The problem with Windows 11, as I see it...

[K4sum1]

10 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

 

Wondering where you are getting that from?  Is it anecdotal or do you have something that you can cite?  Windows 7 had tons of optimization over Vista to improve performance or lower resource use.  I think that you would see many cases of performance improvements after an upgrade.  A good example is WDDM 1.1.  Here, from the Ars Technica review of Windows 7:

 

Windows 7 is backwards compatible with WDDM 1.0, but introduces a new WDDM 1.1 driver model. Almost all the downsides of WDDM 1.0 in Vista are resolved by WDDM 1.1 in 7. Key GDI operations are now hardware-accelerated. In turn, this means that the main memory buffer is no longer required; each window is buffered in video memory alone. In limited scenarios, this can result in a performance reduction (namely, applications that need to examine or manipulate the entire window image now have to read it from video memory, which tends to be slower than reading from main memory), but in general it means that Windows 7 has considerably lower memory usage than Vista; Vista's memory usage scaled according to the number of open windows, 7's system memory usage is constant.

 

I looked at the tests I found, and it doesn't seem like very good testing. It appears they did only one of each test, and when they did multiple tests, they took the maximum instead of the median or mean. I'll probably have to do some tests myself, however, I'm also very lazy.

 

One thing I do know is that WDDM 1.0 has better smoothness, could be due to rendering the UI in DX 9 instead of DX 11 in 7, but I'm not sure. 7 runs better without GPU drivers installed, no matter the vendor or driver version.

I also think I heard that with the platform update and supplement, the RAM usage is about on par with 7 when a WDDM 1.1 driver is used. (WDDM 1.1 is compatible with 1.0) It is something I'd have to test though.

 

31 minutes ago, Aaron44126 said:

On the subject, Windows 8 had many optimizations over Windows 7.  Windows 8.1 also had the only system requirements decrease that Windows has ever seen; Microsoft saw fit to reduce the RAM requirement after putting some memory optimizations.  (That said, Microsoft's RAM requirement has always been laughably low for what one would expect for a decent user experience.)  Anyway, for starters you can look at Microsoft's comments on addressing boot time, memory consumption, and power consumption in Windows 8 (...I miss the days when Microsoft would post stuff like this).

8.x does perform better and is more stable than 7. I usually stick with 7 though due to better compatibility than 8 (artificial incompatibility sucks), and 7 just looks better.

[Ishayin]

On 2/20/2022 at 8:32 PM, Sandy Bridge said:

...

Now that native NTFS driver is interesting news!  On my Windows/Linux dual-boot system, I set up the shared folder as FAT32, since that's what both of them natively supported.  Which is fine 90% of the time, except when it isn't.  Mainly when I want to put a > 4 GB file on it, and I can't, because it's FAT32.  Native NTFS in Linux will solve that problem nicely.

 

I did try installing an ext3 and ext2 driver for Windows back in the day as a solution to that problem, too.  It mostly worked, but could be a little flaky... I think it was just written by one guy in his spare time so I was pleasantly surprised it worked at all, and that I didn't lose data either.  But ultimately it wasn't as reliable of a solution as FAT32, and IIRC it didn't support ext4 or any of the other newfangled file systems so it wasn't a viable forever solution.  So it's great to hear that Linux is finally getting full NTFS support, that will make it more viable to dual-boot and thus lower the barrier to entry in Windows users converting to Linux, either partially or fully.

 

I'm still not going to bet on 2022 being the Year of the Linux Desktop, though...

 

Any particular reason for choosing FAT32 over exFAT?
https://www.howtogeek.com/235655/how-to-mount-and-use-an-exfat-drive-on-linux/

[Sandy Bridge]

23 hours ago, Ishatix said:

 

Any particular reason for choosing FAT32 over exFAT?
https://www.howtogeek.com/235655/how-to-mount-and-use-an-exfat-drive-on-linux/

Most likely it was because it's an older XP/Mint dual-boot system, and FAT32 is natively supported in XP, including in the disk formatting utility for internal drives, which made it very easy to set up.  It looks like I probably could have used exFAT.

[Steerpike]

Have Microsoft given any justification for the complete lack of control over the 'Start' menu - inability to group, inability to control placement, etc?  I don't expect to be wowed by their explanation, just curious if they have one! 

 

I'm finding Windows 11 to be fairly tolerable so far, but I'm only using it for one or two mainstream activities; once I start installing all my old utilities and tools, I will go crazy with the launch process.  I'm aware of 'startisback', and 'ExplorerPatch', both of which aim to restore decent 'start menu' behavior.  Has anyone compared the two? I installed ExplorerPatch briefly and it seemed to have promise. I'm guessing 'startisback' is smoother. 

[Papusan]

1 hour ago, Steerpike said:

Have Microsoft given any justification for the complete lack of control over the 'Start' menu - inability to group, inability to control placement, etc?  I don't expect to be wowed by their explanation, just curious if they have one! 

 

I'm finding Windows 11 to be fairly tolerable so far, but I'm only using it for one or two mainstream activities; once I start installing all my old utilities and tools, I will go crazy with the launch process.  I'm aware of 'startisback', and 'ExplorerPatch', both of which aim to restore decent 'start menu' behavior.  Has anyone compared the two? I installed ExplorerPatch briefly and it seemed to have promise. I'm guessing 'startisback' is smoother. 

Microsoft goes their own ways. Why should they bother with a few peoples needs? Here's the Easter egg for 2022 from Redmond. 

 

 

[Aaron44126]

2 hours ago, Steerpike said:

Have Microsoft given any justification for the complete lack of control over the 'Start' menu - inability to group, inability to control placement, etc?

I haven’t seen anything like this from MS.  Grouping is coming back, it is available in current preview builds.  I am using Start11 which has a good “Windows 10 style Start menu” option, if you actually preferred something like that.

[Steerpike]

I've been using Win 11 for almost a month now, and I have to say, I'm not seeing any issues other than the crappy start menu and taskbar, both of which I've fixed using 'ExplorerPatcher'. Based on what I was reading here, I was expecting ads in Explorer, and who knows what else. I use the laptop for hours every day and I even use Edge for some of my browsing (Chrome also).  There's nothing I like about Win 11, so from that perspective it's a failure but I'm just not finding anything to dislike, so far. Maybe it's early days ... 

[Aaron44126]

Regarding feature stability.

 

Starting with Windows 11, version 22H2 ("2022 Update"), we have some news from Microsoft regarding the timing for new features being activated on Windows 11.

• Old stuff:
  • Microsoft will ship a new "major version" of Windows yearly (in the second half of the year).
  • The time that each "major version" is supported for depends on which Windows edition it is: 24 months (Home/Pro) or 36 months (Enterprise/Education).
  • New features will not be held back until a "major version" drops; they will drop throughout the year "when they are ready".
• New stuff:
  • In order to continue to get new features, you must be on the latest yearly release.  If you stay on an older release that is still supported with monthly patches, you won't be getting new feature additions.
  • New features might not be enabled for everyone all at once.  They are using "controlled feature rollout" so new features might be activated only for a subset of users at first.  (...As if things weren't confusing enough already.)  Users who actively install the "preview" updates released on Windows Update later in each month will get new features first.
  • Here's the one that is most interesting to me.  If you are on Enterprise or Education edition, new features delivered via monthly updates will be disabled by default.  The new features can be enabled via Group Policy, if desired, or otherwise they will remain inactive until you install the next yearly update — which you don't necessarily have to do right away; with 36 months support, you could actually skip a version or two while still receiving security updates.  (If you are on Enterprise/Education edition and you install next year's 23H2 update, all of the "optional" features that were delivered to Home/Pro users during the 22H2 cycle will become active.)
    • [Edit] It is being reported that the feature drop coming in October/November is excluded from this policy.  These features (including tabbed File Explorer) will be enabled by default on Enterprise/Education edition installs.  Basically, these were slated for the 22H2 release but not ready in time?  Subsequent feature additions will not be enabled by default.

This makes me reconsider my strategy for staying on Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC.  If I can use Windows 11 Education Edition and only have to worry about new features dropping when I explicitly choose to upgrade to a new major release, rather than just "maybe anytime a monthly patch shows up", I'll consider using it.  I have several Education Edition licenses.  ...I'll do some testing and evaluate.  It will depend on how "true" to this strategy with feature additions they are, and also how much hassle it is to disable monetizing features (like widgets).

 

Ars Technica article on feature updates

TechRepublic article on feature updates

Trying to find some MS documentation on this feature-update-disabled Group Policy stuff and will update if/when I do...

[ryan]

oh just use the mods and tweaks windows 11 is doable

[Aaron44126]

1 hour ago, ryan said:

oh just use the mods and tweaks windows 11 is doable

 

It's not really just a matter of making it usable (which I understand can be done).  It's a matter of them shoving changes down with no particular schedule that I'll have to figure out how to disable.  This is my PC and I shouldn't have to put up with that...  I want to decide when to upgrade and subject myself to that.  It seems like this has now been addressed with their changes to how features will be rolled out to Enterprise and Education edition systems.  Then... there's also just the "philosophical" issue of them treating end users as the "product" and trying to make money off of them (monetization features) which I also have an objection to and do not want to support.

 

I did start playing with Windows 11 a bit last night.  I upgraded in-place from Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021 to Windows 11 (22H2) Education Edition (leaving myself in a position to roll back if I so choose).  I haven't had a lot of time to mess with it but observations so far:

• Two attempts to get seconds on the taskbar clock came out sub-par.  ElevenClock is nifty but if you interact with the taskbar you will see the native Windows clock popping up over the clock that ElevenClock attempts to put on top of it, which looks pretty messy.  Start11 has a feature to put seconds directly into the native clock, but the width of the clock changes when a "1" pops up in the time, as in the clock font, the number "1" is skinnier than the other numbers, and that causes the tray icons to also shift position and flicker.  (When the seconds ticks through 09, 10, 11, 12... each one of those has a different number of "1"s and causes such a shift.)  I may well program my own solution.
• I fired up RetroArch on a whim and ran an N64 game, and it is rather stuttery rather than butter smooth 60 FPS that I was getting on Windows 10.  Gotta dig in and figure out what's going on there.  Maybe it's pushing too much load onto the E cores.  (A couple of other games/emulators that I tried were fine.)

Call me picky, but these are issues that I didn't have on Windows 10.  And this is just after using the system and trying different things for like 45 minutes.  I'm sure that I'll run into more.

 

It's not all bad.  I do like the "look" better than Windows 10, in general (though I could do without the rounded corners on windows — looks like there is a solution for that).  My primary motivation for upgrading was just to make use of features in my new laptop that Windows 10 does not support.  Thread Director for Alder Lake is an obvious one.  Also, iGPU VRR support is way better; with Windows 10 VRR only works on apps using DirectX 12 or exclusive full screen, whereas it is way more broad support in Windows 11 (22H2).  I'm trying the Start Menu which now has folders for pinned items and seeing if I can tolerate that, but I can always fall back to Start11 if it doesn't work out.

 

[Edit]

Looks like Stardock is addressing my issue with seconds on the clock causing the clock width to change.

[Azther]

18 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

Regarding feature stability.

 

Starting with Windows 11, version 22H2 ("2022 Update"), we have some news from Microsoft regarding the timing for new features being activated on Windows 11.

• Old stuff:
  • Microsoft will ship a new "major version" of Windows yearly (in the second half of the year).
  • The time that each "major version" is supported for depends on which Windows edition it is: 24 months (Home/Pro) or 36 months (Enterprise/Education).
  • New features will not be held back until a "major version" drops; they will drop throughout the year "when they are ready".
• New stuff:
  • In order to continue to get new features, you must be on the latest yearly release.  If you stay on an older release that is still supported with monthly patches, you won't be getting new feature additions.
  • New features might not be enabled for everyone all at once.  They are using "controlled feature rollout" so new features might be activated only for a subset of users at first.  (...As if things weren't confusing enough already.)  Users who actively install the "preview" updates released on Windows Update later in each month will get new features first.
  • Here's the one that is most interesting to me.  If you are on Enterprise or Education edition, new features delivered via monthly updates will be disabled by default.  The new features can be enabled via Group Policy, if desired, or otherwise they will remain inactive until you install the next yearly update — which you don't necessarily have to do right away; with 36 months support, you could actually skip a version or two while still receiving security updates.  (If you are on Enterprise/Education edition and you install next year's 23H2 update, all of the "optional" features that were delivered to Home/Pro users during the 22H2 cycle will become active.)
    • [Edit] It is being reported that the feature drop coming in October/November is excluded from this policy.  These features (including tabbed File Explorer) will be enabled by default on Enterprise/Education edition installs.  Basically, these were slated for the 22H2 release but not ready in time?  Subsequent feature additions will not be enabled by default.

This makes me reconsider my strategy for staying on Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC.  If I can use Windows 11 Education Edition and only have to worry about new features dropping when I explicitly choose to upgrade to a new major release, rather than just "maybe anytime a monthly patch shows up", I'll consider using it.  I have several Education Edition licenses.  ...I'll do some testing and evaluate.  It will depend on how "true" to this strategy with feature additions they are, and also how much hassle it is to disable monetizing features (like widgets).

 

Ars Technica article on feature updates

TechRepublic article on feature updates

Trying to find some MS documentation on this feature-update-disabled Group Policy stuff and will update if/when I do...

another thing you might wanna consider also is if u have LTSC already, you can do an inplace upgrade like i have and it activates enterprise edition automatically unless you wanna use education for a specific reason

[Aaron44126]

5 minutes ago, Azther said:

another thing you might wanna consider also is if u have LTSC already, you can do an inplace upgrade like i have and it activates enterprise edition automatically unless you wanna use education for a specific reason

 

I did in-place upgrade to Education edition.  The only reason that I'm using Education instead of Enterprise is that I have a bunch of Education licenses.  ("LTSC" Enterprise and "regular" Enterprise are licensed separately.)

[Azther]

ah ok, when i upgraded it from LTSC 2021 to enterprise it activated automatically *shrugs*

[Aaron44126]

Well.  Fed up and rolled back.  It's like one minor issue after another. I’ve worked through a few of them, but…

 

The worst issue is, once every day or so, the system enters some kind of stuttery state with high CPU usage on the "System interrupts" process.  I have to reboot to get things back to normal.  Difficult to diagnose as the PC is painfully slow to use while it is going on, but of course you need to actually check it while it is going on to find the issue.  The perceived benefit of Windows 11 to me is minimal, so I just rolled back to Windows 10 LTSC and for now I'm planning to stick to the plan of waiting for the next LTSC release before upgrading.

 

(Maybe after a few months of patches, things would be more stable…)

 

I do have to wait a few hours now to move my ReFS files around (from another Windows 11 install) because Windows 11 automatically "upgrades" ReFS volumes when they are mounted, making the volume unusable from Windows 10, even after a rollback.

[Etern4l]

IMHO the only reason to use Win 11 is to better utilise Alder Lake/Raptor Lake thanks to Intel Thread Director, things can get ridiculous on Windows 10 (if they don't - stay on Win 10), although some more or less cumbersome workarounds exist.

[GeekBear80]

My biggest question regarding Windows 11 as a primary system is why I should bother when it feels like there's way more work that needs to be done before I am back to what I consider a usable state (Windows 7 styling with Aero Glass, proper context menus, taskbar, Start menu and so on). I am talking about running it on my main PC, which is docked most of the time with external monitor, mouse and keyboard and where I certainly don't need anything "touch friendly" due to no touchscreen anywhere in the setup.

 

It feels like a system where the very first thing that I need to do is to "reverse" several changes back to a state where I don't get high blood pressure (which I do, unfortunately since there are products and systems that affect me physically) isn't the first choice.

Is it possible to use Open Shell on Windows 11 or is that a disaster?

Feature updates isn't my cup of tea after I made the big mistake of allowing Windows Update to trash my 20H2 installation with a reinstall needed, which helped me get LTSC way faster (perhaps thank you, Microsoft for boosting that process after all...). I rather have quality updates until several of them did roll out for "feature update X" before the latter is something worthy to be installed, Windows.old and all. 

 

It seems like WindowsBlinds did come out with a version for Windows 11, which is excellent news to me since my eyes hurt when I look at "flat" postmodernistic interfaces even if Windows 11 is a true beauty in comparison with Android 9 and newer (downright ugly filth) or iOS (iToy) and it kind of look decent on product pictures such as Surface promo images and I kind of appreciate the aesthetic it has on a 2-in-1/tablet. 

How is Windows Subsystem for Android working nowadays?

 

It is the feature I would consider going the 11 path for on such a device (replacing the smartphone with a Windows 11 PC small form factor is my dream).

 

Edit: I'm not surprised about Windows 11 not really holding a candle compared to Windows 10 LTSC. Both LTSC 2019 and 2021 runs great here, highly reliable systems and they offer the most trouble free experience I ever had on this side of Mac OS X 10.3.x Panther (which had excellent reliability).

[Steerpike]

On 10/27/2022 at 11:36 AM, GeekBear80 said:

My biggest question regarding Windows 11 as a primary system is why I should bother when it feels like there's way more work that needs to be done before I am back to what I consider a usable state ...

Certainly a valid question to ask if you are on an older machine and already happy with W10. I certainly wouldn't voluntarily go from W10 to W11.  But for those of us who purchase brand new machines with the latest processors, with W11 pre-installed, it's really not much effort to restore the few key things that make W10 better than W11.  On my LG Gram 17, I installed "explorer patcher' and made a few other changes (disabled 'modern standby'). On my second new machine (Samsung NP950) , I'm actually leaving W11 'as is', to see just how annoying it is, and to see if I can get used to it.  I'm actually doing OK with it. 

 

So far - after several months of use - I'm not finding anything about W11 (with my slight modifications) that is really annoying. 

[Aaron44126]

So, I spent a few days on Windows 11 (see above) and what really stood out to me was... it really wasn't much different than Windows 10 in terms of actually using it.

 

Granted:

• I use Directory Opus in place of File Explorer.
• I use Start11 in place of the default Start Menu.
  • Start11 can also put seconds on the taskbar clock (requires at least Windows 11 22H2, doesn't work with 21H2).  There was an issue with this when I tried it, but one thing that I like about about StarDock is that they fix things promptly.
• I immediately got this app launching at startup to remove rounded corners.
• ...So, really the only thing immediately noticeable during regular use (other than the stability issues that forced my rollback) was that the taskbar looked a little bit different.

I'm still sticking with Windows 10 (LTSC), but the reasoning is more ideological than technical.  I like the promise that they will support it but that they won't change stuff.  You don't get that with Windows 11.  I have the system working how I like, and I don't want it to be messed with...  I'm of the opinion that it should be me and not Microsoft who decides when an OS feature upgrade is going to be applied.  I'll take monthly security/stability patches but additional features shouldn't be lumped in with those (especially since at least half of them are things that I'll just want to figure out how to disable).

 

Also, there's just a never-ending stream of bugs that I keep seeing for the new 22H2 version.  Task Manager not allowing "safely remove hardware", NVIDIA GPU performance issues ...(oh, and more of them), AMD CPU performance issues, broken Windows Hello, and so on and so on.  Maybe it's that I no longer have a tolerance or time for having to deal with this sort of stuff and I'd just as soon let things settle down for a bit before I upgrade.  Maybe it's that Microsoft's level of QC for new Windows releases has taken a nosedive since Windows 10's release.  (Maybe both.)  I'll sit it out for a while yet.

 

If I do ever switch back to mainstream Windows, I think that I will run it a year behind for maximum stability / least disruption.  I.e., when Windows 11 version 23H2 comes out in fall 2023, maybe I will try again upgrading to 22H2 and see how that goes; the major bugs should all be long sorted out by then, and they won't be dropping new features on it anymore.  Then when 24H2 comes out, I can upgrade to 23H2.  Etc.

[GeekBear80]

I will be happy to give Windows 11 a go when the LTSC version is released and it is pretty simple reasoning behind it: When Microsoft consider it stable enough to be deployed in "critical" environments is also the time when I will consider it good enough as a daily driver. It is still way too much work in progress considering the bugs still encountered to have that status yet.

 

Running mainstream Windows after this time with LTSC would be hard unless we are talking about a debloated Enterprise as a base, which might work OK. I am still wary of feature updates, though. 

 

A lot of the issues with Windows 11 I think are rising from the fact that it is a kind of "hybrid" between Windows 10 and Windows Core OS (10X), a bit like when Windows 95 were a hybrid between legacy DOS/Windows 3.x and Windows NT - those "mixtures" tend to be sensitive. This would be another good reason to simply wait for Windows 11 LTSC before upgrading.

 

To me, using LTSC has nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with technology and stability/reliability, which I certainly have high on my list of priorities after using Mac OS X 10.3.x for years without issues (it became a reference point for me in terms of reliability) and also Mac OS X 10.6.x, which also did run really well. LTSC feels pretty much the same and switching over to something "experimental" with new features constantly added, causing issues isn't something I want as a daily driver. It can be fun in a VM/test environment but not as my primary system. 

 

Microsoft did start to talk about Windows 12 for a reason and I am pretty sure it will mark the transition over to the newer system design, including the new driver model (Windows Drivers as they started to call them when they came out for the 10X prototype system). So it seems like 11 is an "intermediate" system meant to bring up the hardware to a newer standard before deploying 12 as the major new system.

[Aaron44126]

50 minutes ago, GeekBear80 said:

When Microsoft consider it stable enough to be deployed in "critical" environments is also the time when I will consider it good enough as a daily driver.

 

Excellent point.  I was thinking about this more after making my previous post.  I like the idea of waiting for a Windows client/LTSC release that has parity with a proper Windows Server release before upgrading, because that is one that they will for sure pay extra attention to.  Microsoft tends to do that with their LTSC releases, but they didn't do it with LTSC 2021 — but, LTSC 2021 is essentially based on an (at the time) 18-month old Windows 10 release, version 2004, old enough to be pretty solid.

 

And I also remembered that I wanted to reply to your post above but forgot about it after going off track in my last post...

 

On 10/27/2022 at 2:36 PM, GeekBear80 said:

Is it possible to use Open Shell on Windows 11 or is that a disaster?

How is Windows Subsystem for Android working nowadays?

 

When I tried Open Shell on Windows 11, it "sort of" worked, but the way they stick the button onto the taskbar...  It doesn't fully cover up the "native" Start button so it's possible to click that one by accident.  That was about a year ago, though, it might have been fixed by now.  That said, Open Shell doesn't seem to have a tremendous amount of dev interest behind it for making serious improvements.  For example, I asked them about a situation where you change the Windows DPI scaling ratio during a session.  Open Shell doesn't handle this properly, so you will end up with buttons and menus that are way too large or way too small depending on which way you go.  I did get a response but they didn't seem to be interested in addressing this.

 

I've been happily using Start11 for a while now.  You have to pay a few bucks, but it works really well and has a lot of options.  I've posted a few bug reports on their forum and as long as they can reproduce them internally, they've always addressed them for the next release.

 

As for Windows Subsystem for Android, I played with that for the first time about a month ago.  Definitely interesting.  I didn't have any trouble with it "working", but the officially available selection of apps was pretty limited.  (I know that there are also ways to sideload apps... including the full Google Play store.  Didn't try that.)  I was pleased that app discovery works really well, installed apps just show up in the Start Menu and they can be pinned to the taskbar without hassle.  It does have a notable startup delay...  When you start an Android app, if you didn't have any others running, it has to basically boot up Android which takes several seconds.  The other issues I have are more to do with just what it is like to shove a touch-focused app onto a traditional PC.  Keyboard and mouse interactions are kind of wonky in some apps.  You're used to using arrow keys or PgUp/PgDn or the mouse scroll wheel to scroll, for example, but that might not work as you expect (or at all).  I'm sure at least some app developers will take note that they have a new potential Windows audience and update their apps to work more smoothly inside of WSA.

[GeekBear80]

 I use WindowBlinds to get Aero Glass on Windows 10 LTSC 2021 and I wouldn't mind Start11 when it is time to go there (when 11 LTSC is out) but not before then.

 

WSA is interesting as an Android device replacement to me since I just can't stand what Google did to the system with 9 and newer versions. On a 2-in-1 or tablet I have a feeling that it bring the important benefit of being able to more or less eliminate the smartphone altogether, which is what I am aiming up (2022 smartphones make me physically ill from all annoyances and frustrations they bring). Running WSA with sideloaded Play Store means the ability to run specific apps on a proper operating system without artificial restrictions and without dumb overpriced hardware when there's perfectly good micro PCs available.

 

Running it in a traditional desktop environment feels a bit so-so, though. I do have some experiences of some Android apps that just can't understand what a remote control is on a TV box because their developers think that everything is touchscreen, touchscreen uber alles...

 

[6730b]

lol

Considerably more businesses running Windows 7 than Windows 11
https://betanews.com/2022/10/10/businesses-running-windows-7-than-windows-11/

People just aren't switching to Windows 11
https://betanews.com/2022/11/01/windows-11-low-share/

[GeekBear80]

I would say that I am not surprised that people aren't switching unless you have one of the following:

Alder Lake
Tablet

2-in-1 

 

Microsoft did improvements in those areas and if you don't have something that fit the bill, no need to switch. It would be highly surprising if Windows 11 would be a "resounding" success considering what it offers. 
 

[Etern4l]

The problem with Windows with general is that you leave too much performance on the table. Casual users don't mind, which is what this system is all about.

[GeekBear80]

I am not totally convinced that Windows is just for "casual users" considering the existence of Enterprise and Enterprise LTSC. There's two other operating systems that are very "casual": iOS and Android (versions from 9 and up are so casual oriented and dumbed down that I always long for Windows 95 with all its power every time I have high blood pressure from the latter OS).

What I would say, though is that Windows hasn't been the most "optimized" system generally speaking; it is quite demanding in comparison with such a system as the Amiga OS, which still is the most resource efficient one (among one of them) in terms of feature set, flexibility, interface and hardware requirements.

The standards of today are very low, though and compared to Android 12/13 (which are the worst systems I have ever encountered), Windows 10 and 11 are impressively resource efficient considering that they can run on 4GB RAM hardware with perfectly good feature set, while we have atrocious smartphones with 8-16GB RAM that are just adfilled experiences with simple dumb "apps" and a system with serious limitations (all of them artificial), resulting in the need to a "Go edition" (further dumbed down) to run on 2GB RAM devices. It really make Windows look like extreme high tech and the highest level of optimization and refinement.

There are operating systems that would be able to outperform Windows easily based on technical merit but the development did move backwards over the last decade and compared to the absolute filth that is Android 12/13 in 2022, even Windows 11 Home is extreme refinement and sophistication.

It is necessary to set the perspectives straight: For all faults of Microsoft, there are systems that are really bad and no, it's not that Windows shouldn't be better or could be better than it is but it is perhaps a bit harder to move in the right direction when people keep worshipping/defending/explaining "simplicity" and insist that Android/iOS are some kind of "reference" that should guide how operating systems should look and function.