12 ms·

Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

• Razengan 5mo ago
  Man, Microsoft still struggling with shit macOS solved decades ago. On the other hand, Apple still refusing to fix shit in macOS people have been asking for decades.
• LocalH 5mo ago
  "quality" lol
• jdw64 5mo ago
  I really like Windows. I just wish Copilot could be made fully optional. Honestly, I can live with Windows 11 being a little slow, and I can deal with File Explorer issues. I can write my own tools to manage some of that, and PowerShell is simple enough for many tasks. Those parts do not bother me that much. What bothers me is Copilot being pushed into the operating system experience itself. I wish it could simply be treated as an optional feature. Windows is an operating system. An operating system is the foundational layer that governs the user’s work. Because of that, AI should be an opt-out assistant, not a premise that changes the default behavior of the system. When I move from Windows 10 to Windows 11, Copilot feels like something that damages the user experience itself. If Copilot were at the level of GPT or Claude, I probably would not complain as much. But I do not understand why the quality gap feels so large.
  • Leonard_of_Q 5mo ago
    > I can live with Windows 11 being a little slow Why accept mediocrity when Microsoft has shown to be capable of producing something better than their current iteration of Windows? Whether you prefer Windows 2000 or XP or 7 or one of the server versions over 10/11, all of those were in many ways 'better' than 11. > I can deal with File Explorer issues Again, why? It is not as if those issues are the result of Microsoft adding something useable or worthwhile, they're just the result of MS adding even more ballast to an already overburdened system. > I can write my own tools to manage some of that Yes, you can, and... > PowerShell is simple enough for many tasks ...so you're getting to experience the power of the shell like *nix-users have been espousing for more than half a century now. Welcome to the club and welcome to the CLI. Here we use words to communicate instead of pictures, we outgrew those once we left play school. If you want to use Windows just use one of the previous versions as long as you can while preparing to move over to the greener Wine-yards in Linux-land. Unless there is a big shake-up within Microsoft - unlikely - it looks like Windows as an operating system is a dead-end street. It will be turned into a straight jacket where you will comply with whatever the current business plan dictates. Escape while you still can I'd say, there are many alternatives on offer.
    • jdw64 5mo ago
      It is very simple. the factory work I do cannot run without Windows. The software required for my work is supported only on Windows. Of coures, Linux may give more control. But while people in the US may have a choice, in Korea, for this kind of industrial work, I usually do not.
      • Leonard_of_Q 5mo ago
        Do you need to use Windows 11 though? If you're using Windows to drive industrial equipment I assume those machines are not connected to the internet? If so you should be fine running Windows 7 or - if need be - 10. There's plenty of medical devices running Windows 2000, some of them use even older versions. As long as they're kept away from the internet and from random USB sticks they remain useable without fear of compromise. I'd not want anything like Windows 11 controlling industrial equipment as that OS does not need to be compromised to be untrustworthy.
• beanjuiceII 5mo ago
  "trust me bro"
  • vachina 5mo ago
    Yeah exactly. They already have a fixed distro that is Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC.
    • DaiPlusPlus 5mo ago
      ...and there's clearly huge market-demand for Windows LTSC amongst retail customers, and yet, MS's C-levels already decided for them that no amount of love nor money - excepting a sufficiently large enterprise licensing contract - can legally entitle you to a license - or even official media - for Windows LTSC. It reminds me of when Adobe ended perpetual licensing and switched to cloud(TM)-only, subscription licensing for Photoshop, et al: many of us (myself included) assumed that Adobe was surely making a foolish mistake to abandon perpetual-license customers, but it turns out[1] that was the plan all along: those customers are a vocal minority who can demonstrably afford to pay more, the rest of the customer-base doesn't care enough to switch to a competitor. Over 10 years later (2013), we haven't seen any of Photoshop's then-promising upstart competitors come close. ...on that basis, I don't think MSFT's recent backpedalling on Windows 11's disrespect for its own users is in any way a response to us power-users complaining online - or even because any number of us did fully migrate off Windows and onto Linux, but instead because of all the recent talk overseas from foreign governments (France, Germany) taking active steps to secure their digital-sovereignty and deploying more Linux desktops; and a good way to get people (and decision-makers in government and large businesses) personally interested in digital-sovereignty is by pointing out how shitty their own corporate desktop UX has gotten. I'll gladly eat my hat when/if MS graciously allows regular retail consumers, and not just large organizations - and those of us with a $2000/yr MSDN Subscription - the privilege of paying for an OS without advertising built-in to the shell and having hard dependencies on proprietary online services. [1] (This article has some hallmarks of LLM "assistance" but gets the point across; and cites sources at the bottom): https://secondactsbiz.substack.com/p/adobe-the-transformation-that-everyone https://secondactsbiz.substack.com/p/adobe-the-transformatio...
• ciconia 5mo ago
  Just switch to Linux people!
  • advael 5mo ago
    Hard to overstate the sunk-costness of it all
    • deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
  • throwa356262 5mo ago
    My first hand experience with Windows vs Linux this month: A friend of mine recently bought a very expensive laptop to do some gaming. I helped him set it up and god that was a horrible experience. For example, we could not get rid of LinkedIn and other crap Microsoft wanted to force on him. Disabling copilot and removing Office required registry surgery. And the damn fans were always running because of some unknown activity in the background, maybe Microsoft is moving into bitcoin mining business? He eventually got fed up, installed Ubuntu 26.04 as an experiment and a week later still seems to enjoy the experience. Games run fine on steam and his laptop finally feels like his own. Most surprisingly, Linux worked fine out of the box. Windows 11 on the other hand needed a bunch of PowerShell and registry hacks to be copy pasted from various sources before it was even remotely usable. It's funny how it felt as if Windows was the OS for nerds with too much free time on their hands while Ubuntu was created for ordinary people. And my god, Ubuntu feels so much more fluid on the same hardware. The difference is *huge*.
    • mkayokay 5mo ago
      Gaming on Linux works pretty good now. Setup is easy thanks to Steam and other launchers (e.g. heroiclauncher).
      • td2 5mo ago
        Sure, for many games Riot games / others with kernal level anticheats dont support linux sadly
• deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
• prymitive 5mo ago
  > You want to see what we’re doing, understand our decisions, and see progress through shipping. Second, a shared sense of pride. So basically: - recent changes are all crap - so why did you make them?
  • lpcvoid 5mo ago
    [flagged]
    • jeltz 5mo ago
      More likely: "People needed to get promotion packages, don't you understand?!" I would guess many of the bad changes are caused by perverse incentives which do not even help shareholder value.
      • rincebrain 5mo ago
        My mental model remains that the Windows team is mostly governed by designers on Macs who want to see a user-visible change to get their promo and never use Windows.
  • nikanj 5mo ago
    Because mortages need paid, and when you’re working as a programmer, you deliver what the top brass wants
  • itopaloglu83 5mo ago
    Microslop: In service revenue and shareholder dividends we trust.
• deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
• advael 5mo ago
  It fascinates me to speculate about who this is for. At least among people I've talked to, the ones who still want windows (instead of the obvious alternatives) cite wanting things to "just work", often claiming that they "don't want making the computer work to become a second job" or similar. I personally don't think these preferences reflect the reality of how much effort using e.g. a linux distro is in this day and age, to be clear, but these are the beliefs I encounter. Are there really people who want to deal with providing feedback and stress testing an operating system and its various software components and features, but doing this for a corporation that sets the terms of their transparency efforts and ultimately does this for profit and will still grab the reins and exert control against their users' will when they feel like it?
  • jofzar 5mo ago
    Windows insider builds have always been for people who like being on the cutting edge, it's the same as people who run nightlies for Linux. Some people just enjoy testing and the pain that comes with it.
    • advael 5mo ago
      Right, but it's hard not to claim those people would likely get more out of an OS they could customize more, and also that it's considerably more exploitative of those people across the divide of corporate product versus community project
      • herrherrmann 5mo ago
        Sometimes it’s just about using the path of least resistance. I’ve also contributed to Apple Maps’ and Google Maps’ data, even though I’d prefer to exclusively contribute to OSM and other open platforms instead. But, it was just easier to go through a quick form in the (Apple|Google) Maps app, because that’s where I was at that point in time. Maybe the excuse is laziness and/or force of habit? Edit: I also imagine the reach of the mainstream platforms to be much higher (e.g. Windows vs. Linux or Google Maps user reviews vs. <is there even an alternative?>).
    • 5mo ago
• jofzar 5mo ago
  > The theme is simple: fewer disruptions, more clarity, more control. This update moves Windows toward a single monthly restart by consolidating OS, .NET, and driver updates, and gives you more flexibility to time updates around your schedule. We’ve also made changes to the Power menu so you’ll always see the standard Restart and Shut down options without having to install a pending update first. You decide when updates happen, not the other way around. Finally, like seriously, so many times I have to "shutdown" (aka restart) for an update before going to bed. I don't want to have to babysit my desktop computer when I want to finish up for the night.
  • left-struck 5mo ago
    You can just turn it off at the socket or hold down the power button. It usually doesn’t break anything
• microtonal 5mo ago
  Not a Windows user, have never been (since Windows 3.11). But if I were, I would think this is just PR unless they changed some fundamentals, like bringing back local user support without jumping through five hoops.
  • pndy 5mo ago
    Oh of course it's the same PR as we've seen 44 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47459296 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47459296 Careful, it's over 1k comments there
• qingcharles 5mo ago
  They talk about improving memory footprint and performance, but simply removing (or making optional) the massive amount of cruft and telemetry in a default Windows 11 install would go miles. Installing Tiny11 and then running a debloat over its corpse results in a much faster and less memory hungry default clean install.
  • matthewfcarlson 5mo ago
    Cruft can be removed yes but the telemetry is literally how they measure quality. Their metrics of whether it’s good or not is the status of telemetry on a given device set and figuring out root cause. So they can’t easily roll back the telemetry without a massive rethink in their quality strategy
    • Telaneo 5mo ago
      > So they can’t easily roll back the telemetry without a massive rethink in their quality strategy Given how that strategy has gone, that sounds like a great idea.
    • p_ing 5mo ago
      Along with this, which is how nearly every major piece of software works today, removing telemetry likely wouldn't have a measurable impact on performance or memory usage. Those aren't heavy subsystems.
  • ninjagoo 5mo ago
    > They talk about improving memory footprint and performance, but simply removing (or making optional) the massive amount of cruft and telemetry in a default Windows 11 install would go miles. Executive management at MS must be seeing interesting (migration) numbers on their dashboards, so they've gotten involved in white-washing their reputation without changing business strategy, hence the executive-level manifestos and platitudes coming out as of late. I'm sure they see the EU/Worldwide decoupling from US companies as definitely-going-to-happen and they have no control over that, so retaining US consumers becomes even more important, but the first attempt will be at improving reputation without changing business strategy (ads, data monetization, ai are the future revenue drivers). And only if that fails will the business strategy change.
• throwuxiytayq 5mo ago
  I have a feeling that my fat ass switching over to Linux is going to outrun their attempt to roll back decades of accumulated tech debt, institutional incompetence and burned bridges.
  • hackrmn 5mo ago
    I feel like your sentiment mirrors my thoughts exactly on this. Since this isn't the Reddit comment section (I hear people here prefer a bit more elaboration and argumentative nuance with their $BEVERAGE), I feel compelled to add some of my own personal experience. I don't think Windows can be fixed anymore. I think the choices Microsoft have been doing for _decades_ now, with only the _mechanisms_ coming and going, have become endemic to Windows, a part of its identity. Copilot, for example, is just another gadget Microsoft simply cannot not put in. In '95 is was Clippy, but the deliveries never stop, and frankly I feel like an old man that finally decided to kick a bad habit because I truly see now all the empty talk from Microsoft I've heard countless amount of times before, wrapped in different packaging, and that Windows is like it is _by design_ and that it's bad for my health (in a different way than Linux can ever be, I feel). Ever since Windows '95 the addition of slop has been accelerating, admittedly Microsoft _were_ much different then, but it's the _curve_ I am referring to, not that they were always _as bad_. Frankly, the "churn" is insane now, I think it's one or the other adage I can't recall where "available operating system" fills "available resources" and Microsoft are there to prove it. The problem is also they are experimenting on their users to no end. I don't mind being part of the "user experiment" for "user experience" but how many decades do they need to arrive at the same fundamental conclusions -- that people prefer less bloat, and fewer interruptions in their face? Occam's Razor tells me it's rather that Microsoft is pretending to care but their agenda is their own alone (surprise). Just the other day I had to spend 2 hours trying to "fix" some very-background OneDrive update because I suppose I am sucker enough to use OneDrive -- one of the least liked of Microsoft products I've had the misfortune to use -- with Windows using my laptop as a BitCoin farm, wasting cycles in some infinite loop produced by what evokes comparisons to those monkeys with typewriters. Half a dozen Powershell commands and 3-4 reboots later the `wsappx.exe` process finally was healthy enough to idle. These things happen constantly to people everywhere and there's little Microsoft can or wants to do anything about. It's a cost they're willing their users to pay. To stop rambling, one of these days -- summer vacation perhaps -- I will remove the blasted thing finally (after decades of using both Windows and Linux) and grit my teeth through Linux, which I have tried avoiding only because I am on a Thinkpad and there's always another tweak that's needed for the whole thing to work as well as Windows does on a _good_ day. To be clear, I prefer Linux by and large, it's just that I want to avoid spending weekends configuring sleep, power states, Trackpoint, full-disk encryption, the docking station, etc. The fact I am going to do it anyway, just to rid myself of the Windows experience that's just been getting worse and worse, says it all really.
• bsrhng 5mo ago
  It's fascinating that one of the top features insiders are interested in is making File Explorer more dependable.
  • qingcharles 5mo ago
    They took a real punch to the gut when File Pilot rolled out and showed them what their own devs should have been doing.
    • UberFly 5mo ago
      Directory Opus has been doing that for decades.
      • drcongo 5mo ago
        Hadn't heard that name since the Amiga days and had no idea it was still around!
      • deburo 5mo ago
        I'm sure it did, but that app looks like a Win XP-era app (not even Win7). FilePilot is fast, looks good & feels modern (support a command palette, fuzzy search, etc). The only downside is that it runs on the GPU and so running it inside a VM is a bit of a hassle.
        • ChoGGi 5mo ago
          You can completely customize how it looks.
        • kasabali 5mo ago
          Why the hell would I want a file manager to be run on the GPU. it's supposed to be light on requirements and run on a potato, it's a file manager ffs not a 3rd person shooter.
          • VoidWarranty 5mo ago
• SeriousM 5mo ago
  > Second, a shared sense of pride. We want to be proud of what we build... Yep, that's marketing. You don't care about your users.
  • avaer 5mo ago
    Yes, they do admit that. > a broader shift to make AI in Windows more intentional and realign the experiences to those that provide the most value to users To be fair they are claiming a shift away from their previous policy of not aligning the product to provide value to users...
    • avazhi 5mo ago
      > realign the experiences to those that provide the most value to users Aside from the fact that nobody actually takes what Microsoft says seriously (they are professional bullshitters [with full time PR firms perfecting their bullshit] and have been for 30 years), it's funny that even this line can be reasonably interpreted as pushing more blatant nonsense onto consumers as long as it's what C-suite types think they should be paying for. Notice that what provides the most value to users is not at all necessarily the same thing as'what our users want'. And it isn't even clear that Microsoft is thinking of consumer users here as opposed to corporate users and corporate IT departments, which are in most cases these days their actually direct customers. Most home user consumers don't pay for Windows directly.
  • xeonmc 5mo ago
    I guess their intent was to instil a sense of pride and accomplishment for those who’ve sunk intangible investments into their platform.
  • pndy 5mo ago
    Seeing what happen to Windows since W7, I'm not sure where would that pride come from. Or perhaps this should be read as proud of the whole Windows up until this time - if so, then there's even less to be proud of.
• mips_avatar 5mo ago
  Microsoft is trying to sell things like extended servicing agreements. They purposefully make Windows worse so they can sell you solutions to fix it. They purposefully keep it insecure so you need their updates. It’s about taking the customers hostage.
• TowerTall 5mo ago
  By changing two settings in Windows, you can fix the worst of it. Using a local group policy, you can change when "Preview builds and Feature updates" and "Quality Updates" become available in Windows Update. By delaying those with 30 or 60 days, you will never have preview updates applied to your system, and feature and quality updates will have at least 1 or 2 months' worth of fixes before you get them. start > run > gpedit.msc > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Update > Manage updates offered from Windows Update > 1) Enable "Select when preview builds and feature updates are received". Set days to 60 2) Enable "Select when quality updates are received". Set days to 30 (max value)
  • realo 5mo ago
    I don't know if you realize it but your post single-handedly demonstrates a lot of the reasons why Windows is bad ...
    • unleaded 5mo ago
      When people cricitize Linux there's always people responding "it's simple really, just run this super long command and do this and that".. looks like the same thing to me.
      • AlienRobot 5mo ago
        That's actually why I started using Linux. I hated that Linux has all these commands you had to go through, then I installed Windows 11 and tutorials were telling me run all these commands to fix it. I figure I'd just use Linux at that point.
        • nope1000 5mo ago
          > I hated that Linux has all these commands you had to go through Was this still your experience though? I am using Fedora on GNOME and I rarely have to use the terminal. I like to use it but if you don't want to, you don't have to. There is a graphical installer, settings panel, software center, file manager, disk utility software, etc.
• tjpnz 5mo ago
  Will I still have the urge to stab myself in the hand repeatedly?
• PeterStuer 5mo ago
  What people realy want: as little OS as possible to let them run just the things on their computer they want to run. What Microsoft wants: Windows as their straightjacket into the Microsoft services as that is where the revenue is. Why Windows got this bad: incentives and coercion placed on the teams to show uptake on the services no matter what leading to perversion in tactics and complete alienation of the user base. The incentives are alomost perpendicularly misaligned. Regaining trust is extremely hard after you've crossed an edge. People are looking for the exit, finding there is indeed a door, and stopping them will take far more than just some reassurance from the DJ boot.
  • cineticdaffodil 5mo ago
    Linux would need to be willing to safe the work millions of people put into memorizing excel, word and windows workflows.
    • cwillu 5mo ago
      “Linux” needs to do nothing of the sort. People who want to save their work by moving to a platform without those issues need to be willing to either do the work or pay for it.
      • snerc 5mo ago
        I've never read a more archpilled comment
        • redeeman 5mo ago
          "i hate how the current system is, i see some other guys have something that doesnt have these issues, what the other system needs to do is make their system exactly like my current, so that I dont need to spend ANY effort myself" few moments later "i hate how the current system is"
          • cineticdaffodil 5mo ago
• ymolodtsov 5mo ago
  The same people who made Windows that bad are now tasked with making it slightly better. Yeah, I wouldn't bet on this.
• 999900000999 5mo ago
  >We’ve also made changes to the Power menu so you’ll always see the standard Restart and Shut down options without having to install a pending update first. You decide when updates happen, not the other way around. Multiple times I've wanted to shutdown my laptop so I can go home and Windows says no, sit here for 5 minutes. I don't trust sleep mode to not keep running and overheat, so I wait. Macbooks with 1TB drives are getting cheaper every day. Music production on Linux isn't really practical. A lot of this stuff barely runs on Windows/OSX. Competition is great. But this is about the Mac Neo( and left over M4 Macs crashing in price ). Desktop Linux is still a challenge. I consider myself an advanced Linux user, and it still took me an hour this morning to figure out how to get a VPN to work on Open Suse.
  • c0n5pir4cy 5mo ago
    > I don't trust sleep mode to not keep running and overheat, so I wait. People have been expressing their dissatisfaction at Windows Updates strategy for so long - Modern Standby was so badly implemented it basically cooked laptops in bags and while leaving users wondering what was happening. I had to reflow a laptop because of it. > Macbooks with 1TB drives are getting cheaper every day. Also high-speed external storage is very accessible now - so having large built in storage for your DAW isn't really necessary. The 1 USB 3 port on the MacBook Neo is more than fast enough for this. > Music production on Linux isn't really practical. I would somewhat disagree with this. Linux has much better low-latency, multi application audio support than Windows & Mac now (via JACK) and some pretty incredible native DAWs like Bitwig - so the moat certainly isn't as large as it used to be. I would say it's practical if your workflow doesn't require features of Mac/Windows or tools specific to those platforms. As impractical as it would be for normal users - even Ableton works pretty well under WINE. > Competition is great. But this is about the Mac Neo( and left over M4 Macs crashing in price ). Desktop Linux is still a challenge. I think between this and they've maybe had a bit of a scare from Valve and SteamOS - because that's historically been one of their other big moats. They kicked off a similar initiative to make Windows nicer for gamers back in December. I agree that desktop Linux is still a challenge - it's better than it used to be and you can get away without a terminal now if you're just doing basic Internet/Office tasks. In a lot of places the UX can get pretty gnarly.
• polyamid23 5mo ago
  For 2 months now the „put in admin credentials“ dialog is so fundamentally broken - ui-wise, it is unbelievable (in the sense that I do not believe it actually made it to production even though I see it with my own eyes). There are so many anecdotes about slop by now, the working parts become the anecdotes. By now Windows, for me is more like a reality TV show than an OS.
• lousken 5mo ago
  > This update moves Windows toward a single monthly restart by consolidating OS, .NET, and driver updates I just can't, gotta ask - what about c++ updates? What about integral os components that were migrated to the store and if you disable it, you won't get updates? What about defender updates (not definitions but app update) that won't get applied if you have another anti malware? The thing I hate about windows updates is that microsoft can't even update all their own stuff with a single button. edit: almost forgot - why is office not in windows update, and what the hell is wrong with teams and why it is seperate from office updates Just updating windows is a complete and utter mess and every single Linux distro is 100x better
• avazhi 5mo ago
  > We know there’s a lot of excitement for Taskbar customization – and that’s coming soon. This will never not be funny to me. These clowns really did remove something that existed for decades and then spend more than a decade trying to edge their users to the fact that they were gonna bring it back. In 500 years when somebody looks up enshittification on Wikipedia, this should be the first example.
  • Smalltalker-80 5mo ago
    This announcement terrfies me. I dont think MS now has developers that are competent enough to reliably change core parts of Windows like the Explorer (taskbar). This plan will not only introduce bloat with reduced performance, but will also reduce core stability further. (Explorer has hanging issues since the april update). So please, please, please @Marcus. If you want to add stuff, please do it in side apps. Leave the core alone, that's above your ability currently. For the core please only focus on bug fixing and removing bloat again.
  • greenbit 5mo ago
    Who gets to do the customizing though? Suspecting that "auto hide the taskbar" will suddenly become more popular. Oh no! "Your taskbar buttons will be back after these important messages"
• torben-friis 5mo ago
  This reads... Weird? As in, I know it's marketing speech but expressions seem misused and ideas don't follow from each other: >You decide when updates happen, not the other way around. Not... the other way around? Updates decide when I happen? >Last month we said we would reduce where Copilot shows up across Windows, focusing on bringing AI where it’s most valuable. [...] in Notepad, we’ve replaced the generic Copilot icon with a clearer “Writing Tools” label that better describes what it does. We've reduced AI by renaming the button?
  • greenbit 5mo ago
    Wonderful, can't wait to be ambushed by Son of Clippy. Should have anticipated these kinds of shenanigans.
  • frm88 5mo ago
    My sentiments exactly when reading that - I had to read the first one twice to verify what it said.
• seebeen 5mo ago
  Too little too late. I've already fully migrated to Fedora 43.
• faragon 5mo ago
  Microsoft degrading user experience plus lower price on Mac computers it maybe their downfall. E.g., removing local accounts, unwanted advertising, arbitrary decisions (forced TPM requirement), etc.
• hansmayer 5mo ago
  [dead]
• wewewedxfgdf 5mo ago
  The Windows we want: The SAME as Windows 2000 in terms of what is installed. NO TPM REQUIREMENT. Even better: when installing Windows, there should be a "install minimal" option, and if you select it then it should be so fucking minimal - so little on there, that all you get is control panel and a way to install new software - NOTHING more. That's your win, Microsoft. I'm 2000% certain nothing even slightly close to that will be delivered.
  • wewewedxfgdf 5mo ago
    The minimal install should be so minimal that you feel naked, like you need to immediately start installing stuff to get anything useful done. I do not care what you give people who don't select "minimal install" - that's their problem.
  • teekert 5mo ago
    Yeah it’s funny how at this moment I’d pay more for less Windows. But I’ve found my way on Linux long ago. Sure not all software is there and MS365 fully from browser has so many annoyances, but I love the OS minimalism, how clean it is. My ideal windows in indeed win2000, but in a transparent VM so I can just do the Windows apps. I need LSW, Linux subsystem for Windows, essentially. I live in Linux but still have some need for the Windows Runtime from time to time. If only Windows containers were at the level of the Linux ones, I’d flip the whole world up side down. podman run ms365-full —license-key FCKGW-RHQQ2-YXRKT-8TG6W-2B7Q8 I’d pay for that. But such a system only provides value, it does not extract it. It is a 180 of the way they have been thinking for a long time now.
    • deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
    • globalnode 5mo ago
      its worth trying really really hard to get windows apps running through wine before reaching for a vm imho. once you open a vm you have to deal with ... well... windows.
• itrunsdoomguy 5mo ago
  [flagged]
• nikanj 5mo ago
  [dead]
• jollymonATX 5mo ago
  Migrating off windows, win server and exchange saved us a lot of money and was suprisingly not as challenging as we had feared.
• sagacity 5mo ago
  I recently got locked out of my machine because logging in with the mandatory Microsoft account-backed primary user of my machine didn't work anymore. It said I was offline and I had to use the "previous password" even though I didn't have a previous password for that account. Hacking around in the recovery console to add another administrator user worked, but then I couldn't reset the original user's password because it was tied to the Microsoft account and you can't change the password locally. I don't need Copilot managing my inbox through AI, nor do I need a more exciting widget experience. I just want an OS where if something like the above happens there's a way to fix it without having to reinstall. It doesn't seem like much to ask. Edit: yes, I can use Linux but I have decades of Windows muscle memory and I do a bunch of DirectX programming. I shouldn't have to switch :)
  • cbdevidal 5mo ago
    Also years of Windows muscle memory here, especially the keyboard shortcuts. I’ve used Windows since 1997. I’ve decided I’m done. A new PC arrives in a month. It’ll be running Ubuntu. I’m done. Maybe there is a Linux language similar to DirectX you might transition to? Maybe test code in a VM? (Although that gets you right back into Win11.)
    • theandrewbailey 5mo ago
      > Maybe there is a Linux language similar to DirectX you might transition to? Yes: DirectX. Just make sure that it runs in Wine or Proton. Nit: DirectX is a bunch of APIs and libraries, not a language. Same for Wine and Proton.
      • w4rh4wk5 5mo ago
        DXVK works great for DirectX 11. However, it's rather annoying to debug through this intermediate layer. I wouldn't recommend this for development.
        • kajman 5mo ago
          Sure is nice as a user. I get better frames in some games than Windows users do!
• SwamyM 5mo ago
  Anyone have a good guide to (re)install Windows without any of the bloat? Preferably using Group Policy vs registry changes. I've seen Tiny11 referenced but haven't seen a good guide for it.
  • kotaKat 5mo ago
    Install Windows 11 Education edition (which rips all of the AI shit out mostly with sane defaults for schools). If you need the ISO, Microsoft's default Win11 ISOs have it. Use https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/ https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/ to get a good autounattend set up to rip out the extra bloat and set up a clean install. Activate with Massgrave HWID. You're done.
    • cmehdy 5mo ago
      I'll vouch for this. I have a USB drive set up with Ventoy, which has the ability to install its TPM certs when booting from USB. It has a couple Linux ISOs and one Win11. It also has a Ventoy config tying that ISO to an autounattended XML built from that exact site. The result is an install with no copilot/cortana/widgets, a win defender that can be disabled, no auto updates at all, a local account only, no taskbar shenanigans, properly configured explorer, some registry tweaks, runtimes pre-installed, extra drivers if needed, and QoL settings tweaked how I want them. The OS installs itself in a few minutes with no intervention after the disk/partitioning stuff which I kept manual. It ends up being faster than the Ubuntu and CachyOs installs from the same drive. Then 2mins with massgrave post install if I haven't provided a key already. When it is set up that way, Windows is decently fast and stable. And I have some control over it, at least whenever I need to enforce something.
    • SwamyM 5mo ago
      Wasn't aware that there was an Edcation version but that unattended installer site seem like a great way to install, without using a bunch of random Power Shell scripts.
      • kotaKat 5mo ago
• mdavid626 5mo ago
  I literraly can’t name one feature since Windows 7 what was worth it, even on the contrary: every update made the system worse. I had to restore Notepad, Calculator and Paint from Windows 7. What the hell Microsoft?
  • fancyfredbot 5mo ago
    WSL is a great feature and was a part of Windows 10.
    • wokkel 5mo ago
      So you install an launcher to run linux. Ditch the launcher i'd say.
    • embedding-shape 5mo ago
      WSL1 seemed great, until it wasn't. Then WSL2 came along, which is just a VM and works identical to VirtualBox et al. Still huge hassle to deal with various things that get confused when you run it in a "Linux-but-not-really-but-also-Windows" environment. Better to just go straight to what you actually want, which seems to be a proper Linux distribution, everything just works as expected then.
    • mdavid626 5mo ago
      WSL sounded great, until it didn’t. It’s still not so easy to use, plus they ditched it anyway for VM solution.
    • realo 5mo ago
      WSL 1 was a piece of garbage. WSL 2 is supposed to be a VM ... all problems solved ... until they aren't. Hint: try to use normal USB stuff natively (Linux) in WSL 2 ...
    • heresie-dabord 5mo ago
      For all its problems, WSL is the single greatest power feature that Windows has ever had. Debian itself is a superpower.
  • deleted 5mo ago
• aboardRat4 5mo ago
  Windows can ensure its quality quite easily: restore support for Windows 7.
  • senfiaj 5mo ago
    In ideal world, but it's too late. The codebase is old. It's very difficult to backport/reimplement/integrate features (tons of APIs, kernel features, etc) that new software relies on. Also, because of compatibility you can't remove all the mess.
    • aboardRat4 5mo ago
      It's not that old. In fact, there is little new stuff added to Windows after version 7 that is really worth keeping. Even Windows XP supports most recent Chromiums, albeit with a lot of hacky patches. I would even say that from the usability perspective, Windows 2000 beats them all, but quite some useful APIs were added in XP and 7, including better Unicode support, driver signing, UAC. But 10 and 11 were just a waste of effort.
      • senfiaj 5mo ago
        Maybe UWP and similar stuff isn't that popular, but about WSL?
        • aboardRat4 5mo ago
          WSL1 is just an upgraded Interix, which had been with Windows since at least 2000, maybe even NT4. All the APIs are there, porting WSL1 on 7 should be not a problem at all. WSL2 is just a virtual machine. Hyper-V was first shipped in Windows 8, which is not too far from Windows. But things are even more bright. Qemu already had the "kqemu", which what eventually became KVM when merged into the Linux kernel, and it worked _even on windows NT 4_, and if course it worked on 2000 and XP. So porting Hyper-V/WSL2 as a driver onto Windows 7 should be even less of a problem than WSL1.
• mcswell 5mo ago
  There are two mentions of "reliab[ility]" (I searched for the first five letters to be sure I got other morphological forms of the word). It appears twice: once near the top, as a general goal, and once at the bottom, as part of the general goal. Nothing in between, like saying "we'll be using {less AI | more AI debugging | more human screening | magic wands | secret sauce} in an effort to improve reliability". So at least as far as this post goes, hardly even lip service. Given the number of botched updates reported earlier this year, that's astonishing. Disclaimer: I switched to Linux last year.
• gverrilla 5mo ago
  Windows is scamware.
• glimshe 5mo ago
  Sweet Jesus, when are these guys going to understand that I want to be able to turn off automatic updates completely and forever. I'm fine if my computer melts and explodes if I didn't get the update, but let me do it on my own schedule permanently!
  • realo 5mo ago
    I understand your point and motivation completely. And I agree... However in today's world if you expose an unpatched "anything" to the internet then it is very possible that it will be discovered and eventually used to (silently) do things you don't want. Think DDOS farms, illegal software distribution etc... What is the middle ground? I don't think there is one. We need to have reliable, automatically updated OSes which don't suck and , much more importantly, run the applications we need. That is definitely NOT Windows.
    • glimshe 5mo ago
      That's fine. I'll take responsibility for my decision. Show me a big warning message when I disable automatic updates. If I'm concerned about this scenario, I'll just manually update it (by clicking the update button).
      • realo 5mo ago
        The problem is not you being inconvenienced. The problem is making your machine part of a botnet that will attack ME. I don't like that. The cost of your freedom is you being a threat to everyone around you. Do YOU take responsibility for that?
        • glimshe 5mo ago
          I won't, as I don't take responsibility for someone stealing my street legal classic car, which is parked on the street right now without any special anti-theft device, and using it to run over you. If someone takes over my computer, I'm the victim as much as you. You can't force your security standards on me, just as you can't prohibit people from connecting an arbitrary version of Windows, Linux or MacOS to the Internet just because it could inconvenience you.
• jokoon 5mo ago
  valve is on the brink of replacing windows with steam for many people it's probably not a big dent in market share, but it's probably a good tipping point
  • forestingfisher 5mo ago
    Not everyone is a gamer.
    • jokoon 5mo ago
      I did not say everyone is a gamer, but it's still a big market share
• widowlark 5mo ago
  the post shared here is clearly written with AI.
  • alex1138 5mo ago
    You're absolutely right!
• garganzol 5mo ago
  At first they ridicule people with general disrespect, privacy violations and ads in Start Menu, then they expect the same people to treat them seriously. That's a cognitive dissonance right there, and now they have to live with it. Psychotherapy may help.
• kasabali 5mo ago
  > We’ve also made changes to the Power menu so you’ll always see the standard Restart and Shut down options without having to install a pending update first. You decide when updates happen, not the other way around. Great! We've progressed back to Windows XP of 22 years ago.
  • Al-Khwarizmi 5mo ago
    Great, this is actual progress. Now it would be amazing if "Update and Shut Down" would actually update and shut down, instead of doing so like 50% of the time with the other 50% just updating and restarting with an actual shut down. (This is on various very diverse machines so I'm rather sure is common, and not just an interaction with a particular machine). It's baffling that a company like MS can leave this kind of obvious problems lingering for months.
    • electroly 5mo ago
      They recently acknowledged and fixed this issue. I can personally confirm it hasn't happened to me since the update. https://www.pcmag.com/news/microsoft-fixes-update-and-shut-down-bug-that-doesnt-actually-turn-off https://www.pcmag.com/news/microsoft-fixes-update-and-shut-d...
      • Al-Khwarizmi 5mo ago
        Great to know. I would say that it happened to me more recently but it may have been in machines that had been unused for some months and ran an old version. According to the link, it "only" took them 5 years to solve the bug. Better late than ever though, I guess :)
    • laurels-marts 5mo ago
      For me it never updates and shutdown. It always just updates and restarts.
    • lenkite 5mo ago
      This behaviour really trumped me when I was working on a friends Windows-11 PC on the new year. My Family Big-Home PC (> a decade old) still has Win-10 since it cannot upgrade, so I was confused at WTF was happening. I could not believe Microsoft had actually broken this.
• k3vinw 5mo ago
  I’m most excited for the scheduler and memory footprint improvements. As bad as I hear Windows 11 is, I’ve rarely had issues with it. For the most part it just works and stays out of my way. My only gripes are the occasional forced updates and a rare hard crash that happened once in a span of a year of using it as my daily driver. Well that and I have to be mindful of running too many resource starving processes at the same time including WSL. Otherwise performance will quickly degrade. But that’s not much different than my 2015 ASUS zenbook running Linux off of 8gb of ram. In comparison my work laptop runs on 32gb of ram with much more powerful cpu cores. WSL is my favorite and most used feature of Windows 11. So I’ll be happy as long as they don’t screw that up.
  • itopaloglu83 5mo ago
    I think I’m more bothered by the paper cuts I experience every minute. Starting from web based start menu taking forever to launch, to everything resisting to you to be in control of your computer. Some say the speed is fine, but forget that these machines are running at nanosecond level instructions and there’s no reason for a simple task to take milliseconds unless somebody is optimizing for service revenue and user tracking (to be sold later to advertisers, not for user experience improvements). Microslop is just scared out of mind with the European and Asian countries moving to Linux based platforms to get out of their grip. Can you imagine the amount of intelligence they will loose, and how much harder they will need to work to compete for real after three decades of being the default in everything.
    • k3vinw 5mo ago
      Interesting. I replaced most of my gripes with power toys and WSL. That and a ridiculous amount of hardware. YMMV.
• archargelod 5mo ago
  > My ask of you: try the experiences, pressure test them, and let’s keep building a product we are proud of. Translated: We fired our Quality Assurance. You are the QA now.
  • matthewfcarlson 5mo ago
    I was at Microsoft for that particular transition but it is still wild to me that a post about improving quality starts with details about windows insiders.
  • pndy 5mo ago
    Only if that QA in form of "enthusiastic" Windows Insiders would actually result in something
• grassfedgeek 5mo ago
  With Windows Update what I really want is control over reboot. Don't automatically reboot, instead let me save documents, close applications and reboot manually. "Pausing" updates doesn't do that, and could be dangerous as urgent security updates are delayed. With AI features, the most annoying thing has to be the Copilot key on my laptop keyboard. If you accidentally hit it it opens a Copilot window, interrupting your typing. The Settings app for this key only allow you to specify whether it activates search or copilot, it doesn't let you turn it off. There are other workarounds like installing an app from the Store, but all those workarounds come with unwanted excess baggage.
  • ninjagoo 5mo ago
    > The Settings app for this key only allow you to specify whether it activates search or copilot, it doesn't let you turn it off. That's because it's not your computer, it is Microsoft's ;-) Seriously, though, there will be quirks like with almost any OS. OS devs make choices that abstract some of the complexity in order to make it useful for a broad audience. With Linux or the BSDs, you have the freedom to take it to any level of detail or customization that you wish to, with all that entails being outside of an externally maintained OS. Ask me how I know :-)
    • grassfedgeek 5mo ago
      > That's because it's not your computer, it is Microsoft's ;-) I think it is because allowing the key to be disabled will make Microsoft look dumb for adding the key in the first place!
  • pndy 5mo ago
    What should be also bring back is the selective choice for installing updates. That would allow users again avoiding patches which have been confirmed as dangerous to the system stability. Pausing, postponing isn't a solution here.
• duzer65657 5mo ago
  It is beyond naive, and I don't know how it can be anything but disingenuous to pretend that the top priorities of "Windows Insiders" are sensible defaults, a calm discoverability feed and how AI works in notepad. The reality is this guy obviously got promoted and assigned "win-back OS users" task, in the face of an organization that overwhelming wants to leverage Windows for short-term, user-hostile bumps in AI usage, advert impressions and questionable engagement scores. He's not going to be allowed to mess with things like the marketing strategy or sales targets, and you see that in these "highlights". Your target audience asked for things like "let me manage my machine locally" and you're delivering "a more muted and polished consumer experience". It's lipstick on a pig, only the pig is dead, and actually a pile of garbage. Even if you do "get it", you ain't going to be allowed to deliver it.
  • Someone1234 5mo ago
    Exactly. I mean they literally, in this same release[0], just turned WIN+R (Run) from a classic FAST Win32 UI into a modern slow monstrosity. Who was this for? I use WIN+R instead of the Start Menu Search/PowerToy's Alt+Space because it is INSTANT and 100% CONSISTENT. You just made my instant thing slower, great, thanks, mission accomplished! Feels wildly out of touch, to almost a comical degree. [0] https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2026/05/01/announcing-new-builds-for-1-may-2026-and-extending-iso-support/ https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2026/05/01/announc...
• 1980phipsi 5mo ago
  The deterioration in the Windows and Office experience is astounding.
• ramijames 5mo ago
  There's no amount of progress that will make me go back to Windows. 1. Microsoft accounts. No. 2. Ads in my OS. No. 3. Slow copying of files. No. 4. A maddening mix of UI/UX paradigms and implementations. No. 5. AI deeply embedded in my OS. No. I don't know wtf their design team is doing.
  • ninjagoo 5mo ago
    > I don't know wtf their design team is doing. They're doing what management/business-strategy is asking them to do.
    • itopaloglu83 5mo ago
      Not even the MBA types would mess things up this bad, it feels like Microslop is now full of programmers that make something and just ship it, no thought or any brain cells involved.
      • ninjagoo 5mo ago
        > it feels like Microslop is now full of programmers that make something and just ship it I just don't see that happening in an Agile (the tech software dev term) workplace - it's got to be clueless Product Managers driving this. And even those folks have to answer to their management. Tying it back to what's happening at the broader business level over the past few months - see this comment of mine [1] - there's got to be some degree of chaos at the business strategy level, and that's showing up at our consumer level. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47996910 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47996910
  • polski-g 5mo ago
    I like how there are still two control panel UIs after... Five years now?
• windex 5mo ago
  Windows 11 is what happens when no one speaks up at product team meetings. People nod their heads, get on with the build and the marketing team decides they want another 40 hooks into customer data for monetization. Windows 11 today is a spectacular example of customer disrespect and disregard. MS believes it can manage with enterprise customer revenue alone. Well, best of luck with that, even enterprises are getting fed up.
  • machomaster 5mo ago
    Windows is what happens when there are too many cooks in the kitchen, without a single authority figure, ultimately responsible for maintaining the OS (and only the OS), guarding against and saying no to all attempts to leech the user base.
• p_ing 5mo ago
  People complain about telemetry but that’s how you get improved features. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/the-new-run-dialog-faster-cleaner-and-more-capable/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/the-new-run-dialo...
  • kasabali 5mo ago
    Yet somehow PEAK Windows versions ( whether it was 2000, XP or 7 depending on person) all predates introduction of forced or opt-out telemetry.
    • p_ing 5mo ago
      Peak in what way? Windows 2000 had sequential service startup. It took /ages/ to boot. The boot screen was pretty, though. XP was a security nightmare and out the gate was BSOD city, much of that thanks to 3rd party drivers, but the OS had fundamental kernel bugs, too. 7 was okay, but it isn't something you'd want to go back to with modern hardware. It lacks many features we find essential. TRIM being a big one. I'd argue that the Windows 7 iconography wasn't very nice. I'm more of a fan of NT4 for it's utilitarian look, though service management was no where near as nice as what the MMC brought. From a stability perspective, it really wasn't until Windows 8/10 where we got to the "PEAK" Windows versions, where stability was not an issue at the OS level with Microsoft-shipped code, but rather at a driver or hardware level. No longer were we seeing some fundamental kernel bug halting the system, instead it shifted over to garbage 3rd party drivers (largely fixed thanks to Windows' unique ability to restart the graphical subsystem/removal of kernel mode print drivers) or failing hardware. You won't find that level of stability in Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Windows 7.
      • kasabali 5mo ago
        > You won't find that level of stability in Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Windows 7. Nice try but you won't deceive any attentive readers. Everything you've told in that paragraph was applicable to Windows 7, it had all the stability and none of the user hostility of later versions.
• wewewedxfgdf 5mo ago
  It feels like there is no one person in control of Windows. It feels like there is a committee and every Microsoft marketing group gets their changes that they want in Windows to help push their product. Windows should have someone at the top - with TASTE - and the authority and strength and vision to actually make real change happen. Real change isn't possible because assuming someone is in charge of Windows then they are weak and without their own vision to even understand all the things that are being said over and over and over in threads like this. People would LOVE it if when installing Windows you could choose "text only/no GUI", or "minimal install" or "select the components you want" or "super special with the lot". Why the fuck can't Microsoft work out on its own to do this. And for gods sake drop the stupid TPM thing which was required by the Microsoft new PC sales licensing division. And NO ADS - it's an operating system not a billboard.
• 1970-01-01 5mo ago
  How long will it take them to realize they just need to re-release the Win7 start menu, kill ads, kill telemetry, and declare victory?
• Canada 5mo ago
  Microsoft strategy is adverse to Windows quality.
• grandpoobah 5mo ago
  Microsoft wants a fucking medal for appearing to give a shit about their customers for the first time in 10 years.
• ninjagoo 5mo ago
  Executive management at MS must be seeing interesting (migration) numbers on their dashboards, so they've gotten involved in white-washing their reputation without changing business strategy, hence the executive-level manifestos and platitudes coming out as of late. I'm sure they see the EU/Worldwide decoupling from US companies as definitely-going-to-happen and they have no control over that, so retaining US consumers becomes even more important, but the first attempt will be at improving reputation without changing business strategy (ads, data monetization, ai are the future revenue drivers). And only if that fails will the business strategy change. Posted this originally as a reply to a comment, but I think it should be its own top-level comment.
  • internet2000 5mo ago
    They went all in on pretending to care about quality since the MacBook Neo. The numbers they're seeing must be terrifying.
    • ninjagoo 5mo ago
      > They went all in on pretending to care about quality since the MacBook Neo. The numbers they're seeing must be terrifying. Yeah. Worldwide Neo sales at 5 million units + production raise to 10 million? [1] Even if only 50% of those are US consumers, add to that the number of folks switching over to linux [4]; and suddenly that's not small potatoes, considering there are only about 162 million working folks in the US. There are only about 50 million folks at 100+ employees, and 16 million at 1000+ employees in private firms. [2] All these folks switching over? Once they get comfy with non-Windows OSes, they'll ask for those at work. And at the smaller employers - 100 or less employees or even 1000 or less employees, that won't be hard to support, especially if one or two management types make the switch and drive the change. You have to read a bit between the lines, but an estimate is that 35-50 million have access to Google Workspace at work, and 25-40 million paid Google Workspace users. [3] And Azure? same number problems, and there seems to be a general discontent with the way things are going with cloud. Combined with the EU/Worldwide decoupling, suddenly that MS moat isn't looking so deep. It's easy to imagine an inflection point at which MS becomes the minority OS provider, even in the US. The Kodak-ization of Microsoft. On Nadella's watch, no less. Should we expect a change in leadership soon? Either Nadella deciding to do something different with his time or the Board pushing for a change? They've both got to be seeing the same numbers we are, plus additional insight based on internal metrics. A Perfect Storm, if you will. [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/macbook-neo-allegedly-selling-too-182812394.html https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/macbook-ne... [2] https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/susb.html https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/susb.html [3] https://expertinsights.com/saas-app-security/google-workspace-security-and-adoption-statistics-for-businesses https://expertinsights.com/saas-app-security/google-workspac... [4] updated to reflect that [1] has global sales numbers based on feedback from responses below.
• internet2000 5mo ago
  If you believe they'll accomplish anything beyond changing a handful of dialogs before getting reorg'd, I got an Agentic AGI Python script you can use on Windows to sell you.
• childintime 5mo ago
  Windows is adding features nobody asked for, like scroll wheel zooming everywhere, like in cmd.exe. Wtf do you need zooming for in the terminal?? I get false positives, and no benefit, at all. Another is Windows Explorer, loses focus all the time, no hint to where it went, preventing keyboard navigation. Basic UI conventions are being violated, for no reason than having no clue what Windows is. Windows is apparently being infested by young hackers who think Linux is the best thing since sliced bread and who just want to add tacky features using sloppy AI.
  • circuit10 5mo ago
    Do you mean Ctrl + scroll wheel? I use that feature quite a lot, I like my font size small but it can be difficult to see for other people so being able to quickly scale it up is really useful
    • _kblcuk_ 5mo ago
      I use Ctrl + <number> to switch between different workspaces on Mac, and half of the time I come back to MS web pages or apps (like Teams) the font is either 9000+pt or then -3pt. Outlook takes the cake though, where for whatever reason they decided to support different font "zoom" levels in different parts. And everyone were dreaming of having the inbox menus in 1pt while having email with 1000pt, right?
• algoth1 5mo ago
  We need a faster way to uninstall copilot and download chrome
• arein3 5mo ago
  Does it require a microsoft account to use? If yes I dont care and I won't use w11 Still have w10 for steam, will switch to linux in the future
• what-the-grump 5mo ago
  You’ve managed to brick w11 VMs completely running in your native cloud. Kill laptops in the April update and trigger bitlocker on consumer machines which users having zero experience recovering their devices because the GUI is crap. You’ve been busy. Stop shipping features, ship stability and quality.
• shevy-java 5mo ago
  Very unconvincing. Microsoft seems to want to calm the storm. I think a dead-giveaway is the realisation that issues that come with Microsoft-specific software, is met with an increasing amount of complaints by end users. Thus, either we buy into the PR explanation by Microsoft, or we rely on what end users says. Now there is a question how accurate the end users are, but the amount of complaints is not static; it has increased a lot in the last some weeks, and even way before that. There is a reason why Microsoft is now called Microslop - the decrease in quality is one big reason for that. AI has not led to an increase in quality - Microsoft needs to acknowledge that. But they won't, because they already committed totally to AI without any way back now.
• chris_wot 5mo ago
  Windows Explorer always freezes for me. Teams is constantly interrupting me with popovers to tell me about features I’ll never use. on startup, it takes some time for panels to load. The file system still uses drive letters. Can’t they scrap the old file system folder layout to something… organized?
  • kasabali 5mo ago
    > The file system still uses drive letters. Can’t they scrap the old file system folder layout to something… organized There's no point doing so. Folder mounts are possible in diskmgmt.msc, and on Linux partitions end up mounted in /mnt/crap (and removables in /media/crap :D) anyway.
• game_the0ry 5mo ago
  MS Windows is the Pontiac Aztec of operating systems.
• iamtedd 5mo ago
  11 years of mandatory telemetry in Windows, and it still takes a huge amount of noise from users and journalists online over a long time for Microsoft to notice and finally make change. What good is the fucking telemetry then? Why can I still not turn it off?
• benterix 5mo ago
  OK so I see someone at Microsoft decided that their strategic decisions do have impact on their income so they are implementing a crisis management strategy. The way I read this, it sounds like "We're not giving up on disabling local accounts, telemetry, ads in the OS and other things most people complain. However, we're willing to make some concessions in how aggressively the updates are pushed on users and a few minor points or things we planned to implement at some point anyway but didn't consider that important." Prove me wrong.
• modeless 5mo ago
  Wake me when the left side taskbar is restored to the stable version
• franczesko 5mo ago
  The main problem with Windows is that it's half baked with "let's see what sticks" strategy. It feels like a constant beta, not a mature, serious platform.
• ilia-a 5mo ago
  Windows 10, especially when they added WSL2 was genuinely great and an awesome platform for development, with essentially native/fast Linux. Since Win11, it has all been downhill (imo), speed dropped massively, even opening task manager now takes seconds, weird slowdowns that only reboot resolves (temporarily). I hope Microsoft starts taking performance seriously and tries to get back to what was lost after Win10, but I have big doubts.
  • krior 5mo ago
    Why would you describe windows 10 as great? Forced updates and the beginning of ads, massive increase in telemetry while basically giving you a mediocre reskin and virtual desktops. Windows 11 sure moved the overton window.
    • ilia-a 5mo ago
      Compared to what was before and after it was pretty great.
      • krior 5mo ago
        I remember windows 7 being better.
• MagicMoonlight 5mo ago
  Lmao, since the neo they’re panicking. It’s over microslop.
• wao0uuno 5mo ago
  Bunch of weak willed half measures and a whole lot of marketing around it. I fixed all of my Windows problems by switching to Linux years ago. No more humiliation rituals.
• xbar 5mo ago
  Windows 10 still working fine.
• whywhywhywhy 5mo ago
  I know it’s intentional to build rapport but seeing the wording and language from windows on this stuff is insane considering their tenure and dominance and attitude of the last 30 years. I don’t mean this in thee sense you should warm to them I mean it as in they’re on the back foot.
• apexalpha 5mo ago
  Purely anecdotally I have not noticed any improvement in FPS or performance while gaming. The fact that some Windows games run better on Bazzite + Proton (/ Wine) is evidence in itself.
• gmponyo 5mo ago
  Smoke and mirrors. Microsoft will never change.
• natas 5mo ago
  Do you want to hear what the execs are doing about it from a trusted source instead of a marketing person: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47216047#47223342 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47216047#47223342
• dartharva 5mo ago
  They wouldn't have had to face such embarrassment and rollbacks and spend billions had they just stuck to maintaining Windows 10 in the first place. To this day any improvement W11 offers over W10 is still an enigma.
  • ninjagoo 5mo ago
    > To this day any improvement W11 offers over W10 is still an enigma. Win 11 may not offer improvements for you, but it may be designed to offer big benefits for MS: ads, data monetization, ai, data for training ai.
• notepad0x90 5mo ago
  It looks like it's the year of the MacOS desktop. I think since apple is looking at the lower-end consumer market, it must also be looking at the corporate desktop market. Supporting enterprise software/fleet is a whole different ballgame. But it does play well into apple's strength, in that apple is great at letting others experiment and learn lessons from their failures. If the new leadership at apples even glances in that direction, it will be wild for the desktop computing industry in general. Perhaps microsoft will rethink things, but better yet, entire companies and governments might start switching to MacOS. Linux desktop is not ready for mass adaption, but it isn't that far off either. My opinion is that people using more macs get them more familiar with the unixy way of doing things. But better yet, a lot of the tooling and libraries for macs is easier to port to linux than from windows. macs dominating enterprise and consumer markets can mean improvements in linux desktop, and the eventual reality (perhaps in a decade) of seeing GNU/Linux desktops in those same spaces as viable options (Android/Linux is already there in the lowest of the low markets).
  • vrighter 5mo ago
    moving away from microsoft in the eu is intended to cut digital reliance on the US. The EU governments will not switch to macs ever. If they did that, they might as well stick with windows, because apple is also american and beholden to american laws.
    • notepad0x90 5mo ago
      I get that, it's just geopolitics, but practically speaking, it is doable for some companies and governments, but can regular every day people manage their own linux desktops? the EU needs a mac competitor, and they're not spending to make that happen. They're just buying into Linux because of its popularity there, and they haven't seen the real price tag of "free as in beer" FOSS software.
• farty357345645 5mo ago
  just wanted to say that windows is a brilliant piece of software, and i look forward to the efficiency improvements. as to the naysayers, they were clueless back then, they're clueless today, and they will continue to be clueless as windows gets better and better.
  • senfiaj 5mo ago
    IMHO the last truly brilliant and consistent version was 7. Ideally MS should do such improvements on Windows 7. Sadly, Windows developers also have to deal with the mess created during Windows 8/8.1/10/11.
• gbro3n 5mo ago
  I discovered NixOS this year and I'm afraid I won't be back Windows. TBH Windows has been pretty good to me. This laptop was running at least 4 years on the same install. I never really found that Windows got in my way except for "This file is being used by another process" annoyances that I don't get with Linux. For ages I felt that Windows + WSL2 was the best of both worlds, but NixOS gives me a reproducible OS configuration that means I'll never have to fully build my OS again, and every installed app / routine is documented in code. This feels like the way forward.
• sharts 5mo ago
  lol nobody cares.
• Havoc 5mo ago
  >"you want [...] a shared sense of pride" MS is so cooked if they think they can fix quality issues with corporate culture slogans
• estimator7292 5mo ago
  [flagged]
• Scroll_Swe 5mo ago
  I run Windows 11 on my gaming PC powerful desktop and a good work laptop. No issues. No idea what you guys are doing. I can also now run and install over cmd powershlle with choco, scoop and winget. Get Firefox, VLC, MPV and all that. Get Powertoys. Run Christitustech utlity for tweaks. So even less usage for Linux imo.
  • cwel 5mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome
    • Scroll_Swe 5mo ago
      Great argument buddy!
      • cwel 5mo ago
        I was the same way (I suppose I still am since I never deleted the partition), scoop + tailored pwsh profile + 'debloat' tweaks etc. I never really understood any of the popular complaints about Windows/W11 since I always reign my install in. There is no argument, just vague gesturing toward the grass. I recognized myself in your post.
        • Scroll_Swe 5mo ago
          Fair enough. I am not against Linux at all, but work does mandate Windows (or OSX but...) and Windows for gaming is still a must imo due to anti-cheat and my Steam library is massive. Gamepass is not a bad deal too.
• linhns 5mo ago
  I’m not currently participating in the program, how come I’m seeing these changes already? Although they’re welcome.
• rlkf 5mo ago
  I don't need transparency, I don't want a shared sense of pride. What I want is for someone to put in a switch to can Mica so that I can have color in the active titlebar again.
• ray023 5mo ago
  Besides, infesting Windows with Spyware and AI what they did to the start menu was among the most atrocious changes they made. I was always a taskbar top guy, because it simply makes more sense, this is not opinion this is fact. Browser tabs are on the TOP, your mouse hovers over the top of the screen WAY more, and It's stupid to have to spend miles in mouse travel time to the bottom of the screen. Window controls like close, minimize, fs are TOP. Most things are on the TOP. Whoever made the decision to remove that ability to move the taskbar while Linux basically offers EVERYTHING you can imagine and more is insane. I was using Explorer Patcher, but it was buggy for me, so I use Start 11 now, its works fine, but it should not need a 3rd party closed source software to basically just have what Windows always offered. I use Windows only for gaming, everything else I do on Linux. I think It's too late to realize these things. M$ started by just buying software and building a monopoly they were never the good guys so I can not say the "lost it" but whatever this BS is they are doing now its worse. I also use AtlasOS to bring some sense into Windows, also something that should not be needed and be that way out of the box with few simple switches. It's just a bloated mess, at least its stable for the most part.
• Kadecgos 5mo ago
  If this is what the Windows considers 'quality updates' after 2 months, then Windows is in really rough shape. Rebranding Copilot in Notepad is the kind of thing I expect from a modern day Microsoft, where they can't possibly understand what people mean when they say the word 'no thank you'. The actual change here should be a global toggle somewhere to just turn it off, forever, with no arguments from the OS. But of course we can't have that because engagement for a product no one wants might fall off. I so, so badly wish this team would pull their head out of their ass, but if this is what their idea of improvement is, then I guess I might be done with Windows when I can't use W10 any more.
• gigel82 5mo ago
  The "sense of pride" bit makes me think they're not even taking it seriously... either that, or they hired EA's PR person that managed this record voted comment on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsBattlefront/comments/7cff0b/comment/dppum98/ https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsBattlefront/comments/7cff0b...
• left-struck 5mo ago
  Lets be real, Microsoft is incentivised to treat their users as products so they’ll constantly test the limits of the user’s patience. Okay, they found a limit, now they’ll back off a little and try a different direction for a while until they run into another limit. Abandon windows, and abandon any software that runs only on windows. It’s the only way out.
• Daniel_Visovsky 5mo ago
  [flagged]
• AnnaKoro453 5mo ago
  The Microsoft account lockout thing happened to me too. Had to use a recovery USB and hack the registry to re-enable the local admin account. Took two hours of googling. I just want to log into my computer, not earn a certification in Windows recovery.