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2025 was a disaster for Windows 11

246 points by speckx 11mo ago

deleted 11mo ago
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deleted 11mo ago
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JoeAltmaier 11mo ago
Once they move product testing to the Engineering group charged with releasing the product, it was inevitable that Release would take priority over Exhaustive Test. Even if bugs surfaced during their sketchy testing, the group would be pressed to release anyway, to meet schedule. This is obvious to anyone. The management at Microsoft was naive or ignorant to make this process change, take your pick.
- fcq 11mo ago
  It is baffling how sluggish windows explorer has become, same with the start menu... Even worse that there are no end-user settings to turn down what makes both suck... you have to run hacks, tweak registry keys in order to have it working ~normally~
  - EGreg 11mo ago
    I truly don’t understand how the world’s most valuable corporations with huge reserves of cash employing tons of developers can exist and NOT make a stable and reliable bug-free product after 30 years. It’s just more bloat and bugs all the time. I think open source projects by contrast get better over time, because they’re not constrained by whatever corporate agenda is that obviously doesn’t prioritize combatting enshittification over chasing fads and enriching shareholders. Apple has had the same crap, Webkit/Safari is now the sick man of browsers, the entire development stack for Apple is a steaming pile of ad-hoc kludges (from Objective C to Swift to iOS APIs) and they even forgot to renew the certificate to their own app store, breaking all their apps. Twice! https://magarshak.com/blog/if-steve-jobs-still-ran-apple/ https://magarshak.com/blog/if-steve-jobs-still-ran-apple/ Even today, the new OS they shipped is focused on creating a usability nightmare with liquid glass making everything hard to read and forcing users to use “Accessibility > Reduce Transparency” to try and combad rather than, say, focusing on fixing long-standing bugs and making their browser better. I mean hey, iOS has been around for almost 20 years and their search is still so broken that “Coo” shows a result but then continuing to type “Cool” hides all results including those with the word Cool, for some mysterious reason every search keeps hitting their servers before it can reveal what’s on the local device. The “Spotlight” MacOS indexing sucks more than “Sherlock” did 30 years ago, it never seems to find the files, always appears to only begin indexing only when you search (default setting), the search results interface sucks with everything including previews etc. despite a single guy at Apple literally creating Previews for every major file format! But somehow they can’t be bothered to make it easy to use, but you can hold Option or Shift and then open each found file in a full program to see what it contain. Technically takes literally at most $200K to get this right and rock-solid out of $50 BILLION DOLLARS. One would think they’d care about “user experience”. The old Apple did. And Siri is nearly as dumb as it was 10 years ago, and ALSO needs to send data to their servers just to, say, find out what time it is on your own device. “I’m sorry Dave, but I can’t do that — I can’t reach my servers right now.” Sigh. This isn’t buildin rockets to Mars, people. You have BILLIONS OF DOLLARS SITTING AROUND and you don’t know what to do with them. This is a failure of basic product management. These corporations KNOW that their users aren’t leaving. They are an oligopoly in devices and browsers. That’s what they use to keep the plebs in line.
    - Oreb 11mo ago
      I agree with your general complaints about the decline of Apple’s software quality, but what’s your problem with Safari? I’ve never found another macOS browser I like half as much.
      - EGreg 11mo ago
        On MacOS it is way better than the crippled hacked-together thing that is on iOS. Google was right to move from WebKit to Blink for Chrome. It is far more stable and impressive.
  - Zetaphor 11mo ago
    Windows users: Linux is too complicated, you have to configure too much stuff and eww command line Also Windows users: I downloaded this massive collection of registry tweaks and PowerShell scripts that I have to run as admin after every update to undo whatever fresh fuckery Microsoft just forced on me. And there's no guarantee that it won't all be undone with the next update. I'm being facetious to make a point, but it's always amused me how much effort you have to expend just to keep a moderately sane experience. Software should adapt to the user, not the other way around.
  - dundarious 11mo ago
    filepilot is a very snappy and feature-rich alternative to the native file explorer. I wish there was a runner alternative. I love tofi on linux where a tiny bit of config makes it show up with dynamic yet deterministic results in a couple frames (at 60Hz).
zbrozek 11mo ago
I'm really hoping that the Linux gaming folks keep making progress on Windows-on-Linux compatibility so that I can transparently and with zero-fussing run any arbitrary Windows application. Unfortunately there's still plenty of professional software that has not been and will never be released for Linux.
- Zetaphor 11mo ago
  Linux ages like WINE, Windows ages like milk. The incentives for improving Linux are driven only in part by commercial interests, and those interests are not completely centralized. Windows' fate is entirely in the hands of the current Microsoft leadership, and they seem hellbent on extracting maximum value from their users while ignoring the suffering their "Continuous Innovation" creates. It's almost as if they want everyone to start looking for the exits, and thankfully Linux is finally at the point in its maturity on desktop to start attracting power users who have no prior experience. I don't think 2026 is the year of the Linux desktop, but it does feel like we're at the start of a big shake-up in the industry. Once we start seeing the hockey stick pattern in the adoption rates I would expect that more money and developer time will follow to help smooth out the areas where the transition is still difficult, like professional software.
  - p_ing 11mo ago
    If the heavy WINE support continues, there will never be a Year of the Linux Desktop because all software will continue to be perpetually Win32 -- OS/2 already proved out this path of [full] compatibility.
    - akimbostrawman 11mo ago
      >OS/2 already proved out this path of [full] compatibility. it is not the 1980s anymore. majority of apps are for better or worse in the browser or cross platform with electron. Wine is merely a stepping stone for adoption because some software compatibility is a hard requirement for user to even considered another platform as an alternative, without these user there won't be any native development to begin with proven by the failure of the original steam machine.
xg15 11mo ago
So. Nvidia abandons the gaming market, Microsoft abandons Windows and Google abandons Search, all because AI is supposedly more important. At some point it starts to feel like a drug for C-suites.
- wtcactus 11mo ago
  Hum. Windows has been ridden with bugs forever. I don’t see how this is connected to Microsoft abandoning windows in favor of AI. Windows code base is just too heavy to maintain. They need to break compatibility with older products like MacOS often does, so that Windows can be manageable again… but that goes against Microsoft philosophy it seems.
  - josefritzishere 11mo ago
    That's not the whole story. The challenges associated with legacy app support have nothign to do with ads, telemetry, reCall and jamming AI into every crevice. Microsoft is doing both things wrong and 11 is a hot mess for that.
  - realusername 11mo ago
    It more or less worked fine until they fired all the QA staff and bundled Windows with adware.
  - coldtea 11mo ago
    >Hum. Windows has been ridden with bugs forever Windows had a reasonable share of bug analogous to its huge breadth and backwards compatibility needs. Otherwise, it was very stable and mature. Now it's gotten way worse...
    - lostmsu 11mo ago
      Yes, but it happened before ChatGPT. Windows 11 was released in 2021, already with shitty taskbar, search, and start menu.
      - 11mo ago
ufmace 11mo ago
I disagree with AI being part of the OS. IMO, any desktop OS should have absolutely nothing to do with AI. It's only a platform for managing other applications and resources. Remote AI stuff should be on websites only, available only if I choose to go to them and interact, or in apps specifically designed to be AI, like Claude Code or Antigravity. All the nonsense in Windows 11 has me thinking about trying Linux desktops again for the first time in decades.
- Zetaphor 11mo ago
  You've got nothing to lose by trying but time. Time spent learning something new is certainly better than time spent trying to regain control of your OS and workflow after another mandatory "improvement".
  - ufmace 11mo ago
    Oh, I've run Linux on the desktop before all right, for years. I eventually decided, at the time, that Windows was drastically better at "just working" for desktop applications and it wasn't worth the bother. Now, though, Microsoft's antics with Windows 11 is starting to make me think that might not be the case anymore.
areoform 11mo ago
I'm a macos / linux user who bought a second-hand windows PC last year for CAD and games. Windows 11 is worse than you think it is. It's worse than the data harvesting (which required two hours to turn off), irritating ads (for an OS you pay for) and generally schizophrenic UX (don't get me started on the Start menu). The Windows team has gone far beyond typical bugs. They're introducing new classes of bugs; one day your computer's working fine and the next, your GPU's 3D performance (somehow) drops by a half — you know, the thing I bought the computer for? — https://www.guru3d.com/story/windows-11-kb5066835-update-triggers-major-gaming-performance-regression/ https://www.guru3d.com/story/windows-11-kb5066835-update-tri... The bug impacted CAD too, AFAICT btw, though I couldn't find a publication that tested this update on solidworks / shapr 3D etc. They shipped a patch that started bricking SSDs, https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ssds/latest-windows-11-security-patch-might-be-breaking-ssds-under-heavy-workloads-users-report-disappearing-drives-following-file-transfers-including-some-that-cannot-be-recovered-after-a-reboot https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ssds/latest-windo... / https://www.pcmag.com/news/pc-building-group-figures-out-why-windows-11-update-is-bricking-ssds https://www.pcmag.com/news/pc-building-group-figures-out-why... / https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/reports-say-windows-11-update-is-bricking-drives-is-yours-on-the-list https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/reports-... Another that kept crashing on certain motherboards and processors with integrated graphics, https://windowsforum.com/threads/windows-11-24h2-intel-z890-motherboard-instability-issues-and-fixes.344424/ https://windowsforum.com/threads/windows-11-24h2-intel-z890-... If I didn't have a Solidworks license and Solidworks wasn't Windows only, I'd have switched to Steam OS or another linux distro a long time ago. I'm currently being held hostage by Dassault (and – to a lesser degree — the Windows-Gaming Industrial Complex). Forget Apple Maps bad, this is Windows 11 bad.
- SunshineTheCat 11mo ago
  As someone who has been primarily Mac for most of my life, I started using a Windows machine fairly recently for work. I'm tied down to the Windows eco-system (Teams, Outlook, etc). I still haven't gotten use to the idea of every link in Microsoft apps opening in Edge regardless of your settings. This might seem like a small thing, but the entire UX seems to be designed around benefiting Microsoft, not the user.
tupac_speedrap 11mo ago
And Microsoft don't care in the slightest, they have lots of market share so they have been pivoting to the enshittification phase especially over the past few years... the UX is still a cluster fuck but hey there's plenty of space for ads and AI integration now
hermitcrab 11mo ago
I've been using Windows since 3.1. I really resent how intrusive it has got. I feel that I am both paying and the product, at the same time.
yoyohello13 11mo ago
Microsoft in 2025: We fired a bunch of engineers and mandated AI usage. 90% of our code is now generated by AI. Also Microsoft in 2025: Record setting bugs and anti-features released. Case study in code quantity is not equal to code quality.
- ACCount37 11mo ago
  The relation is tangential at best. Microsoft's management was a personification of corporate rot for a long while now, AI or no AI. They view Windows as a straw to suck users into their higher value products through, and are seemingly unaware of what "UX" is, or how their decisions affect it. Which is how Windows 11 ended up being such a clusterfuck.
  - utopiah 11mo ago
    > The relation is tangential at best. Microsoft's management was a personification of corporate rot for a long while now, AI or no AI. Is it though? Wouldn't you expect "personification of corporate rot" to precisely jump on whatever trendy bandwagon there is to make a quick buck, regardless of consequences, then move on?
    - ACCount37 11mo ago
      I would. But if Microsoft's haphazard AI push was the only thing making Windows 11 worse than Windows 10 was, it would be a good OS overall. I also believe that OS-level AI features can be worthwhile if implemented right. It's just that the chances of that happening at Microsoft, under the current Microsoft leadership, are nonexistent.
- slekker 11mo ago
  To add they want to rewrite Windows in Rust with AI, which I can only assume they hope will keep the software quality up but I doubt it
  - p_ing 11mo ago
SoKamil 11mo ago
The last 12 months? The last decade.
lunias 11mo ago
All I wanted was a native tiling windows manager; all I got was shit on by a bloated cloud.
yakattak 11mo ago
Windows has been eroding my trust for a decade or so, and I really didn’t like having to make a Microsoft account to setup Windows. However there was that voice in my head whispering “Well, it’s not like you can play games on Linux.” or “See all those tools like Substance Painter and Unreal Engine you like using? Pfff can’t do that on Linux”. Then the Steam Deck came out, and I was skeptical. I was wrong. Gaming on Linux could happen, it was happening. Proton and the strides made in Wine in the past decade or so have been amazing. A month ago I installed a few different distros to “try out gaming on Linux”. I was shocked when Cyberpunk with mods worked with a little tinkering. Not only that, but it performed extremely well. So if you’re on the fence, try it. Also all my tools still work ;). p.s. Don’t let lack of NVIDIA support stop you if you’ve got an NVIDIA GPU, the latest driver works really well.
n8cpdx 11mo ago
> Too many bugs. Too many changes. Too little control. Windows 11's reputation might be at its lowest it's ever been as 2025 comes to a close. That, sadly, also applies almost perfectly to macOS. And yet, as bad as macOS has become, it is still a distant third in the race to become the worst desktop OS. Very difficult spot to be in when the entire industry is racing to make desktops awful. Linux starts to look very interesting, but is held back by the lack of good efficient high quality mobile hardware - the only such devices, Macs and snapdragon x elite devices, have poor Linux support.
awesan 11mo ago
I installed Linux (an arch-based distro) last month. There have been some minor issues but nothing worse than what I experienced regularly on Windows recently. My computer feels fast again and when things randomly break I can at least get to the root cause and fix it myself. I used to quite like Windows, but it has gotten worse every patch day for years now. The pain of learning a new system is not so bad and at least I own my computer now.
- cheschire 11mo ago
  When things randomly break in my Linux install, I fire up Claude
  - newsoftheday 11mo ago
    Are you saying that any Linux install you've tried in let's say, the past decade, has actually failed for you? I've not seen that and I've put it on many dissimilar machines with success. I use Ubuntu, and now Kubuntu, perhaps you could name the distro that gave you issues?
    - cheschire 11mo ago
      Ehh, nothing so strong as "failed". For example in Cinnamon I will occasionally install an app that doesn't have a tray icon. Or if I install an app using a chromium based browser, it doesn't have an icon associated with it. So then I tell claude to fix it. It goes out to the internet and finds a suitable icon and will set it up for me. Or trying to get Steam to work, which is wildly better than it used to be thanks to proton, but still not quite a perfect experience. For example there's a menu compatibility setting you have to enable for some menus to work, and other menus don't work when you have hover-click enabled in the accessibility settings of Cinnamon. Those weren't fixed by Claude CLI like the icons example, but definitely identified through chats with Claude. The only "fail" states I get into are when I'm doing homelab power user stuff, setting up ownCloud, configuring Caddy, proxmox, etc. I don't blame Linux for that though. All in all, I would say Linux is absolutely in a state I would install on my parents' computer without fear like I would've had in perhaps 2010.
tredeske 11mo ago
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JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
Is Windows usage actually down?
- areoform 11mo ago
  > "As Forbes reports, a whopping 1 billion PCs are still running Windows 10 - despite half of them technically being eligible for an upgrade. During PC maker Dell's November quarterly earnings call, the company's COO, Jeff Clarke, admitted that "we have about 500 million of them capable of running Windows 11 that haven't been upgraded," referring to all PCs, and not just Dell machines." > In other words, those who own a whopping third of the estimated 1.5 billion PCs worldwide are outright refusing to upgrade, indicating Microsoft is seriously struggling to woo them. That’s likely due to a number of reasons, from simple frustrations over a tweaked and unfamiliar interface to the need to run software that isn’t Windows 11 compatible — and annoying ads. https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/windows-users-refusing-upgrade-windows-11-ai https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/windows-users-r...
Zopieux 11mo ago
Why does anyone still go through the trouble, for personal use, of buying and fighting against Windows terrible design decisions and crappy implementations, when there are so many great alternatives?
- coldtea 11mo ago
  Because there aren't so many great alternatives. There's MacOS, which requires expensive dongles (an Apple computer), and has some of its own systemic issues. And there's Linux, in different subtly incompatible distros, with its own share of problems, and a non-starter if you need and/or want to use many proprietary staples, from the Creative Suite to video, music, and business apps...
  - robertoandred 11mo ago
    Windows doesn't require a computer?
    - gambiting 11mo ago
      As in - if you already have a windows PC and someone says "you should try a Mac" you can't just install MacOS, it requires you to buy a whole new PC from Apple. With Linux you can at least just install it in a second partition and use it that way untill you're sure it works for you, zero money required.
    - hoppyhoppy2 11mo ago
      The point they were making is that a Windows user generally (Hackintoshing aside) can't just install MacOS in their existing computer; it requires purchasing another, Apple-brand computer.
    - coldtea 11mo ago
      One of a generic PC-compatible machine, available in all kinds of prices, with all kinds of specs, from all kinds of vendors - one of which you likely already own anyway.
- 11mo ago
hypertexthero 11mo ago
I think 2026 will bring many to Linux because of Steam Machine: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steammachine https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steammachine
- deepfriedrice 11mo ago
  I can't help but think that Steam Machine/SteamOS/Linux gaming in general is severely bottlenecked by anti-cheat. Nearly all serious multiplayer games require Windows specific anti-cheat. Maybe there's a critical mass of Linux users that will force AC support. Maybe new cheating paradigms (DMA) will obsolete local AC. I suppose one of those could happen in the next 10 years.
  - gregors 11mo ago
    Arc Raiders on linux is fully supported and a lot of fun. Lots of people have steam decks and lots of people will have a steam machine. There will be FPS multi on linux. The larger studios might not, but many more will.
pcblues 11mo ago
I haven't had a _terrible_ UI experience with Win 11 that Apple hasn't put me through already. But it took away my sideways toolbar. I don't click anything that loads edge, like "Show me more from the web" type links. So I don't see ads. I use firefox and thunderbird. The telemetry all the way through the operating system sucks ethically. But I'm invested and familiar with Windows and Office. Not being able to make Copilot disappear is annoying. However, all my games and software that work on Windows won't necessarily work on linux. I am not interested in making a political stand and putting up without abilities and features I currently have. So, for my own use-case, Win 11 it is. Clearly not an endorsement, just a data-point.
- gambiting 11mo ago
  Yeah, I think it's just a matter of what you know. I recently got a Mac for work and the UI is horrid and I have no idea how people put up with it, it's like designed by people who never actually had to use it afterwards. But clearly it works for people so I strongly suspect it's just the personal bias here.
- inetknght 11mo ago
  > However, all my games and software that work on Windows won't necessarily work on linux Unless you specifically know what won't work: there's a solid chance that your games and software will work just fine on Linux.
samiv 11mo ago
I've been preaching this for a while but the era of PC as in "personal computing" is coming to an end and will slowly but surely be replaced with CC, Corporate Computing, where the corporations own everything, the hardware, the software and only permit you to use their equipment against a monthly fee and only to the extent they allow and permit. Everything you do will be controlled and observed and extracted for data for extra revenue streams. (Ads) Free/libre software is the only bastion of hope but I'm sure if it would ever become large enough to threat the CC revenue models it'd be locked down, amputated, bought out or silenced by any means necessary. For the time being the technical hurdles and low quality is what keep the majority away from it and gets the job done for the corporations.
- trinix912 11mo ago
  So basically rented mainframes like IBM did in the '60s but with ads? I agree about free software but that only works as long as the hardware doesn't get too closed down. At some point even reverse engineering won't keep up with it. We need more free/libre hardware.
  - tavavex 11mo ago
    The rented mainframes were, imo, far less egregious than what's awaiting all of us. It'd probably be less "massive B2B transactions to cut down on costs and outsource operating a hugely complex machine to its manufacturer", and more "everyone participating in society making mandatory perpetual payments to be allowed to use tightly-controlled devices that they must manage their entire lives through".
    - wilsonnb3 11mo ago
      > making mandatory perpetual payments to be allowed to use tightly-controlled devices that they must manage their entire lives through This is the mainframe experience for companies that run on z/OS, the licensing makes Azure look simple by comparison https://ibmlicensingexperts.com/ibm-mainframe-licensing-z-systems-models-costs-and-negotiation-tips/ https://ibmlicensingexperts.com/ibm-mainframe-licensing-z-sy...
gtdhvy 11mo ago
[dead]
doodlebugging 11mo ago
I am wrapping up my shift from Windows to Linux. I will have a linux box to replace my Win7Pro/Win10Pro install on an old Dell workstation. I will also be migrating one of my older relative's pc's to an identical linux box to replace their 2008 model ASUS machine running Win10. Once I have that all comfortably running I am walking away from iOS on the iPhone. I'm a bit tired of lock-in and in a position now where I have free time to manage the various things that interest me and to sort through any issues with data or software compatibility between the old/new OSes. I've been a pc user since the early 1980's with DOS and my first pc was a 128k MAC which I still have. I won't have any more Microsoft or Apple stuff in a couple of months if all goes well. Wish me luck.
- ncr100 11mo ago
  I wish you luck! Tangent: Containerizing one's digital life feels smart - isolating apps and data from exploitation and unhelpful constraints of the underlying systems seems to be more and more necessary. E.g. can't launch my video-conferencing camera on Windows because the camera provider has a conflict with my recent OS updates. I do not want to pay money / attention / energy into the lagging software maintenance of a collection of finger-pointing ("not my fault") companies. So, if I could bundle up the dependencies, and re-learn my own ability to trust (not "digital trust", genuine trust!), then that would be the future I'd potentially enjoy, using computers. Sony Playstation, Microsoft Xbox, .. these consoles achieve long term stability for their games because they put effort into making THAT possible. Old games do NOT need updates to run on newer Playstation/Xbox OS updates because the old games can rely upon their APIs working the way they did when the game originally shipped. Sailing the seas of "my PC supplier wanted to release AI Copilot Online Storage Face Prettifier app 2028 and it broke my camera" is kinda an inhumane way to live.
  - doodlebugging 11mo ago
    Thanks. I sympathize with you here and hope to rid myself of all the subscription-based horseshit in favor of things I already own or those that I can easily compartmentalize. The hardest part of regaining control is getting everyone else close to you on board since some may actively use the things that regularly extract but never provide real value for the "service".
bgwalter 11mo ago
It is clear that Nadella has no clue what he is doing in 2025 and just wants to make another big splash with "AI". If you force employees to dedicate 100% of their thinking power to agents, prompts, "AI" meetings, working on their necessarily fake "AI" success stories and "impacts", no one has time to do real work. Or have any real new ideas about anything else. But Nadella doubles down and goes into "startup mode": https://www.ft.com/content/255dbecc-5c57-4928-824f-b3f2d764f635 https://www.ft.com/content/255dbecc-5c57-4928-824f-b3f2d764f... Not only Windows 11 got worse, Github got worse, too. So did the free Copilot.
autoexec 11mo ago
Microsoft was a disaster for Windows 11. They made a product that's such shit that now you've got people who'd rather figure out what linux is or how to work on an apple computer than use Windows 11.
- leptons 11mo ago
  I moved my server and 6 VMs running on it to Linux Mint this year, in response to Microsoft enshitifying Windows 11. It was a pretty easy move, and practically all software I needed has a Linux version. Plex, Agent DVR (security cams), and the LSI-Megaraid admin software for my RAIDs all runs on Linux. Moving the RAID was the easiest part, I just moved the LSI card from the Windows system to the Linux system and drives just showed up instantly. Of course they are formatted as NTFS, and it would be better for Linux if they were formatted as something else, but I'm working on moving ~35TB of stuff off to a backup server so I can reformat those RAID drives, then move all the data back. The last VM I need to move to Linux is a somewhat complex Windows 10 IIS webserver setup that is still running on a Windows VM. I have to figure out a bunch of stuff to make that move to Linux happen, but I will do that soon enough. Microsoft can fuck off, I'm done with them after 30 years. They have made it clear I am not their target audience anymore, and I won't recommend their products to anyone anymore.
Aurornis 11mo ago
I did a clean install of Windows 11 when Windows 10 went EOL. From all of the complaints I was hearing from headlines I expected a disastrous experience. But to be honest, it’s been fine. I’m not a heavy user but I switch to the Windows PC at least once a day for a few hours of CAD, gaming, and one other engineering program that is Windows only. I don’t click any of the AI buttons. I declined the OneDrive or backup sync or whatever it was and it’s gone. I don’t use the built-in email client or the other features this article complains about and I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. The centered start menu isn’t my favorite, but it’s not like it’s unusable. I didn’t find it difficult to adjust the interface and hide things I didn’t like in the first few minutes. On the other hand, my experience with the latest macOS and iOS 26 has been incredibly frustrating. I’m almost to the point where my basic apps have worked around new macOS bugs. My iOS phone is stuttering and laggy for unclear reasons and searches show I’m not alone. I didn’t expect my Windows 11 PC, of all things, to be the smooth sailing computing experience in my house but so far that’s how it’s looking going into 2026.
- k1musab1 11mo ago
  Give it a few undocumented updates that change your settings in the background, and come back to give us an update. Even my Win10 extended support is getting CoPilot shoved down the pipeline silently.
  - hightrix 11mo ago
    I’m not this person, but I installed win11 a month or two after launch and have lived through many many updates. I’ve never had a single setting switched from what I set it to. Nor have I had AI shoved down my throat. My guess is that since I set it up with a local account originally and have never added a MSFT account, that insulates me from a lot of the issues others have seen.
    - mrbluecoat 11mo ago
      > even Notepad now has a Copilot button, which is something literally nobody has ever asked for AI is like crickets - some people like the sound, some ignore the sound, and some are driven crazy by the sound
tgpc 11mo ago
Weirdly, Windows Server is a better desktop experience. It does not ask you to play Candy Crush, for example.
manwe150 11mo ago
This seems to be a story written for the HN audience, rather than for the core user base. Despite a long trend of predictions of Windows demise, it is still very much here and healthy as a platform for user install. I could also write the same article about this website, how it was so full of bloat and ads that nobody wants I could barely get it to scroll, and it eventually crashed before getting to the end of TFA due to general resource exhaustion on mobile. None of that predicts the websites financials or “disasters” though.
- grugagag 11mo ago
  If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will of course frantically try to clamber out. But if you place it gently in a pot of tepid water and turn the heat on low, it will float there quite placidly. As the water gradually heats up, the frog will sink into a tranquil stupor, exactly like one of us in a hot bath, and before long, with a smile on its face, it will unresistingly allow itself to be boiled to death. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
  - subjectsigma 11mo ago
    (From your own link, the story is just a myth that’s not supported by modern scientific evidence. But the point still stands.)
    - tartoran 11mo ago
      This is just a metaphor and not meant to be taken literally. It's about how the masses get used to poorer service gradually. Had it happened instantly they'd protest heavily but doing it slowly isn't obvious.
    - onraglanroad 11mo ago
      From that same link: "These modern biologists, however, did not produce any evidence contradicting Fratscher's results since they did not test such slow water-heating as in Fratscher's experiments." Sounds undetermined whether they croak or not...
nobodyandproud 11mo ago
100% leadership inflicted. Meanwhile they keep downsizing their workforce while not making personal sacrificed (personal pay) while they chase AI.
p1mrx 11mo ago
Windows 11 isn't too bad after running Win11Debloat, but I get quite annoyed when an update shows "You're 100% there" for more than a second. 100% means done, why aren't you done yet? When I was working on a deployment dashboard, I made it show ">0%" or "<100%" near the endpoints, to avoid misleading rounding.
- trinix912 11mo ago
  Sadly debloating doesn't fix the numerous bugs and it's a cat-and-mouse game with every major update.
easyThrowaway 11mo ago
Something I've also noticed is a trending "silent exodus" from Windows 11 to Linux and macOS from a bunch of non-technical users. Compared to the past, where some friend or relative who asked for help into moving from Windows to Linux or Mac usually had a certain ideology-driven strain in their decision, nowadays the requests I receive are along the lines of "look, I'm tired of Windows weirdness, I need something that doesn't change in weird ways between reboots, even if everything is not compatible 100%". As of late my default answer has been "Do you need Photoshop or Office? Buy the cheapest Apple M-something laptop you can find. Otherwise tell me when you're free so we can install Linux on your machine", usually a bog standard version of Fedora KDE. I've moved circa 10-12 laptops in the last year to Fedora, and outside of a single case it went way better than I expected. I've asked multiple times if they're ok and at least until now they all were like "yep, fine." They do their job, expect their work device to never change in meaningful ways, and then forget about it for the rest of the day. Also they are not going to buy a new laptop just because a popup tells them their 3-years old pc can't be upgraded to Windows 11 for whatever reason. Also we've reached a point where they couldn't care less if something like deCSS or an MP4 codec is missing. Entertainment apps are usually delegated to a tablet or an internet connected TV, as long as Youtube works they're fine. They're people who don't really care about open source, GNU, Software Freedoms or so on. They're looking for something that doesn't interrupt them with Copilot this or AI Update that while they're having a call or a meeting on slack/teams/whatever. Truth is linux has become... "Eh, good enough, that'll do it" for most people. Which is a lot more enticing compared to "Pay 400€ for something you already own and spend the rest of the day closing popups".
subjectsigma 11mo ago
> In this scenario, going into your update history to see what changed is going to confuse you, because the update that includes the new Start menu was installed on your system weeks ago. You're only seeing the new features now because Microsoft allowed you to see it, which is insane and frustrating beyond belief. Holy shit that’s insane, what a giant middle finger to users.
deleted 11mo ago
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akkad33 11mo ago
Last year I moved to fedora because tired of adware and forced updates on Windows
fifticon 11mo ago
windows 11 was a disaster for 2025, IMHO.
ksynwa 11mo ago
For me the strange and unproductive direction Windows is going towards in encapsulated in the right-click menu in the file manager (Explorer). 11 has a shiny new menu that shows up when you right click. But it is a new coat of paint over the ones from 10 or before. Additional options from for example 7zip don't show up in it. You have to click "more options" at the bottom which them reveals the old menu. There is no benefit to the new menu except for the fact that it is aesthetically more "modern" to its detriment.
- Glawen 11mo ago
  Nice to mention that this new menu takes ages to appear, on my computer I can wait 5s until it is rendered and I can finally click on more options...
  - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 11mo ago
    That's funny because I was about to speculate that maybe the customized 7-zip options were removed as part of an API change to speed up the menu by getting rid of shell extensions. Whoopsy!
  - utilize1808 11mo ago
    I remember seeing some tech vlogger discovering that the lag was due to a bug where the fade-in animation of the menu not being played properly, and the menu just "appear" after the missing animation, leading to the feeling of sluggish interaction.
    - card_zero 11mo ago
      But that's not just a feeling, it's actual sluggish interaction. What's it doing a fade-in for, to build suspense?
  - card_zero 11mo ago
    If I remember rightly, "send to" is missing, even after clicking for more options. This was one of the first places where I felt the need to hit Windows 11 with a wrench, so I've had the old-style context menu back for years now.
pvtmert 11mo ago
I wonder if microsoft executives and product managers are using windows at all? It seems like tables have turned, they saw half baked apple implementation(s) on macOS and decided to clone these.
WalterBright 11mo ago
I still use Windows 7. The only problem I have with it is some software doesn't run on it anymore. I had to get a separate Windows 10 laptop to run my scanner and access some websites.
killjoywashere 11mo ago
If you're using Windows, you're using a computer controlled by a corporation and your actions on that machine are not your own. Even if you walked into a store and bought it, your actions on that computer may not belong to your boss, but you're definitely working, directly, for Microsoft. Any "feature" of Windows is there because one or more organizational leaders wanted it. Government, commercial, academic. Somewhere in between. But they pray every night for your more complete subjugation.
roschdal 11mo ago
Linux is now better than Windows.
1vuio0pswjnm7 11mo ago
Someone just gave me a used computer with pre-installed Windows 10 Home I have not had a non-work computer running Windows to play with in several decades It has enough RAM that I can boot UNIX-like OS with rootfs mounted as tmpfs. This is how I prefer to run UNIX-like OS Not interested in connecting a non-work computer running Windows to the internet but it might be useful for offline usage
reeredfdfdf 11mo ago
I don't hate Windows 11, I just don't give a shit about it. I can run nearly any software I might possibly need professionally on MacOS or Linux. The latter is also so good at gaming, that I don't really need Windows for that either. At this point, Windows is just something I occasionally dual boot from my laptop, for the rare piece of software that I can't use on MacOS or Linux easily.
asveikau 11mo ago
The greatest sin of Windows 11 is that it will cause many people to throw out otherwise usable machines.
nkrisc 11mo ago
Of everything wrong with Windows 11 I’m most perved that I can’t have a vertical taskbar. Seriously? Something so simple that existed in Windows 10 and we can’t have it in Windows 11?
ascendantlogic 11mo ago
I've used macOS for development for 15+ years now but always built my gaming rigs using Windows. For the first time in my life I'm so annoyed with Windows I'm seriously entertaining the idea of putting SteamOS on my rig and fighting my way through whatever nonsense I have to to make it work. I was able to tolerate a lot of Microsoft's nonsense so I could have a very easy path to just turn my machine on and play some games without having to think too much about it but my patience is finally at an end.
martin1975 11mo ago
Sounds like Windows needs to undergo a similar evolution, or rather, renewal as what OS 9 did moving to OS X. I'm not sure what that might look like, but the easiest route is to probably rebase Windows atop Linux, with a WINE emulation layer to start with to keep compatibility with old apps, as they transition/port their cash cows to Linux/Rust. Rust has been in their sights for a long time now and seems MS is committed to it. They have a 4+ decade long legacy and it needs to be shed, not hauled into the future forever. It will breathe new life into MS. They know they need it. Question is, is Nadella the one to pull this off?
- wilsonnb3 11mo ago
  How would rebuilding Windows on top of Linux help anything? Nobody is complaining about the NT kernel and none of the Linux DEs are clearly superior to the Windows userland, they all have at least as many bugs and warts.
sedatk 11mo ago
I love Windows 11. I'm sure some of my code still lives in Windows 11 from my days at Microsoft. But, the hasty and haphazard ways that some teams at Microsoft treat it sadden me. I specifically despise Microsoft Accounts being forced down our throats because, among all other things, they make certain workflows impossible. For instance, you can't schedule tasks to run as your user when you're not logged in[1]. It won't work because your Microsoft account doesn't have a password in the traditional sense. You basically can't do anything that requires you to enter your Windows user credentials. I also had problems with making Remote Desktop connections to my other computers at home in the past and maybe it's related to this too. Another thing; I don't like seeing multiple WebView-based apps running on my system all the time either. WebView or Electron screams lazy to me. Because some dev team didn't want to bother to write a decent and lightweight GUI frontend with numerous GUI frameworks Microsoft had released, 1.5 billion Windows users have to pay the price to have an extremely heavyweight layers of layers of abstractions on their system running all the time. I can't imagine the waste at this scale. Something basic like "Start menu search" should never be a WebView, but it is[2]. [1] https://bsky.app/profile/ssg.dev/post/3m7vpkshbgc2p https://bsky.app/profile/ssg.dev/post/3m7vpkshbgc2p [2] https://bsky.app/profile/ssg.dev/post/3m2wt3cyrv22q https://bsky.app/profile/ssg.dev/post/3m2wt3cyrv22q
- obdev 11mo ago
  How many browser tabs you have open right now? I find JavaScript and its ecosystem atrocious in many ways, but several browser tabs and Electron/WebView apps running just fine on an early 2010s PC I employ. I don't see an XAML based C# .NET desktop app performing marginally better than an equivalent well-written Electron app either. In both cases, GPU takes care of the graphics rendering, JIT and GC do what they do, and you might be able to offload the pain points over to C++ through WebAssembly and P/Invoke or COM objects.
  - neonsunset 11mo ago
    [dead]
  - sedatk 11mo ago
    > but several browser tabs and Electron/WebView apps running just fine on an early 2010s PC I employ. "My car runs fine with the five anvils in the trunk" isn't the argument you're looking for. Performance isn't the only problem with Electron either. Electron apps fail to integrate with native system components both from look and feel and accessibility aspects like incorrect zoom levels on HiDPI displays etc. They are even worse than browser tabs in that manner. > I don't see an XAML based C# .NET desktop app performing marginally better than an equivalent well-written Electron app either RAM usage would be at least an order of magnitude different. Nothing to do with how well-written it is either. It's inevitable.
gregors 11mo ago
As Win10 is officially unsupported now, non-tech people have come to me to ask me what they should buy as a new laptop. So far I've been successful in installing Ubuntu or having them install Ubuntu and go on about their life. The vast majority of these people live in a browser. Sometimes I get asked "what's a good app for x?" People who are hard-tied to Windows for some program aren't the ones asking for my input. If they don't want Linux I point them towards a macbook, which no longer scares people who use iphones all day long. If they do that, I ask if I can repurpose their old computer with linux and donate it to someone.
- SirMaster 11mo ago
  Well they have official extended update options, so it's still officially supported?
  - debugnik 11mo ago
    Aren't those only free for European customers?
    - SirMaster 11mo ago
      Do they have to be free to be official support? You get at least 1 year if you log in with your Microsoft account.
      - gregors 11mo ago
        While it is true you can get extended support, their website states the following >>>> Extended Security Updates for organizations and businesses on Windows 10 can be purchased today through the Microsoft Volume Licensing Program, at $61 USD per device for Year One. For more information, see When to use Windows 10 Extended Security Updates. The price doubles every consecutive year, for a maximum of three years. ESU is available at no additional cost for Windows 10 virtual machines in the following services Maybe if you log in they just give it to you? It certainly seems like it's pay to play from the documentation quoted (I'm located in the US). Also, while I'm completely open to debate the exact definition of "official support", Microsoft's own marketing states that Win10 is no longer supported and they advise you to move to a supported version, or enroll in extended support as a temporary bridge to Win11. >>>> Windows 10 support has ended on October 14, 2025 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-10-support-has-ended-on-october-14-2025-2ca8b313-1946-43d3-b55c-2b95b107f281 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-10-suppo...
prinny_ 11mo ago
I built a new pc for gaming 2 years ago with windows 11 and I can’t see myself using this OS again when I retire it. From randomly losing Bluetooth, to keyboard resets, to the hilarious failure that is the new right click menu (which lags a bit before appearing, something that I find hilarious) it’s just a bad user experience through and through. My new pc will either run Linux or be a Mac mini. Hopefully Linux gaming will continue to improve and I will be able to completely ditch windows once and for all.
- gregors 11mo ago
  I've been running Steam on both linux and windows. This year I was 85% Linux.
rawgabbit 11mo ago
In Soviet Windows, you don’t control the operating system; it controls you.
XVincentX 11mo ago
> The last 12 months have been an incredibly frustrating time for Windows fans. Windows fans? What?
snielson 11mo ago
I'm not a developer, but I consider myself relatively tech literate. That said, I really like Windows 11 and many other MS products such as M365, Edge, new Outlook, One Drive, and even Teams is tolerable (maybe not as polished as Zoom). Copilot is still struggling to find relevance, but I just chalk that up to MS pivoting rapidly to figure out how to make it useful (I currently use the enterprise version solely to draft emails, which is a huge time saver even if it is a bit pricey at $30/mo). The complaints I see on here so frequently just don't register with me. For example, I never see any ads. Maybe there is a setting I turned off long ago, but I cannot recall ever seeing an ad. The setting must be persistent with my Windows backups because no ads show when I reinstall Windows and restore the settings and configuration from a backup. Things are not always perfect, but the issues I have encountered are relatively minor all things considered.
tim-tday 11mo ago
Windows has fans? I just thought people tolerated it.
tempodox 11mo ago
Microsoft and Windows are fully self-sufficient as disasters, they need no help from outside in that area.
amluto 11mo ago
I think that quite a few large companies are currently entrenched in a way that is rather unfortunate for their customers: they are so hard to displace that it’s not longer important whether their product is good enough that the customers like it. Microsoft: Windows is pretty bad lately (and is certainly not ahead of Linux when used as a desktop system in the way that it was, say, 20 years ago). But Microsoft barely cares whether anyone likes Windows because so many corporations are already thoroughly committed to Microsoft. If Microsoft were just starting out with its current product, it would be a hard sell. (Not just desktop — a lot of their serious enterprise stuff like AD is awful. But AD doesn’t need to be good any more — it just needs to be AD.) Apple, too: their last few generations added very little benefit and a whole lot of bugs. Their hardware is no longer ahead of anyone else’s, and I don’t think their software really is either. But people have bought in to the ecosystem. Android: Ditto, except there is barely even canonical hardware. Want apps but not iOS? You’re using Android. Boeing: The 737 MAX seems to have been a commercial success more or less solely because quite a few buyers specifically wanted planes compatible with their existing 737 investments. Boeing doesn’t seem to be trying to make planes that buyers would choose if they were unconstrained. The list goes on. Not that any of this is really new,
goobler 11mo ago
[dead]
Friedduck 11mo ago
My two chief complaints are instability and lack of consistency across the UI. There are 20-year-old dialogs lurking behind shiny new interfaces. Search doesn’t work reliably. Right-Clicking on a file twice in a row will often present different options. Finally, inserting AI where you least expect or want it just slows common tasks. I don’t need AI to guess the next data value in a series. They’ve left a huge opening for Google, more so than Apple, to get a foot in the door for corporate computing.
pier25 11mo ago
I only use Windows for gaming and 11 has been fine. Only use it to launch Steam though. My biggest complain is that every time I reboot I get the annoying ad for copilot and one drive that I can only skip for a couple of days.

246 points by speckx 11mo ago

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JoeAltmaier 11mo ago

Once they move product testing to the Engineering group charged with releasing the product, it was inevitable that Release would take priority over Exhaustive Test. Even if bugs surfaced during their sketchy testing, the group would be pressed to release anyway, to meet schedule. This is obvious to anyone. The management at Microsoft was naive or ignorant to make this process change, take your pick.

fcq 11mo ago
It is baffling how sluggish windows explorer has become, same with the start menu... Even worse that there are no end-user settings to turn down what makes both suck... you have to run hacks, tweak registry keys in order to have it working ~normally~
- EGreg 11mo ago
  I truly don’t understand how the world’s most valuable corporations with huge reserves of cash employing tons of developers can exist and NOT make a stable and reliable bug-free product after 30 years. It’s just more bloat and bugs all the time. I think open source projects by contrast get better over time, because they’re not constrained by whatever corporate agenda is that obviously doesn’t prioritize combatting enshittification over chasing fads and enriching shareholders. Apple has had the same crap, Webkit/Safari is now the sick man of browsers, the entire development stack for Apple is a steaming pile of ad-hoc kludges (from Objective C to Swift to iOS APIs) and they even forgot to renew the certificate to their own app store, breaking all their apps. Twice! https://magarshak.com/blog/if-steve-jobs-still-ran-apple/ https://magarshak.com/blog/if-steve-jobs-still-ran-apple/ Even today, the new OS they shipped is focused on creating a usability nightmare with liquid glass making everything hard to read and forcing users to use “Accessibility > Reduce Transparency” to try and combad rather than, say, focusing on fixing long-standing bugs and making their browser better. I mean hey, iOS has been around for almost 20 years and their search is still so broken that “Coo” shows a result but then continuing to type “Cool” hides all results including those with the word Cool, for some mysterious reason every search keeps hitting their servers before it can reveal what’s on the local device. The “Spotlight” MacOS indexing sucks more than “Sherlock” did 30 years ago, it never seems to find the files, always appears to only begin indexing only when you search (default setting), the search results interface sucks with everything including previews etc. despite a single guy at Apple literally creating Previews for every major file format! But somehow they can’t be bothered to make it easy to use, but you can hold Option or Shift and then open each found file in a full program to see what it contain. Technically takes literally at most $200K to get this right and rock-solid out of $50 BILLION DOLLARS. One would think they’d care about “user experience”. The old Apple did. And Siri is nearly as dumb as it was 10 years ago, and ALSO needs to send data to their servers just to, say, find out what time it is on your own device. “I’m sorry Dave, but I can’t do that — I can’t reach my servers right now.” Sigh. This isn’t buildin rockets to Mars, people. You have BILLIONS OF DOLLARS SITTING AROUND and you don’t know what to do with them. This is a failure of basic product management. These corporations KNOW that their users aren’t leaving. They are an oligopoly in devices and browsers. That’s what they use to keep the plebs in line.
  - Oreb 11mo ago
    I agree with your general complaints about the decline of Apple’s software quality, but what’s your problem with Safari? I’ve never found another macOS browser I like half as much.
    - EGreg 11mo ago
      On MacOS it is way better than the crippled hacked-together thing that is on iOS. Google was right to move from WebKit to Blink for Chrome. It is far more stable and impressive.
- Zetaphor 11mo ago
  Windows users: Linux is too complicated, you have to configure too much stuff and eww command line Also Windows users: I downloaded this massive collection of registry tweaks and PowerShell scripts that I have to run as admin after every update to undo whatever fresh fuckery Microsoft just forced on me. And there's no guarantee that it won't all be undone with the next update. I'm being facetious to make a point, but it's always amused me how much effort you have to expend just to keep a moderately sane experience. Software should adapt to the user, not the other way around.
- dundarious 11mo ago
  filepilot is a very snappy and feature-rich alternative to the native file explorer. I wish there was a runner alternative. I love tofi on linux where a tiny bit of config makes it show up with dynamic yet deterministic results in a couple frames (at 60Hz).

zbrozek 11mo ago

I'm really hoping that the Linux gaming folks keep making progress on Windows-on-Linux compatibility so that I can transparently and with zero-fussing run any arbitrary Windows application. Unfortunately there's still plenty of professional software that has not been and will never be released for Linux.

Zetaphor 11mo ago
Linux ages like WINE, Windows ages like milk. The incentives for improving Linux are driven only in part by commercial interests, and those interests are not completely centralized. Windows' fate is entirely in the hands of the current Microsoft leadership, and they seem hellbent on extracting maximum value from their users while ignoring the suffering their "Continuous Innovation" creates. It's almost as if they want everyone to start looking for the exits, and thankfully Linux is finally at the point in its maturity on desktop to start attracting power users who have no prior experience. I don't think 2026 is the year of the Linux desktop, but it does feel like we're at the start of a big shake-up in the industry. Once we start seeing the hockey stick pattern in the adoption rates I would expect that more money and developer time will follow to help smooth out the areas where the transition is still difficult, like professional software.
- p_ing 11mo ago
  If the heavy WINE support continues, there will never be a Year of the Linux Desktop because all software will continue to be perpetually Win32 -- OS/2 already proved out this path of [full] compatibility.
  - akimbostrawman 11mo ago
    >OS/2 already proved out this path of [full] compatibility. it is not the 1980s anymore. majority of apps are for better or worse in the browser or cross platform with electron. Wine is merely a stepping stone for adoption because some software compatibility is a hard requirement for user to even considered another platform as an alternative, without these user there won't be any native development to begin with proven by the failure of the original steam machine.

xg15 11mo ago

So. Nvidia abandons the gaming market, Microsoft abandons Windows and Google abandons Search, all because AI is supposedly more important. At some point it starts to feel like a drug for C-suites.

wtcactus 11mo ago
Hum. Windows has been ridden with bugs forever. I don’t see how this is connected to Microsoft abandoning windows in favor of AI. Windows code base is just too heavy to maintain. They need to break compatibility with older products like MacOS often does, so that Windows can be manageable again… but that goes against Microsoft philosophy it seems.
- josefritzishere 11mo ago
  That's not the whole story. The challenges associated with legacy app support have nothign to do with ads, telemetry, reCall and jamming AI into every crevice. Microsoft is doing both things wrong and 11 is a hot mess for that.
- realusername 11mo ago
  It more or less worked fine until they fired all the QA staff and bundled Windows with adware.
- coldtea 11mo ago
  >Hum. Windows has been ridden with bugs forever Windows had a reasonable share of bug analogous to its huge breadth and backwards compatibility needs. Otherwise, it was very stable and mature. Now it's gotten way worse...
  - lostmsu 11mo ago
    Yes, but it happened before ChatGPT. Windows 11 was released in 2021, already with shitty taskbar, search, and start menu.
    - 11mo ago

ufmace 11mo ago

I disagree with AI being part of the OS. IMO, any desktop OS should have absolutely nothing to do with AI. It's only a platform for managing other applications and resources. Remote AI stuff should be on websites only, available only if I choose to go to them and interact, or in apps specifically designed to be AI, like Claude Code or Antigravity. All the nonsense in Windows 11 has me thinking about trying Linux desktops again for the first time in decades.

Zetaphor 11mo ago
You've got nothing to lose by trying but time. Time spent learning something new is certainly better than time spent trying to regain control of your OS and workflow after another mandatory "improvement".
- ufmace 11mo ago
  Oh, I've run Linux on the desktop before all right, for years. I eventually decided, at the time, that Windows was drastically better at "just working" for desktop applications and it wasn't worth the bother. Now, though, Microsoft's antics with Windows 11 is starting to make me think that might not be the case anymore.

areoform 11mo ago

I'm a macos / linux user who bought a second-hand windows PC last year for CAD and games. Windows 11 is worse than you think it is. It's worse than the data harvesting (which required two hours to turn off), irritating ads (for an OS you pay for) and generally schizophrenic UX (don't get me started on the Start menu). The Windows team has gone far beyond typical bugs. They're introducing new classes of bugs; one day your computer's working fine and the next, your GPU's 3D performance (somehow) drops by a half — you know, the thing I bought the computer for? — https://www.guru3d.com/story/windows-11-kb5066835-update-triggers-major-gaming-performance-regression/ https://www.guru3d.com/story/windows-11-kb5066835-update-tri... The bug impacted CAD too, AFAICT btw, though I couldn't find a publication that tested this update on solidworks / shapr 3D etc. They shipped a patch that started bricking SSDs, https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ssds/latest-windows-11-security-patch-might-be-breaking-ssds-under-heavy-workloads-users-report-disappearing-drives-following-file-transfers-including-some-that-cannot-be-recovered-after-a-reboot https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ssds/latest-windo... / https://www.pcmag.com/news/pc-building-group-figures-out-why-windows-11-update-is-bricking-ssds https://www.pcmag.com/news/pc-building-group-figures-out-why... / https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/reports-say-windows-11-update-is-bricking-drives-is-yours-on-the-list https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/reports-... Another that kept crashing on certain motherboards and processors with integrated graphics, https://windowsforum.com/threads/windows-11-24h2-intel-z890-motherboard-instability-issues-and-fixes.344424/ https://windowsforum.com/threads/windows-11-24h2-intel-z890-... If I didn't have a Solidworks license and Solidworks wasn't Windows only, I'd have switched to Steam OS or another linux distro a long time ago. I'm currently being held hostage by Dassault (and – to a lesser degree — the Windows-Gaming Industrial Complex). Forget Apple Maps bad, this is Windows 11 bad.

SunshineTheCat 11mo ago
As someone who has been primarily Mac for most of my life, I started using a Windows machine fairly recently for work. I'm tied down to the Windows eco-system (Teams, Outlook, etc). I still haven't gotten use to the idea of every link in Microsoft apps opening in Edge regardless of your settings. This might seem like a small thing, but the entire UX seems to be designed around benefiting Microsoft, not the user.

tupac_speedrap 11mo ago

And Microsoft don't care in the slightest, they have lots of market share so they have been pivoting to the enshittification phase especially over the past few years... the UX is still a cluster fuck but hey there's plenty of space for ads and AI integration now

hermitcrab 11mo ago

I've been using Windows since 3.1. I really resent how intrusive it has got. I feel that I am both paying and the product, at the same time.

yoyohello13 11mo ago

Microsoft in 2025: We fired a bunch of engineers and mandated AI usage. 90% of our code is now generated by AI. Also Microsoft in 2025: Record setting bugs and anti-features released. Case study in code quantity is not equal to code quality.

ACCount37 11mo ago
The relation is tangential at best. Microsoft's management was a personification of corporate rot for a long while now, AI or no AI. They view Windows as a straw to suck users into their higher value products through, and are seemingly unaware of what "UX" is, or how their decisions affect it. Which is how Windows 11 ended up being such a clusterfuck.
- utopiah 11mo ago
  > The relation is tangential at best. Microsoft's management was a personification of corporate rot for a long while now, AI or no AI. Is it though? Wouldn't you expect "personification of corporate rot" to precisely jump on whatever trendy bandwagon there is to make a quick buck, regardless of consequences, then move on?
  - ACCount37 11mo ago
    I would. But if Microsoft's haphazard AI push was the only thing making Windows 11 worse than Windows 10 was, it would be a good OS overall. I also believe that OS-level AI features can be worthwhile if implemented right. It's just that the chances of that happening at Microsoft, under the current Microsoft leadership, are nonexistent.
slekker 11mo ago
To add they want to rewrite Windows in Rust with AI, which I can only assume they hope will keep the software quality up but I doubt it
- p_ing 11mo ago

SoKamil 11mo ago

The last 12 months? The last decade.

lunias 11mo ago

All I wanted was a native tiling windows manager; all I got was shit on by a bloated cloud.

yakattak 11mo ago

Windows has been eroding my trust for a decade or so, and I really didn’t like having to make a Microsoft account to setup Windows. However there was that voice in my head whispering “Well, it’s not like you can play games on Linux.” or “See all those tools like Substance Painter and Unreal Engine you like using? Pfff can’t do that on Linux”. Then the Steam Deck came out, and I was skeptical. I was wrong. Gaming on Linux could happen, it was happening. Proton and the strides made in Wine in the past decade or so have been amazing. A month ago I installed a few different distros to “try out gaming on Linux”. I was shocked when Cyberpunk with mods worked with a little tinkering. Not only that, but it performed extremely well. So if you’re on the fence, try it. Also all my tools still work ;). p.s. Don’t let lack of NVIDIA support stop you if you’ve got an NVIDIA GPU, the latest driver works really well.

n8cpdx 11mo ago

> Too many bugs. Too many changes. Too little control. Windows 11's reputation might be at its lowest it's ever been as 2025 comes to a close. That, sadly, also applies almost perfectly to macOS. And yet, as bad as macOS has become, it is still a distant third in the race to become the worst desktop OS. Very difficult spot to be in when the entire industry is racing to make desktops awful. Linux starts to look very interesting, but is held back by the lack of good efficient high quality mobile hardware - the only such devices, Macs and snapdragon x elite devices, have poor Linux support.

awesan 11mo ago

I installed Linux (an arch-based distro) last month. There have been some minor issues but nothing worse than what I experienced regularly on Windows recently. My computer feels fast again and when things randomly break I can at least get to the root cause and fix it myself. I used to quite like Windows, but it has gotten worse every patch day for years now. The pain of learning a new system is not so bad and at least I own my computer now.

cheschire 11mo ago
When things randomly break in my Linux install, I fire up Claude
- newsoftheday 11mo ago
  Are you saying that any Linux install you've tried in let's say, the past decade, has actually failed for you? I've not seen that and I've put it on many dissimilar machines with success. I use Ubuntu, and now Kubuntu, perhaps you could name the distro that gave you issues?
  - cheschire 11mo ago
    Ehh, nothing so strong as "failed". For example in Cinnamon I will occasionally install an app that doesn't have a tray icon. Or if I install an app using a chromium based browser, it doesn't have an icon associated with it. So then I tell claude to fix it. It goes out to the internet and finds a suitable icon and will set it up for me. Or trying to get Steam to work, which is wildly better than it used to be thanks to proton, but still not quite a perfect experience. For example there's a menu compatibility setting you have to enable for some menus to work, and other menus don't work when you have hover-click enabled in the accessibility settings of Cinnamon. Those weren't fixed by Claude CLI like the icons example, but definitely identified through chats with Claude. The only "fail" states I get into are when I'm doing homelab power user stuff, setting up ownCloud, configuring Caddy, proxmox, etc. I don't blame Linux for that though. All in all, I would say Linux is absolutely in a state I would install on my parents' computer without fear like I would've had in perhaps 2010.

tredeske 11mo ago

[dead]

JumpCrisscross 11mo ago

Is Windows usage actually down?

areoform 11mo ago
> "As Forbes reports, a whopping 1 billion PCs are still running Windows 10 - despite half of them technically being eligible for an upgrade. During PC maker Dell's November quarterly earnings call, the company's COO, Jeff Clarke, admitted that "we have about 500 million of them capable of running Windows 11 that haven't been upgraded," referring to all PCs, and not just Dell machines." > In other words, those who own a whopping third of the estimated 1.5 billion PCs worldwide are outright refusing to upgrade, indicating Microsoft is seriously struggling to woo them. That’s likely due to a number of reasons, from simple frustrations over a tweaked and unfamiliar interface to the need to run software that isn’t Windows 11 compatible — and annoying ads. https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/windows-users-refusing-upgrade-windows-11-ai https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/windows-users-r...

Zopieux 11mo ago

Why does anyone still go through the trouble, for personal use, of buying and fighting against Windows terrible design decisions and crappy implementations, when there are so many great alternatives?

coldtea 11mo ago
Because there aren't so many great alternatives. There's MacOS, which requires expensive dongles (an Apple computer), and has some of its own systemic issues. And there's Linux, in different subtly incompatible distros, with its own share of problems, and a non-starter if you need and/or want to use many proprietary staples, from the Creative Suite to video, music, and business apps...
- robertoandred 11mo ago
  Windows doesn't require a computer?
  - gambiting 11mo ago
    As in - if you already have a windows PC and someone says "you should try a Mac" you can't just install MacOS, it requires you to buy a whole new PC from Apple. With Linux you can at least just install it in a second partition and use it that way untill you're sure it works for you, zero money required.
  - hoppyhoppy2 11mo ago
    The point they were making is that a Windows user generally (Hackintoshing aside) can't just install MacOS in their existing computer; it requires purchasing another, Apple-brand computer.
  - coldtea 11mo ago
    One of a generic PC-compatible machine, available in all kinds of prices, with all kinds of specs, from all kinds of vendors - one of which you likely already own anyway.
11mo ago

hypertexthero 11mo ago

I think 2026 will bring many to Linux because of Steam Machine: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steammachine https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steammachine

deepfriedrice 11mo ago
I can't help but think that Steam Machine/SteamOS/Linux gaming in general is severely bottlenecked by anti-cheat. Nearly all serious multiplayer games require Windows specific anti-cheat. Maybe there's a critical mass of Linux users that will force AC support. Maybe new cheating paradigms (DMA) will obsolete local AC. I suppose one of those could happen in the next 10 years.
- gregors 11mo ago
  Arc Raiders on linux is fully supported and a lot of fun. Lots of people have steam decks and lots of people will have a steam machine. There will be FPS multi on linux. The larger studios might not, but many more will.

pcblues 11mo ago

I haven't had a _terrible_ UI experience with Win 11 that Apple hasn't put me through already. But it took away my sideways toolbar. I don't click anything that loads edge, like "Show me more from the web" type links. So I don't see ads. I use firefox and thunderbird. The telemetry all the way through the operating system sucks ethically. But I'm invested and familiar with Windows and Office. Not being able to make Copilot disappear is annoying. However, all my games and software that work on Windows won't necessarily work on linux. I am not interested in making a political stand and putting up without abilities and features I currently have. So, for my own use-case, Win 11 it is. Clearly not an endorsement, just a data-point.

gambiting 11mo ago
Yeah, I think it's just a matter of what you know. I recently got a Mac for work and the UI is horrid and I have no idea how people put up with it, it's like designed by people who never actually had to use it afterwards. But clearly it works for people so I strongly suspect it's just the personal bias here.
inetknght 11mo ago
> However, all my games and software that work on Windows won't necessarily work on linux Unless you specifically know what won't work: there's a solid chance that your games and software will work just fine on Linux.

samiv 11mo ago

I've been preaching this for a while but the era of PC as in "personal computing" is coming to an end and will slowly but surely be replaced with CC, Corporate Computing, where the corporations own everything, the hardware, the software and only permit you to use their equipment against a monthly fee and only to the extent they allow and permit. Everything you do will be controlled and observed and extracted for data for extra revenue streams. (Ads) Free/libre software is the only bastion of hope but I'm sure if it would ever become large enough to threat the CC revenue models it'd be locked down, amputated, bought out or silenced by any means necessary. For the time being the technical hurdles and low quality is what keep the majority away from it and gets the job done for the corporations.

trinix912 11mo ago
So basically rented mainframes like IBM did in the '60s but with ads? I agree about free software but that only works as long as the hardware doesn't get too closed down. At some point even reverse engineering won't keep up with it. We need more free/libre hardware.
- tavavex 11mo ago
  The rented mainframes were, imo, far less egregious than what's awaiting all of us. It'd probably be less "massive B2B transactions to cut down on costs and outsource operating a hugely complex machine to its manufacturer", and more "everyone participating in society making mandatory perpetual payments to be allowed to use tightly-controlled devices that they must manage their entire lives through".
  - wilsonnb3 11mo ago
    > making mandatory perpetual payments to be allowed to use tightly-controlled devices that they must manage their entire lives through This is the mainframe experience for companies that run on z/OS, the licensing makes Azure look simple by comparison https://ibmlicensingexperts.com/ibm-mainframe-licensing-z-systems-models-costs-and-negotiation-tips/ https://ibmlicensingexperts.com/ibm-mainframe-licensing-z-sy...

gtdhvy 11mo ago

[dead]

doodlebugging 11mo ago

I am wrapping up my shift from Windows to Linux. I will have a linux box to replace my Win7Pro/Win10Pro install on an old Dell workstation. I will also be migrating one of my older relative's pc's to an identical linux box to replace their 2008 model ASUS machine running Win10. Once I have that all comfortably running I am walking away from iOS on the iPhone. I'm a bit tired of lock-in and in a position now where I have free time to manage the various things that interest me and to sort through any issues with data or software compatibility between the old/new OSes. I've been a pc user since the early 1980's with DOS and my first pc was a 128k MAC which I still have. I won't have any more Microsoft or Apple stuff in a couple of months if all goes well. Wish me luck.

ncr100 11mo ago
I wish you luck! Tangent: Containerizing one's digital life feels smart - isolating apps and data from exploitation and unhelpful constraints of the underlying systems seems to be more and more necessary. E.g. can't launch my video-conferencing camera on Windows because the camera provider has a conflict with my recent OS updates. I do not want to pay money / attention / energy into the lagging software maintenance of a collection of finger-pointing ("not my fault") companies. So, if I could bundle up the dependencies, and re-learn my own ability to trust (not "digital trust", genuine trust!), then that would be the future I'd potentially enjoy, using computers. Sony Playstation, Microsoft Xbox, .. these consoles achieve long term stability for their games because they put effort into making THAT possible. Old games do NOT need updates to run on newer Playstation/Xbox OS updates because the old games can rely upon their APIs working the way they did when the game originally shipped. Sailing the seas of "my PC supplier wanted to release AI Copilot Online Storage Face Prettifier app 2028 and it broke my camera" is kinda an inhumane way to live.
- doodlebugging 11mo ago
  Thanks. I sympathize with you here and hope to rid myself of all the subscription-based horseshit in favor of things I already own or those that I can easily compartmentalize. The hardest part of regaining control is getting everyone else close to you on board since some may actively use the things that regularly extract but never provide real value for the "service".

bgwalter 11mo ago

It is clear that Nadella has no clue what he is doing in 2025 and just wants to make another big splash with "AI". If you force employees to dedicate 100% of their thinking power to agents, prompts, "AI" meetings, working on their necessarily fake "AI" success stories and "impacts", no one has time to do real work. Or have any real new ideas about anything else. But Nadella doubles down and goes into "startup mode": https://www.ft.com/content/255dbecc-5c57-4928-824f-b3f2d764f635 https://www.ft.com/content/255dbecc-5c57-4928-824f-b3f2d764f... Not only Windows 11 got worse, Github got worse, too. So did the free Copilot.

autoexec 11mo ago

Microsoft was a disaster for Windows 11. They made a product that's such shit that now you've got people who'd rather figure out what linux is or how to work on an apple computer than use Windows 11.

leptons 11mo ago
I moved my server and 6 VMs running on it to Linux Mint this year, in response to Microsoft enshitifying Windows 11. It was a pretty easy move, and practically all software I needed has a Linux version. Plex, Agent DVR (security cams), and the LSI-Megaraid admin software for my RAIDs all runs on Linux. Moving the RAID was the easiest part, I just moved the LSI card from the Windows system to the Linux system and drives just showed up instantly. Of course they are formatted as NTFS, and it would be better for Linux if they were formatted as something else, but I'm working on moving ~35TB of stuff off to a backup server so I can reformat those RAID drives, then move all the data back. The last VM I need to move to Linux is a somewhat complex Windows 10 IIS webserver setup that is still running on a Windows VM. I have to figure out a bunch of stuff to make that move to Linux happen, but I will do that soon enough. Microsoft can fuck off, I'm done with them after 30 years. They have made it clear I am not their target audience anymore, and I won't recommend their products to anyone anymore.

Aurornis 11mo ago

I did a clean install of Windows 11 when Windows 10 went EOL. From all of the complaints I was hearing from headlines I expected a disastrous experience. But to be honest, it’s been fine. I’m not a heavy user but I switch to the Windows PC at least once a day for a few hours of CAD, gaming, and one other engineering program that is Windows only. I don’t click any of the AI buttons. I declined the OneDrive or backup sync or whatever it was and it’s gone. I don’t use the built-in email client or the other features this article complains about and I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. The centered start menu isn’t my favorite, but it’s not like it’s unusable. I didn’t find it difficult to adjust the interface and hide things I didn’t like in the first few minutes. On the other hand, my experience with the latest macOS and iOS 26 has been incredibly frustrating. I’m almost to the point where my basic apps have worked around new macOS bugs. My iOS phone is stuttering and laggy for unclear reasons and searches show I’m not alone. I didn’t expect my Windows 11 PC, of all things, to be the smooth sailing computing experience in my house but so far that’s how it’s looking going into 2026.

k1musab1 11mo ago
Give it a few undocumented updates that change your settings in the background, and come back to give us an update. Even my Win10 extended support is getting CoPilot shoved down the pipeline silently.
- hightrix 11mo ago
  I’m not this person, but I installed win11 a month or two after launch and have lived through many many updates. I’ve never had a single setting switched from what I set it to. Nor have I had AI shoved down my throat. My guess is that since I set it up with a local account originally and have never added a MSFT account, that insulates me from a lot of the issues others have seen.
  - mrbluecoat 11mo ago
    > even Notepad now has a Copilot button, which is something literally nobody has ever asked for AI is like crickets - some people like the sound, some ignore the sound, and some are driven crazy by the sound

tgpc 11mo ago

Weirdly, Windows Server is a better desktop experience. It does not ask you to play Candy Crush, for example.

manwe150 11mo ago

This seems to be a story written for the HN audience, rather than for the core user base. Despite a long trend of predictions of Windows demise, it is still very much here and healthy as a platform for user install. I could also write the same article about this website, how it was so full of bloat and ads that nobody wants I could barely get it to scroll, and it eventually crashed before getting to the end of TFA due to general resource exhaustion on mobile. None of that predicts the websites financials or “disasters” though.

grugagag 11mo ago
If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will of course frantically try to clamber out. But if you place it gently in a pot of tepid water and turn the heat on low, it will float there quite placidly. As the water gradually heats up, the frog will sink into a tranquil stupor, exactly like one of us in a hot bath, and before long, with a smile on its face, it will unresistingly allow itself to be boiled to death. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
- subjectsigma 11mo ago
  (From your own link, the story is just a myth that’s not supported by modern scientific evidence. But the point still stands.)
  - tartoran 11mo ago
    This is just a metaphor and not meant to be taken literally. It's about how the masses get used to poorer service gradually. Had it happened instantly they'd protest heavily but doing it slowly isn't obvious.
  - onraglanroad 11mo ago
    From that same link: "These modern biologists, however, did not produce any evidence contradicting Fratscher's results since they did not test such slow water-heating as in Fratscher's experiments." Sounds undetermined whether they croak or not...

nobodyandproud 11mo ago

100% leadership inflicted. Meanwhile they keep downsizing their workforce while not making personal sacrificed (personal pay) while they chase AI.

p1mrx 11mo ago

Windows 11 isn't too bad after running Win11Debloat, but I get quite annoyed when an update shows "You're 100% there" for more than a second. 100% means done, why aren't you done yet? When I was working on a deployment dashboard, I made it show ">0%" or "<100%" near the endpoints, to avoid misleading rounding.

trinix912 11mo ago
Sadly debloating doesn't fix the numerous bugs and it's a cat-and-mouse game with every major update.

easyThrowaway 11mo ago

Something I've also noticed is a trending "silent exodus" from Windows 11 to Linux and macOS from a bunch of non-technical users. Compared to the past, where some friend or relative who asked for help into moving from Windows to Linux or Mac usually had a certain ideology-driven strain in their decision, nowadays the requests I receive are along the lines of "look, I'm tired of Windows weirdness, I need something that doesn't change in weird ways between reboots, even if everything is not compatible 100%". As of late my default answer has been "Do you need Photoshop or Office? Buy the cheapest Apple M-something laptop you can find. Otherwise tell me when you're free so we can install Linux on your machine", usually a bog standard version of Fedora KDE. I've moved circa 10-12 laptops in the last year to Fedora, and outside of a single case it went way better than I expected. I've asked multiple times if they're ok and at least until now they all were like "yep, fine." They do their job, expect their work device to never change in meaningful ways, and then forget about it for the rest of the day. Also they are not going to buy a new laptop just because a popup tells them their 3-years old pc can't be upgraded to Windows 11 for whatever reason. Also we've reached a point where they couldn't care less if something like deCSS or an MP4 codec is missing. Entertainment apps are usually delegated to a tablet or an internet connected TV, as long as Youtube works they're fine. They're people who don't really care about open source, GNU, Software Freedoms or so on. They're looking for something that doesn't interrupt them with Copilot this or AI Update that while they're having a call or a meeting on slack/teams/whatever. Truth is linux has become... "Eh, good enough, that'll do it" for most people. Which is a lot more enticing compared to "Pay 400€ for something you already own and spend the rest of the day closing popups".

subjectsigma 11mo ago

> In this scenario, going into your update history to see what changed is going to confuse you, because the update that includes the new Start menu was installed on your system weeks ago. You're only seeing the new features now because Microsoft allowed you to see it, which is insane and frustrating beyond belief. Holy shit that’s insane, what a giant middle finger to users.

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

akkad33 11mo ago

Last year I moved to fedora because tired of adware and forced updates on Windows

fifticon 11mo ago

windows 11 was a disaster for 2025, IMHO.

ksynwa 11mo ago

For me the strange and unproductive direction Windows is going towards in encapsulated in the right-click menu in the file manager (Explorer). 11 has a shiny new menu that shows up when you right click. But it is a new coat of paint over the ones from 10 or before. Additional options from for example 7zip don't show up in it. You have to click "more options" at the bottom which them reveals the old menu. There is no benefit to the new menu except for the fact that it is aesthetically more "modern" to its detriment.

Glawen 11mo ago
Nice to mention that this new menu takes ages to appear, on my computer I can wait 5s until it is rendered and I can finally click on more options...
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 11mo ago
  That's funny because I was about to speculate that maybe the customized 7-zip options were removed as part of an API change to speed up the menu by getting rid of shell extensions. Whoopsy!
- utilize1808 11mo ago
  I remember seeing some tech vlogger discovering that the lag was due to a bug where the fade-in animation of the menu not being played properly, and the menu just "appear" after the missing animation, leading to the feeling of sluggish interaction.
  - card_zero 11mo ago
    But that's not just a feeling, it's actual sluggish interaction. What's it doing a fade-in for, to build suspense?
- card_zero 11mo ago
  If I remember rightly, "send to" is missing, even after clicking for more options. This was one of the first places where I felt the need to hit Windows 11 with a wrench, so I've had the old-style context menu back for years now.

pvtmert 11mo ago

I wonder if microsoft executives and product managers are using windows at all? It seems like tables have turned, they saw half baked apple implementation(s) on macOS and decided to clone these.

WalterBright 11mo ago

I still use Windows 7. The only problem I have with it is some software doesn't run on it anymore. I had to get a separate Windows 10 laptop to run my scanner and access some websites.

killjoywashere 11mo ago

If you're using Windows, you're using a computer controlled by a corporation and your actions on that machine are not your own. Even if you walked into a store and bought it, your actions on that computer may not belong to your boss, but you're definitely working, directly, for Microsoft. Any "feature" of Windows is there because one or more organizational leaders wanted it. Government, commercial, academic. Somewhere in between. But they pray every night for your more complete subjugation.

roschdal 11mo ago

Linux is now better than Windows.

1vuio0pswjnm7 11mo ago

Someone just gave me a used computer with pre-installed Windows 10 Home I have not had a non-work computer running Windows to play with in several decades It has enough RAM that I can boot UNIX-like OS with rootfs mounted as tmpfs. This is how I prefer to run UNIX-like OS Not interested in connecting a non-work computer running Windows to the internet but it might be useful for offline usage

reeredfdfdf 11mo ago

I don't hate Windows 11, I just don't give a shit about it. I can run nearly any software I might possibly need professionally on MacOS or Linux. The latter is also so good at gaming, that I don't really need Windows for that either. At this point, Windows is just something I occasionally dual boot from my laptop, for the rare piece of software that I can't use on MacOS or Linux easily.

asveikau 11mo ago

The greatest sin of Windows 11 is that it will cause many people to throw out otherwise usable machines.

nkrisc 11mo ago

Of everything wrong with Windows 11 I’m most perved that I can’t have a vertical taskbar. Seriously? Something so simple that existed in Windows 10 and we can’t have it in Windows 11?

ascendantlogic 11mo ago

I've used macOS for development for 15+ years now but always built my gaming rigs using Windows. For the first time in my life I'm so annoyed with Windows I'm seriously entertaining the idea of putting SteamOS on my rig and fighting my way through whatever nonsense I have to to make it work. I was able to tolerate a lot of Microsoft's nonsense so I could have a very easy path to just turn my machine on and play some games without having to think too much about it but my patience is finally at an end.

martin1975 11mo ago

Sounds like Windows needs to undergo a similar evolution, or rather, renewal as what OS 9 did moving to OS X. I'm not sure what that might look like, but the easiest route is to probably rebase Windows atop Linux, with a WINE emulation layer to start with to keep compatibility with old apps, as they transition/port their cash cows to Linux/Rust. Rust has been in their sights for a long time now and seems MS is committed to it. They have a 4+ decade long legacy and it needs to be shed, not hauled into the future forever. It will breathe new life into MS. They know they need it. Question is, is Nadella the one to pull this off?

wilsonnb3 11mo ago
How would rebuilding Windows on top of Linux help anything? Nobody is complaining about the NT kernel and none of the Linux DEs are clearly superior to the Windows userland, they all have at least as many bugs and warts.

sedatk 11mo ago

I love Windows 11. I'm sure some of my code still lives in Windows 11 from my days at Microsoft. But, the hasty and haphazard ways that some teams at Microsoft treat it sadden me. I specifically despise Microsoft Accounts being forced down our throats because, among all other things, they make certain workflows impossible. For instance, you can't schedule tasks to run as your user when you're not logged in[1]. It won't work because your Microsoft account doesn't have a password in the traditional sense. You basically can't do anything that requires you to enter your Windows user credentials. I also had problems with making Remote Desktop connections to my other computers at home in the past and maybe it's related to this too. Another thing; I don't like seeing multiple WebView-based apps running on my system all the time either. WebView or Electron screams lazy to me. Because some dev team didn't want to bother to write a decent and lightweight GUI frontend with numerous GUI frameworks Microsoft had released, 1.5 billion Windows users have to pay the price to have an extremely heavyweight layers of layers of abstractions on their system running all the time. I can't imagine the waste at this scale. Something basic like "Start menu search" should never be a WebView, but it is[2]. [1] https://bsky.app/profile/ssg.dev/post/3m7vpkshbgc2p https://bsky.app/profile/ssg.dev/post/3m7vpkshbgc2p [2] https://bsky.app/profile/ssg.dev/post/3m2wt3cyrv22q https://bsky.app/profile/ssg.dev/post/3m2wt3cyrv22q

obdev 11mo ago
How many browser tabs you have open right now? I find JavaScript and its ecosystem atrocious in many ways, but several browser tabs and Electron/WebView apps running just fine on an early 2010s PC I employ. I don't see an XAML based C# .NET desktop app performing marginally better than an equivalent well-written Electron app either. In both cases, GPU takes care of the graphics rendering, JIT and GC do what they do, and you might be able to offload the pain points over to C++ through WebAssembly and P/Invoke or COM objects.
- neonsunset 11mo ago
  [dead]
- sedatk 11mo ago
  > but several browser tabs and Electron/WebView apps running just fine on an early 2010s PC I employ. "My car runs fine with the five anvils in the trunk" isn't the argument you're looking for. Performance isn't the only problem with Electron either. Electron apps fail to integrate with native system components both from look and feel and accessibility aspects like incorrect zoom levels on HiDPI displays etc. They are even worse than browser tabs in that manner. > I don't see an XAML based C# .NET desktop app performing marginally better than an equivalent well-written Electron app either RAM usage would be at least an order of magnitude different. Nothing to do with how well-written it is either. It's inevitable.

gregors 11mo ago

As Win10 is officially unsupported now, non-tech people have come to me to ask me what they should buy as a new laptop. So far I've been successful in installing Ubuntu or having them install Ubuntu and go on about their life. The vast majority of these people live in a browser. Sometimes I get asked "what's a good app for x?" People who are hard-tied to Windows for some program aren't the ones asking for my input. If they don't want Linux I point them towards a macbook, which no longer scares people who use iphones all day long. If they do that, I ask if I can repurpose their old computer with linux and donate it to someone.

SirMaster 11mo ago
Well they have official extended update options, so it's still officially supported?
- debugnik 11mo ago
  Aren't those only free for European customers?
  - SirMaster 11mo ago
    Do they have to be free to be official support? You get at least 1 year if you log in with your Microsoft account.
    - gregors 11mo ago
      While it is true you can get extended support, their website states the following >>>> Extended Security Updates for organizations and businesses on Windows 10 can be purchased today through the Microsoft Volume Licensing Program, at $61 USD per device for Year One. For more information, see When to use Windows 10 Extended Security Updates. The price doubles every consecutive year, for a maximum of three years. ESU is available at no additional cost for Windows 10 virtual machines in the following services Maybe if you log in they just give it to you? It certainly seems like it's pay to play from the documentation quoted (I'm located in the US). Also, while I'm completely open to debate the exact definition of "official support", Microsoft's own marketing states that Win10 is no longer supported and they advise you to move to a supported version, or enroll in extended support as a temporary bridge to Win11. >>>> Windows 10 support has ended on October 14, 2025 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-10-support-has-ended-on-october-14-2025-2ca8b313-1946-43d3-b55c-2b95b107f281 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-10-suppo...

prinny_ 11mo ago

I built a new pc for gaming 2 years ago with windows 11 and I can’t see myself using this OS again when I retire it. From randomly losing Bluetooth, to keyboard resets, to the hilarious failure that is the new right click menu (which lags a bit before appearing, something that I find hilarious) it’s just a bad user experience through and through. My new pc will either run Linux or be a Mac mini. Hopefully Linux gaming will continue to improve and I will be able to completely ditch windows once and for all.

gregors 11mo ago
I've been running Steam on both linux and windows. This year I was 85% Linux.

rawgabbit 11mo ago

In Soviet Windows, you don’t control the operating system; it controls you.

XVincentX 11mo ago

> The last 12 months have been an incredibly frustrating time for Windows fans. Windows fans? What?

snielson 11mo ago

I'm not a developer, but I consider myself relatively tech literate. That said, I really like Windows 11 and many other MS products such as M365, Edge, new Outlook, One Drive, and even Teams is tolerable (maybe not as polished as Zoom). Copilot is still struggling to find relevance, but I just chalk that up to MS pivoting rapidly to figure out how to make it useful (I currently use the enterprise version solely to draft emails, which is a huge time saver even if it is a bit pricey at $30/mo). The complaints I see on here so frequently just don't register with me. For example, I never see any ads. Maybe there is a setting I turned off long ago, but I cannot recall ever seeing an ad. The setting must be persistent with my Windows backups because no ads show when I reinstall Windows and restore the settings and configuration from a backup. Things are not always perfect, but the issues I have encountered are relatively minor all things considered.

tim-tday 11mo ago

Windows has fans? I just thought people tolerated it.

tempodox 11mo ago

Microsoft and Windows are fully self-sufficient as disasters, they need no help from outside in that area.

amluto 11mo ago

I think that quite a few large companies are currently entrenched in a way that is rather unfortunate for their customers: they are so hard to displace that it’s not longer important whether their product is good enough that the customers like it. Microsoft: Windows is pretty bad lately (and is certainly not ahead of Linux when used as a desktop system in the way that it was, say, 20 years ago). But Microsoft barely cares whether anyone likes Windows because so many corporations are already thoroughly committed to Microsoft. If Microsoft were just starting out with its current product, it would be a hard sell. (Not just desktop — a lot of their serious enterprise stuff like AD is awful. But AD doesn’t need to be good any more — it just needs to be AD.) Apple, too: their last few generations added very little benefit and a whole lot of bugs. Their hardware is no longer ahead of anyone else’s, and I don’t think their software really is either. But people have bought in to the ecosystem. Android: Ditto, except there is barely even canonical hardware. Want apps but not iOS? You’re using Android. Boeing: The 737 MAX seems to have been a commercial success more or less solely because quite a few buyers specifically wanted planes compatible with their existing 737 investments. Boeing doesn’t seem to be trying to make planes that buyers would choose if they were unconstrained. The list goes on. Not that any of this is really new,

goobler 11mo ago

[dead]

Friedduck 11mo ago

My two chief complaints are instability and lack of consistency across the UI. There are 20-year-old dialogs lurking behind shiny new interfaces. Search doesn’t work reliably. Right-Clicking on a file twice in a row will often present different options. Finally, inserting AI where you least expect or want it just slows common tasks. I don’t need AI to guess the next data value in a series. They’ve left a huge opening for Google, more so than Apple, to get a foot in the door for corporate computing.

pier25 11mo ago

I only use Windows for gaming and 11 has been fine. Only use it to launch Steam though. My biggest complain is that every time I reboot I get the annoying ad for copilot and one drive that I can only skip for a couple of days.