Leaks confirm low takeup for Windows 11

Yeah I don't understand how there's a whole article of "no one is using it" and the author then states "it's OK, there's nothing wrong with it".

If there's nothing wrong with it, why is no one using it?

Maybe because 11 is fucking awful. Maybe it's the ads. Maybe it's removing fuck tons of features for no apparent reason. Maybe it's the fucking awful design choices.

But no, the author just says "every decision has haters, people just hate it because it's different"

I expected more from The Register.

That's not even a selling point to an android dev. Android emulators already run, and give a better simulation of a physical device. The only reason it'd be useful for android dev is if you're actually developing an APK for Windows itself.

You literally need a third party application to install an APK. At that point you might as well get an android emulator instead of using this spyware.

You could just buy the program from the windows store and run it in Windows 10 (it's called Files). Also linux had tabbed file explorers for decades. Glad to see windows finally catch up.

Me too. The tabs are not great and crash often for me.

Does it change the screen's contrast depending on what's being displayed? Because my work laptop does that. If there's a white window on screen, contrast is great. But if I minimize that and just have something dark on screen, it slowly reduces the contrast until I can barely read anything.

For linux clients maybe, but definitely not for windows clients. Microsoft practically killed Virtualbox, so we have to use Hyper-V at work now. And unlike virtualbox, it doesn't let me install my keyboard layout in the VM via MSKLC, which is literally made by microsoft. I had to convert my virtualbox VM where it was installed already and guess what, it works perfectly now.

I also have to disable the keyboard manager in powertoys, another microsoft product, whenever I use the VM because capslock gets stuck on inside the VM if I don't. That also happens on VMs without my keyboard layout, so it's a separate issue.

The VM also feels much slower and glitchier than the virtualbox one I used on an older computer.

I haven't tried VMs via hyper v but WSL and sandbox seems to work a bit better. I don't know if it's quantifiablely better but it feels like runs better.

MS Indexing is terrible. It's only saving grace is that it scans inside Outlook. If you want a fast search and instant results try Everything by VoidTools com.

Search only feels better in 11 because 10s was so bad. Both of them are pretty bad.

How much better is the HDR support in Win11? Does it stop your desktop looking washed out when turned on?

Yeah mostly I've only heard people defending Windows 11 with "It's not that bad, guys!"

I actually love Windows 11 personally (no I'm not paid by MS). I get an extra hour of battery life on 11 somehow, and finally like 2 years in the right click menu is getting support from 3rd party apps so it's not just in the way and is actually nice and fast unlike a bloated legacy right click menu.

Windows 11 has a lot of issues, but most of them are carry overs from windows 10. The same work arounds work for 11 as 10 so if you do an upgrade you don't even have to deal with them.

Extra spying and ads?

HDR works better and has more features (ie AutoHDR) on win11

Windows 11 Pro is pretty good!

Windows 11 Home is pretty stinky!

I use 11 for work and 10 for my personal usage still.

No idea. I haven’t heard anything positive either. It’s been like 3 years since I’ve touched a Windows machine. I had to use Windows 10 at an old job and it was a solid OS. Stable, reliable, can’t really say anything negative about it. I prefer Linux though.

Rounded corners lmao. But actually the UI makes the OS feel more complete and polished compared to Windows 10. You can never know how much you missed out until you try it.

My last gig was as a CIO in a fairly large organization and we had stringent infosec requirements due to the industry we were in. Old operating systems and software are absolutely an issue, although it still doesn’t stop some companies from running them.

Most of the malware going around exploits patched vulnerabilities. It literally takes seconds and not exactly a high skill level to compromise a machine that’s missing security updates. Regular patching is without a doubt one of the best controls you can have in place. The other big issue was social engineering. If you don’t effectively tackle those two things it doesn’t matter what else you do because you will be breached.

Besides that, you’re mostly right. We were all over the security updates but didn’t care for other upgrades because they introduce instability. It’s the last thing you want with thousands of endpoints and a bunch of shitty enterprise apps. Run it until the wheels fall off or it’s approaching EOL for security updates.

banking sector many of the programs are UNIX era

Somewhere in the distance a mainframe sysop with blue tie is protesting that statement but nobody's hearing him over the noise of the rotating drum.

Windows 8/8.1 was dark times for me

Maybe that was an issue with Windows 10 on the consumer side. I don't have experience with the home versions. In any case, it was a good upgrade and it provided more secure desktops for most people. On the corporate side, we were pretty happy to go to 10 and it was a smooth process. We had to do it in phases and we got a lot more calls from users wanting to move higher on the list than complaints. There were only a few asking to be last and the only real problem we had was one guy who demanded we buy him a refurbished Surface that had a specific old version of 8 pre-installed because it was "the best version ever".

Vista was pretty bad. That was another one most people skipped. They had 2 excellent releases prior to that - 2000 and XP - and then shit the bed with Vista. I still think 8 was worse though. But 2000 was my personal favorite Microsoft OS so what the hell do I know.

IIRC, it was internal Microsoft file/mail.

E: INI file in the Canary channel.

I'm not speaking to any specific reports. I just think that some day Microsoft will make it a subscription because that's where they've taken everything. You'll have to sign up for a new "w365" which will have the office suite and the OS will live in Azure. They will be like Chromebooks, but for Windows. Naturally, there will be tiers for storage and pro apps, a business tier, and a government tier.

I hope it doesn't come to that, but if it does, I don't want to be a part of it. On the business side, I think it's already headed that way. It may not be a subscription for Windows, but it will be thin clients running stuff in the cloud. It's already possible, I think it will be the mainstream someday.

This has actually been on Microsoft's internal roadmap for a while now. The bigger goal is to move to a Desktop as a Service model for Windows.

Admittedly, I did dabble a little in Ubuntu and Mint years ago, so I had some level of familiarity.

I wanted something gaming focused to minimize setup, so I went with Garuda, which is Arch based. I had some issues early on with discord and steam that I thought having a gaming centric distro would have prevented, but it didn't. If I didn't have to reinstall things I would probably switch to something more vanilla, but stick with Arch.

The file structure and cli commands have been the biggest hurdle having spent my life in a Windows environment, but it's coming along. It's weird needing to think how to do things and look up commands for things that are second nature. Like ipconfig /all in Windows. Linux has ethtools with a million switches, and ifconfig which is similar, but different. I run a Pihole docker on my unRAID server, and setting a static DNS was a pain. Some of those things which could give a new user enough problems that they just give up and go back to Windows is why I wouldn't say it's for everyone on a whim. Best to get a more user friendly distro and dabble before committing.

The odd part is that I am sure many people and businesses would not mind paying a subscription to keep there existing windows (whatever that happens to be) up to date. It would be way cheaper then making a new OS every few years.

But then they might have to accept that the technology is maturing overall....

It already just works

Is that why IBM found that it took 22 times the help desk personnel to support Windows users compared to their Mac peers?

Unfortunately for work I have to use Windows.

Damn, I feel old! :)

I've been using windows all my life and I've never seen anyone not say this about "their" version. Except ME. Fuck ME.

But seriously my dad refused to switch to Windows from DOS for the longest time. 95? The best. 98? Can't upgrade. Xp or die. 7 forever. 10 or bust. In 10 years it will be people clamoring over 11 and refusing to switch.

It has a setting to at least not show anything there but it still leaves a blank space. Seems like something that would have a mod somewhere to get rid of it.

If you dont play competitive multiplayer, Steam Deck's version of Linux runs damn near every game at this point

The Windows 11 version is called StartAllBack and makes Windows 11 much better. Annoyed I had to pay for an upgrade but it was worth it

I can only speak for myself, but as a gamer I don't have a lot of complaints with gaming on linux. If most of your games are on steam they should work fine on linux thanks to proton (and steamdeck too). Sure, if you play a lot of multiplayer games where the anti-cheat doesn't tolerate linux, then staying on windows is understandable. Outside of steam, there are other launchers, lutris and heroic, for example.

I'm personally still dual booting, because one game that I played still doesn't work on linux, but as I don't play that game anymore nor have I booted to windows in like 6 months, I might as well get rid of windows once and for all.

I mean, if you're still wanting, it's wanting.

Personally I don't really touch EA or Ubisoft so, I don't miss anything, and even if I was into them, from the looks of things, I wouldn't be missing much.

Worth checking into Steam and Nobara if you haven't.

That's a big issue for lots of people.

I will say though that Steam's Proton is amazing. I play Guild Wars 2 and all previous emulations were awful and buggy. With Proton it's no different to running in Windows.

Definitely worth a try.

I believe only one of the like 200 games I tested didn't work on linux. Everything else works except for some anticheat titles. But I'm playing titanfall 2, aoe2 and drg without any major issues. Everything else just works.

I used Arch for about a decade but I got really tired of babysitting.

Oh, that library causes crashes to such and such app, either downgrade or eat shit until it's updated again

That can be a day,... a week, a month, maybe longer.

Mint is new enough without being too new and it's polished enough without seeming like too much, like Garuda or most flavors of Ubuntu.

On a desktop system? Cost to manufacture. Simpler cores are more space-efficient per IPS (instructions per second) and thus you can squeeze more IPS on a given area of die and die area is money.

In areas where you care about power and heat budget (mobile, datacenter-scale servers) you also get advantages in those terms. What you lose is the sheer single-thread speed of the beefy CPU cores, but then not everything needs to be that fast. Small cores also keep random small loads off the beefy cores (say: move the mouse pointer) meaning that those don't have to context-switch that often meaning the get to run more instead of waiting for data.

It definitely makes sense to have a couple of them around though they're not going to make or break a CPU, at least not on the desktop. ARM processors have been using that scheme for ages (called big.LITTLE), hardly surprising seeing as practically everything mobile runs ARM. Also Linux had scheduling support for those kinds of architectures for ages, MS definitely didn't have to roll out a whole new OS version for that.

Fun side note: AMD's mini Zen 4 cores are in a sense the exact same cores as their usual Zen 4 cores: They have the same gate layout. What they do is pack them differently (and giving them half the L3 cache), achieving only ~3GHz instead of the full 5.5GHz for the full cores, but fitting two mini cores into the same area as one big core.

Honestly, I don't know. It was supposed to be power management but for all know, it could all be marketing nonsense.

Isn't 11 like less bloaty than 10? I've not noticed that much bloat compared to when I originally installed 10

The world wasn’t ready for vista

The PC and Windows became a thing because Gates cut deals with hardware OEMs to use DOS, and outsource the OS work to a company that does only microcode software, hence the name. That meant hardware devs could disentangle from high level shit and focus on the hardware, which saves them money and effort, and in exchange Microsoft gets paid via OEM license and completely locks down the PC market.

It was called the "line in the sand" when they did this with Vista. I think they have some sort of belief that if people are not needing better and better hardware the whole PC market will falter and they will not be able to sell as much software. This might even be true but as with vista this approach normally just pisses people and companies off.

Yup. It’s the Wintel juggernaut. While the license fees are much lower for pc manufacturers they are still a huge source of Windows revenue. Enterprise and cloud licenses are making it less important than it used to be, but they intend to continue to capture as much rent for windows as possible.

Win11 is more secure than prior releases, but certainly not better enough to justify buying new hardware.

The issue with that theory is that the "good" keep getting worse and the "shits" plumb the depths more and more with each cycle.

They look good when comparing it with the last one but I would say ME (I used ME as a teen I know it) was better then Vista and Vista was better then 8 and 8 was better then 11.

Microsoft decided to skip Windows 9 because, after doing a lot of research, they found that a lot of commonly used legacy software had implemented compatibility hacks which involved checking for "Windows 9" to detect when the software was running under either Windows 95 or Windows 98.

Instead of breaking a lot of software or requiring a lot of updates (some of which could even be from vendors who were no longer in business) they decided to work around the problem by just skipping straight to 10.

Edit: My mistake, I responded to the wrong comment. But I'm gonna leave it here because I already typed it.

I for one expect my computer operating system company to be able to count to at least 10.

What? if that was a good enough reason to skip 9 they could have called it something else. What happened was that marketing said 10 is cooler.

(leaving out the better NT line) :

I agree the NT line was better, but I left it out.

I hated ME so much when I had it but looking back it was not nearly as bad as say 8. And once you learn how to delete the evergrowing windows files safely it was fine.

Well as someone who also was there, I agree. That was why I wrote "first time dos was really secondary", that was not a slight on dos.

Once again, nothing new 🤣

The preinstalled bloatware in Windows is what started to sour me on the OS. It used to be you could do a fresh format and you would have a clean, crisp install. Now it has Candy Crush and Tik Tok pre-installed. The fuck is that?

This is patently false, and I don’t understand how this rumor is going around still. This started because people found code in windows 11 previews for subscription based windows. That was related to windows 11 enterprise iot. Not windows 12. Not windows 11. The iot version of windows.

Idk why anybody would use windows on embedded systems, but I also don’t know how this rumor is still going around.

Have you heard about decrapify? I highly recommend it for all new Win10 installs.

Oh it's absolutely gotten worse.

New os ass because i have to click uninstall candy crush 🤣🤣 takes 1/10 of the time needed to whine on internet about it

Steam in-home streaming might help you out for the odd game that is only works in Windows for you. You have a Windows machine with the game installed/setup, and that gets streamed to the computer of your choice over your LAN. A few of my buddies use it to play computer games on their TVs when they don't feel like sitting at their desk.

That maschine.rs tool looks intriguing, though limited to mk2 (I have mkiii). It keep seems to connect it as a midi device, for use in midi mode, which is not my main use case. I may try though. If I just want a midi pad controller there are plenty of choices beyond maschine, whose actually killer feature is full edit workflow through its own interface (connected to PC, yes, but you can avoid using the computer for the most part).

Someone mentioned darktable. I am familiar with it - it's a perfectly serviceable interface/non-destructive editor, but it's the interoperability/workflow that lightroom provides that is the secret sauce (ie - all devices, edit anywhere, sync to desktop (where I keep originals and do heavier edits) and back). I'll look at darktable again now that I have an install.

At some point (with some use cases) the Linux desktop switch becomes an exercise of putting a square peg in a round hole - an uphill battle of shoehorning in workarounds. I'm game to try - pls don't read this as being dismissive - but I've gone down this path many, many, many times.

The real answer (pie in the sky) is to get commercial product manufacturers to actually support Linux. Snaps exist (software can be done even if inefficiently), but HW requires commitment from the builders.