Not even the ghost of obsolescence can coerce users onto Windows 11

Am I missing something? Microsoft literally won't let me upgrade because my fully functional processor is deemed to old for them. Of coarse the adoption rate is low if they start by excluding a good portion of their user base.

I don't even understand why they make that distinction. I recently bought a used notebook with Windows 10 preinstalled that can't be upgraded. But if you just boot up the Windows 11 ISO it works fine without issues from there.
Granted I don't know why someone would want this; I was genuinely surprised when I noticed installation without a Microsoft account isn't supposed to be possible. Then you get that system that just feels sketchy to use, Teams in autostart, online services in your menus and all that. And that's just the stuff you can see. It's a total disaster in my opinion. But it went downhill ever after Windows 7 as far as I can tell.
- Because Windows 11's primary new feature is SOC level DRM. Old CPUs don't have the hardware. Obviously MS won't advertise this, so they end up making vague arguments that Window 11 is "better" but never really elaborate.
- My pet theory is that it's to throw a bone to OEMs. They came out saying "oop, 7th-gen and older Intel chips won't work, guess you'll just need to buy a new PC!" until someone over there noticed that their still-for-sale (at the time the requirements went live), few-thousand-dollar PC (the Surface Studio 2) was a 7th-gen chip so they made eventually an exception just for that one. Because "reasons".
That is mentioned in the article.
It baffles the mind. I have a brand new system, newest generation 7600 Ryzen processor, AM5 motherboard, plenty of ram, decent graphics card.
"Your computer does not meet the minimum requirements for Windows 11"
It's almost certainly bugged somehow, but I'll take it as a compliment, I'll never willingly install that OS regression anyways...
- When Windows 11 first released this was due to TPM being disabled but I thought they had fixed the messaging now to say that
My boot drive is too small for 11 but has always been fine for 10, which is a blessing for me as I have loads of other drive space that isn't being considered. An unexpected update would make me so sad.

Windows 11 has one specific limiting feature that drives me bonkers and it's not being able to click the clock in the bottom right on a secondary monitor to pull up a calendar. Windows 10 has this, why remove it?

It's a miniscule but good feature

It seems like they are going out of their way to remove good features. Like they removed the option to right click the taskbar and open task manager. They since added it back, but only because of user demand.
They have removed quick access to disabling the network, seeing and changing ip settings.
I can't remember all the annoying issues, but there's a lot.
I hate that it has become a general thing to ruin user experience and possibilities of customization. Google is doing the same with android.
- The volume mixer is also only now coming back.
- My biggest issue is that you can't open new file explorer tabs in the same window. So before you know it, you have 10 different file browser windows open. It wasn't a Windows 10 feature either but there was an extension called Qtabbar that allowed it. That doesn't work on Windows 11. So I've been using free commander as a work around. It's annoying though.
Seems like a lot of stuff like that though. At this point I only use windows to play games and I want to interact with the OS as little as possible, so I don’t understand why I would want an updated UI with more ads and Microsoft integrations when it does nothing to improve what I actually use it for.
- Are you sure? Singing in with an online Microsoft account improves your experience*
  *it allows us to collect data on you
- Kind of forgot what an OS is... Should fade into the background (but how do you make money with that???)
At launch you couldn't even have that clock on the second screen, they added it back partially in an update, non-clickable.
And win11 is filled with this sort of thing. It's the worst update windows ever got, except maybe for winMe - which I don't recall that well.
- VISTA comes to mind when i was getting more into computers. I missed XP so bad. Then 7 came out and it was great!
From a technical perspective, they didn’t remove it or any of the other missing features from the taskbar since the win11 taskbar was built from scratch without any of the old code for 10. For whatever reason, that feature wasn’t prioritized in the new taskbar build so it wasn’t built yet, or they didn’t want to add it.
I still think their decision to not allow the new taskbar to be placed on the sides or top is really stupid though, as someone with a 32:9 monitor, I’d much rather use some of my horizontal space for taskbar rather than limited vertical space.
My minor but really irritating gripe is the unmovable taskbar (which I'm not sure if this has changed or not), I've been a top taskbar person since xp and it doesn't make sense to me to remove a feature like that. Apparently there are Reg hacks or third party tools to do what I want but I really shouldn't have to resort to that Imo.
- I have tried a reg hack, which worked pretty well, but it kept resetting after every update. And changing the registries I did (don't recall which I changed or if they still work.) also came with some annoying issues, like window preview still show on top of taskbar (so outside of your screen) among other thing.
  I also preferred to have a smaller taskbar which is also no longer possible.
  So I have given up and resorted to a bottom taskbar on autohide. But even that has some wonky interactions, with for example windows + tab, where there is a nice shade behind your different virtual desktops, but it stops at the original location of the taskbar.
- The taskbar nailed immovable to the bottom is some impressively dumb bullshit. That limitation is so unnecessary and useless I can only chalk it up to brutal idiocy on the product managers side.
- I didn't even realize this. What in the backwards UI design is that?
I'm still waiting for the uncombined icons on taskbar
- Small icons, show title, never combine.
  Still waiting on the release that contains this.
- YES PLEASE
- I think they just released that..
This is my biggest gripe with W11 as well. I used to use that all the time to check what day any given date is.

Why would I upgrade to an OS that pushes ads on my login screen and start menu? Some software forces me to keep a windows machine around but I'm certainly in no hurry to upgrade from 10 to 11.

- I'm still using Windows 7 in my home computer, for gaming no less, and only recently did some games come out that don't support it and the only significant push to upgrade is the upcoming (end of year) end of Steam support for it, which is just going to make me use my Linux partition for games more.
  Roughly only in the last 2 years have I started to have any inconveniences from having Windows 7 - basically the latest KiKad, for circuit design, doesn't support it, so I kept using the previous version which has very rarelly has forced me to go find component and footpads which I would otherwise have already in the latest one.
  The point being that if Windows 7 only started to get incovenient to use (both for gaming and professionally) well beyond not just Windows 8 having been launched but even Windows 10 having been launched, it's reasonable to expect that Windows 10 will still be fine for use for many years.
- Fortunately I don't need gaming features on that machine, I only need to boot it to use things like Odin to flash a Samsung tablet or run crappy Nintendo Switch tools from gbatemp.
  It's very much a 4th or 5th string machine for me.
Disabled with a single click.
- The fact it's there at all is fucked. No thanks I'll pass

Let's see. Its full of ads, spyware and the ui is a complete mess.

I can't imagine why people a digging in there heals

Honestly, I think, like the article says, the hardware issue is the biggest hurdle. People use Facebook, after all, and it is full of ads and its UI is also a complete mess.
I mean... Full of Ads seems a bit exaggerating... And I have seen much worse UIs on Linux.... The spyware part nothing to say, plenty of telemetry and other stuff so yeah....
- Full of Ads seems a bit exaggerating...
  One is enough. Especially considering it's a paid product.
  And I have seen much worse UIs on Linux....
  This is like saying "Motorcycles are better, because I've seen some terrible car designs"
  plenty of telemetry and other stuff so yeah....
  So as long as many people do a thing, it makes it ok, ya?
- I get Tron back at Reddit and that cleans up my windows
I am on Windows 11. The UI has been more consistent than 10 ever was and I am curious where the ads are.
- The 'news' thing in the taskbar counts, I think. As does the recommended apps and preinstalled candy crush. It's looking less and less like a professional tool nowadays.
- Too many features that I use daily as a Sysadmin are missing to consider w11 as anything more than a PITA currently.
  At home my PC hardware is fully capable but my HDD will need a reformat, so I either rebuild my system from scratch (not gonna happen any time soon) or fork out for yet another HDD and transfer tools.
  So it's an imposed cost for little benefit and a whole mountain of inconvenience.
  I literally disabled my TPM chip to prevent w11 force installing itself. Management forked out for a new fleet of w11 machines and staff are straight up refusing to move off older slower PC's to avoid w11.
  W11 needs a solid 12 months of re-adding existing features to be worth looking sideways at.
- I hate that I can't have labels in the taskbar. Really slows down my workflow
- I bought a new laptop that came with 11, I haven't had any super annoying issues... Actually the preinstalled Samsung apps are more annoying than anything OS related... But to be fair, when I was setting it up, I looked into how to do it without connecting to a Microsoft account - it's possible but takes a little work. I wonder if that is the difference...

To me an os should be something that just let's me run programs of my choice and use my hardware to it's fullest. Eg be as light as possible.

With windows it just wants to suck up all my hardware/battery by itself and puts up a fight anytime I want to install anything myself

Don't know how many times now I've had to take defaults away from things like edge but yeah

Might want to look into Linux :-)
- While I exclusively use Linux at home and I recommend it to everyone especially on desktop, they mentioned battery life and from my experience that isn't its strong suit.
- I really thought that comment was building up to something like "and that's why I use Arch, btw" lol
I'm not sure how secure it is, but Chris titus's windows debloater works wonders for my windows install. Getting rid of edge and other MS clutter really cleans up the windows desktop in a way you wouldn't think.
- I actually have used that as well on most of my family's computers also. It sure does beat messing with settings.
  I think next time I have to reinstall windows I'll attempt something like tinywin10.

2 years is plenty of time to see where linux support is. We should have a good idea by then of where gaming and streaming quality stand for the foreseeable future.

Most of my PCs will easily go to linux, the big question is whether to suck it up and upgrade my gaming rig to 11 or just switch everything to linux.

Switching to Linux is a pain, but its a pain once, staying on windows is the pain that keeps on giving
- ARE YOU SURE YOU DONT WANT A ONEDRIVE SUBCRIPTION?!?
- Gaming is much better on Linux thanks to Steam, but having lots of problems with more recent games and their cursed launchers. I try and remember that Gen X had to figure all this stuff out with early versions of Windows and I should resurrect the same determination that got me through back then... but I'd be lying if I said it was easy.
It really depends on the games you play. The thing is, you need to be really honest with yourself in regards to what you play and how far you're willing to go for the ease of use. Most, if not all games that don't require invasive anti cheat will just work,there are outliers like media foundations cinematics that just don't work without protonGE, but even that's not really a problem and getting smaller and smaller with every proton update. Are you comfortable installing the heroic games launcher from a terminal if it's not available in your software center? If so, then that opens up a whole new library of games to play from Epic and GoG, if not then use a distro that has it preinstalled.
The Linux community will make you think it's an easy transition, and for the most part it is, but as someone who moved to Linux full-time and has been running only Linux for about 6 months, there are still hurdles to jump over, it was about 80% click install and play, and the other 20% was troubleshooting and trying different versions of proton. I'm willing to live with those odds if it means complete freedom of my computer and cutting all ties to Windows. If I want to play games that have anti cheat though, I either have to use GeForce now or use my consoles. However, increasing support for crossplay makes this a non-issue in most cases.
I do hope you make the jump, it's pretty clear the path Microsoft wants to follow and I don't want any part of it, neither should anyone else. We're in sort of a golden age of Linux gaming right now thanks to Valve, and the momentum doesn't seem to be slowing down thanks to the steam deck.
- I don’t really play any anti-cheat multiplayer but I do play some AAA with DRM like Assassins Creed.
  I’m fully comfortable with linux to the degree that I can start with a TTY and set up my own GUI with a window manager (though I prefer to just install a DE.)
  Proton has been hit or miss with me on my laptop: sometimes the game won’t load, or it’ll load but the graphics will suck, or it’ll run nicely but all the good mods aren’t supported. That’s what I mean by seeing what the state of gaming is in 2 years: at that point Steam Deck and Proton should be pretty mature.
  Outside of that, the Windows streaming apps support 4k but resolution is generally limited in the browser, though I suppose I could use my tv’s streaming apps. I’ve used my work software on my linux laptop so I know that’s a non-issue.
  At this point, I don’t have a push to switch, but I’m not really excited for 11 and I might have to reinstall anyway to upgrade because apparently the Windows 10 install didn’t leave Windows 11 enough free space at the start of the disk or some bullshit. And if I have to reinstall anyway in 2 years, I’ll probably just do linux.
- My one game that isn’t fully supported (with mods and add ons) is FFXIV. I’m not switching until ACT (DPS parsing with packet capturing as a windows firewall) is supported. All my others mods for FFXIV are supported very easily it seems.
I can't switch until Playnite gets an official implementation on Linux
I'm playing a heavily modded skyrim playthrough, 1 click button with wabbajack. There's support for it but... Not much. I also play FFXIV, half support again. PoE works fineish and Bg3 works somewhat. League works? Not as straightforward when I last tried it. Modded D2 works somewhat but it needs to be configured. Last Epoch worked iirc but I haven't checked, and their game needs heavy optimization so I'd hold my horses if what they do can be applied to Linux too. I haven't tried dark souls but that shit lags on any Windows machine so it's basically a 1 to 1 port lmao.
As you see, all of them are -ish experiences. It's always googling issues, checking compatibility... I just want to game man.

I have a rig with Windows 10, and haven't upgraded because.. Microsoft arbitrarily say my CPU is unsupported, even though it meets all the criteria.

Bypassing takes a click if you download the reg files (there's an install version and an upgrade version)
Or more clicks if you have to do it manually
My CPU is from 2013 running win11 perfectly fine and fast
- That sounds like a lot of work for what seems to be a worse or at least 'meh' experience.
I siavled the TPM module so it’ll keep saying this. Can’t be forced into an upgrade if the cpu doesn’t seem to be supported
- You also seem to have siavled your ability to spell
- This is the thing with my CPU. It has TPM, it's enabled, and the upgrade tool says that's fine. The installer doesn't make it clear what the issue is, it's like: Congrats, your CPU satisfies these three bullet points, but no, you still can't have Win 11.

Windows 11 coerced me into being an Ubuntu user.

- And the Linux snob. I found him!!!
- God damn. Even moving to linux isn’t good enough for you people lol
- "Ubuntu" is Zulu for "can't install Debian".
- ::rolleyes::
- I use Knoppix because I am a 1337 haxxor.
I just went through those weasel-worded Windows 11 setup questions three times while configuring a laptop for a family member, then twice had to figure out how to dodge it demanding a Microsoft account, after which I needed to remove all the bloatware and change various defaults. My own laptop with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed has been a delight to use by comparison.
Also, the Windows 11 Start menu still doesn't work half the time.
Windows XP did that for me.

The comparisons in the article are boneheded.

According to Statcounter, the worldwide Windows version desktop market share puts Windows 10 at 71.64 percent, with Windows 11 trailing at 23.61 percent.

To put that in context, Windows 11 was launched two years ago today. Windows 10 was launched in 2015 and took two years to reach the same market share as the then-dominant player, Windows 7.

Comparing the numbers of the move from 7 to 10 to that from 10 to 11 ignores that whole shitshow with 8.0 and the correction of 8.1.

Of course it's easier for 10 to dethrone 7 when there is the spoiler effect of 8 and 8.1!

So anyways, I've been playing Baldurs Gate and Genshin on Linux and it's pretty dope

The steam deck being on a Linux architecture really pushed this forward. Go Linux! And go ARM!
Valheim works like a charm too
genshin works on Linux now? I thought it's anticheat wasn't compatible with proton
- They actually made the anti cheat compatible. You just run the exe through wine-ge (I use lutris for that) and it just works. Nothing is modified. Lutris installer also has an installer script that just runs a clean unmodified exe from mihoyo's site.
  I've been running it since 3.8 just fine, everything just works in it. Apparently it's been supported since 3.5.
  Avoid AnAnimeGame Launcher, that is the launcher where they modify your files, which is completely unnecessary now that it's compatible.
- The ban hammer will come soon.

The usual “switch to Linux” spiel.

It’s easier than ever before, blah blah blah.

[Debian based distro] is a good option.

Beware of temporary pitfalls such as Adobe and arrogant game devs decided not to tick the EAC/Battleye for Proton compatibility box, etc.

Tbh, it’s really getting tiring to tell people to try Linux to only get hit with a tsunami of out of date straw man arguments featuring issues that haven’t be relevant in almost a decade.

I doubt I'll switch any time soon, I use Linux for work and have a dislike for how small issues turn into hours of troubleshooting, but anyway, not the point. I think something that deters a lot of people are the really vocal people who shove it down others throats and treat people who don't want to switch like idiots.
We all have our reasons, I'll keep using Win10 until it becomes too much of a security risk and then reevaluate my options. For now I enjoy having shit that just works, for example, I use Cura, it hasn't had a working Linux release in years, there's a lot of deterrents for the layperson or those who have to troubleshoot and struggle to get shit working for a job and couldn't be arsed to do it in their personal time.
Ah, also, some things I see in these comments I don't really deal with because I use enterprise edition. MS I believe is smart enough to not fuck with their enterprise customers as that's where their profits are, so I guess my experience is slightly different (I was also an MS SysEng for ~12 years)
- Also people seem to completely ignore the amount of re-learning I'd need to do to switch. I'm not really a power user of Windows, but part of the reason it runs pretty smoothly for me is that I have a decade plus of knowledge of common failure points. You sort of get an intuition about things after awhile that I don't have on a different OS. Little issues the might result in a couple of days of troubleshooting are just solved immediately because I have hunches on what the issue is.
  Meanwhile I'm struggling on my steamdeck to deal with minor problems because I'm very unfamiliar with the setup. It's not insurmountable, but it's a barrier to entry that I'm not willing to undertake just yet.
- Made the switch, yet its still easier for me to remote onto a windows machine to still use autodesk than learn any free alternatives ( freeCAD :l ), and a WiFi driver took me 2 days to find. However my workplace for some unbenownst reason has 11 Pro (instead of enterprise) on some of our machines, which Ill notice popups for office360 and kinda cringe at, hoping the customer never does
  Do have to push prusaSlicer, I used Cura for so long but just experimenting found more satisfaction for the slic3r solver, especially for bridges and overhangs
- All valid.
  I personally believe that if work mandates electronic material for your job or project, then they should provide the equipment. However, if this is not possible, then getting equipment that is specialized for your work is a more prudent solution that you can free your daily driver from.
  After all, we shouldn't be married to our work. It should be an investment in our skills and abilities.
- Wait cura is that out of date on Linux? I've been using superslicer since cura was kinda confusing to me but I'm surprised it's lagging behind with the Linux builds
Thank you for doing this work. I tried Ubuntu dual booted in 2011 and loved it but gave it up when windows re-wrote the boot. I finally got a linux machine when I got a second PC. I think laptops and phones are the best bolster to linux - you can troubleshoot on a second screen instead of getting soft-locked while doing a base install to a mission critical computer.

Windows, a solution to problems that only exist because of Windows.

The single biggest reason is that Microsoft significantly limited the hardware that can be used for W11 with the TPM and stringent hardware needs.

I actually disabled tpm in the bios so windows 11 wouldn't be installed....
- I enabled it on mine and I STILL cannot upgrade.
Not that I want to upgrade but I don't understand the logic behind the requirements at all. I have a cheap and weak little travel notebook thats apparently elegible, meanwhile my desktop thats very modern and could probably run an atomic scale simulation of that notebook is apparently not suitable.
- Pretty much any modern CPU has a TPM module built-in. Good chance you just need to go to the BIOS and enable it.
I would have upgraded a while ago if my hardware supported it. The kernel upgrades are pretty zippy.

Windows 11 is basically Windows 10 with a slightly nicer (in most respects) desktop. There aren't a lot of compelling reasons to switch if what you have works well enough.

Windows 11 is also much better at collecting personal data with improved analytics and Microsoft spyware running under the hood. Not to mention it's superiority at serving advertisements and embedding them in nearly every aspect of the UI.
It's doubtful that Microsoft shareholders have meetings about how to improve the user experience of their OS. I think they are more concerned with extracting every penny they can designing the most efficient backend to harvest data and push ads, kinda like our friends at Alphabet, Microsoft is trying so desperately to emulate.
- I have not seen a single ad ....
- That's why I said in most respects. The Windows 10 start menu is way more configurable. It doesn't waste space for "recommended" apps either. In Win11 it is possible to reduce the space eaten up for recommendations but not hide it. The way pinned apps flow left to right and down is annoying too for spatial positioning. An update added icon groups which is something. I think the rest of the desktop, things like the control panel, task bar is a lot slicker in general though.
The control panel being much easier to navigate versus all the changes they're making in settings along with what they're hiding behind powershell commands is another reason.

My pc isn't compatible with Win11 (unsupported cpu) and since I'm poor, I'm not getting a new one anytime soon.

Besides, Win10 is great.

And when it's end of life and open season for hackers, just switch to Linux
- I'd say switch now, if you're going to switch eventually anyways, why wait?
- I'm a gamer, so that isn't a viable option for me. I know that it's starting to get better thanks to the Steamdeck but it has a long way to go.

There is a trend line of the amount of shit you need to do to get linux to do things you want.
There is a trend line of the amount of shit you need to do to stop windows from doing things you don't want.

Those two lines have crossed quite a while ago.

My "fuck this" moment came about 7y ago when Microsoft started forcing reboots that couldn't be disabled even with group policy. I think I lost work 2 or 3 times because I'd stayed up late working and eventually just fell into bed without saving everything and shutting the machine down. I woke up to a login screen the next morning and said "oh fuck this" the second or third time it happened.
- The most shameful thing is that many applications that would fail to come back with all their state after restart were Microsoft's own programs like Sql Server Management Studio -- that one does better now, but well over a decade too late.
Being real though, for most people on actual personal computers, not work devices, linux does everything you need, though with different software in some cases.
If you rely on adobe for personal hobbies, you're fucked. An ever shrinking amount of games don't play well with proton. And if you use a pc for your music listening/organization, you're not going to enjoy things much. That's it.
Now, switching software like word over to libreoffice can take a week or so of adjustment, but you can write a bloody novel on it. Same with the other libreoffice tools; they do perfectly well.
Yeah, work programs might not be optional, so until the big names start serving the linux market, not everyone will have full choice. But for those of us that aren't locked into an industry standard piece of software? It's really not an issue now.
Even when 10 came out, there wasn't a lot of issue switching over. Gaming at the time was the biggest non-work weakness.
The only thing I haven't been able to replace and do as well or better with is with audio. Linux doesn't have any programs that match musicbee.

If it ain't broke don't fix it. Windows 10 isn't even close to end of support.

If enterprise users haven't moved over then individual users don't need to.

I will move over before support finishes but make no mistake that'll be because I'm forced to due to security reasons and not because I want to.

My windows 10 enterprise has been running flawlessly.

It isn't that far off from end of life...
"Windows 10 will reach end of support on October 14, 2025. The current version, 22H2, will be the final version of Windows 10, and all editions will remain in support with monthly security update releases through that date. Existing LTSC releases will continue to receive updates beyond that date based on their specific lifecycles."
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-10-home-and-pro
Only 2 years.
- Two years goes by fast. The only people getting extended support are enterprise customers. And that gets progressively more expensive until the extended support ends.

I said it before, and I say it again. Once I am forced to switch to win 11, I'm not doing so. I'm simply switching to Linux.

Windows has been on a downward spiral and I don't see that improving anytime soon

I only use windows for gaming, linux for everything else and have been for many years. I upgraded from windows 10 to windows 11 and had zero issues. It actually is starting to look better as well.
That said, more and more games run just fine on Linux now so I probably won’t need a dualboot system anymore at some point.
- I've been using Linux full time for about a decade. Gaming, video editing, everything.
  I was forced back onto Windows when I started a new job. I genuinely tried to give it a chance. I ended up triggering a company-wide policy change to allow Linux and Mac employee systems. I'm back on Linux with a sigh of relief.
That time was when I was forced to switch from Windows 7. I switched to Linux, found that I can do there most things I usually do on a computer anyways, and never looked back. It reached to the point that someone had to give me an entire SDD with a windows installation just to coax me to use Windows 10. I rarely touch it nowadays, and every time I do, I end up being frustrated with it.

These articles cater to the privacy centric, super user type people, which is totally fine, but we should remember that we are not the average user. We represent... basically an insignificant percentage of the user base.

Windows is not actually having a problem getting people to upgrade to Windows 11. There is a small minority of people who see the issues and are loud about it, but I guarantee that 95% will update when their computer tells them they have to update (when it does the "next time you restart we are doing it for you" thing).

For that to happen they'd have to drop the TPM requirement.
Pretty sure my CPU (i5-8400) has it, but for some reason it doesn't show up. Probably disabled in the BIOS, although I've no idea why.
In any case I don't care until I have a good reason to upgrade. Direct Storage was threatening to be Win 11 only, but I've honestly never heard of any games requiring it yet. And the still fucked GPU prices mean I'm more likely to play those on my PS5 than upgrade my PC for it.
- I enabled the TPM in my CPU and I still can't update to W11.
And a large chunk of this 95% would see that their hardware is not supported, sigh and stay on 10, gradually conditioning themselves to ignore the upgrade notifications.
- And most of these will upgrade once they buy a new laptop anyway.
Sheep, they're goddamn sheep.
- Individual thinking is when you have an aneurysm over telemetry.
- This place is weird
Windows is not actually having a problem getting people to upgrade to Windows 11.
According to this article, they are. It took 2 years for Win10 to overtake Win7 and be more than 50% of the install base. After 2 years of Win11 being available, it only has 23% of the install base.
- To be fair (somewhat) Win10 had the dumpster fire that was Win8 between it and Win7, so it had all the people upgrading from Win7 as well as everyone that had Win8. Not defending Win11 here, I'm never going to use it.

I use windows 10 atm. The wife is using windows 11. This is a laptop though, so I might just keep it as windows 10 and then get a new computer and put linux on it. Windows 11 has no redeeming qualities as far as I can see.

I did exactly that, but my wife is oblivious to tech, so she uses Linux without even knowing.

My rig is outdated but plays all the games I play. I can’t afford a gaming rig update just to get Windows 11 with start menu ads and junk.

I heard they took out a lot of junk. But I'm not going near it.
- There’s a way to install it where you use a non-America language and it causes it to not install all the junk.
  I read about it a couple weeks ago and once again, I said to myself, “ORRRR, I can just stay on Windows 10…”
- It's still very full of junk.
- They did not take out a lot of junk.

Windows 10 should be proud it is XP next generation. We are going to get another vista disaster if Microsoft keeps pushing 11.

Exactly, they're going to have a hard time getting rid of it.

I'll use my Win 10 machine as the daily driver until the very last day of support. I game in 1080, and my 6gb 1060 coupled with my 6700k blows all but the very latest and most demanding games out of the water.

By the time I'm strong armed into Win 11, there might be a better option by then, but at the very least it will be a nice cheap time to upgrade to 2-3 year old hardware so I can continue playing factorio, but in 1440 instead of 1080.

Factorio from 1080>1440 is like seeing in 4 dimensions. It's beautiful 😍
Rumor is that Windows 12 ~~the last last version of Windows~~ will be releasing next year.

I haven't moved to Linux because I work in healthcare and do 12 hour shifts and do not have the time needed to-

Wipe anything
Reinstall anything
Learn new things and finally
Use my computer.

The last one is the real pain. I'll tell ya though, if I ever get to sit at my computer again I'll learn how to unfuck it and I hope by then there's some easy to access resources for learning a system!

Don't wipe-out everything. Grub Linux Mint/Fedora iso, and install it to be alongside Windows.
When you have free time, play with it.
- Or do what I do for a portable install. Stick an old SATA or NVMe drive in a good USB enclosure (one that supports TRIM and doesn't have dodgy drivers) plug that in, plug in an install ISO flash drive, boot the flash drive and install directly onto the external drive. Then just plug it in and boot it when you want to use Linux, or unplug it and use Windows. Boom, persistent emergency OS that you can use anywhere.

Just so everyone knows at one point Microsoft was forced to buy your unused windows key on a new computer. It would be a damn shame if we forced them to do that again.

Pro tip here, ASUS will give you a refund for the cost of a windows license if you hassle them enough.
In theory you need to not have activated Windows on the laptop but in practice I don't think they have any way of verifying this.
- The cost of the license on their end, or the cost of a license as you would buy it personally?

These will be the same people forever defending and holding on to 11 after 10 is dead and 12 has been out forever. Just like all times before. The people holding on to 7 are now these staunch 10 defenders after it was obvious 7 was a crutch.

No, this is the usual reaction to Microsoft’s habit of following a good Windows release with a terrible one.
Vista made people stick with XP Win8 made people stick with 7 Win11 makes people stick with 10
There were no die-hard fans sticking with the shit releases, just as nobody will cling on to Windows 11.
- The backwards compatibility starts getting unbearable after a while. XP runs like a dream on modern hardware but the fact that everything after ~2014 or so only supports 7+, there's a limit on how mucn you can do with it.
I think there is a fair balancing point between jumping on the newest release of an os, when you have an established workflow, and don't know about longevity (windows 8 had a shorter than normal support cycle) and holding on to an outdated os for ever and ever.
I don't plan on switching to win 11 anytime soon, but I eventually will I'm sure.
No, no, I still hate 10 and refuse to use it. I keep 7 on one pc for musicbee, and that's it. Fuck windows. Fuck it in the ass without consent, using a razor studded strap on. Fuck 10, fuck 11, and definitely fuck 12
- I hope you keep your win 7 isolated from the internet since it has been out of maintenence for quite a while now.
  You always have to consider that probably at least 80% of the Windows code base is the same across versions. So when a current release gets a patch for a new security flaw that's a hint to the malware devs the old release is likely vulnerable too. As soon as a version gets out of maintenance its likelihood for infection rises steeply.
I was very happy with almost all windows update in the last 23 yrars. WinXp was bad for a little while but soon got good. Win Vista was terrible for a shorter period and soon got fantastic. Everything else had more good than bad from the start. Win11 had zero positive changes until the paint layers got announced, with a ton of negative changes.
This time really is different because windows is ending updates for windows 10 in 2025 AND they will not allow many computers to upgrade to windows 11, your only choice is to buy a new computer, which obviously isn't an option for everyone.
I built my gaming PC in 2017 and it still runs all the games and editing programs I want, but it is not eligible to upgrade to W11 because their DRM won't work on my processor.

I would absolutely rather stick with 10 if I could've. Hell, give me back XP.

Win 7 is peak Windows for me, but yeah, XP is fine. So is 2K or even Vista for that matter. With every release since 7 MS seem to have been actively looking for ways to make the UI experience worse.

I will die before I use Windows 11.

"Upgrading" from 7 to 10 was already painful enough.

It's amazing how some people prefer death an as option over upgrading an OS lol
- We will die eventually anyway. The real question is how much torture are we willing to put up, until then.

Hehehe they can't force me to switch if I don't have secure boot.

I swear, this shit infuriates me so much when I need to fix booting on some laptop
Wait, really? I've had it disabled for a while for other reasons. I'm safe from a Win11 forced upgrade?
- windows can't install unless your mobo and cpu support secure boot.

Had to get a new laptop for work. Came with Windows 11. It's fine. I actually like one feature it comes with that windows 10 doesn't have. I went through the rigamarole of uninstalling all the nonsense and stopping tracking (yeah, sure I did), and all that. It's a pain. I did it with windows 10. And 7. And I'm sure I fucked around with XP. I'll fuck around with every windows I get.

My PC is windows 10. I won't upgrade. When I build a new one, who knows!

Whats the one feature you like that windows 10 doesn't have?
- Right? Bro left us hanging. I wanna know too lol
- Not OP but personally touch input feels much better implemented on 11 than any previous Windows
I liked one thing about this comment, but I'll never tell...
- Computer users hate him for this one trick!

I'm running Win7 because I don't wanna fiddle around with Linux as the primary use of my computron is gaming. Steam announced that it will stop running on Win7 starting January 2024. Not sure what I will be doing January 2024 yet, currently trying to decide between Linux and a pirated Win10. Open for suggestions.

Linux support with steam is great. Linux is not what it used to be. It's very user friendly these days, just a bit of a learning curve as things are just done differently.
- I came to say this. Steam's Proton is in some black magic fuckery status. It really runs windows games without problems. I had an old laptop which struggled to run windows 10 because telemetry and other shit services and windows update clogging everything, installed Linux and Steam and runs games I already gave up running there. I was very surprised at the fact that Linux gaming is very feasible nowdays. We have a lot to be thankful to steamdecks for.
- Yeah, I heard that things have been moving forward a lot on Linux gaming, thanks.
Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 if you have to stick with Windows. Download from here , then download MAS.
- Bookmarked, thanks.
Linux. But that's my preference. There's no wrong answer. Whichever makes you happy.
Windows 7? How are you getting your security updates?
- I don't. I'm blocking scripts and ads and don't download obvious bait. Security updates are overrated.
You can get legitimate windows 10 using HWID activation, this method was temporarily patched but is now working again.
If you play any games with kernel level anti cheat like Destiny 2 or Fortnite, you will need to go with Win 10. Otherwise, Linux is really easy nowadays. Pick an easy distro like Pop or Mint and you can get into the game pretty easy. Your games that are already installed on NTFS drives can even be easily recognized by Steam with a little work setting up mount points etc
- Nah, I'm more into singleplayer games. Multiplayer games I play are pretty much only D2R and maybe at some point PoE/PoE 2 again, but I doubt a kernel-level anti cheat will ever be a thing there.
  I'll put Mint and Pop on my watchlist, thanks!

I don't even understand why Windows 11 exists. I thought Windows 10 was meant to be the last version and then it was continually upgraded. They never add any particularly good new features, so I'm happy with security updates and staying behind a few months on feature updates to avoid being a beta tester.

Oh, and Windows 11 removed the ability to put the taskbar on the left or right, and I would have thought that perhaps teams of engineers and designers paid 100k+ in a trillion dollar company would be able to make that a reality, regardless of whether or not it's only 1% of users (millions of people) that use that feature. I heard the right click menus have been fucked up by some idiot as well, and the sad thing is they probably spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to make them that way, after many many depressing meetings and someone had to task it all out in Azure, whilst gradually losing the will to live, just to eventually make an already existent feature worse. Nice job Microsoft.

I'm happy to wait until Windows 11 is at least at feature parity with Windows 10 and thoroughly tested before I "upgrade". I suspect some things got better, but it isn't worth it.

I upgraded to windows 11 at the urging of security updates and such.
They really took away a bunch of features that make it difficult, for me as someone with a disability, to use the computer comfortably. I have made complaints about the problem and have basically received only "thank you for your feedback".
I have a loss of mobility in my hands and wrists as well as arthritis, so sometimes I have difficulty using the mouse and clicking around on the screen.
They the slide bars on the side of the file explorer and the web browsers (at least what I've noticed so far) so tiny and hard to click for me since I don't have as much as accuracy as normal users. I have to very carefully focus and make sure I click properly or I can't slide the bar. I attempted to resize this through some settings but it ends up making the web browser slide bars too big and barely makes a difference for the file explorer.
Then in addition to that, the design of the task bar at the bottom where it's centered in the screen is extremely frustrating for me to use. I am constantly misclicking items there as it was and then they added a bunch that I didn't want. I spent probably an hour resizing it and removing unnecessary items there.
And while it doesn't relate to my disability, I didn't like the little dots they used to indicate an open program, I preferred the outline. Which you can change but it wasn't very intuitive, I had to figure it out through googling!
I feel like Windows always grabs ui ideas from the Linux desktops. Well, Windows 11 is Windows but designed by Gnome.

Until they let me use Windows 11 without a TPM, how am I supposed to upgrade?

Well, it's actually not that difficult if you really want to, but there's really no good reason to do so right now. It's basically just the same OS with an even more annoying UI.
- Hi. Would you like to back up to the windows cloud? You can say yes or you can tell us to remind you in a week.
  You want to not be reminded? Fuck you.
I still don't understand the TPM 2.0 requirement. As far as I know there's nothing that Windows 11 does by default that requires TPM, just optional features like BitLocker or Windows Hello
- It establishes the TPM as a common hardware requirement so that these companies can lock down the web and their hardware to kill your right to control your own shit.
- TPM isn't even really the big blocker for most of the CPUs that were excluded -- many have TPM 2.0 functionality. The bigger culprit wrt compatibility is a virtualization security feature called MBEC (AMD has another name) If your CPU doesn't have MBEC the functionality can be emulated in software but it comes at a potentially hefty performance hit.
  IIRC Intel 7th Gen has this feature but it doesn't work properly on some/all chips so that's why the Intel cutoff was 8th Gen. AMD has this feature on Zen 2 and above (Ryzen 3000) but Windows 11 supports Zen+ (Ryzen 2000 & 1600AF) using the emulation although it is indeed a large performance hit. I would see ~15-20% fps increase on my 1600AF in games when disabling the virtualization security settings. Now that I've moved to a Ryzen 5600 the difference between on and off is negligible.

I don't mind windows 11

Gonna be honest. I didn't mind XP, or windows 7 either.
I only got win10 because it was free and for Steam.
But now with SteamOS and all those proton updates, I really wont have a reason to use a Windows computer very soon.

Munt?
- Yeah, have you never heard of the two popular Linux distributions, Ubintu and Munt?
- Maybe they meant "Mint".
Just curious. What does the process of "pushing an app company to go Linux" look like?

Look at the bright side - there’s gonna be shitloads of not that old enterprise hardware on the market.

During the rise of work from home the last few years, my wife needed a home desktop setup. I picked up a used Dell micro for like $200, installed 10 and we were off. She basically just needed an RDP connection so nothing special.

If she needed to continue past when 10 was supported I’d just throw Fedora on there and go through FreeRDP.

I’ve got another micro running some VMs on Proxmox. I love these things.

Seriously this. I got an Optiplex. It's changing my life to have a reliable second computer at my desk.

Putting the obvious privacy issues aside (which also exist in Windows 10), my friends/family who use Windows actually enjoy Windows 11. Most people don't care about privacy, they enjoy running the most recent windows edition whatever that is.

The problem is that Windows 11 introduced some really arbitrary hardware requirements and people who actually want to upgrade don't have the tech knowledge to bypass them. These sites think people hate windows 11 but they're just too poor to upgrade.

It has definitely come with a significant roadblock compared to the ease with which you could move from Windows 7 or 8 to Windows 10. It is a whole lot less straightforward a proposition this time around.

Hell, i refuse to move off win7. And given the eavesdropping behaviour of my laptop even after a deshittification scrub, that's not gonna change any time soon.

Windows 7 is where Microsoft peaked imo.
- 98/XP/7 was a glorious time. Then they decided way too late that they wanted to be tabletgardenwalledadmachines.
  Not on fucking hardware i built you don't.
Is 7 still getting security patches?
- officially no, even ESU ended jan 2023, but you can get around the MSE ones by a manual install. I've also found they allow for extraordinary ones like CVE-2023-29336

the ghost of obsolescence

the 4ᵗʰ ghost of christmas

I had to get a new PC and it came with WIN 11 honestly it's not any more terrible than any other version of Windows once I shut off all the obnoxious options that are defaulted on. But also I never would have bothered installing it if I hadn't gotten an entirely new system.

It's what you can't see that is problematic. The surveillance is turned up to 11. Ba-dum Tish!
- You really think Windows 10 has less tracking? This is the thing that bothers me the most in general. People are quick to just accept what they think is the popular view of something without experiencing it for themselves. Especially in the day and age of social media people just say things are bad because someone they know watched a video that says it was bad.
  Literally, this whole Windows 11 is bad thing started because some tech content creators pointed out that every other version of Windows is bad (which isn't even strictly true) and everyone just agreed with them because they "know what they are talking about". I hold on love for Microsoft, but I also hold no love for Google and Apple because they are corporations and that means you should trust them as far as you can throw them. Windows 11 wasn't even great in the beginning, but I wanted to give it a shot because I wanted the full experience. I wanted to know what I was talking about when I told people not to upgrade. As of right now the general public (e.g. not a bunch of Linux nerds on the Fediverse) are probably fine to use 11. Would I tell people to go out of their way to upgrade? Fuck no. But if a new computer comes with 11 pre-installed they probably wouldn't even notice beyond the taskbar placement.

When Windows sold off to India, i knew it was the end.
Wtf is that supposed to mean?

I'd like to try Linux for real one day, I've hap hazardly tried it a few times over the years but ahh fuck it. I barely have time these days to do shit that I want than worry about switching OS's, maybe when I retire one day or kids move out. Probably too late then, MS will have all the data on me that everyone is so concerned about.

It takes an hour at most to figure it all out. You can test drive it before hand without changing nothing in your computer. And once you figure it out, it can be instantly productive depending on what software you use. Here, Microsoft made a neat guide to teach you how to do it.
I'm very intrigued by everyone's responses and appreciate them. I'm very tempted to give it a go. Perhaps while I'm on leave at the end of the year. Is there a distro that you'd recommend? I mainly game, do game development and watch plex. It's also critical that onedrive works flawlessly. And I also have xbox game pass, this needs to work on Linux too. Doing a quick search, I don't think it does?

So as somebody who has avoided Win11 just because I use a taskbar in a configuration that Win11 doesn't support (docked to the left edge of the screen, no grouping, full text labels) what's the reason other people are avoiding Win11? Something about ads?

Because on the "windows login" thing, I actually like that part. Having automatic cloud sync of my documents and config across machines through OneDrive is handy. I agree it shouldn't be mandatory, but it suits me.

So I just had it forced onto my work machine and here's my take away so far:
It's slow. I don't care about the bells and whistles they added visually, it's slow. Really slow. My workload and usage has not changed one iota from 10 to 11. Every single aspect of my job is the same, i use 90% Microsoft Apps, plus chrome (no choice) and acrobat. WHY IS IT SLOW. My laptop was built for windows 11. Windows 10 ran fine and was not noticeably different in any way other than some visual changes I don't need. Why the fuck is it SLOW. Why. Seriously, why?
I do not care about tabbed explorer, it's fine but it's not a feature I've ever had in an OS or needed. I don't care about most of the other obvious changes, but I do care that my job is now significantly more difficult because my every day tasks take longer and the OS locks up due to high CPU and memory usage even though all apps combined are only using about 20% of my resources. So the OS eats 80% because....i don't know or car why, it fucking sucks and I hate it.
- deleted by creator
- That's how I use a taskbar. Glad I held off on 11
No grouping and full text labels is also why I reverted back to windows 10.
- Same, not upgrading till they fix that. But it seems that by the time that makes its way back, Windows 12 is going to be announced. xD

You are literally the only person on the planet that feels this way. I prefer my OS without ads. You'd be better off staying on Linux

Wow I feel like the lone Mac user on this thread.

This thread is open to anyone that wants to bitch about Windows, you're more than welcome here.
- Well, I’m stuck using a PC at work, and 32 years later they haven’t solved the BSOD. I get a kernel dump at least once a month.
You’re not alone. There are dozens of us. Dozens!!!

This happens over and over again with Windows so I don't really take any of these articles seriously. People will migrate to either 11 or whatever comes next. All the kicking and screaming in the world won't be able to stop them. How long are tech folks going to repeat this cycle?

I've had to use some W11 virtual machines for school. Absolutely miserable user experience, both for everyday tasks and power users. Just.. why?

When I got my new laptop I spent a full hour just trying to delete edge. It's still there, but I think I managed to disable it's auto update.

Ah, so it is exactly like Windows 8

Everyone knows every other version of windows is shit.
My Win 10 is working fine on proxmox for the few games that require windows.

I manage a university computer lab and am only planning to upgrade because new consumer devices ship with it. This has already caused a lot of trouble.

I’m fairly sure Microsoft touted Windows 10 as the “last version of Windows” and were just going to build on and improve it forever.

But yeah Windows 11 is shit. I wish we could all go back to Windows 7.

Windows 7 truly was a blessing; fresh new update and performant, but before the double interface hell and advanced taskbar shit with intrusive ads implemented.
At least that's how I remember it.