I think it was windows 8 or 10 that introduced the new menus which I found somehow both too simplistic and harder to navigate. And then sometimes you get lucky and figure out a way to open the old menus to do what you actually want.
I think Windows 7 was my favorite as well.
Another thing that it has over XP is that it's better at providing a minimally usable environment post-install, with a better payload of default drivers. I don't miss booting into 256 color 640x480 and trying to get all the hardware in a functional state without a network connection like was a frequent occurrence with XP and older.
Or that's merely the justification to push back against the designers…
I use macOS now and basically hate it.
(but to be honest I have never used Windows 11 and barely used 10)
Also I use a lot of audio softwares and it's hard to run them on Linux, I would need to try how much those download managers (another rant worthy subject) and Windows VSTs can really run on Linux. But when I get a new PC I will.
(EDIT: Actually maybe it was Vista that introduced the inexplicable massive installation size bloat? My memory is fuzzy there)
That's maybe 11's single saving grace: it course corrected and Fluent actually looks pretty good. If only the rest weren't awful.
This was fixed in 2010, about 15 years ago. And it's still the nicest looking UI of any desktop OS to this date:
https://www.deviantart.com/zainadeel/art/Shine-2-0-for-Windo...
It's what "liquid glass" wishes to be.
NT4 had a lot of issues. Good foundation, but not 'peak'.
The whole hype around Win10 loosing support is way overblown…
Obviously I still use Windows 7 Pro 64-bit as my only Microsoft computer — also have an Ubuntu dual Xeon (for LLM/crypto) and several Apple Silicon products (for general browsing).
You can still equally as effectively firewall and port map devices on public IPs as you can behind NAT -- and actually just a bit easier, since you're taking NAT out of the picture.
It is nowadays actually easier to install Ubuntu Linux than a Windows. Just be sure to back up your data to an external hard drive, and restore it from there after the install.
Unfortunately, some of us have to be able to actually get work done in our corporate environments.
1 in 4 people did not switch to Windows 7 in one week https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desk.... It's really quite jarring this is not the focus of discussion.
What's wrong with Win 11 exactly?
The initial trigger was their Telemetry you cannot switch off. That stuff had a huge extremely negative press exposure for many months.
W11 is basically burned.
There's the obvious telemetry, MS account requirement for home editions, and other MS dark patterns for one.
But, Windows 11 performance is still crap compared to 10, and even 7. The right click menu in explorer is still high latency, and if you have a lot of extensions, you see "loading..." and it can take a good full second for all menu options to show up. Also, you still can't move the task bar, search is as garbage as ever (but honestly that's expected from Windows at this point).
Windows 11 does have some nice features, especially once combined with PowerToys. I still prefer the way Windows manages Windows compared to my mac which I need 3 third party apps at this point to make usable, and WSL2 is neat, windows has native SSH now, etc.
It could be a great OS if Microsoft could get their heads out of their rears and fix the performance issues, and stop with the advertising, telemetry and dark patterns.
- Right click menu latency is such a non-issue and that issue is specifically in file explorer and not other applications. I do think they need to make improvements to that experience like having the legacy right click behind the new one but it’s not a big deal day to day.
- Everyone likes to complain that you can’t move the taskbar. Can you move the menu bar on Mac? Can we not just accept that this is a design decision and move on?
- Is search garbage? Seems to work fine for me and seems identical to Mac and Linux quick searching functionality, and if I need something more powerful I just use Everything.
It actually is a pretty great OS, but like every OS it’s not perfect and never will be.
The right click menu though, I wouldn't call it a non-issue it's a pretty big regression. The legacy right-click menu loads instantaneously. The new one doesn't seem to do any caching either because it's consistently laggy even after an initial load. Is it still usable? Sure, but it's definitely annoying. It's not the only performance regression either.
> Can you move the menu bar on Mac? Can we not just accept that this is a design decision and move on?
Because it was an option in every single windows version up until now. And on macOS I can move the dock to any side of the screen I'd like. Hell, it will even dynamically move if I'm using multiple monitors and hover my mouse where it should be.
> It actually is a pretty great OS, but like every OS it’s not perfect and never will be.
I never said it wasn't. It's got plenty of features I like, use and appreciate. I wouldn't complain if I hated Windows, because I wouldn't care if that was the case. I'm one of the few on here that actually likes and uses Windows, so of course it's frustrating to see regressions.
Right click latency in explorer is annoying.
Opening the settings "app" after first boot takes several seconds because who the hell knows - I personally blame it on moving everything to some thousand layers JS framework since I like being grumpy about that. This is a core part of the OS, FFS. Fairly certain that they have the talent to pull it off properly.
Search has been fine for me.
Language switching almost always breaks during updates - "ghost keyboard layouts" and such. Has been the case for a few years now.
General "we'll shove down whatever we feel like on you" BS.
Just let us pay for "ultimate" (a.k.a. end-user enterprise) and be rid of all the BS.
Getting WSA back (yes, I have the community version) and expanding on connected standby or however they call it now would've been neat, especially on a convertible, but it is what it is, I guess. WSL2 is also quite the improvement. Lots of other small little things like the task manager (not using procexp too often nowadays).
This would do it for me, and probably many others. People would still complain, but at least it'd be offered.
They can keep the home editions as the adware and copilot editions, just let us buy "Ultimate" without all that (or just leave it as opt-in/toggleable). If the new snapdragon X Elite 2 chips pan out like the early benchmarks show they do (almost on par with the M5 in the new iPad), and if Windows encourages more ARM adoption they could seriously have a legitimate macbook competitor finally.
But that would require MS to divert efforts away from "AI, AI, AI, AI!" so they won't do it.
1. It’s not even a requirement for business/enteprise customers.
2. It remains trivial for technical users to bypass.
3. Literal billions of iPhone and Android users live with a similar soft restriction. Like, yeah, you can skip making an account on those devices, but they’re damn near useless in practice without them.
It’s not really that crazy.
I totally agree that Microsoft shouldn’t explicitly force an account on you as iOS, Android, and macOS don’t do that, but at the same time it’s just not such a crazy idea.
Yes, you can put the Dock on any side of the screen, plus you can pin it to the beginning or end of the chosen side. Those options have been in there since 10-dot-0 even before there was official UI to control them. TinkerTool was popular for this: https://www.bresink.com/osx/0TinkerToolClassic/details.html
Their comparison was bad because no one wanted to move the menu bar. Not because the menu bar and task bar have different functions.
Each person decides what is or is not a privacy issue. Or latency issue. Or usability issue.
What Microsoft extracts includes unique identifiers.
Also just lack of attention to detail. e.g. if you start to search in the start menu and then delete what you typed, you don't get the base menu back; you get "suggestions". So e.g. if you search for "power" or "shutdown" to power off, don't see it as a result, and delete your search, the power button won't be there anymore. You have to close the start menu and open it again to find it. Completely ridiculous design (KDE by contrast has the button and finds the action as a search result with both of those search terms).
No serious effort went into consumer desktop Windows in the past 10 years, most of the upgrades are for Windows Server, Azure and Xbox OS. Windows 8 was their last real attempt and they gave up immediately.
The right click menu in explorer is oversimplified garbage that's missing most of the important options without an extra, unnecessary click.
The settings systems still aren't unified, meaning you have to check AT LEAST two places before you find the right settings menu half the time. Sometimes 3.
It takes double the memory it should for something so simple.
Windows explorer in task manager still needs to have the special "restart task" option, specifically because they know it's going to crash a high percentage of the time you use it.
It spies on you with over-intrusive telemetry.
It advertises to you, even though you are (ostensibly) the customer.
It tries to force the Microsoft account.
It tries to force OneDrive.
It tries to force Edge.
Every update resets half my settings that I spent hours configuring.
The updates are often forced on you. I'm not a child. Let ME decide my risk appetite.
It forces their crummy AI into EVERYTHING, and makes you opt out if you don't want all your data hoovered up.
Everything is named poorly and confusingly on purpose. How many damned things are named "Copilot" now? What is Office even called these days?
3rd party extensions were causing it to load slowly.
> It takes double the memory it should for something so simple.
How are you measuring this? How do you specifically know how much memory it should take?
> Windows explorer in task manager still needs to have the special "restart task" option
It's even more convenient in macOS. It's right on the permanently pinned Finder icon in the Dock!
Yep, and I liked it that way. I had piles of right click extensions that I used every day, and if one made it slow I uninstalled it.
Windows is a tool, it shouldn't be any more prescriptive than a hammer. *
> How are you measuring this? How do you specifically know how much memory it should take?
Windows 7 required 1Gb of ram. Windows 11 requires 4Gb (and is unusable with only 4 - windows 7 actually ran with reasonable speed with 1Gb). Windows 11 does NOT offer 4 times the utility or security, it just offers unwanted services.
> It's even more convenient in macOS. It's right on the permanently pinned Finder icon in the Dock!
That made me laugh out loud. Still, if my work crashed and I suggested to the boss that I build a special "restart" button into the menu rather than fixing it I would need to work on my resume urgently.
*EDIT* - Had they made it optional I wouldn't be complaining. Instead you have to use registry hacks to get it back.
I'm not frustrated that things changed, I'm frustrated that it has less functionality than it did before and is more expensive in terms of compute. It does less, but costs more.
How can anyone claim that's true? It does a lot _more_ than Windows 7 did. It has Defender as a full built-in suite. It has VBS. It has a completely different scheduler. It supports the App model. It has a mature virtualization framework. It has ReFS (and the ability to disable file system filters!).
...On and on and on. Windows 11 isn't a 7 with a bit of new GUI paint.
I mean, why stop at your Windows 7 v. 11 complaint? Windows 3.11 only required kilobytes of RAM and ran great; NT was the hefty one with a 12MB minimum! But each one ran Notepad, had Word, NT4 had a couple browsers, etc.
Generally commercial OSes don't take away major bits of impactful functionality that are going to magically minimize their footprint.
Still, I would argue that almost all of the new features you mention are architectural things that advantage the enterprises, not the individual user. Some are even locked to pro/enterprise users behind licensing. Even for those lucky enough to work within those enterprises, it's not the end user who is advantaged. From their perspective Windows does nothing new, it's just slower and provides a worse user experience.
Further, several of those "features" exist only because Windows is still crippled by preserving backwards compatibility, and therefore is saddled with a legacy security model they're forced to continue trying to bolt solutions onto. The cybersecurity situation becoming so bad that the OS needs to ship with an EDR isn't a benefit to anyone.
It's like trying to turn a canvas tent into a bank vault. You can never do a great job of it and throwing in the padlock for free because congress would shut you down if you didn't do SOMETHING isn't a "feature". Worse, the padlock doesn't actually stop intruders, it just inconveniences legitimate users.
I always have to go and dig through the menu (which Microsoft made more difficult to use to encourage use of the search bar) to launch any application.
There is a service you can restart to get it working again, or you can reboot the machine. But it typically stays working for less than an hour.
They added so much bloat that has become core of the OS. Even XBox game bar is a forced installed feature with their embedded / IoT, same with forcing a Microsoft user account.
Windows 7 embedded allowed for full customization and the end user didn't have to install features a product was never going to use.
Microsoft back end processes have become more aggressive. Their analytics added to Windows 10 cause the computer to eat up a core after startup. This time frame is often when most communication about client issues that have to be resolved ASAP. Instead of the resources going to the user and their clients they go to Microsoft.
Microsoft even hides the resource usage from their background process, such as anti malware and analytics, from the user usage reports. They are purposely trying to hide and mask their deficiencies.
All to push product and features that are not actually used by the majority. Forcing a market instead of allowing it to grow from quality.
Microsoft does not have any completion in the Enterprise OS and management market and they exploit it. CTO and IT managers do not get fired for choosing Microsoft as their users prison. Small companies are the ones that can escape.
Windows Enterprise/LTSC/IoT (effectively all names for the same thing) are the product offerings delivering what you want. When I need Windows, it’s what I use.
It’s available for $238 from CDW.com or less from resellers.
If you want to play games, you have to do a tiny bit of extra work to get the right frameworks/drivers installed, especially for VR. But this isn’t done to frustrate you, it’s because this version of windows doesn’t come with anything that’s strictly helpful, and Activity Monitor shows a blissfully low number of processes running on first boot. If you want bells and whistles, you’re free to add them yourself.
I believe you can buy individual copies from a reseller who buys copies in bulk and they are able to create keys in their own licensing portal to resell individually. I believe CDW either is a reseller or partners with Advantech.
If the cost is the issue, I'd probably go for gray-market reseller keys over pirating. Looks like they run $6-20 these days, someone could simply search for "windows 11 iot keys" to see offerings - pick whichever site either seems the least shady or is cheap enough that you're okay losing the money. Always use something like privacy.com to protect your CC info when buying gray-market software keys.
I believe there are bona-fide tools given to large org IT personnel to re-license installed windows as whatever you want, but if you don't have a trusted friend who can provide a trustworthy copy of that, I wouldn't trust anything pirated that claims to do the same thing. There are also open-source tools on Github which can perform the tasks of a KMS and license your copy of Windows as whatever version you want.
Tried a while ago and my purchase was rejected as I wasn't a company (and also entered dubious location info since they only supported the US which I don't live in, probably leading to taxes issue. But the main reason they gave was that the purchase was reserved to companies).
So what's the 'best' edition of windows ('best' for privacy/least crapware/adware/AI slop)? I can get any version.
It was as easy as downgrading a bunch of dependencies (PySide6, numpy) and created a legacy build, and the Windows 7 version got like 2% of downloads (~200). I assume it works since I've gotten no complaints and I don't have a Windows 7 machine to test haha, Windows 7 in UTM crashes a lot for me on macOS ARM.
Man people are still using this. I really only did this since I added macOS 10.14 support (prior minimum was macOS 12) and most of the work needed was already mostly done by that. In theory I could even get macOS 10.10 support, but that would require downgrading Qt6 to Qt5
I recently bought a laptop and that came with Windows 11.
After hours of trying to work around the OOB "experience" that really really wants to you to sign up for a Microsoft account I finally managed to circumvent it.
After using it for a while I actually like it. It's smooth and no major glitches.
Then I didn't use my laptop for a while, logged in and was greeted with
"Let's finish setting up your account". Only options are "Remind me again x days later" and "Ok"
This is so obnoxious behavior it really makes me want to just roll over the whole machine with Linux.
I wish the clowns from the marketing department hadn't taken over the Windows product division. My laptop is already setup thank you very much. I don't need your condesdencing dark pattern UX BS in my face.
Microsoft does not and never will give a shit about some open source/privacy purist user.
Now the IT department can give them windows laptops with WSL and everybody stays happy
https://pxc-coding.com/donotspy11/
Plenty of time to switch to Linux, you mean.
No matter what Linux distro it is, the core issue with it are QT/GTK, they will never give a user peace of mind like winforms did, a winforms program just feels "good" to use, sort of like the feeling you get from using a website done primarily in HTML (Like hardware news or old reddit)...
A lot of the charm that old windows versions had is exactly based on the GUI framework of the operating system, distros are nice and all but they cannot change fundamentally what is wrong with the user interface of QT/GTK.
Anyways until people figure out what is wrong (which is by the way, also wrong with UWP and WinUI 3... Windows 11 did semi recently get ClassicShell support, I recommend you just moving the taskbar to the side and changing the classicshell logo back to the windows 7/vista button... almost makes you feel like you're using a trash operating system.
You can tell your product is crap when people actively downgrade rather than risk an upgrade to the latest version.
I’m really thankful for Microsoft. I can learn a lot about how not to behave by looking at what they do.
tux3•4mo ago
It's one of the last versions where the modal dialogs ask "Yes" or "No", instead of "Yes" and "Not now", "Maybe later", or "Ask again tomorrow".
nonethewiser•4mo ago
This difference captures so much...
I recently setup a minecraft server on an old windows machine and had a hard time setting it to never restart automatically. After reading some support forums I found the menu to control when it restarts but still didnt see an option to completely stop it.
Eventually I found a way that I can't even recall at this point.
westmeal•4mo ago
ToucanLoucan•4mo ago
And even the JVM part, it's not HARD, just annoying.
Symbiote•4mo ago
westmeal•4mo ago
dorkypunk•4mo ago
westmeal•4mo ago
frollogaston•4mo ago
ToucanLoucan•4mo ago
1718627440•4mo ago
That sounds fine though. The PATH variable is a nicety for the user to not need to type long paths, really like using ~ for the home directory, not for program setup.
frollogaston•4mo ago
Symbiote•4mo ago
I'll accept installing and running software on Linux has an unfamiliar procedure for those used to Windows or Mac.
dmux•4mo ago
jandrese•4mo ago
nonethewiser•4mo ago
I agree it's a better OS to run a minecraft server on in general.
westmeal•4mo ago
Edit: also ufw is so much easier than the windows firewall. That shit drives me insane.
hn773746483•4mo ago
There's multiple services dedicated to monitoring / "repairing" windows update, scheduled tasks to enable those, and further tasks to repair everything completely if anything is modified.
And if all of that is disabled... there's a single exe which "helpfully" re-enables and re-creates all of the necessary scheduled tasks and services, which gets called by the service manager automatically: "upfc.exe"
Renaming / getting rid of this stops WaasMedic & other services from respawning.
Krssst•4mo ago
Sounds like we'd need some resident anti-virus-like software dedicated to enforcing the user's choices on the OS.
(but definitely do your updates so as to not become part of a botnet. Too bad the security updates must come with unneeded feature updates)
almostnormal•4mo ago
anonymars•4mo ago
Lammy•4mo ago
https://admx.cengizyilmaz.net/policy/force-a-specific-defaul... “Note: This setting only applies to Enterprise, Education, and Server SKUs.”
https://admx.cengizyilmaz.net/policy/disable-all-apps-from-m... “This setting applies only to Enterprise and Education editions of Windows.”
And of course the really important one where only Enterprise is allowed to fully disable Telemetry: https://admx.cengizyilmaz.net/policy/allow-diagnostic-data “Diagnostic data off (not recommended). Using this value, no diagnostic data is sent from the device. This value is only supported on Enterprise, Education, and Server editions.”
anonymars•4mo ago
I'm not sure I'd agree those policies are enough to truly argue Windows 7 was a last version to not separate out important features to Enterprise -- I'd actually instead simply make the larger point that before Windows 10, Windows wasn't a chintzy ad-driven whorehouse.
jl6•4mo ago
I find the idea of people upgrading from Windows 10 to Windows 7 sad and hilarious in equal measure.
rs186•4mo ago
mapontosevenths•4mo ago
https://github.com/win32ss/supermium
hn_acc1•4mo ago
rs186•4mo ago
rchaud•4mo ago
What new browser feature made in the past decade has improved the user experience?
brokencode•4mo ago
Now they have no incentive to make good upgrades. Instead, they are only incentivized to add privacy-compromising services that nobody wants or asked for.
mielioort•4mo ago
landl0rd•4mo ago
I can't tolerate windows. I put up with 10 for a while then went back to 7. 7 was good. Then some stuff wasn't supported so I moved to 11. Couldn't do it. I'd get random garbage like a notification for some "grand prize giveaway". I legit thought I'd gotten adware installed somehow. Nope, official Microsoft notification! Want to configure the system at all? Keep defender from trashing your CPU for fifteen minutes after you compile something? Stop auto-restarts that close everything? Use actual sleep not the weird "connected sleep" nonsense? Tough, you don't get to. If you do it anyway it will revert after your next update (mandatory btw!) or sometimes just at random.
I can't remember a version since 7 that doesn't make me feel like I'm in a bazaar being accosted by freaking rug merchants.
I used to hate macs. I switched to a macbook. I am much happier now despite the occasional annoyances.
fakedang•4mo ago
WD-42•4mo ago
I’m convinced it’s a frog in boiling water situation for people still using windows. It’s so bad.
nine_k•4mo ago
larrik•4mo ago
On Windows I can't even easily copy/paste from one email to another. It strips out half the formatting and any colors that were there. Nor can I copy email recipients from an email into a new one.
I tried switching to Windows last year and I just couldn't do it. So now my expensive and fancy powerful laptop collects dust and I'm back to my 5 year old m1 (which is somehow faster, usually).
wintermutestwin•4mo ago
JeanMarcS•4mo ago
frollogaston•4mo ago
MarkusWandel•4mo ago
Surprise! Windows 11 likes S3 suspend just fine. Push the button, instant screen off and winking power light... push it again, instant wakeup. So if by some miracle your hardware/UEFI still supports it, you're good. This is a 5-year-old-ish Acer Swift 3 for what it's worth.
Oh, wait, you mean Windows update toggles that setting back? Whoa.
ant6n•4mo ago
Who designs these antipatterns!?
WD-42•4mo ago
What is an operating system? At it's core, an OS is a program to run other programs. Yet this Windows program likes to randomly kill all the programs it's supposed to keep running, at night, when it thinks you aren't looking. It literally fails at the most basic purpose of an operating system.
Rohansi•4mo ago
mapontosevenths•4mo ago
thewebguyd•4mo ago
Not for kernel updates (Linux, by default), and not for macOS which is now RO root fs and also requires a reboot because updates are image based, a. la. Fedora Silverblue.
Also FWIW, Windows now has hotpatching, albeit not available to consumers, it's attached to enterprise licensing
1718627440•4mo ago
mapontosevenths•4mo ago
That's kind of my point. Linux is free and can manage, but 40 year old Windows, which is valued to be worth more than the GDP of many nations can't?
They just aren't trying very hard because they don't have to.
Rohansi•4mo ago
mapontosevenths•4mo ago
It's not that it's an impossible problem, it's that Microsoft doesn't have to compete...so they don't.
Rohansi•4mo ago
If you looked into it though you'd see that you do still need to restart at least every quarter for baseline updates. If you don't restart then future hotpatch updates will not apply because they only target the current baseline update. There are also unplanned baseline updates that require a restart to patch zero-day exploits that cannot be fixed in a hotpatch.
I'm still not understanding how this is a solved problem on Linux. If there is a vulnerability in libc then you need to restart (probably) all processes to have the fix take effect.
mapontosevenths•4mo ago
Restarting the service that was directly impacted by the patch is preferable to the 1980's techno-brained idea of rebooting the entire system. Most of the time it isn't glibc.
FWIW - I did recently read that hotpatching is already there in 11 if you enable it in an enterprise. Fingers crossed it comes to home users.
Rohansi•4mo ago
pxmpxm•4mo ago
As a user I want my computer to restart by itself and lose of my work, because its entire purpose is to collect CVE patches.
mapontosevenths•4mo ago
Either you've misunderstood who the customer is, or Microsoft has.
gausswho•4mo ago
ant6n•4mo ago
nine_k•4mo ago
(Also, say early, save often.)
max51•4mo ago
I personally liked the W8 approach to updates. You were allowed to set windows update in a mode that would notify you of new updates but you got to chose when to download/install them. That setting as also permanent and they didn't "accidentally" revert it back during an update.
p_ing•4mo ago
Updates and unbootable systems are nothing new, to treat any OS as a unicorn in this respect is ignoring past history. Happens with Windows, macOS, and Linux.
christkv•4mo ago
fifticon•4mo ago
wobfan•4mo ago
Can't 100% say whether Windows 11 IoT LTSC is equally good, but from what I've read it also is worth considering.
happymellon•4mo ago
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-...
> after you install Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC Evaluation, you won't be able to use the recovery partition on your PC to go back to your previous version of Windows.
Yikes.
e4m2•4mo ago
happymellon•4mo ago
It's really selling itself...
privatelypublic•4mo ago
Lammy•4mo ago
I was already sold; you don't have to convince me.
xdavidliu•4mo ago
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/harry-you-dont-need-to-sell-i...
Lammy•4mo ago
em-bee•4mo ago
i was going to say something similar. the fact that a version of windows that is designed for IoT devises is still usable as a desktop is absolutely ridiculous. imagine using OpenWRT as a desktop...
e4m2•4mo ago
em-bee•4mo ago
the comparison to OpenWRT is warranted, if microsoft expects me to run this system on devices that i would otherwise run OpenWRT on.
sznio•4mo ago
IoT was the buzzword of the year when W10 released.
thewebguyd•4mo ago
In a way, it is for "IoT" devices...but enterprisey things. Where I work we have it on a few devices that I guess you could call an "IoT" device. Unattended driver kiosks for truck scales, manufacturing equipment that requires windows, industrial control panels, etc.
That's what it is for. A lot of this stuff uses really old software, some of which the vendor doesn't even exist anymore, and it only runs on Windows so these control panels and devices need windows (unless you manage to get some of it working on wine but that's usually not viable in these cases).
So yeah, it's supposed to be a full desktop, because these devices often require it to some extent, albeit a little slimmed down and LTS.
I think HN would be surprised to learn just how many devices run windows out there in the world outside of silicon valley. Windows is everywhere you'd hope never to see it running at.
em-bee•4mo ago
ahakki•4mo ago
The recovery partition has some value. But in an OS reinstall scenario Windows.old is a much more helpful feature.
However, these features won't used by someone installing Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC Evaluation (Evaluation just means that it's 90 day free trial version). This is because to aquire the non-trial version of the OS you must either be willing to license Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC from Microsoft, or crack the activation. If you crack Windows you do not need the 90 day free trial! And any company which has institutional knowledge of what an LTSC edition is, is capable of running the 90 day trial in a non destructive way (pro tip: put your new OS on a new drive and keep your old drive in a drawer).
Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC is the best version of Windows 11 I have ever tried, no contest.
SpecialistK•4mo ago
I just reinstalled my own system with a combination of LTSC and Linux (currently looking at a riced Hyprland on CachyOS) with the understanding that there will be occasional annoyances (but still less so than consumer W11)
kristianp•4mo ago
greycol•4mo ago
add-sub-mul-div•4mo ago
pxmpxm•4mo ago
greycol•4mo ago
You can hunt out the other newer superseding settings (good luck without a 3rd party script or guide as you won't find required settings and steps to remove it in any MS docs just scattered parts) and eventually neuter the recommended section again... possibly as you suggest forever or possibly until an update touches this again.
Krssst•4mo ago
It is a tiny bit of a mess to setup on gaming computers because of lack of drivers (for the drivers which cannot be downloaded from the manufacturer site, need to get a Windows 11 install, let it download/install all the drivers as needed, then use pnputil to export them and import them in Windows Server) but I did manage to find a likely-legitimate seller (referenced on the Microsoft website as a partner) selling licenses for legitimate-looking prices. The price goes up with the amount of cores, happy I didn't have a Threadripper.
Also some issues here and there (such as needing a registry change to enable clipboard history, Meta Link not supporting showing the desktop or headset audio (could maybe use the pnputil trick for that)) that I didn't have with the LTSC evaluation.
bikelang•4mo ago
Only issue is that Windows will periodically re-bloat itself - so you have to re-run it after more or less every quarterly windows update.
The only thing remaining that I want to remove but cannot get rid of is edge. Removing edge is only available in the EU for $ome in$ane rea$on. You might be able to get an EU ISO for installation? Unclear to me but I haven’t dug too deeply.
BuyMyBitcoins•4mo ago
It’s horrifying. Edge is jam-packed with bloat and the entire browser is geared towards monitoring and hoarding every scrap of user interaction that passes through it. The worst part is that the average person likely has no idea just how pervasive Microsoft’s spying and ad-targeting is.
I envy the fact that EU Citizens have the right to decline all of these intrusive “features” foisted upon them by Microsoft. I doubt Congress would ever come close to affording us a fraction of these same consumer rights. Sigh.
hyperman1•4mo ago
xela79•4mo ago
???
how? what kind of malware did you install? have several W11 boxes, none exhibit this behavior. No "official" notification for a prize give away or any ads.
GreenVulpine•4mo ago
xela79•4mo ago
ah, cool a region that blocks these business practices... awesome :)
pinkmuffinere•4mo ago
MangoToupe•4mo ago
smileybarry•4mo ago
You're frankly better off applying a bunch of registry changes to 10, using a Education or N (EU) edition "illegally", or blocking DNS than going back to 7 just for privacy concerns. You're cutting off your nose to spite your face.
1718627440•4mo ago
smileybarry•4mo ago
1718627440•4mo ago
smileybarry•4mo ago
1718627440•4mo ago
olyjohn•4mo ago
McAlpine5892•4mo ago
"CONSENT: A clear and unambiguous agreement, expressed outwardly through mutually understandable words or actions, to engage in a particular activity. Consent can be withdrawn by either party at any point."
and
"No means No"
What I'm about to say is strongly worded and I understand not a _perfect_ analogy by any means. However, it does sum up my feelings on this issue.
If Person A makes repeated unwanted advances towards Person B, we have words to describe that. But if Person A, a company, makes repeated unwanted advances towards Person B we call that business.
zelphirkalt•4mo ago