I've been using Windows 11 without much complaint since its release, but off the top of my head, I can't name a single "feature" that would motivate me to upgrade if I were on Windows 10, besides "continued support."
I have a number of laptops and desktops around home, and I mostly cannot distinguish between the Win 10 vs Win 11 ones - except, Win 11 is more annoying. The inability to move taskbar is one, but they've also removed a lot of keyboard shortcuts for common desktop and file explorer activities for no reason I can discern. So I'll type up a shortcut, nothing or bad things will happen, and that's my clue "oh yeah, this one is on $#&@ Windows 11" :-/.
Also when I need to configure something, like sound or network or power options, it seems like the number of separate windows in different styles to hunt through keeps proliferating.
When unplugging and plugging back in external monitors it moves windows back to the same monitors they were on before unplugging them. This is probably the most significant QoL feature.
The control centre generally feels better than Windows 10, except for switching sound outputs or getting to the volume mixer, which require too many clicks.
The settings app is a little more cohesive and has had some more control panel functionality transitioned into it.
Nothing they couldn’t have fixed in Windows 10, but it is overall better for me due to the above.
My new-ish work laptop runs Windows 11, but my personal desktop for gaming on a 6th gen Intel doesn’t meet official requirements. It has TPM 2 though, so once October arrives I reckon it’s better to run Windows 11 in a “technically” unsupported manner rather than stick with an OS which is no longer getting updates (and no, I will not switch to Linux as I’m not looking for another hobby).
It might've been backported at some point, but for a while if you wanted to get the most out of an AMD Ryzen 7xxx, you needed to be on Win11. Generally about an 11% performance improvement.
The big feature I miss was taken away in Fall Creator's Update --- styluses working as styluses and selecting text, as opposed to being dumbed-down to an 11th touch input.
Basically GPU access in WSL was the only feature I was interested in, but I find the forced onedrive to be super annoying etc, etc. I’m considering paying for the long term version of Office for each of my devices just to not have their stupid cloud features.
I'm looking forward to the better window placement snaps. I plan on buying an ultra-widescreen monitor the day that work upgrades us to Windows 11. Manually positioning windows for a monitor that size is frustrating in Windows 10, you pretty much have to disable all the snaps because they work against you snapping windows into undesired sizes if you come close to the edge of the screen.
I hate all the advertising and spyware, so I'll never run Windows 11 at home, but we have a whole team dedicated to disabling that sort of stuff at work, so I don't have to think about it.
I'm predominantly a Ubuntu / Mac user (roughly 60/40).
My Windows machine has seen an uptick in use over the last months for development purposes, but it's still stuck on Windows 10. I don't think I need or want to upgrade it.
Two questions:
- Do I need to upgrade it?
- How do I get comfortable with Windows shell? PowerShell doesn't do Unixisms. There are too many shells. Command Prompt / CMD, PowerShell, there's some utility that installed mingw64 terminal, and WSL is also a thing. Which one(s) should I use?
I'll expand on my shell question: The thing I'm struggling with now is that when I install utilities like git, cargo, etc., they seem to work for some shells but not others. They seem disconnected and not have the same access, visibility, and privileges. What can I read or do to get me over this hill? Which one(s) should I use? (I assume "CMD" is dead?)
I'm doing mostly Rust / TypeScript development on Windows, FWIW.
Agree, I use both Mac/Windows a lot and I feels like Apple usually has a couple OS features that make me want to upgrade whereas windows there's nothing
-The absolute crap of a start menu now being all but useless
-Advertisements
-Increasingly forced to online accounts rather than local
Also the UI changes didn't improve anything, and the changes make upgrading more painful and frustrating than needed. One thing OSX has got right it doesn't keep making major surface change every upgrade.
I could strip it down and it performed and stayed out of my way. It wasn't ever pretty, I didn't like a lot of it, but I could just get what I needed out of it.
Then it started to change, UI / UX had about 20 different flavors. I couldn't find settings anymore. Updates would change settings / undo my explicit settings. Eventually it felt like I was using an ADWARE OS.
I fled to macOS and haven't looked back. I'm even ok with less local gaming to avoid the windows hassle.
It's a bit of a sad thing for me. I do think fondly of my "old days windows" experiences in the sense that I was excited about updates and "Start Me Up" always reminds me of a special time in computing that I loved:
Shows how much of a bubble I live in, most of my friends who play Steam are doing so on Linux with either a Steam Deck or just installing something like ChimeraOS on a desktop and plugging that into the TV.
I've been so entrenched in the Unixey space for like 13 years that going back to Windows would be a pretty substantial productivity drain in the short term, but I'm not sure I'd want to anyway, simply because gaming on Linux has gotten so good, largely thanks to Valve.
Like, it cannot be overstated how utterly good Proton is now. It's to a point where I almost never check compatibility, because it's more than likely going to work just fine. GameScope in particular is such wonderful thing in its own right, and it has genuinely made Linux the "Gaming OS" of choice for me.
I know it's not perfect, my understanding is that there are some games that break with online play with Proton, but for the games I play I have been very happy with Linux.
I am still using Windows 10. A major reason for me to not upgrade is all the media coverage of ads, user tracking, forced subscriptions and unnecessary AI features in Windows 11. Also, Windows 10 is just plain really good. I do have TPM and strong hardware. Windows 11 reputation is the main concern.
It's strange that they are ending Windows 10 support so soon after they stopped selling it. Windows 11 came out October 5, 2021.
Edge came out in 2015 and they kept supporting IE11 until June 15, 2022.
Given that the major Windows 11 features were things like introducing a screen grabber to make your passwords and private data vulnerable to theft, it's no wonder people have resisted adopting it.
Steam users are more likely to be on win 10 than others because they often spend more money on gaming rigs than people buying web browser machine. With the hardware requirements of win 11 (tpm, others) many gamers will not want to throw out their working machines to satisfy Microsoft's hardware demand.
It's the other way around: PC gamers have more computer knowledge than the average user and actually upgrade their hardware. Windows 11 has been out for 3.5 years now.
Among all internet users, 60% are still on Windows 10. Both worldwide [1] and in NA [2]. And that figure includes all the corporate machines that get replaced on deprecation schedules. Among private computers the share of Windows 10 might be even higher
Well 2 years ago when I built a new desktop i took great care to order hardware that works on windows 11.
Then I read the stories saying 11 has even more telemetry that you can't disable, ads on the start menu, Edge that you can't get rid of... and when I got around to setting up Windows on it I ordered a Win 10 license. They're still available even now, I think.
Win 10 does try to trick me into upgrading to 11 randomly on boot (full screen ad with a very hidden "fuck off and skip this" button) but so far I've managed to avoid it.
It's hard to tell but it seems that no more than 20% of Steam users have pre 8th gen Intel CPU. I'm looking at CPUs with 4 or less cores and Intel was shipping them as late as 10th gen so it's probably considerably more so it's probably considerably less than that.
AFAIK most CPUs with > 4 cores are 8th gen or newer and should be supported (besides old Xeons, Skylake-X and such but I doubt there are that many of those ). Also not sure about AMD but their market share was quite low pre 2020.
If you are a "serious" gamer and have a machine that doesn't support Windows 11, you are probably considering an upgrade anyways.
Such a machine will probably not be able to run the latest AAA titles at a decent framerate, it may run smaller games, but so will a recent "web browser machine". The iGPUs in these machines are starting to get pretty good, probably as good as good as a 10 year old gaming rig but with much better energy efficiency.
Steam users are more likely to be on win 11 than others because they often spend more money on gaming rigs than people buying web browser machine. Many of them will want to throw out their working machines to satisfy Microsoft's demand and upgrade to latest hardware to get 300fps
I doubt I'll be able to use windows 11, even just for gaming. I think when I won't be able to game on 10 I'll just install Linux, or steamos?, and I'll just play whatever I can. And I just won't play any games that require windows for their DRM reasons.
That doesn't make sense, Windows 11 was released in 2021. People who spend more money on their hardware are probably not using a 4+ year old machine at this point.
Why should we wait for SteamOS? I’m using Pop_OS! on my gaming machine and can play all new games with the Steam compatibility mode. Baldur’s Gate 3 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance II work perfectly fine. I was quite surprised that there are no problems at all and happy that I can go Windows free now
The number of times I've seen people waiting for SteamOS makes me kind of excited that there's so much demand for an alternative to Windows, nervous that a SteamOS general release isn't going to live up to expectations and frustration that that "demand" isn't moving to other distros of its own accord or otherwise being captured by someone savvy.
I think overall it means that "people", even if they have a more positive view of Linux than they did 10 years ago are still lacking the confidence and know-how to be able to make an actual switch.
There are reasons, sure, but there's absolutely a pool of people right now who would be suitable for Linux and appreciate the switch but there just isn't enough activation energy there to get them over the line.
My gaming laptop is something like 11 years old and still runs the games I'm interested in with really acceptable graphics.
I have installed Pop!OS on it and the combo Steam+Proton is great. I've kept my Windows 10 partition to run Skyrim with mods (last time I checked, it didn't run on Linux) and maybe the occasional Proton-incompatible game.
I tried once to upgrade the W10 partition to W11, and got an error saying that my CPU was not supported.
The day W10 reaches EOL is the day I finally delete that Windows partition. I could just keep it offline, but I don't really play Skyrim anymore (and worst case, I'll wait for Skyrim to run on Proton). As for the occasional game I can't run on Linux, I'll just pass my way. There's way too many games I still want to play, if editors filter themselves out from my reach, it's not my loss.
I tried moving to Windows 11, discovered that pinning folders in Explorer was bugged to hell, and moved back to 10. All of the features I care to use in windows have been in since Windows 7; moving to 11 broke one of the very few moving parts in my workflow. Horrible experience!
Combine that with some of the smartest people I know at microsoft telling me that their current task is to add one iframe to the UI to inject more advertising (and that it had taken six months) and I am an active advocate on not upgrading. I have a test gaming system I'm going to install Arch on to prepare for the win10pocalypse.
> smartest people I know at microsoft telling me that their current task is to add one iframe to the UI to inject more advertising (and that it had taken six months)
This is so sad. A good senior dev can accomplish a lot of good for the customer in 6 months, but instead they're adding ads to an operating system so some Principal Program Manager can get another promo for making his VP's ad revenue go slightly up.
I'm surprised that SteamOS is not listed in the stats. Despite what the article suggests, SteamOS already exists. On the Steam Deck.
Maybe the number of Steam Decks sold is too small to show up in the statistics? Or maybe it reports as Arch, which is the top category of Linux here.
In any case, I'd like to express my gratitude for Steam's excellent Linux support. If anyone is going to usher in the year of the Linux Desktop, it's Steam.
Every time a new Windows version comes out, since Windows XP, that there are forums filled with now the max exodus to Linux Desktop promised land is finally going to happen.
Meanwhile not even Valve was able to convince game studios to port their Android NDK games to SteamDeck, they have to translate Windows/DirectX, and lets see for how long Microsoft will keep tolerating that.
I have the Linux kernel all over the place at home, yet not one of them is a GNU/Linux distribution.
That feature never made sense to me and I always disable it on my GNU+Linux, if I encounter it. Almost always when I want to open 2 different file locations, is because I want to copy files from one folder to another and because I am a lazy lad, i'll just do it by drag and drop. This just works perfectly fine with two windows. Not sure what I would need tabs for. But I also don't care if they exist. Maybe some users like them.
I have a gaming computer on Windows 10 and I only really play Warframe so I plan on making it stay that way (I'm thinking about locking it totally down and not even browsing the web or move to a cloud service). I really don't like moving to Windows 11 especially with the features I don't want or need.
Not surprised. A lot of gamers are still using high-end motherboards and CPUs they bought 10 years ago, only upgrading the GPU and RAM to play newer games. They probably can't upgrade due to the TPM requirement.
I haven't upgraded because my ssd needs to be reformatted to meet install requirements and I no longer enjoy the hours of environment config that will entail
[+] [-] rideontime|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] NikolaNovak|1 year ago|reply
I have a number of laptops and desktops around home, and I mostly cannot distinguish between the Win 10 vs Win 11 ones - except, Win 11 is more annoying. The inability to move taskbar is one, but they've also removed a lot of keyboard shortcuts for common desktop and file explorer activities for no reason I can discern. So I'll type up a shortcut, nothing or bad things will happen, and that's my clue "oh yeah, this one is on $#&@ Windows 11" :-/.
Also when I need to configure something, like sound or network or power options, it seems like the number of separate windows in different styles to hunt through keeps proliferating.
[+] [-] jonathanlydall|1 year ago|reply
The control centre generally feels better than Windows 10, except for switching sound outputs or getting to the volume mixer, which require too many clicks.
The settings app is a little more cohesive and has had some more control panel functionality transitioned into it.
Nothing they couldn’t have fixed in Windows 10, but it is overall better for me due to the above.
My new-ish work laptop runs Windows 11, but my personal desktop for gaming on a 6th gen Intel doesn’t meet official requirements. It has TPM 2 though, so once October arrives I reckon it’s better to run Windows 11 in a “technically” unsupported manner rather than stick with an OS which is no longer getting updates (and no, I will not switch to Linux as I’m not looking for another hobby).
[+] [-] wlesieutre|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ZeWaka|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] throwuxiytayq|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] WillAdams|1 year ago|reply
https://github.com/TheJoeFin/Windows10-Community/issues/17
[+] [-] daft_pink|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] pavon|1 year ago|reply
I hate all the advertising and spyware, so I'll never run Windows 11 at home, but we have a whole team dedicated to disabling that sort of stuff at work, so I don't have to think about it.
[+] [-] echelon|1 year ago|reply
My Windows machine has seen an uptick in use over the last months for development purposes, but it's still stuck on Windows 10. I don't think I need or want to upgrade it.
Two questions:
- Do I need to upgrade it?
- How do I get comfortable with Windows shell? PowerShell doesn't do Unixisms. There are too many shells. Command Prompt / CMD, PowerShell, there's some utility that installed mingw64 terminal, and WSL is also a thing. Which one(s) should I use?
I'll expand on my shell question: The thing I'm struggling with now is that when I install utilities like git, cargo, etc., they seem to work for some shells but not others. They seem disconnected and not have the same access, visibility, and privileges. What can I read or do to get me over this hill? Which one(s) should I use? (I assume "CMD" is dead?)
I'm doing mostly Rust / TypeScript development on Windows, FWIW.
[+] [-] superconduct123|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] PokemonNoGo|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] rich_sasha|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] hmmm-i-wonder|1 year ago|reply
-The absolute crap of a start menu now being all but useless -Advertisements -Increasingly forced to online accounts rather than local
Also the UI changes didn't improve anything, and the changes make upgrading more painful and frustrating than needed. One thing OSX has got right it doesn't keep making major surface change every upgrade.
[+] [-] jaimsam|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] duxup|1 year ago|reply
I could strip it down and it performed and stayed out of my way. It wasn't ever pretty, I didn't like a lot of it, but I could just get what I needed out of it.
Then it started to change, UI / UX had about 20 different flavors. I couldn't find settings anymore. Updates would change settings / undo my explicit settings. Eventually it felt like I was using an ADWARE OS.
I fled to macOS and haven't looked back. I'm even ok with less local gaming to avoid the windows hassle.
It's a bit of a sad thing for me. I do think fondly of my "old days windows" experiences in the sense that I was excited about updates and "Start Me Up" always reminds me of a special time in computing that I loved:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRdl1BjTG7c
[+] [-] tombert|1 year ago|reply
I've been so entrenched in the Unixey space for like 13 years that going back to Windows would be a pretty substantial productivity drain in the short term, but I'm not sure I'd want to anyway, simply because gaming on Linux has gotten so good, largely thanks to Valve.
Like, it cannot be overstated how utterly good Proton is now. It's to a point where I almost never check compatibility, because it's more than likely going to work just fine. GameScope in particular is such wonderful thing in its own right, and it has genuinely made Linux the "Gaming OS" of choice for me.
I know it's not perfect, my understanding is that there are some games that break with online play with Proton, but for the games I play I have been very happy with Linux.
[+] [-] jhot|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] amima|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] wmil|1 year ago|reply
Edge came out in 2015 and they kept supporting IE11 until June 15, 2022.
Given that the major Windows 11 features were things like introducing a screen grabber to make your passwords and private data vulnerable to theft, it's no wonder people have resisted adopting it.
[+] [-] sour-taste|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] wongarsu|1 year ago|reply
Among all internet users, 60% are still on Windows 10. Both worldwide [1] and in NA [2]. And that figure includes all the corporate machines that get replaced on deprecation schedules. Among private computers the share of Windows 10 might be even higher
1: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/windows/d...
2: https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desk...
[+] [-] nottorp|1 year ago|reply
Then I read the stories saying 11 has even more telemetry that you can't disable, ads on the start menu, Edge that you can't get rid of... and when I got around to setting up Windows on it I ordered a Win 10 license. They're still available even now, I think.
Win 10 does try to trick me into upgrading to 11 randomly on boot (full screen ad with a very hidden "fuck off and skip this" button) but so far I've managed to avoid it.
[+] [-] pqtyw|1 year ago|reply
AFAIK most CPUs with > 4 cores are 8th gen or newer and should be supported (besides old Xeons, Skylake-X and such but I doubt there are that many of those ). Also not sure about AMD but their market share was quite low pre 2020.
[+] [-] GuB-42|1 year ago|reply
Such a machine will probably not be able to run the latest AAA titles at a decent framerate, it may run smaller games, but so will a recent "web browser machine". The iGPUs in these machines are starting to get pretty good, probably as good as good as a 10 year old gaming rig but with much better energy efficiency.
[+] [-] high_na_euv|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] beretguy|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] remram|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Lunatic666|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Zhyl|1 year ago|reply
I think overall it means that "people", even if they have a more positive view of Linux than they did 10 years ago are still lacking the confidence and know-how to be able to make an actual switch.
There are reasons, sure, but there's absolutely a pool of people right now who would be suitable for Linux and appreciate the switch but there just isn't enough activation energy there to get them over the line.
[+] [-] cafeinux|1 year ago|reply
I have installed Pop!OS on it and the combo Steam+Proton is great. I've kept my Windows 10 partition to run Skyrim with mods (last time I checked, it didn't run on Linux) and maybe the occasional Proton-incompatible game.
I tried once to upgrade the W10 partition to W11, and got an error saying that my CPU was not supported.
The day W10 reaches EOL is the day I finally delete that Windows partition. I could just keep it offline, but I don't really play Skyrim anymore (and worst case, I'll wait for Skyrim to run on Proton). As for the occasional game I can't run on Linux, I'll just pass my way. There's way too many games I still want to play, if editors filter themselves out from my reach, it's not my loss.
[+] [-] Kapura|1 year ago|reply
Combine that with some of the smartest people I know at microsoft telling me that their current task is to add one iframe to the UI to inject more advertising (and that it had taken six months) and I am an active advocate on not upgrading. I have a test gaming system I'm going to install Arch on to prepare for the win10pocalypse.
[+] [-] qwerpy|1 year ago|reply
This is so sad. A good senior dev can accomplish a lot of good for the customer in 6 months, but instead they're adding ads to an operating system so some Principal Program Manager can get another promo for making his VP's ad revenue go slightly up.
[+] [-] mcv|1 year ago|reply
Maybe the number of Steam Decks sold is too small to show up in the statistics? Or maybe it reports as Arch, which is the top category of Linux here.
In any case, I'd like to express my gratitude for Steam's excellent Linux support. If anyone is going to usher in the year of the Linux Desktop, it's Steam.
[+] [-] petee|1 year ago|reply
A couple open replacement options are in the works but nothing is 100% compatible yet
[+] [-] ethagnawl|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] pjmlp|1 year ago|reply
Every time a new Windows version comes out, since Windows XP, that there are forums filled with now the max exodus to Linux Desktop promised land is finally going to happen.
Meanwhile not even Valve was able to convince game studios to port their Android NDK games to SteamDeck, they have to translate Windows/DirectX, and lets see for how long Microsoft will keep tolerating that.
I have the Linux kernel all over the place at home, yet not one of them is a GNU/Linux distribution.
[+] [-] michaelcampbell|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] 1stranger|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] guax|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] the__alchemist|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] pjmlp|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] dailykoder|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] zitterbewegung|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] shaggie76|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] phendrenad2|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] manchmalscott|1 year ago|reply
Instead of upgrading to windows 11, I’m switching to x plane, which has a native Linux build.
[+] [-] michaelcampbell|1 year ago|reply
My game machine on W10 runs the games I want it to run well enough as well, which is nice.
[+] [-] nalathna|1 year ago|reply