6 ms·

When Windows 10 came along, people happily moved over from 8.x, as it was such an improvement. Those who stuck with 7 decided to still stick with 7 for a while

When Windows 10 came along, people happily moved over from 8.x, as it was such an improvement. Those who stuck with 7 decided to still stick with 7 for a while longer. When 7 came around, same thing: most Vista users happily switched, XP users held out until the bitter end. Every time the sentiment was similar to the comment I'm replying to. Somehow people must be forgetting that the previous thing they had was already better then the current thing. Maybe helped by the fact that the next thing seems to suck even more. Wait until support for 10 ends and 12 has full screen unmutable video ads. 11 will only seem half bad.

voidfunc 4y ago
The difference between 7 and basically every other Windows OS since XP was that it was actually really really good. They took Vista and fixed most of the things that pissed everyone off about it. I don't remember a lot of problems with 7 at all. Then they scrapped it for 8 which was a UX disaster. Win10 was OK, but still quirky as hell with lots of weird 8 carry over. I loathed when I finally upgraded from 7 to 10. I've been using Win11 Pro for gaming mostly and it's OK but not great once I moved the task bar back to the left. I dunno why anyone felt that was worth mucking with. What I really resent about Win11 is the desire to connect my Microsoft account to everything. Someday I'm gonna seriously give the Steam/Proton thing a try on Linux. I'm battle scarred from trying to game on Linux in the early 2000's... but I need to give it another chance. I'd much rather stay on my Linux host for both work and fun rather than just work.
- nickphx 4y ago
  Proton works great with the exception of some online titles that require useless anti-cheat software or wacky drm.
  - aruggirello 4y ago
    BTW for those considering this WSA thing, in Linux land we have Waydroid!
- heywhatupboys 4y ago
  i really loved Vista, don't really get the hate. I recently used a computer with vista, and oh boy it is BEAUTIFUL! more prettier than modern flat bland paint-made Windows
  - iforgotpassword 4y ago
    Ok then, but in which ways was it better than 7? I'm firmly in the "Vista was pretty unpolished" camp, and it wasn't helped by the fact that like the majority of people, I first experienced it on underpowered hardware, adding insult to injury. The story goes that during development, Microsoft overestimated the advances that would be made regarding raw computing power, extrapolated from previous years where we did in fact move crazy fast. So when 7 rolled along, half of the performance issues were solved by hw finally catching up, the other half were tweaks and fixes by MS. The UI I think was improved across the board. So that's why I'm curious what the Vista fans loved so much about it compared to 7.
    - lmm 4y ago
      > Ok then, but in which ways was it better than 7? The way I remember it it was less gratuitously flashy, or at least easier to switch back into a win2k-like mode. Doesn't 7 force you to use a GPU-accelerated desktop or something?
      - layer8 4y ago
        You could still switch to the classic look & feel on Windows 7, which turned off DWM (GPU acceleration). It was Windows 8 that removed that option, forcing DWM.
    - mavhc 4y ago
      Vista was a multi year beta test for 7
      - mst 4y ago
        Vista had a lot of genuine security improvements for corporates, the extent to which you could create a much more reliable environment with judicious use of group policy was actually genuinely impressive. Honestly, apart from the horrible mistake they made around UAC prompting, most of the rough edges didn't bother me and once I got used to it and could just follow the paths I'd beaten previously to get it to do what I wanted it to, for me it was "mostly just another slightly different Windows UI atop a kernel+OS layer that for my purposes appeared to Just Work. I am well aware this was not the experience a lot of people had with Vista.
- jakogut 4y ago
  Do it. I've been gaming solely on Linux for the last five years. Sure, you miss out on a handful of popular triple-A multiplayer titles with incompatible anti-cheat, but I don't miss them. Also, the more users Linux gets, the less it will be ignored by developers and publishers.
- dtx1 4y ago
  > Someday I'm gonna seriously give the Steam/Proton thing a try on Linux. I'm battle scarred from trying to game on Linux in the early 2000's... but I need to give it another chance. I'd much rather stay on my Linux host for both work and fun rather than just work. I sometimes forget to even look up Linux compatibility on steam games causeI assume they work, especially with single player games. We are at what feels like 98% compatibility and it's usually at worst looking up a few cmdline switches on protondb
- doubled112 4y ago
  Do it. Peer pressure! I've been trying to game on Linux for a long time too. Have been dabbling on and off for a long time. I can honestly say that it is better than ever. You really need a distro that stays up to date. Fedora, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, Arch, something like that. Ubuntu is probably a close runner up since they release their HWE updates once in a while. When I say up to date, it is the kind of up to date where some of the new improvements in Proton/Steam/DXVK need Nvidia drivers/Mesa published this month. Although I'd have loved to use Debian stable everywhere, it was the wrong fit for this purpose, and only caused me pain.
  - simfree 4y ago
    Debian Sid is only an apt dist-upgrade away, and its suprisingly stable to boot!
- kroltan 4y ago
  As a game developer (and avid player), I moved to straight Linux last year. Proton is really damn good, I think I only had (trivially fixable) issues with two games so far (out of like 30 I played). Unfortunately my game engine of choice (Unity) has pretty spotty support, but even with it crashing every 3 hours (as opposed to once a day on Mac or once a week on Windows), the performance is still much much better than when running the editor under Windows. You win some, lose some. But as a user, my setup is nearly flawless, and I didn't have to fiddle with any custom stuff beyond what I was already doing on Windows either, maybe less if you count not having to reset my browser from Edge back to Firefox every major update. (Weren't M$ sued to high hell back in the IE days just for bundling it? This seems 10x pushier)
  - apatheticonion 4y ago
    Proton is incredible, I had an itch to play GTA IV recently. I was on Windows but due to the old DX calls used in the game (it's something like 14 years old), it didn't play well on Windows. I dropped DXVK on it under Windows and it worked better but was constantly stuttering. I moved over to Linux (I dual boot) and Steam+Proton ran the game flawlessly. I had to install the xone driver to get my Xbox S/X controller working (and it's a little janky to get connected after restarting) but the game ran _flawlessly_. I was even able to OC my TV to 90Hz under Linux! It's wild that I used Linux to play a game that wouldn't run under Windows. I personally find Gnome 4x fantastic, it still feels incomplete but I like the direction it's going. My only gripe with Linux is applications can be a little janky. Chrome runs like crap (I know people tell me to use Firefox, I am already so deep in the Google ecosystem I don't want to change) - I run it with wayland and regularly submit bug reports to the Chromium team. Once Chrome is as nice as it is on Windows, I will likely move to Linux as my primary OS.
    - jadbox 4y ago
      "Once Chrome is as nice as it is on Windows...” What issues did you have? With amd/Nvidia, I've never seen an issue in the last year or so.
      - 4y ago
- water-your-self 4y ago
  Lutris makes linux gaming entirely painless last I tried, and before that wine was quite good
CamperBob2 4y ago
When Windows 10 came along, people happily moved over from 8.x, as it was such an improvement That's... not how I remember it. What I remember is that people hated the first Windows 10 builds so much that Microsoft not only couldn't give it away for free, but they had to use deceptive techniques -- essentially leveraging Windows Update as a malware distribution channel -- to force them to upgrade.
- smolyeet 4y ago
  The reception of 10 was pretty good and a step in the right direction from the tablet/desktop aio that was 8 and 8.1. Plus it was free and didn’t have as many restriction to upgrade as say 11. It was a challenge for enterprise but people adopted 10 fairly quickly. Even if you google the stats of it : https://www.businessinsider.com/windows-10-adoption-rate-vs-windows-7-windows-8-2015-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/windows-10-adoption-rate-vs-...
  - CamperBob2 4y ago
    It didn't "sell." Upgrades were free (and still are, AFAIK.) Windows 8 was widely (and correctly) perceived as a disaster, so it's not a valid benchmark for market share comparison. Windows 7 was the target Microsoft wanted to hit, and that didn't happen until Q4 2018: https://windowsreport.com/windows-10-7-market-share/ https://windowsreport.com/windows-10-7-market-share/
  - deely3 4y ago
    Erm. Thats not how I remember it. There was a lot of "Microsoft forcing Windows 7 and 8.1 users to install Windows 10" articles in that time. Articles "How to STOP Windows 7 auto Upgrade to Windows 10" was popular too in that time.
- iforgotpassword 4y ago
  Yeah admittedly it's been a while, and it didn't help that most of my peer group was in the 7 camp, but after some initial hesitation and "let's wait for others to try it first", Windows 8 folks seemed rather happy about the free upgrade. I can think of only one person from my group that really loved 8 and only just switched when 8.1 support ended.
logbiscuitswave 4y ago
I wouldn’t say I was thrilled to go to 10. Initial releases were really rough, but it got better really quickly and many of my early complaints were addressed. 11 seems to have stumbled out of the gate and it doesn’t feel to me like any of the even most basic complaints I have will ever be addressed. The taskbar for one still has piss-poor usability and represents a huge (and completely unnecessary) backslide from previous versions of Windows. I also hate that I can’t turn off rounded corners. (Yes it’s a minor thing but it really irks me.)
- Macha 4y ago
  Yeah, I went to 10 as Microsoft wouldn't sell me new license key for 7. A year or two later I would have had to move for software support. But if I had to name user facing things that are nicer in 10 than 7, I struggle. I'm left at stuff like.... the win-p project/extend/mirror toggle menu? Obviously there have been developer facing improvements like modern TLS versions or DirectStorage, but none of them couldn't have been done without the UI or privacy changes
- Zecc 4y ago
  I really held back moving to 10. The feature which finally got me to move from 7 was virtual desktops. I upgraded my Windows 7 to Windows "final version" 10 the week before they announced Windows 11. >_<
saurik 4y ago
The theory has always been that every other release of Windows is terrible; so, while Vista and 8 sucked, XP, 7, and 10 were OK... based on the historical evidence, 12 should be fine despite 11 being trash. https://redmondmag.com/articles/2021/09/07/windows-11-good-bad-oses.aspx https://redmondmag.com/articles/2021/09/07/windows-11-good-b...

voidfunc 4y ago

The difference between 7 and basically every other Windows OS since XP was that it was actually really really good. They took Vista and fixed most of the things that pissed everyone off about it. I don't remember a lot of problems with 7 at all. Then they scrapped it for 8 which was a UX disaster. Win10 was OK, but still quirky as hell with lots of weird 8 carry over. I loathed when I finally upgraded from 7 to 10. I've been using Win11 Pro for gaming mostly and it's OK but not great once I moved the task bar back to the left. I dunno why anyone felt that was worth mucking with. What I really resent about Win11 is the desire to connect my Microsoft account to everything. Someday I'm gonna seriously give the Steam/Proton thing a try on Linux. I'm battle scarred from trying to game on Linux in the early 2000's... but I need to give it another chance. I'd much rather stay on my Linux host for both work and fun rather than just work.

nickphx 4y ago
Proton works great with the exception of some online titles that require useless anti-cheat software or wacky drm.
- aruggirello 4y ago
  BTW for those considering this WSA thing, in Linux land we have Waydroid!
heywhatupboys 4y ago
i really loved Vista, don't really get the hate. I recently used a computer with vista, and oh boy it is BEAUTIFUL! more prettier than modern flat bland paint-made Windows
- iforgotpassword 4y ago
  Ok then, but in which ways was it better than 7? I'm firmly in the "Vista was pretty unpolished" camp, and it wasn't helped by the fact that like the majority of people, I first experienced it on underpowered hardware, adding insult to injury. The story goes that during development, Microsoft overestimated the advances that would be made regarding raw computing power, extrapolated from previous years where we did in fact move crazy fast. So when 7 rolled along, half of the performance issues were solved by hw finally catching up, the other half were tweaks and fixes by MS. The UI I think was improved across the board. So that's why I'm curious what the Vista fans loved so much about it compared to 7.
  - lmm 4y ago
    > Ok then, but in which ways was it better than 7? The way I remember it it was less gratuitously flashy, or at least easier to switch back into a win2k-like mode. Doesn't 7 force you to use a GPU-accelerated desktop or something?
    - layer8 4y ago
      You could still switch to the classic look & feel on Windows 7, which turned off DWM (GPU acceleration). It was Windows 8 that removed that option, forcing DWM.
  - mavhc 4y ago
    Vista was a multi year beta test for 7
    - mst 4y ago
      Vista had a lot of genuine security improvements for corporates, the extent to which you could create a much more reliable environment with judicious use of group policy was actually genuinely impressive. Honestly, apart from the horrible mistake they made around UAC prompting, most of the rough edges didn't bother me and once I got used to it and could just follow the paths I'd beaten previously to get it to do what I wanted it to, for me it was "mostly just another slightly different Windows UI atop a kernel+OS layer that for my purposes appeared to Just Work. I am well aware this was not the experience a lot of people had with Vista.
jakogut 4y ago
Do it. I've been gaming solely on Linux for the last five years. Sure, you miss out on a handful of popular triple-A multiplayer titles with incompatible anti-cheat, but I don't miss them. Also, the more users Linux gets, the less it will be ignored by developers and publishers.
dtx1 4y ago
> Someday I'm gonna seriously give the Steam/Proton thing a try on Linux. I'm battle scarred from trying to game on Linux in the early 2000's... but I need to give it another chance. I'd much rather stay on my Linux host for both work and fun rather than just work. I sometimes forget to even look up Linux compatibility on steam games causeI assume they work, especially with single player games. We are at what feels like 98% compatibility and it's usually at worst looking up a few cmdline switches on protondb
doubled112 4y ago
Do it. Peer pressure! I've been trying to game on Linux for a long time too. Have been dabbling on and off for a long time. I can honestly say that it is better than ever. You really need a distro that stays up to date. Fedora, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, Arch, something like that. Ubuntu is probably a close runner up since they release their HWE updates once in a while. When I say up to date, it is the kind of up to date where some of the new improvements in Proton/Steam/DXVK need Nvidia drivers/Mesa published this month. Although I'd have loved to use Debian stable everywhere, it was the wrong fit for this purpose, and only caused me pain.
- simfree 4y ago
  Debian Sid is only an apt dist-upgrade away, and its suprisingly stable to boot!
kroltan 4y ago
As a game developer (and avid player), I moved to straight Linux last year. Proton is really damn good, I think I only had (trivially fixable) issues with two games so far (out of like 30 I played). Unfortunately my game engine of choice (Unity) has pretty spotty support, but even with it crashing every 3 hours (as opposed to once a day on Mac or once a week on Windows), the performance is still much much better than when running the editor under Windows. You win some, lose some. But as a user, my setup is nearly flawless, and I didn't have to fiddle with any custom stuff beyond what I was already doing on Windows either, maybe less if you count not having to reset my browser from Edge back to Firefox every major update. (Weren't M$ sued to high hell back in the IE days just for bundling it? This seems 10x pushier)
- apatheticonion 4y ago
  Proton is incredible, I had an itch to play GTA IV recently. I was on Windows but due to the old DX calls used in the game (it's something like 14 years old), it didn't play well on Windows. I dropped DXVK on it under Windows and it worked better but was constantly stuttering. I moved over to Linux (I dual boot) and Steam+Proton ran the game flawlessly. I had to install the xone driver to get my Xbox S/X controller working (and it's a little janky to get connected after restarting) but the game ran _flawlessly_. I was even able to OC my TV to 90Hz under Linux! It's wild that I used Linux to play a game that wouldn't run under Windows. I personally find Gnome 4x fantastic, it still feels incomplete but I like the direction it's going. My only gripe with Linux is applications can be a little janky. Chrome runs like crap (I know people tell me to use Firefox, I am already so deep in the Google ecosystem I don't want to change) - I run it with wayland and regularly submit bug reports to the Chromium team. Once Chrome is as nice as it is on Windows, I will likely move to Linux as my primary OS.
  - jadbox 4y ago
    "Once Chrome is as nice as it is on Windows...” What issues did you have? With amd/Nvidia, I've never seen an issue in the last year or so.
    - 4y ago
water-your-self 4y ago
Lutris makes linux gaming entirely painless last I tried, and before that wine was quite good

CamperBob2 4y ago

When Windows 10 came along, people happily moved over from 8.x, as it was such an improvement That's... not how I remember it. What I remember is that people hated the first Windows 10 builds so much that Microsoft not only couldn't give it away for free, but they had to use deceptive techniques -- essentially leveraging Windows Update as a malware distribution channel -- to force them to upgrade.

smolyeet 4y ago
The reception of 10 was pretty good and a step in the right direction from the tablet/desktop aio that was 8 and 8.1. Plus it was free and didn’t have as many restriction to upgrade as say 11. It was a challenge for enterprise but people adopted 10 fairly quickly. Even if you google the stats of it : https://www.businessinsider.com/windows-10-adoption-rate-vs-windows-7-windows-8-2015-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/windows-10-adoption-rate-vs-...
- CamperBob2 4y ago
  It didn't "sell." Upgrades were free (and still are, AFAIK.) Windows 8 was widely (and correctly) perceived as a disaster, so it's not a valid benchmark for market share comparison. Windows 7 was the target Microsoft wanted to hit, and that didn't happen until Q4 2018: https://windowsreport.com/windows-10-7-market-share/ https://windowsreport.com/windows-10-7-market-share/
- deely3 4y ago
  Erm. Thats not how I remember it. There was a lot of "Microsoft forcing Windows 7 and 8.1 users to install Windows 10" articles in that time. Articles "How to STOP Windows 7 auto Upgrade to Windows 10" was popular too in that time.
iforgotpassword 4y ago
Yeah admittedly it's been a while, and it didn't help that most of my peer group was in the 7 camp, but after some initial hesitation and "let's wait for others to try it first", Windows 8 folks seemed rather happy about the free upgrade. I can think of only one person from my group that really loved 8 and only just switched when 8.1 support ended.

logbiscuitswave 4y ago

I wouldn’t say I was thrilled to go to 10. Initial releases were really rough, but it got better really quickly and many of my early complaints were addressed. 11 seems to have stumbled out of the gate and it doesn’t feel to me like any of the even most basic complaints I have will ever be addressed. The taskbar for one still has piss-poor usability and represents a huge (and completely unnecessary) backslide from previous versions of Windows. I also hate that I can’t turn off rounded corners. (Yes it’s a minor thing but it really irks me.)

Macha 4y ago
Yeah, I went to 10 as Microsoft wouldn't sell me new license key for 7. A year or two later I would have had to move for software support. But if I had to name user facing things that are nicer in 10 than 7, I struggle. I'm left at stuff like.... the win-p project/extend/mirror toggle menu? Obviously there have been developer facing improvements like modern TLS versions or DirectStorage, but none of them couldn't have been done without the UI or privacy changes
Zecc 4y ago
I really held back moving to 10. The feature which finally got me to move from 7 was virtual desktops. I upgraded my Windows 7 to Windows "final version" 10 the week before they announced Windows 11. >_<

saurik 4y ago

The theory has always been that every other release of Windows is terrible; so, while Vista and 8 sucked, XP, 7, and 10 were OK... based on the historical evidence, 12 should be fine despite 11 being trash. https://redmondmag.com/articles/2021/09/07/windows-11-good-bad-oses.aspx https://redmondmag.com/articles/2021/09/07/windows-11-good-b...