15 ms·

Microsoft May Have Created the Slowest Windows in 25 Years with Windows 11

346 points by nabla9 9mo ago

Aloha 9mo ago
The changes to rework windows explorer in Windows 11, have IMO mostly resulted in a net poorer UX, and a net loss of performance.
the__alchemist 9mo ago
Out of the loop: Why is Windows 11 discussion trending over the past few months? It was released 4 years ago, and the most notable changes from the previous edition are a tabbed file browser, and the taskbar icons are now in the middle.
- roomey 9mo ago
  I assumed it was because windows 10 went out of support a few months ago
  - 1-6 9mo ago
    Windows 11 doesn't support Intel CPUs older than 8th gens. Linux is no longer an alternative, it's a lifeline for many old yet very capable machines. What is Microsoft trying to do by ending Windows 10 support?
    - the__alchemist 9mo ago
      I believe it does, but only from a clean install, rather than an in-place upgrade; I ran into this a few years ago.
      - zamadatix 9mo ago
        By default the official unmodified Windows 11 ISO enforces CPU, RAM, and TPM/Secure Boot checks. You can bypass these by customizing the installer, configuring some things at install runtime, installing on one machine and moving it over, etc and it may work but the resulting install is not officially supported unless the machine meets the requirements described under https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11-specifications https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11-specifica.... Some ISO-to-USB tools like Rufus can make doing this as easy as a checkbox. I've run many machines this way without issue yet, but it's not officially supported. I'm hoping Microsoft will really just make "Windows 12" or something if they ever decide to make these true hard requirements to load at all instead of just be supported.
- mixel 9mo ago
  As the other commenter said win10 went out of support and only recently ~2 months ago the company I work for migrated to win11, I think now all the people that do not want to use win11 are forced to use it and complain
  - the__alchemist 9mo ago
    Ah thank you! That explains it.
- Rygian 9mo ago
  Probably because people are being forced out of their Windows 10 systems, and onto an unwanted Windows 11. Also, you seem to skip other notable changes like enforced spam and enforced Copilot and enforced online registration.
  - the__alchemist 9mo ago
    I see a Copilot icon in the sys try I didn't put there and is unwelcome, but haven't clicked it. Worrying.
- 1over137 9mo ago
  Windows 10 just stopped getting security updates some weeks ago. So people that had been sticking with 10 are now considering 11.
  - doodlesdev 9mo ago
    You can still get security updated by enrolling in the Extended Support branch. Did it in a relative's computer and it seems it will get security updates for at least an extra year, with the advantage it won't get any feature updates too (a really nice bonus IMO).
- snowram 9mo ago
  Multiple reasons : IA pushback, better gaming experience, Linux becoming more and more mainstream with distro like Bazzite and CachyOS.
- layer8 9mo ago
  Because Windows 10 is now end-of-life. Previously, everyone who cared simply stayed on Windows 10.
- anal_reactor 9mo ago
  Taskbar icons in the middle are a symbol of general direction Windows is going towards. It's the tipping point where we say enough is enough. We're tired of anti-consumer changes. It's different from Vista or 8 which failed despite MS believing in it. This time MS gives us shit and they know it and they don't care. Microsoft doesn't hold the entire PC OS market hostage like it was the case only ten years ago, and if your use case is development + video games + porn, then Linux is a viable option, which definitely wasn't the case ten years ago.
mixel 9mo ago
It's not shocking they added even more bloatware to every microsoft program so even with the same OS kernel it would probably take longer. At this point it also got out of hand for Microsoft themselves if you have heard how they are going to speed up the explorer. Not by making it faster but by preloading it on startup so it feels snappier, there are 20 years of technical debt in I think you cannot save this anymore (but I am to inexperienced to know that for sure)
- smitty1e 9mo ago
  Sluggishness is the price we pay for freedom*. *Corporate surveillance.
- bob1029 9mo ago
  > there are 20 years of technical debt The only part of windows that really matters in the long run is win32 which has been extremely stable. You could go back to XP and not lose that many features. The fact that modern windows runs like ass has very little to do with backwards compatibility.
  - driggs 9mo ago
    Windows 2000 or Windows XP - with security updates and modern hardware support - is exactly what I want.
    - greenavocado 9mo ago
      Zone94 is still releasing modern Windows XP distributions and OneCore API brings Windows 10-level app support to Windows XP. https://github.com/shorthorn-project/One-Core-API-Binaries https://github.com/shorthorn-project/One-Core-API-Binaries
      - anal_reactor 9mo ago
        the fuck
  - 9mo ago
magicalhippo 9mo ago
Been using KDE on a secondary machine for 15 years now. However they were always lacking in hardware compared to my main desktop. I recently installed CachyOS on a USB NVMe drive, so I can dual boot without the dual boot pain. And wow, that thing flies. I've been a Windows user since 3.0, but Windows 11 is probably getting replaced soon. I've stopped competitive gaming so anti-cheats ain't an issue, and Linux gaming is good enough. There are some things I'll miss, but the bloat and lack of care from MS I'll be glad to leave behind.
ckladianos 9mo ago
Can we go back to Windows 7 yet?
- duskdozer 9mo ago
  If you have to use windows, 10 LTSC IOT version has support until 2032, and you can remove most of the bloat.
  - user____name 9mo ago
    Iirc only businesses can buy that and you cannot upgrade hardware.
    - cmxch 9mo ago
      Form an LLC and present yourself as a small business interested in IoT.
      - emeril 9mo ago
        or just buy a cd key from a wholesaler for $20 :) probably won't be disconnected... been using such a cd key for months w/o issue and my win11 experience isn't that painful
        cmxch 9mo ago
        Indeed, but for all the cases where I’d want to use IoT Windows, such as small scale NVRs, I have opted for Debian/Ubuntu/RHEL.
        nar001 9mo ago
        If you're gonna pay 20 bucks to someone who isn't even allowed to sell you a key, why not just activate it with massgrave?
richard_chase 9mo ago
I switched to Linux after Windows started showing me propaganda on the screen where you enter your password. To me, that's diabolical and forced me to make the switch. Sorry, I don't wish to "Learn more about Black-Owned Businesses" just to access my computer.
- nilamo 9mo ago
  I, too, am irrationally furious at microsoft for forcing me to look at nature scapes and offering a link to learn more if I wanted.
  - Abekkus 9mo ago
    Those landscape photos are a crappy hypnotic effort meant to try and dissociate Microsoft from the feeling most people have when they have to login on a Monday Morning.
    - nilamo 9mo ago
      Still, complaining about something you can only possibly see when you're not using the computer is such a minor thing, whether you like it or not, I cant find myself to care in any amount.
  - qwerpy 9mo ago
    What got me to angrily turn it off was a gigantic closeup of a moose face. It’s kind of funny now that I think about it but I have two 32” monitors and I really did not need 64” of moose lips and wet nostrils.
    - Loughla 9mo ago
      Honestly that sounds like something I would set as my work background just as a gag though.
    - ThatMedicIsASpy 9mo ago
      I was wondering what I want for my background but you've nailed it. Just random animals in nature.
Flux159 9mo ago
"What Andy giveth, Bill taketh away" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_and_Bill%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_and_Bill%27s_law On a more serious note, I really only use Windows for games & I'm still always frustrated with how many updates (& restarts during updates) Windows needs. My fans are always constantly spinning on Windows too (laptop or desktop) whereas my Mac & Linux machines are generally silent outside of heavy load.
- thesnide 9mo ago
  I'm now even using wine & proton for it. Thanks to Valve only very few games don't work. And it's not that i don't like windows, it is just too damn slow for me. And no. I do not want to upgrade my gear every 2 years or so
  - zamadatix 9mo ago
    I feel like I've been monkeys-pawed with the downfall of Windows for gaming. I.e. rather than being at the point where everything just works best/easiest in my Bazzite install it's a game of DRM, modding tool support, feature support, and random "this game runs better on Windows, this game runs better on Bazzite" discovery. Also Windows/Steam OS clone/"normal Linux" setups all have their own very awkward corners around the non-gaming portions. I've not found one that does not require substantial tweaking to get a usable all around experience unless you buy a device to use as more a dedicated gaming console (Xbox/Steam Deck type device). I miss the ~mid Windows 7 era. Not that everything ran perfectly without issues on Windows 7 at the time, particularly old games, but at least there was an option good enough to assume to always go with first instead of "see if the games you play work best here".
  - Der_Einzige 9mo ago
    All the games that "don't work" are the games that PEOPLE ACTUALLY PLAY! It's always hardcore multiplayer games with the actual crowd. Using linux for gaming is a great way to continue down the path to becoming a recluse.
    - 9mo ago
roc856a 9mo ago
From the article: "The benchmarks were run on a Lenovo ThinkPad X220 — a model not officially compatible with Windows 11 — which could have affected some results."
nine_k 9mo ago
I see no reason to migrate to Win11 when Win10 hits hard EOL. I'm lucky, of course: I only have one game-oriented machine with Windows, and Steam / Proton is going to suffice. Those beholden to MSO and the One True Excel, which of course is not guaranteed to work well (or at all) under Wine / Proton, are less lucky.
heraldgeezer 9mo ago
It is crazy bad on low powered hardware like my work laptop. It has an Intel Ultra 7 Processor 155U. Wow! An i7! Not so fast, the u there means ultrabook. Crammed into a too small chassis, this thing chokes even when using Edge or Chrome to work on Jira. Windows 11 JS Web Start menu does not help... Windows 11 is "fine" on my powerful desktop gaming CPU, but that is just brute-forcing it.
heraldgeezer 9mo ago
I once had to remote into a Windows XP machine somehow running on an older Intel i5 (first or 2nd gen). Still overkill for XP. It was CRAZY fast, over Teamviewer it felt better and faster than my local machine... Sad times.
- bob1029 9mo ago
  Windows XP is the only one that could consistently go faster than me. Explorer.exe used to be a wonder of productivity.
epolanski 9mo ago
I liked the path windows was going in late 2010s. WSL, power toys, many great utils, great performance. But it has since then stalled and got increasingly worse. Especially with this AI shoving everywhere, not even mentioning getting ads at some point in notifications and start menu. I'm not particularly in love with MacOS either (but have no realistic alternative on my MacBooks). I'm more and more inclined of switching my desktop (my main working machine) to Omarchy, two coworkers in my team use it and love it and seems the sweet spot for what I need as a dev without the annoyance of Windows or the god awful macos.
- pbohun 9mo ago
  It sounds weird to say, but Steve Ballmer was probably the best CEO of Microsoft.
  - phillipcarter 9mo ago
    Yeah, it sounds weird because the person you’re replying to is using examples of things that came in under Nadella, not Ballmer.
  - hackyhacky 9mo ago
    Or: Steve Ballmer oversaw the decline of Mircosoft's flagship product, but left before he could be blamed for it. A lot of Windows' current problems can be traced back to the Ballmer era, including the framework schizophrenia, as Microsoft shifted between Win32, UWP, WPF, and god knows what else. This has lead to the current chaotic and disjointed UI experience, and served to confuse and drive away developers. Repeatedly sacrificing reliable and consistent UX while chasing shiny and new technologies is no way to run an OS.
    - schmuckonwheels 9mo ago
      >including the framework schizophrenia, as Microsoft shifted between Win32, UWP, WPF Ah yes, and the solution being presented is Linux, with Xlib, Motif, Qt, GTK, and your choice of 167 different desktop environments. Don't forget the whole Wayland schism. Mac is no better, shifting SDKs every few years, except Apple goes one step further by breaking all legacy applications so you are forced to upgrade. Can't be schizo when you salt the earth and light a match to everything that came before the Current Thing.
flumpcakes 9mo ago
Windows 11 makes me hate everyday computing. From the adverts in the start menu, to the sluggish performance on a computer orders of magnitude more powerful than any XP machine I used. It's just not fun anymore.
- madphilosopher 9mo ago
  More evidence that Windows 11 is a hate crime.
michelb 9mo ago
Curious how MacOSX stacks up over the past 25 years. Tahoe feels like a massive regression on all fronts, from GUI to I/O.
- k2enemy 9mo ago
  MacOS seems to be going the way of Windows, with unnecessary and distracting notifications for things users don't care about. Then on top of that, the whole liquid glass redesign that hurts usability and information density. Definitely moving in the direction of "what is good for a particular PM" and not "what is good for the user." I would have switched to linux years ago if it were not for the great hardware and I like having access to iMessages from the desktop.
- jordand 9mo ago
  Yeah and I think Apple know from their telemetry that too many users (including me) are sticking with macOS 15 Sequoia, which they need to address with macOS 27 this year (but given how they are, it'll just be Apple Intelligence)
baddie_twoshoes 9mo ago
Don't software products tend to get slower, not faster, with each release? I think Windows 7 vs Vista was the only time I remember things getting better. IOS 26 is also terrible (on battery especially). New OS releases always have a ton of new services in them that bog them down.
- doodlesdev 9mo ago
  They do, but that's really not necessary. In the linked video you can see Windows 8.1 is pretty well optimized compared to the other Windows versions. A lot of this slowdown is just developers getting complacent and getting used to the new hardware capabilities. Windows has a lot of low hanging optimization fruit laying around. It's just Microsoft doesn't really care about that: it doesn't fit the business model at all.
doodlesdev 9mo ago
Regarding the video benchmark on the page: what would be fair is testing against the hardware that was available when the operating system was released. Windows 11 is absolutely not meant to run against hard drives, and current notebook and desktop offerings for home and enterprise users reflect that: you can get a 256gb SSD for a pretty decent price nowadays, to the point there's absolutely no reason to put in an HDD. When Windows Vista was released, your computer would absolutely have an HDD, so that would be a fair comparison. That said, I was restoring a notebook owned by my aunt recently and I decided to run Ubuntu on it so I could mess with gparted a little bit. I'm already a full-time Linux user (have been for about five years now, I guess), but I was still surprised to see that one of the most bloated Linux distributions ran lightning fast on my aunt's Pentium Gold + 4gb RAM + HDD while Windows took over four minutes to boot. It's absolutely time to abandon Windows if you're still dependent on it. There are alternatives. Heck, I'm not a fan of Apple either but at this point I'd recommend a MacBook for anyone wanting to get away from Windows and not comfortable with Linux or a Chromebook.
- smt88 9mo ago
  MacOS is a buggy mess, and it's also pretty slow lately. If you need full Office for work, your best bet is probably still Windows.
  - pico303 9mo ago
    As a software engineer who has developed on Macs (and Linux) for most of my career and has recently started a job that requires me to use Windows again, I can tell you from experience that Office on the Mac is far, far more stable, easy to use, and considerably faster than on Win11. Microsoft’s macOS team are really good at their jobs. But then I don’t find macOS to be slow or a buggy mess, so mileage may vary.
    - jtbayly 9mo ago
      Man, I've been an Apple user for years, and the best rumor I've ever heard is that MacOS 27 is going to be a Snow Leopard (bug fix) release! It's so buggy on 26, it drives me crazy. Just not nearly as crazy as Windows 11 drives me.
gjvc 9mo ago
we need to rewind to a timeline with 64-bit Windows 2000.
- user____name 9mo ago
  I would pray a premium for this.
  - gjvc 9mo ago
    ClearType is a winXP only feature, so let's say XP with the classic 2000 look and feel. hot damn.
retrocog 9mo ago
Switched to Ubuntu almost a year ago and I am much happier now.
kryogen1c 9mo ago
The fact that, on expensive hardware, I can hit windows+r and start typing before the run box renders/loads is staggering, it beggars belief. Im generally a microsoft shill, but theyre really on the down hill slope. windows 11 is truly a masterpiece of changes no one asked for or wants, Teams is the least reliable piece of business software I've ever seen. New outlook does not have feature parity with old outlook and has the same bargain bin apple ux stylings as w11. Maybe ive finally crested the age gap and im officially a dinosaur, but God damn every microsoft product is worse than it used to be.
- halapro 9mo ago
  As a dinosaur, it might finally be time for the Linux desktop
  - vachina 9mo ago
    Ironically MSFT is surviving off of dinosaurs. Legacy companies pumping it with Office 365 suite and Copilot subscriptions. They’re toast without them.
- quacked 9mo ago
  I dug out my dad's Windows 98 era PC that he was running Windows 2000 on that we hadn't turned on since 2011, and it felt lightning-fast compared to W10 and W11. Double-click to open apps and they appear, ready to type in. It felt like I was on some kind of futuristic prototype.
  - agumonkey 9mo ago
    I had similar impressions with multiple setup: - dell p2 300 win95 - early core duo era with linux 2.4 (some kali linux image) in both cases there was something very odd, the crude os design (no parallel systemd etc), gui toolkit and desktop environment (no compositor, glitchy) wasn't an issue and the low amount of lag felt very good. it's the same feeling when driving 90s cars, the drive feels directly connected to the whole, it's cruder but it feels better and saying this as a fan of recent linux kernel and systemd parallelism with the crazy cpu over ssd speed.. i was utterly surprised
lifetimerubyist 9mo ago
Windows will continue to get slower and slower because being fast is not a priority for them. The only care about AI so that’s what we’re gonna get.
tester756 9mo ago
c'mon folks, stop being naive - this is bullshit test :D "Windows 11 is running on unsupported hardware" I've been using W10 and W11 Pro versions daily and I don't feel any difference except task bar search menu performance (especially this on corpo laptop, on PC this is fine)
eboy 9mo ago
[dead]
dataflow 9mo ago
Windows 11 is fast enough if you... disable a million things on it that >99% of users wouldn't know when/how to, or wouldn't want to. Definitely depressing.
- marcosdumay 9mo ago
  What's the point when they will be all silently re-enabled by the update application?
  - dataflow 9mo ago
    I mean, the point is to make it usable. You can set up scheduled tasks where needed. I haven't had to re-disable stuff after that, but I've jumped through a lot more initial hoops than most people are willing to.
    - marcosdumay 9mo ago
      I tried this when Win 7 was new, and it worked great. Then I tried it when Win 10 was new, and it was a complete useless waste of time. In a week it was too slow to use again. I still haven't used Windows since Win 10 support ended, and have no idea how bad Windows 11 is for people to declare Win 10 "super fast" all over the internet. But I don't have any hope it will accept any setup I want. Win 10 already didn't.
      - antisthenes 9mo ago
        Win 10 IOT LTSC is supported for 6 more years, so support didn't really "end". That being said, W10 (or W11 for that matter) will never be as fast a Win 7 was on an SSD in the 2010-2020 era, even with all the hacks and debloat scripts available in many places on the Internet.
- golden-face 9mo ago
  Can you expand on this? For example details on any tools to do this. I've been trying to disable features I know use resources and aren't needed but the native UIs to do it are hella confusing and feel purposely useless.
luke5441 9mo ago
With which version did they enable/implement the CPU mitigations (Spectre etc.)?
- dijit 9mo ago
  Windows 7 SP2; Windows 8; Windows 10 and W11. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/update-to-disable-mitigation-against-spectre-variant-2-971f4092-29ed-42dd-a44a-4bf572796aa2 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/update-to-disable-...
PeterStuer 9mo ago
Slowest is unfortunately not even the worst problem of Win11. I just want an OS that helps me control my computers and be productive, not one that "mines" me to sell me to be exploited. While I have been using various Linux flavors for my servers, my desktop has been Windows for decades. Microsoft's charade with Win11 has me committed to moving to desktop Linux in 2026. There will be pain, but they crossed a line.
- ncpa-cpl 9mo ago
  And every update makes it more difficult to disable web search on the start menu and using local only accounts.
nephihaha 9mo ago
Vista was bad enough.
- halapro 9mo ago
  Vista was not bad, it's just that you tried running it on a 128MB computer from 2002. Vista was fantastic on so many levels but people were just not ready for it. People mocked Vista's permission prompts, something that every OS has now. That alone should tell you how misplaced your hate is.
  - nephihaha 9mo ago
    Mine was a bit later than 2002, but it was dreadful. I practically moved over straight away to the new iteration.
  - Marsymars 9mo ago
    Yeah, I needed >2gb of RAM at the time and ran Windows XP x64... 64-bit Vista was a significant improvement over the x64 version of XP.
  - Aldipower 9mo ago
    I ran it on an 2005 computer in 2005. And I remember it was very slow. Win7 was good then, 3 years later.
    - halapro 9mo ago
      Incredible you could run it in 2005 since it was released in late 2006. I ran windows vista beta that summer on my new 2GB computer, it was a great OS in my view.
      - Aldipower 9mo ago
        Sorry, then it was 2006. Thanks for pointing that out. You know my brain is getting older...
- drewfax 9mo ago
layer8 9mo ago
While not being a fan of Windows 11, I had the opposite experience for application launch times. They became shorter after the upgrade for some reason.
beezle 9mo ago
I was actually OK with Win 8, I just only used it in traditional desktop mode
kachapopopow 9mo ago
to be fair windows 11 is the most secure windows ever created, the amount of random checks it has is astonishing. Unfortunately it gets undermined by poor driver code from third-parties, much less of a problem with hyper-v based security, but still a huge problem. Obviously all these security features cost performance and something that linux and macos can live without since they generally do not have closed source drivers that can't be fixed (except nvidia, but it seems to be changing as nvidia is giving up and starting to open up due to AI). Windows has to be proactive and that is one of the biggest performance hurdles it faces. It's actually incredible how comparatively safe windows is if you have all the security features enabled, there are obviously still one-offs due to having to maintain compatibility and what was effectively usermode code ported to kernelmode ruining it, thankfully that also seems to be changing since they're slowly rewriting it to be secure by design with Unstrusted<> guards making these issues significantly less common. as for apple doesn't have third party code in the kernel at all so they can also fix it themselves. side note, the restrictive linux license might seem like it is preventing adoption since for example the whole HDMI 2.1 spec is centered around proprietary code, but in reality they have this illusion that their 'proprietary' code can be protected and somehow linux undermines it when in reality people can reverse everything to sourcecode if they spend enough time on it - if anyone is curious you can just take one of the firmware dumps from any hdmi 2.1 capable TV dongle, extract the kernel module responsible handling the authentication for hdmi 2.1, extract the code, put it in your amdgpu opensource driver, now you have hdmi 2.1 on linux.
- wackget 9mo ago
  Random checks?
  - user____name 9mo ago
    For the random battery fires and explosions.
  - kachapopopow 9mo ago
    patchguard, hyperguard, CET, retpoline, shadowing checks, you name it, look at any memory function and see if (rdtsc() % xxx) check_something.
WillAdams 9mo ago
If I could still be running Windows 2000, I would --- it simply flew on a Fujitsu Stylistic ST2300, and I was able to hack the Compaq TC1000 Finepoint digitizer driver for Windows NT to run on it --- w/ a CF--IDE adapter, no spinning rust to worry about, and I even had room for a full install of Encarta, my only worry until it died was buying AAAA batteries for the stylus, and the only thing I missed was pressure sensitivity (but my work computer had a Wacom Intuos, so the delicate stuff was done on that). That said, my favourite Windows computer ever was the Fujitsu Stylistic ST4110 w/ transflective display and Wacom EMR digitizer --- put an SSD in it, carried a couple of spare batteries, added a USB GPS, and kept a pair of docking stations w/ power supplies at my desks at work and the office and a third power supply in my laptop bag and it just worked --- despair of really replacing it, the Samsung Galaxy Book 12 was close, but then Fall Creators Update came out and crippled styluses down to an 11th touch input so that they would scroll rather than select text... getting by w/ a Book 3 Pro 360, but Windows 11 has me looking at a Raspberry Pi paired w/ a Wacom One or Movink display....
secondcoming 9mo ago
The people working on the windows kernel must be gutted to see their hard work destroyed by sub-standard devs elsewhere in MS.
throwmsreply 9mo ago
Running W11 on unsupported hardware aside. I was surprised the other day when I used a W11 machine that the new context menu took a perceptible second to appear and it still didn't have everything the old had so you still have to call the old one, very dismaying.
adabyron 9mo ago
Maybe some Microsoft Devs can publish a book about all the secret regedit hacks they use to make it function for themselves. I think Dave Plummer or another Msft vet mentioned you can remove hibernate & get 25GB back on your hard drive.
- keyringlight 9mo ago
  Isn't disabling hibernate "powercfg /hibernate off"? I'm not aware of a simple and obvious UI switch to do the same
  - dragonwriter 9mo ago
    I'm pretty sure hibernate has defaulted to off for quite a while and has to be turned on if desired (at least, the last several machines I've bought new that was the case.) The UI switch is not particularly obvious, at Control Panel → Hardware and Sound → Power Options → System Settings
- Spivak 9mo ago
  Well yeah it's basically Windows' version of a swap partition where they can dump the OS state when hibernating. You can get even more of your hard drive back by limiting the size of Windows' page file. I'm actually a big fan of hibernation on laptops and have mine set to suspend for 5 minutes then hibernate. My real life usage battery life has been noticeably longer with this setup.
christkv 9mo ago
I’m curious is the windows org considered a dead end at Microsoft making it hard to recruit top engineering talent?
1970-01-01 9mo ago
I call bullshit on these tests. The baseline doesn't make sense. Software defaults are never minimal (aka bloating) and are designed to scale with hardware. So as faster hardware reaches systems, the core OS still becomes faster but you will never see it when choosing defaults. You still receive baseline OS functioning in faster increments over time. If you tuned these OS installs for performance (no bloating, only core GUI and speed enhancing services) you would reach the opposite conclusion.
halapro 9mo ago
With so many good OSes nowadays, why is anyone still on Windows? Seriously. Unless you need custom hardware or software worth thousands of dollars, I bet it's easier to switch to one of the 4+ other major platforms.
- MonkeyClub 9mo ago
  Counting Windows, macOS, and Linux, I reach up to 3. Which are the other two major desktop-ready OSs you have in mind?
Aldipower 9mo ago
Just an anecdote from yesterday. I got an old Pentium 4 1,5Ghz from a friend, put a Terratec EWX 24/96 soundcard in, installed WinXP, turned automatic updates off and installed a software synth, Native Instruments FM7, connected a midi keyboard via the gameport. Literally 2ms latency and no midi jitter! With an 25 years old setup! And it just works, without any distractions. Really, I almost cried as I saw that. I feel somehow violated by today's Windows11/10/8.
- arcanemachiner 9mo ago
  I had a similar experience when helping a friend's parent with an absolutely ancient laptop from like 2007, which which had a crappy Celeron, 256 MB of RAM, and Widnoes Vista. The damn thing was shockingly performant. We have been played for absolute fools.
  - Narishma 9mo ago
    I don't believe that. Can Vista even run with just 256MB of RAM?
    - Aldipower 9mo ago
      I believe him that Vista was shockingly performant on an old laptop. And that is the point he is making.
- danhau 9mo ago
  Apparently Vista introduced a new audio stack with higher processing overhead and thus latency. I used to boot up XP in a VM occasionally. It‘s amazing how streamlined everything felt, inviting you to be productive. This was before the Electron apocalypse. Almost all UI looked the same, behaved the same and was easy on the eyes (remember when widgets had depth?).
kabes 9mo ago
And yet: https://www.phoronix.com/review/windows-beats-linux-arl-h https://www.phoronix.com/review/windows-beats-linux-arl-h
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
ExoticPearTree 9mo ago
Has anyone considered that maybe Microsoft is trying to help the Linux desktop adoption grow at a faster rate?
tibbydudeza 9mo ago
The other day I got tired of using mRemoteNG for RDP it takes ages to start up. So I went back to Microsoft's own RDP client - they deprecated it and now only support the new Windows App but you need to login with your corporate email and it does not even support RDP but Azure !!!!. You need to go to the stone age and use the RDP client they shipped with Windows NT 4.0. Say what you want about Balmer but Satya is now worse - he needs to go.
- Marsymars 9mo ago
  RDCMan works pretty well.
- majkinetor 9mo ago
  Try 1remote
jl6 9mo ago
Ah, an opportunity to call upon Hacker News, tech support of last resort… Someone please tell me if there’s a trick to making the Windows snipping tool faster. I press Win+Shift+S to activate the tool for capturing a region. It takes about 2 seconds to load. I draw the rectangle. Then it takes about 2 seconds to finish capturing. That is 4 infuriating seconds for something that should be (and I’m sure used to be!) virtually instant. Now that text is easily recognized in images, screenshots are an important interoperability tool for garbage apps like Teams.
- majkinetor 9mo ago
  Try flameshot
- MonkeyClub 9mo ago
  Win+PrtScr takes an instant screenshot. Win+Shift+PrtScr selects an area first.
  - jl6 9mo ago
    Are you sure about that second one?
- UltraMagnus 9mo ago
  Ditch the snipping tool, and try my favorite screen capture tool, FastStone Capture: https://www.faststone.org/FSCaptureDetail.htm https://www.faststone.org/FSCaptureDetail.htm I am not associated with this software, just a very happy user. You get a lifetime license for $20, it's constantly updated with new features, and is a joy to use.
whatever1 9mo ago
JavaScript has taken over UI. Why operating systems do not embrace it and make it a first class citizen? Aka explicitly design the os to run and render fast and efficiently js code
- pathartl 9mo ago
  This isn't true in the slightest.
eboy 9mo ago
[dead]
pjmlp 9mo ago
Not surprising given the amount of Webview2 and WinUI/WinRT that Windows 11 happens to contain. Note that even though WinRT is largely written in C++, and the team brags about performance, due to the amount of COM/WinRT reference counting and the sandboxing model of application identity, it actually runs slower than .NET applications. Quite ironic, given the Windows team sabotaged on Longhorn.
user2722 9mo ago
May not have been a fair test. Windows is running the kernel in a kinda VM which older computers have not been optimized for -- newer generations of CPU can smooth out the overhead. For a fair test against Windows 10 and below, you'll have at least to do this: "Temporarily turn off your Memory Integrity and VMP" -- https://support.microsoft.com/en-US https://support.microsoft.com/en-US Also, it's important to have all bits and pieces of Hyper-V/Windows Virtual Platform off (which the Menory Integrity relies on), thus cutting off WSL functionality. We don't need flawed tests to tell us Windows 11 sucks -- yesterday my explorer bar didn't respond to clicks nor Windows key. In the past killing explorer.exe and restarting it, or logging off and back on, worked. Yesterday I had to reboot the machine to fix it.
- dijit 9mo ago
  You’re advocating for a flawed test. Why is it, when ever someone points out that Microsoft shits the bed on something someone will come out with ludicrous ideas about changing the default environment. The default environment is what you get, all this handwringing about whats potentially possible misses the point entirely; for decades we have, as a community, scoffed at linux for requiring you to understand deeply how your OS works in order for it to function. Now we’re in the situation where the out-of-the-box experience for gaming requires less esoteric knowledge on Linux than Windows, yet people defend Windows still. Do you seriously think the exec running emails even knows what Hyper-V is? Do you think any IT department is going to disable memory integrity? Would any Dev disable WSL? Do the vast majority of gamers want to do this? Should they have to? You’re now arguing that overhead is ok because its mitigated by newer hardware, I don’t believe that to be true as I run W11 on A Threadripper 3970x and an i9-14900k and the fuckers feel leagues slower than my M1 Macbook, its a joke! Like 10x the power/thermal envelope- and sure, some of that is down to the M1 being great, but there’s no benchmark putting it above those CPUs. Stop pretending that this is ok, and stop trying to spread uncertainty about a valid test. I’d prefer newer hardware too, but this is the compromise if we want older OS’s to be included.
  - user2722 9mo ago
    Valid point. However also note the exec you mentioned wouldn't have Windows 11 on his laptop -- he would be stuck on the out of date, faster, Windows 10.
knowitnone3 9mo ago
It spends so much CPU cycles collecting your data being an OS is just a side quest
chaostheory 9mo ago
Everyone has forgotten how unstable and insecure Windows was back then when it was “fast”. It was also fast to blue screen, freeze, and spread malware. IMO it’s much better now. If you don’t like it, then there are good viable alternatives today especially since everything is web based.
znnajdla 9mo ago
Complexity is to software what cancer is to living organisms.
CrzyLngPwd 9mo ago
I don't see the same things as the commenters or the article. I love Windows 11, and have zero complaints. Win+R is instant. Notepad is the best version so far, I use it as a todo list and it saves and loads in the same place on my third screen every reboot - fantastic. I have no use for the AI being shoehorned into everything, but I use it every day via chatgpt in the browser, and genie and cp in vsc.
- vachina 9mo ago
  Windows is slower objectively if you use the same hardware. Now you might say modern software needs modern hardware, but Windows as it is is stagnant in terms of functionality and features, so what justifies the requirement of newer hardware?
lousken 9mo ago
It is a lot slower than vista was back in the day, so yes, it is garbage.
cmxch 9mo ago
When half the OS is dedicated to data and revenue collection along with protecting it, it should be unsurprising to see it slow.
scorpioxy 9mo ago
I recently had to pay the "Microsoft tax" to Lenovo. Which felt more like an unfair punishment rather than a tax since your taxes are meant to fund public services. I kept on thinking that this feels like it should be illegal. I don't use Windows for my work. My servers all run Linux, my clients servers all run Linux and I have no need for it so why am I being forced to pay? I keep a Windows virtual machine for software that doesn't run on Linux but my use of that over the years has declined dramatically. To me, the earlier versions of Windows 10 were somewhat OK when they're stripped down. But Windows 11 is bloated beyond belief. And shoving AI functionality in it is going to make things worse.
tsoukase 9mo ago
Yes, but it will be the fastest version from now on.
spydr 9mo ago
The computers they give us at work are pretty powerful. Mine has 64 gigs of ram. When I power it on the fans instantly go into full blast mode because the computer is heating up. why? I have no idea I just run Edge and Teams, if I try to use VS my computer will crash. At home I use Mac and Linux (kububtu) and will never have windows on my devices again
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
dada78641 9mo ago
The thing that really offends me about Windows 11 is that new right click menu that takes like 500 ms to appear each time you use it and is less useful than the old one. Recently I've been experimenting with Atlas, Revi and Ghost Spectre, which are custom stripped versions of Windows, and it's such a breath of fresh air. It really makes me feel like if only they'd just ruthlessly pull out all the new garbage without regard for "but we just made and shipped this", Windows would actually be pretty good. Say what you want about Apple and their slow descent into a fully walled garden where independent software development is slowly eroded and sabotaged, but even their most reviled update in years (macOS 26) is still miles ahead of Windows 11 in terms of cohesion and polish.
chris_wray 9mo ago
I don't think this benchmark is fair, since they clearly state the hardware they used wasn't compatible with the OS.

346 points by nabla9 9mo ago

Aloha 9mo ago

The changes to rework windows explorer in Windows 11, have IMO mostly resulted in a net poorer UX, and a net loss of performance.

the__alchemist 9mo ago

Out of the loop: Why is Windows 11 discussion trending over the past few months? It was released 4 years ago, and the most notable changes from the previous edition are a tabbed file browser, and the taskbar icons are now in the middle.

roomey 9mo ago
I assumed it was because windows 10 went out of support a few months ago
- 1-6 9mo ago
  Windows 11 doesn't support Intel CPUs older than 8th gens. Linux is no longer an alternative, it's a lifeline for many old yet very capable machines. What is Microsoft trying to do by ending Windows 10 support?
  - the__alchemist 9mo ago
    I believe it does, but only from a clean install, rather than an in-place upgrade; I ran into this a few years ago.
    - zamadatix 9mo ago
      By default the official unmodified Windows 11 ISO enforces CPU, RAM, and TPM/Secure Boot checks. You can bypass these by customizing the installer, configuring some things at install runtime, installing on one machine and moving it over, etc and it may work but the resulting install is not officially supported unless the machine meets the requirements described under https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11-specifications https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11-specifica.... Some ISO-to-USB tools like Rufus can make doing this as easy as a checkbox. I've run many machines this way without issue yet, but it's not officially supported. I'm hoping Microsoft will really just make "Windows 12" or something if they ever decide to make these true hard requirements to load at all instead of just be supported.
mixel 9mo ago
As the other commenter said win10 went out of support and only recently ~2 months ago the company I work for migrated to win11, I think now all the people that do not want to use win11 are forced to use it and complain
- the__alchemist 9mo ago
  Ah thank you! That explains it.
Rygian 9mo ago
Probably because people are being forced out of their Windows 10 systems, and onto an unwanted Windows 11. Also, you seem to skip other notable changes like enforced spam and enforced Copilot and enforced online registration.
- the__alchemist 9mo ago
  I see a Copilot icon in the sys try I didn't put there and is unwelcome, but haven't clicked it. Worrying.
1over137 9mo ago
Windows 10 just stopped getting security updates some weeks ago. So people that had been sticking with 10 are now considering 11.
- doodlesdev 9mo ago
  You can still get security updated by enrolling in the Extended Support branch. Did it in a relative's computer and it seems it will get security updates for at least an extra year, with the advantage it won't get any feature updates too (a really nice bonus IMO).
snowram 9mo ago
Multiple reasons : IA pushback, better gaming experience, Linux becoming more and more mainstream with distro like Bazzite and CachyOS.
layer8 9mo ago
Because Windows 10 is now end-of-life. Previously, everyone who cared simply stayed on Windows 10.
anal_reactor 9mo ago
Taskbar icons in the middle are a symbol of general direction Windows is going towards. It's the tipping point where we say enough is enough. We're tired of anti-consumer changes. It's different from Vista or 8 which failed despite MS believing in it. This time MS gives us shit and they know it and they don't care. Microsoft doesn't hold the entire PC OS market hostage like it was the case only ten years ago, and if your use case is development + video games + porn, then Linux is a viable option, which definitely wasn't the case ten years ago.

mixel 9mo ago

It's not shocking they added even more bloatware to every microsoft program so even with the same OS kernel it would probably take longer. At this point it also got out of hand for Microsoft themselves if you have heard how they are going to speed up the explorer. Not by making it faster but by preloading it on startup so it feels snappier, there are 20 years of technical debt in I think you cannot save this anymore (but I am to inexperienced to know that for sure)

smitty1e 9mo ago
Sluggishness is the price we pay for freedom*. *Corporate surveillance.
bob1029 9mo ago
> there are 20 years of technical debt The only part of windows that really matters in the long run is win32 which has been extremely stable. You could go back to XP and not lose that many features. The fact that modern windows runs like ass has very little to do with backwards compatibility.
- driggs 9mo ago
  Windows 2000 or Windows XP - with security updates and modern hardware support - is exactly what I want.
  - greenavocado 9mo ago
    Zone94 is still releasing modern Windows XP distributions and OneCore API brings Windows 10-level app support to Windows XP. https://github.com/shorthorn-project/One-Core-API-Binaries https://github.com/shorthorn-project/One-Core-API-Binaries
    - anal_reactor 9mo ago
      the fuck
- 9mo ago

magicalhippo 9mo ago

Been using KDE on a secondary machine for 15 years now. However they were always lacking in hardware compared to my main desktop. I recently installed CachyOS on a USB NVMe drive, so I can dual boot without the dual boot pain. And wow, that thing flies. I've been a Windows user since 3.0, but Windows 11 is probably getting replaced soon. I've stopped competitive gaming so anti-cheats ain't an issue, and Linux gaming is good enough. There are some things I'll miss, but the bloat and lack of care from MS I'll be glad to leave behind.

ckladianos 9mo ago

Can we go back to Windows 7 yet?

duskdozer 9mo ago
If you have to use windows, 10 LTSC IOT version has support until 2032, and you can remove most of the bloat.
- user____name 9mo ago
  Iirc only businesses can buy that and you cannot upgrade hardware.
  - cmxch 9mo ago
    Form an LLC and present yourself as a small business interested in IoT.
    - emeril 9mo ago
      or just buy a cd key from a wholesaler for $20 :) probably won't be disconnected... been using such a cd key for months w/o issue and my win11 experience isn't that painful
      - cmxch 9mo ago
        Indeed, but for all the cases where I’d want to use IoT Windows, such as small scale NVRs, I have opted for Debian/Ubuntu/RHEL.
      - nar001 9mo ago
        If you're gonna pay 20 bucks to someone who isn't even allowed to sell you a key, why not just activate it with massgrave?

richard_chase 9mo ago

I switched to Linux after Windows started showing me propaganda on the screen where you enter your password. To me, that's diabolical and forced me to make the switch. Sorry, I don't wish to "Learn more about Black-Owned Businesses" just to access my computer.

nilamo 9mo ago
I, too, am irrationally furious at microsoft for forcing me to look at nature scapes and offering a link to learn more if I wanted.
- Abekkus 9mo ago
  Those landscape photos are a crappy hypnotic effort meant to try and dissociate Microsoft from the feeling most people have when they have to login on a Monday Morning.
  - nilamo 9mo ago
    Still, complaining about something you can only possibly see when you're not using the computer is such a minor thing, whether you like it or not, I cant find myself to care in any amount.
- qwerpy 9mo ago
  What got me to angrily turn it off was a gigantic closeup of a moose face. It’s kind of funny now that I think about it but I have two 32” monitors and I really did not need 64” of moose lips and wet nostrils.
  - Loughla 9mo ago
    Honestly that sounds like something I would set as my work background just as a gag though.
  - ThatMedicIsASpy 9mo ago
    I was wondering what I want for my background but you've nailed it. Just random animals in nature.

Flux159 9mo ago

"What Andy giveth, Bill taketh away" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_and_Bill%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_and_Bill%27s_law On a more serious note, I really only use Windows for games & I'm still always frustrated with how many updates (& restarts during updates) Windows needs. My fans are always constantly spinning on Windows too (laptop or desktop) whereas my Mac & Linux machines are generally silent outside of heavy load.

thesnide 9mo ago
I'm now even using wine & proton for it. Thanks to Valve only very few games don't work. And it's not that i don't like windows, it is just too damn slow for me. And no. I do not want to upgrade my gear every 2 years or so
- zamadatix 9mo ago
  I feel like I've been monkeys-pawed with the downfall of Windows for gaming. I.e. rather than being at the point where everything just works best/easiest in my Bazzite install it's a game of DRM, modding tool support, feature support, and random "this game runs better on Windows, this game runs better on Bazzite" discovery. Also Windows/Steam OS clone/"normal Linux" setups all have their own very awkward corners around the non-gaming portions. I've not found one that does not require substantial tweaking to get a usable all around experience unless you buy a device to use as more a dedicated gaming console (Xbox/Steam Deck type device). I miss the ~mid Windows 7 era. Not that everything ran perfectly without issues on Windows 7 at the time, particularly old games, but at least there was an option good enough to assume to always go with first instead of "see if the games you play work best here".
- Der_Einzige 9mo ago
  All the games that "don't work" are the games that PEOPLE ACTUALLY PLAY! It's always hardcore multiplayer games with the actual crowd. Using linux for gaming is a great way to continue down the path to becoming a recluse.
  - 9mo ago

roc856a 9mo ago

From the article: "The benchmarks were run on a Lenovo ThinkPad X220 — a model not officially compatible with Windows 11 — which could have affected some results."

nine_k 9mo ago

I see no reason to migrate to Win11 when Win10 hits hard EOL. I'm lucky, of course: I only have one game-oriented machine with Windows, and Steam / Proton is going to suffice. Those beholden to MSO and the One True Excel, which of course is not guaranteed to work well (or at all) under Wine / Proton, are less lucky.

heraldgeezer 9mo ago

It is crazy bad on low powered hardware like my work laptop. It has an Intel Ultra 7 Processor 155U. Wow! An i7! Not so fast, the u there means ultrabook. Crammed into a too small chassis, this thing chokes even when using Edge or Chrome to work on Jira. Windows 11 JS Web Start menu does not help... Windows 11 is "fine" on my powerful desktop gaming CPU, but that is just brute-forcing it.

heraldgeezer 9mo ago

I once had to remote into a Windows XP machine somehow running on an older Intel i5 (first or 2nd gen). Still overkill for XP. It was CRAZY fast, over Teamviewer it felt better and faster than my local machine... Sad times.

bob1029 9mo ago
Windows XP is the only one that could consistently go faster than me. Explorer.exe used to be a wonder of productivity.

epolanski 9mo ago

I liked the path windows was going in late 2010s. WSL, power toys, many great utils, great performance. But it has since then stalled and got increasingly worse. Especially with this AI shoving everywhere, not even mentioning getting ads at some point in notifications and start menu. I'm not particularly in love with MacOS either (but have no realistic alternative on my MacBooks). I'm more and more inclined of switching my desktop (my main working machine) to Omarchy, two coworkers in my team use it and love it and seems the sweet spot for what I need as a dev without the annoyance of Windows or the god awful macos.

pbohun 9mo ago
It sounds weird to say, but Steve Ballmer was probably the best CEO of Microsoft.
- phillipcarter 9mo ago
  Yeah, it sounds weird because the person you’re replying to is using examples of things that came in under Nadella, not Ballmer.
- hackyhacky 9mo ago
  Or: Steve Ballmer oversaw the decline of Mircosoft's flagship product, but left before he could be blamed for it. A lot of Windows' current problems can be traced back to the Ballmer era, including the framework schizophrenia, as Microsoft shifted between Win32, UWP, WPF, and god knows what else. This has lead to the current chaotic and disjointed UI experience, and served to confuse and drive away developers. Repeatedly sacrificing reliable and consistent UX while chasing shiny and new technologies is no way to run an OS.
  - schmuckonwheels 9mo ago
    >including the framework schizophrenia, as Microsoft shifted between Win32, UWP, WPF Ah yes, and the solution being presented is Linux, with Xlib, Motif, Qt, GTK, and your choice of 167 different desktop environments. Don't forget the whole Wayland schism. Mac is no better, shifting SDKs every few years, except Apple goes one step further by breaking all legacy applications so you are forced to upgrade. Can't be schizo when you salt the earth and light a match to everything that came before the Current Thing.

flumpcakes 9mo ago

Windows 11 makes me hate everyday computing. From the adverts in the start menu, to the sluggish performance on a computer orders of magnitude more powerful than any XP machine I used. It's just not fun anymore.

madphilosopher 9mo ago
More evidence that Windows 11 is a hate crime.

michelb 9mo ago

Curious how MacOSX stacks up over the past 25 years. Tahoe feels like a massive regression on all fronts, from GUI to I/O.

k2enemy 9mo ago
MacOS seems to be going the way of Windows, with unnecessary and distracting notifications for things users don't care about. Then on top of that, the whole liquid glass redesign that hurts usability and information density. Definitely moving in the direction of "what is good for a particular PM" and not "what is good for the user." I would have switched to linux years ago if it were not for the great hardware and I like having access to iMessages from the desktop.
jordand 9mo ago
Yeah and I think Apple know from their telemetry that too many users (including me) are sticking with macOS 15 Sequoia, which they need to address with macOS 27 this year (but given how they are, it'll just be Apple Intelligence)

baddie_twoshoes 9mo ago

Don't software products tend to get slower, not faster, with each release? I think Windows 7 vs Vista was the only time I remember things getting better. IOS 26 is also terrible (on battery especially). New OS releases always have a ton of new services in them that bog them down.

doodlesdev 9mo ago
They do, but that's really not necessary. In the linked video you can see Windows 8.1 is pretty well optimized compared to the other Windows versions. A lot of this slowdown is just developers getting complacent and getting used to the new hardware capabilities. Windows has a lot of low hanging optimization fruit laying around. It's just Microsoft doesn't really care about that: it doesn't fit the business model at all.

doodlesdev 9mo ago

Regarding the video benchmark on the page: what would be fair is testing against the hardware that was available when the operating system was released. Windows 11 is absolutely not meant to run against hard drives, and current notebook and desktop offerings for home and enterprise users reflect that: you can get a 256gb SSD for a pretty decent price nowadays, to the point there's absolutely no reason to put in an HDD. When Windows Vista was released, your computer would absolutely have an HDD, so that would be a fair comparison. That said, I was restoring a notebook owned by my aunt recently and I decided to run Ubuntu on it so I could mess with gparted a little bit. I'm already a full-time Linux user (have been for about five years now, I guess), but I was still surprised to see that one of the most bloated Linux distributions ran lightning fast on my aunt's Pentium Gold + 4gb RAM + HDD while Windows took over four minutes to boot. It's absolutely time to abandon Windows if you're still dependent on it. There are alternatives. Heck, I'm not a fan of Apple either but at this point I'd recommend a MacBook for anyone wanting to get away from Windows and not comfortable with Linux or a Chromebook.

smt88 9mo ago
MacOS is a buggy mess, and it's also pretty slow lately. If you need full Office for work, your best bet is probably still Windows.
- pico303 9mo ago
  As a software engineer who has developed on Macs (and Linux) for most of my career and has recently started a job that requires me to use Windows again, I can tell you from experience that Office on the Mac is far, far more stable, easy to use, and considerably faster than on Win11. Microsoft’s macOS team are really good at their jobs. But then I don’t find macOS to be slow or a buggy mess, so mileage may vary.
  - jtbayly 9mo ago
    Man, I've been an Apple user for years, and the best rumor I've ever heard is that MacOS 27 is going to be a Snow Leopard (bug fix) release! It's so buggy on 26, it drives me crazy. Just not nearly as crazy as Windows 11 drives me.

gjvc 9mo ago

we need to rewind to a timeline with 64-bit Windows 2000.

user____name 9mo ago
I would pray a premium for this.
- gjvc 9mo ago
  ClearType is a winXP only feature, so let's say XP with the classic 2000 look and feel. hot damn.

retrocog 9mo ago

Switched to Ubuntu almost a year ago and I am much happier now.

kryogen1c 9mo ago

The fact that, on expensive hardware, I can hit windows+r and start typing before the run box renders/loads is staggering, it beggars belief. Im generally a microsoft shill, but theyre really on the down hill slope. windows 11 is truly a masterpiece of changes no one asked for or wants, Teams is the least reliable piece of business software I've ever seen. New outlook does not have feature parity with old outlook and has the same bargain bin apple ux stylings as w11. Maybe ive finally crested the age gap and im officially a dinosaur, but God damn every microsoft product is worse than it used to be.

halapro 9mo ago
As a dinosaur, it might finally be time for the Linux desktop
- vachina 9mo ago
  Ironically MSFT is surviving off of dinosaurs. Legacy companies pumping it with Office 365 suite and Copilot subscriptions. They’re toast without them.
quacked 9mo ago
I dug out my dad's Windows 98 era PC that he was running Windows 2000 on that we hadn't turned on since 2011, and it felt lightning-fast compared to W10 and W11. Double-click to open apps and they appear, ready to type in. It felt like I was on some kind of futuristic prototype.
- agumonkey 9mo ago
  I had similar impressions with multiple setup: - dell p2 300 win95 - early core duo era with linux 2.4 (some kali linux image) in both cases there was something very odd, the crude os design (no parallel systemd etc), gui toolkit and desktop environment (no compositor, glitchy) wasn't an issue and the low amount of lag felt very good. it's the same feeling when driving 90s cars, the drive feels directly connected to the whole, it's cruder but it feels better and saying this as a fan of recent linux kernel and systemd parallelism with the crazy cpu over ssd speed.. i was utterly surprised

lifetimerubyist 9mo ago

Windows will continue to get slower and slower because being fast is not a priority for them. The only care about AI so that’s what we’re gonna get.

tester756 9mo ago

c'mon folks, stop being naive - this is bullshit test :D "Windows 11 is running on unsupported hardware" I've been using W10 and W11 Pro versions daily and I don't feel any difference except task bar search menu performance (especially this on corpo laptop, on PC this is fine)

eboy 9mo ago

[dead]

dataflow 9mo ago

Windows 11 is fast enough if you... disable a million things on it that >99% of users wouldn't know when/how to, or wouldn't want to. Definitely depressing.

marcosdumay 9mo ago
What's the point when they will be all silently re-enabled by the update application?
- dataflow 9mo ago
  I mean, the point is to make it usable. You can set up scheduled tasks where needed. I haven't had to re-disable stuff after that, but I've jumped through a lot more initial hoops than most people are willing to.
  - marcosdumay 9mo ago
    I tried this when Win 7 was new, and it worked great. Then I tried it when Win 10 was new, and it was a complete useless waste of time. In a week it was too slow to use again. I still haven't used Windows since Win 10 support ended, and have no idea how bad Windows 11 is for people to declare Win 10 "super fast" all over the internet. But I don't have any hope it will accept any setup I want. Win 10 already didn't.
    - antisthenes 9mo ago
      Win 10 IOT LTSC is supported for 6 more years, so support didn't really "end". That being said, W10 (or W11 for that matter) will never be as fast a Win 7 was on an SSD in the 2010-2020 era, even with all the hacks and debloat scripts available in many places on the Internet.
golden-face 9mo ago
Can you expand on this? For example details on any tools to do this. I've been trying to disable features I know use resources and aren't needed but the native UIs to do it are hella confusing and feel purposely useless.

luke5441 9mo ago

With which version did they enable/implement the CPU mitigations (Spectre etc.)?

dijit 9mo ago
Windows 7 SP2; Windows 8; Windows 10 and W11. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/update-to-disable-mitigation-against-spectre-variant-2-971f4092-29ed-42dd-a44a-4bf572796aa2 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/update-to-disable-...

PeterStuer 9mo ago

Slowest is unfortunately not even the worst problem of Win11. I just want an OS that helps me control my computers and be productive, not one that "mines" me to sell me to be exploited. While I have been using various Linux flavors for my servers, my desktop has been Windows for decades. Microsoft's charade with Win11 has me committed to moving to desktop Linux in 2026. There will be pain, but they crossed a line.

ncpa-cpl 9mo ago
And every update makes it more difficult to disable web search on the start menu and using local only accounts.

nephihaha 9mo ago

Vista was bad enough.

halapro 9mo ago
Vista was not bad, it's just that you tried running it on a 128MB computer from 2002. Vista was fantastic on so many levels but people were just not ready for it. People mocked Vista's permission prompts, something that every OS has now. That alone should tell you how misplaced your hate is.
- nephihaha 9mo ago
  Mine was a bit later than 2002, but it was dreadful. I practically moved over straight away to the new iteration.
- Marsymars 9mo ago
  Yeah, I needed >2gb of RAM at the time and ran Windows XP x64... 64-bit Vista was a significant improvement over the x64 version of XP.
- Aldipower 9mo ago
  I ran it on an 2005 computer in 2005. And I remember it was very slow. Win7 was good then, 3 years later.
  - halapro 9mo ago
    Incredible you could run it in 2005 since it was released in late 2006. I ran windows vista beta that summer on my new 2GB computer, it was a great OS in my view.
    - Aldipower 9mo ago
      Sorry, then it was 2006. Thanks for pointing that out. You know my brain is getting older...
drewfax 9mo ago

layer8 9mo ago

While not being a fan of Windows 11, I had the opposite experience for application launch times. They became shorter after the upgrade for some reason.

beezle 9mo ago

I was actually OK with Win 8, I just only used it in traditional desktop mode

kachapopopow 9mo ago

to be fair windows 11 is the most secure windows ever created, the amount of random checks it has is astonishing. Unfortunately it gets undermined by poor driver code from third-parties, much less of a problem with hyper-v based security, but still a huge problem. Obviously all these security features cost performance and something that linux and macos can live without since they generally do not have closed source drivers that can't be fixed (except nvidia, but it seems to be changing as nvidia is giving up and starting to open up due to AI). Windows has to be proactive and that is one of the biggest performance hurdles it faces. It's actually incredible how comparatively safe windows is if you have all the security features enabled, there are obviously still one-offs due to having to maintain compatibility and what was effectively usermode code ported to kernelmode ruining it, thankfully that also seems to be changing since they're slowly rewriting it to be secure by design with Unstrusted<> guards making these issues significantly less common. as for apple doesn't have third party code in the kernel at all so they can also fix it themselves. side note, the restrictive linux license might seem like it is preventing adoption since for example the whole HDMI 2.1 spec is centered around proprietary code, but in reality they have this illusion that their 'proprietary' code can be protected and somehow linux undermines it when in reality people can reverse everything to sourcecode if they spend enough time on it - if anyone is curious you can just take one of the firmware dumps from any hdmi 2.1 capable TV dongle, extract the kernel module responsible handling the authentication for hdmi 2.1, extract the code, put it in your amdgpu opensource driver, now you have hdmi 2.1 on linux.

wackget 9mo ago
Random checks?
- user____name 9mo ago
  For the random battery fires and explosions.
- kachapopopow 9mo ago
  patchguard, hyperguard, CET, retpoline, shadowing checks, you name it, look at any memory function and see if (rdtsc() % xxx) check_something.

WillAdams 9mo ago

If I could still be running Windows 2000, I would --- it simply flew on a Fujitsu Stylistic ST2300, and I was able to hack the Compaq TC1000 Finepoint digitizer driver for Windows NT to run on it --- w/ a CF--IDE adapter, no spinning rust to worry about, and I even had room for a full install of Encarta, my only worry until it died was buying AAAA batteries for the stylus, and the only thing I missed was pressure sensitivity (but my work computer had a Wacom Intuos, so the delicate stuff was done on that). That said, my favourite Windows computer ever was the Fujitsu Stylistic ST4110 w/ transflective display and Wacom EMR digitizer --- put an SSD in it, carried a couple of spare batteries, added a USB GPS, and kept a pair of docking stations w/ power supplies at my desks at work and the office and a third power supply in my laptop bag and it just worked --- despair of really replacing it, the Samsung Galaxy Book 12 was close, but then Fall Creators Update came out and crippled styluses down to an 11th touch input so that they would scroll rather than select text... getting by w/ a Book 3 Pro 360, but Windows 11 has me looking at a Raspberry Pi paired w/ a Wacom One or Movink display....

secondcoming 9mo ago

The people working on the windows kernel must be gutted to see their hard work destroyed by sub-standard devs elsewhere in MS.

throwmsreply 9mo ago

Running W11 on unsupported hardware aside. I was surprised the other day when I used a W11 machine that the new context menu took a perceptible second to appear and it still didn't have everything the old had so you still have to call the old one, very dismaying.

adabyron 9mo ago

Maybe some Microsoft Devs can publish a book about all the secret regedit hacks they use to make it function for themselves. I think Dave Plummer or another Msft vet mentioned you can remove hibernate & get 25GB back on your hard drive.

keyringlight 9mo ago
Isn't disabling hibernate "powercfg /hibernate off"? I'm not aware of a simple and obvious UI switch to do the same
- dragonwriter 9mo ago
  I'm pretty sure hibernate has defaulted to off for quite a while and has to be turned on if desired (at least, the last several machines I've bought new that was the case.) The UI switch is not particularly obvious, at Control Panel → Hardware and Sound → Power Options → System Settings
Spivak 9mo ago
Well yeah it's basically Windows' version of a swap partition where they can dump the OS state when hibernating. You can get even more of your hard drive back by limiting the size of Windows' page file. I'm actually a big fan of hibernation on laptops and have mine set to suspend for 5 minutes then hibernate. My real life usage battery life has been noticeably longer with this setup.

christkv 9mo ago

I’m curious is the windows org considered a dead end at Microsoft making it hard to recruit top engineering talent?

1970-01-01 9mo ago

I call bullshit on these tests. The baseline doesn't make sense. Software defaults are never minimal (aka bloating) and are designed to scale with hardware. So as faster hardware reaches systems, the core OS still becomes faster but you will never see it when choosing defaults. You still receive baseline OS functioning in faster increments over time. If you tuned these OS installs for performance (no bloating, only core GUI and speed enhancing services) you would reach the opposite conclusion.

halapro 9mo ago

With so many good OSes nowadays, why is anyone still on Windows? Seriously. Unless you need custom hardware or software worth thousands of dollars, I bet it's easier to switch to one of the 4+ other major platforms.

MonkeyClub 9mo ago
Counting Windows, macOS, and Linux, I reach up to 3. Which are the other two major desktop-ready OSs you have in mind?

Aldipower 9mo ago

Just an anecdote from yesterday. I got an old Pentium 4 1,5Ghz from a friend, put a Terratec EWX 24/96 soundcard in, installed WinXP, turned automatic updates off and installed a software synth, Native Instruments FM7, connected a midi keyboard via the gameport. Literally 2ms latency and no midi jitter! With an 25 years old setup! And it just works, without any distractions. Really, I almost cried as I saw that. I feel somehow violated by today's Windows11/10/8.

arcanemachiner 9mo ago
I had a similar experience when helping a friend's parent with an absolutely ancient laptop from like 2007, which which had a crappy Celeron, 256 MB of RAM, and Widnoes Vista. The damn thing was shockingly performant. We have been played for absolute fools.
- Narishma 9mo ago
  I don't believe that. Can Vista even run with just 256MB of RAM?
  - Aldipower 9mo ago
    I believe him that Vista was shockingly performant on an old laptop. And that is the point he is making.
danhau 9mo ago
Apparently Vista introduced a new audio stack with higher processing overhead and thus latency. I used to boot up XP in a VM occasionally. It‘s amazing how streamlined everything felt, inviting you to be productive. This was before the Electron apocalypse. Almost all UI looked the same, behaved the same and was easy on the eyes (remember when widgets had depth?).

kabes 9mo ago

And yet: https://www.phoronix.com/review/windows-beats-linux-arl-h https://www.phoronix.com/review/windows-beats-linux-arl-h

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

ExoticPearTree 9mo ago

Has anyone considered that maybe Microsoft is trying to help the Linux desktop adoption grow at a faster rate?

tibbydudeza 9mo ago

The other day I got tired of using mRemoteNG for RDP it takes ages to start up. So I went back to Microsoft's own RDP client - they deprecated it and now only support the new Windows App but you need to login with your corporate email and it does not even support RDP but Azure !!!!. You need to go to the stone age and use the RDP client they shipped with Windows NT 4.0. Say what you want about Balmer but Satya is now worse - he needs to go.

Marsymars 9mo ago
RDCMan works pretty well.
majkinetor 9mo ago
Try 1remote

jl6 9mo ago

Ah, an opportunity to call upon Hacker News, tech support of last resort… Someone please tell me if there’s a trick to making the Windows snipping tool faster. I press Win+Shift+S to activate the tool for capturing a region. It takes about 2 seconds to load. I draw the rectangle. Then it takes about 2 seconds to finish capturing. That is 4 infuriating seconds for something that should be (and I’m sure used to be!) virtually instant. Now that text is easily recognized in images, screenshots are an important interoperability tool for garbage apps like Teams.

majkinetor 9mo ago
Try flameshot
MonkeyClub 9mo ago
Win+PrtScr takes an instant screenshot. Win+Shift+PrtScr selects an area first.
- jl6 9mo ago
  Are you sure about that second one?
UltraMagnus 9mo ago
Ditch the snipping tool, and try my favorite screen capture tool, FastStone Capture: https://www.faststone.org/FSCaptureDetail.htm https://www.faststone.org/FSCaptureDetail.htm I am not associated with this software, just a very happy user. You get a lifetime license for $20, it's constantly updated with new features, and is a joy to use.

whatever1 9mo ago

JavaScript has taken over UI. Why operating systems do not embrace it and make it a first class citizen? Aka explicitly design the os to run and render fast and efficiently js code

pathartl 9mo ago
This isn't true in the slightest.

eboy 9mo ago

[dead]

pjmlp 9mo ago

Not surprising given the amount of Webview2 and WinUI/WinRT that Windows 11 happens to contain. Note that even though WinRT is largely written in C++, and the team brags about performance, due to the amount of COM/WinRT reference counting and the sandboxing model of application identity, it actually runs slower than .NET applications. Quite ironic, given the Windows team sabotaged on Longhorn.

user2722 9mo ago

May not have been a fair test. Windows is running the kernel in a kinda VM which older computers have not been optimized for -- newer generations of CPU can smooth out the overhead. For a fair test against Windows 10 and below, you'll have at least to do this: "Temporarily turn off your Memory Integrity and VMP" -- https://support.microsoft.com/en-US https://support.microsoft.com/en-US Also, it's important to have all bits and pieces of Hyper-V/Windows Virtual Platform off (which the Menory Integrity relies on), thus cutting off WSL functionality. We don't need flawed tests to tell us Windows 11 sucks -- yesterday my explorer bar didn't respond to clicks nor Windows key. In the past killing explorer.exe and restarting it, or logging off and back on, worked. Yesterday I had to reboot the machine to fix it.

dijit 9mo ago
You’re advocating for a flawed test. Why is it, when ever someone points out that Microsoft shits the bed on something someone will come out with ludicrous ideas about changing the default environment. The default environment is what you get, all this handwringing about whats potentially possible misses the point entirely; for decades we have, as a community, scoffed at linux for requiring you to understand deeply how your OS works in order for it to function. Now we’re in the situation where the out-of-the-box experience for gaming requires less esoteric knowledge on Linux than Windows, yet people defend Windows still. Do you seriously think the exec running emails even knows what Hyper-V is? Do you think any IT department is going to disable memory integrity? Would any Dev disable WSL? Do the vast majority of gamers want to do this? Should they have to? You’re now arguing that overhead is ok because its mitigated by newer hardware, I don’t believe that to be true as I run W11 on A Threadripper 3970x and an i9-14900k and the fuckers feel leagues slower than my M1 Macbook, its a joke! Like 10x the power/thermal envelope- and sure, some of that is down to the M1 being great, but there’s no benchmark putting it above those CPUs. Stop pretending that this is ok, and stop trying to spread uncertainty about a valid test. I’d prefer newer hardware too, but this is the compromise if we want older OS’s to be included.
- user2722 9mo ago
  Valid point. However also note the exec you mentioned wouldn't have Windows 11 on his laptop -- he would be stuck on the out of date, faster, Windows 10.

knowitnone3 9mo ago

It spends so much CPU cycles collecting your data being an OS is just a side quest

chaostheory 9mo ago

Everyone has forgotten how unstable and insecure Windows was back then when it was “fast”. It was also fast to blue screen, freeze, and spread malware. IMO it’s much better now. If you don’t like it, then there are good viable alternatives today especially since everything is web based.

znnajdla 9mo ago

Complexity is to software what cancer is to living organisms.

CrzyLngPwd 9mo ago

I don't see the same things as the commenters or the article. I love Windows 11, and have zero complaints. Win+R is instant. Notepad is the best version so far, I use it as a todo list and it saves and loads in the same place on my third screen every reboot - fantastic. I have no use for the AI being shoehorned into everything, but I use it every day via chatgpt in the browser, and genie and cp in vsc.

vachina 9mo ago
Windows is slower objectively if you use the same hardware. Now you might say modern software needs modern hardware, but Windows as it is is stagnant in terms of functionality and features, so what justifies the requirement of newer hardware?

lousken 9mo ago

It is a lot slower than vista was back in the day, so yes, it is garbage.

cmxch 9mo ago

When half the OS is dedicated to data and revenue collection along with protecting it, it should be unsurprising to see it slow.

scorpioxy 9mo ago

I recently had to pay the "Microsoft tax" to Lenovo. Which felt more like an unfair punishment rather than a tax since your taxes are meant to fund public services. I kept on thinking that this feels like it should be illegal. I don't use Windows for my work. My servers all run Linux, my clients servers all run Linux and I have no need for it so why am I being forced to pay? I keep a Windows virtual machine for software that doesn't run on Linux but my use of that over the years has declined dramatically. To me, the earlier versions of Windows 10 were somewhat OK when they're stripped down. But Windows 11 is bloated beyond belief. And shoving AI functionality in it is going to make things worse.

tsoukase 9mo ago

Yes, but it will be the fastest version from now on.

spydr 9mo ago

The computers they give us at work are pretty powerful. Mine has 64 gigs of ram. When I power it on the fans instantly go into full blast mode because the computer is heating up. why? I have no idea I just run Edge and Teams, if I try to use VS my computer will crash. At home I use Mac and Linux (kububtu) and will never have windows on my devices again

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

dada78641 9mo ago

The thing that really offends me about Windows 11 is that new right click menu that takes like 500 ms to appear each time you use it and is less useful than the old one. Recently I've been experimenting with Atlas, Revi and Ghost Spectre, which are custom stripped versions of Windows, and it's such a breath of fresh air. It really makes me feel like if only they'd just ruthlessly pull out all the new garbage without regard for "but we just made and shipped this", Windows would actually be pretty good. Say what you want about Apple and their slow descent into a fully walled garden where independent software development is slowly eroded and sabotaged, but even their most reviled update in years (macOS 26) is still miles ahead of Windows 11 in terms of cohesion and polish.

chris_wray 9mo ago

I don't think this benchmark is fair, since they clearly state the hardware they used wasn't compatible with the OS.