6 ms·

My experience with Windows 11 has been roughly bug free - but it’s not a pleasant place to be. Installing is a nightmare too with the online account requirement

My experience with Windows 11 has been roughly bug free - but it’s not a pleasant place to be. Installing is a nightmare too with the online account requirement. You can circumvent with a shell but still annoying. I’ve been much happier with Debian 12 and KDE for my primary workstation. I can’t think of a compelling to use windows outside of gaming.

runjake 3y ago
What edition of Windows 11 are you using? I hear this a lot about the online account requirement but on my versions (Pro and Enterprise) you just select “Domain Join” and it bypasses the online account requirement. My guess is that a lot of people are using the crappy Home edition.
- whalesalad 3y ago
  Pro https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/install-windows-11-without-microsoft-account https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/install-windows-11-witho...
- theryan 3y ago
  I'm confused by that as well. I've setup multiple machines this past year with Windows 11 and they are all just straight up local accounts.
- toast0 3y ago
  > My guess is that a lot of people are using the crappy Home edition. What makes Home crappy? Other than the account thing, obviously. You can't join a domain with it either, but then most people don't have a domain at home. There's some other disabled features, like Hyper-V, but why should people have to pay for a higher tier Windows to use a local account if they don't need the other features?
  - whalesalad 3y ago
    I want to say RDP is limited to higher trims. I don’t think you can Remote Desktop to home. But otherwise I agree with your points.
    - toast0 3y ago
      Yeah, that seems familiar, but RDP hosting seems like another feature many people can live without / can mostly replace with other software for ocassional use.
      - fuzzfactor 3y ago
        With Home: you also don't have Bitlocker no Group Policy no Active Directory
  - runjake 3y ago
    - Hyper-V - RDP - Windows Sandbox (super neat and useful and under-appreciated!) - BitLocker - Active Directory - Local accounts, apparently - Various other little things and some local policies. I use all of the above Pro-only stuff. If my use of "crappy" offended you, please substitute the term "less-featureful". Other than that, I didn't say what Microsoft should or shouldn't do for home users. That's on you. It's my personal belief that multiple Windows 11 editions are insulting, and it should just be a single OS edition, with all features available, across the board.
- drbawb 3y ago
  I did three installs of Pro this year. Two of them required hacks to force local account creation because the motherboard (Asus) ships with a _literal rootkit_ that injects a wireless driver that Windows itself does not ship with. So you either have to disable that in firmware before first boot to Windows OOBE, or run the BypassNRO cmdlet from a hidden shell to convince it that you do not, in fact, have internet access. I tried to domain join the third device to see what that flow is like. It asks: 1. Personal use / Work or School 2. You are asked to login to Azure AD. You have to click a small (10pt?) link for "Sign-in options." with no indication that will let you join to the domain. 3. Pick "Domain Join instead" 4. It asks you to setup a local account ("Even better, use an online account" :-) 5. _You finish setup without the device actually being joined to the domain!?_ 6a. You now have to login (click) 6b. and go to the system settings (click) 6c. go to accounts (click, ad for M365), 6d. go to "Connect to work or school" (click), 6e. click another "Connect" button with no indication that it will join it to a domain,, 6f. Click another small link for "Join this device to a local Active Directory domain" to domain join the PC. So, I'm sorry, but if you think the Pro SKU is better in this regard you are just incorrect. There is no excuse for these dark patterns, this is user-hostile behavior designed to convert you to being recurring SaaS revenue and not retail revenue. As an added bonus I just tried to create a Windows 11 VM in hyper-v to confirm my memory, and _Microsoft Hyper-V_ doesn't even correctly configure itself to allow Windows installation to proceed by default. (Secure Boot enabled, but no vTPM.) It then proceeded to download updates to the installer and reboot without a prompt or any option to skip it. Microsoft _clearly does not give a shit_ about the OOBE if you are not using their cloud services.
isaacremuant 3y ago
> I can’t think of a compelling to use windows outside of gaming. And thanks to Steam deck/proton, that gap is also decreasing significantly. Windows definitely has regressed in terms of user experience and updates/upgrades and online integration are two big pain points that really make me miss Linux (Ubuntu or Arch+lxde, if you want names) every time I'm there.
vladvasiliu 3y ago
> Installing is a nightmare too with the online account requirement. My nightmare, before the account shenanigans, was finding a mouse for my HP laptop, whose trackpad didn't work OOB. Then, once I'd managed to go through the installation, the account thing was a PITA because the Intel wifi card wasn't supported, and this laptop doesn't have a wired network port. I was actually going to use an MS account (this is a work computer, and they're all in on MS). But I couldn't set it up without jumping through the hoops of creating a local account first and then grabbing the wifi drivers by booting Linux. This happened mid-2023 with a 2020 model laptop. Also, HP recommends Windows. Arch Linux worked fully out of the box.
- justsomehnguy 3y ago
  Ah, yes, Gates personally banned the drivers for this 2020 WiFi cards. Or maybe it was Intel who did a bazillion of cards with a minor diffs and/or didn't ask MS to add this flavour to the default driver set, shipped with Windows install media?
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    I haven't used a device that Windows didn't ship drivers for In twenty years!
    - tuetuopay 3y ago
      I recently had the (dis)pleasure to install Windows 10 on a Dell XPS laptop from 2018. The Windows installer had no drivers for the nvme controller _that is provided by the CPU itself_, so a platform controller. Oh and getting the installer to recognize the drivers was much harder than the usual "stick the files on a thumb drive, plug to laptop, tell the installer". I had to generate a custom Windows ISO with the drivers preinstalled, for which the process is described by a single indian dude on a website very sparsely indexed by google.
      - justsomehnguy 3y ago
        Yep, just as I said in the previous comment: everyone is at fault but for sure it wasn't the vendor of the device! How the vendor could be the culprit in doing something what would cripple the boot/install of the OS? Nonsense!
Tijdreiziger 3y ago
> I can’t think of a compelling to use windows outside of gaming. - Office - Adobe - Ableton - Visual Studio
- whalesalad 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - politelemon 3y ago
    Please read the guidelines on behavior in comments. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - Tijdreiziger 3y ago
    Eh, they're both proprietary OSes. Maybe you're more used to the UI paradigms of one or the other, but other than that, I don't see a strong reason to prefer one or the other. Also, I personally don't use any of these tools except Office, but I'm pretty sure classing developers as having psychological issues based on their language ecosystem choice is against HN guidelines.
    - whalesalad 3y ago
      Under the hood macOS is Unix though... so there is a lot to be said for that. I can run tools like sed, awk, grep right out of the box. As someone who is in a shell 24x7 on multiple remote linux servers it is nice to also have a very similar experience within my local desktop environment.
      - Tijdreiziger 3y ago
        So then you just `wsl --install` and you get a proper Linux distribution. Also get the Windows Terminal from the store and you're off to the races. I honestly consider this a better experience compared to Apple's BSD tools and lack of first-party package manager.
jonhohle 3y ago
It’s somewhat ironic that Windows users used to call Macs “toy computers”. Now most deeply technical people are using Macs or at least Linux or BSD and Windows is relegated to games. It seems Windows is for toy computers ;-)
- laserdancepony 3y ago
  I've never heard crap like that in my life before.
- DiabloD3 3y ago
  I don't know any technical people who use Macs with OSX still installed. They all gave up on that trainwreck of an OS, and either their final Mac died and they replaced it with an even better laptop by a different vendor (Framework, et al), or they still own a Mac but it now runs Windows or Linux (and when that one dies, it will be their last, and they will become post-Mac, too). I know exceptionally few tech people with M1, and they bought it knowing they had to suffer the rough edges of Asahi; I do not know a single tech person who bought an M1 and left OSX on it. The number of Macs in existence only goes down, not up; doubly so in the tech world. I don't get why theres a few people on HN that persist in the FUD+FOMO combo that OSX is gonna make a comeback and win because "its a Unix!" and "Apple takes security seriously!" and "Safari is world's best browser!" and "Swift is a great language to code in, even if it doesn't work on other OSes!" and "I use XCode unironically!" Just stop already, we've all heard it. Repeating it doesn't make it true.
  - whalesalad 3y ago
    What the heck are you on about? This is patently false. I've been using Mac hardware professionally since 05 in a ton of different environments. We very rarely had issues. Apple makes the best laptops in the world, nothing else comes remotely close.
    - CacheRules 3y ago
      well that's just like your opinion man
DanTheManPR 3y ago
What keeps me trapped using Windows on my main home workstation is simply that a lot of the professional software I use is Windows-only, and always will be. Fortunately, the advancements in Proton and better cross-platform support for a lot of software has let me use Linux on my gaming computer and notebook. There are a few games which I can't play, but honestly there's so many options available that I don't miss them much. I don't think I'll ever completely eliminate Windows from my life, I think around 2021 was The Year Of Linux On The Desktop for me.

runjake 3y ago

What edition of Windows 11 are you using? I hear this a lot about the online account requirement but on my versions (Pro and Enterprise) you just select “Domain Join” and it bypasses the online account requirement. My guess is that a lot of people are using the crappy Home edition.

whalesalad 3y ago
Pro https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/install-windows-11-without-microsoft-account https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/install-windows-11-witho...
theryan 3y ago
I'm confused by that as well. I've setup multiple machines this past year with Windows 11 and they are all just straight up local accounts.
toast0 3y ago
> My guess is that a lot of people are using the crappy Home edition. What makes Home crappy? Other than the account thing, obviously. You can't join a domain with it either, but then most people don't have a domain at home. There's some other disabled features, like Hyper-V, but why should people have to pay for a higher tier Windows to use a local account if they don't need the other features?
- whalesalad 3y ago
  I want to say RDP is limited to higher trims. I don’t think you can Remote Desktop to home. But otherwise I agree with your points.
  - toast0 3y ago
    Yeah, that seems familiar, but RDP hosting seems like another feature many people can live without / can mostly replace with other software for ocassional use.
    - fuzzfactor 3y ago
      With Home: you also don't have Bitlocker no Group Policy no Active Directory
- runjake 3y ago
  - Hyper-V - RDP - Windows Sandbox (super neat and useful and under-appreciated!) - BitLocker - Active Directory - Local accounts, apparently - Various other little things and some local policies. I use all of the above Pro-only stuff. If my use of "crappy" offended you, please substitute the term "less-featureful". Other than that, I didn't say what Microsoft should or shouldn't do for home users. That's on you. It's my personal belief that multiple Windows 11 editions are insulting, and it should just be a single OS edition, with all features available, across the board.
drbawb 3y ago
I did three installs of Pro this year. Two of them required hacks to force local account creation because the motherboard (Asus) ships with a _literal rootkit_ that injects a wireless driver that Windows itself does not ship with. So you either have to disable that in firmware before first boot to Windows OOBE, or run the BypassNRO cmdlet from a hidden shell to convince it that you do not, in fact, have internet access. I tried to domain join the third device to see what that flow is like. It asks: 1. Personal use / Work or School 2. You are asked to login to Azure AD. You have to click a small (10pt?) link for "Sign-in options." with no indication that will let you join to the domain. 3. Pick "Domain Join instead" 4. It asks you to setup a local account ("Even better, use an online account" :-) 5. _You finish setup without the device actually being joined to the domain!?_ 6a. You now have to login (click) 6b. and go to the system settings (click) 6c. go to accounts (click, ad for M365), 6d. go to "Connect to work or school" (click), 6e. click another "Connect" button with no indication that it will join it to a domain,, 6f. Click another small link for "Join this device to a local Active Directory domain" to domain join the PC. So, I'm sorry, but if you think the Pro SKU is better in this regard you are just incorrect. There is no excuse for these dark patterns, this is user-hostile behavior designed to convert you to being recurring SaaS revenue and not retail revenue. As an added bonus I just tried to create a Windows 11 VM in hyper-v to confirm my memory, and _Microsoft Hyper-V_ doesn't even correctly configure itself to allow Windows installation to proceed by default. (Secure Boot enabled, but no vTPM.) It then proceeded to download updates to the installer and reboot without a prompt or any option to skip it. Microsoft _clearly does not give a shit_ about the OOBE if you are not using their cloud services.

isaacremuant 3y ago

> I can’t think of a compelling to use windows outside of gaming. And thanks to Steam deck/proton, that gap is also decreasing significantly. Windows definitely has regressed in terms of user experience and updates/upgrades and online integration are two big pain points that really make me miss Linux (Ubuntu or Arch+lxde, if you want names) every time I'm there.

vladvasiliu 3y ago

> Installing is a nightmare too with the online account requirement. My nightmare, before the account shenanigans, was finding a mouse for my HP laptop, whose trackpad didn't work OOB. Then, once I'd managed to go through the installation, the account thing was a PITA because the Intel wifi card wasn't supported, and this laptop doesn't have a wired network port. I was actually going to use an MS account (this is a work computer, and they're all in on MS). But I couldn't set it up without jumping through the hoops of creating a local account first and then grabbing the wifi drivers by booting Linux. This happened mid-2023 with a 2020 model laptop. Also, HP recommends Windows. Arch Linux worked fully out of the box.

justsomehnguy 3y ago
Ah, yes, Gates personally banned the drivers for this 2020 WiFi cards. Or maybe it was Intel who did a bazillion of cards with a minor diffs and/or didn't ask MS to add this flavour to the default driver set, shipped with Windows install media?
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  I haven't used a device that Windows didn't ship drivers for In twenty years!
  - tuetuopay 3y ago
    I recently had the (dis)pleasure to install Windows 10 on a Dell XPS laptop from 2018. The Windows installer had no drivers for the nvme controller _that is provided by the CPU itself_, so a platform controller. Oh and getting the installer to recognize the drivers was much harder than the usual "stick the files on a thumb drive, plug to laptop, tell the installer". I had to generate a custom Windows ISO with the drivers preinstalled, for which the process is described by a single indian dude on a website very sparsely indexed by google.
    - justsomehnguy 3y ago
      Yep, just as I said in the previous comment: everyone is at fault but for sure it wasn't the vendor of the device! How the vendor could be the culprit in doing something what would cripple the boot/install of the OS? Nonsense!

Tijdreiziger 3y ago

> I can’t think of a compelling to use windows outside of gaming. - Office - Adobe - Ableton - Visual Studio

whalesalad 3y ago
[flagged]
- politelemon 3y ago
  Please read the guidelines on behavior in comments. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Tijdreiziger 3y ago
  Eh, they're both proprietary OSes. Maybe you're more used to the UI paradigms of one or the other, but other than that, I don't see a strong reason to prefer one or the other. Also, I personally don't use any of these tools except Office, but I'm pretty sure classing developers as having psychological issues based on their language ecosystem choice is against HN guidelines.
  - whalesalad 3y ago
    Under the hood macOS is Unix though... so there is a lot to be said for that. I can run tools like sed, awk, grep right out of the box. As someone who is in a shell 24x7 on multiple remote linux servers it is nice to also have a very similar experience within my local desktop environment.
    - Tijdreiziger 3y ago
      So then you just `wsl --install` and you get a proper Linux distribution. Also get the Windows Terminal from the store and you're off to the races. I honestly consider this a better experience compared to Apple's BSD tools and lack of first-party package manager.

jonhohle 3y ago

It’s somewhat ironic that Windows users used to call Macs “toy computers”. Now most deeply technical people are using Macs or at least Linux or BSD and Windows is relegated to games. It seems Windows is for toy computers ;-)

laserdancepony 3y ago
I've never heard crap like that in my life before.
DiabloD3 3y ago
I don't know any technical people who use Macs with OSX still installed. They all gave up on that trainwreck of an OS, and either their final Mac died and they replaced it with an even better laptop by a different vendor (Framework, et al), or they still own a Mac but it now runs Windows or Linux (and when that one dies, it will be their last, and they will become post-Mac, too). I know exceptionally few tech people with M1, and they bought it knowing they had to suffer the rough edges of Asahi; I do not know a single tech person who bought an M1 and left OSX on it. The number of Macs in existence only goes down, not up; doubly so in the tech world. I don't get why theres a few people on HN that persist in the FUD+FOMO combo that OSX is gonna make a comeback and win because "its a Unix!" and "Apple takes security seriously!" and "Safari is world's best browser!" and "Swift is a great language to code in, even if it doesn't work on other OSes!" and "I use XCode unironically!" Just stop already, we've all heard it. Repeating it doesn't make it true.
- whalesalad 3y ago
  What the heck are you on about? This is patently false. I've been using Mac hardware professionally since 05 in a ton of different environments. We very rarely had issues. Apple makes the best laptops in the world, nothing else comes remotely close.
  - CacheRules 3y ago
    well that's just like your opinion man

DanTheManPR 3y ago

What keeps me trapped using Windows on my main home workstation is simply that a lot of the professional software I use is Windows-only, and always will be. Fortunately, the advancements in Proton and better cross-platform support for a lot of software has let me use Linux on my gaming computer and notebook. There are a few games which I can't play, but honestly there's so many options available that I don't miss them much. I don't think I'll ever completely eliminate Windows from my life, I think around 2021 was The Year Of Linux On The Desktop for me.