7 ms·
State of the Windows: What is going on with Windows 11?
- timpera 9mo agoMicrosoft really needs to retire the Control Panel and other old-school elements of the OS. Windows 11's design system is very pretty and user-friendly, please finish the transition to it ASAP!
- tokyobreakfast 9mo agoThis is sarcasm, right?
- timpera 9mo agoAbsolutely not sarcasm. Control Panel is a mess and keeping it is only confusing for most users.
- belval 9mo agoI am confused by what you mean by this. An average user would interact with the new "Settings" and never really touch or see Control Panel...
- timpera 9mo agoBecause many settings still aren't available in the "Settings" app, you often have to dig into the Control Panel (most notably for power options). Microsoft support forums and ChatGPT, which I think would be used by non-technical users when they encounter an issue, seem to both default to recommending going straight to the Control Panel to change settings.
- jatari 9mo agoLiterally every time I interact with the modern settings UI I give up 15 seconds in and switch back to the old control panel. For instance, how do you change the key repeat delay in the modern UI? I have looked and I actually can't find a way to change it. I have to use control panel. Just looking at the modern UI is an eyesore, there is so much empty space, a menu that should be a 600x400 rectangle takes up the entire screen. The information density is comically low. I have to scroll up and down this giant monitor sized list to find the one thing I am looking for. It's horrendous.
- tokyobreakfast 9mo ago90% of the time when you do find what you're looking for in Settings it's a hyperlink to Control Panel anyway.
- tokyobreakfast 9mo agoNo, Control Panel works as well as it did 30 years ago. Settings is a slow, bloated mess, as you stated elsewhere missing many settings, and was in general designed by schizophrenics. A primary reason for the sorry state of software today is the absolutely delusional priority that software should be "pretty" vs it being functional. Send all the UI/UX wizards packing, give them a Starbucks apron where IMO they belong, and watch software usability and customer satisfaction improve over the next 5 years.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- Telaneo 9mo agoThe monkey's paw curls, and the old control panels disappear. However, more than 70% of what you needed to do when you did dig down into the old control panel is still not available in the new settings menu. They've been 'transitioning' away from the old control panel since Windows 8, and they're still nowhere near done. On the contrary, when I do find myself on a Windows machine, I just jump straight to the old settings rather than jump through the hoops of the new settings, since I don't have any confidence in the new settings to do anything when I need them to (honourable mention to Windows update. That's worked mostly fine for me, other than the two times it broke and just refused to update anything until I did some manual fix. All it needs now is an 'Never update automatically. Only update manually' button, but I don't expect Microslop to understand what consent is quite yet).
- jasonjayr 9mo agoI giggle every time I stumble upon a Windows 3.1 file-selector dialog still in Windows 11.
- bberrry 9mo agoThe old stuff still being accessible is the only way I find the stuff I'm looking for
- Koffiepoeder 9mo agoExactly there's so much stuff you simply cannot configure otherwise. For example disallowing applications to take sole ownership of a mic, in-detail power plans, etc. If they remove the old control panel, your machine basically becomes unconfigurable.
- poolnoodle 9mo agoI can at least find stuff in control panel
- wewewedxfgdf 9mo agoState of Windows? It's so out of touch, people hate it. People want a simple, clean, minimal, consistent OS that does not have anyone's interests first except the user. Windows 11 is a very, very long way from this. Honestly Windows 95 is closer to ideal than Windows 11. The state of Windows is: disaster.
- timpera 9mo agoI wouldn't be so certain of this. People on HN hate it for sure, but this is a bit of an echo chamber.
- galleywest200 9mo agoAt least in the comment sections on tech/PC gaming YouTube people are frustrated with it there too. On the other hand YouTube tries to serve me content I want so maybe thats just the algo talking.
- keithnz 9mo agopeople tend to complain more than comment on being content. A fraction of a percent of windows user base is a lot of people. ( given around 500 million.... 1 percent is 5 million people ish, it would seem to me much much less than 5 million people are generally complaining)
- graemep 9mo agoNo,lots of people hate it. The biggest haters I know in real life are non technical users. However, they will continue to use it so MS does not need to worry about them.
- doener 9mo agoIt‘s not a priority for Microsoft, it‘s intrusive and above all it‘s shit.
- kvduba 9mo agohow is it not yet a code red inside Microsoft, for the astonishing decline of user experience of Windows 11?
- jmpeax 9mo agoit's probably been thrown out the window compared to office and chatgpt
- hackyhacky 9mo agoIt's not an emergency at Microsoft for two reasons: 1. Microsoft doesn't make their money from Windows anymore. They make their money from services, like Azure and whatever they are calling their web-based Office this week. Windows is now mostly a telemetry-collection system for them, not a product. 2. People who hate Windows don't have a choice. Regular people are issued a PC and its OS from their employer, and can't change it. Consumers who buy low-end laptops for school or hobbies aren't going to pay twice as much for a Mac. And outside of HN, a vanishingly small number of people are even aware of Linux or other FOSS alternatives, much less have the ability to install and use it.
- geraldcombs 9mo agoDon't schools typically use Chromebooks these days? My daughter was issued one each year from grade 7 to 12.
- yellow_postit 9mo agoMicrosoft stopped chasing the education space with the wind down of 11SE [1]. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/08/microsoft-kills-windows-11-se-another-in-a-long-line-of-failed-chromeos-competitors/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/08/microsoft-kills-wind...
- pjmlp 9mo agoOnly in countries like US and apparently Nothern Europe. I never seen them in Portuguese schools, where the expectation is still families get to buy computers and most classes are offline as always.
- anonzzzies 9mo agoA mate just gave me a laptop; it is the first Windows device I have touched in 20 years. It runs Windows 11. I am assuming it's all as bad as it was 20 years ago, but going from all the Windows 11 talk I am guessing it will be far worse? I am trying it out today first and then reinstalling it with Linux. It seems its fully supported out of the box except the cam and fingerprint scanner: cam I never use, fingerprint scanner would be nice but I hear it is basically impossible to get working if not supported (and it is not).
- BoredPositron 9mo agoIt will get more annoying with Satya at the helm and as long as there is a cash cow that is not enduser facing there is not even hope for change.
- Rucadi 9mo agoI'll be honest, I just want something that I can develop on (linux is the easiest by far) and that's not annoying (Nixos is the best at that). I don't even use any advanced config, just bare-minimum config for the system, enough (project-specific things handled by nix).
- jayess 9mo agoXP was peak Windows.
- chupchap 9mo agoNo. It was frustrating to use and had to be reinstalled every year. Windows 8.1 was good and so was Windows 10 to a degree.
- realusername 9mo agoThey never solved that problem in Windows. Every Windows older than a year, even the modern ones, get slower.
- chupchap 8mo agoI haven't reinstalled Windows in years in my PC. The only place I see this issue is in my work laptop, but that also has multiple anti-virus, endpoint detection and other security things hogging memory in the background in the most inefficient way possible.
- mxuribe 9mo agoI think XP to a degree was indeed peak Microsoft...in that while yes, XP felt bloated at first, then they streamlined it, and it got better....plus its look and feel felt like such a departure from previous Windows....or maybe because it was so vibrantly colored that i was hypnotized. But, i did enjoy XP....but then my favorite Windows version was version 7....because it felt to me like a grown up, optimized version of XP...Running Win7 made me feel like XP was the fisher price/toy version of a windows operating system, and Win7 was the adult version...of course, "thanks" to Windows Vista, by the time Win7 came out, i had already started using linux distros as my daily drivers...and never looked back since then. So, i guess i have Windows vista to thank for going all in on linux....and maybe Win11 will be that for others? :-)
- Bender 9mo agoI would almost agree XP with SP2 was decent for its time. SP3 introduced more bugs I'm guessing because that was the end of the line for XP. Stability as of XP made sense as well given Microsoft split the developers into common code, desktop and server. Both desktop and server became more stable around that time, relatively speaking. Both borrowed heavily from the VMS code base. Windows 7 later on in its patch cycle was more stable in my opinion. Each time a version gets stable they make a new version full of new bloat, bugs, stability issues, crap most people did not want or need. Near the end of that versions life cycle it gets more stable and debloat scripts work better, then the cycle repeats and new junk comes out. Stability seems to leap-frog. Win 7 decent, 8 crap, 10 decent, 11 crap. This was a thing long ago with Unix kernel versions. I probably just jinxed it. 12 will probably summon the anti-christ and four horsemen of the apocalypse.
- zabzonk 9mo agoI really don't mind Windows 11, and don't recognise many of the problems other people here claim to have. For example, I simply don't see all (or any) of the ads that many complain about.
- partiallypro 9mo agoYeah, I haven't seen these either. WSL is great, it's pretty nice looking, there's a lot of good stuff in Windows 11. My main gripe is inconsistency and falling behind the competition in speed (largely due to the chips and x86/x64).
- Legend2440 9mo agoMuch of the outrage over Recall seemed excessive to me as well. People spun it as 'Microsoft is spying on you with AI!' even though it was never that in any way.
- wvenable 9mo agoI disagree with this in the article: "Last, but not least, the technical debt of Windows has become almost unbearable. 30+ years of Windows NT certainly adds up." The actual design of the Windows internals has mostly remained unchanged and continues to be improved. This is not much different than Linux being a design from the 70s. The critical bugs in Windows are due to newer additions to that base -- not the base itself. But what everyone really hates is the "modern" technology has been piled on top of that Windows NT legacy not the legacy itself.
- dekhn 9mo agoMy favorite is whenever you need to do anything remotely complicated in settings. It's like travelling through layers of archeological digs. For me, it's the network settings and audio settings that are the best example.
- conception 9mo agoThe services control panel just as badly designed as it was 30 years ago.
- wvenable 9mo agoMicrosoft gets a lot of flak for their approach to updating the settings up but I think they did that exactly right. There was no way that were going to be able to re-implement every setting available in one go and have it be good. So they took the iterative approach and moved over the most important settings first and each version of Windows 10/11 more and more options are available in settings. I find myself having to use the old control panel dialogs less and less -- but I'm also happy that they are still there.
- Legend2440 9mo agoOr like how there are two layers of right-click menu in windows explorer - the new simplified menu, and then 'Show more options' for the old menu just in case.
- teddyalbina 9mo agoExactly technicaly linux is even older than NT. Some Microsoft guys had to implement async io in linux because they where incapable of doing it.
- Alifatisk 9mo agoI am still on Win10 on my pc, the day my pc is forced to update to Win11 is the day I finally switch OS. I don’t even care if I loose things that are windows only. What OS should I switch to? Is it Linux Mint that is the closest alternative?
- aucisson_masque 9mo agoYeah.
- zaruvi 9mo agoLinux Mint would be a very decent distribution to start with. I've also heard good things about Fedora, but never used it myself.
- Legend2440 9mo agoYou should switch to something else immediately. Windows 10 is no longer receiving security updates and will become increasingly unsafe to leave connected to the internet. I like Ubuntu.
- Alifatisk 9mo agoI only startup the PC to play games from Epic / Steam. Maybe watch Youtube sometimes. Nothing else, I use my mac for actual work. Realistically speaking, how dangerous is it for me to stay on Win10 until I am forced to switch? Fedora and Linux Mint is my considerations at the moment.
- asveikau 9mo agoI was at Microsoft for a few years. I think some amount of blame has to go to hiring quality declining over the years. I wrote a bit about this in an old comment: > They have a lot of staff turnover too, and each generation of new SDE has less of a clue how the old stuff worked. So when they're tasked with replacing the old stuff, they don't understand what it does, and the rewrite ends up doing less. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46472300 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46472300 Also, a little bit after I left, they eliminated the SDET role. I have memories of encountering many SDETs who didn't know what they were doing. But the good ones kept the developers honest. Getting rid of a parallel org structure dedicated to testing for regressions etc. would certainly seem like a good explanation for a quality dip.
- teddyalbina 9mo agoI never experienced any of this problems on any of my computers inclusing the ARM one. Same for everybody i know
- princevegeta89 9mo agoThe worst thing is, there is no real alternative to Windows that is backed by somewhat of a corporate guarantee besides macOS. But many people who use Windows wouldn't want to move to a considerably new platform like macOS, which works quite differently. There is Linux, but then there are compatibility issues and driver issues and other things that are not great for the casual average user. It feels like Windows could have been better off without being free, but being something like a buy once, keep forever solution, like the good old days. Today it has just turned into a complete toxic pit of mess that tracks you in every little thing you do and works against you to make sure that it maximizes profits for Microsoft and its partners. The usability is completely destroyed, alas.
- dleslie 9mo agoRedHat and Ubuntu both provide enterprise support.
- princevegeta89 9mo agoWell, they are still Linux, and they are confusing for casual, average users.
- aucisson_masque 9mo agoIt ain’t that confusing. Click on the icon of the app you want to launch and that’s it. The app is similar to what’s going in on windows. Where that becomes frustrating is when you have a computer that isn’t well supported by Linux, things don’t work, battery is bad, you have to look up for ways to fix them and so on. But if the « driver » support was as good as on windows, people could switch in 2 seconds. My university computers ran Ubuntu, we were not computer nerd but civil engineering yet everyone adapted very quick.
- princevegeta89 9mo agoWell okay, tell me why a single user would end up buying enterprise support? And I would still argue that linux is confusing for casual users. Everything from file system paths to system settings, things are not understood readily for casual users. Lack of available apps like photoshop, etc can also frustrate users.
- qcnguy 9mo ago[dead]
- mattbee 9mo agoThe key to having a nice time with Windows is 1) to give it loads of memory (32GB+ surely) and 2) to run a debloater script the moment you pick up a new system e.g. https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat All the rubbish from the last 20 years - ads, OneDrive, Copilot, Office upsells, Candy Crush in the start menu - it can just disappear, leaving a pretty stable system that hasn't actually changed much. Apart from the awful control panels, anything else you don't like is probably replaceable. I really love startallback.com which brings back the regular start menu and lots of other little fixes. Obviously everyone deserves a computer that doesn't try to sell to them CONSTANTLY, and I wish Windows were better out of the box. But it doesn't take much adjustment to get there.
- the_snooze 9mo agoIf only our technology were advanced enough that we could have an OS that didn't constantly undermine the user's intentions.
- debo_ 9mo agoThis looks great. In your experience, do you run it once and that's it? Or do you need to re-run as updates add or re-introduce "bloat"?
- mfro 9mo agoYou definitely should run it after updates.
- mattbee 9mo agoPersonally I don't think I've ever re-run it. I think I've clicked a few buttons as I've seen alerts about new options appearing. But ultimately it's just a bunch of powershell commands to remove packages and set options. So I'd assume it's safe to run regularly.
- debo_ 9mo agoThanks. I was asking because I was hoping to run it for a relative's computer that I am reinstalling Win11 on now, and they would not be capable of re-running it after the fact.
- o_m 9mo agoWho would have thought forcing one developer to write a million lines of code each month would have negative consequences
- AgentMatt 9mo agoTwo years ago I did some cleaning up and finally sorted out the gaming PC from my youth. I believe I bought it around 2007. Ran some old AMD dual core (may have been an Athlon 64 4400), still had an HDD. Installed on it was Windows Vista, which wasn't exactly a crowd favorite. So as I went to backup the final remnants of those gaming days I was flabbergasted by the snappiness of the explorer. Folders just opened instantly! So snappy, it was actually fun just navigating through all the folders. I had been expecting this PC to run at snail's pace, yet the windows experience was much better than on my desktop PC built in 2021 running Windows 10 on an NVMe drive. I have no idea how that is possible, but since then with every interaction with modern Windows there's just this tiny tinge of sadness...
- Telaneo 9mo agoHDD performance on Windows just died after some Windows 10 update. Sure, it took two minutes to boot 7 of an HDD, but once it was going, Explorer ran fine, and Firefox would run fine after that (probably cached after boot). Same goes for day one Windows 10 (they probably didn't touch the relevant parts). I remember having to deal with a Windows 10 machine on an HDD, and it was mostly fine after it booted, but even clean installs on more recent version are just horrible. There's probably been some optimisation done which works fine on SSDs but just thrash HDDs, and HDDs as boot drives just aren't a thing anymore (within margin of error), so it didn't matter. The fact that they've managed to throw so much bloat on top that even SSDs start struggling though, that really is something.
- fuzzfactor 9mo agoWith write-amplification, SSDs are being thrashed even more than HDDs would be, the SSDs just accomplish it quicker :\ Much worse than it was only a year ago.
- ack_complete 9mo agoA major culprit is background processes that scan the drive in the background, like CompatTelRunner.exe. Works fine if you're on an SSD, but grinds an HDD to a halt. They also forgot about their own I/O prioritization API from Vista, so it also spammed I/O at Normal instead of Background priority in the early versions. Not to mention the periodic Defender scans, the Malware Removal Tool scan that runs before each major update, etc. Similarly, Windows Update used to consume ungodly amounts of CPU time because the update system would write a multi-hundred megabyte text log and then spend forever compressing it for upload. Then they remembered their own ETL system and switched to much more efficient binary logs. Firefox also has problems on HDD, I remember it locking up for minutes at a time doing cache maintenance until I switched permanently to SSDs.
- protocolture 9mo agoVibe coded updates for sure. Probably also vibe tested.
- bokohut 9mo agoMy software logic mind asks: I question why if Copilot is so great then why cannot Microsoft turn themselves around by dogfooding their own solution that they have forced on all of their users which then proves to the world that Copilot is great? I am led to believe from marketing that A.I. has all the answers and with Microsoft having the greatest A.I. don't they have all the answers? I apologize in advance for my dumb.
- whynotmaybe 9mo agoIn wonder whether in a few years, we'll have a post complaining about windows 12 and that 11 was much better.
- ChrisArchitect 9mo agoJust repeating all of the threads from the last 6 months; (including two big ones in the last week); https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46761061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46761061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46656998 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46656998 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46011569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46011569 etc
- eleventhborn 9mo agoComing from a Gsuite + Atlassian + AWS world to an all-inclusive Microsoft world was an experience. It should be in the bucket list for every developer to try once in their life. WSL is a far better developer environment in Windows even for dotnet based development. I use it at work. It is fine. Windows OS on the other hand is a mess. There are dedicated keyboard shortcut (win + c), keyboard buttons, buttons on desktop for copilot. Copilot is almost on every Microsoft software. I'm not getting the appeal of copilot at all. Also, I have a personal gripe with a non-standard way of placing the Fn key - first of all, why keep it close to Ctrl, why? and on top of that, Lenovo & Microsoft and every other manufacturer have them in different positions on the keyboard.
- jasonjayr 9mo agoFWIW; Every Lenovo I've used in recent history had a setting in the BIOS to remap Fn/Ctrl. On my assigned machine, I have it swapped so Ctrl is in the lower left spot because otherwise I'd lose my mind trying to figure it out between all the machines I swap through. (Emacs users will have to use something else to put Ctrl where they want ....)
- qnleigh 9mo agoTo force the tech giants to actually compete with each other for customers, we have to be willing to switch platforms. If you think of yourselfs as Mac or PC (or iOS/Android) person, then these companies can treat you like a reliable asset they can extract value from, rather than a customer they have to please in order to keep. Personally, I've worked pretty hard over the last few years to make sure that I can easily switch to a different OS. This means avoiding relying on Mac and Windows apps as much as possible, and most importantly having all of my data in portable formats that do not tie me to any specific software.
- donkeylazy456 9mo agotry windhawk. it is awesome tweak for mac-os-wannabe windows 11.
- ggm 9mo agoI work with seniors, who use W11. Aspects of change from W10 confused them, but their primary requests are two quite different things 1) please stop making dark patterns preference onedrive backup and let us run a local file backup cleanly without needing to de-install software 2) please make the charming folded complex flower-like shape an alpha channel overlay so we can make it lie over a background colour of our own choosing, not the one(s) you pre-package one of them is "stop innovating" and the other is "innovate more" -I think the union over them both is "be nicer" There is a third one: work better with Apple so that outlook handles photos and icloud mail oauth sync better, but there is a blame game with two parties in that one. An amazingly high number of seniors seem to want apple devices (iphone, ipad) to work with Windows home compute, and no amount of me suggesting they get a mac makes them want to get a mac "office doesn't work properly" mainly the issue. (thats nonsense, but they believe what they believe)
- mancerayder 9mo agoYou called them seniors? Like senior citizens? I guess as a senior sysadmin before I got absorbed into cloud I'll say they're right! Legacy backup is found, I just discovered yesterday, in control panel I believe and it's called Windows 7 "File History and Restore". Implying you're one thousand years old and using a legacy system if you don't use Onedrive.
- ggm 9mo agoYes. Senior Citizens. Home users. Legacy backup is there, but MS both de-preference it, and use dark pattern labels on boxes to make it hard to stop one drive from nagging you about what MS want you to do. And, if you did do a network attached install, your actual Document paths now lie UNDER the one drive anchor mount and so you have to un-do things, in order to be cleanly able to delete one drive: If you don't do this, your files can disappear because they are on local disk, under a one drive protected directory which will be wiped. Oh, and it does registry edits to wire One drive into office, so there's all kinds of sneaky paths which make this visible. And these are >75yo, declining faculties people. It's hugely unfair. (I volunteer for a local not-for-profit assisting seniors, older people, with their ICT burdens)
- mrcsharp 9mo agoOne thing not mentioned here is the Photos app. Out of the box, it is the default way to view images on Windows. That app is so bloated and slow to start that Microsoft announced they were going to preload it as well so it "starts" faster.
- tonymet 9mo agoNearly all of the complaints about AI , Ads and Search in Windows are easily bypassed with a few settings (look up Debloat or run the settings manually). There are quality issues, some severe, but no worse than iOS or MacOS. Honestly Windows 11 performance on my $300 mini PC exceeds latest iOS on my $1400 iPhone 17 pro. Instead of shaming Microsoft, we should all be a bit more introspective about performance, latency , quality control and the overall decline in software. 1gb memory for a browser tab is more shameful than a Copilot button on the taskbar
- Telaneo 9mo agoI prefer shaming all guilty parties. Microslop for their declining OS, software quality and pushing AI, Apple for their Ass design, Google for their declining search and closing of the Android ecosystem, and lots of web developers for using way too much JS.
- tonymet 9mo agoYou read my mind
- Beestie 9mo agoNot a day goes by that I regret blocking MS from upgrading my personal PC from Win 10 to Win 11. I decided going without ongoing support is a small price to pay for the joy of not stepping into a bottomless pit of wtf every time I log on and work on stuff.
- oenyawayneo 8mo agoWindows 11 couldn't be more aggravating. User hostile is the term. Windows Explorer, move a file and the navigation pane jumps up and down at random. Excell, cannot locate anything on Find and Select. I wish I would have never bought this new computer. HP makes great laptops, but it won't last long if I throw it against the wall. I've been taking classes and using computers on jobs since the late 70s. My dad taught me to do key punch in 1972. My son has been working on computers his entire life to the point he makes me look like a novice. He yelled the same phrase at his computer that I do "STOP TRYING TO HELP ME! IT'S NOT MY FIRST DAY!!!"