It’s basically identical to Windows 10. Which will be out of support in less than 2 years. So I’d install it if I had a new PC that’s supported and Linux wasn’t an option for what I need to run.
But there’s also not a good reason to upgrade from 10 right now.It’s still possible to install without a Microsoft account, just needs a workaround during installation.
It is not “basically identical”
I couldn’t find my windows 10 installer USB so I gave 11 a spin. I’ve been on it for like 8 months and the past few weeks I’ve been thinking about going back to 10.
-
Taskbar sucks now. Gotta install third party software to make it not look like a mac. ExplorerPatcher stopped working for me so I downloaded ViveTool to enable the “feature” of showing labels. But what I can’t change is the width…so Steam is a tiny icon and Firefox with an open tab is full length. Also having issues buttons overlapping each other
-
I use a USB audio interface. Without the software installed I get sound in most programs but no ASIO. With it installed I get ASIO but no sound in media players
-
Ads. I’m sorry but I don’t recall downloading TikTok on my desktop PC, why is it in my star menu?
This is the first year I’m actively considering Linux but there’s just way too much software I’m not willing to take a performance hit on (AutoCAD and Ableton as examples)
You can left-align the taskbar and make it black in Windows settings. Those other issues you have might be caused by the third party tools you installed, I never had them. And Windows 10 also came with unwanted apps in the start menu, you probably removed them and are now comparing fresh Windows 11 with customized Windows 10.
Explorer comes with tabs now, that alone was a reason for me to switch.But yeah, if you have driver issues, go back to Windows 10 until the manufacturer of your audio interface has fixed them.
(I’m not a Microsoft fanboy, only run it for work. Privately, I use Arch, by the way.)
Left aligning is only part of it - I want uncombined labels. An update broke ExplorerPatcher so I use ViveTool to enable the “official” option in Windows ahead of release. I also want the labels to remain a fixed width like it used to which there is no option for. The issue here is 100% with Windows 11’s new taskbar
Drivers: it’s definitely on the manufacturer but it’s still an OS difference. It’s the first time since Windows…vista? I’ve had a driver issue after upgrading so it’s worth noting imo
Ads: yeah they popped up when I first installed 10 but they never installed themselves later. I restarted the other day and my start menu was full of mobile apps
-
deleted by creator
looks at date of publication
That has got to be one of the timeliness answers to a question I’ve ever seen on here. Thanks!
deleted by creator
The bloatware sucks but it takes <30 minutes after install to remove / disable all of it.
I still can’t drag files to the task bar to open them with a particular program. Tabs on file explorer are a thing, but they don’t behave predictabily so I almost never use them.
Overall still feels like a downgrade, but I’d have updated regardless just to get the little “update available” message to go away
Since the question implies a change of state - I’m going to go with a no.
Lol
No. I reverted back to Windows 10 Pro for my gaming machine after Windows 11 Pro prompted me that it was “international bubble tea day”. Don’t get me wrong, I love bubble tea, I just don’t care for these distractions when I’m trying to use my PC.
Use tiny11 builder from ntdevlabs on GitHub and Chris Titus’s windows toolkit (from GitHub too) to clean things up further. But if you are putting so much effort might as well use linux
It took them 3 years to do one minor UI thing that was at the bottom of my UI complaints.
Windows 11 improves at a pace slow enough that someone else could just hack Windows 10 from scratch and do better and faster.
You did not disclose your issues. It hasn’t changed much since its release, so going by the “yet”, no, it’s still the same.
From a non hardcore Foss pov (I use linux on an old machine to tinker, but I don’t enjoy it. It takes too much energy to get random shit working. My old random Bluetooth usb dongle I had laying around was not compatible with linux? Took me a fucking week to figure that out… ): w11 is as good as windows has ever been.
It does exactly what you want and lets your os mainly stay out of your way of doing other stuff.
All the people complaining about ads and shit: I use Vivaldi and turned off notifications in the side panel. I basically never notice I use windows, except that stuff just works. No fucking around with drivers, random old usb devices just work. All apps I download just work. Never need any serious OS troubleshooting for daily use.
Maybe windows spies on certain things I do? That sucks balls. But I also enjoy watching tiktok on the loo and I still use Facebook to connect with relatives all over the world. It sucks, but I’ve taken my peace with that fact that true privacy online is gone for average Joe. In the end it’s just metadata. Who cares that instagram knows I like to look at ladies underwear…
This mentality is exactly what these corporations want. You’re the perfect consumer.
“I don’t want my free time to be a second unpaid tech support job for myself”, what a horrid unthinkable mentality to have
“this mentality” meaning they want to spend their free time using their computer instead of troubleshooting problems?? Computers are a hobby, you can’t fault people for not wanting to go through the pain of learning a brand new operating system just to play some games
I guess my mentality is exactly what my mechanic wants because I’m not interested enough in cars to learn how to change my own brakes
I agreed with the guy you answered, then I read your comment and I must admit that you’re right.
I need to use windows at work and hate it every couple minutes, but it’s simply true that I have to tinker around a lot with my Linux machines. I have to tinker more with my windows machine, but that’s because I really dislike the windows way and want to do things like I do on my Linux systems.
I am still committed to the idea that Gnu/Linux is a vastly superior system compared to windows, especially so for devs, but it isn’t always easy.
The viewpoint of just “using” a PC is something I’ve mostly lost as it seems.
Is windows really “easier” for non technical people? Or are they just used to it and switching would be too much effort?
Windows just works tbh. If you don’t want to do anything out of the ordinary, it does exactly what it says on the box.
For me, the windows shenanigans start at installing new things.
How? If you just install windows software and follow the installer, it just works no? I’ve never ran into issues using software written for windows. There might be issues with the software itself, but I’ve never had issues with the installation procedure.
It’s about what software you install. Big commercial projects are ok, and anything that offers an MSI installer works too. But it gets really weird once you want to install something that does not offer a dedicated installer.
Instead of every program needing their own installer, there should be a central installer that can install most software.
On my Linux machines, installing things is a matter of a single command. The program downloads, installs, integrates the software of my choosing without me having to search the web for some installer (that could also be malware). If the thing I want only offers an executable, that works too, as I just put it in
/use/local/bin.Another thing is usage in the terminal. On windows, pretty much every program has its own folder. That sucks, because the terminal gets a list of executables depending on the
PATHvariable. That means I end up manually adding A LOT of folders to the PATH.
Is windows really “easier” for non technical people? Or are they just used to it and switching would be too much effort?
Yes but it’s not the OS itself, it’s the software that runs on it. If you’re just browsing the internet then it doesn’t matter but if you’re not techy and you want to play a game with some friends, the chance that you’ll have to troubleshoot is slim compared to Linux.
We browsing is a bad example. We browsing just works on every OS. Games have gotten better of course, but it’s still not at the real it just works level.
I think the above comment is mostly referring to the consumers complacency about their privacy being completely eroded and not caring that they are being taken advantage of.
It’s a balance of privacy and convenience. I will use Windows because the convenience trumps the privacy concerns but I won’t use Facebook because it doesn’t. Everyone has their own balance
Good
It’s fine for Windows. I highly recommend coughing up the money for the pro version so you actually control some of the OS, since MS decided to remove things like the group policy editor from regular users. You’ll need that if you don’t want Windows shoving updates down your throat all the time.
I like the UI more then Windows 10. I don’t know why reddit had such a hard on for 10 but 11 is much faster and more responsive than 10 was.
Did they ever fix the bug with high polling rate mice where the computer would become extremely non responsive if you tried dragging a window? I used Windows 11 for 6 months and they wouldn’t fix that issue, so I wiped it clean and installed Windows 10.
Is polling rate the same as dpi? If so I can test it later today because my mouse has adjustable dpi.
No, it’s different. The polling rate is how frequently the mouse reports its movement to the OS. What was happening was when you drag a window around the screen, it was drawing the desktop each time the mouse reported back to the OS, 1000Hz, which was apparently too much for my 3080TI to handle.
Razer Synapse lets you change the polling rate, so I was able to lower it to the standard 10Hz and workaround this issue, but I bought an expensive mouse because I wanted more precise mouse movement for gaming.
Windows is always faster and more responsive once you reinstall it, it doesn’t matter the version lol. I’m due for a proper nuking myself, now that I think about it.
It still gets slower with time? I remember how it used to do that in the 90s too, and you had to reinstall once in a while to get your speed back. Lol.
Maybe I’m just lucky, but I have not experienced Windows 10 or 11 getting slower with time at all.
I only changed from windows 11 to Linux mint there over the weekend. I was sick of having to update the laptop every day when I wanted to shut it down
No and it will never be
It’s fine for Windows, I guess. They’ve made a bunch of UI improvements that I actually kind of liked. But they still try and force you to setup a Microsoft account when you install. And telemetry is hardly consensual. I think I turned off what I could by rooting around for privacy settings, but it still sends things like crash reports without asking.
I don’t trust it. Just use it for games.
Or don’t even use it for games. Thanks to recent developments users finally have a choice.
Not until they bring back the “never combine” taskbar option. What a dumb idea to omit it for years and not expect push back. You had one job Microsoft.
Looks like they will bring back the option, see https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/hands-on-with-windows-11s-never-combine-taskbar-feature/
I am using this (enabled with ViveTool) and they need to give us an option to standardize the width. It’s so fuckin annoying to have your taskbar move around when you change tabs or songs. It’s also annoying that short window titles get crunched down to a tiny button.
Oh man, I never even knew they had taken that away. I noped out the moment I heard they had removed the Quick Launch toolbar, but if not for that, the forced combining or tasks would have done the trick.
This might have a “mod” that addresses that: https://github.com/ramensoftware/windhawk. I use this one if that’s the same thing https://windhawk.net/mods/taskbar-grouping.
Yeah there was unofficial explorer patch that was available but I just felt like throwing my toys out my pram. In all seriousness, if it’s M$ I expect nothing but the best out of the box, if it’s tinkering I’m after I’m going to main my many linux boxes. For farming all my , erm research activities, you’d think they give a little back. But nooooo…
For me the “can’t believe they got rid of this” was removing the ability to move the taskbar to either side or to the top.
Remember when windows let you have a SQUARE taskbar in the middle of the screen? How far backwards we’ve managed to come.
Square taskbar? On which version?
Windows 98, lol. Way way back.
Nooooo so the task bar icons represent applications instead of individual windows? Ugh that’s gonna bug me…
Yes 🤦🏻♂️ if you have 16 spreadsheets open on your 16k humongous ultra duper wide, it will collapse all sixteen windows into one tiny icon on the taskbar.
You can fix this with StartAllBack:
