22 ms·

So far in the last year or so, I've heard 0 reasons why I'd even need, want or benefit from Win11 over Win10. Tons of reasons in the negative column though. The

by cronix 5y ago

So far in the last year or so, I've heard 0 reasons why I'd even need, want or benefit from Win11 over Win10. Tons of reasons in the negative column though. There isn't even anything to salivate over that might make you think it might be worth it to deal with the other tradeoffs. Hard pass.

nahconan 5y ago
[dead]
aaomidi 5y ago
Mainly wslg, which has vgpu support for consumer gpus. That's about it.
josephcsible 5y ago
Unfortunately, there's one very big reason you'll need Windows 11: that Windows 10 won't get security updates forever. After October 14th, 2025, you'll need to "upgrade" to it to stay secure.
- SECProto 5y ago
  You can get 2021 Windows 10 LTSC IoT with 10 year lifecycle[1], so Jan 2032 for security updates. [1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-10-iot-enterprise-ltsc-2021 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-...
- soco 5y ago
  That's 4 good years to wait and see.
  - xgbi 5y ago
    > That's 4 good years to see if the grass is greener on the Unix side There, I fixed it
    - lostmsu 5y ago
      If only Linux implemented GPU scheduling in that time...
      - BearOso 5y ago
        Didn’t you know? “GPU scheduling” is a change that makes the Windows driver behave more like Linux ones. There’s nothing to implement, it’s been done that way the whole time. edit That’s only if you use mesa, though. Nobody has a clue what the nvidia binary driver is up to.
        lostmsu 5y ago
        I wasn't talking about hardware GPU scheduling, that allows sending compute work to GPU using GPU features. I was talking the kind of scheduling, that prioritizes one kind of work over another as in CPU scheduling (e.g. process priorities). Linux does not do that for GPU AFAIK.
    - lowbloodsugar 5y ago
      2025: The year of the linux desktop! For sure this time!
  - aceazzameen 5y ago
    Yeah, that gives me 4 more years to investigate Linux.
  - ByThyGrace 5y ago
    I left Windows desktop for Linux two years ago, and what I realize now that took a while to happen was a shift in mentality: - When you use Windows, you consume the OS. Everything about it is given, all you do is take. - When you use Linux, you take part in a give-and-take relationship with the OS, because the OS is attached to a community that works on it, around it. Using Linux means that you're not going to have everything given to you on a silver plate. But you also get to make your own silver plate and pass it around.
    - soco 5y ago
      Probably we have very different use cases. I use my laptop to browse, edit documents, develop programs and transfer/view media files. In all these I'd very much like to not even know I have an operating system. So the major difference is I'm not using the laptop to have relationships, with it or with some community, and the less I need to fiddle outside the above use cases, the more I appreciate the experience.
- peakaboo 5y ago
  Or you can use another operating system you actually like. That way you are contributing to the solution and not the problem.
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    It sounds to me like GP wants to stay on Windows 10. I agree Linux is better, but if you want that, you can move to it whenever you want completely independent of Windows 11.
    - peakaboo 5y ago
      Pelle wants all kinds of stuff that is bad for them. Sometimes the right thing to do is to push them to change for the better. Microsoft treats their users with contempt. And I understand it because no matter the privacy or software abuse, they keep using it. Same reason people continue to use Facebook - they just don't have the spine to change their behavior and become better people who don't use shitty products.
- cronix 5y ago
  Considering the state of security in modern computing devices and the various OS's that power them, security updates mean less and less to me over time. Nothing is secure and likely won't ever be. I'd argue we're collectively less secure in 2021 than in 1995 despite massive advances in all other areas of the field.
  - tomsmeding 5y ago
    Adding features probably increases the number of bugs, but security updates generally reduce the number of (exploitable) bugs. So I think that not taking security updates is throwing the baby away with the bathwater; stay on Win10 as long as you like, but apply the security updates.
    - tentacleuno 5y ago
      You can actually block feature updates and still allow security updates on Windows 10 through GPO (Win + R, gpedit.msc). Pretty cool and somewhat little-known feature.
  - willis936 5y ago
    The flashlight is just on. 1995 computers were trivial to compromise and still are. If perfection is unattainable does that mean we should snap to the other extreme and set all of our passwords to "password"?
    - tentacleuno 5y ago
      There's a saying for this: "don't let perfect be the enemy of good"[0]. [0]: https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/don%27t+let+perfect+be+the+enemy+of+good https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/don%27t+let+perfect+be+...
    - BrS96bVxXBLzf5B 5y ago
      We would only be coming full circle. https://donhopkins.medium.com/mit-ai-lab-tourist-policy-f73b77075631 https://donhopkins.medium.com/mit-ai-lab-tourist-policy-f73b...
- jimnotgym 5y ago
  I got XP, skipped Vista, got 7, skipped 8, got 10...I think I will skip 11
  - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
    What makes you think that, say, the Edge link issue will be solved in Windows 12? It looks like Microsoft has run out of ideas and does not have enough innovation to genuinely offer anything interesting in an operating system. Besides, an OS has become a commodity, something you expect to just work, not to be excited about like in the old days of Windows 95 when people literally queued to buy their copy.
    - behnamoh 5y ago
      I mean, they could get rid of legacy designs (e.g., control panel and screen saver windows), but instead, they've focused on offering yet another design layer on top of the previous ones, which has much overlap in functionality with the previous design (e.g., you could control your bluetooth both in Control Panel and in the new settings app). You'd think MS would be able to unify all this mess and consolidate Windows settings, but no.
      - tjalfi 5y ago
        > You'd think MS would be able to unify all this mess and consolidate Windows settings, but no. Removing or redesigning the Control Panel would break third-party apps that rely on the existing structure; Raymond Chen's blog[0] has mentioned apps doing this. [0] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/
    - FridayoLeary 5y ago
      Do you think that the OS is dead, or almost dead? That would lead to decades of stagnation, followed by a race to the bottom. If that's true Windows should become a dumpster fire. And the linux desktop will solve everything, just decades too late.
- causality0 5y ago
  Good news, in four years I run out of reasons not to go back to Windows 7, an OS that doesn't treat me with naked contempt.
  - NullPrefix 5y ago
    they pushed updates for windowns 7 to nag windows 10 upgrade
    - cheschire 5y ago
      If you setup a VM with WSUS, you can use that to setup an ideal install that is missing the annoying updates. If you capture an image right after doing that, you'll never need to install again.
      - NullPrefix 5y ago
        You need to know which updates are bad and which are OKish. I assume there's a list somewhere, right?
    - StillBored 5y ago
      Just block that update, something i'm not sure you can even do with 10..
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  That gives me four years for the tools that lock me to Windows to decide to port to literally any other OS.
  - willis936 5y ago
    I'm not old and I have lived to see this sentiment come and go at least twice before. We're still on Windows.
    - Lorkki 5y ago
      On the other hand, some of it sticks. For one thing, gaming on Linux has improved by leaps and bounds approximately since the announcement of Windows 10.
      - thrower123 5y ago
        Gaming on Linux gave up on trying to build native ports and Valve put some real effort into making their Windows compatibility layer that sits on Linux good.
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      Then why wait? Programs like Photoshop and Ableton Live work just fine through WINE. I have a hard time imagining what kind of software you can't replace on modern Linux...
      - neltnerb 5y ago
        Even LabView runs natively on Linux now, so my reason for the last fifteen years may draw to a close soon. Microsoft decided to put Office in the cloud, so don't need Windows for that anymore... VMware is also quite good if WINE isn't good enough for some reason. There's some rare expensive equipment that doesn't have Linux support (I'm talking $100k mechanical testing equipment and CNC machines) but those only need one computer each. Of course those probably won't support Windows 11 either, they barely supported Windows 10.
      - 5y ago
- sva_ 5y ago
  I wonder if people could sue Microsoft into offering security updates past that date, on the basis that MS did some big marketing about calling Win10 the "last" windows version.
- squarefoot 5y ago
  Sadly there are no guarantees that these nice "features" won't be backported to Win10 as well, just like they did with telemetry in Windows 7.
- userbinator 5y ago
  Don't let the "security" FUD scare you. I bet 99% of malware infections are from people running stuff they should know better than to. Turn off all listening services, use a firewall, and keep JS off by default. I can't wait to see how many new exploits are introduced by all the new features of Win11 which are in a seemingly half-done state... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28404332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28404332
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    Are you seriously calling security patches FUD? This is the worst advice I've ever heard on HN.
    - voussoir 5y ago
      After several years of "essential security updates" being unconditionally bundled with hostile, anti-user changes in both the desktop and mobile space, it is no surprise that some of us will start to assume that the security updates are not actually so essential. With software from github or f-droid, I look forward to updates and check frequently, because I trust the developers to make good software and I can revert if necessary. With software from microsoft or google, I dread updates and disable them, because I trust the developers to make bad software with no practical means of reverting.
    - antifa 5y ago
      Like the other user said, we've entered an age where the "security update" is the malware.
- MrStonedOne 5y ago
  People will choose to be insecure then inconvenienced.
dragontamer 5y ago
Alder Lake needed a new scheduler. So any 12th generation Intel build will greatly benefit from Win11 scheduler over Win10.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  Microsoft could have given us the new scheduler without all the antifeatures, but they didn't.
  - jaywalk 5y ago
    You can say that about the vast majority of upgrades that come with a new OS version if you isolate them. But at the end of the day, they are going to end up bundling a bunch of upgrades together to form a new OS version for a variety of reasons that usually aren't strictly technical.
  - viraptor 5y ago
    That was the original plan with win10 being the rolling "last version". It's a shame they reverted.
- cronix 5y ago
  This is my first PC build, out of about 15-20 or so in the last 30 years going back to the 386sx16, that does not have an intel processor. I'm very happy with the price/performance of the 5950x.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    Eventually, AMD's architecture is going to change and the OS will need a shift with it. Intel just had a major change between gen11 and gen12, so its the most obvious technical reason that warrants an update. But AMD Zen4 (or whatever happens for Zen5) could also need a similar scheduler update... or if not, maybe some other I/O change. ----------- If your hardware never changes, you can keep using the OS from years and years ago. But as hardware details change, it only makes sense to update the OS with the hardware. Just as Linux 5.x has all sorts of updates over Linux 4 or Linux 3, so too does Windows need to change to keep up with the pace of hardware changes.
PostThisTooFast 5y ago
Windows has become a disgraceful pile of defects, in both design and function. Combine that fact with the lack of fundamental applications (Windows doesn't even ship with a functional E-mail program), and you get a shitty, useless computing experience. Mac or Linux. Windows is dead.
zionic 5y ago
If you're a gamer autoHDR and direct storage support are both wins. Also, if you have alder lake you want the new scheduler.
- mehlmao 5y ago
  My understanding is that Windows 11 doesn't have Direct Storage yet, and they've announced that it will come to Windows 10 as well.
sydney6 5y ago
The most common reason i've heard has been: "Yeah, but it's so much more biutiful than Windows 10." But then again, this appears to work quite well for Microsoft.
jjcm 5y ago
I've been using Win11 now for about a week (so take this with a grain of salt) and one positive I've noticed has been a far better UX. OSX has made a ton of leaps and bounds for optimizing controls for how you use your computer, and it felt like windows 10 was lagging behind quite a bit in the last year. Windows 11 addressed a lot of these grievances. Browser overrides like this are definitely in the negative UX column, but better bluetooth controls, a new consolidated settings panel, and smoother window management are all positives for me. FWIW I haven't hit a situation where I've been forced into edge (yet).
- Guillaume86 5y ago
  The new taskbar UX is a huge downgrade compared to my "always ungrouped" taskbar in Windows 10, hope the add it back before I'm forced to upgrade.
  - soco 5y ago
    StartIsBack gives you back the left-side placement, drag&drop and grouping.
    - tyingq 5y ago
      You can do the left-side placement with just Windows 11. There's a "taskbar alignment" setting that can be "left" or "center".
      - soco 5y ago
        It's not "a setting" but an obscure registry entry. And have you actually tried it? I did and it's a joke - you get the taskbar there but no icons on it lol. And how about drag and drop? Or grouping?
        tyingq 5y ago
        For me, it's a setting, and yes, I tried it and it works: https://imgur.com/a/QSxE92W https://imgur.com/a/QSxE92W I didn't mention the other two things because they aren't available settings. I mentioned the one that is, because I thought it might be helpful. Aside: Why do people jump to snark so fast?
josefresco 5y ago
I've ignored the prompt to update to Windows 11 for a couple weeks now. This morning it gave me just two options "no" or "now". There was no clear option to "remind me later". Maybe they just continue to nag you, but it wasn't clear to me as a user.
cptskippy 5y ago
Windows 11 is just another Microsoft operating system setting the groundwork for a generational leap just like Windows ME, Windows Vista, and Windows 8. IMO it is designed to not be widely adopted. When Windows ME was released, it was little more than a reskin of Windows 98 that removed or disabled much of the 16 bit capabilities and support for the ISA architecture in favor of 32 bit and PCI. It couldn't be installed on most existing machines and was highly unstable on those that it would run on. Windows Vista wasn't much different. It was a crappy skin and a new desktop composition paradigm requiring better underlying graphics hardware than Intel was providing at the time. Many systems couldn't upgrade to it and those that did had stability issues due to immature graphics drivers. Windows 8 was similar, it introduced a newer kernel design that fully extracted Win32 out to userland. It also introduced Metro and other modern elements that weren't bound to IA32/IA64. It was primarily targeted at modern single screen touch enabled devices and didn't work well as an upgrade or on desktop PCs. They eventually shipped Windows 8.1 which was largely a refinement of 8 that was arguably the test bed for extending Windows 8 concepts to the desktop.
- einr 5y ago
  When Windows ME was released, it was little more than a reskin of Windows 98 that removed or disabled much of the 16 bit capabilities and support for the ISA architecture in favor of 32 bit and PCI. It couldn't be installed on most existing machines and was highly unstable on those that it would run on. Very little of this is true. Windows ME runs all the 16-bit code you can throw at it and supports all ISA devices identically to 95 and 98. Windows 9x were just as 32-bit as ME and supported PCI just fine. The only thing they removed support for was booting into real-mode DOS, and started ignoring your autoexec.bat and config.sys files for the most part. You can hack that back into the OS pretty trivially, it's purely cosmetic and has nothing to do with the underlying architecture. They probably did this in an attempt to hide its creaky MS-DOS roots, and to get customers more used to not being able to run pure DOS before the inevitable shift to NT. Windows ME was a product even Microsoft seemingly didn't really want to make -- nothing but a last-minute stopgap measure until they got XP ready. No one liked it at the time as it was basically Windows 98 but worse. There are some good parts, though -- improved USB support, for instance -- and therefore there are now projects that "backport" features from Windows ME to Windows 98 so you can get the best of both worlds.
jccalhoun 5y ago
I updated to 11 on my laptop but kept 10 on my main machine. I see zero reason to update my main computer to 11. I was willing to give centered start button a try but the fact that you can't turn off grouping of applications in the taskbar is a deal breaker. If I have two firefox windows open I want to know it and to be able to pick which one I want without having to hover my mouse over the icon for a second while the picture of the windows pops up. So I installed Explorer patcher to get the old taskbar back https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher Other than that the only feature of 11 that I have used is the snap zones. And I guess if I want that I can install the power toy it is based on.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- GordonS 5y ago
  > the fact that you can't turn off grouping of applications in the taskbar is a deal breaker Ach, that's a deal breaker for me too - it's one of the first things I disable on a new Win10 install. I didn't know about this, so thanks for giving me another reason to stick with 10!
- delecti 5y ago
  If you use the Windows+# shortcuts it's pretty easy to navigate multiple instances of an application. I don't know how the ordering works with the centered start button, but traditionally, the left-most application can be switched to by pushing Win+1. The second instance of the first can be switched to by holding Win and then pushing 1 twice. That's been available since Vista. I don't want to excuse taking options away from users, but there are workarounds.
  - frosted-flakes 5y ago
    It still works this way, but I find having to figure out which number to press is too slow. There's a utility that adds numbers to the taskbar buttons when the start key is held down, called 7+ Taskbar Numberer, but it doesn't work on Windows 11. https://ramensoftware.com/7-taskbar-numberer https://ramensoftware.com/7-taskbar-numberer
rbreaves 5y ago
I have 1 reason. ConPTY - it simply works better on Windows 11. VSCode actually respects mouse support under 11 w/ POSIX compliant terminals - but not under 10. That is it, and for RDP but 10 did equally well with RDP, except for the ConPTY support being broken. So all in all the main reason I use 11 is for better mouse support in terminals that finally puts Windows on the same playing level as macOS or Linux for me. I still hate the OS, but at least it is usable after countless hours of doing other fixes.
tyingq 5y ago
The "wslg" version of WSL, which comes with a Wayland display server built-in, is perhaps a driver. The github page still says it requires Windows 11: https://github.com/microsoft/wslg https://github.com/microsoft/wslg Though I suppose it's possible they've also pushed it to the insider builds for Windows 10.
- cma 5y ago
  Apparently they are only going to allow gpu compute on wsl2 on windows 10 and not allow the full graphics integration.
  - tyingq 5y ago
    Ah that's dumb. One of the best things about wslg is pretty pedestrian, but very helpful. You can make Windows shortcuts to launch applications in a very easy way now. Within the "Target:" setting, for a shortcut, just "wslg.exe /some/program -args". No wrappers, no setting DISPLAY, no calling /bin/sh -c "whatever", etc.
  - nyanpasu64 5y ago
    I'm hoping someone will develop an unofficial tool to unlock wslg on Windows 10.
Bluecobra 5y ago
Indeed, I'm going to try holding out on Windows 10 until the next version. Win11 seems like another Vista or Windows 8 to me so far. I can't even run Win11 with my current hardware anyways for silly arbitrary reasons. I have an Intel Skylake CPU + need to boot over legacy BIOS due to a on-board RAID. Both work completely fine and my PC is still performant enough, but don't meet the requirements.
ocdtrekkie 5y ago
Yeah, I'm sure over the next few years there will be things that come out worth having, but especially while both are supported it is mostly a new coat of paint with a higher minimum system requirement. Eventually we'll be there, but there's no incentive to get there right now.
GhettoComputers 5y ago
Free update. Better Linux subsystem support, an android emulator better than anything on Linux, good performance, easy to bypass TPM, lots of software support (since it’s emulating Linux lol). I say this as a Linux user who doesn’t use windows except for some Win only programs that VM and wine can’t run.
bastardoperator 5y ago
Bruh, they have new UI on top of the other 12 UI kits and gaming performance is worse. What more could you want?
gentleman11 5y ago
It will be the same reason you updated windows years ago: some driver or piece of software will only work in windows 11, and you will be forced to switch. I have two machines: windows for gaming and work, Linux for everything else. My Linux machine is wonderful, sometimes even for gaming, but my windows machine won’t stop doing web searches via bing when I try to use the search bar, and won’t stop trying to swap my browser, and keeps reverting my privacy settings
krautsourced 5y ago
Whether these are reasons for you I can't say, for me it's: - proper support of dual monitor setups (particularly via Displayport) and remembering window positions - WSL2 integration (it really does work great) - eventual drop of Win 10 support Not great: - new taskbar is meh - preferences are still all over the place
metasaval 5y ago
I'm on W11 as well and enjoy it over W10 for a variety of reasons (mostly gaming and HDR related), but instead of adding to that noise I just wanted to point out that this change is in Windows 10 as well. From the link, last sentence in the second paragraph: "As it turns out, Microsoft slipped the update into the final patch Tuesday of 2021 for both Windows 10 and Windows 11."
- winternett 5y ago
  My HD runs incessantly on Win10, it's SATA, not SSD. Win 10 already pushed out an upgrade ad on my desktop today to my dismay, just installed win10 2 weeks ago, because I no longer had a choice. Most of the time the HD grind is caused by Chrome scanning my files, but still, I wonder if all the verbose logging and tracking that Win 10+ does now is what made them recommend upgrading to SSDs for the OS'es. I'm also pretty sure that Win11 has a lot of structural changes made to eventually inject ads into everything as a back-up MS-Revenue Stream plan, so I'll wait for the usual mandatory to update anyway, after there is no longer a choice.
  - Bigpet 5y ago
    Win 10 since the first insider builds was a terrible experience on mechanical HDDs. Maybe it's their devs not having HDDs anymore. Who knows. I'm pretty sure it's not the volume of data being read/written. Just a lot of more smaller reads/writes or less attempts at latency-hiding. Be it the anti-malware, less carefully written system apps or whatever. I think especially XAML stuff had terrible start-up times on HDDs. I remember filing a feedback item because after booting up my laptop it took more than 40s to open up calculator.
anotheraccount9 5y ago
I still keep a copy of windows to test out viruses and trojan horses. It's a great operating system.
IIAOPSW 5y ago
Other than security updates, there hasn't been an enticing reason to update since XP. The fact that XP was still in use by so many people and orgs after it was officially no longer supported proves the point.
munk-a 5y ago
The lack of any ability to move the task bar to the side of a screen is killing me on Win11. As an ADD person who has spent years training myself to glance to the right for notifications it's been really breaking my workflow by making it difficult to ignore various applications beeping and blooping.
fomine3 5y ago
I upgraded to Win11 for supporting A2DP AAC codec. I'm fine with new explorer, angry for new taskbar and start menu. Nothing is improved for those but just degrade.
teawrecks 5y ago
Same for 7 to 10. At some point it will be the only supported version of windows and you'll have to upgrade. There's always Linux ;)
pojzon 5y ago
We said the same about Win7 and Win10, yet here we are!
- forgotmyoldname 5y ago
  I think many people would upgrade from Windows 10 to 7 if they had the choice.
- MrStonedOne 5y ago
  I'm still on 7 and never gonna upgrade.
cookiengineer 5y ago
How far has ReactOS [1] come, btw? I mean, at some point they converge to the featureset of Windows 7, and then Microsoft has no business model anymore when it comes to stability and time-of-life; which was the previous reason industries chose Windows over alternatives. [1] https://reactos.org/ https://reactos.org/
randomNumber7 5y ago
You'll be forced to update sooner or later anyway. So microsucks doesn't give a shit about that.
z3ncyberpunk 5y ago
Quite a bit of exaggeration here. Im using it for WSL and development. Much better than WSL on Win10 and the OS itself is definitely a nice UX update to Win 10

by cronix 5y ago

nahconan 5y ago

[dead]

aaomidi 5y ago

Mainly wslg, which has vgpu support for consumer gpus. That's about it.

josephcsible 5y ago

Unfortunately, there's one very big reason you'll need Windows 11: that Windows 10 won't get security updates forever. After October 14th, 2025, you'll need to "upgrade" to it to stay secure.

SECProto 5y ago
You can get 2021 Windows 10 LTSC IoT with 10 year lifecycle[1], so Jan 2032 for security updates. [1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-10-iot-enterprise-ltsc-2021 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-...
soco 5y ago
That's 4 good years to wait and see.
- xgbi 5y ago
  > That's 4 good years to see if the grass is greener on the Unix side There, I fixed it
  - lostmsu 5y ago
    If only Linux implemented GPU scheduling in that time...
    - BearOso 5y ago
      Didn’t you know? “GPU scheduling” is a change that makes the Windows driver behave more like Linux ones. There’s nothing to implement, it’s been done that way the whole time. edit That’s only if you use mesa, though. Nobody has a clue what the nvidia binary driver is up to.
      - lostmsu 5y ago
        I wasn't talking about hardware GPU scheduling, that allows sending compute work to GPU using GPU features. I was talking the kind of scheduling, that prioritizes one kind of work over another as in CPU scheduling (e.g. process priorities). Linux does not do that for GPU AFAIK.
  - lowbloodsugar 5y ago
    2025: The year of the linux desktop! For sure this time!
- aceazzameen 5y ago
  Yeah, that gives me 4 more years to investigate Linux.
- ByThyGrace 5y ago
  I left Windows desktop for Linux two years ago, and what I realize now that took a while to happen was a shift in mentality: - When you use Windows, you consume the OS. Everything about it is given, all you do is take. - When you use Linux, you take part in a give-and-take relationship with the OS, because the OS is attached to a community that works on it, around it. Using Linux means that you're not going to have everything given to you on a silver plate. But you also get to make your own silver plate and pass it around.
  - soco 5y ago
    Probably we have very different use cases. I use my laptop to browse, edit documents, develop programs and transfer/view media files. In all these I'd very much like to not even know I have an operating system. So the major difference is I'm not using the laptop to have relationships, with it or with some community, and the less I need to fiddle outside the above use cases, the more I appreciate the experience.
peakaboo 5y ago
Or you can use another operating system you actually like. That way you are contributing to the solution and not the problem.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  It sounds to me like GP wants to stay on Windows 10. I agree Linux is better, but if you want that, you can move to it whenever you want completely independent of Windows 11.
  - peakaboo 5y ago
    Pelle wants all kinds of stuff that is bad for them. Sometimes the right thing to do is to push them to change for the better. Microsoft treats their users with contempt. And I understand it because no matter the privacy or software abuse, they keep using it. Same reason people continue to use Facebook - they just don't have the spine to change their behavior and become better people who don't use shitty products.
cronix 5y ago
Considering the state of security in modern computing devices and the various OS's that power them, security updates mean less and less to me over time. Nothing is secure and likely won't ever be. I'd argue we're collectively less secure in 2021 than in 1995 despite massive advances in all other areas of the field.
- tomsmeding 5y ago
  Adding features probably increases the number of bugs, but security updates generally reduce the number of (exploitable) bugs. So I think that not taking security updates is throwing the baby away with the bathwater; stay on Win10 as long as you like, but apply the security updates.
  - tentacleuno 5y ago
    You can actually block feature updates and still allow security updates on Windows 10 through GPO (Win + R, gpedit.msc). Pretty cool and somewhat little-known feature.
- willis936 5y ago
  The flashlight is just on. 1995 computers were trivial to compromise and still are. If perfection is unattainable does that mean we should snap to the other extreme and set all of our passwords to "password"?
  - tentacleuno 5y ago
    There's a saying for this: "don't let perfect be the enemy of good"[0]. [0]: https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/don%27t+let+perfect+be+the+enemy+of+good https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/don%27t+let+perfect+be+...
  - BrS96bVxXBLzf5B 5y ago
    We would only be coming full circle. https://donhopkins.medium.com/mit-ai-lab-tourist-policy-f73b77075631 https://donhopkins.medium.com/mit-ai-lab-tourist-policy-f73b...
jimnotgym 5y ago
I got XP, skipped Vista, got 7, skipped 8, got 10...I think I will skip 11
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  What makes you think that, say, the Edge link issue will be solved in Windows 12? It looks like Microsoft has run out of ideas and does not have enough innovation to genuinely offer anything interesting in an operating system. Besides, an OS has become a commodity, something you expect to just work, not to be excited about like in the old days of Windows 95 when people literally queued to buy their copy.
  - behnamoh 5y ago
    I mean, they could get rid of legacy designs (e.g., control panel and screen saver windows), but instead, they've focused on offering yet another design layer on top of the previous ones, which has much overlap in functionality with the previous design (e.g., you could control your bluetooth both in Control Panel and in the new settings app). You'd think MS would be able to unify all this mess and consolidate Windows settings, but no.
    - tjalfi 5y ago
      > You'd think MS would be able to unify all this mess and consolidate Windows settings, but no. Removing or redesigning the Control Panel would break third-party apps that rely on the existing structure; Raymond Chen's blog[0] has mentioned apps doing this. [0] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/
  - FridayoLeary 5y ago
    Do you think that the OS is dead, or almost dead? That would lead to decades of stagnation, followed by a race to the bottom. If that's true Windows should become a dumpster fire. And the linux desktop will solve everything, just decades too late.
causality0 5y ago
Good news, in four years I run out of reasons not to go back to Windows 7, an OS that doesn't treat me with naked contempt.
- NullPrefix 5y ago
  they pushed updates for windowns 7 to nag windows 10 upgrade
  - cheschire 5y ago
    If you setup a VM with WSUS, you can use that to setup an ideal install that is missing the annoying updates. If you capture an image right after doing that, you'll never need to install again.
    - NullPrefix 5y ago
      You need to know which updates are bad and which are OKish. I assume there's a list somewhere, right?
  - StillBored 5y ago
    Just block that update, something i'm not sure you can even do with 10..
InitialLastName 5y ago
That gives me four years for the tools that lock me to Windows to decide to port to literally any other OS.
- willis936 5y ago
  I'm not old and I have lived to see this sentiment come and go at least twice before. We're still on Windows.
  - Lorkki 5y ago
    On the other hand, some of it sticks. For one thing, gaming on Linux has improved by leaps and bounds approximately since the announcement of Windows 10.
    - thrower123 5y ago
      Gaming on Linux gave up on trying to build native ports and Valve put some real effort into making their Windows compatibility layer that sits on Linux good.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    Then why wait? Programs like Photoshop and Ableton Live work just fine through WINE. I have a hard time imagining what kind of software you can't replace on modern Linux...
    - neltnerb 5y ago
      Even LabView runs natively on Linux now, so my reason for the last fifteen years may draw to a close soon. Microsoft decided to put Office in the cloud, so don't need Windows for that anymore... VMware is also quite good if WINE isn't good enough for some reason. There's some rare expensive equipment that doesn't have Linux support (I'm talking $100k mechanical testing equipment and CNC machines) but those only need one computer each. Of course those probably won't support Windows 11 either, they barely supported Windows 10.
    - 5y ago
sva_ 5y ago
I wonder if people could sue Microsoft into offering security updates past that date, on the basis that MS did some big marketing about calling Win10 the "last" windows version.
squarefoot 5y ago
Sadly there are no guarantees that these nice "features" won't be backported to Win10 as well, just like they did with telemetry in Windows 7.
userbinator 5y ago
Don't let the "security" FUD scare you. I bet 99% of malware infections are from people running stuff they should know better than to. Turn off all listening services, use a firewall, and keep JS off by default. I can't wait to see how many new exploits are introduced by all the new features of Win11 which are in a seemingly half-done state... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28404332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28404332
- josephcsible 5y ago
  Are you seriously calling security patches FUD? This is the worst advice I've ever heard on HN.
  - voussoir 5y ago
    After several years of "essential security updates" being unconditionally bundled with hostile, anti-user changes in both the desktop and mobile space, it is no surprise that some of us will start to assume that the security updates are not actually so essential. With software from github or f-droid, I look forward to updates and check frequently, because I trust the developers to make good software and I can revert if necessary. With software from microsoft or google, I dread updates and disable them, because I trust the developers to make bad software with no practical means of reverting.
  - antifa 5y ago
    Like the other user said, we've entered an age where the "security update" is the malware.
MrStonedOne 5y ago
People will choose to be insecure then inconvenienced.

dragontamer 5y ago

Alder Lake needed a new scheduler. So any 12th generation Intel build will greatly benefit from Win11 scheduler over Win10.

josephcsible 5y ago
Microsoft could have given us the new scheduler without all the antifeatures, but they didn't.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  You can say that about the vast majority of upgrades that come with a new OS version if you isolate them. But at the end of the day, they are going to end up bundling a bunch of upgrades together to form a new OS version for a variety of reasons that usually aren't strictly technical.
- viraptor 5y ago
  That was the original plan with win10 being the rolling "last version". It's a shame they reverted.
cronix 5y ago
This is my first PC build, out of about 15-20 or so in the last 30 years going back to the 386sx16, that does not have an intel processor. I'm very happy with the price/performance of the 5950x.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  Eventually, AMD's architecture is going to change and the OS will need a shift with it. Intel just had a major change between gen11 and gen12, so its the most obvious technical reason that warrants an update. But AMD Zen4 (or whatever happens for Zen5) could also need a similar scheduler update... or if not, maybe some other I/O change. ----------- If your hardware never changes, you can keep using the OS from years and years ago. But as hardware details change, it only makes sense to update the OS with the hardware. Just as Linux 5.x has all sorts of updates over Linux 4 or Linux 3, so too does Windows need to change to keep up with the pace of hardware changes.

PostThisTooFast 5y ago

Windows has become a disgraceful pile of defects, in both design and function. Combine that fact with the lack of fundamental applications (Windows doesn't even ship with a functional E-mail program), and you get a shitty, useless computing experience. Mac or Linux. Windows is dead.

zionic 5y ago

If you're a gamer autoHDR and direct storage support are both wins. Also, if you have alder lake you want the new scheduler.

mehlmao 5y ago
My understanding is that Windows 11 doesn't have Direct Storage yet, and they've announced that it will come to Windows 10 as well.

sydney6 5y ago

The most common reason i've heard has been: "Yeah, but it's so much more biutiful than Windows 10." But then again, this appears to work quite well for Microsoft.

jjcm 5y ago

I've been using Win11 now for about a week (so take this with a grain of salt) and one positive I've noticed has been a far better UX. OSX has made a ton of leaps and bounds for optimizing controls for how you use your computer, and it felt like windows 10 was lagging behind quite a bit in the last year. Windows 11 addressed a lot of these grievances. Browser overrides like this are definitely in the negative UX column, but better bluetooth controls, a new consolidated settings panel, and smoother window management are all positives for me. FWIW I haven't hit a situation where I've been forced into edge (yet).

Guillaume86 5y ago
The new taskbar UX is a huge downgrade compared to my "always ungrouped" taskbar in Windows 10, hope the add it back before I'm forced to upgrade.
- soco 5y ago
  StartIsBack gives you back the left-side placement, drag&drop and grouping.
  - tyingq 5y ago
    You can do the left-side placement with just Windows 11. There's a "taskbar alignment" setting that can be "left" or "center".
    - soco 5y ago
      It's not "a setting" but an obscure registry entry. And have you actually tried it? I did and it's a joke - you get the taskbar there but no icons on it lol. And how about drag and drop? Or grouping?
      - tyingq 5y ago
        For me, it's a setting, and yes, I tried it and it works: https://imgur.com/a/QSxE92W https://imgur.com/a/QSxE92W I didn't mention the other two things because they aren't available settings. I mentioned the one that is, because I thought it might be helpful. Aside: Why do people jump to snark so fast?

josefresco 5y ago

I've ignored the prompt to update to Windows 11 for a couple weeks now. This morning it gave me just two options "no" or "now". There was no clear option to "remind me later". Maybe they just continue to nag you, but it wasn't clear to me as a user.

cptskippy 5y ago

Windows 11 is just another Microsoft operating system setting the groundwork for a generational leap just like Windows ME, Windows Vista, and Windows 8. IMO it is designed to not be widely adopted. When Windows ME was released, it was little more than a reskin of Windows 98 that removed or disabled much of the 16 bit capabilities and support for the ISA architecture in favor of 32 bit and PCI. It couldn't be installed on most existing machines and was highly unstable on those that it would run on. Windows Vista wasn't much different. It was a crappy skin and a new desktop composition paradigm requiring better underlying graphics hardware than Intel was providing at the time. Many systems couldn't upgrade to it and those that did had stability issues due to immature graphics drivers. Windows 8 was similar, it introduced a newer kernel design that fully extracted Win32 out to userland. It also introduced Metro and other modern elements that weren't bound to IA32/IA64. It was primarily targeted at modern single screen touch enabled devices and didn't work well as an upgrade or on desktop PCs. They eventually shipped Windows 8.1 which was largely a refinement of 8 that was arguably the test bed for extending Windows 8 concepts to the desktop.

einr 5y ago
When Windows ME was released, it was little more than a reskin of Windows 98 that removed or disabled much of the 16 bit capabilities and support for the ISA architecture in favor of 32 bit and PCI. It couldn't be installed on most existing machines and was highly unstable on those that it would run on. Very little of this is true. Windows ME runs all the 16-bit code you can throw at it and supports all ISA devices identically to 95 and 98. Windows 9x were just as 32-bit as ME and supported PCI just fine. The only thing they removed support for was booting into real-mode DOS, and started ignoring your autoexec.bat and config.sys files for the most part. You can hack that back into the OS pretty trivially, it's purely cosmetic and has nothing to do with the underlying architecture. They probably did this in an attempt to hide its creaky MS-DOS roots, and to get customers more used to not being able to run pure DOS before the inevitable shift to NT. Windows ME was a product even Microsoft seemingly didn't really want to make -- nothing but a last-minute stopgap measure until they got XP ready. No one liked it at the time as it was basically Windows 98 but worse. There are some good parts, though -- improved USB support, for instance -- and therefore there are now projects that "backport" features from Windows ME to Windows 98 so you can get the best of both worlds.

jccalhoun 5y ago

I updated to 11 on my laptop but kept 10 on my main machine. I see zero reason to update my main computer to 11. I was willing to give centered start button a try but the fact that you can't turn off grouping of applications in the taskbar is a deal breaker. If I have two firefox windows open I want to know it and to be able to pick which one I want without having to hover my mouse over the icon for a second while the picture of the windows pops up. So I installed Explorer patcher to get the old taskbar back https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher Other than that the only feature of 11 that I have used is the snap zones. And I guess if I want that I can install the power toy it is based on.

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GordonS 5y ago
> the fact that you can't turn off grouping of applications in the taskbar is a deal breaker Ach, that's a deal breaker for me too - it's one of the first things I disable on a new Win10 install. I didn't know about this, so thanks for giving me another reason to stick with 10!
delecti 5y ago
If you use the Windows+# shortcuts it's pretty easy to navigate multiple instances of an application. I don't know how the ordering works with the centered start button, but traditionally, the left-most application can be switched to by pushing Win+1. The second instance of the first can be switched to by holding Win and then pushing 1 twice. That's been available since Vista. I don't want to excuse taking options away from users, but there are workarounds.
- frosted-flakes 5y ago
  It still works this way, but I find having to figure out which number to press is too slow. There's a utility that adds numbers to the taskbar buttons when the start key is held down, called 7+ Taskbar Numberer, but it doesn't work on Windows 11. https://ramensoftware.com/7-taskbar-numberer https://ramensoftware.com/7-taskbar-numberer

rbreaves 5y ago

I have 1 reason. ConPTY - it simply works better on Windows 11. VSCode actually respects mouse support under 11 w/ POSIX compliant terminals - but not under 10. That is it, and for RDP but 10 did equally well with RDP, except for the ConPTY support being broken. So all in all the main reason I use 11 is for better mouse support in terminals that finally puts Windows on the same playing level as macOS or Linux for me. I still hate the OS, but at least it is usable after countless hours of doing other fixes.

tyingq 5y ago

The "wslg" version of WSL, which comes with a Wayland display server built-in, is perhaps a driver. The github page still says it requires Windows 11: https://github.com/microsoft/wslg https://github.com/microsoft/wslg Though I suppose it's possible they've also pushed it to the insider builds for Windows 10.

cma 5y ago
Apparently they are only going to allow gpu compute on wsl2 on windows 10 and not allow the full graphics integration.
- tyingq 5y ago
  Ah that's dumb. One of the best things about wslg is pretty pedestrian, but very helpful. You can make Windows shortcuts to launch applications in a very easy way now. Within the "Target:" setting, for a shortcut, just "wslg.exe /some/program -args". No wrappers, no setting DISPLAY, no calling /bin/sh -c "whatever", etc.
- nyanpasu64 5y ago
  I'm hoping someone will develop an unofficial tool to unlock wslg on Windows 10.

Bluecobra 5y ago

Indeed, I'm going to try holding out on Windows 10 until the next version. Win11 seems like another Vista or Windows 8 to me so far. I can't even run Win11 with my current hardware anyways for silly arbitrary reasons. I have an Intel Skylake CPU + need to boot over legacy BIOS due to a on-board RAID. Both work completely fine and my PC is still performant enough, but don't meet the requirements.

ocdtrekkie 5y ago

Yeah, I'm sure over the next few years there will be things that come out worth having, but especially while both are supported it is mostly a new coat of paint with a higher minimum system requirement. Eventually we'll be there, but there's no incentive to get there right now.

GhettoComputers 5y ago

Free update. Better Linux subsystem support, an android emulator better than anything on Linux, good performance, easy to bypass TPM, lots of software support (since it’s emulating Linux lol). I say this as a Linux user who doesn’t use windows except for some Win only programs that VM and wine can’t run.

bastardoperator 5y ago

Bruh, they have new UI on top of the other 12 UI kits and gaming performance is worse. What more could you want?

gentleman11 5y ago

It will be the same reason you updated windows years ago: some driver or piece of software will only work in windows 11, and you will be forced to switch. I have two machines: windows for gaming and work, Linux for everything else. My Linux machine is wonderful, sometimes even for gaming, but my windows machine won’t stop doing web searches via bing when I try to use the search bar, and won’t stop trying to swap my browser, and keeps reverting my privacy settings

krautsourced 5y ago

Whether these are reasons for you I can't say, for me it's: - proper support of dual monitor setups (particularly via Displayport) and remembering window positions - WSL2 integration (it really does work great) - eventual drop of Win 10 support Not great: - new taskbar is meh - preferences are still all over the place

metasaval 5y ago

I'm on W11 as well and enjoy it over W10 for a variety of reasons (mostly gaming and HDR related), but instead of adding to that noise I just wanted to point out that this change is in Windows 10 as well. From the link, last sentence in the second paragraph: "As it turns out, Microsoft slipped the update into the final patch Tuesday of 2021 for both Windows 10 and Windows 11."

winternett 5y ago
My HD runs incessantly on Win10, it's SATA, not SSD. Win 10 already pushed out an upgrade ad on my desktop today to my dismay, just installed win10 2 weeks ago, because I no longer had a choice. Most of the time the HD grind is caused by Chrome scanning my files, but still, I wonder if all the verbose logging and tracking that Win 10+ does now is what made them recommend upgrading to SSDs for the OS'es. I'm also pretty sure that Win11 has a lot of structural changes made to eventually inject ads into everything as a back-up MS-Revenue Stream plan, so I'll wait for the usual mandatory to update anyway, after there is no longer a choice.
- Bigpet 5y ago
  Win 10 since the first insider builds was a terrible experience on mechanical HDDs. Maybe it's their devs not having HDDs anymore. Who knows. I'm pretty sure it's not the volume of data being read/written. Just a lot of more smaller reads/writes or less attempts at latency-hiding. Be it the anti-malware, less carefully written system apps or whatever. I think especially XAML stuff had terrible start-up times on HDDs. I remember filing a feedback item because after booting up my laptop it took more than 40s to open up calculator.

anotheraccount9 5y ago

I still keep a copy of windows to test out viruses and trojan horses. It's a great operating system.

IIAOPSW 5y ago

Other than security updates, there hasn't been an enticing reason to update since XP. The fact that XP was still in use by so many people and orgs after it was officially no longer supported proves the point.

munk-a 5y ago

The lack of any ability to move the task bar to the side of a screen is killing me on Win11. As an ADD person who has spent years training myself to glance to the right for notifications it's been really breaking my workflow by making it difficult to ignore various applications beeping and blooping.

fomine3 5y ago

I upgraded to Win11 for supporting A2DP AAC codec. I'm fine with new explorer, angry for new taskbar and start menu. Nothing is improved for those but just degrade.

teawrecks 5y ago

Same for 7 to 10. At some point it will be the only supported version of windows and you'll have to upgrade. There's always Linux ;)

pojzon 5y ago

We said the same about Win7 and Win10, yet here we are!

forgotmyoldname 5y ago
I think many people would upgrade from Windows 10 to 7 if they had the choice.
MrStonedOne 5y ago
I'm still on 7 and never gonna upgrade.

cookiengineer 5y ago

How far has ReactOS [1] come, btw? I mean, at some point they converge to the featureset of Windows 7, and then Microsoft has no business model anymore when it comes to stability and time-of-life; which was the previous reason industries chose Windows over alternatives. [1] https://reactos.org/ https://reactos.org/

randomNumber7 5y ago

You'll be forced to update sooner or later anyway. So microsucks doesn't give a shit about that.

z3ncyberpunk 5y ago

Quite a bit of exaggeration here. Im using it for WSL and development. Much better than WSL on Win10 and the OS itself is definitely a nice UX update to Win 10