Hacker News Reader

Some things that any semi-power user will notice and get angry at:

* Needing internet and a microsoft account to install the OS

* Start menu now requiring two clicks to get to programs list

* Right-click requiring two clicks to get to the options you most likely want to use (e.g. 7z unzip or opening in a specific program)

* Task manager being slow and laggy

* Random ads asking you to install a game pop up in the notification area

* ...

And then there's little bugs everywhere that just grind away at you on a daily basis:

* A tab in explorer will sometimes randomly stop accepting clicks (keyboard select works). So I have to close the tab and re-open

* The keyboard layout setting gets corrupted and there's no proper way to reset it (nevermind the fact tha this setting is now burried twenty levels deep in the new settings app)

* The settings app search does not work

* ...

It is by far the worst Windows version (beating Vista and ME to that title) in my opinion. I use linux as my daily but am forced to use Windows at work and they have of course been forced to upgrade us to Windows 11...

  Right-click requiring two clicks to get to the options you most likely want to use (e.g. 7z unzip or opening in a specific program)

This one you can still change. It is some hidden registry tweak, but there is the capacity to always "show more options".

Or hold [Shift] while right clicking

Microsoft's own "you're holding it wrong moment": "You're right clicking wrong"

Changing the registry is far too much of a hurdle.

Guess that depends on how much it angers you. Within minutes of seeing that, I jumped to the web to find a workaround, because that was way too annoying to accept.

That solution doesn't work in window's last remaining relevant market: enterprise. I run regedit on a work computer, and work is the only place I am forced to put up with Windows.

> And then there's little bugs everywhere that just grind away at you on a daily basis:

When I create a new folder or file in a directory in explorer it hangs for a bit and doesn’t show up unless I click refresh. Ditto if I save a file to a directory that is open in explorer.

Thinking about trying to get a copy of Win 10 IoT LTSC instead at this point.

You don't need IoT, just the normal LTSC (2027, and then security updates until 2032, iirc). And there are easy ways to swap to it, present on GitHub...

Main downside is other applications dropping support for 10, if relevant. I only swapped my main system due to Fusion 360 notifying me they were dropping 10 in January 2026.

The Win 10 IoT LTSC iso is on archive.org (from microsoft)

I'd love to know how many people are verifying checksums, and sourcing the checksums themselves from reputable sources. An event like this seems like a prime opportunity for someone to insert something extra into one of the components needed and a proportion of users will pick it up, whether the security cure is worse than the disease of an unsupported OS.

Just as an example of this everyone points out Massgrave for activation on a version of windows I doubt many are properly licensed for, and one of the methods used relies on periodically talking to KMS servers they provide including some on a Chinese TLD [0]. Personally I'd be charitable and say it's probably well intentioned using the cheap resources they can get (there's no mention of donations on the site), but I wonder how many are aware of what is involved and this is just something they rush through to get rid of the big scary warning that windows puts up and tech news hysteria.

[0] https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts/b...

Go here [0] to get the links to Windows 10 and Windows 11 LTSC.

Also, the script to activate it, go here [1] for that.

[0] - https://massgrave.dev/windows_ltsc_links

[1] - https://massgrave.dev/

I'm using Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC to write this and using Massgrave(l) it's activated to 2038 or something now. The only thing I wanted that LTSC didn't have out of the box was the Microsoft Store but you install that from PowerShell with the command "wsreset -i" and wait for 30s or so :)

I largely agree with your points, but in this context -

* A microsoft account is only needed for Windows 11 Home. A "semi-power user" is hopefully not using that edition of Windows...

* I'm also greatly annoyed by the right click - but holding shift when right-clicking opens the expected menu, removing the extra click requirement.

Some of my own annoyances though:

* The taskbar/windows button seems to just...crash...sometimes. It'll eventually restart, but extremely annoying. Left clicking taskbar icons still works, but right clicks or the start button don't work as expected.

* Additional clicks to change audio devices...drives me crazy on my main system.

* I like the autosaving aspect of notepad, but they've killed the main reason I used it - an instantaneous, lightweight text app. It's still quick, but is noticeably slower.

* Settings and Control Panel is still a mess, and even less usable than Windows 10 was.

> * A microsoft account is only needed for Windows 11 Home. A "semi-power user" is hopefully not using that edition of Windows...

Both Home and Pro require Microsoft account to install and start using. Then you can create local only users in both editions and delete user joined to Microsoft account. This is standard operation even in OEM installs.

Neither Home nor Pro really require a MS account. You can skip that during setup (for example with "bypassNRO"). This might change in the future, but as of 25H2 the workarounds still work.

bypassnro no longer works for Windows 11 Home, unfortunately. If you're using an ISO built prior to the change (a few weeks ago?), you'll be fine.

This is the ISO I used, which, according to the MS website[1], is still the latest right now: Win11_25H2_English_x64.iso (SHA256: D141F6030FED50F75E2B03E1EB2E53646C4B21E5386047CB860AF5223F102A32)

I installed it offline in a VM, Home edition, US region. Shift+F10, oobe\bypassnro worked (with a warning/error at some step, but the local account was created fine). I read somewhere that it doesn't work if you connect to the internet during setup (which is always a bad idea IMO).

[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11

Pro does not. We only use Pro and Enterprise, and Pro certainly does not actually require a Microsoft account (as of last week, anyways). The options given do make it appear to be required, but it is not.

Oh goodness yes. I was forced from Linux to W11 Pro for my new job. Use wsl2 they said, it'll be fine.

And wsl2 is mostly fine. But that doesn't stop the rest of the OS from being a dumpster fire. Why is it asking me to install or play Xbox games constantly? It feels like I have malware...

> Why is it asking me to install or play Xbox games constantly?

Because Microsoft got too large and some manager of Xbox pressured the Windows team to allow such notification to boost up their KPIs (games installed, game hours played).

Telemetry and KPIs are the single worst combination of bullshit that has happened to the entire IT industry.

     It feels like I have malware...

You do; it's called Windows.

I jumped ship over a decade ago and have been using Linux Mint as my daily driver; there hasn't been one day I've regretted it. Seeing the recent news about the constant full-screen Windows Backup/OneDrive popovers and needing a Microsoft Account just to install the OS (they recently killed the OOBE workaround) is just the stale icing on this dumpster fire of a cake.

Don't even get me started on all the AI crap in Edge.

It just sounds as if you haven't reached whatever your capacity is for "having to setup the OS to get out of your way". And that's a personal choice for everyone.

Windows 10 eventually breached my capacity due to the number of defaults I had to change post installation, and then often, again, post-patch/update. This was very soon after Windows 10 was released, and I already didn't like Windows 8's hybrid monstrosity following on from the sublime Windows 7, which I consider to be peak Windows.

I moved to Pop! OS and have been enjoying it on both desktop and laptop for over 5 years.

Forced updates were the last straw for me - after several iterations of using my machine until late, then being forced to let it update itself for another 30-60 minutes when I just wanted to switch everything off and go to bed, and noting that Proton made almost every game playable on Linux (thanks Valve).... the switch was a no-brainer.

My work laptop allows me a view into the dystopian Windows future, including updates as you've described as well as the occasional update and reboot in the middle of doing actual work - yes, I know it should not happen like that, but reality doesn't seem to care for _should_ or _should not_. Just a rare as it is inexplicable.

Meanwhile if a Linux distro wants to update, it politely asks you, and then goes away again when you say no ^^

The "Microsoft account" requirement is a weird one, because when I got a Win 11 PC after the death of my Win 10 one, I tried to set it up with my Microsoft account .. and it told me that this was unsupported on this account, and then it just fell back to creating a local one anyway. Which was what I wanted. No idea how I got into that state, other than the account being very old.

The difference for me is how much time do I need to spend to tweak the system, and how much frustration will I still experience after tweaking everything I could. I found a Linux distro which suits my needs and desires out of the box, that I can just install and immediately get started doing whatever I need to do. It makes using a computer much more enjoyable.

Might have to wait and see. I recently installed Win10 on my spare PC that previously had Ubuntu. Thought it was remarkably clean, but then the nagging about backups etc started coming.

The PC also had Win10 before Ubuntu, and I remember that being way worse because of the constant updates which always triggered more nags and resetting my default browser.

So I can use windows 11 without an account?

I thought that was not possible