Win 11 wasn’t even the primary choice among Windows users.
Rest in peace, Windows 7
Using windows 11 got me to switch my home PC to Linux at the start of the year so I have them to thank or that. My work PC just got updated from W10 to W11 and so far it’s so much worse than I was expecting, purely based on performance/buginess alone. I have no problems with most the features but it all feels one step forward two steps back when the whole system seems to be much less responsive
It’s insane how many stupid little problems there are with it. Especially on functionality that has existed for years/decades. It’s like they just change shit for the sake of changing it and then the changes aren’t tested properly to make sure they work. Absolutely ridiculous coming from such a massive company. It’s clear they give zero fucks about the user experience.
What I don’t understand about Windows 11 is why they can’t seem to fix the weird delay that now exists across the entire UI.
Right click, weird delay, menu shows up.
Press the Start button, weird delay, menu shows up.
Open Explorer, weird delay, program shows up.
Enter text in the search field, weird delay, results show up.
Windows 10 didn’t have that delay.
It has to run your actions by the AI to be sure they are properly recorded and sent to Microsoft.
Isn’t it because they are using a react app for the win 11 UI?
The coolest part is that if your internet goes down and windows can’t tell, your start menu will either never open or never have contents. It becomes completely useless. Fun!
I read a long time ago that delays had to be added to desktop UIs because users didn’t think the computer was “working” if it responded in a single video frame. Maybe the M$ LLM read that too and took it to heart.
I should have switched to linux a few years back as I was on windows due to having the same system as my wife to ease tech support duties. That changed and lazyness kept me static until windows 11 being forced forward that got me to change in the last year. Main regret was not getting my but in gear and doing it a few years sooner.
I’m not on Win11, but I read somewhere that disabling the animation effects makes the system much more responsive.
This is real petty, but on my work laptop, moving from W10 to W11 removed the popup calendar in the taskbar on secondary monitors and however many years later, it still messes me up every day.
I put my work computer on Linux(NixOS) lol. When I do IT for users on Win 11 I’m constantly like "Why is this so slowwww? ".
Same. I got sick of Windows late last year and swapped to Linux in October/November.
What was your experience like?
TLDR; Overall, great. Had some growing pains but Linux feels faster/snappier than windows.
I’m a developer and a self host “enthusiast”, so I was already a little familiar with Linux, but I ended up hopping from OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, to Kubuntu, to Arch Linux (using KDE Plasma).
I had issues with Tumbleweeds package manager, and overall it felt clunky. They have stricter security than other distros and it caused some weirdness with Dolphin and some other utilities/packages.
Kubuntu was fine but then I came across an article that Valve was going to be directly collaborating with Arch, so I said screw it and jumped to Arch.
I absolutely love Arch, but it definitely has a learning curve. I found a gentleman on youtube (OldTechBloke) that walked through installing it and has a Gitlab repo with all of the commands to install. I took that and used it as a starting point and modified it over the past ~8-9 months to suit my needs (I’ve installed it on two other laptops now as well)
The biggest issues I’ve had have been related to Nvidia, and oddly enough, my Gigabyte motherboard. I had to enable several kernel parameters so “sleep” would work correctly. Luckily the arch wiki is incredibly detailed.
For a regular user, I would recommend Kubuntu or Linux Mint.
Edit: Also, I dual booted for a while but I’m at a point now where I haven’t been on Windows since like… February. PUBG and Tarkov are the only things keeping Windows around on my PC.
I’m just waiting for escape from tarkov to send the email to battle eye to enable Linux support and I’ll throw windows into the sun
I recommend dual booting if that’s the only thing holding you up, as long as you keep Linux/windows on separate disks. I am in linux most of the time but I keep windows around just in case I need to use software that doesn’t work with wine/proton. It seems daunting but you’ll start learning how to use Linux as soon as you start using it as your daily driver.
If you are playing Tarkov on a daily basis then I could see that getting old quick
I’m not unfamiliar with Linux and I do for the most part play daily
I have Win 11 at work and I hate it so much for so many reasons I don’t even know where to start.
I know it’s the trend right now, but I hate rounded corners for one. I like having my whole desktop real estate to be used. And the shrunken floating taskbar is a GUI ergonomic nightmare. I want to just throw my cursor into a corner without looking and click with the confidence that it will open my start menu.
Speaking of which, my task bar keeps freezing every day I use it so my system tray and even the time is never accurate.
The start menu is a fucking mess. I really loved the Windows 10 start menu with its tiles and groups. Now you have to manually pin everything, it’s all small icons and you can’t have them in groups. You have to create sub-folders to put the icons in, adding an extra click for nothing.
I hate that it comes with an integrated AI and I hate that it has this privacy nightmare “recall” feature or whatever the fuck that takes sreenshots of your monitor to feed its AI.
I went 100% Linux last fall with Kubuntu. I added a tiled menu and even added Windows 10 style window decorations to complete the look and feel.
With the latest advancements in Steam, Wine and Proton, which has been able to play every game I threw at it so far, it’s become such a powerful OS.
I’ve never been happier!
I’ve just ditched my win 10 partition for a mac mini purely to run some cad software. As a KDE user I find it hard to articulate my hatred for what the fuck is going on with macOS design philosophy.
Not having used win 11 since its first release, it’s funny how much of the above frustration I’m going through with the mac, both suck beyond suck now it seems. The base mac mini for £600 would be an amazing deal, if it was running Linux.
Isn’t there a Linux distro for Mac?
I was just forced to update at work and i haven’t stopped bitching about it since!
A couple other complaints:
- I’ve been a top-taskbar person for a long time and now it’s locked to the bottom.
- Also the emoji picker isn’t as easy or efficient to use as it now requires extra inputs.Thanks Winblows devs. I hate you. 🥰
I went 100% Linux last fall with Kubuntu.
For those reading along, this person is talking about the KDE Plasma desktop environment. The Kubuntu Linux distribution uses it by default, but you can also install and switch to it on just about any popular Linux distro, even if it’s not the default.
I use Plasma, too. It’s good, reasonably familiar, and respects the fact that people might want to tweak things to fit their needs.
I use Arch with KDE Plasma and it looks like a clean version of the traditional desktop you’d expect on Windows, with a bottom taskbar, start menu, etc. But with a really clean theme and tailored to my needs.
My wife is also using Arch with the exact same KDE Plasma version… But hers looks exactly like a Mac, with a rounded translucent dock, a menu bar at the top, widgets, animated wallpapers and so on.
So yeah KDE Plasma is amazing, it will adapt to your exact preferences and not get in the way.
Since my work “upgraded” to windows 11 the task bar is the bane of my existence.
We all run a laptop docked with two monitors. In windows 10 I would set a monitor as primary, drag the task bar to the laptop screen. That would result in the most real estate for the software I use with out clutter.
Can’t fucking do this is 11. It’s either primary or all monitors for task bar. Someone suggested auto hide the task bar. Holy shit even that has been fucking ruined in 11. It turns off randomly and frequently. Plus notifications seem to over ride the hiding.
It’s a fucking mess I tell ya. They put all the effort into spying on their users instead of making the actual OS function.
Speaking of which, my task bar keeps freezing every day I use it so my system tray and even the time is never accurate.
If you have multiple monitors, change the setting so it only displays on the primary monitor and see if that makes a difference.
Ah yes, it does happen when I have an extra monitor. I’ll try it next time.
Thanks!
Hi. I’m a Linux convert and hate Windows as well, but I feel the need to contest some of this
I hate rounded corners […] I like having my whole desktop real estate to be used
Rounded corners only lose something like 30 pixels (assuming 100% resolution scale) out of the millions on screen. Serious question, no shade or sarcasm: do you need those corner pixels? Plus in Windows 11, the window corners are only rounded when the window is floating. The corners go square when the window is snapped and maximized so you get those corner pixels back anytime real estate matters most.
I want to just throw my cursor into a corner without looking and click with the confidence that it will open my start menu.
That’s always been the case since… the Start menu was invented, I think? In Windows 11, just set your taskbar to Left instead of Center and you get that behavior back.
[The Start menu is] all small icons and you can’t have them in groups.
The former is correct, the latter isn’t. I exclusively keep my icons in groups, in the grid along with regular pins, on my last remaining Windows 11 computer. As someone who loves KDE, it drives me crazy that I can’t keep my own in-grid groups like in Windows 11. Closest option I have is Plasma Drawer, which works but requires me to use the KDE Menu Editor to customize which is less convenient.
The taskbar freezing thing sucks for sure, my only recommendation would be to maybe try a 3rd party replacement like StartAllBack but it isn’t free.
As someone who loves KDE, it drives me crazy that I can’t keep my own in-grid groups like in Windows 11.
Hey, check out Tiled Menu for a menu with a grid.
The rounded corners thing is definitely all about individual taste. my brain just likes to have the whole space filled. The rounded corners for me feels so… 2000’s Windows XP/ Early GNOME.
The start menu thing, yeah you can configure it. And no, before Windows 8, I think, there used to be a Gao of a few pixels around the start button if I remember well.
And as for the start menu tiles, again that’s all individual taste I guess, but I sincerely think that ergonomically speaking, it is better.
Can you show an example of what the in grid groups look like? I can’t really imagine what it would look like.
I want to just throw my cursor into a corner without looking and click with the confidence that it will open my start menu.
So change it, that’s a setting that’s been there since day one on W11 to move the Start menu and taskbar stuff back to the left corner.
The start menu is a fucking mess. I really loved the Windows 10 start menu with its tiles and groups. Now you have to manually pin everything, it’s all small icons and you can’t have them in groups. You have to create sub-folders to put the icons in, adding an extra click for nothing.
The tiles were one of the biggest things people complained about on Windows 8 and 10 compared to previous versions. The Windows 11 Start Menu works more like previous versions in this regard, because that’s something people were VERY vocal about wanting back.
And I really don’t get it.
People were used to the multi-level app menu in Windows 7 and before. The tiled menu might have been too much of a change. But it made sense. Less frequently used applications could have smaller icons and more commonly used one have bigger icons so they’re easier to find and click. It was great ergonomically speaking.
The people were wrong! lol
A lot of those problems is 100% fixable through the settings menu…
And so you spend hours tweaking the UI only to have it nuked by an update. If you’re gonna rice your desktop, run Linux!
If you have privileges from corporate IT and it doesn’t get reverted, or overridden to push more AI.
For 48h until they update
Which also means you have roughly 6 years before they make you switch again…
Wooops the requirements have been heightened insert corporate excuse that people will eat up.
Linux Requirements: Computer*
*optional
“Don’t you guys have quantum computers?”
I’ll stick with Win10 and third party protection until my GPU, games or gaming related apps/peripherals stop working. Until then, I see no reason to upgrade, even if they were to pay me to do it.
At least switch to a Linux build. Hell, install a portable one on a USB stick to see if you like it first. The lack of security updates for W10 means you could very easily end up with a zombie computer on your home network.
Probably not a good idea once they stop security patches for win10.
Currently, in my head, moving to win11 (assuming you wont use linux) makes the most sense instead of foregoing security patches (whenever they stop).
Really? Sorry for my ignorance, but isn’t it possible to keep a secure system with malware software and firewalls? I might have to reconsider and just hate MS for moving that quickly to a halfassed OS :(
Super simplistic view: Malware detection is kinda like having a motion sensor in your house. Doesn’t do much to prevent but can help you catch something. If it notices right away it might prevent something being stolen.
Firewall is like having locks on your windows and doors. It helps keep out the curious and respectful, but not the dedicated.
Security updates aren’t necessarily for either of those things. It might be that someone discovered a way to steal your keys, or cut open a window bypassing a lock, or sneak into your basement, or crawl through the pet door. Patches “fix” those vulnerabilities. The longer software (Windows in this case) goes unmaintained the more of those are discovered, revealed, and generally accessible for people to use and exploit your system.
Highly recommend trying a live Linux USB just to poke around and see if it’s as much of a hassle as it seems at the time.
Thanks a lot, you rock!
Go to www.massgrave.dev and check the tutorial for upgrading your existing Windows 10 install to Windows 10 IoT LTSC 2019. You’ll have security updates until 2032 I think.
Wow, that looks pretty simple too, thanks!
How do you get third party protection? I’ve no desire to switch either but I don’t want to go without malware protection.
This looks like a nice solution. I have not looked into it or tried yet: https://massgrave.dev/windows10_eol
Can’t believe it’s been 4 years since Windows 11. It feels like only yesterday when I was a Windows Insider for Windows 10 and Windows Phone 10.
The second Windows 10 expires, I’m switching to the Penguin
Start now friend, it may take time to find alternatives for some of your workflow, also to find a flavour you prefer, Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, etc, there is a lot of choice. I’ve been slowly trying to get everything setup for a while now. Only a few more little apps and things to finish the switch. sadly I will still need windows for several VR games performance wise, some are just too stuttery on nix. I used to love Ubuntu/Gnome but KDE is a better environment, from the reading I did, for VR with an Nvidia vid card
Why waiting? Do it now. Give Linux Mint a try, or elementaryOS if you want a mac-like experience.
Test it out on an old PC, you gotta have one hanging around the house. After a couple of weeks you’ll wonder how you got anything done without it.
welcome!
to get started, download a linux OS .iso and write it to a usb with Balena Etcher. boot to that usb by selecting it in your bios/uefi (restart the computer and smash the del key a whole bunch to get there) :)
its basic, but this is the part that can confuse those who arent so tech savvy and want to switch <3
Not mine anyways lol 🐧
