[HN Gopher] Windows 11 review: An unnecessary replacement for Wi...
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Windows 11 review: An unnecessary replacement for Windows 10
Author : dantondwa
Score : 112 points
Date : 2021-10-02 18:29 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pcworld.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pcworld.com)
| peakaboo wrote:
| Windows users are quite slow to realize that their operating
| system is a weapon, and the users are the target.
| anothernewdude wrote:
| The best OS and UI upgrade is the one you're already comfortable
| using.
| webwielder2 wrote:
| Why is Microsoft so bad at software for microcomputers? They are
| truly a testament to the power of compatibility and enterprise
| sales.
| ilaksh wrote:
| I have the Insider Beta or whatever enabled and the update I
| installed last night seemed to cause some kind of severe memory
| leak. Chrome kept freezing up and was generally unresponsive.
| Something related to the taskbar or OS kept restarting, which I
| assume was because of an out-of-memory issue.
|
| I am wondering if it's a bug or if somehow my Omen laptop doesn't
| meet the requirements and they just sent me the update anyway.
| But as it is I think I absolutely have to revert to a previous
| version.
| bserge wrote:
| "Windows 10 will be the last Windows, a continuously updated OS
| that you can rely on"
|
| "Uhh, turns out we can't make _that much_ money off of it "
|
| "Windows 11 is the most exciting Windows OS yet!"
| wvenable wrote:
| Windows 10 as "the last verson" destroyed Microsoft's and
| hardware OEM's best marketing opportunity. New versions of
| Windows always got Microsoft lots of press, people bought new
| hardware, etc.
|
| It was all marketing because there were major "service-pack"
| level upgrades to Windows 10 -- they were just confusingly
| named and you still needed to know about them.
|
| Going back to versions is an improvement even if this
| particular version isn't one.
| donmcronald wrote:
| Your Windows 11 PC will stop receiving security updates on XX
| date. For your safety and the safety of the global internet
| community, networking capabilities will be disabled on XX. Your
| PC will continue to operate normally.
|
| If you would like to continue to receive security updates,
| please buy a Windows 365 subscription before XX.
| Jensson wrote:
| I wonder when they do the "5 years of security patches" thing
| phones did. Not sure why people accept that for phones but
| not computers, maybe Microsoft and Apple will realise that
| this will work on computers too soon?
| hello___world wrote:
| I have a 2015 MacBook Pro which is going to be the oldest-
| supported model for macOS 12 Monterey, so Apple seems to be
| supporting computers for ~7 years.
| shaoonb wrote:
| macOS 11 still gets another two years of security updates
| though.
| howinteresting wrote:
| Apple is famous for not patching every security
| vulnerability on older versions.
|
| https://twitter.com/grahamgilbert/status/1386862102942339
| 073... is a public example, and I'm aware of non-public
| information regarding this as well.
| smoldesu wrote:
| The mainline Linux kernel will also support pretty much
| anything you throw at it these days anyways. My 12 year
| old Thinkpad almost has complete feature parity with my
| perpetually upgraded desktop, which is a super nice basis
| to build my personal infrastructure off of.
| zamadatix wrote:
| A larger portion of Microsoft's revenue is build around the
| business side where 5 years of security patches now buy a
| new device either wouldn't fly or wouldn't make sense. For
| home users the revenue is based around subscription
| services tied to using Windows (O365) not selling users on
| the Windows license itself which is now free assuming your
| device is new enough to work with subscription services
| that might be sold to you or the business you work for.
|
| For Apple I'm honestly more surprised the MacBook lifecycle
| isn't shorter but it's also not their main money maker.
| fleddr wrote:
| Microsoft just doesn't get it.
|
| Windows is a fundamentally mediocre OS that is made great by
| means of its wide compatibility with software and hardware. It's
| not sexy but it kind of works.
|
| Then they figured we now live in a mobile/touch world and went in
| that direction. But hardly anybody has a mobile Windows device,
| so it misses the target. To this day, store apps look like
| they're made for phones.
|
| Windows used to be a system where you had the feeling its yours.
| General purpose computing. Do whatever you want. Increasingly, it
| feels like some hybrid cloud OS, where gradually you give up user
| control.
|
| Windows 8, a UI clusterfuck, introduced a new design language.
| That was 2012. Almost a decade later, and not even in Windows 11,
| is the UI consistent. It's a facade. Why does it take a decade to
| skin a OS?
|
| Windows 11 removes customization options whilst that is exactly
| what Windows is about.
|
| Too many developers were switching to Mac, so now Linux is
| integrated. Not in itself a bad thing, don't get me wrong.
|
| It seems they're running in every direction at once and just give
| up on each direction halfway through.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| If they make desktop search suck a bit less I'll jump at
| Windows 11.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Microsoft did not release anything worthy since Windows 2000.
| All their features were not needed. I'd easily pay $500/year
| for Windows 2000, just as it was, with support for modern
| hardware and other things needed to survive in modern Internet.
|
| Now I'm not talking about internals. I'm sure that kernel was
| progressing all those years, for example. I'm talking about
| user-visible stuff.
|
| Windows XP cartoon UI: terrible. Windows 10 UI: terrible. Good
| old Windows 2000 UI was just better in every way.
|
| Windows shell? It was good in Windows 2000. Start was good. May
| be fast search would be a worthy feature to add, but that's
| about it. They redesign it every year, but it's not getting
| better.
|
| Windows explorer? It was good in Windows 2000. They move
| buttons around, but that's not needed.
|
| Control panel is 100x better than this settings nightmare UI.
|
| They invent new UI frameworks every few years. That's not
| needed. WinAPI is good enough.
|
| It won't happen. But they actually built a perfect OS and lost
| it. Forever, as corporations can't admit their mistakes. They
| could have improved upon it all this time, instead of trying to
| replace it.
|
| With Nadella Microsoft is going downhill. Yes, they're doing
| things that looks interesting. Like integrating VM with Linux.
| That's cool. But they kind of gave up. Back in the time, they
| were actually pushing their own agenda. They had their own
| tech. Now they gave up and adapt old proven tech. Good for
| customers, but it's path to the end. If someone learned WSL,
| it's just one step to true Linux, why pay for Windows at all.
| Ditto about Edge. They built their own browser engine. How cool
| is that? Very few corporations were able to do so. And they
| gave up.
|
| Microsoft lost his teethes. May be they just don't care about
| desktop anymore. Well, I don't care about Microsoft anymore.
| gtirloni wrote:
| _> Microsoft did not release anything worthy since Windows
| 2000_
|
| Windows 98 was pretty decent. Everybody hated Windows Me.
|
| Windows XP was pretty decent. Everybody hated Windows Vista.
|
| Windows 7 was pretty decent. Everybody hated Windows 8.
|
| Windows 10 is pretty decent. People are hating Windows 11.
|
| And so on and so forth.
| wtallis wrote:
| The pattern here seems to be that the only way Microsoft
| can produce a Windows release that will be rated as "pretty
| decent" is by first subjecting their users to several years
| of a release that lowers the bar (or a subsequent release
| that makes an earlier one seem better in hindsight). 98
| appears to have been the end of Microsoft's ability to ship
| consecutive major versions that were unambiguously an all-
| around improvement.
| keanebean86 wrote:
| Great summary but I remember a few nuances.
|
| Windows ME had some legit quality of life improvements over
| 98. Although 98se had a few of them already.
|
| Winxp SP2 was good. OG winxp had its issues.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I don't necessarily agree with this chronology, but even if
| it's true it seems fair for me to hate something that is
| forced on me just because it's new after I've just
| previously been forced to use something that's at best
| "pretty decent".
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I feel that Windows 7 was the best for me as a developer. It
| had a decent user experience, modern UI without being crazy,
| good support for development tools and far more stable than
| earlier versions.
|
| I wish I could still be using windows 7. sigh.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| >But they actually built a perfect OS and lost it.
|
| Drive letters, registry...
|
| They had a decent UI, reasonable kernel and popular API.
| daptaq wrote:
| It might just be nostalgia, but Windows 7 did look good. Be
| it 7, XP, 2000, etc. I get the feeling the main advantage is
| a consistent UI. So many apps try to mix both desktop and
| touch oriented interfaces, or create their own "style" by
| moving everything around, fluffing up the UI and choosing
| random colors to represent some brand. Come to think of it,
| windows was already doing that with their ribbon UI, but it
| wasn't that wide spread(?). The free software world has been
| having the same issue with GNOME 3 and their client side
| decoration initiative one the one side, and Electron apps on
| the other. The desktop is just a mess. It might be
| inevitable, a product of cross-platform support or too many
| developers (or designers) trying to influence something.
| Either way, it is a burden that contributes to the general
| lack of pleasure most modern computer systems provide (hence
| why I take refuge in Emacs).
| noahtallen wrote:
| I completely disagree about settings. The control panel has
| always been a disaster of information architecture, and any
| part of settings which still drops you into the control panel
| is similar. The big problem settings has is that it hides or
| removes features which used to be available. If Microsoft had
| just implemented those in settings, made the search faster,
| and removed every last bit of UI related to the control panel
| and weird dialogue menus which look like they haven't been
| updated since XP, it would be significantly better.
|
| Either way, I'm almost a little happy that windows is a
| disaster right now, because maybe more people will try Linux.
| :p
| Animats wrote:
| "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on
| a human face--forever." - Orwell.
|
| That's Windows since Windows 7.
|
| Ads? "Telemetry"? A built-in browser? No.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| What about Google insisting you sign in on their own browser
| with 80%+ market share?
| tim333 wrote:
| You can at least uninstall that and use a different one.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| Google has never, ever, required that I use Chrome to access
| any of their sites and services.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| I can't use Google meet with Firefox.
| anothernewdude wrote:
| I can
| DaltonCoffee wrote:
| Google Earth Studio is Chrome only
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| uhm, many of their services work poorly or not at all with
| Firefox; how is that not "requiring chrome?"
| hobos_delight wrote:
| I've happily used Firefox on Windows and Linux to access
| all of my Google services, without issue, for years.
|
| Can you expand on which services don't work with ff?
|
| At Google there is a requirement to use Chrome - due to
| certain browser extensions - but that doesn't impact any
| of the services they provide.
| josephcsible wrote:
| I can still use Firefox to sign in to my Google account.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| How does it insist? Chrome works without signing in just
| fine. You'll lose Google synchronization obviously, but
| that's about it.
| [deleted]
| sumthinprofound wrote:
| from the article > Local "offline" accounts require Windows 11
| Pro.
|
| and _still_ no tabbed Windows Explorer.
|
| zero interest in this I see no benefit.
| zepearl wrote:
| Expanding:
|
| > _The most significant change is the elimination of local or
| "offline" accounts within Windows 10 Home--a fact that we were
| told in July and appears still to be the case. At present,
| Windows 11 Home PCs must be set up and administered with a
| Microsoft account, though local accounts can also be added
| later for additional users._
|
| > _To enable local accounts as part of the initial setup,
| you'll need to install Windows 11 Pro, either via an in-place
| upgrade from Windows 10 or a clean installation. During the
| setup process, you'll be prompted for your Microsoft account
| information. Simply click the "sign-in options" link instead.
| The next page will offer you the option to sign in with an
| offline account._
|
| Did I understand correctly: does this mean that I need to have
| a working Internet connection to install Win11 (non-"Pro"),
| hoping that my NIC works during the installation process?
| kreeben wrote:
| MS in 1995: wtf is "internet"?
|
| MS in 2021: wtf is "local"?
| sumthinprofound wrote:
| > Did I understand correctly: does this mean that I need to
| have a working Internet connection to install Win11
| (non-"Pro"), hoping that my NIC works during the installation
| process?
|
| That is my read on it. The guidance to "click the sign in
| options...to sign in with an offline account" worked for me
| in Win10 Home, but apparently not for 11 Home version
| (without any yet to be revealed work arounds)
| kreeben wrote:
| "Windows 11 comes with tight Teams integration."
|
| Coooooooolsies
| brink wrote:
| > Offline accounts are now a "pro" feature.
|
| > Switching default browsers is now more difficult.
|
| > Taskbar is now shoved to the center. Why? No reason other than
| to be aesthetically differentiable from Windows 10.
|
| Remember when things used to get better between versions? I do.
| [deleted]
| russli1993 wrote:
| plus so called team's "integration". Clearly a move to use the
| dominate position of windows in OS space, to push out
| competitors like Slack, Zoom, and all others in the
| communication space.
|
| > Offline account a pro feature: to sell Microsoft accounts,
| office 365 and onedrive
|
| > Switching default browsers more difficult: to sell Edge and
| Bing.
|
| > Taskbar is now in the center: to get people to click on icons
| such as Teams, Microsoft Search, and the new launcher which
| includes links to Microsoft services like office 365.
|
| All the changes above are not for the benefits of consumers or
| other business that rely on Windows OS, for example, app
| developers, partners etc. Microsoft would brand and market them
| for the benefits of consumers. But at their core, they are
| about serving Microsoft bottom line. To use the dominate of
| position of windows OS in the PC(desktop and laptop) market, to
| push other lines of business from Microsoft. Microsoft have to
| continue to grow their revenue to justify their market cap
| right? That is where Microsoft's core interest is and what
| fundamentally propel them to do. And it shows up in what
| consumers will end up with, and it's not surprising at all. All
| that marketing doesn't hide this fact.
|
| And Microsoft will do things slowly, like boiling frogs, slowly
| so people don't realize. Remember when Windows 10 was launching
| people expressed concerns about linking Microsoft account to
| windows and Microsoft replied offline account will always be
| here? Now they removed it from non-pro edition and calling it
| "improving our ability to deliver new features to consumers" or
| "bring consumers more value". Microsoft's strategy is get
| people to use Microsoft account, so people use other Microsoft
| services like onedrive and office, and have stronger ties with
| Microsoft. Now if you want a offline account, you have to fork
| more money, and a lot of laptop OEMs ship with non-pro version
| of windows because it's cheaper license. This will deter a lot
| of people, so people cave in and go with Microsoft's strategy.
| But in long run, Microsoft will make more money from people
| with Microsoft accounts than they lost from the cheaper windows
| non-pro license. The business executives and strategists have
| all this calculated.
| liketochill wrote:
| How were word and excel going to get collaborative editing
| like google docs without some kind of online account?
|
| A common HN refrain is that defaults matter, so by default in
| order to be feature competitive you need an MS account.
|
| For my personal computer I will use Linux and windows 7 in a
| VM for autocad and other windows only software, for work I
| use whatever they provide. If it lets my company pay $x per
| user per year for supported collaborative word and excel,
| common cloud storage, and shared calendars... that's pretty
| turn key and a great deal compared to having an in house IT
| department that could do all of that, when tech is a tool for
| our business and not core or adjacent to the business
| sofixa wrote:
| > so called team's "integration". Clearly a move to use the
| dominate position of windows in OS space, to push out
| competitors like Slack, Zoom, and all others in the
| communication space
|
| I hope the regulators are listening - it's the same crap as
| IE.
| em500 wrote:
| Sounds like Microsoft is turning Windows into ChromeOS. Now I
| actually _like_ ChromeOS a lot. But I do wish we 'd keep some
| actual choices, instead of the same thing with different skins.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I _largely_ like ChromeOS as itself, but I wouldn 't want it
| for a general purpose system; it works _because_ it 's a
| limited system
| kreeben wrote:
| If you mean "every other version", then yes, I member.
|
| I think MS has shifted from that strategy into a new one, where
| we'll see improvements every fifth version or so. 20 years from
| now, we'll get "multiple displays works like a charm".
| nikanj wrote:
| With Microsoft, they get better with every other version. Goes
| back at least to Windows 2000. Windows Me, Vista, 8 were
| monsters, 2000, XP, 7 and 10 were nice enough. Whatever comes
| after 11 should be good again
| arepublicadoceu wrote:
| I feel like local accounts on windows is just like local vaults
| on 1Password.
|
| They kind of support it but will keep annoying and bullying the
| hell out of you to move to the cloud for "your own benefit".
| Until you either leave or submit to their will.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Only reason I have my local account linked to my Microsoft
| account is I actually use Xbox Live on Windows. Other than that
| the only time I got asked about it was during install.
| 65 wrote:
| I don't understand why Microsoft's developer products (like VS
| Code and Github) are really great, but their consumer products
| just suck.
| liketochill wrote:
| Developers are less likely to put up with crap because they
| will go and program their own competing product that is better
| Yuioup wrote:
| Microsoft bought GitHub. It was already tremendously
| successful.
| flyinglizard wrote:
| It keeps prospering under them. Imagine Oracle buying it or
| something like that.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| "Oracle GitHub is being renamed to Oracle JavaZone(TM) to
| harmonise Oracle's developer story under the Java(TM)
| brand."
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| "Your JavaZone(tm) account will remain free for
| individual, non-profit use; all other account owners will
| be contacted but not until some future date after we
| trick you into visiting the site and demand punative
| licensing fees under threat of legal action"
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Oracle bought Java and Java is pretty good under its
| patronage. Better than Sun, at least in last years.
|
| Oracle provides RHEL build and it's pretty good. No CentOS
| drama, it's free and just works.
|
| I think that Oracle can execute well.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| How can you completely dismiss the JDK and licensing
| issues that was started by Oracle?
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| You obviously didn't get scooped up in their JDK dragnet.
| It was essentially a ransomeware demand that cost our
| company mid-five figures annually.
| eli wrote:
| "Developers developers developers!" was intended to be an
| actual strategy
| linguae wrote:
| Developers have a wide range of alternatives to Microsoft
| products, so Microsoft must compete on the merits of its
| products. If I don't like SQL Server, I could choose between
| Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and many other RDBMSes. However,
| non-developers, particularly those using desktop operating
| systems, have limited alternatives to the Windows ecosystem.
| Applications that are exclusive to Windows are still a major
| reason why many people are still using Windows, though thanks
| to the Web and mobile computing this is less of an issue than
| it was 15 years ago. There is also still the fact that most
| retail PCs ship with Windows by default; options for purchasing
| PCs with Linux are still rather limited, though once again this
| situation has improved greatly in the past 15 years. Sure,
| there's the Mac as an alternative to Windows, but Apple does
| not compete in certain use cases and price points, whereas the
| Windows/PC ecosystem covers most use cases at a wide variety of
| price points.
|
| When you're the 800-pound gorilla, you don't have to worry as
| much about the other animals in the ecosystem. I remember the
| days of Internet Explorer 6 and how that browser was allowed to
| stagnate, giving time for Mozilla Firefox to rise out of the
| ashes of Netscape Navigator and offer an alternative so
| compelling that it forced Microsoft to compete again. I feel
| this way of thinking may also explain Microsoft's approach to
| controversial features such as telemetry and UI changes; where
| will users migrate to? Migrating to the Mac or Linux requires
| tradeoffs that a wide amount of users have decided through
| their actions are not worth migrating away from Windows despite
| some of Windows' problems.
| remir wrote:
| Because Microsoft is a platform company.
| DavidVoid wrote:
| Overall I do really like the new UI, but the lack of taskbar
| customizability does indeed suck (I used to have it at the top,
| but now that I'm forced to have it at the bottom I've set it to
| auto-hide). The Settings menu on the other hand is leaps and
| bounds better than the absolute garbage that is the Windows 10
| Settings menu (except for the default app mess but hopefully
| they'll improve that).
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| I'm blocking the Windows 11 update via group policy[1] until
| the Taskbar and Start Menu are usable.
|
| I run software that is unusable without it being 1-taskbar-
| button-per-window. Forcing us to use 1-button-per-EXE with a
| slow-and-fiddly window sub-menu is so very user-hostile.
|
| I suspect the decision to force single large buttons was to
| prompt third-party developers to have single-window-apps just
| like smartphones and tablets - which is just so wrong on so
| many levels.
|
| Being dicks about MSAs in Home SKUs is also inexplicable. Do
| they really expect people will be okay with being stuck and
| unable to install Windows without a working internet
| connection? What if a computer has a modern NIC that Windows
| doesn't have in-box drivers for? This. Is. Insane.
|
| [1] Yes, I run an AD domain for my house.
| arepublicadoceu wrote:
| My plan is to stick to windows 10 until full nvidia support for
| wayland arrive. Hopefully, 5 years is enough as things started to
| get better lately.
| chungy wrote:
| You don't need to wait any longer. NVIDIA updated their driver
| for full Wayland support a few months ago.
| zokier wrote:
| Sounds pretty rough still
|
| https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NVIDIA-G.
| ..
|
| Unless I'm misreading that completely its saying that Sway
| support is not yet even in beta.
| ginko wrote:
| Or you could just buy an AMD GPU.
| arepublicadoceu wrote:
| Or I can just not generate e-waste by using my perfectly
| capable device until the end of its life.
| tjoff wrote:
| Selling is an option, or using it for passthrough.
| arepublicadoceu wrote:
| It's a laptop. I'm not interested in selling it as it's a
| great laptop and works fine for my needs. I'm a patient
| men and I can wait 5 years easily for proper wayland
| support. If it doesn't come, then I think about selling
| it.
|
| I've tried gpu pass through it was more annoying then
| installing arch to set it up. And made me realize that my
| dGPU is wired to my HDMI so I can't use my hdmi while my
| dGPU is on my virtual machine.
|
| Anyway, I'm not complaining about windows 10, I quite
| like it as everything works out of the box.
| wtallis wrote:
| It sounds like it's pretty far from "perfectly" capable
| according to your needs.
| arepublicadoceu wrote:
| How exactly do you know what my needs are?
|
| I don't "need" to run Linux on it for the next 5 years as
| windows 10 will continue to be supported.
| wtallis wrote:
| I was assuming that if you actually knew enough about
| Linux to know that your use cases require full Wayland
| support and cannot be satisfied by X11, then you are
| probably _already_ using Linux to some extent. It didn 't
| seem realistic that you could have come to such a
| conclusion about Wayland if using Linux at all is merely
| a distant hypothetical to you.
| [deleted]
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Buying a GPU in 2021 is tricky for most people.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I've got a 1050ti that handles x11 and Wayland perfectly fine.
| I haven't put Wayland through it's paces with any games, but
| I've heard that the Nvidia 470.xx updates added in dramatically
| better xWayland support.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I find it pretty crazy that as far as hardware requirements go
| apparently the minimum is a 7th generation intel chip.
| Unsurprisingly only slightly more than 40% of enterprise machines
| meet that requirement[1], this pretty much excludes any machine
| pre 2018, no? Very weird.
|
| [1]https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-11-half-of-
| enterprise-...
| qzw wrote:
| PC OEM sales people have already started shopping for bigger
| houses and boats.
| anothernewdude wrote:
| During an ongoing chip shortage too.
| zokier wrote:
| In enterprise context I'd assume most of the upgrades would
| happen with regular device replacement cycles.
| joconde wrote:
| 8th generation :) I started their "PC health app" today and got
| told my Core i7 7700HQ is too old.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| I remember Vista had some hardware grading system, and this was
| around the time GHz scaling was plateauing. I think really high
| end systems started out as like a 3 on a scale of 10...
|
| Did we ever get to 10?
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| Vista maxed out at 5.9, Windows 7 bumped the upper limit up
| to 7.9
|
| It's gone from the UI in Windows 10, but WinSat is still
| there (for some reason), and the range now goes up to 9.9.
| rzzzt wrote:
| Vista went up to 5.9, Windows 7 raised the bar to 7.9:
| https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-experience-index-in-
| wi...
|
| Edit: ninja'd!
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Eh, I think I managed something close to the max around that
| time on pretty average hardware.
|
| The current version goes to 10, open powershell and run Get-
| CimInstance Win32_WinSat. On that, I have an 8.1 on my SSD,
| and 9+ on everything else despite an 8 year old CPU.
| _Understated_ wrote:
| I'm convinced that this is all a result of Microsoft being a
| rudderless ship. That and their unkillable telemetry telling them
| shit like "n% of people spend x% more time in Settings than
| Control Panel" so that means that Settings must be better. Right?
| Cool, let's take 5 years to slowly destroy the control panel.
|
| Many things I've read over the last few years about Microsoft is
| that it's utterly disfunctional. It's become so big that it's
| impossible to achieve any kind of coherence. As another comment
| pointed out: they've had 10 years to make the UI all look the
| same and still haven't achieved it! A single dev could have
| redesigned the whole thing in a couple of years at most so it
| can't be a technical issue: it points to them either having
| incompetent management or just being too damn big to actually
| manage!
|
| Now I've worked mainly for large corporates over the years and
| they're never a single entity: they're always made up of multiple
| internal entities whether officially or unofficially. And they
| all have their own goals so steering a company as a whole is not
| an easy task but Microsoft are a fucking mess and thanks to all
| this forced shit, Windows 10 will be the final version of Windows
| for me.
|
| So what does that mean? It means that Linux has 4 years to get
| its act together before I switch to it permanently, come hell or
| high water. Coz right now, Linux is not a replacement for Windows
| for a great many people. Myself included. Even though I've tried
| multiple times with Fedora, Pop_OS and Ubuntu, shit always goes
| wrong. Always: dodgy sound issues, Nvidia drivers issues, scaling
| issues etc... stuff I don't get with Windows! Ever.
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| With open source software you have to select the right
| hardware. If you want things to keep working I would recommend
| NixOS (if you're comfortable writing code and learning a new
| language). If things break you'll roll back your entire system
| (except /home essentially).
|
| I was on manjaro, but my move to NixOS made me stay Linux
| (still have 2 gpus to GPU passthough to a Windows VM though)
| tdsamardzhiev wrote:
| Trying (and failing miserably) to kill Control Panel blows my
| mind every time. There's not a single thing that Settings
| improves upon. Even its "touch-friendliness" is a direct result
| of omitting important features.
| fractalf wrote:
| Win7 was my last version. Then I switched to Linux Mint
| permanently and never looked back. I'm a developer using open
| source web tech, and this made my life a million times easier.
|
| Sure, there's some things that require some/lots of
| tweaking/research and yea I still miss a few "apps" (Total
| Commander), BUT you gain so much more. When I rarely dual boot
| onto Win7 now I really cannot understand how I survived using
| it earlier.
|
| Windows gets worse every time. Linux just gets better and
| better. No brainer if you ask me.
| everyone wrote:
| Every giant tech company seems to do this to some extent. I call
| it 'genetic drift' as it's akin to that phenomenon in nature.
| When a company gets so big that it will keep existing and being
| profitable no matter what decisions they make, then, they make
| random decisions, there's no selection pressure anymore.
| sigzero wrote:
| "While Windows 11 tolerates local offline accounts, expect to see
| numerous little passive-aggressive nags here and there to "change
| to a Microsoft [or "online"] account."
|
| I hate that with Windows 10. Give me a break M$.
| peakaboo wrote:
| Tolerates? Tolerates??
|
| That attitude is exactly why I'm on Linux since 8 years back. I
| don't accept Microsoft telling me what my computer will do.
| RheingoldRiver wrote:
| All I'm hoping for at this point is that they switch course on
| this ridiculous taskbar thing. I want a vertical task bar on the
| left side of my rightmost monitor, and I can't actually imagine
| using a PC with anything else. Also, small taskbar buttons with
| text (my taskbar is about 250px wide so that I can read the names
| of all my multiple windows of each IDE/text editor/Firefox).
|
| This is such a huge impact on day-to-day usage of the OS by
| users, why would they constrain it?
| Pathogen-David wrote:
| Yup, this is the main reason I won't be upgrading to Windows 11
| anytime soon. I've never been a fan of the icons-only taskbar
| and have enabled text labels since Windows 7.
| thanatos519 wrote:
| I don't understand how it makes sense to bind the OS or GUI to
| desktop UI behaviour, but I've been a happy X11 user since 1994
| so what do I know?
|
| I believe that they constrain it because they have no respect
| for their users.
| qzw wrote:
| My bold prediction: they're making it worse so that they can
| fix it in a future update. Why? There are only so many ways
| to actually _improve_ things all the time, and it gets harder
| the more mature the product is. But a sinusoidal pattern of
| regressions and then "improvements" can be sustained
| indefinitely. It's like an AC current: the features are the
| oscillating electrons, and the bonuses /promotions are the
| load.
| peakaboo wrote:
| Gnome 40 got massively improved speed.
|
| Gnome 41 got better battery management.
|
| You can play most top games on Linux now thanks to proton.
|
| Some operating systems are improving every release, but
| they are found in the Linux world now. The suckers are the
| one who bought into the mac or Windows ecosystem and
| believed all the shit about privacy and security.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I think GNOME 40 was notable more for the regressions it
| mainlined. It's pretty subjective on the visual side of
| things, but objectively they did remove quite a bit of
| GNOME functionality in exchange for... slightly more
| consistent themes?
|
| I use Linux too, but GNOME is a pretty bad example of
| iterative improvement IMO. Ever since they ditched the
| "Unity" interface, most people agree that it's gone
| downhill.
| chungy wrote:
| GNOME never had a Unity interface. That was Unity;
| Canonical later developed a bunch of extensions to
| replicate Unity in GNOME for the default Ubuntu desktop.
| petepete wrote:
| Unity had nothing to do with the GNOME project, it was
| built by Canonical for Ubuntu.
|
| GNOME has been moving in the right direction for a long
| time in my opinion, their concentration on making it
| easier for developers is really starting to pay off too.
| smoldesu wrote:
| How have they been making it easier on developers? I
| frankly think the GNOME documentation went _heavily_
| downhill after the release of 40, and their insistence on
| linking libdwaita makes it even harder for me to write
| GTK apps that function properly on GNOME. Everything
| about the transition feels like it was intended to push
| developers away, to me. I 'd be interested to hear your
| input on it, though.
| zamadatix wrote:
| It's the first party shell implementation that is locked in
| compatibility, being built around assumptions of a particular
| OS version. The X11 equivalent layer has been the same system
| since Vista (obviously with extensions just like X11 over
| time) and supports launching any shell, even 3rd party ones.
| dleslie wrote:
| For kicks I installed Works 9.0 yesterday; on my bleeding edge
| beast of a gaming machine. _Holy hell_ is it fast _and capable_.
|
| For comparison, I popped open the relevant Office 365 apps and
| every one of them was noticeably slower to load, and slower to
| function. Even text rendering of input seemed to have a bit of a
| delay.
|
| I can only imagine a world where Windows 2000 simply kept
| receiving security and driver updates. _sigh_
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| > I can only imagine a world where Windows 2000 simply kept
| receiving security and driver updates. sigh
|
| Everyone wants this, funny how Big Corp works. Its supposed to
| be giving the consumer what he wants. Economists can't
| comprehend.
| zokier wrote:
| > Even text rendering of input seemed to have a bit of a delay
|
| Modern Office has animated text input which has distinctly
| different feel. Not sure if it is actually slower though.
| zootboy wrote:
| That feature annoyed me to no end, so I found a way to turn
| it off:
|
| https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/turn-off-
| office-a...
| LuisMondragon wrote:
| I'm an editor and proofread texts daily. (In Spanish). The
| spell check process in Word was always straightforward, without
| significant delays between each check.
|
| But guess what. Now the humble spell checker has evolved and
| now it's AI and cloud based. Nothing wrong with those
| technologies if properly implemented, but now _each word that
| gets flagged makes a web request_ to try and find a suggestion,
| most of which are useless. It 's so frustrating. My work was
| becoming noticeable slower. Since I get paid per word, I need
| to work fast, so now before spell checking I have to disconnect
| from the internet. And I paid for Office! I paid for a software
| that helps me work slower and earn less.
| huuuz wrote:
| word and excel are slower when compared to the Google workspace
| counterparts. There's a very noticeable lag when typing. They
| should be ashamed of themselves.
| marcooliv wrote:
| Seis sao muito chato, jesus amado.
| everyone wrote:
| Win 10 LTSB (the only good version of windows atm anyway) will be
| supported for a good few more years. Presumably by its EOL there
| will be a decent win 11 LTSB available to switch to.
|
| I have to use Windows for my job (game dev) . I dont understand
| how anyone can stomach non LTSB windows. Also, just go ahead and
| pirate it! MS have given us no other choice.
| prosody wrote:
| I'm switching to 10 LTSC (nb they renamed LTSB) 1809 this
| weekend to get ahead of the curve. Supported until January
| 2029. 11 came out six years after 10, so decent odds this can
| tide me over until 12. Unfortunately they reduced their support
| commitment for the upcoming 10 LTSC 21H2 to five years from
| release, so the older version is the best you can do.
|
| Also FWIW, Microsoft does kind of give you a choice to obtain
| 10 LTSC legitimately, it's just a pain in the ass since it's
| very deliberately not intended for consumers. Described here:
| https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2167558-explicit-inst...
|
| I actually did it (using CDW, total cost US$319.15), in part
| because I'm a goody-goody I guess and in part because even if
| you can trust the ISO you got is good by verifying its
| checksum, god knows what the tool you use to bypass the
| copyright enforcement mechanism does.
|
| If anyone reading this comment is interested in buying it, you
| should probably also know that the Open License volume
| purchasing program that the linked units are being sold under
| is getting discontinued in January 2022, so might want to
| decide whether to bite the bullet soon.
| everyone wrote:
| I dont really consider giving money to MS a 'goody goody'
| thing to do. The crack is super simple, you install windows
| so it uses a key management server for its DRM. The crack
| just fakes a KMS server and tells windows "yep yer good, you
| have a license." You have to do it every 6 months or
| something.
|
| I think of pirate stuff like open source software. I'm not
| personally going to go through every download with a fine
| tooth comb looking for malware. But other members of the
| community _will_ do that. I trust the pirate community _way
| more_ than I 'd trust any corp. In fact even if I buy
| something, I like to download and actually use the pirate
| version, cus often-times the cracker removes the spyware and
| shit that's included in the official release.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| With all of these new features Microsoft continues to try to
| usher in the year of the Linux desktop.
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