version). This is because to aquire the non-trial version of the OS you must either be willing to license Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC from Microsoft, or crack the activation. If you crack Windows you do not need the 90 day free trial! And any company which has institutional knowledge of what an LTSC edition is, is capable of running the 90 day trial in a non destructive way (pro tip: put your new OS on a new drive and keep your old drive in a drawer).
Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC is the best version of Windows 11 I have ever tried, no contest.
I just reinstalled my own system with a combination of LTSC and Linux (currently looking at a riced Hyprland on CachyOS) with the understanding that there will be occasional annoyances (but still less so than consumer W11)
You can hunt out the other newer superseding settings (good luck without a 3rd party script or guide as you won't find required settings and steps to remove it in any MS docs just scattered parts) and eventually neuter the recommended section again... possibly as you suggest forever or possibly until an update touches this again.
It is a tiny bit of a mess to setup on gaming computers because of lack of drivers (for the drivers which cannot be downloaded from the manufacturer site, need to get a Windows 11 install, let it download/install all the drivers as needed, then use pnputil to export them and import them in Windows Server) but I did manage to find a likely-legitimate seller (referenced on the Microsoft website as a partner) selling licenses for legitimate-looking prices. The price goes up with the amount of cores, happy I didn't have a Threadripper.
Also some issues here and there (such as needing a registry change to enable clipboard history, Meta Link not supporting showing the desktop or headset audio (could maybe use the pnputil trick for that)) that I didn't have with the LTSC evaluation.
Only issue is that Windows will periodically re-bloat itself - so you have to re-run it after more or less every quarterly windows update.
The only thing remaining that I want to remove but cannot get rid of is edge. Removing edge is only available in the EU for $ome in$ane rea$on. You might be able to get an EU ISO for installation? Unclear to me but I haven’t dug too deeply.
It’s horrifying. Edge is jam-packed with bloat and the entire browser is geared towards monitoring and hoarding every scrap of user interaction that passes through it. The worst part is that the average person likely has no idea just how pervasive Microsoft’s spying and ad-targeting is.
I envy the fact that EU Citizens have the right to decline all of these intrusive “features” foisted upon them by Microsoft. I doubt Congress would ever come close to affording us a fraction of these same consumer rights. Sigh.
???
how? what kind of malware did you install? have several W11 boxes, none exhibit this behavior. No "official" notification for a prize give away or any ads.
ah, cool a region that blocks these business practices... awesome :)
This difference captures so much...
I recently setup a minecraft server on an old windows machine and had a hard time setting it to never restart automatically. After reading some support forums I found the menu to control when it restarts but still didnt see an option to completely stop it.
Eventually I found a way that I can't even recall at this point.
And even the JVM part, it's not HARD, just annoying.
apt install openjdk-21-jdk-headless
That sounds fine though. The PATH variable is a nicety for the user to not need to type long paths, really like using ~ for the home directory, not for program setup.
I'll accept installing and running software on Linux has an unfamiliar procedure for those used to Windows or Mac.
I agree it's a better OS to run a minecraft server on in general.
Edit: also ufw is so much easier than the windows firewall. That shit drives me insane.
There's multiple services dedicated to monitoring / "repairing" windows update, scheduled tasks to enable those, and further tasks to repair everything completely if anything is modified.
And if all of that is disabled... there's a single exe which "helpfully" re-enables and re-creates all of the necessary scheduled tasks and services, which gets called by the service manager automatically: "upfc.exe"
Renaming / getting rid of this stops WaasMedic & other services from respawning.
Sounds like we'd need some resident anti-virus-like software dedicated to enforcing the user's choices on the OS.
(but definitely do your updates so as to not become part of a botnet. Too bad the security updates must come with unneeded feature updates)
"CONSENT: A clear and unambiguous agreement, expressed outwardly through mutually understandable words or actions, to engage in a particular activity. Consent can be withdrawn by either party at any point."
and
"No means No"
What I'm about to say is strongly worded and I understand not a _perfect_ analogy by any means. However, it does sum up my feelings on this issue.
If Person A makes repeated unwanted advances towards Person B, we have words to describe that. But if Person A, a company, makes repeated unwanted advances towards Person B we call that business.
Now they have no incentive to make good upgrades. Instead, they are only incentivized to add privacy-compromising services that nobody wants or asked for.
I find the idea of people upgrading from Windows 10 to Windows 7 sad and hilarious in equal measure.
What new browser feature made in the past decade has improved the user experience?
https://admx.cengizyilmaz.net/policy/force-a-specific-defaul... “Note: This setting only applies to Enterprise, Education, and Server SKUs.”
https://admx.cengizyilmaz.net/policy/disable-all-apps-from-m... “This setting applies only to Enterprise and Education editions of Windows.”
And of course the really important one where only Enterprise is allowed to fully disable Telemetry: https://admx.cengizyilmaz.net/policy/allow-diagnostic-data “Diagnostic data off (not recommended). Using this value, no diagnostic data is sent from the device. This value is only supported on Enterprise, Education, and Server editions.”
I'm not sure I'd agree those policies are enough to truly argue Windows 7 was a last version to not separate out important features to Enterprise -- I'd actually instead simply make the larger point that before Windows 10, Windows wasn't a chintzy ad-driven whorehouse.
You're frankly better off applying a bunch of registry changes to 10, using a Education or N (EU) edition "illegally", or blocking DNS than going back to 7 just for privacy concerns. You're cutting off your nose to spite your face.