I recently got locked out of my machine because logging in with the mandatory Microsoft account-backed primary user of my machine didn't work anymore. It said I was offline and I had to use the "previous password" even though I didn't have a previous password for that account.
Hacking around in the recovery console to add another administrator user worked, but then I couldn't reset the original user's password because it was tied to the Microsoft account and you can't change the password locally.
I don't need Copilot managing my inbox through AI, nor do I need a more exciting widget experience.
I just want an OS where if something like the above happens there's a way to fix it without having to reinstall. It doesn't seem like much to ask.
Edit: yes, I can use Linux but I have decades of Windows muscle memory and I do a bunch of DirectX programming. I shouldn't have to switch :)
> I can use Linux but I have decades of Windows muscle memory and I do a bunch of DirectX programming.
I see a likely inversion of motives here: you earn your living coding or otherwise are deeply vested in Windows, so you are committed for survival to Windows and to fixing the absurd account problem that MSFT has inflicted on you.
The expression "muscle memory" here just means the cognitive load of working with a technology. MSFT has added a hard-blocking piece of stupidity to your cognitive load.
I am sure this is not the first time! Registry problems, update problems, and now for pity's sake account problems.
As a long-time user of both Linux and Windows, I'd say my OS cognitive load with Linux is almost entirely related to efficient actions, whereas with Windows I have a quiver of stupid arrows to shoot at all the problems that MSFT inflicts.
When people advise you to switch to Linux if you can, they are giving solid advice.
My Ubuntu servers have been in an undefined state since canonical botched a regular upgrade to 26.04 LTS due to the ongoing DDOS. Their status page says everything works. A simple ping tells me nothing works.
Let's not pretend Microsoft has a monopoly on idiocy in the software world. All major Linux distros are hell bent on repeating the mistakes of Windows. Especially since the people in control of the stack (minus the kernel) are the rejects who couldn't make it in Microsoft and Apple in the 90s and 00s but really wanted to.
Meanwhile my small happy place with OpenBSD and Guix just works.
They are caused by moral busy bodies who think they know better.
To quote CS Lewis:
>Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
Also years of Windows muscle memory here, especially the keyboard shortcuts. I’ve used Windows since 1997. I’ve decided I’m done. A new PC arrives in a month. It’ll be running Ubuntu. I’m done.
Maybe there is a Linux language similar to DirectX you might transition to? Maybe test code in a VM? (Although that gets you right back into Win11.)
I have no problem using Debian (I’m actually a Linux sysadmin by profession) so I have no problems later switching distros. But as of today, I’m happy with Ubuntu on my road laptop and I would no doubt be happy switching the home PC, too. (Actually the road lap is Lubuntu and it currently has zero visible AI influence.)
I have no problem using Debian (I’m actually a Linux sysadmin by profession) so I have no problems later switching distros. But as of today, I’m happy with Ubuntu on my road laptop and I would no doubt be happy switching the home PC, too. (Actually the road lap is Lubuntu and it currently has zero visible AI influence.)
Same. I used to develop Windows apps with Borland C++ once, that's how old I am. Last year, I finally installed a second Linux Mint boot - for Windows games!
The level of disregard for quality from MS is just obnoxious. We are really crossing some kind of line here, I think, where taking the pain of migrating once seems easier than dealing with all this nonsense.
(I had to clean install Windows after that infamous update with system check infinite loop at boot time).
> These suggestions are like telling someone that that is being harassed to maybe wear something different.
Weird analogy - it's telling someone who is paying to be abused to simply stop paying...
If Windows was actually free, as in download a copy and use it as you wish, then sure, maybe you might have a (very tiny) point, but it's not like that at all.
Many legit users have a license applied to their Microsoft account that predates the current situation. That is to say, a license carried over from windows 10 and possibly as far back as windows 7, since there was a time where Microsoft was offering free license transfers. Many people see windows 7 as being not shitty and abusive.
> there was a time where Microsoft was offering free license transfers
I don't think they ever stopped. Maybe they ceased advertising it, but installing Windows 10 over 7 or 8 would silently inherit the license far past the original terms. The time-limited offer was just a FOMO-inducing marketing scam.
You don't choose to use Windows. You have to. Because it's the only OS that supports whatever tool you need for your work. Windows is mandatory in many situations, which is why it can afford being obnoxious.
Do both. Insist that the authorities reform the abuser AND leave the relationship.
In a real life abusive relationship that would look like both calling the cops and leaving. In the case of software, demand reform and also switch OSes.
your analogy would be fitting for a jurisdiction that had no sexual assault laws or way for victims to defend themselves. In which case "Don't provoke an attack" is sound advice.
in other industries, you can sue product manufacturers if their defects cause you inordinate grief, lost wages, or excessive repair costs.
Have you considered Linux on bare metal and a Windows VM for your coding? Two monitor setup and you can have Windows on one side when working then all your other daily stuff is in Linux. Shared drives and clipboards make things pretty easy.
Also just debloat the Windows install, why are you suffering with Co-Pilot? I have a VM running on Proxmox and I rdp to it from Linux when needed, but daily use, no way and honestly there really is no reason to put all your eggs in the Windows basket in this day and age.
As Windows more and more difficult to use at very basic, after passing certain threshold, just developing on Linux is more practical. Even for DirectX.
I used Windows since my first PC on 3.1. But recently it just became too much. Switched over to Mint for just over a year now and loving it. No issues at all for development or gaming. The machine just works. No lag at the lock screen, typing in your password and hitting enter has the desktop loaded instantly. It just works the way you expect and with the performance you expect. I used to defend Windows but I cannot say the same about it anymore.
Hello fellow DirectX programmer! I gave up and got a Mac. I made myself get used to the defaults. I can't go back. I tried putting together a gaming pc a couple years ago and Windows annoyed me too much. It's better here!
And yeah - I gave up on DirectX programming to do it. I do like Metal...
> I recently got locked out of my machine because logging in with the mandatory Microsoft account-backed primary user of my machine didn't work anymore. It said I was offline and I had to use the "previous password" even though I didn't have a previous password for that account
Not sure what's so confusing here... When Windows is online, it checks your password against the cloud and updates the local store. When Windows is offline, it checks your password against a local store. By previous password, Windows just means the password you used on the last successful login for the user on that machine.
The day I can’t make a local-only account on windows (for personal use, work is a different matter unfortunately) is the day I stop using windows.
It’s irritating enough that new linux installs want me to add accounts. I can skip it, which is nice, but just don’t show the screen. If you’re installing linux you either know what you’re doing or you don’t: if you do you know it’s possible and don’t need it jammed in your face, and if you don’t you’re probably not quite tall enough to understand it isn’t needed and you probably don’t want it anyways.
I don't even want a local account, I just want to be able to set a custom username for my account instead of some autogenerated jumble of letters.
My Microsoft Account email is "contact@<my-domain-name>". If I set up a new Windows 11 computer using this account, Windows picks the first 4 letters of my email address and sets that as the username. So my username becomes "conta", and the path to my user directory becomes "C:\Users\conta".
I know this is a really small thing, but I find it incredibly irritating. I can't be typing that into the terminal all day long! It's not the end of the world, but it speaks to a lack of polish and care across the whole product, not to mention a disrespect for their users' intelligence.
I'm not a Windows user—I only use it for gaming—so I don't really know how to get around this issue. Maybe there's a secret keycombo I can press during install? Or some unrelated checkbox that I can toggle that will do the magic? I just know that I login via my iCloud account on all my Macs, and Apple has always allowed me to choose my own username and home directory.
I don't think this is high on their list of issues to fix so I'm not very hopeful that this will ever get addressed. Maybe I should just change my legal name to Conta?
> I'm not a Windows user—I only use it for gaming—so I don't really know how to get around this issue.
5ish years back I used to have a PCI passthrough via OVMF [0] setup for my GPU and my windows VM (Arch host) so I could game on windows.
Then I realized Proton/wine had gotten good enough to play all my games (I don't play AAA competitive shooters) and I dropped the VM and never looked back.
I would encourage everyone to give Steam/Proton on Linux a shot if you haven't recently and see if you're able to drop windows for good. These days, I don't even look at compatibility - 95% of games work OOTB and the other 5% work by changing the proton version (i.e. proton-ge). YMMV of course but I've been much happier without windows on my system.
> It’s irritating enough that new linux installs want me to add accounts.
I don't quite understand what you are saying here. If you're talking about setting up an account to use the system, it's the same idea as setting up a local account on Windows.
If you're talking about online accounts, I believe you are referring to a convenience feature offered during setup. Ironically, it was put there to guide people who are coming to Linux from Windows.
What people realy want: as little OS as possible to let them run just the things on their computer they want to run.
What Microsoft wants: Windows as their straightjacket into the Microsoft services as that is where the revenue is.
Why Windows got this bad: incentives and coercion placed on the teams to show uptake on the services no matter what leading to perversion in tactics and complete alienation of the user base.
The incentives are alomost perpendicularly misaligned.
Regaining trust is extremely hard after you've crossed an edge. People are looking for the exit, finding there is indeed a door, and stopping them will take far more than just some reassurance from the DJ boot.
It's always the MBAs. The organizational structure incentivises them on the wrong metrics. So they adapt and optimize for that. In real life, after a while, you hit a plateau with features and market demand. What these MBA clowns love to do is take what's already perfectly fine and mess it up and create a road map for it to fix something to being it the way it was, so they can justify to their higher ups they are "adding value" to the company. And half way through this, they leave the company. Now some other new employee comes in, has no idea why this had to be reworked and messes it up even more. You have this loop enough times, you end up with how software engineering works in the fortune 500.
The moment you hear "let's circle back" enough in meetings, that's your tell tale sign to quit the workplace infested with MBAs. A good organization is always run by engineers at the top level and engineers don't incentivise engineers simply for working on roadmaps of perfectly fine existing features. That's the difference.
> A good organization is always run by engineers at the top level and engineers don't incentivise engineers simply for working on roadmaps of perfectly fine existing features. That's the difference.
I wish this were true, but unfortunately, I've seen enough evidence otherwise to strongly disagree. MBAs weren't born evil, they were made that way in business school. The same corrupting process works on engineers and can happen outside of business school contexts (one common corrupting force is Hacker News comments). An MBA-brained engineer as a manager is orders of magnitude worse than a regular MBA.
Different sector, but I'd say Blackmagic Design seems to be run by people who actually use their own products and care about both product experience and engineering.
In the creative industry there is a bunch of these "boutique" companies that places great care on the final experience. Probably Blackmagic Design is no longer "boutique" to be fair, but seems they still got the culture right.
Valve and the few sane startups / small/mid sized companies you can be lucky enough to end up in.
I was part of the transformation of a healthy mid size engineering led startup company that got taken over by MBAs and Indian employees and saw the whole lifecycle.
They want to be Apple. Apple sells hardware, services, and takes a huge cut being a software store.
Microsoft sells software. They turned office into a service but it's still software. Nobody really wants to use their store. Their hardware is a cute little side hustle.
Microsoft's strategy for turning into Apple is kneecapping their own software.
Considering that at this point most Microsoft OEMs are failing, Microsoft should just start building a lot of consumer hardware.
Apple makes more money selling consumer hardware than the entire PC hardware market combined. I'm exaggerating, but only a little. This would have been unimaginable in 1999.
It didn't have to be. The same toxic dynamics that compromised their software poisoned their hardware, but they had too many products, or eras of a product, that Just Worked(TM) for it to have been a fluke. Someone knew what they were doing. They were screwed over by competing interests.
Zune people loved their Zunes. Windows Phone 8 people loved their Nokias. I've seen Surface Pro 2s "boot" to the same session for half a decade (that is: put it to sleep, stick it in a drawer for a year, take it out, plug it in, turn it on, all of the same files and folders and apps are open; I've NEVER seen this happen with any other device, they always lose state after enough time unplugged). And it's crazy how badly the Courier/Surface Duo was botched, given the excitement for it. Even newer Surfaces are great for the first year, before all of the compromises and poor engineering decisions make themselves known.
Imagine if it had been managed by someone who actually cared about their users, instead of people who treated them like marks and rubes.
> Regaining trust is extremely hard after you've crossed an edge.
Microsoft needs to learn consent. Everywhere there's a Yes and "Remind me later", there has to be a No. And the No has to work and be remembered forever, not forgotten after the next update. Using Windows has to stop feeling like you're being roofied all the time.
This is how you can tell that they just don't get it.
Microsoft, your users include developers and power users. We are not all someone's tech illiterate relative who needs constant reminding to check that backups are on, nor do we want to use OneDrive.
If we turn it off, it means off. Updates off = they stay off until turned back on, don't worry, we'll remember. Backup off = it stays off. Edge off = it stays off. Ads off = I don't want ads.
The battle they are fighting is that by using Google, tech illiterate people have found buttons like the ability to disable updates, but don't understand what they're doing, and then leave them off and now their OS becomes part of a botnet in a few months. So Microsoft believes that they are doing a greater good by not offering a real option to actually turn certain things off. But this babysitting behavior is annoying as shit when you want to leave something running that is going to take 6 days. Sure yes put it on a cloud vm. But if I was still using Windows as my OS, why should I have to? Just because your OS can't handle a developer doing something else than using Outlook and OneDrive to store pictures of aunties family get-together?
It's wild to me that they don't have an Android-esque "Developer mode" that requires an obscure thing that you need to look up to see the options that can harm you (Click X times on the "Build info", etc).
Yeah this seems to be a trend over the last few years.
Google does this too. I don't have photos backed up to my Google account on a Pixel and every few days if I open the photos app it prompts me to backup to the cloud and I always have to click "maybe later", "not now" or whatever they decide to name it.
It's messed up because if I were to accidentally ever click yes to that it would fill up my Google storage and I would no longer be able to receive email since I'd have 0% storage. I don't get how something so dangerous can be shoved in front of you so frequently. I know it's marketing / advertising to constantly remind you of something even if you don't want it, but I would have thought customer happiness would outweigh that.
or every time you click a YT link in firefox on android it asks "do you want to open this in the YT App?" where you're options are Yes (with an always use app checkbox) and "Cancel" to open in the browser. Like "Cancel" means "no, get out of the way and do what I want before you injected yourself in this flow"
Good luck with that. I have a Windows computer I sometimes have to run stuff on overnight, like renders or what not. I've disabled everything I can related to Windows Update, plus setting "Active hours" or what not, so the computer doesn't reboot because of updates in the middle of the night.
Today I woke up, went to check the progress and wouldn't you know, Windows Update updated the computer and rebooted, and what I was waiting for was aborted... So fucking tiresome to use shit like this.
I've seen people resorting to disconnecting machines from the internet to prevent this. They load up the software they need, then it never goes online again, so updates can never bother them or otherwise get in the way. The software thus stays exactly as they want it to be. It's an appliance at that point.
It's annoying to have to shuffle files over to it, if that's needed for its job, but I think it's still a worthwhile thing to consider (it's insane that we've gotten to this point, but such is life). If it isn't workable, then fine. But if it is, the hassle of shuffling files using external SSDs or whatever is probably better, or at the very least more consistent, than turning on your machine one day and finding it corrupted itself due to an update, or the software in question got a UI update which breaks your workflow for a month.
Hm, yeah, can't really disconnect it, I'm using it for CI purposes as well. I could disconnect it from the internet though, keep the local connection, but maybe actually explicitly blocking anything windows/microsoft for the period I want it to stay online, might work sufficiently.
Have you tried using a program that regularly simulates keypresses or mouse movements so the computer thinks the user is still active? The `SCROLL` key for instance can be pressed without causing unwanted side effects, but it stops my Windoze VM from going to sleep.
Regularly being presented with a "Set up Windows" after boot forcing you to click "no thanks" on a bunch of Microsoft services is exactly the kind of thing that irritates me. I've politely declined their services about 10 times already, make it stop!
When I get tired of Battlefield 6 I'm likely going full Linux. It is simply not worth putting up with Microsoft Windows for gaming. More and more games seem to work either directly on Linux or at least via things like Proton (courtesy Valve Software).
I got one of those external drive enclosures for an NVMe drive after I upgraded.
The only reason I still have Windows is the little screw securing the drive into the enclosure is in the wind and I can't be bothered to find it (for backup of all of my things so I can delete windows and install linux)
> What people realy want: as little OS as possible to let them run just the things on their computer they want to run.
The truth is - it's more complicated than that. People want three contradictory things:
1. To not be nagged for things like setting up cloud backups.
2. To not have data sent to the cloud without consent.
3. To be able to get their data back, if their hard drive dies.
> What people realy want: as little OS as possible
I see what you're saying but that isn't how I think about it.
I'm happy to have as "much" OS as is useful and adds value, convenience, or user experience for me.
Example: I quite like Windows Hello. Facial recognition is the smoothest, most pleasant form of biometric authentication available on a laptop, and it's nice to be able to use it anywhere throughout the whole OS that a password would otherwise be required (e.g. before revealing hidden passwords in a password manager, when opening a command prompt with elevated permissions, or before applying passkeys to log into a website). It starts up fast, works in low light thanks to IR emitters, and recognizes me pretty close to 100% of the time. It's a great experience. My use of my laptop would only be reduced by having "less OS" in this case.
What I don't want is anything that compromises my utility, convenience, or user experience in order to make the OS useful and valuable for someone else.
Example: advertisements embedded in the Start menu are plenty valuable to M$, but compromise my user experience in the process.
Example 2: Inserting Copilot into Paint and Notepad seem valuable for pumping M$'s stock price, but both annoy me by cramming unwanted AI into my basic utility programs where I have no interest in it.
From my point of view, the ideal here is something like pre-OS-X Mac OS, where the OS itself was barely even an OS and more just a substrate just complete enough to run the desktop and third party applications on.
The majority of bells and whistles (which Windows Hello falls under) were not baked into the OS, but instead implemented as system extensions that the user could disable and prevent from loading into memory at will.
This meant that even with the last release of Classic Mac OS (9.2.x), if you disabled all extensions you got a desktop reminiscent of the 1985 System 1 except with color and modern resolution support.
I think it should be more of a goal for desktop OSes to try to emulate this. If a Windows user wants a quiet no-frills Win2000 like experience except with choice exceptions like Hello, they should be able to have that without having to resort to messy hacks that impact stability and undo themselves if you update.
You had Windows ME which was a terrible, buggy OS. I don’t know a single person who didn’t lose all their data on Windows ME.
Shifting personal windows to the Windows NT foundation provided a massive relative boost, but even that took until XP SP2 to reallt settle in, which was followed by the disaster that was Vista.
Then Windows 7 came along and it was genuinely really good. Probably peak Windows.
And then you came to an actual straitjacketing of windows in Windows 8, where the entire desktop Windows ecosystem was relegated to being a single app no better than calculator in the mobile first, completely undeveloped Windows 8 interface.
Windows 10 got us back to sanity, and barring a few minor UI mishaps Windows 11 was originally a nice refinement. This was the longest stretch of Windows being decent as a personal computer. The addition of WSL (well actually it took until WSL2) made Windows competitive with Mac as a developer desktop.
That was nearly a decade of enjoyable and productive Windows. Unfortunately, now we have AI, and Windows is once again being destroyed to serve the its AI master.
But I really wonder, is wanting a "little OS" just a hacker thing? For most people, they probably just want a full-featured OS. I don't have a solid take on this yet.
"For most people, they probably just want a full-featured OS."
I don't think so. Most people just want to get to their websites or email. They don't care about the OS, and may not even know what an OS is.
The problem is that they may just click "yes" on any popups, to make them go away - which is probably what Microsoft wants. "Yes" track me, "yes" show me ads, etc.
For your average user, Xubuntu or Mint are both great choices: simple, understandable desktops, and otherwise they stay out of the way. I set up Xubuntu for my elderly BIL a few months ago. He's a smart guy, but completely non-technical. One support call since, otherwise he has reported no problems.
I think the challenge is where do you draw the line between the OS and the set of baseline applications it comes with, and then further questions on what is included in that (default?) set or how full featured they are. What is a feature of the OS? That's before considering how users discover and manage other software for activities not covered by whatever is OS provided.
been on linux for a month now, i found the exit and stepped through it. the pain points change from getting shafted by m$ to doing research and learning how to make the system work. at least the second option gives me some agency, and now its all set up i wish i had of switched sooner! ive got to say valve is doing the lords work, along with all the other linux enthusiasts.
as a long time linux user, my advice is : make backups , and don't mess with your system too much. Definitely take OS updates every few months, but don't chase the perfect utopia of UX. at least, buy another computer that you tweak and test on. If you break your main PC, it's very unpleasant and frustrating to fix.
The problem is that "to let them run just the things on their computer they want to run" changes when they want it to run something new. They don't care about cloud backup for their data? One hard drive failure, and suddenly they do. And if you want to sell the same version of the OS to different people, you need the union of what everybody wants and what everybody is going to want later.
But there needs to be a way to turn something off that you don't want, and to not get nagged about it repeatedly thereafter. But for that to work, there has to be a clear, easily findable way to turn it back on later.
> And if you want to sell the same version of the OS to different people, you need the union of what everybody wants and what everybody is going to want later.
The answer is: make the OS extremely modular so that the user can have configure whether he wants an absolutely minimalistic OS or something with "batteries included".
They think they know better than what the user wants. If someone who is not a power user Googles "how to turn off updates" they do not want that user to be able to find an option on how to do it, because the user won't understand the dangers. They won't read any warnings. They will follow the steps, turn it off and be part of a botnet soon. If there is ANY possible way to turn it off, someone will make a video and the people who should not find it will find it.
What if you are ACTUALLY someone who knows what they are doing and need to run a perf test over a multiple day period and need it running and uninterrupted? You can't. You are not a part of their target customer base, and at this point their actions have made it clear that they want such users to leave.
> Parallel lines never touch, maybe that’s a better geometric analogy.
I do believe the OP meant to say that the incentives are orthogonal (i.e., misaligned, or 90deg to each other), and perpendicularly misaligned is a close fit.
Not sure why folks felt you should be downvoted for an heartfelt comment, an explanation is a much better feedback. Downvotes are counterproductive, IMO, if you're trying to have a debate or come to a meeting of minds, so I almost never use them anymore, except for where I detect ill-intentions.
> What people realy want: as little OS as possible to let them run just the things on their computer they want to run.
Citation needed. “As little OS as possible” would mean not having a standard clipboard, not having a standard way to install fonts, etc.
Even interpreting that as “all the functionality, but limit applications to utilities for managing the hardware”, I think there people who want that, but I doubt that’s what people, in general, want. Having to choose (and, likely, pay for) a photo manager, a simple word processor, etc. is just too much of a hassle for many.
Also, why would any commercial entity develop such an OS? The margin is in the
The margin is in the exact place where players on the market left it. With macOS being free but paid by expensive hardware, and Windows having practiced hiding in OEM to be popular rather than to bring money, expectations have been set. It's entirely these companies' doing, not an immutable reality that's impossible to overcome.
I will not stop using a demanding tone for my expectations towards companies which can't deliver on them, because they shat their bed years ago and have to now deal with that. The fact that your uncompetitive practices caught up with you does not constitute a reason for me to shed a tear for you and to tap over your shoulder in sympathy.
There is a huge difference between having a text editor included and running it by default on startup to pretend fast launches.
And then there is the whole world of nearly impossible to avoid 'services' you realy do not want but will keep popping up regardless of your wishes ('Telemetry', Onedrive, Copilot, Edge, Recall, Bing adds in the start menu ffs...).
Let us also not forget being forced into a Microsoft account against your wishes ... does it still feel like it's your computer?
"i hate how the current system is, i see some other guys have something that doesnt have these issues, what the other system needs to do is make their system exactly like my current, so that I dont need to spend ANY effort myself"
You’ve managed to brick w11 VMs completely running in your native cloud. Kill laptops in the April update and trigger bitlocker on consumer machines which users having zero experience recovering their devices because the GUI is crap.
You’ve been busy.
Stop shipping features, ship stability and quality.
Windows 11 is what happens when no one speaks up at product team meetings. People nod their heads, get on with the build and the marketing team decides they want another 40 hooks into customer data for monetization.
Windows 11 today is a spectacular example of customer disrespect and disregard. MS believes it can manage with enterprise customer revenue alone. Well, best of luck with that, even enterprises are getting fed up.
> We’ve also made changes to the Power menu so you’ll always see the standard Restart and Shut down options without having to install a pending update first. You decide when updates happen, not the other way around.
Great! We've progressed back to Windows XP of 22 years ago.
Great, this is actual progress. Now it would be amazing if "Update and Shut Down" would actually update and shut down, instead of doing so like 50% of the time with the other 50% just updating and restarting with an actual shut down. (This is on various very diverse machines so I'm rather sure is common, and not just an interaction with a particular machine).
It's baffling that a company like MS can leave this kind of obvious problems lingering for months.
Executive management at MS must be seeing interesting (migration) numbers on their dashboards, so they've gotten involved in white-washing their reputation without changing business strategy, hence the executive-level manifestos and platitudes coming out as of late.
I'm sure they see the EU/Worldwide decoupling from US companies as definitely-going-to-happen and they have no control over that, so retaining US consumers becomes even more important, but the first attempt will be at improving reputation without changing business strategy (ads, data monetization, ai are the future revenue drivers). And only if that fails will the business strategy change.
Posted this originally as a reply to a comment, but I think it should be its own top-level comment.
> They went all in on pretending to care about quality since the MacBook Neo. The numbers they're seeing must be terrifying.
Yeah. 5 million units + production raise to 10 million? [1] Add to that the number of folks switching over to linux; and suddenly that's not small potatoes, considering there are only about 162 million working folks in the US.
There are only about 50 million folks at 100+ employees, and 16 million at 1000+ employees in private firms. [2]
All these folks switching over? Once they get comfy with non-Windows OSes, they'll ask for those at work. And at the smaller employers - 100 or less employees or even 1000 or less employees, that won't be hard to support.
You have to read a bit between the lines, but an estimate is that 35-50 million have access to Google Workspace at work, and 25-40 million paid Google Workspace users. [3]
Suddenly that MS moat isn't looking so deep. It's easy to imagine an inflection point at which MS becomes the minority OS provider, even in the US. The Kodak-ization of Microsoft.
It fascinates me to speculate about who this is for. At least among people I've talked to, the ones who still want windows (instead of the obvious alternatives) cite wanting things to "just work", often claiming that they "don't want making the computer work to become a second job" or similar. I personally don't think these preferences reflect the reality of how much effort using e.g. a linux distro is in this day and age, to be clear, but these are the beliefs I encounter. Are there really people who want to deal with providing feedback and stress testing an operating system and its various software components and features, but doing this for a corporation that sets the terms of their transparency efforts and ultimately does this for profit and will still grab the reins and exert control against their users' will when they feel like it?
Right, but it's hard not to claim those people would likely get more out of an OS they could customize more, and also that it's considerably more exploitative of those people across the divide of corporate product versus community project
Sometimes it’s just about using the path of least resistance. I’ve also contributed to Apple Maps’ and Google Maps’ data, even though I’d prefer to exclusively contribute to OSM and other open platforms instead. But, it was just easier to go through a quick form in the (Apple|Google) Maps app, because that’s where I was at that point in time. Maybe the excuse is laziness and/or force of habit?
Edit: I also imagine the reach of the mainstream platforms to be much higher (e.g. Windows vs. Linux or Google Maps user reviews vs. <is there even an alternative?>).
First of all, in many countries outside of EU/US it's just not possible to buy laptop without preinstalled Windows 11 (except Apple). For example, even if a model supports Linux in the US as many Lenovo Thinkpads do, in Singapore it's just not sold without Windows.
Second, Microsoft has broken sleep with pushing S0 sleep in UEFI. Bettery life is shit now, and hibernate is disabled by default in most OS. Also, hibernate in Linux is a complete disaster comparing to windows one (windows presaves memory to disk continuously, while in linux you have to wait until the whole ram (+ vram, if gpu) is saved/restored). It takes time. Sleep s3 is needed, but Microsoft killed it. So linux is really a bad choice for laptop. But Windows 11 is much worse, especially if you don't really like ads.
> in many countries outside of EU/US it's just not possible to buy laptop without preinstalled Windows 11
Wipe and install something else. Previously you would just have been eating the OS license cost paid, and the benefit was taking control and supporting the free-as-in-freedom ecosystem.
But now the additional benefits are that you'll be preventing them from monetizing your data on an ongoing basis, denying data for training ai, and enhancing your privacy, so it's economically justifiable too.
I don't really understand the rationale behind disabling S3 sleep...
Was it simply that getting every device and driver to properly support it was hard, so the easiest option was to remove it and have the machine always powered up?
ACPI defines power state of power-saving capable offbrand fake IBM computers(among other things, and also the "fake IBM" part is almost completely moot at this point).
ACPI power state S0 is everything running. S1 pauses CPU and CPU I/O bus. S2 puts CPU to reset. S3 cuts power to CPU. S4 cuts off everything(not actual power off). S5 cuts off everything(actual power off).
S3 and S4 are often referred to as Sleep and Hibernation. In Sleep, RAM contents are kept as-is, and sleep handling code just restore CPU internal states that gets lost. In Hibernation, OS usually dump RAM contents to disk, and write back to RAM upon bootup - S4 and S5 aren't always clearly separated and both Windows and Linux tend to go through standard boot processes, then do the state resume using RAM dump they find on disk.
For SOME reason, Microsoft forced laptop vendors to quit supporting S3 in favor of their custom "S0iX" state, which is more or less just machine running at full power, which can be extremely wasteful as far as sleep state goes.
The official explanation for this pressuring is that everybody want notification and this is the only way Windows could possibly handle notifications. A lot are skeptical about that.
The bit we all care about: S3 is sleep mode proper. Most everything is physically powered off, only enough is kept on to keep contents of RAM alive.
S0 is.. just on. The PC is completely powered up. Microsoft has done this so that they can force your computer to wake itself up to install updates you don't want. Literally you aren't allowed to turn off your computer because some middle manager needs to see update stats go up. If your computer happens to be in a bag and cooks itself to death, well that's your problem. Fuck you for trying to keep Microsoft's statistics down.
> hibernate in Linux is a complete disaster comparing to windows one
Part of this is that hibernation can't be cancelled mid way, which is dumb. Ideally a computer is like a light switch - you can turn it on and off instantly whenever. To get closer to that, if you turn it off, but then immediately on again, the hibernation should be cancelled and return you to your desktop.
Also, the whole idea of a 'hibernation image' which is read from disk in one huge 10+ second read is best for hard drives. Now that everyone uses SSD, it should all be demand-paged in.
I love macOS for a "just working" OS but I wouldn't think people spending a lot of time using Office would prefer the Web versions. They are just (by definition) sluggish, like most web apps are. Use the native apps, whether it's on Windows or Mac.
I used to daily drive Windows 10 for many months before official release. It was great. I wish I could stay on development builds that still had Windows 7 style Start menu.
Sadly now I use Windows 11 just because manufacturer of my laptop didn't bother to ensure that their sound driver worked corrctly on Windows 10.
My mouse lags for seconds when gpu is busy, even with something as trivial as alt-tabbing from a game.
I can name features, but everything I can think of are technical features rather than obvious surface level stuff: DX12, better support for SSDs (Windows 7 doesn't natively support TRIM), HDR (I guess, but it still seems broken to me). And none of these are things that couldn't be implemented in Windows 7. The UI has nothing to do with these things, and there's no reason we couldn't have them without the trouble Windows 10/11, other than the fact that MS doesn't want to do things that way.
On Windows 11, when you reconnect to a monitor or set of monitors that you've connected to before, it will automatically return your open windows to the layout across those monitors that you had when you last disconnected (assuming those windows are still open).
This is extremely nice and saves me time on a literally (not figuratively) daily basis, to the point that I generally forget that it hasn't always worked that way.
I wish this worked! I have to go to the office on my hybrid schedule. When I switch between home and office, Windows is "smart" enough to keep the windows on the correct window in the task bar while generally placing the windows on the opposite window where I want it (and literally opposite where it is on the task bar!) It's so annoying and I dread the days I'm switching between office and home for this reason, as I have to drag each window to the opposing window before things are back to how I want them. It would be less bad the old way, where they were just stupidly thrown on the "primary" monitor and I only had to drag half of them over.
For my dual monitors, they have a conflict with this feature where they do not detect signal and then switch inputs and eventually power down. Then windows sees a different config and switches again causing an endless spiral. I have to turn both monitors on to the correct input while plugging in the laptop to the dock. I wish there was a way to save specific monitor setups and manually toggle them.
Even aside from the malevolence, Windows is rotten from the thirty-year old metaphor that it started with: windows themselves. The job of positioning and resizing applications is a confusing mix of responsibility between the user and the system.
Once you've switched to tiled window managers, examples like these sound like Stockholm Syndrome.
I hate tiling window managers. After I start a program, I move and resize its window to the perfect position, and it stays there for weeks. I don't ever want it to be moved or resized automatically, which is what tiling window managers do by default.
I will offer that you can resize/move/float in most tiling managers. Remembering your modifications is usually possible too. It's the default behavior that separates the experience.
I can't see a practical world where the OS doesn't need to take control of window positioning in certain situations. As a core example, there is full screen. Minimize is another, but that doesn't have a clean analogue in the tiled universe.
There's a natural strong reaction folks have to window managers, because it forces you to mentally remap at such a foundational level.
I prefer tiled managers because the user offloads most responsibility. Open something and by default it uses as much space as is available. If you have a special need, you can float or resize, but the vast majority of cases it makes the right call.
At heart, it's offloading cognitive load. They're more predictable and require less faffing around.
"Well, they turned the entire OS into a tracking, sales and ad/propaganda delivery service, but they managed to make a single feature non-dumb, so guess we're even."
(propaganda - Windows 11 default widgets are "offering" a lot of russian-biased media, because Microsoft is too dumb to recognize that and they take any news source - and russian connected outlets are happy to use this delivery vector that most gullible people leave turned on)
Wine is more like emulating Windows API behavior on Linux, while WSL is Microsoft throwing their hands in the air and saying "Lets just VM Linux wholesale".
Both aim to avoid Windows, neither replace Linux but instead tries to move more to Linux.
WSL1 seemed great, until it wasn't. Then WSL2 came along, which is just a VM and works identical to VirtualBox et al. Still huge hassle to deal with various things that get confused when you run it in a "Linux-but-not-really-but-also-Windows" environment.
Better to just go straight to what you actually want, which seems to be a proper Linux distribution, everything just works as expected then.
This may be unpopular, but they made three legitimately GOOD changes to Notepad, before they went absolutely batshit.
- Dark mode
- Tabs
- "Continue previous session" (restore after restart)
But they also made a HUGE regression which isn't talked about enough:
- Previously, if you delete the underlying file, Notepad didn't "notice." Meaning you could Save to recreate it. The file existed in an ephemeral state, as long as the Notepad window remained open. Right now, if you delete the underlying file, Notepad notices immediately, errors out, and closes that tab -- content gone.
VSCode handles this correctly, it puts a line through the filename in the tab (and red-font), but doesn't close the tab on you suddenly. Ephemeral state retained.
In my ideal world Notepad needs exactly ONE new feature:
- Right Click Tab: "Copy Path."
Then just REMOVE: Spell Checker, Formatting, CoPilot, Markdown(!), and Autocorrect. Completely inappropriate functionality for Notepad, and the Vibecoded Markdown implementation already added a security vulnerability(!) to freaking Notepad. Branch off into a product called "Wordpad" and then create all of that garbage in there.
I used to run all three major OS' where I saw no real difference in me using it for the apps etc I needed. As I leaned more heavily on the development side, linux kind of prevailed. Windows 8.1 and Yosemite were the last of the other two I've used for real. Never had to look back to other two since, be it for work, games or whatever.
Even occasional need for Adobe things stopped. I would still really like to see Adobe suite on linux, but if they don't want my money that's cool too I guess. I suspect the software tools people use for work is what's holding them back mostly, like Altium, CADs etc. Funnily enough, Microsoft office is just fine without OS native version most of the time.
Yeah, I thought it was an odd couple of recommendations. Alacritty is an awesome terminal emulator that'll run on Windows (although I'd say Windows Terminal is still pretty close to decent)
My mental model remains that the Windows team is mostly governed by designers on Macs who want to see a user-visible change to get their promo and never use Windows.
They talk about improving memory footprint and performance, but simply removing (or making optional) the massive amount of cruft and telemetry in a default Windows 11 install would go miles.
Installing Tiny11 and then running a debloat over its corpse results in a much faster and less memory hungry default clean install.
> They talk about improving memory footprint and performance, but simply removing (or making optional) the massive amount of cruft and telemetry in a default Windows 11 install would go miles.
Executive management at MS must be seeing interesting (migration) numbers on their dashboards, so they've gotten involved in white-washing their reputation without changing business strategy, hence the executive-level manifestos and platitudes coming out as of late.
I'm sure they see the EU/Worldwide decoupling from US companies as definitely-going-to-happen and they have no control over that, so retaining US consumers becomes even more important, but the first attempt will be at improving reputation without changing business strategy (ads, data monetization, ai are the future revenue drivers). And only if that fails will the business strategy change.
Cruft can be removed yes but the telemetry is literally how they measure quality. Their metrics of whether it’s good or not is the status of telemetry on a given device set and figuring out root cause. So they can’t easily roll back the telemetry without a massive rethink in their quality strategy
There's no amount of progress that will make me go back to Windows.
1. Microsoft accounts. No.
2. Ads in my OS. No.
3. Slow copying of files. No.
4. A maddening mix of UI/UX paradigms and implementations. No.
5. AI deeply embedded in my OS. No.
Not even the MBA types would mess things up this bad, it feels like Microslop is now full of programmers that make something and just ship it, no thought or any brain cells involved.
I was at Microsoft for that particular transition but it is still wild to me that a post about improving quality starts with details about windows insiders.
> The theme is simple: fewer disruptions, more clarity, more control. This update moves Windows toward a single monthly restart by consolidating OS, .NET, and driver updates, and gives you more flexibility to time updates around your schedule. We’ve also made changes to the Power menu so you’ll always see the standard Restart and Shut down options without having to install a pending update first. You decide when updates happen, not the other way around.
Finally, like seriously, so many times I have to "shutdown" (aka restart) for an update before going to bed. I don't want to have to babysit my desktop computer when I want to finish up for the night.
I’m most excited for the scheduler and memory footprint improvements. As bad as I hear Windows 11 is, I’ve rarely had issues with it. For the most part it just works and stays out of my way. My only gripes are the occasional forced updates and a rare hard crash that happened once in a span of a year of using it as my daily driver.
Well that and I have to be mindful of running too many resource starving processes at the same time including WSL. Otherwise performance will quickly degrade. But that’s not much different than my 2015 ASUS zenbook running Linux off of 8gb of ram. In comparison my work laptop runs on 32gb of ram with much more powerful cpu cores.
WSL is my favorite and most used feature of Windows 11. So I’ll be happy as long as they don’t screw that up.
I think I’m more bothered by the paper cuts I experience every minute.
Starting from web based start menu taking forever to launch, to everything resisting to you to be in control of your computer.
Some say the speed is fine, but forget that these machines are running at nanosecond level instructions and there’s no reason for a simple task to take milliseconds unless somebody is optimizing for service revenue and user tracking (to be sold later to advertisers, not for user experience improvements).
Microslop is just scared out of mind with the European and Asian countries moving to Linux based platforms to get out of their grip. Can you imagine the amount of intelligence they will loose, and how much harder they will need to work to compete for real after three decades of being the default in everything.
At first they ridicule people with general disrespect, privacy violations and ads in Start Menu, then they expect the same people to treat them seriously. That's a cognitive dissonance right there, and now they have to live with it. Psychotherapy may help.
> realign the experiences to those that provide the most value to users
Aside from the fact that nobody actually takes what Microsoft says seriously (they are professional bullshitters [with full time PR firms perfecting their bullshit] and have been for 30 years), it's funny that even this line can be reasonably interpreted as pushing more blatant nonsense onto consumers as long as it's what C-suite types think they should be paying for.
Notice that what provides the most value to users is not at all necessarily the same thing as'what our users want'. And it isn't even clear that Microsoft is thinking of consumer users here as opposed to corporate users and corporate IT departments, which are in most cases these days their actually direct customers. Most home user consumers don't pay for Windows directly.
With Windows Update what I really want is control over reboot. Don't automatically reboot, instead let me save documents, close applications and reboot manually. "Pausing" updates doesn't do that, and could be dangerous as urgent security updates are delayed.
With AI features, the most annoying thing has to be the Copilot key on my laptop keyboard. If you accidentally hit it it opens a Copilot window, interrupting your typing. The Settings app for this key only allow you to specify whether it activates search or copilot, it doesn't let you turn it off. There are other workarounds like installing an app from the Store, but all those workarounds come with unwanted excess baggage.
> The Settings app for this key only allow you to specify whether it activates search or copilot, it doesn't let you turn it off.
That's because it's not your computer, it is Microsoft's ;-)
Seriously, though, there will be quirks like with almost any OS. OS devs make choices that abstract some of the complexity in order to make it useful for a broad audience.
With Linux or the BSDs, you have the freedom to take it to any level of detail or customization that you wish to, with all that entails being outside of an externally maintained OS. Ask me how I know :-)
>We’ve also made changes to the Power menu so you’ll always see the standard Restart and Shut down options without having to install a pending update first. You decide when updates happen, not the other way around.
Multiple times I've wanted to shutdown my laptop so I can go home and Windows says no, sit here for 5 minutes.
I don't trust sleep mode to not keep running and overheat, so I wait.
Macbooks with 1TB drives are getting cheaper every day. Music production on Linux isn't really practical. A lot of this stuff barely runs on Windows/OSX.
Competition is great. But this is about the Mac Neo( and left over M4 Macs crashing in price ). Desktop Linux is still a challenge.
I consider myself an advanced Linux user, and it still took me an hour this morning to figure out how to get a VPN to work on Open Suse.
I'm sure it did, but that app looks like a Win XP-era app (not even Win7). FilePilot is fast, looks good & feels modern (support a command palette, fuzzy search, etc). The only downside is that it runs on the GPU and so running it inside a VM is a bit of a hassle.
Took the beta for a quick spin and... wow, the speed is truly astonishing!
Windows doesn't feel slow because the kernel or the filesystem is inherently "that" slow, it feels like a sloth overdosing on heroin because nobody at Microsoft gives the slightest crap about making it even a tiny bit faster.
It's staggering how the instant you double-click a file in File Pilot you're... back in the tar pit. (The Windows image preview app just spins... and spins... while it does God-knows-what with my CPUs.)
The contrast of going from one to the other makes the quality difference glaringly obvious.
There are two mentions of "reliab[ility]" (I searched for the first five letters to be sure I got other morphological forms of the word). It appears twice: once near the top, as a general goal, and once at the bottom, as part of the general goal. Nothing in between, like saying "we'll be using {less AI | more AI debugging | more human screening | magic wands | secret sauce} in an effort to improve reliability". So at least as far as this post goes, hardly even lip service. Given the number of botched updates reported earlier this year, that's astonishing.
By changing two settings in Windows, you can fix the worst of it.
Using a local group policy, you can change when "Preview builds and Feature updates" and "Quality Updates" become available in Windows Update.
By delaying those with 30 or 60 days, you will never have preview updates applied to your system, and feature and quality updates will have at least 1 or 2 months' worth of fixes before you get them.
start > run > gpedit.msc > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Update > Manage updates offered from Windows Update >
1) Enable "Select when preview builds and feature updates are received". Set days to 60
2) Enable "Select when quality updates are received". Set days to 30 (max value)
It is beyond naive, and I don't know how it can be anything but disingenuous to pretend that the top priorities of "Windows Insiders" are sensible defaults, a calm discoverability feed and how AI works in notepad. The reality is this guy obviously got promoted and assigned "win-back OS users" task, in the face of an organization that overwhelming wants to leverage Windows for short-term, user-hostile bumps in AI usage, advert impressions and questionable engagement scores. He's not going to be allowed to mess with things like the marketing strategy or sales targets, and you see that in these "highlights". Your target audience asked for things like "let me manage my machine locally" and you're delivering "a more muted and polished consumer experience". It's lipstick on a pig, only the pig is dead, and actually a pile of garbage.
Even if you do "get it", you ain't going to be allowed to deliver it.
Exactly. I mean they literally, in this same release[0], just turned WIN+R (Run) from a classic FAST Win32 UI into a modern slow monstrosity. Who was this for?
I use WIN+R instead of the Start Menu Search/PowerToy's Alt+Space because it is INSTANT and 100% CONSISTENT. You just made my instant thing slower, great, thanks, mission accomplished!
Feels wildly out of touch, to almost a comical degree.
Not a Windows user, have never been (since Windows 3.11). But if I were, I would think this is just PR unless they changed some fundamentals, like bringing back local user support without jumping through five hoops.
The SAME as Windows 2000 in terms of what is installed. NO TPM REQUIREMENT.
Even better: when installing Windows, there should be a "install minimal" option, and if you select it then it should be so fucking minimal - so little on there, that all you get is control panel and a way to install new software - NOTHING more.
That's your win, Microsoft. I'm 2000% certain nothing even slightly close to that will be delivered.
Yeah it’s funny how at this moment I’d pay more for less Windows.
But I’ve found my way on Linux long ago. Sure not all software is there and MS365 fully from browser has so many annoyances, but I love the OS minimalism, how clean it is.
My ideal windows in indeed win2000, but in a transparent VM so I can just do the Windows apps. I need LSW, Linux subsystem for Windows, essentially.
I live in Linux but still have some need for the Windows Runtime from time to time. If only Windows containers were at the level of the Linux ones, I’d flip the whole world up side down.
podman run ms365-full —license-key FCKGW-RHQQ2-YXRKT-8TG6W-2B7Q8
I’d pay for that. But such a system only provides value, it does not extract it. It is a 180 of the way they have been thinking for a long time now.
its worth trying really really hard to get windows apps running through wine before reaching for a vm imho. once you open a vm you have to deal with ... well... windows.
I did it in the past, vmware (where the desktop was transparant so it was like Windows on Linux), CrossOver office, Wine (bottles).
Recently I tried to get Windows running using quickemu but that also failed.
All just so that I don't have to experience MS365 in the browser where I will regularly click "New message" (in Outlook) and start typing but my browser interprets all characters as shortcuts (as if I held alt or something??) messing up my inbox to various degrees before I become aware, ending up with a pile op messages in "archive". I hate the daily re-logins in Teams (which does not tell you it's logged out, your messages just hang and the menu is empty). Word simply deletes my last 2 sentences from time to time (even though it assures me on every frightened ctrl-s that it's all fine!!), etc, etc.
And we're not even talking about the hoops you have to jump through when a doc is not on SharePoint/OneDrive but on a NAS.
sounds painful, just searched on "how can i get ms office running in linux using wine" and the results included a containerised windows vm that looks very interesting. but yes i agree, they seem to have gone to a lot of effort to make office use a billion microservices that would be a nightmare to run through wine.
edit: nvm, the docker vm thing looks really slow, id rather use libreoffice (which is quite good really). and now europe is trying to cut the umbilical you can probably expect a lot more open source productivity stuff in the near future too.
Microsoft is trying to sell things like extended servicing agreements. They purposefully make Windows worse so they can sell you solutions to fix it. They purposefully keep it insecure so you need their updates. It’s about taking the customers hostage.
If you believe they'll accomplish anything beyond changing a handful of dialogs before getting reorg'd, I got an Agentic AGI Python script you can use on Windows to sell you.
Windows is adding features nobody asked for, like scroll wheel zooming everywhere, like in cmd.exe. Wtf do you need zooming for in the terminal?? I get false positives, and no benefit, at all.
Another is Windows Explorer, loses focus all the time, no hint to where it went, preventing keyboard navigation. Basic UI conventions are being violated, for no reason than having no clue what Windows is.
Windows is apparently being infested by young hackers who think Linux is the best thing since sliced bread and who just want to add tacky features using sloppy AI.
Do you mean Ctrl + scroll wheel? I use that feature quite a lot, I like my font size small but it can be difficult to see for other people so being able to quickly scale it up is really useful
I use Ctrl + <number> to switch between different workspaces on Mac, and half of the time I come back to MS web pages or apps (like Teams) the font is either 9000+pt or then -3pt. Outlook takes the cake though, where for whatever reason they decided to support different font "zoom" levels in different parts. And everyone were dreaming of having the inbox menus in 1pt while having email with 1000pt, right?
My first hand experience with Windows vs Linux this month:
A friend of mine recently bought a very expensive laptop to do some gaming. I helped him set it up and god that was a horrible experience. For example, we could not get rid of LinkedIn and other crap Microsoft wanted to force on him. Disabling copilot and removing Office required registry surgery. And the damn fans were always running because of some unknown activity in the background, maybe Microsoft is moving into bitcoin mining business?
He eventually got fed up, installed Ubuntu 26.04 as an experiment and a week later still seems to enjoy the experience. Games run fine on steam and his laptop finally feels like his own.
Most surprisingly, Linux worked fine out of the box. Windows 11 on the other hand needed a bunch of PowerShell and registry hacks to be copy pasted from various sources before it was even remotely usable. It's funny how it felt as if Windows was the OS for nerds with too much free time on their hands while Ubuntu was created for ordinary people. And my god, Ubuntu feels so much more fluid on the same hardware. The difference is *huge*.
But it's the kind of things you'd expect Windows to take care of automatically, or in the worst case, to prompt the users to install on first boot, especially if Linux (with overall less driver support from manufacturers).
And with a preinstalled Windows (tuned to the laptop) this behavior should not be observed at all.
I got a new computer a couple weeks ago, with a 5070, and installed ubuntu on it and it was incredibly slow. I looked online and found some claim that 24.04 has some incompatability with nvidia, tried installing a bunch of different driver versions and nothing helped, tried turning everything off in gnome tweaks and still slow, tried installing 26.04 and 22.04 but the installer hangs forever in both, tried linux mint 24.04 still slow, gave up and installed windows with WSL :/
I'm running Ubuntu on a 9950x3d and 5090 and it is not slow. Games in Steam with Proton are buttery smooth.
One hiccup was I had to disable variable refresh rate because moving the cursor didn't "count" as a reason to update the screen, so moving the cursor on its own (rather than e.g. moving a window) looked choppy.
But a choppy mouse cursor isn't "slow".
Tip: if you have a performance problem, run Claude Code (or an AI agent of your choice) and ask it to investigate.
Claude Code would probably attach a profiler and take a peek under the hood. Agents are making sysadmin and system introspection way more accessible, and the tools, unlike Windows, are generally command-line, easy for an agent to automate.
Mac chose another path. You buy a pc and OS and the same vendor makes both. You can’t choose but at least you also never need to wonder whether your laptop and OS work together.
Microsoft took a more difficult path. They have close contact with OEMs, run certification programs etc. A massive apparatus to make it somewhat likely that hardware will ”just work”.
Both of these are valid models. I’d be happy to use either. I’m not very keen on doing this work myself though. I can buy a PC with Ubuntu but then it’s still hit and miss if I buy something new for it. There is no canonical store selling canonical gear like the Apple Store
Came here to say that. I've recently tried linux mint and it just works. You don't have to use the terminal if you don't want to, but i do enjoy using it. It's a breath of fresh air after windows. I'm now waiting for the year of the linux desktop. Though i'm not holding my breath. The average person will carry on using their system until it grinds to a halt under all the crap they've installed on it, and then complain their computer is too old.
This is a choice for you! I'm a pretty heavy PC gamer and whilst I've run Linux since I was in college (UK college, not US) I've always had a Windows install for gaming.
A few years ago, I finally decided I'd had it with Windows and their crap and uninstalled it. If I game doesn't run on Linux, I don't play it. Simple as that.
I'm lucky in that a majority of games I play run fine on Linux, the only real game I'd love to play is Vermintide 2. My friends also run a mix of Linux and Windows and so we're fairly fine skipping games as a group if we can't play on Linux.
That is a problem of any operating system switch, you need to figure out what software is compatible or weather there are suitable replacements. It's the same even if you switch between iOS and Android.
That said, Linux used to be a tough cookie because there were so little support for software people wanted to run and the alternatives didn't do it any favours, plus the barrage of problems you used to get installing it on a random machine was discouraging, at best. Nowadays your chances of running it well on a random machine is pretty damn good and getting the software you need is lot more feasible. But don't go YOLOing a linux install, see if meets your use cases. There is nothing wrong with waiting until it's good enough.
I'm just down to Creative Cloud now. It's the only thing I still need Windows for. Everything else runs on Linux or there is a suitable alternative. So I've got several Debian machines running at home and at work, and one Windows machine that I boot only for photo editing.
Install Windows 11 Education edition (which rips all of the AI shit out mostly with sane defaults for schools). If you need the ISO, Microsoft's default Win11 ISOs have it. Use https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/ to get a good autounattend set up to rip out the extra bloat and set up a clean install. Activate with Massgrave HWID. You're done.
I'll vouch for this. I have a USB drive set up with Ventoy, which has the ability to install its TPM certs when booting from USB. It has a couple Linux ISOs and one Win11. It also has a Ventoy config tying that ISO to an autounattended XML built from that exact site.
The result is an install with no copilot/cortana/widgets, a win defender that can be disabled, no auto updates at all, a local account only, no taskbar shenanigans, properly configured explorer, some registry tweaks, runtimes pre-installed, extra drivers if needed, and QoL settings tweaked how I want them.
The OS installs itself in a few minutes with no intervention after the disk/partitioning stuff which I kept manual. It ends up being faster than the Ubuntu and CachyOs installs from the same drive. Then 2mins with massgrave post install if I haven't provided a key already.
When it is set up that way, Windows is decently fast and stable. And I have some control over it, at least whenever I need to enforce something.
Wasn't aware that there was an Edcation version but that unattended installer site seem like a great way to install, without using a bunch of random Power Shell scripts.
I will disclose that it generates a lot of random Powershell scripts to do all the unattended tweaks and magic... but yes, it's still a great way to install.
It feels like there is no one person in control of Windows.
It feels like there is a committee and every Microsoft marketing group gets their changes that they want in Windows to help push their product.
Windows should have someone at the top - with TASTE - and the authority and strength and vision to actually make real change happen.
Real change isn't possible because assuming someone is in charge of Windows then they are weak and without their own vision to even understand all the things that are being said over and over and over in threads like this.
People would LOVE it if when installing Windows you could choose "text only/no GUI", or "minimal install" or "select the components you want" or "super special with the lot". Why the fuck can't Microsoft work out on its own to do this.
And for gods sake drop the stupid TPM thing which was required by the Microsoft new PC sales licensing division.
And NO ADS - it's an operating system not a billboard.
> This update moves Windows toward a single monthly restart by consolidating OS, .NET, and driver updates
I just can't, gotta ask - what about c++ updates? What about integral os components that were migrated to the store and if you disable it, you won't get updates? What about defender updates (not definitions but app update) that won't get applied if you have another anti malware?
The thing I hate about windows updates is that microsoft can't even update all their own stuff with a single button.
edit: almost forgot - why is office not in windows update, and what the hell is wrong with teams and why it is seperate from office updates
Just updating windows is a complete and utter mess and every single Linux distro is 100x better
Sweet Jesus, when are these guys going to understand that I want to be able to turn off automatic updates completely and forever. I'm fine if my computer melts and explodes if I didn't get the update, but let me do it on my own schedule permanently!
I understand your point and motivation completely. And I agree...
However in today's world if you expose an unpatched "anything" to the internet then it is very possible that it will be discovered and eventually used to (silently) do things you don't want. Think DDOS farms, illegal software distribution etc...
What is the middle ground? I don't think there is one. We need to have reliable, automatically updated OSes which don't suck and , much more importantly, run the applications we need.
Microsoft degrading user experience plus lower price on Mac computers it maybe their downfall. E.g., removing local accounts, unwanted advertising, arbitrary decisions (forced TPM requirement), etc.
This reads... Weird? As in, I know it's marketing speech but expressions seem misused and ideas don't follow from each other:
>You decide when updates happen, not the other way around.
Not... the other way around? Updates decide when I happen?
>Last month we said we would reduce where Copilot shows up across Windows, focusing on bringing AI where it’s most valuable. [...] in Notepad, we’ve replaced the generic Copilot icon with a clearer “Writing Tools” label that better describes what it does.
For 2 months now the „put in admin credentials“ dialog is so fundamentally broken - ui-wise, it is unbelievable (in the sense that I do not believe it actually made it to production even though I see it with my own eyes).
There are so many anecdotes about slop by now, the working parts become the anecdotes.
By now Windows, for me is more like a reality TV show than an OS.
I really like Windows. I just wish Copilot could be made fully optional.
Honestly, I can live with Windows 11 being a little slow, and I can deal with File Explorer issues. I can write my own tools to manage some of that, and PowerShell is simple enough for many tasks. Those parts do not bother me that much.
What bothers me is Copilot being pushed into the operating system experience itself. I wish it could simply be treated as an optional feature.
Windows is an operating system. An operating system is the foundational layer that governs the user’s work. Because of that, AI should be an opt-out assistant, not a premise that changes the default behavior of the system.
When I move from Windows 10 to Windows 11, Copilot feels like something that damages the user experience itself.
If Copilot were at the level of GPT or Claude, I probably would not complain as much. But I do not understand why the quality gap feels so large.
Why accept mediocrity when Microsoft has shown to be capable of producing something better than their current iteration of Windows? Whether you prefer Windows 2000 or XP or 7 or one of the server versions over 10/11, all of those were in many ways 'better' than 11.
> I can deal with File Explorer issues
Again, why? It is not as if those issues are the result of Microsoft adding something useable or worthwhile, they're just the result of MS adding even more ballast to an already overburdened system.
> I can write my own tools to manage some of that
Yes, you can, and...
> PowerShell is simple enough for many tasks
...so you're getting to experience the power of the shell like *nix-users have been espousing for more than half a century now. Welcome to the club and welcome to the CLI. Here we use words to communicate instead of pictures, we outgrew those once we left play school.
If you want to use Windows just use one of the previous versions as long as you can while preparing to move over to the greener Wine-yards in Linux-land. Unless there is a big shake-up within Microsoft - unlikely - it looks like Windows as an operating system is a dead-end street. It will be turned into a straight jacket where you will comply with whatever the current business plan dictates. Escape while you still can I'd say, there are many alternatives on offer.
I have a feeling that my fat ass switching over to Linux is going to outrun their attempt to roll back decades of accumulated tech debt, institutional incompetence and burned bridges.
I feel like your sentiment mirrors my thoughts exactly on this.
Since this isn't the Reddit comment section (I hear people here prefer a bit more elaboration and argumentative nuance with their $BEVERAGE), I feel compelled to add some of my own personal experience.
I don't think Windows can be fixed anymore. I think the choices Microsoft have been doing for _decades_ now, with only the _mechanisms_ coming and going, have become endemic to Windows, a part of its identity. Copilot, for example, is just another gadget Microsoft simply cannot not put in. In '95 is was Clippy, but the deliveries never stop, and frankly I feel like an old man that finally decided to kick a bad habit because I truly see now all the empty talk from Microsoft I've heard countless amount of times before, wrapped in different packaging, and that Windows is like it is _by design_ and that it's bad for my health (in a different way than Linux can ever be, I feel).
Ever since Windows '95 the addition of slop has been accelerating, admittedly Microsoft _were_ much different then, but it's the _curve_ I am referring to, not that they were always _as bad_. Frankly, the "churn" is insane now, I think it's one or the other adage I can't recall where "available operating system" fills "available resources" and Microsoft are there to prove it.
The problem is also they are experimenting on their users to no end. I don't mind being part of the "user experiment" for "user experience" but how many decades do they need to arrive at the same fundamental conclusions -- that people prefer less bloat, and fewer interruptions in their face? Occam's Razor tells me it's rather that Microsoft is pretending to care but their agenda is their own alone (surprise).
Just the other day I had to spend 2 hours trying to "fix" some very-background OneDrive update because I suppose I am sucker enough to use OneDrive -- one of the least liked of Microsoft products I've had the misfortune to use -- with Windows using my laptop as a BitCoin farm, wasting cycles in some infinite loop produced by what evokes comparisons to those monkeys with typewriters. Half a dozen Powershell commands and 3-4 reboots later the `wsappx.exe` process finally was healthy enough to idle. These things happen constantly to people everywhere and there's little Microsoft can or wants to do anything about. It's a cost they're willing their users to pay.
To stop rambling, one of these days -- summer vacation perhaps -- I will remove the blasted thing finally (after decades of using both Windows and Linux) and grit my teeth through Linux, which I have tried avoiding only because I am on a Thinkpad and there's always another tweak that's needed for the whole thing to work as well as Windows does on a _good_ day. To be clear, I prefer Linux by and large, it's just that I want to avoid spending weekends configuring sleep, power states, Trackpoint, full-disk encryption, the docking station, etc.
The fact I am going to do it anyway, just to rid myself of the Windows experience that's just been getting worse and worse, says it all really.
You're probably correct. Windows can be fixed, but it's stuck in the hands of MS who never will, so true ideas on how to fix it are little more than intellectual exercises.
> I don't think Windows can be fixed anymore. I think the choices Microsoft have been doing for _decades_ now, with only the _mechanisms_ coming and going, have become endemic to Windows, a part of its identity.
I'm not so sure that Windows is unfixable. It could probably be fixed, but doing that would require rebuilding every burned bridge back to its old standard, and probably then some, and that's something the relevant people aren't going to agree to do (since they were the ones who burned them).
Mandatory updates? Now they aren't any more.
Onedrive stole your files and deleted them? Now Onedrive is enabled/disabled on first setup.
Shitty start menu? Now you can pick which one you want, all the way back to the Windows 7 one.
Shitty right click menu? Now the old one is back.
All AI? Now there's a toggle on install to enable/disable it all.
Now settings menu sucks? Here's the old control panel back as standard.
Telemetry? How about no?
If MS did all of these things (and probably more), their trust level would rise skyhigh, since they'd be doing tangible things to fix the pain points we've all talked about. Now they've hit one point out of probably 50+, and many of the remaining ones are much harder to fix than updates being forced.
> Onedrive stole your files and deleted them? Now Onedrive is enabled/disabled on first setup.
That's the one that really shocked me, and I haven't even experienced it for myself. I'm not normally that prone to excessive hyperbole, but that's about the most terrible thing I could ever conceive of an OS doing. All of the other stuff is a little annoying, but I could deal. But how in the hell could it ever be considered acceptable by anyone for your own OS to delete your files and move them to OneDrive or any other cloud service automatically? It's almost like ransomware, but the ransomware people will at least give you your files back for one flat payment. And the ransomware people at least know they're doing something nasty, and didn't try to integrate it as a default operating system feature. I guess they have better ethics than Microsoft!
It's just so obviously wrong, it's hard to even believe that it's a real thing. I don't think I could ever install an OS that even had a feature to do that at all, even if I could maybe temporarily turn it off with some scripts downloaded off the internet.
someone tries to scam, steal, beat you up. they then make efforts to stop doing that, and their trust would rise skyhigh? what does someone have to do to earn that kind of loyalty? would you apply this to anything else?
If they've given all the money back that they've scammed and otherwise made all the people they've hurt whole again, and are then continuing to provide a service people find use in, then yes. I'd probably need some time to be convinced that that's what's happened, and that they've truly changed. MS obviously isn't there, but there are theoretical worlds where this can happen.
Obviously, Microsoft can't give people back their deleted Onedrive files, but they can make good on a promise that it will never happen again (given that their efforts are founded in reality and not marketing speak), and hide behind a shield of 'that wasn't our intention'. Same goes with most other things you could complain about Windows.
If you have no reason to believe that Windows will screw you over, since MS has course-corrected on all major points of contention, then why not stick around? (The answer is that MS may change course again, but for those who haven't jumped ship, I'm sure this will provide good enough reason to stick around. It's not like the ship isn't providing them any utility. They've stuck around this long for a reason.)
> We know there’s a lot of excitement for Taskbar customization – and that’s coming soon.
This will never not be funny to me. These clowns really did remove something that existed for decades and then spend more than a decade trying to edge their users to the fact that they were gonna bring it back. In 500 years when somebody looks up enshittification on Wikipedia, this should be the first example.
This announcement terrfies me. I dont think MS now has developers that are competent enough to reliably change core parts of Windows like the Explorer (taskbar). This plan will not only introduce bloat with reduced performance, but will also reduce core stability further. (Explorer has hanging issues since the april update). So please, please, please @Marcus. If you want to add stuff, please do it in side apps. Leave the core alone, that's above your ability currently. For the core please only focus on bug fixing and removing bloat again.
Who gets to do the customizing though? Suspecting that "auto hide the taskbar" will suddenly become more popular. Oh no! "Your taskbar buttons will be back after these important messages"
...and there's clearly huge market-demand for Windows LTSC amongst retail customers, and yet, MS's C-levels already decided for them that no amount of love nor money - excepting a sufficiently large enterprise licensing contract - can legally entitle you to a license - or even official media - for Windows LTSC.
It reminds me of when Adobe ended perpetual licensing and switched to cloud(TM)-only, subscription licensing for Photoshop, et al: many of us (myself included) assumed that Adobe was surely making a foolish mistake to abandon perpetual-license customers, but it turns out[1] that was the plan all along: those customers are a vocal minority who can demonstrably afford to pay more, the rest of the customer-base doesn't care enough to switch to a competitor. Over 10 years later (2013), we haven't seen any of Photoshop's then-promising upstart competitors come close.
...on that basis, I don't think MSFT's recent backpedalling on Windows 11's disrespect for its own users is in any way a response to us power-users complaining online - or even because any number of us did fully migrate off Windows and onto Linux, but instead because of all the recent talk overseas from foreign governments (France, Germany) taking active steps to secure their digital-sovereignty and deploying more Linux desktops; and a good way to get people (and decision-makers in government and large businesses) personally interested in digital-sovereignty is by pointing out how shitty their own corporate desktop UX has gotten.
I'll gladly eat my hat when/if MS graciously allows regular retail consumers, and not just large organizations - and those of us with a $2000/yr MSDN Subscription - the privilege of paying for an OS without advertising built-in to the shell and having hard dependencies on proprietary online services.
Hacking around in the recovery console to add another administrator user worked, but then I couldn't reset the original user's password because it was tied to the Microsoft account and you can't change the password locally.
I don't need Copilot managing my inbox through AI, nor do I need a more exciting widget experience.
I just want an OS where if something like the above happens there's a way to fix it without having to reinstall. It doesn't seem like much to ask.
Edit: yes, I can use Linux but I have decades of Windows muscle memory and I do a bunch of DirectX programming. I shouldn't have to switch :)
I see a likely inversion of motives here: you earn your living coding or otherwise are deeply vested in Windows, so you are committed for survival to Windows and to fixing the absurd account problem that MSFT has inflicted on you.
The expression "muscle memory" here just means the cognitive load of working with a technology. MSFT has added a hard-blocking piece of stupidity to your cognitive load.
I am sure this is not the first time! Registry problems, update problems, and now for pity's sake account problems.
As a long-time user of both Linux and Windows, I'd say my OS cognitive load with Linux is almost entirely related to efficient actions, whereas with Windows I have a quiver of stupid arrows to shoot at all the problems that MSFT inflicts.
When people advise you to switch to Linux if you can, they are giving solid advice.
Let's not pretend Microsoft has a monopoly on idiocy in the software world. All major Linux distros are hell bent on repeating the mistakes of Windows. Especially since the people in control of the stack (minus the kernel) are the rejects who couldn't make it in Microsoft and Apple in the 90s and 00s but really wanted to.
Meanwhile my small happy place with OpenBSD and Guix just works.
To quote CS Lewis:
>Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
Maybe there is a Linux language similar to DirectX you might transition to? Maybe test code in a VM? (Although that gets you right back into Win11.)
Yes: DirectX. Just make sure that it runs in Wine or Proton.
Nit: DirectX is a bunch of APIs and libraries, not a language. Same for Wine and Proton.
https://status.canonical.com/
You're in for a bad time. It's been three days and they still can't get updates to work.
Get Debian if you must. Use something sane like Guix and OpenBSD if you can.
The level of disregard for quality from MS is just obnoxious. We are really crossing some kind of line here, I think, where taking the pain of migrating once seems easier than dealing with all this nonsense.
(I had to clean install Windows after that infamous update with system check infinite loop at boot time).
While it would, yes, likely avoid the problem happening again, it shifts the responsibility to the party that should not be at fault.
Meanwhile the harasser is like “what’s wrong? I took an anti-harassment class?”
Weird analogy - it's telling someone who is paying to be abused to simply stop paying...
If Windows was actually free, as in download a copy and use it as you wish, then sure, maybe you might have a (very tiny) point, but it's not like that at all.
I don't think they ever stopped. Maybe they ceased advertising it, but installing Windows 10 over 7 or 8 would silently inherit the license far past the original terms. The time-limited offer was just a FOMO-inducing marketing scam.
In a real life abusive relationship that would look like both calling the cops and leaving. In the case of software, demand reform and also switch OSes.
in other industries, you can sue product manufacturers if their defects cause you inordinate grief, lost wages, or excessive repair costs.
Understood. However, your choices are:
1. Keep complaining while paying $$$ for the privilege of complaining.
2. Switch to something else.
My tolerance level is much lower than yours (I switched my daily driver around 1998), obviously...
Also just debloat the Windows install, why are you suffering with Co-Pilot? I have a VM running on Proxmox and I rdp to it from Linux when needed, but daily use, no way and honestly there really is no reason to put all your eggs in the Windows basket in this day and age.
And yeah - I gave up on DirectX programming to do it. I do like Metal...
Not sure what's so confusing here... When Windows is online, it checks your password against the cloud and updates the local store. When Windows is offline, it checks your password against a local store. By previous password, Windows just means the password you used on the last successful login for the user on that machine.
It’s irritating enough that new linux installs want me to add accounts. I can skip it, which is nice, but just don’t show the screen. If you’re installing linux you either know what you’re doing or you don’t: if you do you know it’s possible and don’t need it jammed in your face, and if you don’t you’re probably not quite tall enough to understand it isn’t needed and you probably don’t want it anyways.
My Microsoft Account email is "contact@<my-domain-name>". If I set up a new Windows 11 computer using this account, Windows picks the first 4 letters of my email address and sets that as the username. So my username becomes "conta", and the path to my user directory becomes "C:\Users\conta".
I know this is a really small thing, but I find it incredibly irritating. I can't be typing that into the terminal all day long! It's not the end of the world, but it speaks to a lack of polish and care across the whole product, not to mention a disrespect for their users' intelligence.
I'm not a Windows user—I only use it for gaming—so I don't really know how to get around this issue. Maybe there's a secret keycombo I can press during install? Or some unrelated checkbox that I can toggle that will do the magic? I just know that I login via my iCloud account on all my Macs, and Apple has always allowed me to choose my own username and home directory.
I don't think this is high on their list of issues to fix so I'm not very hopeful that this will ever get addressed. Maybe I should just change my legal name to Conta?
5ish years back I used to have a PCI passthrough via OVMF [0] setup for my GPU and my windows VM (Arch host) so I could game on windows.
Then I realized Proton/wine had gotten good enough to play all my games (I don't play AAA competitive shooters) and I dropped the VM and never looked back.
I would encourage everyone to give Steam/Proton on Linux a shot if you haven't recently and see if you're able to drop windows for good. These days, I don't even look at compatibility - 95% of games work OOTB and the other 5% work by changing the proton version (i.e. proton-ge). YMMV of course but I've been much happier without windows on my system.
[0] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PCI_passthrough_via_OVMF
I don't quite understand what you are saying here. If you're talking about setting up an account to use the system, it's the same idea as setting up a local account on Windows.
If you're talking about online accounts, I believe you are referring to a convenience feature offered during setup. Ironically, it was put there to guide people who are coming to Linux from Windows.
What Microsoft wants: Windows as their straightjacket into the Microsoft services as that is where the revenue is.
Why Windows got this bad: incentives and coercion placed on the teams to show uptake on the services no matter what leading to perversion in tactics and complete alienation of the user base.
The incentives are alomost perpendicularly misaligned.
Regaining trust is extremely hard after you've crossed an edge. People are looking for the exit, finding there is indeed a door, and stopping them will take far more than just some reassurance from the DJ boot.
The moment you hear "let's circle back" enough in meetings, that's your tell tale sign to quit the workplace infested with MBAs. A good organization is always run by engineers at the top level and engineers don't incentivise engineers simply for working on roadmaps of perfectly fine existing features. That's the difference.
I wish this were true, but unfortunately, I've seen enough evidence otherwise to strongly disagree. MBAs weren't born evil, they were made that way in business school. The same corrupting process works on engineers and can happen outside of business school contexts (one common corrupting force is Hacker News comments). An MBA-brained engineer as a manager is orders of magnitude worse than a regular MBA.
In the creative industry there is a bunch of these "boutique" companies that places great care on the final experience. Probably Blackmagic Design is no longer "boutique" to be fair, but seems they still got the culture right.
I was part of the transformation of a healthy mid size engineering led startup company that got taken over by MBAs and Indian employees and saw the whole lifecycle.
Microsoft sells software. They turned office into a service but it's still software. Nobody really wants to use their store. Their hardware is a cute little side hustle.
Microsoft's strategy for turning into Apple is kneecapping their own software.
*XBox and Microsoft gaming's $23.5b revenue (~10% of MS's total) enter the chat*
You were saying something about not letting facts get in the way of a preferred narrative, I believe?
Considering that at this point most Microsoft OEMs are failing, Microsoft should just start building a lot of consumer hardware.
Apple makes more money selling consumer hardware than the entire PC hardware market combined. I'm exaggerating, but only a little. This would have been unimaginable in 1999.
It didn't have to be. The same toxic dynamics that compromised their software poisoned their hardware, but they had too many products, or eras of a product, that Just Worked(TM) for it to have been a fluke. Someone knew what they were doing. They were screwed over by competing interests.
Zune people loved their Zunes. Windows Phone 8 people loved their Nokias. I've seen Surface Pro 2s "boot" to the same session for half a decade (that is: put it to sleep, stick it in a drawer for a year, take it out, plug it in, turn it on, all of the same files and folders and apps are open; I've NEVER seen this happen with any other device, they always lose state after enough time unplugged). And it's crazy how badly the Courier/Surface Duo was botched, given the excitement for it. Even newer Surfaces are great for the first year, before all of the compromises and poor engineering decisions make themselves known.
Imagine if it had been managed by someone who actually cared about their users, instead of people who treated them like marks and rubes.
Microsoft needs to learn consent. Everywhere there's a Yes and "Remind me later", there has to be a No. And the No has to work and be remembered forever, not forgotten after the next update. Using Windows has to stop feeling like you're being roofied all the time.
Microsoft, your users include developers and power users. We are not all someone's tech illiterate relative who needs constant reminding to check that backups are on, nor do we want to use OneDrive.
If we turn it off, it means off. Updates off = they stay off until turned back on, don't worry, we'll remember. Backup off = it stays off. Edge off = it stays off. Ads off = I don't want ads.
The battle they are fighting is that by using Google, tech illiterate people have found buttons like the ability to disable updates, but don't understand what they're doing, and then leave them off and now their OS becomes part of a botnet in a few months. So Microsoft believes that they are doing a greater good by not offering a real option to actually turn certain things off. But this babysitting behavior is annoying as shit when you want to leave something running that is going to take 6 days. Sure yes put it on a cloud vm. But if I was still using Windows as my OS, why should I have to? Just because your OS can't handle a developer doing something else than using Outlook and OneDrive to store pictures of aunties family get-together?
Google does this too. I don't have photos backed up to my Google account on a Pixel and every few days if I open the photos app it prompts me to backup to the cloud and I always have to click "maybe later", "not now" or whatever they decide to name it.
It's messed up because if I were to accidentally ever click yes to that it would fill up my Google storage and I would no longer be able to receive email since I'd have 0% storage. I don't get how something so dangerous can be shoved in front of you so frequently. I know it's marketing / advertising to constantly remind you of something even if you don't want it, but I would have thought customer happiness would outweigh that.
Today I woke up, went to check the progress and wouldn't you know, Windows Update updated the computer and rebooted, and what I was waiting for was aborted... So fucking tiresome to use shit like this.
It's annoying to have to shuffle files over to it, if that's needed for its job, but I think it's still a worthwhile thing to consider (it's insane that we've gotten to this point, but such is life). If it isn't workable, then fine. But if it is, the hassle of shuffling files using external SSDs or whatever is probably better, or at the very least more consistent, than turning on your machine one day and finding it corrupted itself due to an update, or the software in question got a UI update which breaks your workflow for a month.
Regardless, thanks for the ideas!
When I get tired of Battlefield 6 I'm likely going full Linux. It is simply not worth putting up with Microsoft Windows for gaming. More and more games seem to work either directly on Linux or at least via things like Proton (courtesy Valve Software).
The only reason I still have Windows is the little screw securing the drive into the enclosure is in the wind and I can't be bothered to find it (for backup of all of my things so I can delete windows and install linux)
The truth is - it's more complicated than that. People want three contradictory things:
1. To not be nagged for things like setting up cloud backups. 2. To not have data sent to the cloud without consent. 3. To be able to get their data back, if their hard drive dies.
Microsoft picks 2 and 3.
I see what you're saying but that isn't how I think about it.
I'm happy to have as "much" OS as is useful and adds value, convenience, or user experience for me.
Example: I quite like Windows Hello. Facial recognition is the smoothest, most pleasant form of biometric authentication available on a laptop, and it's nice to be able to use it anywhere throughout the whole OS that a password would otherwise be required (e.g. before revealing hidden passwords in a password manager, when opening a command prompt with elevated permissions, or before applying passkeys to log into a website). It starts up fast, works in low light thanks to IR emitters, and recognizes me pretty close to 100% of the time. It's a great experience. My use of my laptop would only be reduced by having "less OS" in this case.
What I don't want is anything that compromises my utility, convenience, or user experience in order to make the OS useful and valuable for someone else.
Example: advertisements embedded in the Start menu are plenty valuable to M$, but compromise my user experience in the process.
Example 2: Inserting Copilot into Paint and Notepad seem valuable for pumping M$'s stock price, but both annoy me by cramming unwanted AI into my basic utility programs where I have no interest in it.
The majority of bells and whistles (which Windows Hello falls under) were not baked into the OS, but instead implemented as system extensions that the user could disable and prevent from loading into memory at will.
This meant that even with the last release of Classic Mac OS (9.2.x), if you disabled all extensions you got a desktop reminiscent of the 1985 System 1 except with color and modern resolution support.
I think it should be more of a goal for desktop OSes to try to emulate this. If a Windows user wants a quiet no-frills Win2000 like experience except with choice exceptions like Hello, they should be able to have that without having to resort to messy hacks that impact stability and undo themselves if you update.
You had Windows ME which was a terrible, buggy OS. I don’t know a single person who didn’t lose all their data on Windows ME.
Shifting personal windows to the Windows NT foundation provided a massive relative boost, but even that took until XP SP2 to reallt settle in, which was followed by the disaster that was Vista.
Then Windows 7 came along and it was genuinely really good. Probably peak Windows.
And then you came to an actual straitjacketing of windows in Windows 8, where the entire desktop Windows ecosystem was relegated to being a single app no better than calculator in the mobile first, completely undeveloped Windows 8 interface.
Windows 10 got us back to sanity, and barring a few minor UI mishaps Windows 11 was originally a nice refinement. This was the longest stretch of Windows being decent as a personal computer. The addition of WSL (well actually it took until WSL2) made Windows competitive with Mac as a developer desktop.
That was nearly a decade of enjoyable and productive Windows. Unfortunately, now we have AI, and Windows is once again being destroyed to serve the its AI master.
I don't think so. Most people just want to get to their websites or email. They don't care about the OS, and may not even know what an OS is.
The problem is that they may just click "yes" on any popups, to make them go away - which is probably what Microsoft wants. "Yes" track me, "yes" show me ads, etc.
For your average user, Xubuntu or Mint are both great choices: simple, understandable desktops, and otherwise they stay out of the way. I set up Xubuntu for my elderly BIL a few months ago. He's a smart guy, but completely non-technical. One support call since, otherwise he has reported no problems.
But there needs to be a way to turn something off that you don't want, and to not get nagged about it repeatedly thereafter. But for that to work, there has to be a clear, easily findable way to turn it back on later.
The answer is: make the OS extremely modular so that the user can have configure whether he wants an absolutely minimalistic OS or something with "batteries included".
What if you are ACTUALLY someone who knows what they are doing and need to run a perf test over a multiple day period and need it running and uninterrupted? You can't. You are not a part of their target customer base, and at this point their actions have made it clear that they want such users to leave.
Um. Perpendicular lines intersect at some point.
Parallel lines never touch, maybe that’s a better geometric analogy.
Of course, for most people things that are “parallel” would seem to be in close agreement.
Unless you are trying to screw your loyal users in 3 or more dimensions which seems to be the case here
I do believe the OP meant to say that the incentives are orthogonal (i.e., misaligned, or 90deg to each other), and perpendicularly misaligned is a close fit.
Not sure why folks felt you should be downvoted for an heartfelt comment, an explanation is a much better feedback. Downvotes are counterproductive, IMO, if you're trying to have a debate or come to a meeting of minds, so I almost never use them anymore, except for where I detect ill-intentions.
Citation needed. “As little OS as possible” would mean not having a standard clipboard, not having a standard way to install fonts, etc.
Even interpreting that as “all the functionality, but limit applications to utilities for managing the hardware”, I think there people who want that, but I doubt that’s what people, in general, want. Having to choose (and, likely, pay for) a photo manager, a simple word processor, etc. is just too much of a hassle for many.
Also, why would any commercial entity develop such an OS? The margin is in the
I will not stop using a demanding tone for my expectations towards companies which can't deliver on them, because they shat their bed years ago and have to now deal with that. The fact that your uncompetitive practices caught up with you does not constitute a reason for me to shed a tear for you and to tap over your shoulder in sympathy.
And then there is the whole world of nearly impossible to avoid 'services' you realy do not want but will keep popping up regardless of your wishes ('Telemetry', Onedrive, Copilot, Edge, Recall, Bing adds in the start menu ffs...).
Let us also not forget being forced into a Microsoft account against your wishes ... does it still feel like it's your computer?
People who want to save their work by moving to a platform without those issues need to be willing to either do the work or pay for it.
few moments later
"i hate how the current system is"
You’ve been busy.
Stop shipping features, ship stability and quality.
Windows 11 today is a spectacular example of customer disrespect and disregard. MS believes it can manage with enterprise customer revenue alone. Well, best of luck with that, even enterprises are getting fed up.
Great! We've progressed back to Windows XP of 22 years ago.
It's baffling that a company like MS can leave this kind of obvious problems lingering for months.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/microsoft-fixes-update-and-shut-d...
I'm sure they see the EU/Worldwide decoupling from US companies as definitely-going-to-happen and they have no control over that, so retaining US consumers becomes even more important, but the first attempt will be at improving reputation without changing business strategy (ads, data monetization, ai are the future revenue drivers). And only if that fails will the business strategy change.
Posted this originally as a reply to a comment, but I think it should be its own top-level comment.
Yeah. 5 million units + production raise to 10 million? [1] Add to that the number of folks switching over to linux; and suddenly that's not small potatoes, considering there are only about 162 million working folks in the US.
There are only about 50 million folks at 100+ employees, and 16 million at 1000+ employees in private firms. [2]
All these folks switching over? Once they get comfy with non-Windows OSes, they'll ask for those at work. And at the smaller employers - 100 or less employees or even 1000 or less employees, that won't be hard to support.
You have to read a bit between the lines, but an estimate is that 35-50 million have access to Google Workspace at work, and 25-40 million paid Google Workspace users. [3]
Suddenly that MS moat isn't looking so deep. It's easy to imagine an inflection point at which MS becomes the minority OS provider, even in the US. The Kodak-ization of Microsoft.
[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/macbook-ne...
[2] https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/susb.html
[3] https://expertinsights.com/saas-app-security/google-workspac...
If yes I dont care
Some people just enjoy testing and the pain that comes with it.
Edit: I also imagine the reach of the mainstream platforms to be much higher (e.g. Windows vs. Linux or Google Maps user reviews vs. <is there even an alternative?>).
First of all, in many countries outside of EU/US it's just not possible to buy laptop without preinstalled Windows 11 (except Apple). For example, even if a model supports Linux in the US as many Lenovo Thinkpads do, in Singapore it's just not sold without Windows.
Second, Microsoft has broken sleep with pushing S0 sleep in UEFI. Bettery life is shit now, and hibernate is disabled by default in most OS. Also, hibernate in Linux is a complete disaster comparing to windows one (windows presaves memory to disk continuously, while in linux you have to wait until the whole ram (+ vram, if gpu) is saved/restored). It takes time. Sleep s3 is needed, but Microsoft killed it. So linux is really a bad choice for laptop. But Windows 11 is much worse, especially if you don't really like ads.
Wipe and install something else. Previously you would just have been eating the OS license cost paid, and the benefit was taking control and supporting the free-as-in-freedom ecosystem.
But now the additional benefits are that you'll be preventing them from monetizing your data on an ongoing basis, denying data for training ai, and enhancing your privacy, so it's economically justifiable too.
Was it simply that getting every device and driver to properly support it was hard, so the easiest option was to remove it and have the machine always powered up?
> Sleep s3 is needed, but Microsoft killed it.
Would you or someone else here mind explaining this?
ACPI power state S0 is everything running. S1 pauses CPU and CPU I/O bus. S2 puts CPU to reset. S3 cuts power to CPU. S4 cuts off everything(not actual power off). S5 cuts off everything(actual power off).
S3 and S4 are often referred to as Sleep and Hibernation. In Sleep, RAM contents are kept as-is, and sleep handling code just restore CPU internal states that gets lost. In Hibernation, OS usually dump RAM contents to disk, and write back to RAM upon bootup - S4 and S5 aren't always clearly separated and both Windows and Linux tend to go through standard boot processes, then do the state resume using RAM dump they find on disk.
For SOME reason, Microsoft forced laptop vendors to quit supporting S3 in favor of their custom "S0iX" state, which is more or less just machine running at full power, which can be extremely wasteful as far as sleep state goes.
The official explanation for this pressuring is that everybody want notification and this is the only way Windows could possibly handle notifications. A lot are skeptical about that.
1: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/k...
S0 is.. just on. The PC is completely powered up. Microsoft has done this so that they can force your computer to wake itself up to install updates you don't want. Literally you aren't allowed to turn off your computer because some middle manager needs to see update stats go up. If your computer happens to be in a bag and cooks itself to death, well that's your problem. Fuck you for trying to keep Microsoft's statistics down.
Part of this is that hibernation can't be cancelled mid way, which is dumb. Ideally a computer is like a light switch - you can turn it on and off instantly whenever. To get closer to that, if you turn it off, but then immediately on again, the hibernation should be cancelled and return you to your desktop.
Also, the whole idea of a 'hibernation image' which is read from disk in one huge 10+ second read is best for hard drives. Now that everyone uses SSD, it should all be demand-paged in.
Sadly now I use Windows 11 just because manufacturer of my laptop didn't bother to ensure that their sound driver worked corrctly on Windows 10.
My mouse lags for seconds when gpu is busy, even with something as trivial as alt-tabbing from a game.
Feedback is there on their feedback site. They just wouldn't listen.
I had to restore Notepad, Calculator and Paint from Windows 7. What the hell Microsoft?
This is extremely nice and saves me time on a literally (not figuratively) daily basis, to the point that I generally forget that it hasn't always worked that way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Bird_in_a_Gilded_Cage
Once you've switched to tiled window managers, examples like these sound like Stockholm Syndrome.
There's a natural strong reaction folks have to window managers, because it forces you to mentally remap at such a foundational level.
I prefer tiled managers because the user offloads most responsibility. Open something and by default it uses as much space as is available. If you have a special need, you can float or resize, but the vast majority of cases it makes the right call.
At heart, it's offloading cognitive load. They're more predictable and require less faffing around.
(propaganda - Windows 11 default widgets are "offering" a lot of russian-biased media, because Microsoft is too dumb to recognize that and they take any news source - and russian connected outlets are happy to use this delivery vector that most gullible people leave turned on)
WSL -> Running Linux VM inside of Windows
Wine is more like emulating Windows API behavior on Linux, while WSL is Microsoft throwing their hands in the air and saying "Lets just VM Linux wholesale".
Both aim to avoid Windows, neither replace Linux but instead tries to move more to Linux.
Better to just go straight to what you actually want, which seems to be a proper Linux distribution, everything just works as expected then.
Debian itself is a superpower.
WSL 2 is supposed to be a VM ... all problems solved ... until they aren't.
Hint: try to use normal USB stuff natively (Linux) in WSL 2 ...
It’s still not so easy to use, plus they ditched it anyway for VM solution.
I can't believe it took them 20 years to add them, but at least they're finally here.
- Dark mode
- Tabs
- "Continue previous session" (restore after restart)
But they also made a HUGE regression which isn't talked about enough:
- Previously, if you delete the underlying file, Notepad didn't "notice." Meaning you could Save to recreate it. The file existed in an ephemeral state, as long as the Notepad window remained open. Right now, if you delete the underlying file, Notepad notices immediately, errors out, and closes that tab -- content gone.
VSCode handles this correctly, it puts a line through the filename in the tab (and red-font), but doesn't close the tab on you suddenly. Ephemeral state retained.
In my ideal world Notepad needs exactly ONE new feature:
- Right Click Tab: "Copy Path."
Then just REMOVE: Spell Checker, Formatting, CoPilot, Markdown(!), and Autocorrect. Completely inappropriate functionality for Notepad, and the Vibecoded Markdown implementation already added a security vulnerability(!) to freaking Notepad. Branch off into a product called "Wordpad" and then create all of that garbage in there.
Even occasional need for Adobe things stopped. I would still really like to see Adobe suite on linux, but if they don't want my money that's cool too I guess. I suspect the software tools people use for work is what's holding them back mostly, like Altium, CADs etc. Funnily enough, Microsoft office is just fine without OS native version most of the time.
So basically: - recent changes are all crap - so why did you make them?
I would guess many of the bad changes are caused by perverse incentives which do not even help shareholder value.
Installing Tiny11 and then running a debloat over its corpse results in a much faster and less memory hungry default clean install.
Executive management at MS must be seeing interesting (migration) numbers on their dashboards, so they've gotten involved in white-washing their reputation without changing business strategy, hence the executive-level manifestos and platitudes coming out as of late.
I'm sure they see the EU/Worldwide decoupling from US companies as definitely-going-to-happen and they have no control over that, so retaining US consumers becomes even more important, but the first attempt will be at improving reputation without changing business strategy (ads, data monetization, ai are the future revenue drivers). And only if that fails will the business strategy change.
1. Microsoft accounts. No. 2. Ads in my OS. No. 3. Slow copying of files. No. 4. A maddening mix of UI/UX paradigms and implementations. No. 5. AI deeply embedded in my OS. No.
I don't know wtf their design team is doing.
They're doing what management/business-strategy is asking them to do.
Translated: We fired our Quality Assurance. You are the QA now.
Finally, like seriously, so many times I have to "shutdown" (aka restart) for an update before going to bed. I don't want to have to babysit my desktop computer when I want to finish up for the night.
Well that and I have to be mindful of running too many resource starving processes at the same time including WSL. Otherwise performance will quickly degrade. But that’s not much different than my 2015 ASUS zenbook running Linux off of 8gb of ram. In comparison my work laptop runs on 32gb of ram with much more powerful cpu cores.
WSL is my favorite and most used feature of Windows 11. So I’ll be happy as long as they don’t screw that up.
Starting from web based start menu taking forever to launch, to everything resisting to you to be in control of your computer.
Some say the speed is fine, but forget that these machines are running at nanosecond level instructions and there’s no reason for a simple task to take milliseconds unless somebody is optimizing for service revenue and user tracking (to be sold later to advertisers, not for user experience improvements).
Microslop is just scared out of mind with the European and Asian countries moving to Linux based platforms to get out of their grip. Can you imagine the amount of intelligence they will loose, and how much harder they will need to work to compete for real after three decades of being the default in everything.
Yep, that's marketing. You don't care about your users.
> a broader shift to make AI in Windows more intentional and realign the experiences to those that provide the most value to users
To be fair they are claiming a shift away from their previous policy of not aligning the product to provide value to users...
Aside from the fact that nobody actually takes what Microsoft says seriously (they are professional bullshitters [with full time PR firms perfecting their bullshit] and have been for 30 years), it's funny that even this line can be reasonably interpreted as pushing more blatant nonsense onto consumers as long as it's what C-suite types think they should be paying for.
Notice that what provides the most value to users is not at all necessarily the same thing as'what our users want'. And it isn't even clear that Microsoft is thinking of consumer users here as opposed to corporate users and corporate IT departments, which are in most cases these days their actually direct customers. Most home user consumers don't pay for Windows directly.
With AI features, the most annoying thing has to be the Copilot key on my laptop keyboard. If you accidentally hit it it opens a Copilot window, interrupting your typing. The Settings app for this key only allow you to specify whether it activates search or copilot, it doesn't let you turn it off. There are other workarounds like installing an app from the Store, but all those workarounds come with unwanted excess baggage.
That's because it's not your computer, it is Microsoft's ;-)
Seriously, though, there will be quirks like with almost any OS. OS devs make choices that abstract some of the complexity in order to make it useful for a broad audience.
With Linux or the BSDs, you have the freedom to take it to any level of detail or customization that you wish to, with all that entails being outside of an externally maintained OS. Ask me how I know :-)
Multiple times I've wanted to shutdown my laptop so I can go home and Windows says no, sit here for 5 minutes.
I don't trust sleep mode to not keep running and overheat, so I wait.
Macbooks with 1TB drives are getting cheaper every day. Music production on Linux isn't really practical. A lot of this stuff barely runs on Windows/OSX.
Competition is great. But this is about the Mac Neo( and left over M4 Macs crashing in price ). Desktop Linux is still a challenge.
I consider myself an advanced Linux user, and it still took me an hour this morning to figure out how to get a VPN to work on Open Suse.
Windows doesn't feel slow because the kernel or the filesystem is inherently "that" slow, it feels like a sloth overdosing on heroin because nobody at Microsoft gives the slightest crap about making it even a tiny bit faster.
It's staggering how the instant you double-click a file in File Pilot you're... back in the tar pit. (The Windows image preview app just spins... and spins... while it does God-knows-what with my CPUs.)
The contrast of going from one to the other makes the quality difference glaringly obvious.
Disclaimer: I switched to Linux last year.
Using a local group policy, you can change when "Preview builds and Feature updates" and "Quality Updates" become available in Windows Update.
By delaying those with 30 or 60 days, you will never have preview updates applied to your system, and feature and quality updates will have at least 1 or 2 months' worth of fixes before you get them.
start > run > gpedit.msc > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Update > Manage updates offered from Windows Update >
1) Enable "Select when preview builds and feature updates are received". Set days to 60
2) Enable "Select when quality updates are received". Set days to 30 (max value)
Even if you do "get it", you ain't going to be allowed to deliver it.
I use WIN+R instead of the Start Menu Search/PowerToy's Alt+Space because it is INSTANT and 100% CONSISTENT. You just made my instant thing slower, great, thanks, mission accomplished!
Feels wildly out of touch, to almost a comical degree.
[0] https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2026/05/01/announc...
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/the-new-run-dialo...
Yeah, I wouldn't bet on this.
The SAME as Windows 2000 in terms of what is installed. NO TPM REQUIREMENT.
Even better: when installing Windows, there should be a "install minimal" option, and if you select it then it should be so fucking minimal - so little on there, that all you get is control panel and a way to install new software - NOTHING more.
That's your win, Microsoft. I'm 2000% certain nothing even slightly close to that will be delivered.
But I’ve found my way on Linux long ago. Sure not all software is there and MS365 fully from browser has so many annoyances, but I love the OS minimalism, how clean it is.
My ideal windows in indeed win2000, but in a transparent VM so I can just do the Windows apps. I need LSW, Linux subsystem for Windows, essentially.
I live in Linux but still have some need for the Windows Runtime from time to time. If only Windows containers were at the level of the Linux ones, I’d flip the whole world up side down.
podman run ms365-full —license-key FCKGW-RHQQ2-YXRKT-8TG6W-2B7Q8
I’d pay for that. But such a system only provides value, it does not extract it. It is a 180 of the way they have been thinking for a long time now.
Recently I tried to get Windows running using quickemu but that also failed.
All just so that I don't have to experience MS365 in the browser where I will regularly click "New message" (in Outlook) and start typing but my browser interprets all characters as shortcuts (as if I held alt or something??) messing up my inbox to various degrees before I become aware, ending up with a pile op messages in "archive". I hate the daily re-logins in Teams (which does not tell you it's logged out, your messages just hang and the menu is empty). Word simply deletes my last 2 sentences from time to time (even though it assures me on every frightened ctrl-s that it's all fine!!), etc, etc.
And we're not even talking about the hoops you have to jump through when a doc is not on SharePoint/OneDrive but on a NAS.
edit: nvm, the docker vm thing looks really slow, id rather use libreoffice (which is quite good really). and now europe is trying to cut the umbilical you can probably expect a lot more open source productivity stuff in the near future too.
I do not care what you give people who don't select "minimal install" - that's their problem.
Another is Windows Explorer, loses focus all the time, no hint to where it went, preventing keyboard navigation. Basic UI conventions are being violated, for no reason than having no clue what Windows is.
Windows is apparently being infested by young hackers who think Linux is the best thing since sliced bread and who just want to add tacky features using sloppy AI.
A friend of mine recently bought a very expensive laptop to do some gaming. I helped him set it up and god that was a horrible experience. For example, we could not get rid of LinkedIn and other crap Microsoft wanted to force on him. Disabling copilot and removing Office required registry surgery. And the damn fans were always running because of some unknown activity in the background, maybe Microsoft is moving into bitcoin mining business?
He eventually got fed up, installed Ubuntu 26.04 as an experiment and a week later still seems to enjoy the experience. Games run fine on steam and his laptop finally feels like his own.
Most surprisingly, Linux worked fine out of the box. Windows 11 on the other hand needed a bunch of PowerShell and registry hacks to be copy pasted from various sources before it was even remotely usable. It's funny how it felt as if Windows was the OS for nerds with too much free time on their hands while Ubuntu was created for ordinary people. And my god, Ubuntu feels so much more fluid on the same hardware. The difference is *huge*.
It's been wonderful.
NVIDIA GPUs were infamous for doing this with nouveau on less ideally supported cards, for example.
And with a preinstalled Windows (tuned to the laptop) this behavior should not be observed at all.
I'm running Ubuntu on a 9950x3d and 5090 and it is not slow. Games in Steam with Proton are buttery smooth.
One hiccup was I had to disable variable refresh rate because moving the cursor didn't "count" as a reason to update the screen, so moving the cursor on its own (rather than e.g. moving a window) looked choppy.
But a choppy mouse cursor isn't "slow".
Tip: if you have a performance problem, run Claude Code (or an AI agent of your choice) and ask it to investigate.
Everything, huge input delay in every interaction, clicking on anything, opening menus, typing, tabbing between windows, everything had 1-2s of delay.
>disable variable refresh rate
I think I tried this but dont recall, there were a few things related to monitor refresh I tried that probably included this
Without having to google whether it will, or what hardware to buy.
Without having to google some workaround or configure anything to get the most of it.
You should buy preinstalled the OS you want instead.
Microsoft took a more difficult path. They have close contact with OEMs, run certification programs etc. A massive apparatus to make it somewhat likely that hardware will ”just work”.
Both of these are valid models. I’d be happy to use either. I’m not very keen on doing this work myself though. I can buy a PC with Ubuntu but then it’s still hit and miss if I buy something new for it. There is no canonical store selling canonical gear like the Apple Store
A few years ago, I finally decided I'd had it with Windows and their crap and uninstalled it. If I game doesn't run on Linux, I don't play it. Simple as that.
I'm lucky in that a majority of games I play run fine on Linux, the only real game I'd love to play is Vermintide 2. My friends also run a mix of Linux and Windows and so we're fairly fine skipping games as a group if we can't play on Linux.
yes ive reached that point too.
There's at least one anti-cheat that "works" on Linux so they have options.
That said, Linux used to be a tough cookie because there were so little support for software people wanted to run and the alternatives didn't do it any favours, plus the barrage of problems you used to get installing it on a random machine was discouraging, at best. Nowadays your chances of running it well on a random machine is pretty damn good and getting the software you need is lot more feasible. But don't go YOLOing a linux install, see if meets your use cases. There is nothing wrong with waiting until it's good enough.
I've seen Tiny11 referenced but haven't seen a good guide for it.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/11/what-i-do-to-clean-u...
The result is an install with no copilot/cortana/widgets, a win defender that can be disabled, no auto updates at all, a local account only, no taskbar shenanigans, properly configured explorer, some registry tweaks, runtimes pre-installed, extra drivers if needed, and QoL settings tweaked how I want them.
The OS installs itself in a few minutes with no intervention after the disk/partitioning stuff which I kept manual. It ends up being faster than the Ubuntu and CachyOs installs from the same drive. Then 2mins with massgrave post install if I haven't provided a key already.
When it is set up that way, Windows is decently fast and stable. And I have some control over it, at least whenever I need to enforce something.
It feels like there is a committee and every Microsoft marketing group gets their changes that they want in Windows to help push their product.
Windows should have someone at the top - with TASTE - and the authority and strength and vision to actually make real change happen.
Real change isn't possible because assuming someone is in charge of Windows then they are weak and without their own vision to even understand all the things that are being said over and over and over in threads like this.
People would LOVE it if when installing Windows you could choose "text only/no GUI", or "minimal install" or "select the components you want" or "super special with the lot". Why the fuck can't Microsoft work out on its own to do this.
And for gods sake drop the stupid TPM thing which was required by the Microsoft new PC sales licensing division.
And NO ADS - it's an operating system not a billboard.
I just can't, gotta ask - what about c++ updates? What about integral os components that were migrated to the store and if you disable it, you won't get updates? What about defender updates (not definitions but app update) that won't get applied if you have another anti malware?
The thing I hate about windows updates is that microsoft can't even update all their own stuff with a single button.
edit: almost forgot - why is office not in windows update, and what the hell is wrong with teams and why it is seperate from office updates
Just updating windows is a complete and utter mess and every single Linux distro is 100x better
However in today's world if you expose an unpatched "anything" to the internet then it is very possible that it will be discovered and eventually used to (silently) do things you don't want. Think DDOS farms, illegal software distribution etc...
What is the middle ground? I don't think there is one. We need to have reliable, automatically updated OSes which don't suck and , much more importantly, run the applications we need.
That is definitely NOT Windows.
>You decide when updates happen, not the other way around.
Not... the other way around? Updates decide when I happen?
>Last month we said we would reduce where Copilot shows up across Windows, focusing on bringing AI where it’s most valuable. [...] in Notepad, we’ve replaced the generic Copilot icon with a clearer “Writing Tools” label that better describes what it does.
We've reduced AI by renaming the button?
By now Windows, for me is more like a reality TV show than an OS.
Honestly, I can live with Windows 11 being a little slow, and I can deal with File Explorer issues. I can write my own tools to manage some of that, and PowerShell is simple enough for many tasks. Those parts do not bother me that much.
What bothers me is Copilot being pushed into the operating system experience itself. I wish it could simply be treated as an optional feature.
Windows is an operating system. An operating system is the foundational layer that governs the user’s work. Because of that, AI should be an opt-out assistant, not a premise that changes the default behavior of the system.
When I move from Windows 10 to Windows 11, Copilot feels like something that damages the user experience itself.
If Copilot were at the level of GPT or Claude, I probably would not complain as much. But I do not understand why the quality gap feels so large.
Why accept mediocrity when Microsoft has shown to be capable of producing something better than their current iteration of Windows? Whether you prefer Windows 2000 or XP or 7 or one of the server versions over 10/11, all of those were in many ways 'better' than 11.
> I can deal with File Explorer issues
Again, why? It is not as if those issues are the result of Microsoft adding something useable or worthwhile, they're just the result of MS adding even more ballast to an already overburdened system.
> I can write my own tools to manage some of that
Yes, you can, and...
> PowerShell is simple enough for many tasks
...so you're getting to experience the power of the shell like *nix-users have been espousing for more than half a century now. Welcome to the club and welcome to the CLI. Here we use words to communicate instead of pictures, we outgrew those once we left play school.
If you want to use Windows just use one of the previous versions as long as you can while preparing to move over to the greener Wine-yards in Linux-land. Unless there is a big shake-up within Microsoft - unlikely - it looks like Windows as an operating system is a dead-end street. It will be turned into a straight jacket where you will comply with whatever the current business plan dictates. Escape while you still can I'd say, there are many alternatives on offer.
Since this isn't the Reddit comment section (I hear people here prefer a bit more elaboration and argumentative nuance with their $BEVERAGE), I feel compelled to add some of my own personal experience.
I don't think Windows can be fixed anymore. I think the choices Microsoft have been doing for _decades_ now, with only the _mechanisms_ coming and going, have become endemic to Windows, a part of its identity. Copilot, for example, is just another gadget Microsoft simply cannot not put in. In '95 is was Clippy, but the deliveries never stop, and frankly I feel like an old man that finally decided to kick a bad habit because I truly see now all the empty talk from Microsoft I've heard countless amount of times before, wrapped in different packaging, and that Windows is like it is _by design_ and that it's bad for my health (in a different way than Linux can ever be, I feel).
Ever since Windows '95 the addition of slop has been accelerating, admittedly Microsoft _were_ much different then, but it's the _curve_ I am referring to, not that they were always _as bad_. Frankly, the "churn" is insane now, I think it's one or the other adage I can't recall where "available operating system" fills "available resources" and Microsoft are there to prove it.
The problem is also they are experimenting on their users to no end. I don't mind being part of the "user experiment" for "user experience" but how many decades do they need to arrive at the same fundamental conclusions -- that people prefer less bloat, and fewer interruptions in their face? Occam's Razor tells me it's rather that Microsoft is pretending to care but their agenda is their own alone (surprise).
Just the other day I had to spend 2 hours trying to "fix" some very-background OneDrive update because I suppose I am sucker enough to use OneDrive -- one of the least liked of Microsoft products I've had the misfortune to use -- with Windows using my laptop as a BitCoin farm, wasting cycles in some infinite loop produced by what evokes comparisons to those monkeys with typewriters. Half a dozen Powershell commands and 3-4 reboots later the `wsappx.exe` process finally was healthy enough to idle. These things happen constantly to people everywhere and there's little Microsoft can or wants to do anything about. It's a cost they're willing their users to pay.
To stop rambling, one of these days -- summer vacation perhaps -- I will remove the blasted thing finally (after decades of using both Windows and Linux) and grit my teeth through Linux, which I have tried avoiding only because I am on a Thinkpad and there's always another tweak that's needed for the whole thing to work as well as Windows does on a _good_ day. To be clear, I prefer Linux by and large, it's just that I want to avoid spending weekends configuring sleep, power states, Trackpoint, full-disk encryption, the docking station, etc.
The fact I am going to do it anyway, just to rid myself of the Windows experience that's just been getting worse and worse, says it all really.
Microsoft's biggest and most consistent product is contempt for its users - consumers especially, but also business users.
When you understand that all of Microsoft's offerings are vectors for that contempt, the rest falls into place.
A user-centric Microsoft is an oxymoron. The company is literally incapable of it.
I'm not so sure that Windows is unfixable. It could probably be fixed, but doing that would require rebuilding every burned bridge back to its old standard, and probably then some, and that's something the relevant people aren't going to agree to do (since they were the ones who burned them).
Mandatory updates? Now they aren't any more.
Onedrive stole your files and deleted them? Now Onedrive is enabled/disabled on first setup.
Shitty start menu? Now you can pick which one you want, all the way back to the Windows 7 one.
Shitty right click menu? Now the old one is back.
All AI? Now there's a toggle on install to enable/disable it all.
Now settings menu sucks? Here's the old control panel back as standard.
Telemetry? How about no?
If MS did all of these things (and probably more), their trust level would rise skyhigh, since they'd be doing tangible things to fix the pain points we've all talked about. Now they've hit one point out of probably 50+, and many of the remaining ones are much harder to fix than updates being forced.
That's the one that really shocked me, and I haven't even experienced it for myself. I'm not normally that prone to excessive hyperbole, but that's about the most terrible thing I could ever conceive of an OS doing. All of the other stuff is a little annoying, but I could deal. But how in the hell could it ever be considered acceptable by anyone for your own OS to delete your files and move them to OneDrive or any other cloud service automatically? It's almost like ransomware, but the ransomware people will at least give you your files back for one flat payment. And the ransomware people at least know they're doing something nasty, and didn't try to integrate it as a default operating system feature. I guess they have better ethics than Microsoft!
It's just so obviously wrong, it's hard to even believe that it's a real thing. I don't think I could ever install an OS that even had a feature to do that at all, even if I could maybe temporarily turn it off with some scripts downloaded off the internet.
Obviously, Microsoft can't give people back their deleted Onedrive files, but they can make good on a promise that it will never happen again (given that their efforts are founded in reality and not marketing speak), and hide behind a shield of 'that wasn't our intention'. Same goes with most other things you could complain about Windows.
If you have no reason to believe that Windows will screw you over, since MS has course-corrected on all major points of contention, then why not stick around? (The answer is that MS may change course again, but for those who haven't jumped ship, I'm sure this will provide good enough reason to stick around. It's not like the ship isn't providing them any utility. They've stuck around this long for a reason.)
it's probably not a big dent in market share, but it's probably a good tipping point
On the other hand, Apple still refusing to fix shit in macOS people have been asking for decades.
This will never not be funny to me. These clowns really did remove something that existed for decades and then spend more than a decade trying to edge their users to the fact that they were gonna bring it back. In 500 years when somebody looks up enshittification on Wikipedia, this should be the first example.
It reminds me of when Adobe ended perpetual licensing and switched to cloud(TM)-only, subscription licensing for Photoshop, et al: many of us (myself included) assumed that Adobe was surely making a foolish mistake to abandon perpetual-license customers, but it turns out[1] that was the plan all along: those customers are a vocal minority who can demonstrably afford to pay more, the rest of the customer-base doesn't care enough to switch to a competitor. Over 10 years later (2013), we haven't seen any of Photoshop's then-promising upstart competitors come close.
...on that basis, I don't think MSFT's recent backpedalling on Windows 11's disrespect for its own users is in any way a response to us power-users complaining online - or even because any number of us did fully migrate off Windows and onto Linux, but instead because of all the recent talk overseas from foreign governments (France, Germany) taking active steps to secure their digital-sovereignty and deploying more Linux desktops; and a good way to get people (and decision-makers in government and large businesses) personally interested in digital-sovereignty is by pointing out how shitty their own corporate desktop UX has gotten.
I'll gladly eat my hat when/if MS graciously allows regular retail consumers, and not just large organizations - and those of us with a $2000/yr MSDN Subscription - the privilege of paying for an OS without advertising built-in to the shell and having hard dependencies on proprietary online services.
[1] (This article has some hallmarks of LLM "assistance" but gets the point across; and cites sources at the bottom): https://secondactsbiz.substack.com/p/adobe-the-transformatio...