Why Gamers Are Adopting Windows 11 More Slowly Than Windows 10 (arstechnica.com) 150
Ars Technica's Andrew Cunningham combed through Steam Hardware & Software Survey data "to see how Windows 11 is fairing with enthusiasts." An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: Steam users are migrating to Windows 11 about half as quickly as they moved to Windows 10. Six months after its release, Windows 10 ran on 31 percent of all Steam computers -- nearly one in three. As of March 2022, Windows 11 runs on just under 17 percent of Steam computers -- about one in six. Three-quarters of all Steam computers in 2022 are still running Windows 10. It's easy to interpret these results as an indictment of Windows 11, which generated some controversy with its relatively stringent (and often poorly explained) security-oriented system requirements. At least some of this slow adoption is caused by those system requirements -- many of the PCs surveyed by Steam probably can't install Windows 11. That could be because users have an older unsupported CPU or have one or more of the required security features disabled; Secure Boot and the firmware TPM module were often turned off by default on new motherboards for many years. But there are other compelling explanations. Windows 11's adoption looks slow compared to Windows 10, but Windows 10's adoption was also exceptionally good.
Windows 8 and 8.1 were not well-loved, to put it mildly, and Windows 10 was framed as a response to (and a fix for) most of Windows 8's user interface changes. And people who were still on Windows 7 were missing out on some of the nice quality-of-life additions and under-the-hood improvements that Windows 8 added. You can see that pent-up demand in the jump between July 2015 and September 2015. In the first two months of Windows 10's availability, Windows 8 hemorrhaged users, falling from around 35 percent usage to 19 percent. Virtually all of those users -- and a smaller but still notable chunk of Windows 7 users -- were moving to Windows 10. Windows 11 also got a decent early adopter bump in November 2021, but its gains every other month were much smaller.
In contrast, Windows 11 was announced with little run-up, and it was replacing what users had been told was the "last version of Windows." Where Windows 10 replaced one new, unloved OS and one well-liked but aging OS, Windows 11 replaced a modern OS that nobody really complained about (Windows 10 ran on over 90 percent of all Steam computers in September 2021 -- even Windows 7 in its heyday couldn't boast that kind of adoption). It's also worth noting that Microsoft didn't try to re-create that initial burst of adoption for Windows 11. Following some turbulence after early Windows 10 servicing updates, Microsoft began rolling updates out more methodically, starting with small numbers of PCs and then expanding availability gradually as problems were discovered and ironed out. Windows 11 only entered "its final phase of availability" in February, ensuring that anyone with a compatible PC could get Windows 11 through Windows Update if they wanted it.
Windows 8 and 8.1 were not well-loved, to put it mildly, and Windows 10 was framed as a response to (and a fix for) most of Windows 8's user interface changes. And people who were still on Windows 7 were missing out on some of the nice quality-of-life additions and under-the-hood improvements that Windows 8 added. You can see that pent-up demand in the jump between July 2015 and September 2015. In the first two months of Windows 10's availability, Windows 8 hemorrhaged users, falling from around 35 percent usage to 19 percent. Virtually all of those users -- and a smaller but still notable chunk of Windows 7 users -- were moving to Windows 10. Windows 11 also got a decent early adopter bump in November 2021, but its gains every other month were much smaller.
In contrast, Windows 11 was announced with little run-up, and it was replacing what users had been told was the "last version of Windows." Where Windows 10 replaced one new, unloved OS and one well-liked but aging OS, Windows 11 replaced a modern OS that nobody really complained about (Windows 10 ran on over 90 percent of all Steam computers in September 2021 -- even Windows 7 in its heyday couldn't boast that kind of adoption). It's also worth noting that Microsoft didn't try to re-create that initial burst of adoption for Windows 11. Following some turbulence after early Windows 10 servicing updates, Microsoft began rolling updates out more methodically, starting with small numbers of PCs and then expanding availability gradually as problems were discovered and ironed out. Windows 11 only entered "its final phase of availability" in February, ensuring that anyone with a compatible PC could get Windows 11 through Windows Update if they wanted it.
Windows 11 is a sidegrade at most. (Score:5, Insightful)
The other, much more likely option, is that Windows 11 adds nothing new for anyone to be excited about, and Windows 10 functions perfectly fine for the large majority of people.
Add to that all the 'new features' that Windows 11 implements that are NOT of any use to actual users, but only to M$'s advertisement arm, which have been in the news everywhere, and an awful lot of people simply don't see any reason to upgrade.
Of everyone I know who upgraded to Win 11 (either voluntarily or because M$ happily updated on its own), there's only 1 who's still running it, and everyone else rolled back the upgrade.
Re: Windows 11 is a sidegrade at most. (Score:2)
Re: Windows 11 is a sidegrade at most. (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah - I suspect that's a lot of it. Historically, every major version update to Windows is best avoided for at least the first year, and every other version never gets good enough to be honestly called an upgrade.
As it is Win10 barely crossed the threshold of being one of the "good ones", and pissed off a lot of people with the constant pointless changes to settings, and I suspect most of the reason that it was adopted so quickly is that MS bribed people to do so with the promise of a limited-time free upgrade, while also threatening to discontinue Win7 support in the near future.
Win 11 "features" (and lack of *actual* user-benefiting features) meanwhile seem to firmly place it in the bad camp, as expected. And without the carrot/stick of limited-time free upgrades and impending loss of support, there's really no reason to upgrade.
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Oh, and can't forget that MS also removed one of the biggest reasons to stay with Win7 by backporting most of the surveillance anti-features from Win10.
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Yeah but those updates are known and avoidable, good luck avoiding that stuff with win10 or win11. I like old games and Indie games and win7 works far better for those, win10 likes to break old games.
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If you were dedicated enough they could be - but as I recall it seemed every few months they'd try to sneak stuff in with another update, reset privacy settings to their permissive defaults, etc. If, like most people, you weren't willing or able to constantly defend yourself against "your" own operating system you were pretty much in the bag.
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Yeah... every time Windows 10 got "updated', Microsoft found a new way to cram more advertising for other Microsoft products in it.
At this point, people are probably imagining that Windows 11 is filled with wall to wall ads for services like Office 365, OneDrive, XBox, and Teams. Therefore, they are trying to avoid it like it's a plague.
windows 11 also made some odd cpu cut outs as well (Score:3)
windows 11 also made some odd cpu cut outs as well
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TPM 2.0, virtualization-based security and hypervisor-protected code integrity enabled always, UEFI Secure Boot, device encryption, etc. They also claim that the cut-off in supporting older chip-architectures in their new Windows Driver Model has significantly increased reliability/far less crashes, for what it is worth...
Yes, much of it could be (and a
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I wasn't particularly interested in upgrading my Windows install, but getting rid of taskbar-on-side sealed the deal for me. I can't live without that. Can't upgrade, not even for free.
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There are some things I want in Windows 11, except our IT hasn't approved it yet. I use the Windows Subsystem for Linux, and some features in Windows 11 improves this a lot - like making networking from the Linux side work better, because currently WSL2 in Windows 10 is kind of like a NAT; and I really want that USB and serial support in W11. Also minor issues, such as better support for multiple monitors and multiple desktops (things I don't deal with on my home computer).
Because really the only thing I
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The guy miunderstood the Microsoft rule. The Microsoft rule is:
1/ Version x.0 of Windows is always shit
2/ Subsequent versions are good if that iteration of Windows is good. Otherwise just don't bother and stay with the previous iteration, because it's gonna be one hateful ride until it's finally replaced by the next iteration (version x.0 of which you should pass up - see !/ above)
In short, only stick to reworked versions of Windows that brave early adopters have already vetted for you.
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Exactly.
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In Microsoft it is not only 1.0, but every x.0, in many other companies, say a 5.0 is likely to be fairly good.
There are of course other companies that also beta test their software by releasing them as x.0 releases, but there are many others that actually put out fairly good x.0 releases.
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Windows 2000 was from back in the day when the NT systems were a separate thing from the gaming ones.
Re:Windows 11 is a sidegrade at most. (Score:4)
IIRC, Win2k was an attempt to merge the platforms of "home" (95/98) and business (NT) into one line.
It was successful too, so long as you had the proper SPs installed to Win2k. It was a fantastic OS and one of the reasons XP was slow to be adopted (everyone made fun of the Fisher-Price looking UI)
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All I really remember about W2K is that it took 10 minutes to boot. Granted, that was all the fault of the enterprise spyware IT put on, but it was so discouraging to have something that felt worse than NT. I only used it for email and Office though, I swiveled the chair around to use the real work computer that ran Linux.
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Kind of successful. There were a lot of consumer apps (Office, initially, and a bunch of games) that didn't work with Win2k out of the gate. MS poured engineering into getting Office up and running, naturally. A lot of game companies were stymied by the changes in permissions that came with it and didn't deploy until XP came out. There were a lot of other, smaller consumer-level apps that needed to rearchitect their apps to work with the new kernel that also didn't come out until XP did. So, Win2k was great
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Win2k was great, use it long time, was great with dual Celeron Abit BP6 mobo.
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As others said 2000 was NT - an alternate branch which specifically targeted corporate users and had rather poor support for consumer (aka Win 9x) software, especially games which would often instantly lock up the system. And added LOTS of security and configuration complexity that didn't offer any real advantage to home users, and carried a hefty performance penalty by default.
XP was their first serious attempt to make a consumer-friendly NT so they could drop their legacy 3.x/9x line, and they eventually
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On W8.1 now (8.0 was awful, 8.1 with Open Shell isn't really that bad).
Used Win7 at work, never really liked it. Wife's laptop has W10 and I hate using it.
Re:Windows 11 is a sidegrade at most. (Score:5, Interesting)
In regards to Windows ME I was working tech support for a peripheral manufacturer in the release days of Windows XP so there were a lot of people who had bought PC's that came with Windows ME installed.
It's totally anecdotal but almost everyone with ME who called in had real driver issues and crash issues. Many times more than 98, so much so that we had specific scripts to explain to people that their issues may simply not be resolvable. Procedures that worked under 98 just became hit or miss under ME. I do remember two customers that were more knowledgeable actually ended up downgrading to 98 and it solved their problems.
Again, total anecdotes, I have no data to back this up and working tech support is a bias since all your interactions are people with problems but any professional interaction I ever had with ME was problematic for some reason and I cannot explain what Microsoft could have done to the base of 95/98 to cause that. It's reputation overall might be undeserved because of stories like that I can admit but it sure felt like a hot mess.
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>ended up downgrading to 98 and it solved their problems
That was not a downgrade. ME was a massive headache with no redeeming qualities.
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You're an idiot. The list is incredibly accurate.
Windows 95 was shit up until the OSR2 release.
Windows 98 was shit up until SE.
ME was total shit.
XP was fine and got better as driver support improved.
VISA was total shit.
7 was VISTA with 3 years of bug fixes.
8 was total shit.
10 - Microsoft pushed this fucker onto an unwilling userbase and it took them years because 8 was such total shit.
11 - Is total shit. A full incarnation of Microsoft's privacy-invading philosophy. Skip it.
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+1 thank you, too many people around here drinking the kool aid by the gallon.
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XP was fine? It wasn't until the first service pack that they even enabled the firewall by default. The internet was starting to really take hold and a lot of people had dial-up or simply connected directly to their cable/ADSL modem, so were not protected by NAT. It got to the point where if you forgot to unplug the network cable and were unlucky enough for Windows to have a driver for your card, your fresh XP machine would last 5 to 10 seconds before being p0wned.
It also came with Internet Explorer, which
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11 also has good improves for WSL that they're not backporting to W10. WSL is the only really good thing in Windows, and I'm surprised management has left that team alone instead of reminding them to be more evil.
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The Windows 2000/NT-based server OS is probably one of the most stable Windows releases ever.
Just a shame they never continued *that* specific code base for anything other than server related stuff (and not even then)
Re: Windows 11 is a sidegrade at most. (Score:2)
"and before SP2 could be pawned over the internet in like 9 seconds"
"Pwned" - because gamers got the hahas when one day somebody accidently hit the key next to the "O".
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Win 3.x was a massive improvement over 2.x and 1.x. A consistent API for writing applications. Much faster. And capable of running a lot more things. By the time 3.1/3.11 came around it was pretty good at hooking up to a network, better at it than even DOS.
Of course Win 3.x was no OS/2 2.0. But Windows was getting bundled with a mouse for $150 and OS/2 was $200 and a bit scary to most customers. Looking back I think IBM could have combined some better deals for OS/2 and used the marketing to educate the pub
Re: Windows 11 is a sidegrade at most. (Score:2)
"At the time, IBM had the cash to out spend Microsoft with the home users, but they didn't really see MS as a threat in the business realm. oops!"
"Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM".
It was true back in the old days. Now, not so much. Standard Oil was very big in it's day too.
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You seem to be forgetting the literal YEARS during XP's lifecycle where every. single. week. there would be a new 0-day exploit found, most of which required zero interaction from the user. Sometimes there was more than one. That's not even hyperbole, with maybe a few exceptions where MS managed to go a week without any major vulnerability being found, it was literally every week. Patch Tuesday and Win 10's policy of forcing people to install updates can be traced directly back to this period.
If users are l
We've learned our lessons (Score:3)
Windows 98 had issues until SE came out years later
Windows ME was a mess (2000 doesn't really count for consumers)
Windows XP had problems until SP2
Windows Vista was a total shit show
Windows 7 was better but SP1 helped it out a bunch
Windows 8 was a also a shit show, 8.1 helped but not much.
Windows 10 was plagued with compatibility issues at launch. Its better now since it's had years of patches and updates.
Windows 11 seemingly being not much more than a nice reskin of Windows 10 certainly isn't going to entice anyone that much, I have 0 reasons to switch off 10 now that it's pretty stable.
Microsoft should have really had the balls to stick with the idea that 10 would be the "last" version, at least until enough time had passed for some real paradigm shifts to occur, if any can really occur nowadays with an OS like that. Old habits die hard I suppose and Microsoft just can't help throwing new versions on it rather than just calling it a big fat Win10 service pack.
Re: We've learned our lessons (Score:3)
Re:We've learned our lessons (Score:5, Insightful)
I, too, have learned my lesson. (Score:5, Informative)
I do my gaming on Ubuntu Linux (for real, it works great!).
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Useless article (Score:5, Informative)
This article blathers on speculatively without even cursory knowledge. AMD has a stutter issue tied to its fTPM implementation. TPM is a requirement for Windows 11. Performance oriented gamers will have TOM disabled to cure the stutter issue and therefore don't want Windows 11.
There, a three sentence article more useful than the real 5 paragraph one.
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P.S. Sorry, Tom.
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Yep. None of my PCs qualify for Windows 11, thank Glub.
(My main PC is AMD and my laptop is too old).
Re:Useless article (Score:5, Insightful)
Also windows 11 is basically unusable.
The task bar rewrite (yes they rewrote the taskbar program) is not ready. There are several issues:
- You can't "ungroup" apps. They are all icons now (like OS X)
- By default, they are centered (like in OS X)
- It uses twice as much vertical space and you can't use small icons (like OS X though OS X handles this more gracefully)
- You can no longer drag-hover-drop (to drag to a target window obscured by the source window) (like OS X)
- Control panel is hidden and hidden. Want to add a second IP address to your NIC? Good luck. (like OS X)
- Windows have rounded borders now (like OS X, except in OS X there is less waste of space since windows don't have a title bar so big)
Basically Windows 11 is designed to mimic OS X so people may go home with a windows PC thinking it's a mac.
Microsoft has been removing functionality from menus and control panel. Basically, windows is now supposed to be a dumbed down "Tablet OS" with all knobs taken away so you can't change dangerous settings. But if you really need to tweak stuff deep down, you need to use cryptic Powershell commands and know exactly what you're doing.
At least OS X gives you a padlock icon in "dangerous" settings so you can't accidentally change them. Windows 11 just tries to take away all that "advanced functionality" from you. May be good for corporate settings where scripting is useful, but not for "power users" trying to figure out why the hell the network card is not using jumbo frames.
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- You can no longer drag-hover-drop (to drag to a target window obscured by the source window) (like OS X)
On OSX, you can drag to the dock icon for the open app, wait for the app to switch and then drop it into the app. I think Windows has had this for a while and I don't believe that is gone.
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It's amazing that if we break it down, your is almost a mirror of the Windows 8 failures. Both Windows 8 & 11:
- Have a new control panel with only had a subset of the prior functionality
- Have a new start menu with only had a subset of the prior functionality
- Redesigned UI with only had a subset of the prior functionality
- Same root cause for the above: Tablet-based OS on a desktop
It's amazing that a company like Microsoft makes the same mistakes over-and-over again. Clearly they don't eat their own
Re: Useless article (Score:3)
I think they fixed the drag and drop.
Taskbar changes are the biggest headache for me.
In addition to the above list:
File history is now deprecated (the official word is you should save everything on OneDrive)
explorer is now very slow.
I think it has something to do with how they changed context menus and toolbars, for every file it seems like it triggers a massively heavy query into what actions are available on that file. So if you like to use cursor keys to move to the relevant file, each cursor key press n
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Windows now does have a fully functional Unix shell. Get Windows Subsystem for Linux. WSL1 shares the same filesystem even, whereas WSL2 has more features but needs it's own filesystem space. They also improved the Terminal so that it is much nicer for running a shell in. Even from a Windows based cmd.exe or powershell you can give commands that run from the linux side, and vice versa.
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There's also the problem that TPM is basically hardware level DRM for your entire computer.
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As an end-user, why do I want a TPM? I don't think I do, but Microsoft and Intel says I do want it.
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I'm split. I like the idea of the locked down OS from a malware standpoint. Or as an IT department of a large business. As a hobbyist or home user, I only sort of like it because it also means Hollywood will let me stream movies and TV in 4K since they know I can't steal it easily. Compromises can be for mutual benefit.
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Lol if you think TPM is for stopping malware, the blackhats will always find a way, TPM is 100% there for MPAA / RIAA.
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The one use case that I find appealing is that it can provide automatic boot with disk encryption and meaningful protection.
Without a TPM, either the encryption is worthless (the key can be trivially recovered) or requires password every reboot (and password suggests weak to cracking in the average case).
With a TPM, the disk encryption key may be sealed to PCRs, so that not only will the encryption key be protected if it moves away from the system board, but taking an action like, say, booting a removable u
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It's nice to have one, if it's yours. TPM is not a new thing, it's just new as a standard option. This gets used in security a lot. If you're in the corporate world where people worry about what happens if someone loses a laptop while visiting China, then you really want a hardware security module. However for Microsoft it seems to be used as a "only boot operating systems we approve of" style of thing.
Ie, cryptographic operations happen in the hardware module, you don't have your precious private keys a
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The TPM provides some useful functions for the user.
It can store encryption keys, for example. If you use BitLocker with a self encrypting drive (most decent SSDs support it), it's a good option to keep the key safe from things like cold boot attacks and malware.
Even if you don't use a password to encrypt your data, it's worth enabling. There is no performance penalty as all modern SSDs do it anyway; there is no way to turn it off. That's the reason why you usually can't recover data from failed SSDs by rem
"Exceptionally good" adoption (Score:5, Insightful)
...but Windows 10's adoption was also exceptionally good.
You mean the version of Windows that Microsoft incessantly badgered end users with, to the point of processing upgrades regardless of user intent? Right, and I'm sure that, for a few shining years, the new accounts metrics at Wells Fargo looked really "good", too.
Why does it matter? (Score:2)
People who find value in it will upgrade, the rest will sit it out for a while.
Not being forced to (Score:4, Insightful)
Simple: People aren't migrating to Win11 en masse because they're not being forced to.
Windows 10 was forced upon everyone; from aggressive automatic downloads, to deliberate hardware obsolescence (Try installing Win7 or 8 on a 7th gen or newer CPU...), to support for third party drivers being dumped industry-wide. Unless you're willing and able to run hardware that's almost 10 years old you don't have much of a choice.
=Smidge=
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Planned obsolescence isn't a conspiracy.
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There's a difference between planned obsolescence and deliberately making sure product X doesn't work with product Y even though there is no technical or justifiable reason for it.
Win7 will not work on a Kaby Lake CPU. Why? No reason; because you can slip a third party driver into the install package and it will work just fine. This is deliberate sabotage. It's not like the CPUs dropped critical support for some legacy functionality or anything, just "Nope! If you want to use a CPU made after 2016, it's Win
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Simple: People aren't migrating to Win11 en masse because they're not being forced to.
indeed. plus they don't even allow it on slightly old hardware that is perfectly fit for use except for hosting their dubious "new security" scheme.
a windows update whose install i have to do absolutely nothing to avoid is can't be beaten, it's just the best windows update ever! :-)
^ This - *Yet* (Score:3)
This is pretty much the last step in taking away the last vestige of control from the person who actually bought the fucking machine and turning in to a phone with a walled app-signed anti-anything-we don't-like garden. Now with Ads in the File Explorer! [theverge.com] Remind me who the customer is again? You still have to pay the fucking M$ tax on nearly everything OEM too. This shit has only gotten worse since the 90s.
samba or SMB slowed with each upgrade (Score:5, Insightful)
By all accounts it's broken (Score:5, Interesting)
And it's clearly this generation's Window's Vista. Add to that the requirement for a TPM model (which is pretty clearly there to help lock down the platform iOS style so Microsoft can charge 30% of all software sales) and yeah, nobody's interested.
I'll say this, if I were Adobe or any other major desktop software vendor I'd be hiring Linux devs, if only as a way of saying to Microsoft "back off, we're not giving you 30%". I guess they've still got Mac to fall back on for a platform you can just make software for, but how long will that last when Microsoft walls off their garden?
lock down the platform iOS = anit trust issues (Score:2)
lock down the platform like iOS = anit trust issues and the lost of big corporations that have the own in house apps that don't run the store frame work at all.
and will an bank give MS 30% of each transaction???
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and the only gamer centered feature, direct storage, didn't work. Reviews showed the performance gains were so marginal
Let me stop you right there. There are currently precisely zero games released with this feature. There is precisely one game which showed a tech demo, which is still a good 9 months out of being released, and has had approximately 2 months worth of "optimisation time" which is a euphemism for "it hasn't been optimised even remotely".
Declaring the feature as "didn't work" is no different than those people who said Tesla would never produce an electric car. Don't be so sure of yourself. You have zero reliabl
My first Windows (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows 11 isn't being adopted for two reasons.
1) Compatibility. They put the system requirements so high almost no computer short of a machine newer than 2016 is guaranteed to run it, and if you didn't setup your BIOS correctly when you built your PC, even a new machine will fail the check. that coupled with the fact that many of the requirements are unnecessary, useless, or dubious for 99% of PC usage and it gets more infuriating why MS went down this path short of they want to be like Apple and not have to support anything over 5 years of age.
2) Idiocracy. They're Stupidifying 20 years of interface design for your protection to chase the Chromebook paper tiger. They've basically replaced a high end Sony Hi-Fi system with a "My First Sony" and wonder why no one is buying it. They already dumbed down the context menus and start menu, and they're still slowly replacing more of the smart control panel settings with the dumbed down settings screen.
Re:My first Windows (Score:4, Interesting)
Note it's not chasing an imagined threat of ChromeOS, it's more like they *wish* their userbase was ChromeOS like, with the users locked in harder to their platform, with all the upsell opportunity afforded by that level of ownership of the customer platform.
Imagine if user's simply had to run all their applications out of the Microsoft Store, that all their network access went through the OS web browser.
They aren't afraid of ChromeOS so much as they are envious of the possibilities to exploit the userbase in that sort of enduser relationship.
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I don't disagree there. MS definitely wants to go down the 5 years and done hardware model like Apple and Google. The OEM's especially want them to go that way too. It wouldn't surprise me that they start pushing rolling system requirements soon. They're already testing it in the insider builds with the watermark and all.
And MS definitely wishes they had a walled garden store like Google and Apple, but for some reason they seemingly don't want to go down that route at least in the short term.
Windows 11 SE i
Re:My first Windows (Score:5, Informative)
The only plus out of this is that it fixed my problem and I can probably downgrade without having to reinstall everything.
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From where I'm sitting, the real question here is why stick with Microsoft? Linux Just Works, right out of the box.
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Setup the bios "correctly?". As in not using UEFI on purpose so companies can't own my machine?
UEFI doesn't magically make companies own your machine. I mean sure it does, but they only own machines of those people thinking the moon landing was fake.
Reality: UEFI isn't an automatic default on an off the shelf motherboard. If you put together your new PC and boot of USB Stick instead of ${ExactModelOfUSBStick}, then its very likely you've just started the Windows setup in CSM Legacy mode.
People aren't migrating (Score:2)
Because they can't, I built a machine months ago and Windows is telling me I can't upgrade. I'll roll with windows 10 until I can't, then I'll switch to Linux and maybe run windows in a VM. I have no need to upgrade hardware and I should not be forced into it because a hardware upgrade doesn't appeal to me anymore
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That is my plan, I see no reason to switch to an OS where everything has been moved. There is a reason why I use windows, because I can push all the buttons and tweak things. But from what I know about windows 11 they are trying to be Mac OS. So if they do that, why don't I just buy an apple? I don't want a clean looking OS.
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The last time I worked on a Mac for tech support with printer drivers, they didn't even have the option to change a specific thing I wanted to change. The windows driver, you could have it your way via the registry. As far as I understand if you can't get it done through a GUI your screwed on a Mac
11 runs perfectly well (Score:3)
Re:11 runs perfectly well (Score:5, Interesting)
I've always been jealous of people that can 'just use' Windows in its default configuration and settings.
There are far too many things in Windows' default setup that trigger extreme anger in me to ever be able to do that.
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I do. Like virus alerts because MS Edge changes its settings at every boot. Some software (nurgo-software.com, viper.patriotmemory.com) suffers the same problem in Windows 10, so this appears to be a security downgrade recommended by Microsoft.
The display seems to update slower than Windows 10, a clock wallpaper that can tick 240/minute under Windows 10 manages only 30/minute under Windows 11.
Well there's a damn good reason for that. (Score:3, Insightful)
Windows 11 represents an even worse implementation of Microsoft's "Your computer is our computer" philosophy with privacy-invading malware built right into the OS. In addition, the penetration of Microsoft's intrusive advertising is worse than it's ever been.
Windows 11 is a trojan. Anyone who voluntarily installs it is a fool.
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Yeah likewise. It's amazing how we constantly see people complain about Windows X because of some nefarious thing that pretty much no one sees and those who do see it are not affected by it, only to find out user actually runs Windows X-1 and doesn't even have first hand experience with the OS.
Windows 11 told me Edge is the preferred browsing experience. Once. Fuck me dead my life is going to end due to this intrusive advertising /sarcasm.
Re: (Score:2)
I like this thinking. It just shows how stupid people are and how quickly we accept getting shat on when we see a bigger turd.
You realise that Windows 11 is *identical* to Windows 10 in terms of privacy implications right? They literally backported that shit. Hell they ported a lot of the telemetry to Windows 7.
But good to see you think Windows 11 is evil. It means our plan to slowly boil you frogs is working. mwahahahahhah
Sincerely
MS Engineer.
Re: (Score:3)
It's worse than that. This is the next step down Microsoft end-game: Windows as a rental. None of these security features are there for your benefit. They exist solely as the next logical step of locking down Windows so you can only run it if your rental payments are up to date.
Microsoft has been playing the long game for the last 20 years, but everyone should be able to clearly see the end at this point.
dx12 (Score:5, Informative)
Only reason I bothered going to 10, nothing wrong with 7 other than MS EOL'ing it...
duh (Score:2)
People aren't willing to let MS own and manage their hardware. #fucktpm
Why? (Score:2)
Why would anyone want to adopt win 11? The only feature improvement it offers is the need to waste some inordinate amount of time figuring out all the gratuitous changes they have made for no good reason other than change. This is very useful for those do-nothing IT departments who have to rationalize their existence.
Because it's a steaming turd? (Score:3)
I switched to Linux for gaming, about 9 months back now, but I wanted to have a play with Unreal Engine 5 & my Mac M1 wasn't really powerful enough.
I'd kept my windows 10 partition "just in case" - plus also to copy game data from to Linux.
I decided to take the plunge and give win11 a try. After some messing about with "trusted computing" settings in BIOS, I was "fortunate" enough to have hardware that win11 was happy with - just barely. ... that's when the fun really begins.
The typical multi-boot super slow install process was uneventful and
You see, it _isn't_ your computer by default - microsoft decide to ram it full of bells and whistles, apps and advertising, a trove of "phone home" "features"
One example, I decided that I didn't want microsoft to know my location, the upshot of which, windows was unable to set my time and date for daylight savings - options were greyed out. Each time I managed to get it to set it, via a flurry of clicking, on reboot, it was back to being an hour out.
Then we get onto the UI - it is so stupidly restricted, so "dumb", so forced upon you, you can't even do the most simple of things, such as _move_ the taskbar, or "drag and drop" and app onto the taskbar. To do that, you have to right click on an app shortcut icon and select "pin to taskbar".
There's just a TON of this kind of backward thinking in win11, which would be excusable, IF the defaults actually made sense - they don't.
I kept it for 4 days and then just restored to win10 to install ue5.
As for speed? The UI, for me, had noticeable delays in launching apps - _VERY_ noticeable - to a degree of "did that click actually do anything?"
In short, win11 is another microsoft Beta release - just like winME, Vista and win8 were.
Don't even bother - heck, don't even bother with windows if you can avoid it. If you are a PC gamer with most your games on Steam, ditch it and run Linux.
If I _could_ get ue5 running acceptably on Linux, believe me, I would - it's possible, but there's features missing, bugs etc.
This is Epic after all...
nope (Score:2)
The reason I didn't upgrade yet is because my CPU isn't on the approved list. This is the main reason why adoption is slow. MSFT decided to tie adoption to the hardware upgrade lifecycle, so its going to lag 2 or 3 years.
What? (Score:2)
This is why drugs are bad, mkay? People regularly complain about Windows 10 and the incompetent programmers who designed it. There's a whole shitload of complaints about things not working which have never been fixed, or things so convoluted that trying to do something takes two to three times as long as it did in Windows 7.
The moment someone writes something stupid like the above sentence you know the rest of the article isn't w
Windows 7 (Score:2)
I'm one of those people that stayed on Windows 7. The summary says "And people who were still on Windows 7 were missing out on some of the nice quality-of-life additions and under-the-hood improvements that Windows 8 added." What are those nice improvements and under the hood improvements I'm missing out on? This is an honest question. I admin a bunch of different modern Windows machines at work and I've never seen a single thing I want in Windows 7 (besides continued security updates of course). I only use
Windows marketshare (Score:2)
I have no idea why Microsoft is always so hot lately on removing features and redesigning their taskbar. They have far more serious problems in the core OS itself to worry about. My top pet peeves are:
1) The network sharing implementation (SMB) is a total disaster. Windows constantly drops connections to active network shares and Explorer constantly freezes.
2) The entire Windows code signing platform needs to be completely redesigned from the ground up to be 100% free.
3) No simple, clean, built-in, an
many games run worse (Score:2)
ummmm... (Score:2)
How about because it sucks donkey butt?
yeah ... (Score:2)
... but Windows 10's adoption was also exceptionally good.
I wonder how much of that "exceptionally good" adoption was because of the forced automatic upgrades?
Technical limitations too (Score:2)
A lot of gamers built their own systems. A lot of gamers installed windows themselves. A lot of said gamers didn't realise the impact of their computer booting in CMS Legacy mode when they installed windows, meaning they can't enable SecureBoot even if they wanted to as Windows isn't booting in UEFI mode.
I know 4 other gamers (and I don't actually know very many) in this position. I say other, because I was in this position and attempting to correct this problem caused my computer to become unbootable. Yay