Windows 11 – There's still nothing worth my time • Hacker News Board

Re: Windows 11 – There's still nothing worth my time

#111

Post by jodrellblank » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 5:02 PM UTC

ffsm8 wrote: post #97

Cumpiler69 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN will never let facts stand in the way of good FUD.

It's Snarkiness, not FUD. Neither fear, uncertainty nor doubt involved here. And I think everyone knew from context that the claim was strongly tongue in cheek.

It is the rise of anti-intellectualism. It's the lack of good-faith. It's the promulgation of lies instead of truths, without even caring they are lies as long as they attack the right people. It's the idea "it takes a lot of work to make it look easy" being replaced with "if it looks easy you must not be working".

Windows 10 you can go through a couple of clicks of a Wizard and reboot, and Windows will install Hyper-V type 1 hypervisor, seamlessly virtualise the host OS and not even look or feel different. It will integrate with Windows patching, with PowerShell Hyper-V cmdlets, with subsystems like WSL2, with Volume Shadow Copy. It's localised into different languages, documented, and supported. It's got virtual switch and networking support layered into the Windows network subsystem. And you can go through a couple of clicks of a Wizard and reboot, and Windows will seamlessly un-virtualise the OS, and that's all just gone. On almost any random hardware it's not limited to Dell servers with qualified drivers, you can do it on a desktop or laptop with the right CPU instructions and Windows license level.

How much human programmer effort, planning, design and time does the parent poster think that took? And that happened alongside all the other changes to internals, process isolation, memory compression, UAC, networking stack, and along with merging tablet PC Windows and Xbox Windows and Windows Server into one unified codebase.

No all that goes into "I didn't use it, I didn't see it, I hate it, so it counts as doing nothing".

Repeat for all the features. "Oh they just added new hardware support" - Bluetooth support is more than a driver, it's a whole front end for discovery, sharing, there's APIs into the Metro apps and WinRT for apps to send files and data over Bluetooth, there's Bluetooth audio stack, Windows telephony subsystem integration for answering calls.

Multiple monitors? High DPI screens? Multiple desktops? Fractional display scaling?

You can run Windows 2000 in a browser here: https://bellard.org/jslinux/vm.html?url=win2k.cfg&mem=192&gr...

It's pretty, it's classic, it's coherent, it's responsive. People would go ape-shit over this? Really?

(Is it a coincidence that Windows and Mac users look at it and think it's a nice retro legacy toy from 25 years ago, and Linux users look at it and think it's a futuristic utopia?)

Re: Windows 11 – There's still nothing worth my time

#112

Post by reginald78 » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 5:04 PM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #87

xx_ns wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if it doesn't do what he wants him to do, it sucks Well... yeah? The computer is a tool. If my tool doesn't do what I want it to do, or, by extension, it does things I didn't ask for or need, then it does suck. If my tool suddenly told me that my toolbox needs another, arbitrary tool Y that I don't need (in this case, TPM), then I will look for another brand. The fact that "most users" are ignorant doesn't mean tha…

> " Also, security, as we see every day, is all about backend infrastructure, like telcos not getting hax0red, amirite, and not about home users. After all, in my three decades of computing, 100% of harm to my "computing estate" came from companies being lax with their data in their "clouds", not from any movie-like hax0rology on my local systems. " Does the author not remember the days when connecting an unpatched W…

I don't follow. They didn't fix it by installing ads in the start menu, making the command prompt take 4 second to load or constantly moving all the settings around. The fixed those things with security patches, which back then weren't even force bundled with packs of crappy features.

Re: Windows 11 – There's still nothing worth my time

#113

Post by maccard » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 5:07 PM UTC

xnorswap wrote: post #71

maccard wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree windows defender was an absolute game changer, but have you used it in Win11? I upgraded a fairly beefy workstation from win10 to win11 and immediately started to see 10-15x slowdowns on the first run of a task after boot. Things that took 20 seconds were taking 3-4 minutes. I took an etl trace and discovered it was windows defender. Subsequent runs were about 20% worse than on win10. Adding the folder to the…

Windows 11 is horribly slow at everything it does. It's borderline unusable. Just hitting the windows key and typing "notepad" and hitting enter has gone from something that was near instant in windows XP to something that takes 30 seconds and only sometimes might be successful. I'm assuming it's waiting for network requests to send off what I'm typing to bing/cortana/etc before giving me the result I want. Yes it co…

> Just hitting the windows key and typing "notepad" and hitting enter has gone from something that was near instant in windows XP to something that takes 30 seconds and only sometimes might be successful

Agreed. It's also surprisingly easy to fix - disable web search in the start menu. [0]

> Because as horrible as defender is, have you experienced commercial AV products?

yes, and they're a disgrace. I don't normally engage in baiting on here, but honestly a lot of them are worse than the viruses they protect you from. McAfee and Norton are _literally_ spyware.

At $PREV_JOB carbon black was installed over the weekend, and I was working on some performance related tasks. All my results were invalidated because of the slowdown it imparted on _everything_.

That doesn't give defender a free pass for falling from grace though.

[0] https://weblog.west-wind.com/posts/2024/May/03/Speed-up-your...

Re: Windows 11 – There's still nothing worth my time

#114

Post by reginald78 » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 5:24 PM UTC

ReptileMan wrote: post #48

aboardRat4 wrote: post #4

Wait until the programs you need to run only work on w11.

Like league of legends with their amazing anticheat kernel driver that also requires tpm. Not sure how this thing is gdpr compliant. It is way too invasive.

Preventing the user from running unauthorized software is the purpose of the TPM so that isn't much of a surprise.

Re: Windows 11 – There's still nothing worth my time

#115

Post by Arainach » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 5:44 PM UTC

STRML wrote: post #90

jodrellblank wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_XP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_Vista https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_10 ???

Arguably, especially in the 8/10/11 era, few of these features are things that meaningfully enhance the user experience. Incredibly, we're still running NTFS and dealing with hacks on hacks on hacks. In the 8 era, a huge number of massive projects were started, promoted, and mothballed.

You say "still" as if NTFS hasn't evolved in that time. It still has a far more capable permissions model than any Linux filesystem.

Raymond called it 21 years ago: when you change the insides, no one notices. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20040525-00/?p=39...

Re: Windows 11 – There's still nothing worth my time

#116

Post by jodrellblank » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 5:45 PM UTC

hulitu wrote: post #88

jodrellblank wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_XP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_Vista https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_10 ???

> Windows 10 reintroduced the start menu A great feature. They dumbed it down though. > Unlike in previous versions of Windows NT, the Win32 console windows can now be resized without any restrictions. Truly a great achievement. It took MS 2 decades. > It can be made to cover the full screen by pressing the Alt+↵ Enter combination on keyboard. Maybe i'm too old, but this was always working. And the cherry on the cake…

Yes all those Wikipedia articles only mention three things. Three things is all Microsoft did in twenty years. And they are all bad therefore Microsoft bad.

Re: Windows 11 – There's still nothing worth my time

#117

Post by ryandrake » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 5:54 PM UTC

xx_ns wrote: post #73

batrat wrote: post #56

I stopped reading when he uninstalled defender. Is the best thing ms did to windows! OP is like the 90% of linux users: if it doesn't do what he wants him to do, it sucks. Like you said most users don't care about TMP, they also don't care about who is protecting them, what interface it is, how printers work, how office works, how browsers work. This is why windows is/was successful, you start it, open outlook, mail,…

> if it doesn't do what he wants him to do, it sucks Well... yeah? The computer is a tool. If my tool doesn't do what I want it to do, or, by extension, it does things I didn't ask for or need, then it does suck. If my tool suddenly told me that my toolbox needs another, arbitrary tool Y that I don't need (in this case, TPM), then I will look for another brand. The fact that "most users" are ignorant doesn't mean tha…

> Well... yeah? The computer is a tool. If my tool doesn't do what I want it to do, or, by extension, it does things I didn't ask for or need, then it does suck.

Exactly. We have strayed so far from the original path of the PC being owned by and serving its USER. Doing what the USER wants it to do. Running what the USER wants running. Upgrading when the USER wants to upgrade. I don't want my operating system to what Microsoft wants it to do, or what Apple wants it to do, or, to be fair, what Canonical wants it to do. I want it to do what I want it to do. The fact that this has become a weird "power user" point of view is scary.

Re: Windows 11 – There's still nothing worth my time

#118

Post by incrudible » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 6:42 PM UTC

JSR_FDED wrote: post #74

incrudible wrote: post #72

I hate where Microsoft is going, but there is no obvious alternative. I am not go to be paying hundreds of dollars markup for RAM/SSDs and limiting myself to a single GPU vendor by switching to Apple. I am very hesitant to deal with desktop linux bullshit, but Windows 11 may just be the thing to push me over the edge. I know there are great people at Microsoft who know what “the right thing” is for the people who act…

I’m puzzled. On the one hand you don’t want the complexity of a Linux desktop, but you want the hassle that comes with changing GPUs. Over the life of a typical machine is it really worth upgrading the GPU separately?

Upgrading a GPU is not much of a hassle on an ordinary desktop, you open the case and plug it in, at worst you also need to upgrade the PSU. And you do that maybe once during the lifetime of the machine.

The real problem with the Apple approach though is that the very highest end SoC gives only the performance of a much cheaper midrange discrete chip and does not support all the software. Unified memory is nice, but that does not make up for it.

Re: Windows 11 – There's still nothing worth my time

#119

Post by incrudible » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 6:53 PM UTC

soco wrote: post #76

incrudible wrote: post #72

I hate where Microsoft is going, but there is no obvious alternative. I am not go to be paying hundreds of dollars markup for RAM/SSDs and limiting myself to a single GPU vendor by switching to Apple. I am very hesitant to deal with desktop linux bullshit, but Windows 11 may just be the thing to push me over the edge. I know there are great people at Microsoft who know what “the right thing” is for the people who act…

That's the very point of this discussion: not everybody cares abut the platform. As long browsing and office work, half (or more) of the population would never know a Windows from a Mac. And they shouldn't either. PS video and music, let aside games, are already for power users.

It does not take a power user to notice that the system has become more sluggish and more annoying, the average user just is not that vocal about it.

However, these people also do not care about stuff like Copilot, so the question becomes: Who is Windows being developed for? Microsoft could save a bunch of money literally adding no new features and that would make both the power user and the average user happy.

Re: Windows 11 – There's still nothing worth my time

#120

Post by incrudible » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 7:00 PM UTC

bbkane wrote: post #78

incrudible wrote: post #72

I hate where Microsoft is going, but there is no obvious alternative. I am not go to be paying hundreds of dollars markup for RAM/SSDs and limiting myself to a single GPU vendor by switching to Apple. I am very hesitant to deal with desktop linux bullshit, but Windows 11 may just be the thing to push me over the edge. I know there are great people at Microsoft who know what “the right thing” is for the people who act…

Apple's (much more) slowly going down to the same "profit over users" road. A year or so ago I started slowly migrating from Apple-only apps to cross-platform apps. Fortunately my main hobbies are YouTube and software side projects so this was pretty easy. Anyway, when I finally felt my Mac was getting a bit long in the tooth, I loaded Linux (Debian + XFCE in my case, but they say Linux Mint is quite Windows-ish) on…

Having skipped over Vista and Windows 8, my hope is that 11 is another one of those versions where they throw crap at the wall that will not stick to the next version. On the other hand, Windows 10 still has things I considered unacceptable, which I ended up accepting begrudgingly. Perhaps that is the whole strategy.