Windows 11 still sucks.

[Night Wing]

Since some of us like to hear about the "problems" about Windows 11, problems never cease. And it isn't always affecting the Retail markte. Even Enterprise has it problems with Window 11 updates. The article at the link came out yesterday (Dec 4th).

https://www.ghacks.net/2025/12/04/micro ... prise-pcs/

[back2themoon]

Never is a strong word, but we can safely say there will NEVER be a time when Windows 11 will not suck.

Consequently, it's almost natural for this thread to derail.

[frostknight]

It's definitely part exasperation, also part being less clear in the head, but it just seems that whenever we do land on linux which is predictable, of course, it immediately veers off from the spirit of what this thread was made for and into the dungeons of very specific things to do for very specific situations in linux.
I mean if that is what everyone wants then sure, have at it. I'll just step back in that case.

Well like others have said, windows 11 is truly horrific, that is indeed why I think people talking about linux.

Although you know me, I thought windows was looking ugly by XP but I didn't voice it till I looked way back.

I am glad I abandoned it before 10 came out. That would have been chaotic...

[Mæstro]

Although you know me, I thought windows was looking ugly by XP but I didn't voice it till I looked way back.

Was it the icon set for you? XP made it possible to restore the traditional start menu and task bar, and I remember activating the classic theme on Windows 7, not on aesthetic grounds but because it made my processor run a few degrees cooler.

[frostknight]

Was it the icon set for you? XP made it possible to restore the traditional start menu and task bar, and I remember activating the classic theme on Windows 7, not on aesthetic grounds but because it made my processor run a few degrees cooler.

Probably, I liked the look of older windows better

[BloxDeGroteUnsklled]

I predict that Windows 12 is coming next year. If you notice, Windows 10 came out in 2015, one year after OS X Yosemite and Windows 11 came out in 2021, one year after macOS Big Sur. So Windows 12 could come out one year after macOS Tahoe. Basically, the current pattern is a new Windows release a year after a new, fully redesigned macOS version.

[jobbautista9]

If there's going to be a new Windows release and they're trying to follow macOS then the next Windows could probably be called Windows 26 instead of Windows 12...

Off-topic:
I hate that the current macOS release codename sounds like "Touhou". Yeah it's supposed to be named after some American lake but everytime I see "Tahoe" I remember the clip of xQc butchering the pronunciation of Touhou

[Mæstro]

Version number wars have left their scar even on Pale Moon. They obscure the actual differences between iterations of a system. Windows 7–10 adapted the numbering scheme for NT versions. (Vista was 6.) Windows 11 retains 10’s version of NT, which contributes towards it being, in my mind, just a later edition of ‘the last version of Windows’. Much as Microsoft cut off support earlier for W10 versions from before 2018(?), so it has now for those before 2021. Year numbers would be a return to the XX^th century pattern for Microsoft, not that Microsoft wishes to restore anything of its second-millennium self but its monopoly. Judging from Mac’s rising use share, as I have discussed elsewhere, I think the firm has begun to regard Apple as a real threat, at least in the richer countries, in a way it was not twenty or thirty years ago. Throughout this century, Mac OS X point releases have appeared every year or two. It has always been clear that Apple could outpace Microsoft in a counting match if they held one, but this has only become relevant lately.

Off-topic:
As for a Touhou OS…

[moonbat]

I think the firm has begun to regard Apple as a real threat

MIcrosoft long ago pivoted away from being an OS vendor to a cloud services company, and Azure is what brings in their maximum revenue, followed by Office 365 and only then Windows (perhaps Xbox is higher than Windows at this point). Their rivals are Amazon AWS, Google Cloud and similar. It's why they gutted their testing and QA staff years ago, why Windows has been turning to shit since 8 and a subscription model is inevitable. The corporate enterprise sector will anyway continue to dominate Windows license sales over end user Home edition ones. In terms of absolute revenue, Microsoft is making far more than it did during the late 90s during the time of the browser wars and the anti-trust cases. So they don't care about consumer Windows usage; people will inevitably roll over and shell out the subscription rather than move to Linux (despite frostnight's deepest fantasies ). Even with Apple I daresay the iPhone and app store are their main money printers compared to Mac hardware.

While creators (programmers,graphic designers, engineers etc) will always need a proper computer, they are vastly outnumbered by net consumers of content who primarily or exclusively use smartphones and so by sheer numbers alone it's more profitable to target the latter.

[andyprough]

While creators (programmers,graphic designers, engineers etc) will always need a proper computer, they are vastly outnumbered by net consumers of content who primarily or exclusively use smartphones and so by sheer numbers alone it's more profitable to target the latter.

Yes, by about 2016 Android had surpassed Windows globally as the most used operating system across all consumer device types, and in 2025 Android has a commanding lead. Here's some of the data as summarized on wikipedia:

As of August 2025, Android, which uses the Linux kernel, is the world's most popular operating system with 44.51% of the global market, followed by Windows with 27.39%, iOS with 15.94%, macOS with 5.29%, and other operating systems with 6.86% . This is for all device types excluding embedded devices.

Android and iOS combined will probably soon have triple the number of worldwide users compared to Windows.

[Moonchild]

Doesn't look like Microsoft is going to wait until Windows 12. They plan to "evolve" Windows 11 into an "agentic OS"
https://youtu.be/zKjo8Oc2qLk

[Night Wing]

@ Moonchild

That was an EXCELLENT video you posted. I have not seen that one, but it did come out about 15 hours ago at the time of this post. I do not and I will never use an "agentic" operating system. I do not want any AI program making any decisions for me or worse, actually implementing those decisions for me without my consent.

When Microsoft started implementing so called "quality updates" and "cumulative updates, starting in or around August of 2016, that was when I formatted my dual boot Windows 7 hard drive and installed Linux Mint on that drive so it was a mirror image of my default drive which I use everyday which already had Linux Mint on it.

I consider myself lucky that I did not have any Windows only programs which would not run on Linux. So it was very easy for me to kick Windows to the curb. But for those programs I did like and which were Windows only, it was never a deal breaker for me to keep using Windows when I decided to go "all in" when it came to the world of Linux.

Since I have been volunteering at the computer shop which my next door neighbor owns for the last 14 years, back then I was "averaging" turning one Windows computer into a Linux computer once every two months. Fast forward to today. The shop is "averaging" turning one Windows computer into a Linux computer every week.

That is fifty-two linux computers in one year's time. But the average really picked up during the last four years. That coincides with the release of Windows 11 in October of 2021.

[frostknight]

Doesn't look like Microsoft is going to wait until Windows 12. They plan to "evolve" Windows 11 into an "agentic OS"
https://youtu.be/zKjo8Oc2qLk

I have a feeling they will keep going down that road with each new version. Hence why I am glad I jumped the ship before windows 10.

Very glad in fact.

[Mæstro]

https://youtu.be/zKjo8Oc2qLk

As well as confirming what Moonbat said about Microsoft having lost genuine interest in home users now that its revenue comes elsewhere, this reminded me that Mac exists, not merely as a long-standing competitor to Windows which claims larger shares of a pie chart, but as another viable choice for those displeased with Windows’ recent course, but unable for whatever reason to migrate to Linux. I have got another friend like this: the one who drew my previous profile picture. As an artist, he relies on Clip Studio Paint. He hates Windows 11, LLM and his current Lenovo computer, and would be happy to switch to Linux, but he has tested it in Wine and found that certain advanced software features he relies upon do not work properly, and he could not replicate these in Krita or other software available for Linux. Thanks to this film, I thought to check and learnt that CSP supports Mac. When I told him, he was pleased and is now open to buying a used Mac.

We like Linux here, yet despite holding a mixed attitude towards Apple, it is far warmer than that I can give for Microsoft since 2012. In my own experience in 2020–21, I could tolerate using a modern Mac for academic business, whereas I could not use Windows 11 in this way. Commercial software support for Mac is sturdy enough that it can serve for the man on the Clapham omnibus. In this context, it is quite ironic that Apple’s internal decisions motivate Microsoft’s to make Windows worse. I do not imagine this is quite what people mean by race to the bottom.

[Moonchild]

There's just one major issue with Mac: there is no such thing as a budget Mac; Apple clearly targets solely the more affluent consumer with its products. Budget Windows PCs exist plenty. So its not really a viable alternative if you aren't able to afford the hardware needed for the OS.

[Mæstro]

Indeed, a Mac would be too dear for me personally. My friend is rich. One can tell whom Mac targets by the languages the OS supports: most, but not all, national languages of Europe and Asia, while Windows fills in the gaps and throws a bone to Abyssinia and Peru. We do a better job supporting international users than Apple.

---

My mind returned through another post to something mentioned here earlier:

Some Windows 10/11 rants are here: http://toastytech.com/evil/rants.html

Among his rants, the webmaster complained in 2005 as a Windows 95 user that most software then released only for Windows 2000 and XP. The equivalent today, a gap of seven years (less if service packs are stipulated), would be requiring Windows 10 version 1806 (≙ Windows Server 2019) or higher, which would appear to be the case for lots of software today. Some things have changed less than we think.

Legacy support would even appear to be worse in Linuxland than Windowsia. Canonical claims to support LTS for ten years, but I know too little of the Ubuntu community to know how robust application support remains in the later years in a given release’s cycle. It has come up in other threads that third-party support for Debian 10 has already waned. Even Freexian, tasked with maintaining Debian security updates for the last five years, chooses packages to maintain on an ad hoc basis per paying businesses’ needs, hence my Chromium installation having been left to rot. Compare Windows 2000 (supported 1999–2010), XP (2001–14/19), 7 (2009–2020/24) and 10 (2015–25/32), where software releases tended to target an iteration for about two years after general support ended. Probably, this simply follows from Windows’ much greater popularity, nothing inherent to the operating systems involved. Apple support timelines are too little known to me for me to give much comment about them for now, but because I think they are about five years for recent versions, I presume they resemble the situation here in Debian.

Minding my recent experiences, I recall installing software being much easier on Windows, although it was harder to move between directories once installed. Any counterpart to a simple executable in Linux is harder to use (eg shell scripts) or less reliable (eg Appimage).

[BloxDeGroteUnsklled]

macOS Tahoe is just as bad as Windows 11, if not worse. That's why I haven't upgraded to it yet.

[Mæstro]

Tahoe is just as bad as Windows 11, if not worse.

How would you compare the two?

[Night Wing]

Off-topic:
At the shop I volunteer at, we have noticed a few things about the newer Apple laptops. Quite a few of them are difficult when taking them apart for repairs. Some of these laptops, are "glued" shut when trying to separate the top and bottoms of the laptop.

So trying to get to the motherboard is a royal "pita". They are easy to break if one is not very, very careful. The owner of the shop is now considering not doing anymore repair work because of the easy breakage which might occur putting the shop liable for damages.

I think the powers that be at Apple are trying to get more repair work inhouse so to speak (sending the laptop to a registered Apple dealer) and trying to "cut out the middle man" (repair shops like us) from fixing Apple laptops.

Or Apple just wants people to buy a brand new Apple laptop model. Since Apple attracts more affulent people money wise, I think Apple is counting on these same people to purchase a new Apple laptop.

[Mæstro]

Some months ago, I said this:

I have heard so much about Windows 10 LTSC and the like, and I understand that certain users have created comprehensive themes and shells to remove flat design from the younger Windows versions and otherwise model them after their elders. I have never tried these for myself, but knowing these exist makes Windows 10 somewhat more respectable in my eyes. The same could hold for the newest Windows versions also if the same conditions were met.

Yesterday, I stumbled upon some progress, as far as appearances are concerned. It is impressive to see this, although I know nothing still about how far progress has gone in suppressing forced updates, LLM use and telemetry.