6 ms·

Windows 11 is so broken that even Microsoft can’t fix it

artjomb 3y ago
There is a solution: even more telemetry!
- Incipient 3y ago
  I mean this kinda is an argument for telemetry. I only write very basic code, but stuff like "UI thing X doesn't work" is super painful to debug - let alone a million different use cases of big chunky code like Windows.
dotcoma 3y ago
Which country, or group of countries, will try to make Linux for the masses, or at least for their government and public servants, a reality -- and when? Is it going to be India? The EU? Brazil? Nigeria?
- maven29 3y ago
  Just issue Chromebooks for the 90 percent if most of the work happens in webapps?
  - jruohonen 3y ago
    Even worse spyware.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - hutzlibu 3y ago
      But with very polished drivers and firmware underneath. Untying it from google is quite hard, though.
    - maven29 3y ago
      Enjoy implementing the legal and compliance requirements yourself on linux, then. We live in a society, after all. Enterprise chromebooks are not a consumer product, they are beholden to an entirely different terms of service. You can either have the desktop linux that is proven to work as a drop-in replacement, or you can have the lab rat version that only works out in engineering orgs.
- dartharva 3y ago
  Linux is already widely used in govt and public servant computers. It's easy to do that, but to do it "for the masses" is an entirely different game. To this day, laptop and desktop computers "for the masses" exist almost solely for office work and gaming. Windows and Microsoft products are too ingrained in both use cases, so it will take a herculean effort in changing software standards and platforms for app vendors to consider Linux.
  - dotcoma 3y ago
    I'm sure it's going to take a herculean effort, but hight time somebody took on the challenge.
    - brookst 3y ago
      Please keep us posted on your progress!
      - dotcoma 3y ago
        I am a lurker, not a programmer. Sorry.
  - pydry 3y ago
    The effort required is mainly in preventing Microsoft from subtly pressuring OEMs to either not offer Linux or to cripple their offerings. The year of the Linux desktop ought to have started with the netbook craze of 2007 but Microsoft's nuclear response to that (free windows licenses, ordering OEMs to cap netbook RAM at 2GB) successfully choked that market segment in its sleep. There are, unfortunately, an awful lot of ways Microsoft can still subtly bring legally deniable pressure to bear on OEMs and antitrust enforcement in America is a joke anyhow.
    - revelio 3y ago
      Chromebooks managed it, made by OEMs. The issue with Linux is pervasively user-hostile design in the name of GNU ideology, not Microsoft
- pjmlp 3y ago
  The only thing that will make it, is the increase of nationalism, which will make FOSS OSes the only option that is somehow free from USA influence. Other than that, I keep reading about the big Linux exodus for the last 20 years, myself I have given up for the Apple, Google and Microsoft controlled ecosystems, after having emails with a signature that used to have M$ on it, and having been a Linux Journal subscriber for the lifetime of its printed existence.
- viraptor 3y ago
  Germany experimented with OpenOffice a few times, which is a related problem. DPRK had (has?) Red Star OS. Russia has Astra Linux for gov / army use.
  - timbit42 3y ago
    Have they tried LibreOffice? It seems to have a lot more updates since the split from OpenOffice.
- 47thpresident 3y ago
  I remember that the Kerala government (southern state in India) deployed an ubuntu-based operating system on 200,000 laptops in government-funded schools in 2021. Turns out they saved an estimated $360,000 compared to Windows/ChromeOS offerings. https://www.onmanorama.com/career-and-campus/top-news/2021/02/22/kite-launches-foss-operating-system-students-download-today.html https://www.onmanorama.com/career-and-campus/top-news/2021/0...
  - iLoveOncall 3y ago
    So using Linux over Windows saves only $1.8 per user? If anything that makes an amazing selling point for Windows.
    - 47thpresident 3y ago
      $1.80 doesn't sound like a lot in the US, but I'm sure the government would want to spend the savings on teacher salaries and equipment rather than on trivial Windows licenses - especially in developing countries where every dollar counts.
      - Incipient 3y ago
        These types of broad summaries at least often fail to talk about the cost of support, education, and interoperability. Eg xrdp is a huge productivity hit at best, but honestly not viable at all.
iLoveOncall 3y ago
Complex bugs are hard to fix. Complex bugs that only affect a small subset of users are hard to fix and not worth prioritizing. This is not a Microsoft or a Windows 11 problem, it's a software engineering problem. Actually it's even just a basic business problem. How is this news?
- arbuge 3y ago
  Careful with that. Everything is relative. When your user base is 2 billion users, a small subset of users is still a large number. 0.01% of 2B is 200,000. With great power comes great responsibility. Or at least, it should.
  - devnullbrain 3y ago
    It's chilling to think about. Back when Windows updates were particularly obnoxious, I went to work and had a forced update from 9 to 10:30 despite setting up acceptable update times and shutting down the laptop regularly. An hour and a half of lost productivity because of poor UX! If everyone else who uses Windows for work experiences a similar time loss, it's costing humanity billions. Plus all the stories of updates prior to important meetings and presentations. Microsoft intentionally monopolised work computing and now the whims they use to extract more revenue from paying customers have absurd negative externalities.
    - DLA 3y ago
      My company thankfully supports Windows and Mac. The PowerPoint & meeting types generally use Windows. All us devs use Macs. It’s bad enough we have to suffer the horrible UX of Teams. I could not imagine having to deal with Windows on a daily basis, although Linux Subsystem for Windows is pretty cool—-like a sip of cool water on a desert island!
  - iLoveOncall 3y ago
    I'm not saying it shouldn't be fixed, I'm saying it shouldn't be fixed before other more impactful / easy to fix bugs. It's just a matter of prioritization, it doesn't mean it will be swept under the rug and left there to rot, unlike what the article claims.
puika 3y ago
I cherish the days when Windows 10 was meant to be the last version of Windows. Still hope they brush Windows 12 under the carpet and turn 180 degrees, nothing good can come out of that one. Although maybe Windows 11 becomes the new 8, unceremoniously forgotten.
- cm2187 3y ago
  I don't. Since they are busy breaking windows 11, windows 10 is a lot more stable.
- FridayoLeary 3y ago
  You do? If windows 10 was an orchestra then every instrument group would be taking instructions from different conductors. Clowns with trumpets would be roaming the audience playing loudly right next to unsuspecting members. When asked to stop they would sulkily reply that the full auditory experience is now being missed. Oh, and the scene changers would pull the curtains in the middle of the performance. It might still be ok for some of the audience, but the more discerning would find it somewhat disturbing.
michelb 3y ago
Learning that MacOS has thousands of open bugs, I'm wondering how many are open in Windows.
g051051 3y ago
Pure clickbait. Not at all what the page at MSFT is saying. If you actually go to the problem page, it says: > Next steps: We are working on a resolution and will provide an update in an upcoming release. So, they just haven't fixed it yet.
- sgift 3y ago
  Yeah, the article even states it itself after much handwringing, though in another bullshit manner: > Microsoft claims that it is working on a resolution, and I hope it's able to roll one out that fixes the issue without making users uninstall certain apps. It's concerning, though, that there seem to be areas where Windows 11 (and Windows 10, which is also suffering from this problem) is so broken that Microsoft simply can’t fix it. Yes, software cannot be fixed by magically snipping your fingers. It takes time and effort. What a surprise. Duh.
- revelio 3y ago
  It's not clickbait unfortunately and the article shouldn't be flagged. Anyone who works closely with Windows in recent years knows that the OS is falling apart inside at a catastrophic rate. They seem to have entered some sort of tech debt spiral. Basic things that were once reliable no longer work right and MS seem unable or unwilling to fix them, or their attempts to fix them break things even further. I've seen them flatly give up on fixing bugs in things as basic as the sockets library or CreateProcess. Plus there are multiple critical, stop-ship level bugs in parts of Windows 10 that you'll hit if you follow their documentation for how to write and ship Windows apps. Some of these are fixed in Win 11 but they aren't backporting the fixes. Take a look at this page: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-client/shell-experience/troubleshoot-start-menu-errors https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-clien... What other OS has such a huge page dedicated to debugging failures in something as basic as the menu of apps? It's impossible to imagine Apple having anything even close to this. The first one in the list is: "Deployment/Install issues - Easiest to identify but difficult to recover. This failure is consistent and usually permanent. Reset, restore from backup, or rollback to recover". As in, the start menu can now get so messed up that the only way to fix it is to reinstall the entire OS, and this isn't one bug but a whole class of bugs. Others mention corrupted local databases, corrupted registry keys, etc. Again, this isn't news to devs who have to work around this crap all day. Microsoft doesn't seem able to introduce a cache or a database into the OS without screwing it up and introducing random data corruptions and failures all over the place.
jl6 3y ago
Save yourself a click, it’s just a bug they’re still working on.
PaulHoule 3y ago
UWP and the Windows Store never worked 100% but it never affected me much because most of those apps were ‘crapplets’, for a long time the only one I needed was a driver for HP scanners, today I have a Canon MFP and all the programs for it are ordinary Windows programs that “just work”.
bastard_op 3y ago
It's not clickbait, it's unfortunately sad truth every microsoft slave/user has to cope with. It still holds true to just avoid every other release of Windows if one really must use it. Luckily the only thing I need Windows for is as a runtime environment for Visio and Project in a virtual machine, so doesn't matter how bad the OS UI tends to be (assuming they don't screw those up as they did for Office ribbons introductions). Luckily with using Linux, if I don't like a UI, I just modify it, or change to an entirely different one that suits me. Microsoft slaves don't get this option.

There is a solution: even more telemetry!

Incipient 3y ago
I mean this kinda is an argument for telemetry. I only write very basic code, but stuff like "UI thing X doesn't work" is super painful to debug - let alone a million different use cases of big chunky code like Windows.

Which country, or group of countries, will try to make Linux for the masses, or at least for their government and public servants, a reality -- and when? Is it going to be India? The EU? Brazil? Nigeria?

maven29 3y ago
Just issue Chromebooks for the 90 percent if most of the work happens in webapps?
- jruohonen 3y ago
  Even worse spyware.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    But with very polished drivers and firmware underneath. Untying it from google is quite hard, though.
  - maven29 3y ago
    Enjoy implementing the legal and compliance requirements yourself on linux, then. We live in a society, after all. Enterprise chromebooks are not a consumer product, they are beholden to an entirely different terms of service. You can either have the desktop linux that is proven to work as a drop-in replacement, or you can have the lab rat version that only works out in engineering orgs.
dartharva 3y ago
Linux is already widely used in govt and public servant computers. It's easy to do that, but to do it "for the masses" is an entirely different game. To this day, laptop and desktop computers "for the masses" exist almost solely for office work and gaming. Windows and Microsoft products are too ingrained in both use cases, so it will take a herculean effort in changing software standards and platforms for app vendors to consider Linux.
- dotcoma 3y ago
  I'm sure it's going to take a herculean effort, but hight time somebody took on the challenge.
  - brookst 3y ago
    Please keep us posted on your progress!
    - dotcoma 3y ago
      I am a lurker, not a programmer. Sorry.
- pydry 3y ago
  The effort required is mainly in preventing Microsoft from subtly pressuring OEMs to either not offer Linux or to cripple their offerings. The year of the Linux desktop ought to have started with the netbook craze of 2007 but Microsoft's nuclear response to that (free windows licenses, ordering OEMs to cap netbook RAM at 2GB) successfully choked that market segment in its sleep. There are, unfortunately, an awful lot of ways Microsoft can still subtly bring legally deniable pressure to bear on OEMs and antitrust enforcement in America is a joke anyhow.
  - revelio 3y ago
    Chromebooks managed it, made by OEMs. The issue with Linux is pervasively user-hostile design in the name of GNU ideology, not Microsoft
pjmlp 3y ago
The only thing that will make it, is the increase of nationalism, which will make FOSS OSes the only option that is somehow free from USA influence. Other than that, I keep reading about the big Linux exodus for the last 20 years, myself I have given up for the Apple, Google and Microsoft controlled ecosystems, after having emails with a signature that used to have M$ on it, and having been a Linux Journal subscriber for the lifetime of its printed existence.
viraptor 3y ago
Germany experimented with OpenOffice a few times, which is a related problem. DPRK had (has?) Red Star OS. Russia has Astra Linux for gov / army use.
- timbit42 3y ago
  Have they tried LibreOffice? It seems to have a lot more updates since the split from OpenOffice.
47thpresident 3y ago
I remember that the Kerala government (southern state in India) deployed an ubuntu-based operating system on 200,000 laptops in government-funded schools in 2021. Turns out they saved an estimated $360,000 compared to Windows/ChromeOS offerings. https://www.onmanorama.com/career-and-campus/top-news/2021/02/22/kite-launches-foss-operating-system-students-download-today.html https://www.onmanorama.com/career-and-campus/top-news/2021/0...
- iLoveOncall 3y ago
  So using Linux over Windows saves only $1.8 per user? If anything that makes an amazing selling point for Windows.
  - 47thpresident 3y ago
    $1.80 doesn't sound like a lot in the US, but I'm sure the government would want to spend the savings on teacher salaries and equipment rather than on trivial Windows licenses - especially in developing countries where every dollar counts.
    - Incipient 3y ago
      These types of broad summaries at least often fail to talk about the cost of support, education, and interoperability. Eg xrdp is a huge productivity hit at best, but honestly not viable at all.

iLoveOncall 3y ago

Complex bugs are hard to fix. Complex bugs that only affect a small subset of users are hard to fix and not worth prioritizing. This is not a Microsoft or a Windows 11 problem, it's a software engineering problem. Actually it's even just a basic business problem. How is this news?

arbuge 3y ago
Careful with that. Everything is relative. When your user base is 2 billion users, a small subset of users is still a large number. 0.01% of 2B is 200,000. With great power comes great responsibility. Or at least, it should.
- devnullbrain 3y ago
  It's chilling to think about. Back when Windows updates were particularly obnoxious, I went to work and had a forced update from 9 to 10:30 despite setting up acceptable update times and shutting down the laptop regularly. An hour and a half of lost productivity because of poor UX! If everyone else who uses Windows for work experiences a similar time loss, it's costing humanity billions. Plus all the stories of updates prior to important meetings and presentations. Microsoft intentionally monopolised work computing and now the whims they use to extract more revenue from paying customers have absurd negative externalities.
  - DLA 3y ago
    My company thankfully supports Windows and Mac. The PowerPoint & meeting types generally use Windows. All us devs use Macs. It’s bad enough we have to suffer the horrible UX of Teams. I could not imagine having to deal with Windows on a daily basis, although Linux Subsystem for Windows is pretty cool—-like a sip of cool water on a desert island!
- iLoveOncall 3y ago
  I'm not saying it shouldn't be fixed, I'm saying it shouldn't be fixed before other more impactful / easy to fix bugs. It's just a matter of prioritization, it doesn't mean it will be swept under the rug and left there to rot, unlike what the article claims.

puika 3y ago

I cherish the days when Windows 10 was meant to be the last version of Windows. Still hope they brush Windows 12 under the carpet and turn 180 degrees, nothing good can come out of that one. Although maybe Windows 11 becomes the new 8, unceremoniously forgotten.

cm2187 3y ago
I don't. Since they are busy breaking windows 11, windows 10 is a lot more stable.
FridayoLeary 3y ago
You do? If windows 10 was an orchestra then every instrument group would be taking instructions from different conductors. Clowns with trumpets would be roaming the audience playing loudly right next to unsuspecting members. When asked to stop they would sulkily reply that the full auditory experience is now being missed. Oh, and the scene changers would pull the curtains in the middle of the performance. It might still be ok for some of the audience, but the more discerning would find it somewhat disturbing.

michelb 3y ago

Learning that MacOS has thousands of open bugs, I'm wondering how many are open in Windows.

g051051 3y ago

Pure clickbait. Not at all what the page at MSFT is saying. If you actually go to the problem page, it says: > Next steps: We are working on a resolution and will provide an update in an upcoming release. So, they just haven't fixed it yet.

sgift 3y ago
Yeah, the article even states it itself after much handwringing, though in another bullshit manner: > Microsoft claims that it is working on a resolution, and I hope it's able to roll one out that fixes the issue without making users uninstall certain apps. It's concerning, though, that there seem to be areas where Windows 11 (and Windows 10, which is also suffering from this problem) is so broken that Microsoft simply can’t fix it. Yes, software cannot be fixed by magically snipping your fingers. It takes time and effort. What a surprise. Duh.
revelio 3y ago
It's not clickbait unfortunately and the article shouldn't be flagged. Anyone who works closely with Windows in recent years knows that the OS is falling apart inside at a catastrophic rate. They seem to have entered some sort of tech debt spiral. Basic things that were once reliable no longer work right and MS seem unable or unwilling to fix them, or their attempts to fix them break things even further. I've seen them flatly give up on fixing bugs in things as basic as the sockets library or CreateProcess. Plus there are multiple critical, stop-ship level bugs in parts of Windows 10 that you'll hit if you follow their documentation for how to write and ship Windows apps. Some of these are fixed in Win 11 but they aren't backporting the fixes. Take a look at this page: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-client/shell-experience/troubleshoot-start-menu-errors https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-clien... What other OS has such a huge page dedicated to debugging failures in something as basic as the menu of apps? It's impossible to imagine Apple having anything even close to this. The first one in the list is: "Deployment/Install issues - Easiest to identify but difficult to recover. This failure is consistent and usually permanent. Reset, restore from backup, or rollback to recover". As in, the start menu can now get so messed up that the only way to fix it is to reinstall the entire OS, and this isn't one bug but a whole class of bugs. Others mention corrupted local databases, corrupted registry keys, etc. Again, this isn't news to devs who have to work around this crap all day. Microsoft doesn't seem able to introduce a cache or a database into the OS without screwing it up and introducing random data corruptions and failures all over the place.

jl6 3y ago

Save yourself a click, it’s just a bug they’re still working on.

PaulHoule 3y ago

UWP and the Windows Store never worked 100% but it never affected me much because most of those apps were ‘crapplets’, for a long time the only one I needed was a driver for HP scanners, today I have a Canon MFP and all the programs for it are ordinary Windows programs that “just work”.

bastard_op 3y ago

It's not clickbait, it's unfortunately sad truth every microsoft slave/user has to cope with. It still holds true to just avoid every other release of Windows if one really must use it. Luckily the only thing I need Windows for is as a runtime environment for Visio and Project in a virtual machine, so doesn't matter how bad the OS UI tends to be (assuming they don't screw those up as they did for Office ribbons introductions). Luckily with using Linux, if I don't like a UI, I just modify it, or change to an entirely different one that suits me. Microsoft slaves don't get this option.