Are they surprised? Why on earth would anyone want to switch to 11?
Getting rid of the customisable/movable taskbar and replacing it with the god-awful Mac-style centre menu was an absolute travesty of design.
Similarly, replacing functional control panel dialogs with the "settings app".
The insistence on packaging programs as "app bundles".
Then there's the slew of useless always-online garbage, which literally nobody asked for, and which basically amounts to user-hostile spyware.
MS needs to accept that user interface design mostly peaked about a decade or two ago, and anything beyond that has been pointless tinkering at best, or actual regression of usability at worst.
You can actually move the taskbar to the left, but you can no longer have it vertically :/
> The insistence on packaging programs as "app bundles".
I don't think appx is too bad on its own - the operating system should have a package manager, it provides a means of handling common dependencies (although this was for WinUI3, which is kind of dead), and both MSI and CAB are very old, weird file formats.
The UWP sandboxing .. I can see why they did it, protection against malicious apps, but it completely handicaps desktop apps.
> Then there's the slew of useless always-online garbage, which literally nobody asked for, and which basically amounts to user-hostile spyware.
Yes, this is Bad and the sort of thing the EU should start leaning on.
> MS needs to accept that user interface design mostly peaked about a decade or two ago
The original Windows era had plenty of work put into accessibility and making it clear what was clickable. The modern era swept that away in favor of "looks nice to minimalists", and I think it's a loss.
When I learned the taskbar can't be placed on the side vertically is when I realized I'm never going to install Windows 11. That combined with 10 being advertised as "the last Windows I'll ever need to buy" and the fact their updater told me I have to replace my entire PC to be eligible to install it (in spite of the fact that I merely need to turn on a BIOS setting and my system would fully support it), then the notice that they'd be selling 1-year support contract extensions for anyone staying on 10... What's next, Windows declares itself outright as ransomware and holds my data hostage? I'm imagining a full screen overlay appears: "Nice OS install you've got here... Would be a shame if something... happened to it."
> This update is especially important for everyone still on Windows 10 who plans to stay there and take advantage of the Extended Security Updates (ESU) program.
it's also sloooow, which makes me wonder if that's the real reason for their hardware requirements and locking out old CPUs that are perfectly servicable.
Or because lots of other people use it and you're developing for them, though I guess that comes under "your work requires it".
The reason I'm not using a Mac is because of their walled garden, the gross intent to control all the devs. This is admittedly very trendy right now and Google and Microsoft are at it too.
The reason I don’t consider Linux is:
* I want a single company responsible for security on my computer. Apple has a highly paid professional team to respond for any security updates and configuration. I have a linux server and there is no easy way to get that kind of support. I’m happy to pay a reasonable price for this.
* I need some legacy software like Microsoft Excel. Mac’s tend to have more professionally developed third party software like Microsoft Excel, Adobe, Raycast, etc.
Those are really the two big frictions that I find with using anything other than Windows and Mac.
The biggest problem I have with 11 is how unstable it is. Almost seems like there's a new BSOD trigger or data corruption bug introduced every month by Microsoft themselves, and 3rd party drivers fare even worse. A bunch of explorer and start menu random crashes too. 7 and 10 never caused this much headache for me.
The new taskbar is nothing like the macOS dock; you can put the dock to the left or right of the screen, and I never expect this user feature to go away. Apple is quick to get rid of older APIs, but they're better than Microsoft at keeping user features.
Yeah, you can’t move it away from the bottom of the screen, but it doesn’t have to look like the macOS Dock. With a couple of toggles it operates mostly like a traditional taskbar.
I've basically switched to Linux. The bar is insanely low for me with Microsoft, get rid of all the telemetry bull#@$@# or make it easy for me to disable it without having to run obscure github scripts.
I have 0 telemetry on Arch Linux.
Assuming Apple itself doesn't bypass Little Snitch, I don't even think Apple is doing the level of telemetry Microsoft does.
I bought a Mac for my next laptop, and I have 0 need for Windows, I have been maining Linux for like six years now, and anything that needs me to use Windows is usually also available on Mac.
Your move Microsoft. Give me an OS for power users that isn't full of marketing driven development.
My gaming PC is a very unloved Windows machine, if not for that I'd be long gone (everything else is Linux). Come to think of it, gaming is why I used windows in the first place, starting with 95. With the Steam Deck and its push for Linux compat I don't see the next generation being so windows focused either.
I have been gaming on Linux for like nearly two years now. Proton just works. I recommend either Arch or a Ubuntu based distro I can't vouch for other distros, though I'm sure they can run Steam just fine (but SteamOS was once Debian based and now its Arch based so it makes sense to me).
I am using EndeavourOS with KDE (Arch based, with a GUI installer) daily for nearly a year now, before that I was on POP_OS! but I wanted more up to date packages.
Proton had a bug that deleted all Steam Cloud saves made on Windows for any game I launched it with. Not sure if it is fixed yet because I'm scared to try again. Beware & make backups
fyi you can directly view and download the saves and config files that get uploaded to the steam cloud. you could always download them as a backup before launching the game. it would not surprise me if there were oss tools to help manage that as well
I built a newish gaming PC on AMD components and flashed SteamOS onto it. It just works out of the box, although it does sort of think that it's an oversized steamdeck.
My previous gaming PC was a 2016-vintage windows machine with a very hacked and lobotomized win10, so nvidia graphics drivers were starting to become a problem what with the lack of windows update and all that...
Steam and emulation works fairly well. Nearly all newer games just run, and most older games do as well. There's a few I won't run because they use kernel-level anti-cheat. I play single-player and no game needs kernel access, not even to check for cheating.
> Assuming Apple itself doesn't bypass Little Snitch, I don't even think Apple is doing the level of telemetry Microsoft does.
Little snitch doesn't talk directly to the kernel's netfilter/iptables/nftables framework so some traffic may be hidden from it (low-level stuff that cannot be accessed via the API). I don't use it so I don't know if there is a way to bypass this in the settings or with special permission.
You could always route your Mac through a device you can then monitor traffic on and get a ballpark. I don't see why Apple would do so much telemetry and go through so much effort to hide it though.
> Assuming Apple itself doesn't bypass Little Snitch, I don't even think Apple is doing the level of telemetry Microsoft does.
Apple doesn’t do all that much telemetry even if all the telemetry settings are enabled. Because you’re not a product to them. Which is probably why they didn’t even play in the AI race.
Apple's ad revenue keeps climbing, and eventually it will be too big to ignore, while their products plateau with little innovation to show. Don't think they are immune to market forces that bend literally everybody else, at the end they have shareholders too.
For me the most frustrating thing about linux is that it's distros are universally made by people who love linux, and the linux paradigm.
I have used linux on and off for 20 years now, and every time I end up back on windows, and it's such a relief when I am back. And so upsetting that I cannot escape windows.
Windows solves friction with GUI usability.
Linux solves friction with expectation of CLI mastery.
It's forever damned to the 5% of people who are willing to toil with a CLI (yes, I know your grandma uses it to check her e-mail, unfortunately the -only- thing she does is check email).
Then we have the likes of Android and MacOS, which had product people force engineering to bury all CLI stuff.
I strictly use KDE. It is well refined, all the KDE built apps follow a consistent UI. It behaves much like I have expected any desktop OS to behave. Back in the days of KDE 3 (or 3.5?) they used to do a setup wizard where it would ask you which experience you'd prefer: Windows, Mac, or Linux and it would change everything to match how those platforms behaved.
They also seem to have an app for all the major things.. IRC Client? There's definitely a KDE based one, Mail client? KMail. Web Browser? Konqueror! Even though I don't use it, it's still nive to see them build apps for everything for KDE, even a range of simple games.
What do you mean, there's all kinds of extremely user focused distributions.
If you need it to feel like Windows there's KDE - but if you're OK with changing your mind then things like ElemeteryOS (https://elementary.io/) put a huge amount of focus on UX, accessibility, beauty and of course: usability.
Aside from Archlinux, the majority of mainstream distributions bend over themselves to offer you GUIs for everything. Yes, the CLI is powerful and you will be better served by not avoiding it: but you can get by totally fine if you never open a single terminal on Ubuntu or Bazzite.
This is written as a power-user lamenting having power, and presuming that non-power users will have to learn to be a power user.. that's just not a thing in linux since at least 2016.
EndeavourOS is what I use, since I wanted to try Arch but I also refuse to run an OS install that does not have a GUI. The 90s where 30 years ago, every other major distro has a GUI installer OOTB.
Debian lets you do either, I would prefer Arch adopt the UI and still keep the terminal. The other thing is usually with a GUI installer you get a LIVE system that lets 'try before you buy' a distro.
> It's forever damned to the 5% of people who are willing to toil with a CLI
I've never really understood this complaint. On GNOME/KDE, all the normal system administration/configuration stuff (the types of settings you'd see in the control panel on Windows) are accessible through the settings GUI. The situations in which I've had to use the CLI on Linux are basically equivalent to when I have to use the Registry Editor, Group Policy Editor, Services Manager, or PowerShell scripts on Windows, none of which are really any more user friendly than the Linux CLI.
>For me the most frustrating thing about linux is that it's distros are universally made by people who love linux, and the linux paradigm.
The distro I use (Slackware), 100% true. Plus that can be said for many others too.
But, RHEL and by extension Rocky and Alma Linux are driven by corporations and marketing, like Windows is. So if you want a marketing driven OS, you have these anyway.
I just hope RHEL changes does not infect Slackware, a couple of things snuck in due to dependencies, but luckily it did not change the feel of Slackware (yet).
Slackware was my first distro, then Debian, Ubuntu, openSUSE for a little while, then POP_OS!, and now Arch Linux. I loved openSUSE the most, but it stopped supporting my hardware at some point. I dont like to fight for my OS to just work.
I used Linux as a daily driver in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Then switched back to Windows for work convenience. For the first time in about 20 years I have switched back to Linux as the daily driver. I have a windows 11 VM, in case I run into an xlsx file that libre office can't handle (rarely). Linux is just so much faster and cleaner that the convenience factor has shifted.
I built a beast of a workstation in '23 and it's had like 5 collective minutes of downtime since. Debian 12, KDE, 13900K, 128GB ram, 2x2TB nvme disks for my home dir in a btrfs mirror, a 4TB /var disk for containers, psql, etc. It's such a stable and consistent workhorse. Slack, Spotify, vscode, sublime, 1password, screen sharing, google meet, everything works great. Using Libreoffice/Onlyoffice in lieu of MS stack has not been an issue, even when doing extensive document comment reviews with financial companies etc who live on Microsoft tooling.
The irony is that I am using this with a 5K Apple Studio Display, lol. The webcam and other onboard goodies do not work (can't control brightness) but the picture quality sure is good.
You can get the Studio Display to work pretty easily to be fair: you just need to pass through the video card to the motherboard and then run thunderbolt.
I have Linux working with my Studio Display and it just worked out of the box; speakers, webcam and all. (though, the sound quality on the mac is better).
The only issues were that when I use a USB-C capable graphics card, it only has displayport out over USB-C, and doesn't talk USB4/Thunderbolt to the rest of the computer.. so those devices don't get exposed to the motherboard at all.
If you care- it's a kickass display anyway even if you don't.
So interestingly, I have an ASUS Thunderbolt EX4 add-in card, but it doesn't seem to work for me.
> you just need to pass through the video card to the motherboard and then run thunderbolt
I will have to experiment with this. I was using the little daisy chain cables that allow you to go out from GPU -> immediately IN to Thunderbolt card, then monitor was connected to Thunderbolt card. But I couldn't even get any output at all.
I did that before linking the USB-C cable to the gfx card, but I'm not sure if that's required or not? It's the only thing I did.
I had multiple displays at the time, now I just have the Studio Display - if it doesn't work automatically without authorization I wonder how you would bootstrap it..
Checking now in my KDE control panel, I see that I do have a Thunderbolt section, and the display is listed as "Apple Inc. Studio Display - Disconnected, Trusted"
I'll need to play about with this again over the weekend.
There has never been a better time for Windows users to switch to Linux. Most desktop applications are getting replaced with websites, Valve is making herculean progress in getting games to run seamlessly on Linux and, most recently, LLMs have become very effective at helping new users understand and potentially fix their setups.
That said, I did just spend almost half a day trying to debug why SuSE couldn’t see my NVIDIA card. After giving up on that, I tried Fedora which forces Wayland on me and was stuttery for no obvious reason. Finally I tried Arch and it seems to work fine without much fiddling about.
Meanwhile I can buy a Mac and use it immediately, and Windows is a pain but I never have to try 100 solutions before it works.
That’s on me for using NVIDIA though, I’m sure it’s much smoother with Intel and AMD hardware.
I just use EndeavourOS which is Arch based, but has a simpler installer. I know its a meme that Arch people wont shut up about using Arch, but seriously, give it a shot.
Pro-tip do installs / updates with "yay" and you will not want to pull your hair out, Pacman is too "low level" for normal use, yay is higher level and simple. How to update your system? just run "yay" no params. Comes out of the box on EndeavourOS.
SteamOS is also based on Arch these days so it will always work the best with Steam. ;)
I do miss openSUSE, but when they became a rolling distro it stopped supporting things like my wireless card OOTB so I stopped trying to use openSUSE.
> That’s on me for using NVIDIA though, I’m sure it’s much smoother with Intel and AMD hardware.
Yeah, I can confirm that AMD on Linux just fucking works and has for ages. I've not used any recent Intel 3D accelerator cards, but if their new stuff is as solid as their stuff from like twenty years ago, then it'll also just fucking work.
> Yeah, I can confirm that AMD on Linux just fucking works and has for ages. I've not used any recent Intel 3D accelerator cards, but if their new stuff is as solid as their stuff from like twenty years ago, then it'll also just fucking work.
I've had the complete opposite experience. It's only now that I'm using Nvidia that Linux works for me... I hate to admit it, I'm an AMD fanboy.
> It's only now that I'm using Nvidia that Linux works for me... I hate to admit it, I'm an AMD fanboy.
Weird. I've been using AMD hardware on Linux for the past ~twenty years... since back when they were ATi. Aside from when one had to write one's own Xorg.conf [0], everything has just worked.
Having said that, all of my laptops have used Intel graphics hardware, so perhaps none of my ATi- or AMD-video-card-bearing systems properly suspended to RAM or hibernated? I wouldn't know because that's not something I do with my desktops or servers.
A few months ago, I worked out how to run Steam as a different user under Xorg. [0] Since then, I've discovered that nearly all of the games I play (and I play a whole bunch of games) work fine under Linux with an AMD graphics card.
I haven't booted into Windows in months. I'm so glad that folks like Valve have put so much effort into making Windows video games run fine on Linux.
[0] It's not hard, and -like many such things- could totally be set up by a distro if they cared to do so.
The main hurdle for Linux gaming right now is kernel-level anticheat. Kernel-level anticheat is increasingly common in multiplayer games, and it does not play well with Linux. This makes it difficult to play new multiplayer games on Linux.
Of course it's easy to argue that kernel-level anticheat gives way too much system access for a simple video game. But it's currently the most effective form of anticheat, and I don't see it going away anytime soon.
The only game I've heard of is Rust, and apparently they just need to include a library or something to that effect to make it work under Wine, but refuse to do so because they think people will cheat on Linux. I'm pretty sure people cheating are mostly cheating from Windows. I don't care about the Rust game enough to be bothered.
> This makes it difficult to play new multiplayer games on Linux.
There are so many multiplayer games that don't use invasive kernel-mode anticheat. I and my friends have been playing them for quite a long while now.
I agree that there are games that won't work because their invasive kernel-mode anticheat won't run under Wine or Proton (and their devs haven't bothered to port it to Linux). Honestly? I'm quite fine with that. There are so many great games out there; I'm totally okay with never again playing the insignificant percentage of them that demand full control of my computer.
You're right, and I realize my post implied that multiplayer was a complete non-starter on Linux, which isn't true. Kernel-level anticheat is mostly found in big, mainstream releases (especially competitive shooters). Of course, these games happen to be very popular, which gives them an outsized impact.
Personally, I know that the upcoming Battlefield 6 is making me question if I want to switch to Linux once Windows 10 support dies. For a lot of people, being able to play 99% of games on Linux doesn't matter if they can't play one specific game they enjoy. It's a situation that just sucks all around, and I don't see it getting fixed anytime soon.
> Of course, these games happen to be very popular, which gives them an outsized impact.
On the one hand, true. On the other hand, I wonder how BF6's day 1 demand will compare with that of Silksong!
> For a lot of people, being able to play 99% of games on Linux doesn't matter if they can't play one specific game they enjoy.
Sure, yeah, agreed. And the only thing that's wrong with that is that they can't play the game they want to play.
> Personally, I know that the upcoming Battlefield 6 is making me question if I want to switch to Linux once Windows 10 support dies.
Yeah, BF6 demanding Secure Boot be enabled is fascinating. All that effort and they currently do (and will continue to) have cheaters. Plus, all it takes is one buggy widely-used kernel component to render the whole Secure Boot exercise pointless.
Bear in mind that I'm quite a fan of first-person shooters when reading the following:
It seems to me that the big-name Military-Themed Murder Simulators are all released on both PC and PS5 these days. It seems like many of them support attaching a mouse and keyboard to the console and giving you mouse+keyboard control. Honestly, if I ever get the urge to play one of those flashy-but-not-at-all-good-enough-to-justify-the-price-let-alone-the-invasive-kernel-mode-combination-snoopware-and-backdoors things again, I'll just get a copy for PS5 and attach a mouse and keyboard.
Were I fifteen, I'd be likely to jump through the hoops they're presenting. But, I'm definitely no longer fifteen... and over those years, I've played so many -frequently way better- incarnations of whatever game the big studios are serving up this year. I guess it's a pity for them that years and years of accumulated experience have turned me into something of a low-key snob. ;)
I don't see why you're being so snarky about popular games just to say that if you were to play them, you would do it on the proprietary system, PS5, which you already own. That's not sticking it to anyone at all.
> I don't see why you're being so snarky about popular games...
You misunderstand me. I've wasted a ton of my life playing video games. I've played a huge number of video games. If you enjoy violent FPS games, you've not played many games, and you especially haven't played any very good multiplayer FPS games, you're likely to like this year's AAA Military-Themed Murder Simulator (MTMS). As I mentioned, fifteen-year-old me would have surely enjoyed this year's installment of MTMS, as fifteen-year-old me had played many, many fewer games in the genre than mumble-year-old me has.
If I wrote video-game-storefront video game reviews [0], there's a type of positive review that I'd end up writing for many of the games I play. It goes something like
"If this is the first or one of the first games of this type you've played, then definitely get a copy and play it. If you like the genre at all, you'll have a great time. If you have played many games of this type, then consider playing something else, or maybe replaying one of those games. It's a totally competent game, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. But it doesn't do anything or go anywhere that many other games like it haven't already."
There's absolutely nothing wrong with being a competently executed game that doesn't do anything that hasn't already been done before by most of its predecessors. Folks who really want more of the same will enjoy the game, and folks who haven't yet had what you're offering will love what you've done. It's hard to make a competently executed game, and it's dreadfully hard to make a groundbreaking one. There's no shame at all in "merely" making something that's solid and decent.
Hopefully now you better understand what I'm talking about and why? If you're still confused, or things still don't make sense, I'm happy to attempt to answer additional questions.
> That's not sticking it to anyone at all.
Sure? I agree? I'm not of the opinion that I'm sticking it to anyone here. The huge dev shops don't want to make their extremely invasive kernel-mode anti-cheat work on Linux, but are fine with having their software run on the PS5. I don't know if their kernel-mode anticheat runs on the PS5, and I don't particularly care. I'm 110% fine with them doing whatever they feel like to my PS5, which is a dedicated video gaming appliance. I'm not fine with them doing whatever they feel like to the computer I use for my day-to-day business.
Why would I believe that I was sticking it to someone when I pay them money for a copy of the game they made? That'd be a really stupid way to think. That's like book-burner levels of stupid.
[0] ...and maybe that's something I should start doing...
I'm confused by your assertion that you're shocked. Would you quote the parts that shock you? If some of what's shocking isn't what I've written, please do make sure to mention what you believe I intended to convey but did not write down.
Yeah, the only games that I've found that don't run fine on Linux, are games where the game may actually work fine but the developer explicitly breaks support for anticheat reasons.
Lol every time I complain about Windows bloat someone sends me a random github repository as if that will make it better somehow. I don't need to debloat Linux or Mac...
The problem with Windows 11 is that it's not meant to be a better Windows but a worse MacOS. Why is it so hard for even Microsoft employees to understand that people with complex workflows actually benefit from a task bar where all the open windows are visible at all times, and no launcher can replace this?
Competing for a segment that it can't win while losing the segment it owns i must be some business school cases study in the works. What's the point in being a slighlty less tall giraffe when you were a rhino before?
I worked on the Windows Desktop Experience Team from Win7-Win10. Starting around Win8, the designers had full control, and most crucially essentially none of the designers use Windows.
I spent far too many years of my career sitting in conference rooms explaining to the newest designer (because they seem to rotate every 6-18 months) with a shiny Macbook why various ideas had been tried and failed in usability studies because our users want X, Y, and Z.
They could make it configurable. You can have your cake and eat it too in this situation.
I don't like KDE's default settings but it took me a mere seconds to get the desktop I like.
Of course this is not a new idea and how it used to be on Windows. The real question is why removing user choice has become so fashionable in UX design. Maybe it's just a phase and will pass.
It's not Microsoft employees who make these calls, but the Microsoft organization itself. Organizations make decisions that nobody by themselves would want to make. The larger an organization gets, the more true this becomes. Think of them like meta organisms, or schooling fish.
Wrong, there is always somebody responsible. It may not be an explicit decision but somebody let it happen.
I've personally witnessed this at work and for lack of better terms call it "leadership by weakness". Initiatives to change a situation will be either ignored or actively undermined by lack of support from the one in charge.
Outsiders get the impression that "it just happened this way" or "things just are like this" but it really was a conscious decision by leadership. As an employee I found it insulting because of course our customers blamed us developers.
You may be able to pinpoint a few people who signed off on the decision, but it's rarely a decision they would have made outside of the context of the organization. The organization provides the incentives, shapes the data used in the decision process, and determines the set of decisions which can be made. For instance, an executive may sign off on a feature after viewing data that says its a good idea, but the data was prepared by another part of the organization which is trying to advance their own agenda. And for-profit organizations being as they are, options which don't increase or even decrease profit are essentially off the table, unavailable for real consideration, so the person signing off on the feature already had their options winnowed down by the organization itself.
> The organization provides the incentives, shapes the data used in the decision process, [...]
Exactly! And who sets those incentives?
Imagine if Satya Nadella was an avid Windows power user that thinks having a vertical tab bar is the best invention since sliced bread. Would he really fuzz around with StartAllBack etc.? Because "it just is like this now"? Or would he be able to influence the Windows team to simply implement it? Of course he could. He just doesn't care about vertical tab bars.
As a side note, I see the blaming of bad situations on "for-profit organizations" as if management had no other choices just because somebody made a spreadsheet as an easy excuse for them to not stand behind their decisions.
If this "profit-uber-alles" theory was true executives would reduce their compensation to minimum wage. It clearly is more complicated.
Executives like to think they're in charge, but they're selected for their alignment with the goals of the organization and if they stray far from that they get replaced. Satya isn't the kind of man who would put good taste in software design first, and if he was then he wouldn't be in the position.
> As a side note, I see the blaming of bad situations on "for-profit organizations" as if management had no other choices
They have one key choice, they can walk away. Whenever they realize the corporation is going to do something they don't want to be involved with, they can and should walk away. Sometimes they do, but when they choose comfort over good aesthetic sense, ethics, morales, laws.. they can and should be judged for that. The worldview I am advocating for (viewing organizations as organisms, or Slow AIs as others have put it) is not about absolving individual humans of responsibility. As long as they continue to participate in the organization, they're responsible. Rather, the point of the mental model is to remind people that organizations, particularly in this case corporations, are inhumane monsters which lack an innate understanding of human values.
They are terraforming our planet into a less habitable one, making many people miserable and turn useful things into abominations. One usually can't point at a single person deciding that it should be so, but at the end that's what's the output is.
The paperclip machine is here and it's optimizing for GDP growth.
It totally makes sense though. Win11 mainly seems to be a career advancement vehicle for Microsoft's anonymous middle management caste. I bet that if you point at a single bad feature in Win11 it will be very hard to find a single person who would take responsibility.
For good features it will be "I made the decision!", for bad features it will be weasel words like "we heard our users loud and clear" or "we modernized" or "we streamlined", etc... basically as if the bad feature was caused by some external force or by a committee decision.
Everyone in a big org has their own incentives and they don't match with what makes a better product. People are looking out for themselves and there's no accountability for the end result. Checkboxes get checked and that's all that matters.
My 32-core Threadripper can't run Windows 11 and my HP Reverb G2 VR headset can no longer run Windows 11 after they removed WMR still present on Windows 10. The only advantage of Windows was backward compatibility, now some smart heads at MS decided to get rid of it to some extent. Also the byzantine mashup of UI styles makes it look like some ancient Linux distro.
Looks like a measurement artifact of some sort, to be honest. I wish Windows 11 saw tangible setbacks, but this just-so story sounds very much like something you invent to explain an effect that’s not actually there, before you realize you messed up the methodology.
Why did[1] the share of Windows 8 (not 8.1) also grow each month from May to August, for example?
Even before using an autounattend.xml for a clean install on a (new to me) laptop to clear some Win11 junk, I didn’t really get the gripes people have for it. It’s basically a new skin for Win10 that could have done without some app redesigns with basically all the same problems of its predecessor.
Slower, more unwanted telemetry, changes are generally for worse, the very definition of a massive failed software project. That you don't see a difference doesn't mean thats valid for everybody.
I've been using Windows 11 LTSC for a few months with all telemetry disabled, it's a bit slower than Windows 10 but overall it is surprisingly usable. The UX changes are a disaster, however, and Explorer lags and Control Panel still exists.
Imo the usability issues are very minor. The default settings for the home edition are absolute shitshow - ads and clickbait everywhere - but those can be turned off with a few clicks.
I imagine if Microsoft can't get you to upgrade to Windows 11, they will make a few out of support updates to Windows 10 that will annoy and nag, plead, beg, and maybe even use UI tricks to have people "accept" an upgrade. If that doesn't work, they may even incorporate the worst of Windows 11 through some side channel like Internet Explorer.
For when Windows 7 support ended they started filling the OS with updates and UI elements for the purpose upgrading, and lots of people ended up accidentally upgrading to Windows 10.
I have Windows 11 and Windows 10. My biggest gripes are:
1. Erratic and bugged out address bar of Explorer in Windows 11.
- Address bar can be sticky (you can't make it close)
- Address bar popping out when you take focus of a window if address has been previously clicked into - so you will double click icon in the unfocused window, but address bar will pop out and you will click on random address in your computer.
- Address bar offering suggestion for recent directory X, but when you press down key to select it, it will choose different address from a different list which you don't see.
- Clicking into address bar can clear it while you want to select it. Especially when address is longer and window is smaller.
Windows 10 may not support tabs in Explorer, but boy at least the experience is not pain in the ass.
2. Windows 11 being picky about support processors, secure boot and TPM. On some computer I needed to go as far as updating UEFI to make it working.
Also on Windows 10 I have noticed that Microsoft is not trying shove AI down your throat. So that might be reason too.
If this is not a statcounter anomaly, the explanation seems obvious: more people are dropping windows in general (both 10 and 11), mostly in favor of phones and tablets (as has been a trend for years now), or in the niche cases, linux. Meanwhile 10 stays strong thanks to all the offices and old machines that won't be upgrading for a while.
At home I sit in front of an all AMD Void Linux Musl machine running XFCE and themed with Chicago95. The UI is nice and boring so its out of the way yet also familiar. I like it.
Flatpak takes care of monster applications like Chrome, KiCAD, LibreOffice, Steam, and so on. Only one of my Steam games gives me a problem: Crysis* (Of course it doesn't run Crysis!) Setting up CUPS was as simple as adding a line to a config file, starting CUPS, adding my HP laser and hit print in Chrome and get a printed document. I recently had to install Zoom so I plugged in a random Webcam, installed Zoom via flatpak and Zoom just worked.
The thing that gets me is that I don't notice I'm using Linux. I'm just using my computer like always. I also have to remind myself to run updates every few weeks but there are times it goes over a month without issue. I have full control of my computer without any of the previous issues.
* Original Crysis, not the remaster which I hear should work under Proton.
I wonder if this is another 'big in China' effect, similar to how China was the last big holdout for WinXP in the Steam hardware stats until 2020 or so after Microsoft had dropped extended WinXP support in 2014. When we tried to decide whether we should drop WinXP support from our MMO game client after Microsoft pulled the plug we monitored the Steam hardware stats for a couple of years and from time to time there was a sudden surge of popularity for WinXP at the cost of Win7 and Win10. We explained that to ourselves that another wave of Chinese PC users must have entered Steam (maybe because of a popular game release in China which was entirely obscure in the rest of the world).
With Win11, I feel all the WinUI overlays have eaten the performance gains of Moore's law. Before Win10, Explorer used to just work. Now explorer won't auto-refresh when it's supposed to after renaming, moving or deleting a file, there's some refreshing loop bug where it'll keep popping a list back up to the top when you've scrolled down. Increasingly running into (assuming locked) files that won't copy or move or give any error or notification of why. Learning more Powershell, Robocopy and CLI commands just to do basic tasks, of which I'd rather learn the linux incantations for.
It tells you a lot that the only way Microsoft has managed to compete with the Steam Deck is by making a Windows version that never even loads explorer.exe at all.
In my case I can't upgrade even if I wanted to because my PC doesn't meet their requirements. It's 7 years old but still runs like a dream. Why would I upgrade my hardware just for Windows 11?
You can upgrade with a clean install. I know that this is out of reach for some users; I bring this up so unfamiliar readers don't misunderstand the limitation.
I'm one of these "holdouts". My gaming setup is Windows 10 21H2, so EoL is in 2027, I'm good so far. Then I'll either proceed to the IoT version, pushing the EoL into 2031, or upgrade to Win11 LTSC, whichever seems to make sense at that moment.
Windows 11 has no attractive features for me over 10. And the UX is subpar. So I'll upgrade when I'll absolutely have to.
Microsoft does not care. They are worth 11x more than when W10 was launched, and have "more important" things to focus on. They are the true tech monopoly.
It's the same story with Xbox. Microsoft is simply too big to have the passion for their gaming division (which is what entertainment needs).
Windows 11 is probably the reason why Apple are going to launch a low-cost MacBook. Not that $999 isn’t already cheap, but if they release a $699 version...
My wife finally switched over and bought a MacBook Pro for work, having never used a Mac before. Seeing me work all day on battery alone, and not having to deal with Windows slowness anymore won her over.
This! From a hardware perspective I do not see any reason to upgrade. I have a gen 7 i5 processor and 16GB or RAM and I have no issues with my current device. I am not sure that Microsoft thought that part through. The problem Microsoft has is that Windows 10 has not slowed down unlike with older Android phones which tend to become rather slow and left behind in terms of apps and so on. With Windows 10 everything still works fine, VLC, Firefox, VS Code.
Oops I should have kept my mouth shut. It will be interesting how the application developers react. Will Firefox or Brave browser stop supporting Windows 10 in a year's time.
My work issued device is on Windows and I keep a Windows PC at home just to make the switching between work and home simpler but I have no reason not to switch to Linux at home.
Forcing TPM garbage was such an anti-user move, especially when it's not actually required and only gives a few basic features like windows hello. You block an upgrade over that? Beyond dumb.
Deeply unsurprising. My work machine was upgraded to 11, and using it in that context makes me certain that I am going to ride 10 into the ground (or a potential future steamOS release).
The machine now takes longer on startup to get to an operational state, the changes to the right click context menu are ridiculous and asinine, and the corners are now rounded on all the windows. Dear microsoft: take a look at windows IRL. ask yourself: are these rectangles, or squircles?
What is there for me to gain as an end user? Seems like Microsoft just gets more user data and is able to sell more ads while i have to use shittier software.
From a usability perspective, the difference is that Vista and 7 drew rounded borders around the window contents, while 11 doesn’t have any borders and instead cuts out pixels from the window contents to make the window rounded. The real problem isn’t the windows being rounded, it’s that they’re hiding parts of the window contents for purely stylistic reasons.
The potential for issues there depends on the radius of the curve, which is fairly mild in W11’s case. macOS has had similarly rounded corners since version 10.7 (2011) and has never caused any problems.
The extreme corner radii found in newer designs like M3 Expressive and Liquid Glass on the other hand are flirting with danger with the extent to which they cut into window content.
I've had issues with stuff on status bars getting cut off for programs written before status bars fell out of fashion. This is less of a problem on Mac because backwards compatibility isn't much of a concern there, so nobody expects to be able to run a program written more than a few years ago.
Just want to remind everyone, if they haven't realized it yet, that Microsoft will help you switch to Linux for free. They have this site (https://copilot.microsoft.com) that will gently walk you though any problems that you may run into. Afraid of the command line? They'll give you the commands to copy and paste.
Same, I don't' get the agita. My operating system version is like #426 on my list of concerns. Most of the complaints are seemingly from people who don't use the OS daily (reviewers?). For me it just... works.
Windows 11 is fine after you turn off all the ads from configs. Do agree the default settings are extremely disrespectful of users but once they are turned off I don’t have any gripes.
I really kind of doubt we'll actually see a W12. Microsoft appears to have lost all interest in creating an operating system in favor of a revenue system.
Best case, W11 tanks when W10 goes away and Microsoft becomes irrelevant on the PC.
More realistically, W11 will become SaaS with a sort of rolling release similar to Arch. After all, why build a new OS when you can do nothing and rake in subscription fees? Actually, why create anything of value when you have such a profitable racket as renting people's own PC to them for literally any price you want?
Hopefully Microsoft wither dies or becomes an ineffectual zombie like IBM or HP.
The next version will be called "Windows", to keep things simple. Then we will retroactively refer it to as "Windows 2027", but generally still fail to be able to query useful info on it. The next one will be "Windows 13".
7 was their highpoint.. It was the 1st version that actually consistently worked good and was otherwise pretty clean.. 10 is a big step down from 7, it has a lot of extraneous shit in it.
My suspicion is that they make the stopgap OSes deliberately shitty and performance hungry so they can sell on the easy gains and improvements. I know, "never attribute malice" but this is such a theme, over 9 generations of an OS, that it can't be completely accidental.
Are they surprised? Why on earth would anyone want to switch to 11?
Getting rid of the customisable/movable taskbar and replacing it with the god-awful Mac-style centre menu was an absolute travesty of design.
Similarly, replacing functional control panel dialogs with the "settings app".
The insistence on packaging programs as "app bundles".
Then there's the slew of useless always-online garbage, which literally nobody asked for, and which basically amounts to user-hostile spyware.
MS needs to accept that user interface design mostly peaked about a decade or two ago, and anything beyond that has been pointless tinkering at best, or actual regression of usability at worst.
You can actually move the taskbar to the left, but you can no longer have it vertically :/
> The insistence on packaging programs as "app bundles".
I don't think appx is too bad on its own - the operating system should have a package manager, it provides a means of handling common dependencies (although this was for WinUI3, which is kind of dead), and both MSI and CAB are very old, weird file formats.
The UWP sandboxing .. I can see why they did it, protection against malicious apps, but it completely handicaps desktop apps.
> Then there's the slew of useless always-online garbage, which literally nobody asked for, and which basically amounts to user-hostile spyware.
Yes, this is Bad and the sort of thing the EU should start leaning on.
> MS needs to accept that user interface design mostly peaked about a decade or two ago
The original Windows era had plenty of work put into accessibility and making it clear what was clickable. The modern era swept that away in favor of "looks nice to minimalists", and I think it's a loss.
Flat design is a travesty. You can't tell what you can click/tap delicately, so touching the screen at all becomes an adventure.
When I learned the taskbar can't be placed on the side vertically is when I realized I'm never going to install Windows 11. That combined with 10 being advertised as "the last Windows I'll ever need to buy" and the fact their updater told me I have to replace my entire PC to be eligible to install it (in spite of the fact that I merely need to turn on a BIOS setting and my system would fully support it), then the notice that they'd be selling 1-year support contract extensions for anyone staying on 10... What's next, Windows declares itself outright as ransomware and holds my data hostage? I'm imagining a full screen overlay appears: "Nice OS install you've got here... Would be a shame if something... happened to it."
Tip for enrolling in the Extended Security Updates for Win10:
https://github.com/builtbybel/Flyoobe/releases
> What’s new in Flyoobe 1.7.284
> This update is especially important for everyone still on Windows 10 who plans to stay there and take advantage of the Extended Security Updates (ESU) program.
Also in 1.10 stable, of course.
it's also sloooow, which makes me wonder if that's the real reason for their hardware requirements and locking out old CPUs that are perfectly servicable.
"What Andy give us, Bill taketh away" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_and_Bill%27s_law
The reason you use Windows 11 is because you have some legacy software that needs it or your work requires it or you are a gamer.
Otherwise Mac OS is soooo much better and the hardware is so much better and if there weren’t ai most people would never have to upgrade from Mac M1.
They also need to stop dumping spyware and forcing people into onedrive etc.
Or because lots of other people use it and you're developing for them, though I guess that comes under "your work requires it".
The reason I'm not using a Mac is because of their walled garden, the gross intent to control all the devs. This is admittedly very trendy right now and Google and Microsoft are at it too.
The reason I don’t consider Linux is: * I want a single company responsible for security on my computer. Apple has a highly paid professional team to respond for any security updates and configuration. I have a linux server and there is no easy way to get that kind of support. I’m happy to pay a reasonable price for this. * I need some legacy software like Microsoft Excel. Mac’s tend to have more professionally developed third party software like Microsoft Excel, Adobe, Raycast, etc.
Those are really the two big frictions that I find with using anything other than Windows and Mac.
The biggest problem I have with 11 is how unstable it is. Almost seems like there's a new BSOD trigger or data corruption bug introduced every month by Microsoft themselves, and 3rd party drivers fare even worse. A bunch of explorer and start menu random crashes too. 7 and 10 never caused this much headache for me.
The new taskbar is nothing like the macOS dock; you can put the dock to the left or right of the screen, and I never expect this user feature to go away. Apple is quick to get rid of older APIs, but they're better than Microsoft at keeping user features.
If you find yourself required to use windows 11, consider running Flyoobe:
https://github.com/builtbybel/Flyoobe
It can be run after install to disable AI/Apps/experience crap that M$ forces on you.
Also, remember to disable app updates in M$ store or it will just reinstall everything you uninstalled on every reboot.
I'm running Win11 right now and I have customized my taskbar to look like it was on Win10.
Now move it to the top of the screen without 3rd party software.
And after you do, enjoy some maximized windows and notifications covering it.
https://github.com/dremin/RetroBar to have customisable Windows 98/XP like taskbar
Yeah, you can’t move it away from the bottom of the screen, but it doesn’t have to look like the macOS Dock. With a couple of toggles it operates mostly like a traditional taskbar.
new hardware compatibility. w10 users will be eeked out whether they like it or not
I've basically switched to Linux. The bar is insanely low for me with Microsoft, get rid of all the telemetry bull#@$@# or make it easy for me to disable it without having to run obscure github scripts.
I have 0 telemetry on Arch Linux.
Assuming Apple itself doesn't bypass Little Snitch, I don't even think Apple is doing the level of telemetry Microsoft does.
I bought a Mac for my next laptop, and I have 0 need for Windows, I have been maining Linux for like six years now, and anything that needs me to use Windows is usually also available on Mac.
Your move Microsoft. Give me an OS for power users that isn't full of marketing driven development.
My gaming PC is a very unloved Windows machine, if not for that I'd be long gone (everything else is Linux). Come to think of it, gaming is why I used windows in the first place, starting with 95. With the Steam Deck and its push for Linux compat I don't see the next generation being so windows focused either.
I have been gaming on Linux for like nearly two years now. Proton just works. I recommend either Arch or a Ubuntu based distro I can't vouch for other distros, though I'm sure they can run Steam just fine (but SteamOS was once Debian based and now its Arch based so it makes sense to me).
I am using EndeavourOS with KDE (Arch based, with a GUI installer) daily for nearly a year now, before that I was on POP_OS! but I wanted more up to date packages.
Proton had a bug that deleted all Steam Cloud saves made on Windows for any game I launched it with. Not sure if it is fixed yet because I'm scared to try again. Beware & make backups
fyi you can directly view and download the saves and config files that get uploaded to the steam cloud. you could always download them as a backup before launching the game. it would not surprise me if there were oss tools to help manage that as well
https://store.steampowered.com/account/remotestorage
Never ran into this before, that's definitely weird.
I am running all my games from linux nowadays. Using nixos with steam (games run via proton) and hyprland. Works like a charm.
I play all my steam games on Linux/proton, zero issues for years now.
I built a newish gaming PC on AMD components and flashed SteamOS onto it. It just works out of the box, although it does sort of think that it's an oversized steamdeck.
My previous gaming PC was a 2016-vintage windows machine with a very hacked and lobotomized win10, so nvidia graphics drivers were starting to become a problem what with the lack of windows update and all that...
System 76 Pop!_OS gamer here.
Steam and emulation works fairly well. Nearly all newer games just run, and most older games do as well. There's a few I won't run because they use kernel-level anti-cheat. I play single-player and no game needs kernel access, not even to check for cheating.
> Assuming Apple itself doesn't bypass Little Snitch, I don't even think Apple is doing the level of telemetry Microsoft does.
Little snitch doesn't talk directly to the kernel's netfilter/iptables/nftables framework so some traffic may be hidden from it (low-level stuff that cannot be accessed via the API). I don't use it so I don't know if there is a way to bypass this in the settings or with special permission.
You could always route your Mac through a device you can then monitor traffic on and get a ballpark. I don't see why Apple would do so much telemetry and go through so much effort to hide it though.
> Assuming Apple itself doesn't bypass Little Snitch, I don't even think Apple is doing the level of telemetry Microsoft does.
Apple doesn’t do all that much telemetry even if all the telemetry settings are enabled. Because you’re not a product to them. Which is probably why they didn’t even play in the AI race.
Apple's ad revenue keeps climbing, and eventually it will be too big to ignore, while their products plateau with little innovation to show. Don't think they are immune to market forces that bend literally everybody else, at the end they have shareholders too.
> while their products plateau with little innovation to show
Seen the battery life figures on yesterday’s iPhones? And ARM revolution was just 5 years ago.
I would hardly call it “little innovation to show”.
For me the most frustrating thing about linux is that it's distros are universally made by people who love linux, and the linux paradigm.
I have used linux on and off for 20 years now, and every time I end up back on windows, and it's such a relief when I am back. And so upsetting that I cannot escape windows.
Windows solves friction with GUI usability.
Linux solves friction with expectation of CLI mastery.
It's forever damned to the 5% of people who are willing to toil with a CLI (yes, I know your grandma uses it to check her e-mail, unfortunately the -only- thing she does is check email).
Then we have the likes of Android and MacOS, which had product people force engineering to bury all CLI stuff.
> Windows solves friction with GUI usability.
I strictly use KDE. It is well refined, all the KDE built apps follow a consistent UI. It behaves much like I have expected any desktop OS to behave. Back in the days of KDE 3 (or 3.5?) they used to do a setup wizard where it would ask you which experience you'd prefer: Windows, Mac, or Linux and it would change everything to match how those platforms behaved.
Yeah, personally I've been using KDE for a few years now and actively find the user interface easier to use and more logical than Windows.
They also seem to have an app for all the major things.. IRC Client? There's definitely a KDE based one, Mail client? KMail. Web Browser? Konqueror! Even though I don't use it, it's still nive to see them build apps for everything for KDE, even a range of simple games.
What do you mean, there's all kinds of extremely user focused distributions.
If you need it to feel like Windows there's KDE - but if you're OK with changing your mind then things like ElemeteryOS (https://elementary.io/) put a huge amount of focus on UX, accessibility, beauty and of course: usability.
Aside from Archlinux, the majority of mainstream distributions bend over themselves to offer you GUIs for everything. Yes, the CLI is powerful and you will be better served by not avoiding it: but you can get by totally fine if you never open a single terminal on Ubuntu or Bazzite.
This is written as a power-user lamenting having power, and presuming that non-power users will have to learn to be a power user.. that's just not a thing in linux since at least 2016.
EndeavourOS is what I use, since I wanted to try Arch but I also refuse to run an OS install that does not have a GUI. The 90s where 30 years ago, every other major distro has a GUI installer OOTB.
I prefer to have control over my install with a command line.
Isn’t it great that we both have options that cater to us! :D
Debian lets you do either, I would prefer Arch adopt the UI and still keep the terminal. The other thing is usually with a GUI installer you get a LIVE system that lets 'try before you buy' a distro.
> It's forever damned to the 5% of people who are willing to toil with a CLI
I've never really understood this complaint. On GNOME/KDE, all the normal system administration/configuration stuff (the types of settings you'd see in the control panel on Windows) are accessible through the settings GUI. The situations in which I've had to use the CLI on Linux are basically equivalent to when I have to use the Registry Editor, Group Policy Editor, Services Manager, or PowerShell scripts on Windows, none of which are really any more user friendly than the Linux CLI.
>For me the most frustrating thing about linux is that it's distros are universally made by people who love linux, and the linux paradigm.
The distro I use (Slackware), 100% true. Plus that can be said for many others too.
But, RHEL and by extension Rocky and Alma Linux are driven by corporations and marketing, like Windows is. So if you want a marketing driven OS, you have these anyway.
I just hope RHEL changes does not infect Slackware, a couple of things snuck in due to dependencies, but luckily it did not change the feel of Slackware (yet).
AlmaLinux is driven by a non-profit foundation and while the core is basically RHEL, we're adding on top to meet the needs of the community.
https://github.com/AlmaLinux/ALESCo/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclo...
Slackware was my first distro, then Debian, Ubuntu, openSUSE for a little while, then POP_OS!, and now Arch Linux. I loved openSUSE the most, but it stopped supporting my hardware at some point. I dont like to fight for my OS to just work.
I used Linux as a daily driver in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Then switched back to Windows for work convenience. For the first time in about 20 years I have switched back to Linux as the daily driver. I have a windows 11 VM, in case I run into an xlsx file that libre office can't handle (rarely). Linux is just so much faster and cleaner that the convenience factor has shifted.
Linux is even faster at running Windows games in some cases. ;)
I built a beast of a workstation in '23 and it's had like 5 collective minutes of downtime since. Debian 12, KDE, 13900K, 128GB ram, 2x2TB nvme disks for my home dir in a btrfs mirror, a 4TB /var disk for containers, psql, etc. It's such a stable and consistent workhorse. Slack, Spotify, vscode, sublime, 1password, screen sharing, google meet, everything works great. Using Libreoffice/Onlyoffice in lieu of MS stack has not been an issue, even when doing extensive document comment reviews with financial companies etc who live on Microsoft tooling.
The irony is that I am using this with a 5K Apple Studio Display, lol. The webcam and other onboard goodies do not work (can't control brightness) but the picture quality sure is good.
The Linux desktop is 100% here.
You can get the Studio Display to work pretty easily to be fair: you just need to pass through the video card to the motherboard and then run thunderbolt.
I have Linux working with my Studio Display and it just worked out of the box; speakers, webcam and all. (though, the sound quality on the mac is better).
The only issues were that when I use a USB-C capable graphics card, it only has displayport out over USB-C, and doesn't talk USB4/Thunderbolt to the rest of the computer.. so those devices don't get exposed to the motherboard at all.
If you care- it's a kickass display anyway even if you don't.
So interestingly, I have an ASUS Thunderbolt EX4 add-in card, but it doesn't seem to work for me.
> you just need to pass through the video card to the motherboard and then run thunderbolt
I will have to experiment with this. I was using the little daisy chain cables that allow you to go out from GPU -> immediately IN to Thunderbolt card, then monitor was connected to Thunderbolt card. But I couldn't even get any output at all.
Would be curious to hear more about your setup!
I have the same card.
I "authorised" the Display in the KDE control panel, probably it was this: https://github.com/KDE/plasma-thunderbolt
I did that before linking the USB-C cable to the gfx card, but I'm not sure if that's required or not? It's the only thing I did.
I had multiple displays at the time, now I just have the Studio Display - if it doesn't work automatically without authorization I wonder how you would bootstrap it..
What distro/kernel/kde version are you on?
Checking now in my KDE control panel, I see that I do have a Thunderbolt section, and the display is listed as "Apple Inc. Studio Display - Disconnected, Trusted"
I'll need to play about with this again over the weekend.
I’m using kubuntu, Trusted would make me think you’ve done the tight thing.
FWIW, I have Two entries in my Thunderbolt list for this
There has never been a better time for Windows users to switch to Linux. Most desktop applications are getting replaced with websites, Valve is making herculean progress in getting games to run seamlessly on Linux and, most recently, LLMs have become very effective at helping new users understand and potentially fix their setups.
That said, I did just spend almost half a day trying to debug why SuSE couldn’t see my NVIDIA card. After giving up on that, I tried Fedora which forces Wayland on me and was stuttery for no obvious reason. Finally I tried Arch and it seems to work fine without much fiddling about.
Meanwhile I can buy a Mac and use it immediately, and Windows is a pain but I never have to try 100 solutions before it works.
That’s on me for using NVIDIA though, I’m sure it’s much smoother with Intel and AMD hardware.
I just use EndeavourOS which is Arch based, but has a simpler installer. I know its a meme that Arch people wont shut up about using Arch, but seriously, give it a shot.
Pro-tip do installs / updates with "yay" and you will not want to pull your hair out, Pacman is too "low level" for normal use, yay is higher level and simple. How to update your system? just run "yay" no params. Comes out of the box on EndeavourOS.
SteamOS is also based on Arch these days so it will always work the best with Steam. ;)
I do miss openSUSE, but when they became a rolling distro it stopped supporting things like my wireless card OOTB so I stopped trying to use openSUSE.
> That’s on me for using NVIDIA though, I’m sure it’s much smoother with Intel and AMD hardware.
Yeah, I can confirm that AMD on Linux just fucking works and has for ages. I've not used any recent Intel 3D accelerator cards, but if their new stuff is as solid as their stuff from like twenty years ago, then it'll also just fucking work.
> Yeah, I can confirm that AMD on Linux just fucking works and has for ages. I've not used any recent Intel 3D accelerator cards, but if their new stuff is as solid as their stuff from like twenty years ago, then it'll also just fucking work.
I've had the complete opposite experience. It's only now that I'm using Nvidia that Linux works for me... I hate to admit it, I'm an AMD fanboy.
> It's only now that I'm using Nvidia that Linux works for me... I hate to admit it, I'm an AMD fanboy.
Weird. I've been using AMD hardware on Linux for the past ~twenty years... since back when they were ATi. Aside from when one had to write one's own Xorg.conf [0], everything has just worked.
Having said that, all of my laptops have used Intel graphics hardware, so perhaps none of my ATi- or AMD-video-card-bearing systems properly suspended to RAM or hibernated? I wouldn't know because that's not something I do with my desktops or servers.
[0] Or whatever XFree86 called that config file
My daily driver for decades has been Linux.
A few months ago, I worked out how to run Steam as a different user under Xorg. [0] Since then, I've discovered that nearly all of the games I play (and I play a whole bunch of games) work fine under Linux with an AMD graphics card.
I haven't booted into Windows in months. I'm so glad that folks like Valve have put so much effort into making Windows video games run fine on Linux.
[0] It's not hard, and -like many such things- could totally be set up by a distro if they cared to do so.
The main hurdle for Linux gaming right now is kernel-level anticheat. Kernel-level anticheat is increasingly common in multiplayer games, and it does not play well with Linux. This makes it difficult to play new multiplayer games on Linux.
Of course it's easy to argue that kernel-level anticheat gives way too much system access for a simple video game. But it's currently the most effective form of anticheat, and I don't see it going away anytime soon.
The only game I've heard of is Rust, and apparently they just need to include a library or something to that effect to make it work under Wine, but refuse to do so because they think people will cheat on Linux. I'm pretty sure people cheating are mostly cheating from Windows. I don't care about the Rust game enough to be bothered.
> kernel-level anticheat gives way too much system access for a simple video game.
Yup. It really does.
> This makes it difficult to play new multiplayer games on Linux.
There are so many multiplayer games that don't use invasive kernel-mode anticheat. I and my friends have been playing them for quite a long while now.
I agree that there are games that won't work because their invasive kernel-mode anticheat won't run under Wine or Proton (and their devs haven't bothered to port it to Linux). Honestly? I'm quite fine with that. There are so many great games out there; I'm totally okay with never again playing the insignificant percentage of them that demand full control of my computer.
You're right, and I realize my post implied that multiplayer was a complete non-starter on Linux, which isn't true. Kernel-level anticheat is mostly found in big, mainstream releases (especially competitive shooters). Of course, these games happen to be very popular, which gives them an outsized impact.
Personally, I know that the upcoming Battlefield 6 is making me question if I want to switch to Linux once Windows 10 support dies. For a lot of people, being able to play 99% of games on Linux doesn't matter if they can't play one specific game they enjoy. It's a situation that just sucks all around, and I don't see it getting fixed anytime soon.
> Of course, these games happen to be very popular, which gives them an outsized impact.
On the one hand, true. On the other hand, I wonder how BF6's day 1 demand will compare with that of Silksong!
> For a lot of people, being able to play 99% of games on Linux doesn't matter if they can't play one specific game they enjoy.
Sure, yeah, agreed. And the only thing that's wrong with that is that they can't play the game they want to play.
> Personally, I know that the upcoming Battlefield 6 is making me question if I want to switch to Linux once Windows 10 support dies.
Yeah, BF6 demanding Secure Boot be enabled is fascinating. All that effort and they currently do (and will continue to) have cheaters. Plus, all it takes is one buggy widely-used kernel component to render the whole Secure Boot exercise pointless.
Bear in mind that I'm quite a fan of first-person shooters when reading the following:
It seems to me that the big-name Military-Themed Murder Simulators are all released on both PC and PS5 these days. It seems like many of them support attaching a mouse and keyboard to the console and giving you mouse+keyboard control. Honestly, if I ever get the urge to play one of those flashy-but-not-at-all-good-enough-to-justify-the-price-let-alone-the-invasive-kernel-mode-combination-snoopware-and-backdoors things again, I'll just get a copy for PS5 and attach a mouse and keyboard.
Were I fifteen, I'd be likely to jump through the hoops they're presenting. But, I'm definitely no longer fifteen... and over those years, I've played so many -frequently way better- incarnations of whatever game the big studios are serving up this year. I guess it's a pity for them that years and years of accumulated experience have turned me into something of a low-key snob. ;)
I don't see why you're being so snarky about popular games just to say that if you were to play them, you would do it on the proprietary system, PS5, which you already own. That's not sticking it to anyone at all.
> I don't see why you're being so snarky about popular games...
You misunderstand me. I've wasted a ton of my life playing video games. I've played a huge number of video games. If you enjoy violent FPS games, you've not played many games, and you especially haven't played any very good multiplayer FPS games, you're likely to like this year's AAA Military-Themed Murder Simulator (MTMS). As I mentioned, fifteen-year-old me would have surely enjoyed this year's installment of MTMS, as fifteen-year-old me had played many, many fewer games in the genre than mumble-year-old me has.
If I wrote video-game-storefront video game reviews [0], there's a type of positive review that I'd end up writing for many of the games I play. It goes something like
"If this is the first or one of the first games of this type you've played, then definitely get a copy and play it. If you like the genre at all, you'll have a great time. If you have played many games of this type, then consider playing something else, or maybe replaying one of those games. It's a totally competent game, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. But it doesn't do anything or go anywhere that many other games like it haven't already."
There's absolutely nothing wrong with being a competently executed game that doesn't do anything that hasn't already been done before by most of its predecessors. Folks who really want more of the same will enjoy the game, and folks who haven't yet had what you're offering will love what you've done. It's hard to make a competently executed game, and it's dreadfully hard to make a groundbreaking one. There's no shame at all in "merely" making something that's solid and decent.
Hopefully now you better understand what I'm talking about and why? If you're still confused, or things still don't make sense, I'm happy to attempt to answer additional questions.
> That's not sticking it to anyone at all.
Sure? I agree? I'm not of the opinion that I'm sticking it to anyone here. The huge dev shops don't want to make their extremely invasive kernel-mode anti-cheat work on Linux, but are fine with having their software run on the PS5. I don't know if their kernel-mode anticheat runs on the PS5, and I don't particularly care. I'm 110% fine with them doing whatever they feel like to my PS5, which is a dedicated video gaming appliance. I'm not fine with them doing whatever they feel like to the computer I use for my day-to-day business.
Why would I believe that I was sticking it to someone when I pay them money for a copy of the game they made? That'd be a really stupid way to think. That's like book-burner levels of stupid.
[0] ...and maybe that's something I should start doing...
I’m kinda shocked by your first paragraph. I’ve played all sorts of games. I still enjoy AAA FPS games even if I mostly play other genres.
I'm confused by your assertion that you're shocked. Would you quote the parts that shock you? If some of what's shocking isn't what I've written, please do make sure to mention what you believe I intended to convey but did not write down.
Yeah, the only games that I've found that don't run fine on Linux, are games where the game may actually work fine but the developer explicitly breaks support for anticheat reasons.
Obscure github scripts?
Simplewall (Henry++) has entered the room.
Lol every time I complain about Windows bloat someone sends me a random github repository as if that will make it better somehow. I don't need to debloat Linux or Mac...
The problem with Windows 11 is that it's not meant to be a better Windows but a worse MacOS. Why is it so hard for even Microsoft employees to understand that people with complex workflows actually benefit from a task bar where all the open windows are visible at all times, and no launcher can replace this?
Competing for a segment that it can't win while losing the segment it owns i must be some business school cases study in the works. What's the point in being a slighlty less tall giraffe when you were a rhino before?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30019307
They could make it configurable. You can have your cake and eat it too in this situation.
I don't like KDE's default settings but it took me a mere seconds to get the desktop I like.
Of course this is not a new idea and how it used to be on Windows. The real question is why removing user choice has become so fashionable in UX design. Maybe it's just a phase and will pass.
It's not Microsoft employees who make these calls, but the Microsoft organization itself. Organizations make decisions that nobody by themselves would want to make. The larger an organization gets, the more true this becomes. Think of them like meta organisms, or schooling fish.
Wrong, there is always somebody responsible. It may not be an explicit decision but somebody let it happen.
I've personally witnessed this at work and for lack of better terms call it "leadership by weakness". Initiatives to change a situation will be either ignored or actively undermined by lack of support from the one in charge.
Outsiders get the impression that "it just happened this way" or "things just are like this" but it really was a conscious decision by leadership. As an employee I found it insulting because of course our customers blamed us developers.
You may be able to pinpoint a few people who signed off on the decision, but it's rarely a decision they would have made outside of the context of the organization. The organization provides the incentives, shapes the data used in the decision process, and determines the set of decisions which can be made. For instance, an executive may sign off on a feature after viewing data that says its a good idea, but the data was prepared by another part of the organization which is trying to advance their own agenda. And for-profit organizations being as they are, options which don't increase or even decrease profit are essentially off the table, unavailable for real consideration, so the person signing off on the feature already had their options winnowed down by the organization itself.
> The organization provides the incentives, shapes the data used in the decision process, [...]
Exactly! And who sets those incentives?
Imagine if Satya Nadella was an avid Windows power user that thinks having a vertical tab bar is the best invention since sliced bread. Would he really fuzz around with StartAllBack etc.? Because "it just is like this now"? Or would he be able to influence the Windows team to simply implement it? Of course he could. He just doesn't care about vertical tab bars.
As a side note, I see the blaming of bad situations on "for-profit organizations" as if management had no other choices just because somebody made a spreadsheet as an easy excuse for them to not stand behind their decisions.
If this "profit-uber-alles" theory was true executives would reduce their compensation to minimum wage. It clearly is more complicated.
> Exactly! And who sets those incentives?
The organization.
Executives like to think they're in charge, but they're selected for their alignment with the goals of the organization and if they stray far from that they get replaced. Satya isn't the kind of man who would put good taste in software design first, and if he was then he wouldn't be in the position.
> As a side note, I see the blaming of bad situations on "for-profit organizations" as if management had no other choices
They have one key choice, they can walk away. Whenever they realize the corporation is going to do something they don't want to be involved with, they can and should walk away. Sometimes they do, but when they choose comfort over good aesthetic sense, ethics, morales, laws.. they can and should be judged for that. The worldview I am advocating for (viewing organizations as organisms, or Slow AIs as others have put it) is not about absolving individual humans of responsibility. As long as they continue to participate in the organization, they're responsible. Rather, the point of the mental model is to remind people that organizations, particularly in this case corporations, are inhumane monsters which lack an innate understanding of human values.
Slow AI.
They are terraforming our planet into a less habitable one, making many people miserable and turn useful things into abominations. One usually can't point at a single person deciding that it should be so, but at the end that's what's the output is.
The paperclip machine is here and it's optimizing for GDP growth.
That sounds about as reasonable as "the devil made me do it" excuse.
It totally makes sense though. Win11 mainly seems to be a career advancement vehicle for Microsoft's anonymous middle management caste. I bet that if you point at a single bad feature in Win11 it will be very hard to find a single person who would take responsibility.
For good features it will be "I made the decision!", for bad features it will be weasel words like "we heard our users loud and clear" or "we modernized" or "we streamlined", etc... basically as if the bad feature was caused by some external force or by a committee decision.
Everyone in a big org has their own incentives and they don't match with what makes a better product. People are looking out for themselves and there's no accountability for the end result. Checkboxes get checked and that's all that matters.
That is a good analogy though.
My 32-core Threadripper can't run Windows 11 and my HP Reverb G2 VR headset can no longer run Windows 11 after they removed WMR still present on Windows 10. The only advantage of Windows was backward compatibility, now some smart heads at MS decided to get rid of it to some extent. Also the byzantine mashup of UI styles makes it look like some ancient Linux distro.
If you have a Nvidia GPU, you can use the oasis drivers
https://www.uploadvr.com/steamvr-automatically-installs-oasi...
Looks like a measurement artifact of some sort, to be honest. I wish Windows 11 saw tangible setbacks, but this just-so story sounds very much like something you invent to explain an effect that’s not actually there, before you realize you messed up the methodology.
Why did[1] the share of Windows 8 (not 8.1) also grow each month from May to August, for example?
[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desk...
Even before using an autounattend.xml for a clean install on a (new to me) laptop to clear some Win11 junk, I didn’t really get the gripes people have for it. It’s basically a new skin for Win10 that could have done without some app redesigns with basically all the same problems of its predecessor.
Yup. It’s totally fine for it’s job. Not worse or better in my experience.
Slower, more unwanted telemetry, changes are generally for worse, the very definition of a massive failed software project. That you don't see a difference doesn't mean thats valid for everybody.
If I could, I'd still be running Windows 2000 server on my computer. Everything since is progressively worse on each iteration.
The movement towards locked down systems owned by our betters needs to be opposed as strongly as possible, both in the desktop and mobile arenas.
I've been using Windows 11 LTSC for a few months with all telemetry disabled, it's a bit slower than Windows 10 but overall it is surprisingly usable. The UX changes are a disaster, however, and Explorer lags and Control Panel still exists.
Imo the usability issues are very minor. The default settings for the home edition are absolute shitshow - ads and clickbait everywhere - but those can be turned off with a few clicks.
I imagine if Microsoft can't get you to upgrade to Windows 11, they will make a few out of support updates to Windows 10 that will annoy and nag, plead, beg, and maybe even use UI tricks to have people "accept" an upgrade. If that doesn't work, they may even incorporate the worst of Windows 11 through some side channel like Internet Explorer.
For when Windows 7 support ended they started filling the OS with updates and UI elements for the purpose upgrading, and lots of people ended up accidentally upgrading to Windows 10.
I have Windows 11 and Windows 10. My biggest gripes are:
1. Erratic and bugged out address bar of Explorer in Windows 11.
- Address bar can be sticky (you can't make it close)
- Address bar popping out when you take focus of a window if address has been previously clicked into - so you will double click icon in the unfocused window, but address bar will pop out and you will click on random address in your computer.
- Address bar offering suggestion for recent directory X, but when you press down key to select it, it will choose different address from a different list which you don't see.
- Clicking into address bar can clear it while you want to select it. Especially when address is longer and window is smaller.
Windows 10 may not support tabs in Explorer, but boy at least the experience is not pain in the ass.
2. Windows 11 being picky about support processors, secure boot and TPM. On some computer I needed to go as far as updating UEFI to make it working.
Also on Windows 10 I have noticed that Microsoft is not trying shove AI down your throat. So that might be reason too.
If this is not a statcounter anomaly, the explanation seems obvious: more people are dropping windows in general (both 10 and 11), mostly in favor of phones and tablets (as has been a trend for years now), or in the niche cases, linux. Meanwhile 10 stays strong thanks to all the offices and old machines that won't be upgrading for a while.
At home I sit in front of an all AMD Void Linux Musl machine running XFCE and themed with Chicago95. The UI is nice and boring so its out of the way yet also familiar. I like it.
Flatpak takes care of monster applications like Chrome, KiCAD, LibreOffice, Steam, and so on. Only one of my Steam games gives me a problem: Crysis* (Of course it doesn't run Crysis!) Setting up CUPS was as simple as adding a line to a config file, starting CUPS, adding my HP laser and hit print in Chrome and get a printed document. I recently had to install Zoom so I plugged in a random Webcam, installed Zoom via flatpak and Zoom just worked.
The thing that gets me is that I don't notice I'm using Linux. I'm just using my computer like always. I also have to remind myself to run updates every few weeks but there are times it goes over a month without issue. I have full control of my computer without any of the previous issues.
* Original Crysis, not the remaster which I hear should work under Proton.
I wonder if this is another 'big in China' effect, similar to how China was the last big holdout for WinXP in the Steam hardware stats until 2020 or so after Microsoft had dropped extended WinXP support in 2014. When we tried to decide whether we should drop WinXP support from our MMO game client after Microsoft pulled the plug we monitored the Steam hardware stats for a couple of years and from time to time there was a sudden surge of popularity for WinXP at the cost of Win7 and Win10. We explained that to ourselves that another wave of Chinese PC users must have entered Steam (maybe because of a popular game release in China which was entirely obscure in the rest of the world).
With Win11, I feel all the WinUI overlays have eaten the performance gains of Moore's law. Before Win10, Explorer used to just work. Now explorer won't auto-refresh when it's supposed to after renaming, moving or deleting a file, there's some refreshing loop bug where it'll keep popping a list back up to the top when you've scrolled down. Increasingly running into (assuming locked) files that won't copy or move or give any error or notification of why. Learning more Powershell, Robocopy and CLI commands just to do basic tasks, of which I'd rather learn the linux incantations for.
It tells you a lot that the only way Microsoft has managed to compete with the Steam Deck is by making a Windows version that never even loads explorer.exe at all.
In my case I can't upgrade even if I wanted to because my PC doesn't meet their requirements. It's 7 years old but still runs like a dream. Why would I upgrade my hardware just for Windows 11?
You can upgrade with a clean install. I know that this is out of reach for some users; I bring this up so unfamiliar readers don't misunderstand the limitation.
It told me my PC can't run it and to get a Copilot enabled PC. I got a Mac instead. I sure hope Apple pays Microsoft for their great ad campaign.
I'm one of these "holdouts". My gaming setup is Windows 10 21H2, so EoL is in 2027, I'm good so far. Then I'll either proceed to the IoT version, pushing the EoL into 2031, or upgrade to Win11 LTSC, whichever seems to make sense at that moment.
Windows 11 has no attractive features for me over 10. And the UX is subpar. So I'll upgrade when I'll absolutely have to.
In 1999, Bill Gates crossed a witch and was cursed: as long as malaria ravages the earth, every other Windows OS release would be bad.
Also explains his foray into vaccines
Windows is effectively indistinguishable from malware/spyware at this point. Switched to Linux long ago and never looked back!
I wouldn't jump to conclusions from statcounter numbers, they are notoriously flaky. I don't know why people pay attention to them.
See also this recent thread about Linux marketshare: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44580682
Microsoft does not care. They are worth 11x more than when W10 was launched, and have "more important" things to focus on. They are the true tech monopoly.
It's the same story with Xbox. Microsoft is simply too big to have the passion for their gaming division (which is what entertainment needs).
Windows 11 is probably the reason why Apple are going to launch a low-cost MacBook. Not that $999 isn’t already cheap, but if they release a $699 version...
My wife finally switched over and bought a MacBook Pro for work, having never used a Mac before. Seeing me work all day on battery alone, and not having to deal with Windows slowness anymore won her over.
I am missing out on something. Windows 11 feels functionality identical to Windows 10, but with a tabbed file browser.
Windows 10 keeps telling me my very capable computers can't run Windows 11, so why would I upgrade? I suspect this is fairly common.
This! From a hardware perspective I do not see any reason to upgrade. I have a gen 7 i5 processor and 16GB or RAM and I have no issues with my current device. I am not sure that Microsoft thought that part through. The problem Microsoft has is that Windows 10 has not slowed down unlike with older Android phones which tend to become rather slow and left behind in terms of apps and so on. With Windows 10 everything still works fine, VLC, Firefox, VS Code.
Don't give them any ideas...
Oops I should have kept my mouth shut. It will be interesting how the application developers react. Will Firefox or Brave browser stop supporting Windows 10 in a year's time.
My work issued device is on Windows and I keep a Windows PC at home just to make the switching between work and home simpler but I have no reason not to switch to Linux at home.
Forcing TPM garbage was such an anti-user move, especially when it's not actually required and only gives a few basic features like windows hello. You block an upgrade over that? Beyond dumb.
Deeply unsurprising. My work machine was upgraded to 11, and using it in that context makes me certain that I am going to ride 10 into the ground (or a potential future steamOS release).
The machine now takes longer on startup to get to an operational state, the changes to the right click context menu are ridiculous and asinine, and the corners are now rounded on all the windows. Dear microsoft: take a look at windows IRL. ask yourself: are these rectangles, or squircles?
What is there for me to gain as an end user? Seems like Microsoft just gets more user data and is able to sell more ads while i have to use shittier software.
Wait… Microsoft has to have boxed Windows because Windows IRL are boxed? Pretty sure I’ve seen a circular window before.
yeah man i've seen windows that are 100% circular. but that a) isn't the norm and b) is for Aesthetic reasons.
personally, i like my productivity software not to be weirdly configured just for like, vibes, or whatever.
Not to mention Vista and 7 had windows with rounded corners.
From a usability perspective, the difference is that Vista and 7 drew rounded borders around the window contents, while 11 doesn’t have any borders and instead cuts out pixels from the window contents to make the window rounded. The real problem isn’t the windows being rounded, it’s that they’re hiding parts of the window contents for purely stylistic reasons.
The potential for issues there depends on the radius of the curve, which is fairly mild in W11’s case. macOS has had similarly rounded corners since version 10.7 (2011) and has never caused any problems. The extreme corner radii found in newer designs like M3 Expressive and Liquid Glass on the other hand are flirting with danger with the extent to which they cut into window content.
I've had issues with stuff on status bars getting cut off for programs written before status bars fell out of fashion. This is less of a problem on Mac because backwards compatibility isn't much of a concern there, so nobody expects to be able to run a program written more than a few years ago.
Just want to remind everyone, if they haven't realized it yet, that Microsoft will help you switch to Linux for free. They have this site (https://copilot.microsoft.com) that will gently walk you though any problems that you may run into. Afraid of the command line? They'll give you the commands to copy and paste.
The software I use needs nothing from Windows 11, the switch is completely artificial.
I would be happy just to get the Windows 11 kernel, just for supporting more devices or better APIs. The UI? I was happier with Windows 2000.
Very few people I know use Windows 11. It's probably the worst operating system since Windows millennium.
As a daily user who has used windows for 25 years it’s totally fine.
Same, I don't' get the agita. My operating system version is like #426 on my list of concerns. Most of the complaints are seemingly from people who don't use the OS daily (reviewers?). For me it just... works.
More because Windows 11 is a total shit show than anything else I'm sure.
The lack of respect Microsoft shows for its users is appalling.
Windows 11 is fine after you turn off all the ads from configs. Do agree the default settings are extremely disrespectful of users but once they are turned off I don’t have any gripes.
Wow, didn't you BUY Windows? Why would you have to change configs to rid yourself of advertising if you bought it?
The first person to figure out how to backport Direct12 and AMD/NVidia's drivers to Windows 7 is gonna be a billionaire.
[dead]
Windows 12 will be good again.
Win95 (bad), Win98 (good), WinMe (bad), WinXP (good), Win Vista (bad), Win 7 (good), Win 8 (bad), Win 10 (good), Win 11 (bad), ...
I really kind of doubt we'll actually see a W12. Microsoft appears to have lost all interest in creating an operating system in favor of a revenue system.
Best case, W11 tanks when W10 goes away and Microsoft becomes irrelevant on the PC.
More realistically, W11 will become SaaS with a sort of rolling release similar to Arch. After all, why build a new OS when you can do nothing and rake in subscription fees? Actually, why create anything of value when you have such a profitable racket as renting people's own PC to them for literally any price you want?
Hopefully Microsoft wither dies or becomes an ineffectual zombie like IBM or HP.
The next version will be called "Windows", to keep things simple. Then we will retroactively refer it to as "Windows 2027", but generally still fail to be able to query useful info on it. The next one will be "Windows 13".
At this rate Windows 12 is going to be saas and cost $25 a month to rent your own computer.
but it will come with Copilot++
Please, this is Microsoft.
It'll be Copilot#
Windows 2000 was really solid IMO. I have really fond memories of learning and using it at school back around that time.
True, and it was some sort of "new technology".
Although quite some applications could not run on it, due to compatibility issues, so it is not in the list.
7 was their highpoint.. It was the 1st version that actually consistently worked good and was otherwise pretty clean.. 10 is a big step down from 7, it has a lot of extraneous shit in it.
Yes, 10 is the combo breaker here. I'd honestly rather use 8 than 10 - despite the questionable UI decisions - but it's obsolete.
Win 8.1 was really solid, used it for a few years.
My suspicion is that they make the stopgap OSes deliberately shitty and performance hungry so they can sell on the easy gains and improvements. I know, "never attribute malice" but this is such a theme, over 9 generations of an OS, that it can't be completely accidental.
The time between releases is getting longer though, our children might live a lifetime with a bad release after 12