People want a simple, clean, minimal, consistent OS that does not have anyone's interests first except the user. Windows 11 is a very, very long way from this.
Honestly Windows 95 is closer to ideal than Windows 11.
The state of Windows is: disaster.
Telaneo 1 hours ago [-]
The amount of research that went into making Windows 95 a user friendly OS is actually quite impressive. They didn't have all the kinks ironed out, and they couldn't foresee everything, but it's was a pretty solid effort.
I wonder how much research went into Windows 11, or 10 or 8 for that matter, and to what ends that research was made.
lateforwork 1 hours ago [-]
Fortunately for Microsoft, macOS 26 (Tahoe) is an even bigger disaster. Even John Gruber won't upgrade. So Microsoft is under no pressure at the moment.
anvuong 1 minutes ago [-]
Tahoe UI sucks and is a dumpster fire but for the most parts it's still just normal MacOS. Windows 11 on the other hand actively hinders my productivity.
debo_ 1 hours ago [-]
I use Linux for home and both Windows 11 and Tahoe for work. I personally find Windows 11 actively hostile while Tahoe is mostly just whatever. I'd much rather be using Tahoe.
jorts 14 minutes ago [-]
I have been using Tahoe since it came out, and I really don't understand all the hate on it. Some of the aesthetics are a little off, but not burdensome. The only thing I really don't like is the large, rounded corners on windows.
raincole 1 hours ago [-]
You said that as if Linux desktop weren't a thing.
...and you're mostly right.
xp84 16 minutes ago [-]
Isn't Chrome OS "the Linux Desktop" for most non-developer people?
90% of the people I know don't need any software that isn't either delivered via the Web, or limited for purely business reasons to an 'APP™' for mobile phones only.
The remainder of the possible uses of a "computer" are mainly video editing and non-casual gaming.
So if Windows and macOS continue to drag their reputations through the mud, Chrome OS, the Linux Desktop, is the most likely beneficiary.
DrewADesign 38 minutes ago [-]
::sigh:: Windows is an AI slop hellhole, and MacOS is way more interested in being flashy than being good. It should be Linux's time to shine as a general-audience desktop OS... but the usability just isn't there.
As everyone points out when talking about Linux usability, it's fine for your grampa who just uses the email client and browser, but those users are switching to tablets, en masse, anyway. It's obviously fine for technically savvy users who are willing to deal with the periodic breakage or other hassle.
Importantly, It's just a bad experience for users who require hardware, software or something else that tablets don't facilitate, but aren't interested in looking through stack overflow posts and reddit threads to see why the 6 year old tutorial for getting their video editing software to work doesn't apply to the distro they just installed because they couldn't figure out how to install their video card drivers on the other distro. And why does that program they used to use to control their firewall not change anything anymore (which to them just looks like the firewall doesn't work, so they can never research their way out of the problem?) And how do I [insert the bazillion other problems that are non-issues for people with the background knowledge, but for everyone else, frustrating, time-wasting brick walls that probably cost them more in lost billable time than multiple copies of Windows 11 Pro.]
I've been using Linux since the 90s but I still don't use it for a lot of my media work. It's just too much of a PITA when I just need to satisfy my use case, which has nothing to do with the OS.
Even the commercial distros like RHEL are just, comparatively... janky. I really wish it was easier to integrate more interface design expertise into FOSS development. The workflows are just super different. This is why commercial products have product managers that can objectively balance and coordinate the efforts between design and development. I think we've gotten to a point where more of the FOSS crowd sees the benefit of competent expert UI designers, but making that practically useful is a tough nut to crack.
raincole 19 minutes ago [-]
At this point I think Linux's market share in desktop market will keep rising. But mostly due to Windows and MacOS users leaving desktop completely and becoming mobile-only in their private time.
I also believe that's the future both Microsoft and Apple bet on. Otherwise they wouldn't have let their (once) flagship products became what they are now.
gylterud 54 minutes ago [-]
Well, with the help of Microsoft and Apple, who knows? This might just be the years of the Linux desktop!
Valve has made Linux gaming a thing. So, even normies are trying it…
caycep 29 minutes ago [-]
Hey wait...there are...er...dozens of us!
btown 1 hours ago [-]
macOS (not iOS) used to be this. POSIX underpinnings. Iconography and visual language designed for clarity and simplicity. Balances between customizability and system stability with deactivatable gatekeepers.
Now, the same way Windows serves Microsoft’s AI investments, Apple serves a nebulous corporate goal for inimitable (read: too unpredictable/unreliable for competitors to copy) Liquid [Gl]ass user interfaces at the expense of clarity, and launch speed at the expense of stability.
I’m not sure if Steve Jobs would have complained about the market capitalization - but he certainly would have executed product improvements more cleanly.
It’s not yet the year of Linux on desktop, I don’t think - but we get closer every year.
loloquwowndueo 46 minutes ago [-]
> It’s not yet the year of Linux on desktop, I don’t think - but we get closer every year.
It is if you want it to be. For me it was 1996 - been doing great on Linux since then.
setopt 50 minutes ago [-]
> It’s not yet the year of Linux on desktop, I don’t think - but we get closer every year.
For me it is. I was already considering going back to Linux for a while, and MacOS Tahoe pushed me over the fence. Got a Thinkpad with Linux as a replacement for my MacBook some months ago and don’t regret it yet.
robertwt7 1 hours ago [-]
I always find some things that doesn't work with my PC on windows 11. Sometimes things as simple as moving files in explorer makes it hangs where I had to restart explorer.exe. This is embarrassing really that windows can't get this right. There are so many times where I was frustrated and wished that I can just use my macbook pro as my only workstation. I just wish that steam on linux has full support for most games that are it supports in windows then i'll make the switch
my pc is not even that old, its ryzen 9 5900x with rtx 3080 and 32gb ram. however it is sluggish compared to my m1 pro macbook pro
Telaneo 52 minutes ago [-]
> I just wish that steam on linux has full support for most games that are it supports in windows then i'll make the switch
That day is today (assuming you don't play games with kernel anti-cheat).
bigyabai 1 hours ago [-]
Steam on Linux is great. I'm playing Deadlock and Arc Raiders on my 3070 Ti without issue, highly recommend it if you're not playing FaceIts or Valorant.
publicdebates 1 hours ago [-]
Windows 2000 was peak. All improvements from XP onwards were negligible.
nurettin 53 minutes ago [-]
It was all downhill from 3.11
touwer 45 minutes ago [-]
That was the best. With sound drivers
timpera 1 hours ago [-]
I wouldn't be so certain of this. People on HN hate it for sure, but this is a bit of an echo chamber.
Telaneo 1 hours ago [-]
Non-technical users aren't fans of random UI changes either. On the contrary, they hate having to re-learn shit every whatever-the-fuck years.
graemep 1 hours ago [-]
No,lots of people hate it. The biggest haters I know in real life are non technical users.
However, they will continue to use it so MS does not need to worry about them.
galleywest200 1 hours ago [-]
At least in the comment sections on tech/PC gaming YouTube people are frustrated with it there too.
On the other hand YouTube tries to serve me content I want so maybe thats just the algo talking.
keithnz 29 minutes ago [-]
people tend to complain more than comment on being content. A fraction of a percent of windows user base is a lot of people. ( given around 500 billion.... 1 percent is 5 billion people ish, it would seem to me much much less than 5 billion people are generally complaining)
NoPicklez 58 minutes ago [-]
I don't have an issue with it and I started with 98. There are somethings I'd change, but I do feel like I read a lot of hyperbole.
Provided I only largely use my PC for gaming.
wewewedxfgdf 1 hours ago [-]
HN users are the global thought leaders and (hate the term) influencers in technology and what they think has massively outsized impact on the way the tech world works.
tester756 1 hours ago [-]
and other hilarious jokes we can tell ourselves :P
schmookeeg 1 hours ago [-]
There's a fast-follow "You're absolutely right!" from Claude pending here. :)
debo_ 1 hours ago [-]
If this is a joke, it was a very good one.
tstrimple 52 minutes ago [-]
If that were the case, every single project would be hosted on Hetzner with a Postgres database and everyone would be running Linux desktops everywhere. It's not happening.
FpUser 1 hours ago [-]
>"HN users are the global thought leaders and (hate the term) influencers"
I've no idea about leaders as those do not write here much. As for "influencers" - my golden rule is to research subject I am having doubts about and pay zero attention to what so called "influencers" say.
navigate8310 1 hours ago [-]
You'll never know if the person you abuse on HN is Sam or Cook, since they use alts to plant ideas or assess damage their misdeeds are causing.
FpUser 12 minutes ago [-]
I was talking about getting "influenced". I do not base my research on what's on HN. Prefer to find and read articles on specific subjects.
zeroonetwothree 1 hours ago [-]
Have you actually used Windows 95? It was awful. Crashed every four hours, driver hell, etc
Someone1234 27 minutes ago [-]
Windows 95 has some legitimate problem but one thing that was nice is that Microsoft (and Apple) were doing Skeuomorph, so training users to use it was a joy. It was designed to be easy to learn. Today they don't really care how users are trained, and just assume they'll figure it out.
PS - Yes, Skeuomoric concepts age out, like Floppy Disk-Save Icons, but the concept still has merit. It can help "ground" the experience.
linguae 10 minutes ago [-]
I remember those days. Thankfully Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 had a Windows 95/98-style desktop but used the rock-solid NT kernel. Unfortunately they were not marketed to home users.
I feel similarly about the classic Mac OS: excellent interface and UI guidelines hampered by its cooperative multitasking and its lack of protected memory.
Windows XP and Mac OS X were major blessings, bringing the NT kernel and Mach/BSD underpinnings, respectively, to home computing users.
Telaneo 47 minutes ago [-]
I have. Blame the drivers, not the OS. Vista wasn't great for the same reasons. Sure, Windows 11 mostly doesn't have driver problems, but that doesn't mean the OS is great. It's largely irrelevant to the point being made.
monkeydreams 40 minutes ago [-]
I was doing tech support through the Windows 95/98/ME period and it was hell. Everything either crashed the OS or required a restart if you touched it.
When Windows 2000 rolled around and I saw how stable it was, I went out and bought it to put on my gaming PC. Another friend from work laughed at me and told me how terrible "Windows NT" was for running games until he saw how smooth Starcraft ran on it.
Yeah, Windows 95/98/ME were terrible.
jimjimjim 40 minutes ago [-]
It was unstable but it was nice to use. It introduced a lot of UI elements that are now taken for granted. I remember starting to build a window manager that replicated the win95 look.
keithnz 50 minutes ago [-]
what evidence do you have that people hate it? keeping in mind that a fraction of a percent of their user base is going to be a LOT of people so at any given time you can find a lot of people complaining.
Telaneo 45 minutes ago [-]
> Around 500 million PCs are holding off upgrading to Windows 11, says Dell.
> “We have about 500 million of them capable of running Windows 11 that haven’t been upgraded,” said Dell COO Jeffrey Clarke on a Q3 earnings call earlier this week, referring to the overall PC market, not just Dell’s slice of machines.
And that's ignoring the 500 million that can't upgrade due to TPM requirements or whatever.
what's that evidence of? it's also an estimate of all PCs that can upgrade, of 1.5 billion, 500 million still haven't upgraded. Certainly not evidence that people hate it. Many reasons why IT departments may not have upgraded things or why people haven't. In fact, the ones who haven't upgraded kind of are the people who are least likely to know about what windows 11 is like.
Telaneo 18 minutes ago [-]
Steam's Hardware survey still showed a 2/3 to 1/3 share of Windows 11 to Windows 10 two weeks before the support ended.[1] So about 1/3 of people who use Steam still weren't upgrading even though support was ending.
It took about two and a half years for Windows 10 to overtake Windows 10 in usage (release in July 2015, overtook 7 in January 2018). It's taken more than 3 for Windows 11 (released October 2021, overtook 10 in June 2025), and it only did that with four and a bit months left until support for 10 ended (compared to 3 years for 7). And the number isn't consistently trending downwards for 10 anymore. It's a mess.[2]
> Many reasons why IT departments may not have upgraded things
Running an outdated OS which isn't getting security updates is against regulations in a lot of places. I'd imagine all the major corps were already done doing that by the time support actually ended.
> In fact, the ones who haven't upgraded kind of are the people who are least likely to know about what windows 11 is like.
And thus the most likely to be pushed to upgrade by Microslops lack of understanding of what consent is. They're just going to push the button that says 'Next' and have Windows 11 pushed onto them.
OP is certainly a metaphorical as well as a technical question
24 minutes ago [-]
mattbee 1 hours ago [-]
The key to having a nice time with Windows is 1) to give it loads of memory (32GB+ surely) and 2) to run a debloater script the moment you pick up a new system e.g. https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat
All the rubbish from the last 20 years - ads, OneDrive, Copilot, Office upsells, Candy Crush in the start menu - it can just disappear, leaving a pretty stable system that hasn't actually changed much.
Apart from the awful control panels, anything else you don't like is probably replaceable. I really love startallback.com which brings back the regular start menu and lots of other little fixes.
Obviously everyone deserves a computer that doesn't try to sell to them CONSTANTLY, and I wish Windows were better out of the box. But it doesn't take much adjustment to get there.
the_snooze 1 hours ago [-]
If only our technology were advanced enough that we could have an OS that didn't constantly undermine the user's intentions.
debo_ 1 hours ago [-]
This looks great. In your experience, do you run it once and that's it? Or do you need to re-run as updates add or re-introduce "bloat"?
mattbee 53 minutes ago [-]
Personally I don't think I've ever re-run it. I think I've clicked a few buttons as I've seen alerts about new options appearing. But ultimately it's just a bunch of powershell commands to remove packages and set options. So I'd assume it's safe to run regularly.
mfro 60 minutes ago [-]
You definitely should run it after updates.
conception 60 minutes ago [-]
Or buy an IOT LTSC license to have an officially debloated version.
There are sites that will happily sell you keys, though I don’t feel qualified to comment on their legitimacy.
You could also sail the seven seas and run an AutoKMS script, though that might (and probably will) include some malware.
hamdingers 13 minutes ago [-]
If your options include paying for piracy or pirating for free, always pirate for free.
tokyobreakfast 57 minutes ago [-]
Linux is not getting better in those respects, either. DE's are crazy bloated. For everyone bitching about control panels, tell me how is it done in Linux? In the WM control panel or the DE control panel? Or some obscure .conf file you must edit by hand? Your guess is as good as mine and it's beyond disorganized. If I want to change a font it's a game of three card monte.
Linux desktop environments remind me what TempleOS would look like if it was designed by committee.
Blackthorn 39 minutes ago [-]
Bloat is what you call any feature you're not actively using.
Only difference is on Windows nobody wants those "features".
asveikau 1 hours ago [-]
I was at Microsoft for a few years. I think some amount of blame has to go to hiring quality declining over the years.
I wrote a bit about this in an old comment:
> They have a lot of staff turnover too, and each generation of new SDE has less of a clue how the old stuff worked. So when they're tasked with replacing the old stuff, they don't understand what it does, and the rewrite ends up doing less.
Also, a little bit after I left, they eliminated the SDET role. I have memories of encountering many SDETs who didn't know what they were doing. But the good ones kept the developers honest. Getting rid of a parallel org structure dedicated to testing for regressions etc. would certainly seem like a good explanation for a quality dip.
AgentMatt 59 minutes ago [-]
Two years ago I did some cleaning up and finally sorted out the gaming PC from my youth. I believe I bought it around 2007. Ran some old AMD dual core (may have been an Athlon 64 4400), still had an HDD. Installed on it was Windows Vista, which wasn't exactly a crowd favorite. So as I went to backup the final remnants of those gaming days I was flabbergasted by the snappiness of the explorer. Folders just opened instantly! So snappy, it was actually fun just navigating through all the folders. I had been expecting this PC to run at snail's pace, yet the windows experience was much better than on my desktop PC built in 2021 running Windows 10 on an NVMe drive. I have no idea how that is possible, but since then with every interaction with modern Windows there's just this tiny tinge of sadness...
Telaneo 53 minutes ago [-]
HDD performance on Windows just died after some Windows 10 update. Sure, it took two minutes to boot 7 of an HDD, but once it was going, Explorer ran fine, and Firefox would run fine after that (probably cached after boot).
Same goes for day one Windows 10 (they probably didn't touch the relevant parts). I remember having to deal with a Windows 10 machine on an HDD, and it was mostly fine after it booted, but even clean installs on more recent version are just horrible. There's probably been some optimisation done which works fine on SSDs but just thrash HDDs, and HDDs as boot drives just aren't a thing anymore (within margin of error), so it didn't matter.
The fact that they've managed to throw so much bloat on top that even SSDs start struggling though, that really is something.
princevegeta89 1 hours ago [-]
The worst thing is, there is no real alternative to Windows that is backed by somewhat of a corporate guarantee besides macOS.
But many people who use Windows wouldn't want to move to a considerably new platform like macOS, which works quite differently. There is Linux, but then there are compatibility issues and driver issues and other things that are not great for the casual average user.
It feels like Windows could have been better off without being free, but being something like a buy once, keep forever solution, like the good old days.
Today it has just turned into a complete toxic pit of mess that tracks you in every little thing you do and works against you to make sure that it maximizes profits for Microsoft and its partners. The usability is completely destroyed, alas.
dleslie 1 hours ago [-]
RedHat and Ubuntu both provide enterprise support.
princevegeta89 1 hours ago [-]
Well, they are still Linux, and they are confusing for casual, average users.
aucisson_masque 54 minutes ago [-]
It ain’t that confusing. Click on the icon of the app you want to launch and that’s it.
The app is similar to what’s going in on windows.
Where that becomes frustrating is when you have a computer that isn’t well supported by Linux, things don’t work, battery is bad, you have to look up for ways to fix them and so on.
But if the « driver » support was as good as on windows, people could switch in 2 seconds.
My university computers ran Ubuntu, we were not computer nerd but civil engineering yet everyone adapted very quick.
princevegeta89 39 minutes ago [-]
Well okay, tell me why a single user would end up buying enterprise support?
And I would still argue that linux is confusing for casual users. Everything from file system paths to system settings, things are not understood readily for casual users. Lack of available apps like photoshop, etc can also frustrate users.
aucisson_masque 18 minutes ago [-]
I must have miss written it. I meant that single user would have to buy computer that are well supported by Linux.
You don’t need canonical enterprise support.
If nothing is already broken, Ubuntu isn’t that different from windows. You got your 10 app icons, and a button to shut down the computer.
And the file path ? Everyone used the standard file picker and had no issue. I guess it defaulted to the home directory or desktop, whatever the case we just put all the garbage there in folder like we used to do in windows.
jjcm 39 minutes ago [-]
These days less so. LLMs have greatly lowered the barrier to entry.
zabzonk 1 hours ago [-]
I really don't mind Windows 11, and don't recognise many of the problems other people here claim to have. For example, I simply don't see all (or any) of the ads that many complain about.
Legend2440 12 minutes ago [-]
Much of the outrage over Recall seemed excessive to me as well. People spun it as 'Microsoft is spying on you with AI!' even though it was never that in any way.
partiallypro 1 hours ago [-]
Yeah, I haven't seen these either. WSL is great, it's pretty nice looking, there's a lot of good stuff in Windows 11. My main gripe is inconsistency and falling behind the competition in speed (largely due to the chips and x86/x64).
qnleigh 43 minutes ago [-]
To force the tech giants to actually compete with each other for customers, we have to be willing to switch platforms. If you think of yourselfs as Mac or PC (or iOS/Android) person, then these companies can treat you like a reliable asset they can extract value from, rather than a customer they have to please in order to keep.
Personally, I've worked pretty hard over the last few years to make sure that I can easily switch to a different OS. This means avoiding relying on Mac and Windows apps as much as possible, and most importantly having all of my data in portable formats that do not tie me to any specific software.
Rucadi 1 hours ago [-]
I'll be honest, I just want something that I can develop on (linux is the easiest by far) and that's not annoying (Nixos is the best at that).
I don't even use any advanced config, just bare-minimum config for the system, enough (project-specific things handled by nix).
kvduba 1 hours ago [-]
how is it not yet a code red inside Microsoft, for the astonishing decline of user experience of Windows 11?
hackyhacky 1 hours ago [-]
It's not an emergency at Microsoft for two reasons:
1. Microsoft doesn't make their money from Windows anymore. They make their money from services, like Azure and whatever they are calling their web-based Office this week. Windows is now mostly a telemetry-collection system for them, not a product.
2. People who hate Windows don't have a choice. Regular people are issued a PC and its OS from their employer, and can't change it. Consumers who buy low-end laptops for school or hobbies aren't going to pay twice as much for a Mac. And outside of HN, a vanishingly small number of people are even aware of Linux or other FOSS alternatives, much less have the ability to install and use it.
geraldcombs 1 hours ago [-]
Don't schools typically use Chromebooks these days? My daughter was issued one each year from grade 7 to 12.
thewebguyd 57 minutes ago [-]
And PC gaming. Despite the massive amounts of improvement to Linux gaming thanks to Wine & Valve, if you play games that rely on kernel anticheat, you have no choice but Windows.
I'm hoping now that Microsoft seems like they might get serious about kicking people out of the kernel after the cloudstrike incident, kernel level anticheat may go away which will pave the way for Linux to completely take over.
jmpeax 1 hours ago [-]
it's probably been thrown out the window compared to office and chatgpt
throwa356262 1 hours ago [-]
Because their profits are all time high??
eleventhborn 46 minutes ago [-]
Coming from a Gsuite + Atlassian + AWS world to an all-inclusive Microsoft world was an experience. It should be in the bucket list for every developer to try once in their life.
WSL is a far better developer environment in Windows even for dotnet based development. I use it at work. It is fine.
Windows OS on the other hand is a mess. There are dedicated keyboard shortcut (win + c), keyboard buttons, buttons on desktop for copilot. Copilot is almost on every Microsoft software. I'm not getting the appeal of copilot at all.
Also, I have a personal gripe with a non-standard way of placing the Fn key - first of all, why keep it close to Ctrl, why? and on top of that, Lenovo & Microsoft and every other manufacturer have them in different positions on the keyboard.
anonzzzies 1 hours ago [-]
A mate just gave me a laptop; it is the first Windows device I have touched in 20 years. It runs Windows 11. I am assuming it's all as bad as it was 20 years ago, but going from all the Windows 11 talk I am guessing it will be far worse?
I am trying it out today first and then reinstalling it with Linux. It seems its fully supported out of the box except the cam and fingerprint scanner: cam I never use, fingerprint scanner would be nice but I hear it is basically impossible to get working if not supported (and it is not).
wvenable 1 hours ago [-]
I disagree with this in the article: "Last, but not least, the technical debt of Windows has become almost unbearable. 30+ years of Windows NT certainly adds up."
The actual design of the Windows internals has mostly remained unchanged and continues to be improved. This is not much different than Linux being a design from the 70s. The critical bugs in Windows are due to newer additions to that base -- not the base itself.
But what everyone really hates is the "modern" technology has been piled on top of that Windows NT legacy not the legacy itself.
dekhn 1 hours ago [-]
My favorite is whenever you need to do anything remotely complicated in settings. It's like travelling through layers of archeological digs. For me, it's the network settings and audio settings that are the best example.
Legend2440 11 minutes ago [-]
Or like how there are two layers of right-click menu in windows explorer - the new simplified menu, and then 'Show more options' for the old menu just in case.
wvenable 51 minutes ago [-]
Microsoft gets a lot of flak for their approach to updating the settings up but I think they did that exactly right. There was no way that were going to be able to re-implement every setting available in one go and have it be good. So they took the iterative approach and moved over the most important settings first and each version of Windows 10/11 more and more options are available in settings.
I find myself having to use the old control panel dialogs less and less -- but I'm also happy that they are still there.
conception 54 minutes ago [-]
The services control panel just as badly designed as it was 30 years ago.
teddyalbina 1 hours ago [-]
Exactly technicaly linux is even older than NT. Some Microsoft guys had to implement async io in linux because they where incapable of doing it.
qcnguy 1 hours ago [-]
[dead]
Alifatisk 1 hours ago [-]
I am still on Win10 on my pc, the day my pc is forced to update to Win11 is the day I finally switch OS. I don’t even care if I loose things that are windows only. What OS should I switch to? Is it Linux Mint that is the closest alternative?
Legend2440 9 minutes ago [-]
You should switch to something else immediately. Windows 10 is no longer receiving security updates and will become increasingly unsafe to leave connected to the internet.
I like Ubuntu.
zaruvi 32 minutes ago [-]
Linux Mint would be a very decent distribution to start with. I've also heard good things about Fedora, but never used it myself.
aucisson_masque 51 minutes ago [-]
Yeah.
donkeylazy456 15 minutes ago [-]
try windhawk. it is awesome tweak for mac-os-wannabe windows 11.
jayess 1 hours ago [-]
XP was peak Windows.
mxuribe 37 minutes ago [-]
I think XP to a degree was indeed peak Microsoft...in that while yes, XP felt bloated at first, then they streamlined it, and it got better....plus its look and feel felt like such a departure from previous Windows....or maybe because it was so vibrantly colored that i was hypnotized. But, i did enjoy XP....but then my favorite Windows version was version 7....because it felt to me like a grown up, optimized version of XP...Running Win7 made me feel like XP was the fisher price/toy version of a windows operating system, and Win7 was the adult version...of course, "thanks" to Windows Vista, by the time Win7 came out, i had already started using linux distros as my daily drivers...and never looked back since then. So, i guess i have Windows vista to thank for going all in on linux....and maybe Win11 will be that for others? :-)
chupchap 56 minutes ago [-]
No. It was frustrating to use and had to be reinstalled every year. Windows 8.1 was good and so was Windows 10 to a degree.
whynotmaybe 50 minutes ago [-]
In wonder whether in a few years, we'll have a post complaining about windows 12 and that 11 was much better.
o_m 1 hours ago [-]
Who would have thought forcing one developer to write a million lines of code each month would have negative consequences
teddyalbina 1 hours ago [-]
I never experienced any of this problems on any of my computers inclusing the ARM one. Same for everybody i know
BoredPositron 1 hours ago [-]
It will get more annoying with Satya at the helm and as long as there is a cash cow that is not enduser facing there is not even hope for change.
protocolture 56 minutes ago [-]
Vibe coded updates for sure.
Probably also vibe tested.
bokohut 53 minutes ago [-]
My software logic mind asks: I question why if Copilot is so great then why cannot Microsoft turn themselves around by dogfooding their own solution that they have forced on all of their users which then proves to the world that Copilot is great?
I am led to believe from marketing that A.I. has all the answers and with Microsoft having the greatest A.I. don't they have all the answers?
I apologize in advance for my dumb.
doener 1 hours ago [-]
It‘s not a priority for Microsoft, it‘s intrusive and above all it‘s shit.
ChrisArchitect 49 minutes ago [-]
Just repeating all of the threads from the last 6 months; (including two big ones in the last week);
Microsoft really needs to retire the Control Panel and other old-school elements of the OS. Windows 11's design system is very pretty and user-friendly, please finish the transition to it ASAP!
Telaneo 1 hours ago [-]
The monkey's paw curls, and the old control panels disappear. However, more than 70% of what you needed to do when you did dig down into the old control panel is still not available in the new settings menu.
They've been 'transitioning' away from the old control panel since Windows 8, and they're still nowhere near done. On the contrary, when I do find myself on a Windows machine, I just jump straight to the old settings rather than jump through the hoops of the new settings, since I don't have any confidence in the new settings to do anything when I need them to (honourable mention to Windows update. That's worked mostly fine for me, other than the two times it broke and just refused to update anything until I did some manual fix. All it needs now is an 'Never update automatically. Only update manually' button, but I don't expect Microslop to understand what consent is quite yet).
jasonjayr 1 hours ago [-]
I giggle every time I stumble upon a Windows 3.1 file-selector dialog still in Windows 11.
bberrry 1 hours ago [-]
The old stuff still being accessible is the only way I find the stuff I'm looking for
Koffiepoeder 1 hours ago [-]
Exactly there's so much stuff you simply cannot configure otherwise. For example disallowing applications to take sole ownership of a mic, in-detail power plans, etc. If they remove the old control panel, your machine basically becomes unconfigurable.
poolnoodle 1 hours ago [-]
I can at least find stuff in control panel
tokyobreakfast 1 hours ago [-]
This is sarcasm, right?
timpera 1 hours ago [-]
Absolutely not sarcasm. Control Panel is a mess and keeping it is only confusing for most users.
jatari 1 hours ago [-]
Literally every time I interact with the modern settings UI I give up 15 seconds in and switch back to the old control panel.
For instance, how do you change the key repeat delay in the modern UI? I have looked and I actually can't find a way to change it. I have to use control panel.
Just looking at the modern UI is an eyesore, there is so much empty space, a menu that should be a 600x400 rectangle takes up the entire screen. The information density is comically low. I have to scroll up and down this giant monitor sized list to find the one thing I am looking for. It's horrendous.
tokyobreakfast 1 hours ago [-]
90% of the time when you do find what you're looking for in Settings it's a hyperlink to Control Panel anyway.
belval 1 hours ago [-]
I am confused by what you mean by this. An average user would interact with the new "Settings" and never really touch or see Control Panel...
timpera 1 hours ago [-]
Because many settings still aren't available in the "Settings" app, you often have to dig into the Control Panel (most notably for power options). Microsoft support forums and ChatGPT, which I think would be used by non-technical users when they encounter an issue, seem to both default to recommending going straight to the Control Panel to change settings.
tokyobreakfast 1 hours ago [-]
No, Control Panel works as well as it did 30 years ago.
Settings is a slow, bloated mess, as you stated elsewhere missing many settings, and was in general designed by schizophrenics.
A primary reason for the sorry state of software today is the absolutely delusional priority that software should be "pretty" vs it being functional.
Send all the UI/UX wizards packing, give them a Starbucks apron where IMO they belong, and watch software usability and customer satisfaction improve over the next 5 years.
1 hours ago [-]
Rendered at 23:49:55 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
It's so out of touch, people hate it.
People want a simple, clean, minimal, consistent OS that does not have anyone's interests first except the user. Windows 11 is a very, very long way from this.
Honestly Windows 95 is closer to ideal than Windows 11.
The state of Windows is: disaster.
I wonder how much research went into Windows 11, or 10 or 8 for that matter, and to what ends that research was made.
...and you're mostly right.
90% of the people I know don't need any software that isn't either delivered via the Web, or limited for purely business reasons to an 'APP™' for mobile phones only.
The remainder of the possible uses of a "computer" are mainly video editing and non-casual gaming.
So if Windows and macOS continue to drag their reputations through the mud, Chrome OS, the Linux Desktop, is the most likely beneficiary.
As everyone points out when talking about Linux usability, it's fine for your grampa who just uses the email client and browser, but those users are switching to tablets, en masse, anyway. It's obviously fine for technically savvy users who are willing to deal with the periodic breakage or other hassle.
Importantly, It's just a bad experience for users who require hardware, software or something else that tablets don't facilitate, but aren't interested in looking through stack overflow posts and reddit threads to see why the 6 year old tutorial for getting their video editing software to work doesn't apply to the distro they just installed because they couldn't figure out how to install their video card drivers on the other distro. And why does that program they used to use to control their firewall not change anything anymore (which to them just looks like the firewall doesn't work, so they can never research their way out of the problem?) And how do I [insert the bazillion other problems that are non-issues for people with the background knowledge, but for everyone else, frustrating, time-wasting brick walls that probably cost them more in lost billable time than multiple copies of Windows 11 Pro.]
I've been using Linux since the 90s but I still don't use it for a lot of my media work. It's just too much of a PITA when I just need to satisfy my use case, which has nothing to do with the OS.
Even the commercial distros like RHEL are just, comparatively... janky. I really wish it was easier to integrate more interface design expertise into FOSS development. The workflows are just super different. This is why commercial products have product managers that can objectively balance and coordinate the efforts between design and development. I think we've gotten to a point where more of the FOSS crowd sees the benefit of competent expert UI designers, but making that practically useful is a tough nut to crack.
I also believe that's the future both Microsoft and Apple bet on. Otherwise they wouldn't have let their (once) flagship products became what they are now.
Valve has made Linux gaming a thing. So, even normies are trying it…
Now, the same way Windows serves Microsoft’s AI investments, Apple serves a nebulous corporate goal for inimitable (read: too unpredictable/unreliable for competitors to copy) Liquid [Gl]ass user interfaces at the expense of clarity, and launch speed at the expense of stability.
I’m not sure if Steve Jobs would have complained about the market capitalization - but he certainly would have executed product improvements more cleanly.
It’s not yet the year of Linux on desktop, I don’t think - but we get closer every year.
It is if you want it to be. For me it was 1996 - been doing great on Linux since then.
For me it is. I was already considering going back to Linux for a while, and MacOS Tahoe pushed me over the fence. Got a Thinkpad with Linux as a replacement for my MacBook some months ago and don’t regret it yet.
my pc is not even that old, its ryzen 9 5900x with rtx 3080 and 32gb ram. however it is sluggish compared to my m1 pro macbook pro
That day is today (assuming you don't play games with kernel anti-cheat).
However, they will continue to use it so MS does not need to worry about them.
On the other hand YouTube tries to serve me content I want so maybe thats just the algo talking.
Provided I only largely use my PC for gaming.
I've no idea about leaders as those do not write here much. As for "influencers" - my golden rule is to research subject I am having doubts about and pay zero attention to what so called "influencers" say.
PS - Yes, Skeuomoric concepts age out, like Floppy Disk-Save Icons, but the concept still has merit. It can help "ground" the experience.
I feel similarly about the classic Mac OS: excellent interface and UI guidelines hampered by its cooperative multitasking and its lack of protected memory.
Windows XP and Mac OS X were major blessings, bringing the NT kernel and Mach/BSD underpinnings, respectively, to home computing users.
When Windows 2000 rolled around and I saw how stable it was, I went out and bought it to put on my gaming PC. Another friend from work laughed at me and told me how terrible "Windows NT" was for running games until he saw how smooth Starcraft ran on it.
Yeah, Windows 95/98/ME were terrible.
> “We have about 500 million of them capable of running Windows 11 that haven’t been upgraded,” said Dell COO Jeffrey Clarke on a Q3 earnings call earlier this week, referring to the overall PC market, not just Dell’s slice of machines.
And that's ignoring the 500 million that can't upgrade due to TPM requirements or whatever.
https://www.theverge.com/news/831364/dell-windows-11-upgrade...
It took about two and a half years for Windows 10 to overtake Windows 10 in usage (release in July 2015, overtook 7 in January 2018). It's taken more than 3 for Windows 11 (released October 2021, overtook 10 in June 2025), and it only did that with four and a bit months left until support for 10 ended (compared to 3 years for 7). And the number isn't consistently trending downwards for 10 anymore. It's a mess.[2]
> Many reasons why IT departments may not have upgraded things
Running an outdated OS which isn't getting security updates is against regulations in a lot of places. I'd imagine all the major corps were already done doing that by the time support actually ended.
> In fact, the ones who haven't upgraded kind of are the people who are least likely to know about what windows 11 is like.
And thus the most likely to be pushed to upgrade by Microslops lack of understanding of what consent is. They're just going to push the button that says 'Next' and have Windows 11 pushed onto them.
[1] https://www.pcgamer.com/software/windows/a-bunch-of-steam-pl...
[2] https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desk...
All the rubbish from the last 20 years - ads, OneDrive, Copilot, Office upsells, Candy Crush in the start menu - it can just disappear, leaving a pretty stable system that hasn't actually changed much.
Apart from the awful control panels, anything else you don't like is probably replaceable. I really love startallback.com which brings back the regular start menu and lots of other little fixes.
Obviously everyone deserves a computer that doesn't try to sell to them CONSTANTLY, and I wish Windows were better out of the box. But it doesn't take much adjustment to get there.
You could also sail the seven seas and run an AutoKMS script, though that might (and probably will) include some malware.
Linux desktop environments remind me what TempleOS would look like if it was designed by committee.
Only difference is on Windows nobody wants those "features".
I wrote a bit about this in an old comment:
> They have a lot of staff turnover too, and each generation of new SDE has less of a clue how the old stuff worked. So when they're tasked with replacing the old stuff, they don't understand what it does, and the rewrite ends up doing less.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46472300
Also, a little bit after I left, they eliminated the SDET role. I have memories of encountering many SDETs who didn't know what they were doing. But the good ones kept the developers honest. Getting rid of a parallel org structure dedicated to testing for regressions etc. would certainly seem like a good explanation for a quality dip.
Same goes for day one Windows 10 (they probably didn't touch the relevant parts). I remember having to deal with a Windows 10 machine on an HDD, and it was mostly fine after it booted, but even clean installs on more recent version are just horrible. There's probably been some optimisation done which works fine on SSDs but just thrash HDDs, and HDDs as boot drives just aren't a thing anymore (within margin of error), so it didn't matter.
The fact that they've managed to throw so much bloat on top that even SSDs start struggling though, that really is something.
But many people who use Windows wouldn't want to move to a considerably new platform like macOS, which works quite differently. There is Linux, but then there are compatibility issues and driver issues and other things that are not great for the casual average user.
It feels like Windows could have been better off without being free, but being something like a buy once, keep forever solution, like the good old days. Today it has just turned into a complete toxic pit of mess that tracks you in every little thing you do and works against you to make sure that it maximizes profits for Microsoft and its partners. The usability is completely destroyed, alas.
The app is similar to what’s going in on windows.
Where that becomes frustrating is when you have a computer that isn’t well supported by Linux, things don’t work, battery is bad, you have to look up for ways to fix them and so on.
But if the « driver » support was as good as on windows, people could switch in 2 seconds.
My university computers ran Ubuntu, we were not computer nerd but civil engineering yet everyone adapted very quick.
You don’t need canonical enterprise support.
If nothing is already broken, Ubuntu isn’t that different from windows. You got your 10 app icons, and a button to shut down the computer.
And the file path ? Everyone used the standard file picker and had no issue. I guess it defaulted to the home directory or desktop, whatever the case we just put all the garbage there in folder like we used to do in windows.
Personally, I've worked pretty hard over the last few years to make sure that I can easily switch to a different OS. This means avoiding relying on Mac and Windows apps as much as possible, and most importantly having all of my data in portable formats that do not tie me to any specific software.
I don't even use any advanced config, just bare-minimum config for the system, enough (project-specific things handled by nix).
1. Microsoft doesn't make their money from Windows anymore. They make their money from services, like Azure and whatever they are calling their web-based Office this week. Windows is now mostly a telemetry-collection system for them, not a product.
2. People who hate Windows don't have a choice. Regular people are issued a PC and its OS from their employer, and can't change it. Consumers who buy low-end laptops for school or hobbies aren't going to pay twice as much for a Mac. And outside of HN, a vanishingly small number of people are even aware of Linux or other FOSS alternatives, much less have the ability to install and use it.
I'm hoping now that Microsoft seems like they might get serious about kicking people out of the kernel after the cloudstrike incident, kernel level anticheat may go away which will pave the way for Linux to completely take over.
WSL is a far better developer environment in Windows even for dotnet based development. I use it at work. It is fine.
Windows OS on the other hand is a mess. There are dedicated keyboard shortcut (win + c), keyboard buttons, buttons on desktop for copilot. Copilot is almost on every Microsoft software. I'm not getting the appeal of copilot at all.
Also, I have a personal gripe with a non-standard way of placing the Fn key - first of all, why keep it close to Ctrl, why? and on top of that, Lenovo & Microsoft and every other manufacturer have them in different positions on the keyboard.
I am trying it out today first and then reinstalling it with Linux. It seems its fully supported out of the box except the cam and fingerprint scanner: cam I never use, fingerprint scanner would be nice but I hear it is basically impossible to get working if not supported (and it is not).
The actual design of the Windows internals has mostly remained unchanged and continues to be improved. This is not much different than Linux being a design from the 70s. The critical bugs in Windows are due to newer additions to that base -- not the base itself.
But what everyone really hates is the "modern" technology has been piled on top of that Windows NT legacy not the legacy itself.
I find myself having to use the old control panel dialogs less and less -- but I'm also happy that they are still there.
I like Ubuntu.
Probably also vibe tested.
I am led to believe from marketing that A.I. has all the answers and with Microsoft having the greatest A.I. don't they have all the answers?
I apologize in advance for my dumb.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46761061
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750358
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46656998
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46011569
etc
They've been 'transitioning' away from the old control panel since Windows 8, and they're still nowhere near done. On the contrary, when I do find myself on a Windows machine, I just jump straight to the old settings rather than jump through the hoops of the new settings, since I don't have any confidence in the new settings to do anything when I need them to (honourable mention to Windows update. That's worked mostly fine for me, other than the two times it broke and just refused to update anything until I did some manual fix. All it needs now is an 'Never update automatically. Only update manually' button, but I don't expect Microslop to understand what consent is quite yet).
For instance, how do you change the key repeat delay in the modern UI? I have looked and I actually can't find a way to change it. I have to use control panel.
Just looking at the modern UI is an eyesore, there is so much empty space, a menu that should be a 600x400 rectangle takes up the entire screen. The information density is comically low. I have to scroll up and down this giant monitor sized list to find the one thing I am looking for. It's horrendous.
Settings is a slow, bloated mess, as you stated elsewhere missing many settings, and was in general designed by schizophrenics.
A primary reason for the sorry state of software today is the absolutely delusional priority that software should be "pretty" vs it being functional.
Send all the UI/UX wizards packing, give them a Starbucks apron where IMO they belong, and watch software usability and customer satisfaction improve over the next 5 years.