I…didn’t think windows 12 was actually a thing but here we are?
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why are the comments on most news articles on here so negative or cynical :(
I think the floating tasbar looks nice
It’s visually pleasing, but very impractical.
Typically on Reddit users responded to news about any changes to Windows with complete vitriol, so I’m honestly not surprised it’s happening here.
Typically all of humanity has since XP.
And with all that telemetry and AI, the floating taskbar thinks you look nice too. Click here to buy Tay Sway concert tickets!
I’m this particular case, I think there is a lot to criticize.
8GB minimum RAM is a lot of requirement for an OS. It makes Microsoft look like they have forgotten what an OS is supposed to be doing.
The floating taskbar might look nice, but to me it looks like they are trying to mimic MacOS or Gnome3. While there’s nothing wrong with that, it does seem like Microsoft is not innovating so much as following.
I think many people are just jaded by Microsoft, though. The last couple of releases have been kinda meh and with them dropping support for older hardware entirely and sunsetting support for Windows 10 soon they are leaving a lot of users out to dry.
As a developer who has to support Windows 11 currently, I find the prospect of Windows 12 replacing 10 to be cause for worry. Windows 11 has been a nightmare to support just due to the API not being idempotent with 10. Queries that work in 10 don’t work anymore in 11.
8GB minimum RAM is a lot of requirement for an OS. It makes Microsoft look like they have forgotten what an OS is supposed to be doing.
I wonder if they have plans for the developing countries, or if they will support windows 10 for much longer, because, if they expect most of us to meet the minimum specs, they’re crazy.
Not only that, but requiring internet for installing also isn’t optimal for many developing countries. What, you need to bring your PC to an internet cafe to install Windows? I hope Microsoft at least offers physical USB installation drives that don’t require internet access.
Lol, yeah, let’s waste even more screen real estate. Not having small icons as an option in win 11 was already anoying, especially on laptops.
Remember when Windows 10 was “the last operating system”?
Pepperidge farm remembers. I had the same thought. lol
Yeah, it was supposed to be a subscription model that they would continuously update. They have not lived up to that promise…
They probably did a user survey and found out that moving windows to a subscription would cause 100% of users to switch to Mac / Linux
Here’s a good article about that: https://www.pcworld.com/article/394724/why-is-there-a-windows-11-if-windows-10-is-the-last-windows.html
Apparently that wasn’t really ever Microsoft’s official stance.
I probably don’t need to ask, at this point, but will there be an agenda flyout back again?
Windows 11 still feels like a beta… Have they completely given up on quality?
How does it feel like a beta exactly? What doesn’t work?
According to the source, Microsoft wants to make the taskbar appear to float above the desktop by separating it from the desktop and rounding off the corners.
…why?
In an effort to make the user experience even shittier? Or maybe one of the suits saw their kid with a custom linux desktop and was like: we need to get these kids off that linux crap, and clearly the floating task bar is the clincher! *does a giant rip of cocain *
To bridge the gap to Windows 13, which will put it in the middle of the screen.
The Taskbar is the screen in Win 13
I can see a few reasons for this.
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Whenever Explorer.exe crashes, it takes down the desktop including the taskbar. They are probably trying to separate the taskbar from the desktop.
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It’s a new style and people expect to see a unique style with every Windows version change. Of course, if you really want to you can make Windows 11 look like Windows 98 with a few button presses afaik.
3 a) It potentially looks like they might start auto-hiding the taskbar by default which could be interesting. If they are and they allow applications to maximize to the full borders of your monitor, that could potentially be awesome.
3 b) auto-hiding the taskbar frees up real estate and if you put on a tin foil hat you can say that Microsoft is going to use that newfound real estate to show ads to users and will justify it because they only take up less space than you were missing before, it’s no big deal, right? (This is highly unlikely and Windows as an OS hasn’t really shown people ads yet. The most it’s done is shipped with minor bloatware apps.)
Windows as an OS has absolutely been showing ads for a long time. Ads for their own stuff for the most part, but those are still ads. They pop stuff up all over the place advocating for paid OneDrive plans or Office 365 or whatever.
Those aren’t ads embedded in the OS. Those are ads because an app is installed. It’s also fairly easy to uninstall them. Also, all over the place is a bit silly. It’s like once via the notification system when you first install the OS.
They are probably trying to separate the taskbar from the desktop.
I’m 99.9% sure this is only visual, without major changes under the hood.
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My cynical take - it’s what MacOS looks like and they’ve been throwing away their own identity to copy Apple for years now.
I don’t see why this is cynical. They fell pretty flat on their face with windows 8 (no explanation necessary) and then made a Frankenstein job out of windows 10. I have zero idea what the plan is here.
I’m not usually a “Windows is terrible” kind of peron, but dramatically changing the main UI every 2 years is the fastest way to get me to change to Linux on my daily driver.
I’m already using Linux as mine. I pretty much only use windows for gaming at this point
I use my PS5 for gaming. I wonder if it’s time to make the jump.
Apparently they’re going to move the system files to their own protected partition in 12, first good Microsoft change?
But I loved having Windows deciding it owns my boot partition and formatting over my bootloader
God this is the fucking worst. Why would they ever make this decision?
aside from annoying dualbootersWhy would they ever literally delete the competition? I dunno.
Microsoft cares about dual-booters about as much as Meta/Facebook care about people running anything other than FB on their phone.
They’re like a vampire: once you invite them in you are rendered powerless to them. Source: “The Lost Boys”
Even after the fact? On every dual boot I’ve ever had, I always install windows first and then whatever else.
Yeah, installing Windows first is the only way to guarantee it won’t override your Linux bootloader
I will say, I bought a new Lenovo a few months ago, and it was a pain in the ass to get grub to surface right off the bat. I still sometimes have to enter the boot menu to get my grub menu, so I know windows is doing something stupid, I just haven’t taken the time to figure it out.
I recommend using systemd-boot, it is much easier than grub, especially for dual-booting. systemd-boot updates the OS list automatically, grub requires so much effort.
Good to know, I’ll have a look, thanks.
Why do they insist on dicking around with the taskbar?
Change for the sake of change. If it didn’t look significantly different, users would question why the upgrade. Doesn’t matter if they made significant, positive (being charitable here) change if the user experience didn’t change. Been there, done that.
The Windows 10 taskbar is just better. The Windows 11 taskbar moves things to the middle by default for some reason, violating Fitt’s law, and removes several features of the Windows 10 taskbar without improving anything as far as I can tell. The new taskbar in the screenshot makes it even harder to click things by making them farther from the bottom of the screen, and makes the right side of the taskbar take up more space.
The new system tray is laughable. The icons cannot be that size. Imagine 16 icons of that size, but half of them are 24x24 or smaller icons scaled up.
One possible improvement with the new taskbar is that even though they have useless search and task switch buttons and the date+time takes up an unnecessary amount of horizontal space, they don’t have any of the other visual clutter like news and weather tickers.
The only reason I could possibly think a middle aligned taskbar is better would be for ultra wide setups. But even then, just make it a non default drop-down in settings and only a default if an ultra wide resolution is used.
Personally on a 1440p monitor or better I think middle aligned is better 🤷
That would make sense. Ive always played at 1080P or 4K (upscaled). So realistically…i have no baseline.
Just that 1080p is fine to have it left aligned.
I’ve tried almost a dozen distros in the last couple of days. Only a couple of them see my second monitor, and none of them pick up my WiFi card. Guess what does every time? Windows 11. It’s been rock solid, fast and smooth.
Now I could put in a usb adapter for WiFi and fiddle around to get the other monitor to liven up, but I shouldn’t have to. I did this for Manjaro, and I was hopeful. On the second day it crapped out.
I didn’t want to like Windows. I used to be a die hard Mac boy, my first computer was a Mac portable. Apple polo shirt, tie and lapel pins, wallet, watch with Apple logo. I even printed my own t-shirts. ‘The box said Windows 95 or better, so I bought a Mac’ etc.
Gave up a few years ago when they became more fashion items than tools.
I’ve tinkered with Linux since Hardy Heron and Mandriva, and Chromebooks since they first came out. It always needed tinkering, nothing just worked for too long. Mac did. Mind you, Windows was crappy back then though.
Perhaps it’s because I’m on the Windows Insider programme but I really have no problem with 11. OK it has some guff that I don’t need but I’ve removed that. And sure it’s not as customisable as Linux distros, then again neither is Mac.
For me 11 just works. It syncs to my phone as soon as it’s in range. KDE Connect never did. I can run Android apps now (yes I know Chromebooks can) so Samsung Notes is my go to Notes app ever since Evernote went down the pan. OneNote is a pile of old fish parts.
I’ll keep trying distros though, I have to as my old HP laptop which dual boots MX Linux (that’s been flawless on the laptop) and Peppermint, won’t run Windows 11. I have a ‘new’ older laptop coming soon and that probably won’t run 12 ;-)
But for now the daily driver is Windows 11.
Blimus, that was longer than I expected 😮
Nah, this is pure speculation. The only source is Microsoft saying they are working on some next gen stuff, could just as well be a major upgrade to W11.
Are they going to let us move the damn taskbar this time?
Maybe in 3 years. They only just brought ungrouping taskbar icons back in the beta lol
Tired of windows messing their UI every next monday? You will love linux!
Meanwhile, Xbox Series S/X:
Yeah! There it’s you fucking up your UI every next Monday because you’re not mentally well, and you can’t let good enough be good enough
There needs to be some middle ground between so much control that simple things that should be obvious breaking your computer isn’t as possible as it currently is.
Linux has a learning curve yes, it also has several hurdles that seem to be an unnecessary byproduct of having total control over your OS.
there is some immutable distros, but I wouldn’t like that it becomes the norm
The Gnome desktop is a pretty good middle ground in my opinion. It is in my opinion even simpler than Windows to use and allows enough customizability with extensions. People in the Linux world love to dunk on it for using slightly more RAM and not having the same amount of customizability as other desktops like KDE Plasma.
Yes sir, until you update your video driver and never see your screen again. I jest a little bit, but watching linus do that cracks me up every time.
Already??? Windows 11 just came out
2 years ago? That’s seems like a normal cadence for OS releases.
Well, we had Windows 10 for over 5 years before Windows 11. 10 was supposedly the last version they were doing, so it’s a little surprising they’re back to regular major releases now.
Too many people turned off telemetry data. They couldn’t get enough of it to just upgrade under the 10 banner. They’re forcing more and more online bits and slowly not letting you turn the other stuff off.
Huh, outside of a few outliers, I guess major Windows releases generally come quicker than I thought
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_Windows_versions
2-3 years is actually a reasonable time for Windows releases, going by historical dates. I think we’re all used to the long gap between Windows 10 and Windows 11
For home use, maybe. It will upset corporate customers to no end with a 2-3 release cycle. The app vendors won’t keep up, keeping the workplace a mess and well behind the new release curve. Deal with this on the Windows server side of things all the time. We’re trying to drag our app vendors off Windows 2012, and they are only coming kicking and screaming. Most only support up to 2016, which we find insane.
…and we’ll be calling it windowsOS 12. It has a revolutionary taskbar which is so new that we gave it an innovative new name: Dack!
Looks like a UnixPorn user’s setup, a messier one at that.
