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Windows Microsoft Operating Systems IT

Windows 11 Still Not Winning the OS Popularity Contest (theregister.com) 207

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Microsoft has released an out-of-band update to nudge laggards toward Windows 11 amid a migration pace that company executives would undoubtedly prefer is rather faster. From a report: The software giant is offering an option of upgrading to Windows 11 as an out of box experience to its Windows 10 22H2 installed base, the main aim being to smooth their path forward to the latest operating system. "On November 30, 2022, an out-of-band update was released to improve the Windows 10, version 2004, 20H2, 21H1, 21H2, and 22H2 out-of-box experience (OOBE). It provides eligible devices with the option to upgrade to Windows 11 as part of the OOBE process. This update will be available only when an OOBE update is installed."

The update, KB5020683, applies only to Windows 10 Home and Professional versions 2004, 20H2, 21H1, 22H2. There are some pre-requisites that Microsoft has listed here before users can make the move to Windows 11. The operating system was released on October 5 last year but shifting stubborn consumers onto this software has proved challenging for top brass at Microsoft HQ in Redmond. According to Statcounter, a web analytics service that has tracking code installed on 1.5 million websites and records a page view for each, some 16.12 percent of Windows users had installed Windows 11 in November, higher than the 15.44 percent in the prior month, but likely still not close to the figures that Microsoft was hoping for.
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Windows 11 Still Not Winning the OS Popularity Contest More

Windows 11 Still Not Winning the OS Popularity Contest

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  • Hidden options regular updates, clicking on close on no starts the update and all that crap?

    • Re:So it begins! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Kisai ( 213879 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @03:03PM (#63104974)

      Microsoft should have just dropped the version number as the "title" of windows.

      Eg, it's just "Windows OS(tm)"

      The unfortunate problem is that Microsoft should have did this with a 64-bit only version of Windows for x86-64+AARCH64

      Every second Windows version is a flop precisely because they try to get people to re-buy/upgrade within the lifecycle of the computer. Most people don't want this. It's not a Mac. Most Mac's can be upgraded and Apple isn't taking functionality out of the OS in big ways. For example MacOS still looks, feels and acts like it does in OS X 10.3 (from 2003) when Intel Mac's first became available. That's 20 years of a consistent, predictable experience. Meanwhile Microsoft has dicked around with the user experience 7 times since, with at least three times, significantly changing the user experience in ways users hated.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Zak3056 ( 69287 )

        Every second Windows version is a flop precisely because they try to get people to re-buy/upgrade within the lifecycle of the computer.

        Eh? The Win11 upgrade is no cost. There is nothing to "buy" here.

        • Au contraire, the Windows 11 upgrade comes with a huge cost if you get hit with the "B" version (they're doing A/B testing). Tried it, it was so full of absolute crap that after 10 minutes of removing stuff, I abandoned it.

          And then the fun began. The "You can go back to the previous version any time within 10 days" turns out to be true only if (a) you have the original install media, and (b) their stupid loader hasn't hosed a good portion of the hard drive. Had to do a fresh install on a second drive to

        • That is the problem people perceive Window 11 as negative value. The only reason I would consider upgrading to windows 11 is Microsoft's persistent nagging gets too much. This one of the reasons I don't like subscription models, you pay for features irrelevant of if you want them or not. If a company can't produce new features that people want then it should rightly stop making money.

        • Every second Windows version is a flop precisely because they try to get people to re-buy/upgrade within the lifecycle of the computer.

          Eh? The Win11 upgrade is no cost. There is nothing to "buy" here.

          Free, and still not worth it.

      • Microsoft should have just dropped the version number as the "title" of windows.

        Eg, it's just "Windows OS(tm)"

        The unfortunate problem is that Microsoft should have did this with a 64-bit only version of Windows for x86-64+AARCH64

        Every second Windows version is a flop precisely because they try to get people to re-buy/upgrade within the lifecycle of the computer. Most people don't want this. It's not a Mac. Most Mac's can be upgraded and Apple isn't taking functionality out of the OS in big ways. For example MacOS still looks, feels and acts like it does in OS X 10.3 (from 2003) when Intel Mac's first became available. That's 20 years of a consistent, predictable experience. Meanwhile Microsoft has dicked around with the user experience 7 times since, with at least three times, significantly changing the user experience in ways users hated.

        It was 10.4 (Tiger) actually, where there was first a Released Intel Build; but the underlying point is well taken.

        I have always opined that you could take a person familiar with the original 1984 68k Finder, and sit them in front of an Apple Silicon Mac running macOS 13.0 (Ventura), and in 5 seconds they'd know how to find files, and launch and use most Applications; and in less than 30 minutes they'd be pretty much completely comfortable.

        Windows? Not so much. . .

  • Wont use it (Score:5, Informative)

    by darkain ( 749283 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @01:48PM (#63104692) Homepage

    We won't upgrade because its literally a downgrade. Basic UI/UX functionality, like the ability to have TEXT LABELS in the task bar was removed. Plus, the entire OS was built to shove MS advertising in our faces. I don't need nor want that. The OS's job is to launch and manage applications, not try to constantly upsell me on services I don't want. While yes, some individual applications that are bundled with Win11 are a nice upgrade, the core UI/UX being broken doesn't justify that upgrade.

    • By all accounts rewriting the task bar resulted in a huge loss of functionality for no perceivable benefits. On top of that, Microsoft is forcibly obsoleting the vast majority of existing PCs by having such stringent hardware requirements. The only thing surprising is if there are really people in Redmond that arrogant enough that they are surprised at the slow pace of adoption.

      I think Windows 11 will be put out to pasture in the next year or two and MS will "fix" all of these major issues (that they caused

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dbialac ( 320955 )
        That's their usual mantra these days: build a new OS with new ideas, let the ones that suck fall and then build a derived OS with the crappiness removed. See also Vista to 7, 8 to 8.1, original 10 to later 10.

        • You talk as if ;

          Vista to 7, 8 to 8.1, original 10 to later 10.

          Were seperate projects (as such). (14 win 10's if you want to be specific, and while some were much the abandoned service packs rather than much differnet some were).

          Vista SP2 was win 7 but people feared vista so NAME CHANGE. (and you had to run vista anyway because hey you needed a 64 bit os and xp 64 was only ever a test, not to mention that xp was a downgrade from win 2000 anyway and I only moved becuase of lack of DX updates, so it does not a

      • The hardware requirements are made up anyways. Pushing TPM is for copy protection and DRM which they cannot roll out if people don't have the necessary hardware to let M$ keep secrets from them on their own computer.

        First round is TPM, next they have this concept called "Pluton" where the TPM will be inside the CPU unable to be side-channeled.

        That is next. All this pain is to basically prepare the world for Microsofts future DRM.

      • You can't easily change the taskbar height. But there's a registry setting for it. So I set it to the medium height to match Windows 10 and it looks better. But... The time/date is now two lines and it refuses to be just the time, and it does not resize when the taskbar resizes. So I put up with the the time looking ok and the date being clipped in half. That's just idiotic. I know Microsoft lost the script decades ago, but recently it feels like they're ad-libbing while on coke.

        And the rounded corner

    • For what it's worth, the last 3 or 4 bi-annual releases of Windows 10 have all been about advertising as well. It seems that they take every opportunity possible to convince you to install OneDrive, Microsoft Edge, and get an Office subscription.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tarlus ( 1000874 )

        I often joke that Edge got its name for the way that it "edges" its way into your default associations, despite your preference. Default web browser, default PDF reader, etc.

        Happens randomly after certain Windows updates and it's a bunch of BS. By design, no non-Microsoft program can sneak in and steal default associations. Why should Edge be allowed to?

        • That's a headache I'm finding with Windows 10 at work, PDF readers. I don't want Acrobat, it sucks and is prone to malware (PDF *should* be only for reading with no capability of writing, no scripting, etc). I uninstall Acrobat and the IT scripts re-install it, I can't help that. So I change the default PDF application to be Firefox, and it works great. Until I reboot, which is often because IT has nagware to reboot often. On reboot the default always goes back to Adobe Acrobat. If Acrobat is uninstall

    • Re:Wont use it (Score:5, Interesting)

      by baker_tony ( 621742 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @03:20PM (#63105028) Homepage

      I spend the first couple minutes of any Windows 11 experience installing these two things:
      ExplorerPatcher, to bring back the Windows 10 taskbar and allow me to dock it to the left of my screen:
      https://github.com/valinet/Exp... [github.com]

      Bringing back file explorer context menu (install reg file and reboot):
      https://pureinfotech.com/bring... [pureinfotech.com]

      Once those two are installed, Windows 11 is great!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Windows 10 is only supported until 2025, and history suggests it will keep getting worse as Microsoft puts less and less effort into the performance of security patches.

      You can fix most of the annoyances with 11. For example, this app will bring back the old Windows 10 taskbar with text labels: https://github.com/valinet/Exp... [github.com]

      You shouldn't need it, but I can't remember the last time a version of Windows was tolerable without some UI fixes. Certainly not XP, maybe 2000? 20 odd years of this nonsense.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by darkain ( 749283 )

        holycrap, thanks a bunch! I've been tons of over start menu / task bar hacks, that have all been janky as hell. This one, at least from the docs, looks like it is very nicely done, and something I'll be testing out very soon.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Zarhan ( 415465 )

      Does Open Shell (Classic Shell) work on it?

      Their github page https://github.com/Open-Shell/... [github.com] only mentions Windows 10, and issue tracker has several issues tagged with "Windows 11" - https://github.com/Open-Shell/... [github.com]

      Is it actually usable yet?

  • Its not really a popularity contest ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drnb ( 2434720 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @01:49PM (#63104704)
    It's not really a popularity contest when so many are excluded from the upgrade. Comparisons to previous Windows upgrades are statistically invalid given the failure of the all-other-things-being-equal caveat.

    • Agree. Amazing that the summary doesn't even mention the hardware requirements that exclude many of us from being eligible for the switch. I'm not going to buy new hardware that I don't need to run an OS that doesn't seem to be an improvement (Win 11 is installed my my employer-provided work laptop and I haven't noticed how it's better than Win 10).

      • i'd take it a step further, what hardware can one get that's an upgrade, while still remaining under the radar for MS's forced bullshit? Computers are basically an appliance at this point, if it *works* why continue updating it?

        MS's response to that question is to break things that were previously working. For example xbox wireless gamepad drivers were working juuuuuust fine on 8.1; but out of what amounts to sheer malice, MS decides to yank those, in order to spur adoption of windows 10.

        the UI changes in

  • Just like Win98 did not win outright from Win95... and WinXP did not Win outright from Win98 ... and WinVista did not Win outright from Win7...

    The reasons vary from version to version, sometimes is onerouys system Requirements, other times is the (real or perceived) lack of quality of the next version of the OS, but, whatever the reason, I'd be hard preseed for a scenario where a newer version of Windows (other than Win95) surpassed quickly the version before...

    You see, until Win10 goes out of mainstream s

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Powercntrl ( 458442 )

      XP was a huge stability improvement over previous versions of Windows. 7 was a significant improvement over XP. It's been all downhill ever since.

      • I would say there has been little improvement since Windows 2000 (still my favorite Windows version). I kept that until I ran into too many apps that wouldn't work on 2000.

        • I would say there has been little improvement since Windows 2000 (still my favorite Windows version). I kept that until I ran into too many apps that wouldn't work on 2000.

          Just imagine that!

          App developers do not like to support (with the added coding and testing effort and expense) an OS that is not actively patched, and therefore more insecure than ussual...

          The nerve!

          • I would say there has been little improvement since Windows 2000 (still my favorite Windows version). I kept that until I ran into too many apps that wouldn't work on 2000.

            Just imagine that!

            App developers do not like to support (with the added coding and testing effort and expense) an OS that is not actively patched, and therefore more insecure than ussual...

            The nerve!

            If application developers were the sole determinants of whether an OS is secure or not, every single computer would be totally hosed.

            It's not like in the days of DOS where every program had full access to all the computer's resources. There's now an OS sitting in the middle.

      • XP was a huge stability improvement over previous versions of Windows. 7 was a significant improvement over XP. It's been all downhill ever since.

        Actually, there were actually some significant improvements under the hood between W7 and W10; but as far as UX??? Ick!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbialac ( 320955 )
      The Linux desktop has been a few years out for over 20 years. It makes improvements that typically follow what Mac or Windows did, but not always. It has the achilles' heal that it is largely built for developers and other technical people, not grandma. Andriod is an obvious exception to this, but that's the point: it was built by people who understood grandma enough to build something that grandma could use.

      • > it was built by people who understood grandma enough to build something that grandma could use.

        You'd be surprised how many grandmas are using Mint and it's only people who've never tried such things who assume they can't.

        Frankly that windowing environment is so much easier to understand than Windows 11, which is always changing and scares old people.

        • > it was built by people who understood grandma enough to build something that grandma could use.

          You'd be surprised how many grandmas are using Mint and it's only people who've never tried such things who assume they can't.

          Frankly that windowing environment is so much easier to understand than Windows 11, which is always changing and scares old people.

          1.) I'd wager that it is easier to coax Win11 in to look more like Grandma's favourite version of Windows than it is to Coax mint into looking like Grandma's favourite version of Windows.

          2.) Grandma probaly has a set/suite of Win32 apps that she uses day in and day out, maybe some quilt making sw, or some recipe software, or some minigame, or whatever she got used to over the years... at this point, she developed muscle memory for said apps. After all, I guess grandma does not turn on the PC just to use the

    • Did you intentionally forget to mention "forced" upgrades for the latest DirectX support?

      Yes, there were security and performance updates but functionality is still important too. Not everyone wants to upgrade only to find out half of their shit is broken.

    • Actually, Windows 98 wasn't that bad, there were a lot of good improvements over 95. Better USB support than Windows 95 SP2. Better IP support. Although there were some GUI changes that looked ok, there was also a lot of odd fluffware. Of course, like any release, people argue that the good changes should have been service packs for the older releases...

      I remember my review for Windows 98 at the time to my family was "it doesn't suck as much as I thought it would."

  • Guess I'm a "stubborn consumer" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @02:10PM (#63104792)

    The operating system was released on October 5 last year but shifting stubborn consumers onto this software has proved challenging for top brass at Microsoft HQ in Redmond.

    If "stubborn consumer" mean someone using an older PC that "doesn't currently meet the minimum system requirements to run Windows 11" according to the Microsoft PC Health Check app and doesn't feel like shelling out $$$ for a new PC that meets those, quite frankly, arbitrary "requirements" when my current PC runs Windows 10 just fine and would probably run Windows 11 just fine as-is, then, yes, that's me.

    You know what I will do Microsoft? When Windows 10 stops being supported, I'll switch to using Linux full-time as it runs just fine on all my (older) PCs.

    Also noting that "doesn't currently meet" the requirements is dumb. It doesn't have a TPM, which can't be added, and has a CPU that's too old to upgrade on the current motherboard to match what Windows 11 "requires", so the system can never get past "currently". I imagine these two issues apply to many systems, meaning the only solution is a new PC -- or "just" a new CPU, RAM and motherboard w/TPM 2.0.

    • This. Remove the artificial restrictions and user count will explode exponentially. I have multiple machines that would run Windows 11 great (and I could make them run it with well documented workarounds), but I don't want to risk breaking changes seeing as they're not "supported". So, for now, Windows 10 is good enough.

  • This must be scammers trying to entice me to infect my computer with bitcoin mining software.

  • And both Google and Mozilla are complicit by discontinuing their browsers after Microsofts arbitrary end of support dates. Windows 8.1 could have been supported until 2026 if ESUs were announced for it but instead they are putting it to sleep early because it wants to make more money from selling both Windows 11 and new OEM hardware. Their end of support message even tells you to "buy a new pc". The chip shortage would have been averted if there were 20 year support cycles instead of 10. Windows 11 is just

    • And both Google and Mozilla are complicit by discontinuing their browsers after Microsofts arbitrary end of support dates. Windows 8.1 could have been supported until 2026 if ESUs were announced for it but instead they are putting it to sleep early because it wants to make more money from selling both Windows 11 and new OEM hardware. Their end of support message even tells you to "buy a new pc". The chip shortage would have been averted if there were 20 year support cycles instead of 10. Windows 11 is just the beginning. Just wait until Windows 12 and 13's requirements come out. Microsoft will probably adapt android style 3 years and you're out updates soon.

      Indeed the want to bring hardware drm to the desktop, since everyone was jealous of what apple got away with with iphone and google with android. Trusted computing started in 1997. The last 3 versions (8, 10, 11) are the final touch stones in the trusted computing initiative and the end of plaintext binary executables.

      Win3 will have encrypted exes, and moving towards encrypted binaries like denuvo.

  • I might reconsider if they drop the unnecessary requirements. Until then 10 is my last Windows, and I mostly only dual-boot it for free Epic games.

  • This is the End (Score:3)

    by rbrander ( 73222 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @02:25PM (#63104856) Homepage

    I'm retiring a Windows 7 machine that I kept going for ages, as software packages stopped supporting it, and caved to a Windows 10. I can barely stand 10. And 11 is just the end. I made it through my career; the only thing still giving me a Windows-need was the joy of Excel, their one good product. But when I can't run 10 any more, I'll even give up Excel. Being retired and now a light user, I have the option. Praise be.

    All sympathies to the employed, and given no choice. "#Resistance" is down to making your employer as unhappy about it as you are.

  • No compelling reason to upgrade... (Score:3)

    by bb_matt ( 5705262 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @02:29PM (#63104870)

    I guess the OS market is in a similar position to hardware - that even hardware/OS combinations from as far back as 7 or 8 years ago, are still performant.

    In the mobile device market - you can pick up a "flagship" mobile phone, 7 years old, for peanuts - and it runs just fine.
    The same applies to the PC market.

    Heck, my gaming rig is now 6 years old, I recently chucked in a new graphics card, but that's all I've done to it in 6 years.
    Guess what, it runs Linux just fine, is super fast, runs the latest games good enough for me - and I'm in a niche PC gamer market.

    If you are just using your computer for light browsing, watching videos and doing some word processing - a computer a decade old is fine.

    That means an OS a decade old is just fine, except for security, if the OS has been abandoned.

    In fairness to microsoft, you can still run windows 8, now a decade old - and get security updates.
    Hell, you can also jab your fingers repeatedly into your eyes to get the same experience windows 8 gives you, but that's another matter...

    The concept of "peak computing" for the vast majority of use cases, was met years ago.

    So, for the vast majority of people, there's no compelling reason to upgrade.

    Add to that the fact that for a HUGE percentage of people, mobile devices are all they need - a tablet, a smartphone or whatever - meh to windows 11.

    That leaves the corporate market as the target for Microsoft, bringing extreme annoyance and pain to a billion workers worldwide.
    No other choice.

    I'll get my coat, because in my opinion, microsoft with windows, lost the plot a decade back and never recovered.

  • Seriously. The underlying OS is generally fine.
    But the damn UI is a gigantic cluster fuck
    Loads of shit that just doesn't work.
    Loads MORE that doesn't work RIGHT.
    Crippled usability.
    Decades-long extant options stripped out.

    I dunno what they were smoking. But they need to cut that shit out.

  • As far as I can tell, the every other version of Windows is crap theory still holds strong. A friend of mine upgraded then regretted it and switched back.

    I know it's kinda a stupid theory but so far I can't quite shake that it's still holding up well.

  • Win11 is the answer to a question no one asked.
    Win11 is the solution to a problem nobody had.

  • The windows taskbar was basically the best thing about windows. it was already unbeatable and they somehow made it even better during windows 7/vista.
    But they threw everything away to copy the loser for some absurd reason.
     

  • From the PC Mag article at https://www.pcmag.com/news/10-... [pcmag.com] entitled "10 Big Reasons Not to Upgrade to Windows 11"

    "6. Windows 11 Requires Signing In to a Microsoft Account"

    "You won’t find any Mac users who don’t sign in to an Apple account, not to mention any Chromebook or Android users who don’t sign in to a Google account. But some Windows users are vehement about not wanting to sign into an account on their PC."

    • You can get around that by modifying the OOBE to tell Windows you don't have an Internet connection and rebooting system. Now OOBE will let you create a local account by clicking on "I don't have an Internet connection". I bought my son a new laptop in August for college. It came with Windows double hockey sticks from hell and I didn't have time to wipe it and set it up to dual boot Win 10 and Linux Mint. (I'll do that for him during Xmas break). That being said Windows 11 is the absolute worst piece of shi

  • I have several PCs here that I would gladly update to Windows 11. They have the required TPM support. They have the processing power and RAM.

    But Microsoft has excluded, without reason as I can see it, everything before the Intel 8xxx series processors. Mind you, it'll run on those machines and there are tricks to install it, but good luck with that when Microsoft decides it won't support those machines. In fact, there are ways to install Win11 without a TPM.

    I imagine there are some instruction extensions th

  • We see the same moronic articles every release of windows. Marketshare for the OS is a marathon not a sprint and it has always creeped up over time as it is more closely linked to the replacement cycle as most home users don't give a shit about a new OS, they will replace it when it dies or when the machine needs replacing. Win 11 this is especially true given the official support starting with only newer CPU's

  • Belle of the ball (Score:3)

    by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @04:49PM (#63105548)

    Windows 11 has a pretty face, but she's a bit bloated and twitchy.

    Windows 10 is her slightly older, but for some reason slightly hotter sister.

    Windows 8... we don't really talk about her. We would prefer she stay in the institution.

    Windows 7? She's still totally WILF, and those have already F-d that remember her fondly.

    MacOS, well, she's controlling, annoying, and very rigid. But some people are totally into that.

    Linux is that weird club-footed girl in the corner with a nice rack, and a tricky personality. There's just something about her... I'm sure in a few months with a therapist she'll be top shelf.

    • Windows XP - so fondly remembered, the girl next door, or your high school sweetheart, the one you still have a flame for, and in retrospect might have made the ideal wife if you had the chance to do it again.

  • Yep, I have a Ryzen R7 1700 (8 cores/16 threads), 64GB RAM and 20TB of storage (a mix of NVMe SSDs and some HDDs) - this spec runs Linux and Windows 10 fine and at a decent speed too. Apparently, the CPU is "too old" to run Windows 11 despite performing well even for demanding tasks.

    Mind you, I'm about to buy a new PC and despite the new PC's CPU being from Intel's 13th gen, Microsoft's idiocy w.r.t. first gen Ryzen made my decision quite easy - the new PC will exclusively run Linux and no version of Window

  • "Show for More Options." No Privacy. W11 is trash.
  • This is a good time to move the Linux desktop forward.
  • Why did they ever release Windows 11 anyway? They should've spent their time addressing features users were wanting, not doing silly things like continuing to mess with the Start Menu. It never has made sense to me.

  • I've had it, moved to Linux. (Score:3)

    by El Jynx ( 548908 ) on Monday December 05, 2022 @05:19PM (#63105738)
    WINE gaming has become so good now that you can run most steam / epic games fairly easily from linux. And with a little work Ubuntu and several other distros are really nice to live with. I think it's definitely matured into a very nice OS - and it keeps improving instead of devolving or trying to reinvent the wheel time and again for no obvious reason other than upgrade trends.

    Seriously, if you're sick of Windows and have a little computer skills, Ubuntu can cover your bases well enough. It's not perfect, but it's better than Win11. Just migrate gradually (dual boot or whatever) so you can slowly customize it to your needs. And document what you change so you can review it later or rebuild if you need to.

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