[HN Gopher] State of the Windows: What is going on with Windows 11?
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State of the Windows: What is going on with Windows 11?
Author : xd1936
Score : 69 points
Date : 2026-01-26 22:03 UTC (57 minutes ago)
(HTM) web link (ntdotdev.wordpress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ntdotdev.wordpress.com)
| timpera wrote:
| Microsoft really needs to retire the Control Panel and other old-
| school elements of the OS. Windows 11's design system is very
| pretty and user-friendly, please finish the transition to it
| ASAP!
| tokyobreakfast wrote:
| This is sarcasm, right?
| timpera wrote:
| Absolutely not sarcasm. Control Panel is a mess and keeping
| it is only confusing for most users.
| belval wrote:
| I am confused by what you mean by this. An average user
| would interact with the new "Settings" and never really
| touch or see Control Panel...
| timpera wrote:
| Because many settings still aren't available in the
| "Settings" app, you often have to dig into the Control
| Panel (most notably for power options). Microsoft support
| forums and ChatGPT, which I think would be used by non-
| technical users when they encounter an issue, seem to
| both default to recommending going straight to the
| Control Panel to change settings.
| jatari wrote:
| Literally every time I interact with the modern settings UI
| I give up 15 seconds in and switch back to the old control
| panel.
|
| For instance, how do you change the key repeat delay in the
| modern UI? I have looked and I actually can't find a way to
| change it. I have to use control panel.
|
| Just looking at the modern UI is an eyesore, there is so
| much empty space, a menu that should be a 600x400 rectangle
| takes up the entire screen. The information density is
| comically low. I have to scroll up and down this giant
| monitor sized list to find the one thing I am looking for.
| It's horrendous.
| tokyobreakfast wrote:
| 90% of the time when you do find what you're looking for
| in Settings it's a hyperlink to Control Panel anyway.
| tokyobreakfast wrote:
| No, Control Panel works as well as it did 30 years ago.
|
| Settings is a slow, bloated mess, as you stated elsewhere
| missing many settings, and was in general designed by
| schizophrenics.
|
| A primary reason for the sorry state of software today is
| the absolutely delusional priority that software should be
| "pretty" vs it being functional.
|
| Send all the UI/UX wizards packing, give them a Starbucks
| apron where IMO they belong, and watch software usability
| and customer satisfaction improve over the next 5 years.
| Telaneo wrote:
| The monkey's paw curls, and the old control panels disappear.
| However, more than 70% of what you needed to do when you did
| dig down into the old control panel is still not available in
| the new settings menu.
|
| They've been 'transitioning' away from the old control panel
| since Windows 8, and they're still nowhere near done. On the
| contrary, when I do find myself on a Windows machine, I just
| jump straight to the old settings rather than jump through the
| hoops of the new settings, since I don't have any confidence in
| the new settings to do anything when I need them to (honourable
| mention to Windows update. That's worked mostly fine for me,
| other than the two times it broke and just refused to update
| anything until I did some manual fix. All it needs now is an
| 'Never update automatically. Only update manually' button, but
| I don't expect Microslop to understand what consent is quite
| yet).
| jasonjayr wrote:
| I giggle every time I stumble upon a Windows 3.1 file-
| selector dialog still in Windows 11.
| bberrry wrote:
| The old stuff still being accessible is the only way I find the
| stuff I'm looking for
| Koffiepoeder wrote:
| Exactly there's so much stuff you simply cannot configure
| otherwise. For example disallowing applications to take sole
| ownership of a mic, in-detail power plans, etc. If they
| remove the old control panel, your machine basically becomes
| unconfigurable.
| poolnoodle wrote:
| I can at least find stuff in control panel
| wewewedxfgdf wrote:
| State of Windows?
|
| It's so out of touch, people hate it.
|
| People want a simple, clean, minimal, consistent OS that does not
| have anyone's interests first except the user. Windows 11 is a
| very, very long way from this.
|
| Honestly Windows 95 is closer to ideal than Windows 11.
|
| The state of Windows is: disaster.
| timpera wrote:
| I wouldn't be so certain of this. People on HN hate it for
| sure, but this is a bit of an echo chamber.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| At least in the comment sections on tech/PC gaming YouTube
| people are frustrated with it there too.
|
| On the other hand YouTube tries to serve me content I want so
| maybe thats just the algo talking.
| graemep wrote:
| No,lots of people hate it. The biggest haters I know in real
| life are non technical users.
|
| However, they will continue to use it so MS does not need to
| worry about them.
| wewewedxfgdf wrote:
| HN users are the global thought leaders and (hate the term)
| influencers in technology and what they think has massively
| outsized impact on the way the tech world works.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"HN users are the global thought leaders and (hate the
| term) influencers"
|
| I've no idea about leaders as those do not write here much.
| As for "influencers" - my golden rule is to research
| subject I am having doubts about and pay zero attention to
| what so called "influencers" say.
| navigate8310 wrote:
| You'll never know if the person you abuse on HN is Sam or
| Cook, since they use alts to plant ideas or assess damage
| their misdeeds are causing.
| tester756 wrote:
| and other hilarious jokes we can tell ourselves :P
| schmookeeg wrote:
| There's a fast-follow "You're absolutely right!" from
| Claude pending here. :)
| debo_ wrote:
| If this is a joke, it was a very good one.
| tstrimple wrote:
| If that were the case, every single project would be hosted
| on Hetzner with a Postgres database and everyone would be
| running Linux desktops everywhere. It's not happening.
| Telaneo wrote:
| Non-technical users aren't fans of random UI changes either.
| On the contrary, they hate having to re-learn shit every
| whatever-the-fuck years.
| NoPicklez wrote:
| I don't have an issue with it and I started with 98. There
| are somethings I'd change, but I do feel like I read a lot of
| hyperbole.
|
| Provided I only largely use my PC for gaming.
| caycep wrote:
| OP is certainly a metaphorical as well as a technical question
| lateforwork wrote:
| Fortunately for Microsoft, macOS 26 (Tahoe) is an even bigger
| disaster. Even John Gruber won't upgrade. So Microsoft is under
| no pressure at the moment.
| raincole wrote:
| You said that as if Linux desktop weren't a thing.
|
| ...and you're mostly right.
| gylterud wrote:
| Well, with the help of Microsoft and Apple, who knows? This
| might just be the years of the Linux desktop!
|
| Valve has made Linux gaming a thing. So, even normies are
| trying it...
| debo_ wrote:
| I use Linux for home and both Windows 11 and Tahoe for work.
| I personally find Windows 11 actively hostile while Tahoe is
| mostly just whatever. I'd much rather be using Tahoe.
| Telaneo wrote:
| The amount of research that went into making Windows 95 a user
| friendly OS is actually quite impressive. They didn't have all
| the kinks ironed out, and they couldn't foresee everything, but
| it's was a pretty solid effort.
|
| I wonder how much research went into Windows 11, or 10 or 8 for
| that matter, and to what ends that research was made.
| btown wrote:
| macOS (not iOS) used to be this. POSIX underpinnings.
| Iconography and visual language designed for clarity and
| simplicity. Balances between customizability and system
| stability with deactivatable gatekeepers.
|
| Now, the same way Windows serves Microsoft's AI investments,
| Apple serves a nebulous corporate goal for inimitable (read:
| too unpredictable/unreliable for competitors to copy) Liquid
| [Gl]ass user interfaces at the expense of clarity, and launch
| speed at the expense of stability.
|
| I'm not sure if Steve Jobs would have complained about the
| market capitalization - but he certainly would have executed
| product improvements more cleanly.
|
| It's not yet the year of Linux on desktop, I don't think - but
| we get closer every year.
| robertwt7 wrote:
| I always find some things that doesn't work with my PC on
| windows 11. Sometimes things as simple as moving files in
| explorer makes it hangs where I had to restart explorer.exe.
| This is embarrassing really that windows can't get this right.
| There are so many times where I was frustrated and wished that
| I can just use my macbook pro as my only workstation. I just
| wish that steam on linux has full support for most games that
| are it supports in windows then i'll make the switch
|
| my pc is not even that old, its ryzen 9 5900x with rtx 3080 and
| 32gb ram. however it is sluggish compared to my m1 pro macbook
| pro
| bigyabai wrote:
| Steam on Linux is great. I'm playing _Deadlock_ and _Arc
| Raiders_ on my 3070 Ti without issue, highly recommend it if
| you 're not playing FaceIts or Valorant.
| Telaneo wrote:
| > I just wish that steam on linux has full support for most
| games that are it supports in windows then i'll make the
| switch
|
| That day is today (assuming you don't play games with kernel
| anti-cheat).
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Have you actually used Windows 95? It was awful. Crashed every
| four hours, driver hell, etc
| publicdebates wrote:
| Windows 2000 was peak. All improvements from XP onwards were
| negligible.
| nurettin wrote:
| It was all downhill from 3.11
| doener wrote:
| It's not a priority for Microsoft, it's intrusive and above all
| it's shit.
| kvduba wrote:
| how is it not yet a code red inside Microsoft, for the
| astonishing decline of user experience of Windows 11?
| jmpeax wrote:
| it's probably been thrown out the window compared to office and
| chatgpt
| hackyhacky wrote:
| It's not an emergency at Microsoft for two reasons:
|
| 1. Microsoft doesn't make their money from Windows anymore.
| They make their money from services, like Azure and whatever
| they are calling their web-based Office this week. Windows is
| now mostly a telemetry-collection system for them, not a
| product.
|
| 2. People who hate Windows don't have a choice. Regular people
| are issued a PC and its OS from their employer, and can't
| change it. Consumers who buy low-end laptops for school or
| hobbies aren't going to pay twice as much for a Mac. And
| outside of HN, a vanishingly small number of people are even
| aware of Linux or other FOSS alternatives, much less have the
| ability to install and use it.
| geraldcombs wrote:
| Don't schools typically use Chromebooks these days? My
| daughter was issued one each year from grade 7 to 12.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| And PC gaming. Despite the _massive_ amounts of improvement
| to Linux gaming thanks to Wine & Valve, if you play games
| that rely on kernel anticheat, you have no choice but
| Windows.
|
| I'm hoping now that Microsoft seems like they might get
| serious about kicking people out of the kernel after the
| cloudstrike incident, kernel level anticheat may go away
| which will pave the way for Linux to completely take over.
| throwa356262 wrote:
| Because their profits are all time high??
| anonzzzies wrote:
| A mate just gave me a laptop; it is the first Windows device I
| have touched in 20 years. It runs Windows 11. I am assuming it's
| all as bad as it was 20 years ago, but going from all the Windows
| 11 talk I am guessing it will be far worse?
|
| I am trying it out today first and then reinstalling it with
| Linux. It seems its fully supported out of the box except the cam
| and fingerprint scanner: cam I never use, fingerprint scanner
| would be nice but I hear it is basically impossible to get
| working if not supported (and it is not).
| BoredPositron wrote:
| It will get more annoying with Satya at the helm and as long as
| there is a cash cow that is not enduser facing there is not even
| hope for change.
| Rucadi wrote:
| I'll be honest, I just want something that I can develop on
| (linux is the easiest by far) and that's not annoying (Nixos is
| the best at that).
|
| I don't even use any advanced config, just bare-minimum config
| for the system, enough (project-specific things handled by nix).
| zabzonk wrote:
| I really don't mind Windows 11, and don't recognise many of the
| problems other people here claim to have. For example, I simply
| don't see all (or any) of the ads that many complain about.
| partiallypro wrote:
| Yeah, I haven't seen these either. WSL is great, it's pretty
| nice looking, there's a lot of good stuff in Windows 11. My
| main gripe is inconsistency and falling behind the competition
| in speed (largely due to the chips and x86/x64).
| jayess wrote:
| XP was peak Windows.
| chupchap wrote:
| No. It was frustrating to use and had to be reinstalled every
| year. Windows 8.1 was good and so was Windows 10 to a degree.
| wvenable wrote:
| I disagree with this in the article: "Last, but not least, the
| technical debt of Windows has become almost unbearable. 30+ years
| of Windows NT certainly adds up."
|
| The actual design of the Windows internals has mostly remained
| unchanged and continues to be improved. This is not much
| different than Linux being a design from the 70s. The critical
| bugs in Windows are due to newer additions to that base -- not
| the base itself.
|
| But what everyone really hates is the "modern" technology has
| been piled on top of that Windows NT legacy not the legacy
| itself.
| dekhn wrote:
| My favorite is whenever you need to do anything remotely
| complicated in settings. It's like travelling through layers of
| archeological digs. For me, it's the network settings and audio
| settings that are the best example.
| conception wrote:
| The services control panel just as badly designed as it was
| 30 years ago.
| wvenable wrote:
| Microsoft gets a lot of flak for their approach to updating
| the settings up but I think they did that exactly right.
| There was no way that were going to be able to re-implement
| every setting available in one go and have it be good. So
| they took the iterative approach and moved over the most
| important settings first and each version of Windows 10/11
| more and more options are available in settings.
|
| I find myself having to use the old control panel dialogs
| less and less -- but I'm also happy that they are still
| there.
| teddyalbina wrote:
| Exactly technicaly linux is even older than NT. Some Microsoft
| guys had to implement async io in linux because they where
| incapable of doing it.
| Alifatisk wrote:
| I am still on Win10 on my pc, the day my pc is forced to update
| to Win11 is the day I finally switch OS. I don't even care if I
| loose things that are windows only. What OS should I switch to?
| Is it Linux Mint that is the closest alternative?
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| Yeah.
| asveikau wrote:
| I was at Microsoft for a few years. I think some amount of blame
| has to go to hiring quality declining over the years.
|
| I wrote a bit about this in an old comment:
|
| > They have a lot of staff turnover too, and each generation of
| new SDE has less of a clue how the old stuff worked. So when
| they're tasked with replacing the old stuff, they don't
| understand what it does, and the rewrite ends up doing less.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46472300
|
| Also, a little bit after I left, they eliminated the SDET role. I
| have memories of encountering many SDETs who didn't know what
| they were doing. But the good ones kept the developers honest.
| Getting rid of a parallel org structure dedicated to testing for
| regressions etc. would certainly seem like a good explanation for
| a quality dip.
| teddyalbina wrote:
| I never experienced any of this problems on any of my computers
| inclusing the ARM one. Same for everybody i know
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| The worst thing is, there is no real alternative to Windows that
| is backed by somewhat of a corporate guarantee besides macOS.
|
| But many people who use Windows wouldn't want to move to a
| considerably new platform like macOS, which works quite
| differently. There is Linux, but then there are compatibility
| issues and driver issues and other things that are not great for
| the casual average user.
|
| It feels like Windows could have been better off without being
| free, but being something like a buy once, keep forever solution,
| like the good old days. Today it has just turned into a complete
| toxic pit of mess that tracks you in every little thing you do
| and works against you to make sure that it maximizes profits for
| Microsoft and its partners. The usability is completely
| destroyed, alas.
| dleslie wrote:
| RedHat and Ubuntu both provide enterprise support.
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| Well, they are still Linux, and they are confusing for
| casual, average users.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| It ain't that confusing. Click on the icon of the app you
| want to launch and that's it.
|
| The app is similar to what's going in on windows.
|
| Where that becomes frustrating is when you have a computer
| that isn't well supported by Linux, things don't work,
| battery is bad, you have to look up for ways to fix them
| and so on.
|
| But if the << driver >> support was as good as on windows,
| people could switch in 2 seconds.
|
| My university computers ran Ubuntu, we were not computer
| nerd but civil engineering yet everyone adapted very quick.
| mattbee wrote:
| The key to having a nice time with Windows is 1) to give it loads
| of memory (32GB+ surely) and 2) to run a debloater script the
| moment you pick up a new system e.g.
| https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat
|
| All the rubbish from the last 20 years - ads, OneDrive, Copilot,
| Office upsells, Candy Crush in the start menu - it can just
| disappear, leaving a pretty stable system that hasn't actually
| changed much.
|
| Apart from the awful control panels, anything else you don't like
| is probably replaceable. I really love startallback.com which
| brings back the regular start menu and lots of other little
| fixes.
|
| Obviously everyone deserves a computer that doesn't try to sell
| to them CONSTANTLY, and I wish Windows were better out of the
| box. But it doesn't take much adjustment to get there.
| the_snooze wrote:
| If only our technology were advanced enough that we could have
| an OS that didn't constantly undermine the user's intentions.
| debo_ wrote:
| This looks great. In your experience, do you run it once and
| that's it? Or do you need to re-run as updates add or re-
| introduce "bloat"?
| mfro wrote:
| You definitely should run it after updates.
| mattbee wrote:
| Personally I don't think I've ever re-run it. I think I've
| clicked a few buttons as I've seen alerts about new options
| appearing. But ultimately it's just a bunch of powershell
| commands to remove packages and set options. So I'd assume
| it's safe to run regularly.
| conception wrote:
| Or buy an IOT LTSC license to have an officially debloated
| version.
| tokyobreakfast wrote:
| Linux is not getting better in those respects, either. DE's are
| crazy bloated. For everyone bitching about control panels, tell
| me how is it done in Linux? In the WM control panel or the DE
| control panel? Or some obscure .conf file you must edit by
| hand? It's beyond disorganized. If I want to change a font it's
| like a game of three card monte.
| o_m wrote:
| Who would have thought forcing one developer to write a million
| lines of code each month would have negative consequences
| AgentMatt wrote:
| Two years ago I did some cleaning up and finally sorted out the
| gaming PC from my youth. I believe I bought it around 2007. Ran
| some old AMD dual core (may have been an Athlon 64 4400), still
| had an HDD. Installed on it was Windows Vista, which wasn't
| exactly a crowd favorite. So as I went to backup the final
| remnants of those gaming days I was flabbergasted by the
| snappiness of the explorer. Folders just opened instantly! So
| snappy, it was actually fun just navigating through all the
| folders. I had been expecting this PC to run at snail's pace, yet
| the windows experience was much better than on my desktop PC
| built in 2021 running Windows 10 on an NVMe drive. I have no idea
| how that is possible, but since then with every interaction with
| modern Windows there's just this tiny tinge of sadness...
| Telaneo wrote:
| HDD performance on Windows just died after some Windows 10
| update. Sure, it took two minutes to boot 7 of an HDD, but once
| it was going, Explorer ran fine, and Firefox would run fine
| after that (probably cached after boot).
|
| Same goes for day one Windows 10 (they probably didn't touch
| the relevant parts). I remember having to deal with a Windows
| 10 machine on an HDD, and it was mostly fine after it booted,
| but even clean installs on more recent version are just
| _horrible_. There 's probably been some optimisation done which
| works fine on SSDs but just thrash HDDs, and HDDs as boot
| drives just aren't a thing anymore (within margin of error), so
| it didn't matter.
|
| The fact that they've managed to throw so much bloat on top
| that even SSDs start struggling though, that really is
| something.
| protocolture wrote:
| Vibe coded updates for sure.
|
| Probably also vibe tested.
| bokohut wrote:
| My software logic mind asks: I question why if Copilot is so
| great then why cannot Microsoft turn themselves around by
| dogfooding their own solution that they have forced on all of
| their users which then proves to the world that Copilot is great?
|
| I am led to believe from marketing that A.I. has all the answers
| and with Microsoft having the greatest A.I. don't they have all
| the answers?
|
| I apologize in advance for my dumb.
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(page generated 2026-01-26 23:00 UTC)