2025 was a disaster for Windows 11 • Hacker News Board

Re: 2025 was a disaster for Windows 11

#201

Post by deepspace » Wed, Dec 31, 2025, 9:00 PM UTC

Arech wrote: post #70

awesan wrote: post #29

I installed Linux (an arch-based distro) last month. There have been some minor issues but nothing worse than what I experienced regularly on Windows recently. My computer feels fast again and when things randomly break I can at least get to the root cause and fix it myself. I used to quite like Windows, but it has gotten worse every patch day for years now. The pain of learning a new system is not so bad and at leas…

I had been Windows user since Windows3.1. More than 3 decades straight. After a few years of working with Linux, installed Debian on home PC about a year ago and couldn't be more happier since then.

I briefly test-drove Windows 2, but have been a solid Windows user since 3.1 too.

I have been forced to use Windows 11 on a succession of work PCs, but I stayed 10 at home due to the lack of a movable task bar and the terrible right-click menu in 11.

When Microsoft started pushing hard against remaining on 10 this year, I made the switch - to MacOS. It was an easy decision, since I was finally able to get a MacBook for work, too, so no context-switching required. I run a copy of Win11 in a VM for apps that need it, but find that I rarely have to spin it up.

As a product manager, I cannot image the decision-making behind building a product update so shitty that you drive away 35-year customers.

Re: 2025 was a disaster for Windows 11

#202

Post by phendrenad2 » Wed, Dec 31, 2025, 9:00 PM UTC

manwe150 wrote: post #80

This seems to be a story written for the HN audience, rather than for the core user base. Despite a long trend of predictions of Windows demise, it is still very much here and healthy as a platform for user install. I could also write the same article about this website, how it was so full of bloat and ads that nobody wants I could barely get it to scroll, and it eventually crashed before getting to the end of TFA du…

Come on bro, the journalism game isn't about being right, it's about getting people to read the same rehydrated story every month for their entire life.

Re: 2025 was a disaster for Windows 11

#203

Post by Caligatio » Wed, Dec 31, 2025, 9:01 PM UTC

ksynwa wrote: post #142

For me the strange and unproductive direction Windows is going towards in encapsulated in the right-click menu in the file manager (Explorer). 11 has a shiny new menu that shows up when you right click. But it is a new coat of paint over the ones from 10 or before. Additional options from for example 7zip don't show up in it. You have to click "more options" at the bottom which them reveals the old menu. There is no…

You can disable the new right click menu with one registry tweak: https://www.elevenforum.com/t/disable-show-more-options-cont...

Re: 2025 was a disaster for Windows 11

#204

Post by onraglanroad » Wed, Dec 31, 2025, 9:01 PM UTC

subjectsigma wrote: post #101

grugagag wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will of course frantically try to clamber out. But if you place it gently in a pot of tepid water and turn the heat on low, it will float there quite placidly. As the water gradually heats up, the frog will sink into a tranquil stupor, exactly like one of us in a hot bath, and before long, with a smile on its face, it will unresistingly allow itself to be boiled to dea…

(From your own link, the story is just a myth that’s not supported by modern scientific evidence. But the point still stands.)

From that same link:

"These modern biologists, however, did not produce any evidence contradicting Fratscher's results since they did not test such slow water-heating as in Fratscher's experiments."

Sounds undetermined whether they croak or not...

Re: 2025 was a disaster for Windows 11

#205

Post by leptons » Wed, Dec 31, 2025, 9:03 PM UTC

samiv wrote: post #54

I've been preaching this for a while but the era of PC as in "personal computing" is coming to an end and will slowly but surely be replaced with CC, Corporate Computing, where the corporations own everything, the hardware, the software and only permit you to use their equipment against a monthly fee and only to the extent they allow and permit. Everything you do will be controlled and observed and extracted for data…

I'm kind of glad I'm an old guy and got to live through the "golden age" of computing in the 70's, 80's and 90's. I get to check-out in the next 20-30 years or so, before things get really bad. The future really is looking ever more shitty year after year. Back in the 90's I had real hope for the future, but that has faded.

Re: 2025 was a disaster for Windows 11

#206

Post by odie5533 » Wed, Dec 31, 2025, 9:03 PM UTC

p_ing wrote: post #189

odie5533 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The partial overlap has been in this state now for years and years. I still have to access the control panel for network device control, sound control, and some of the advanced sharing settings. I thought it would be a short transition but now we just have crappy partial duplicates of settings and ui styles scattered around this half baked migration. When I open the disk volume management it's like I'm back on Window…

Regular volume management can be done entirely within the Settings app. So can sound settings. There's probably an outlier that diskmgmt does better, I'm sure. But diskpart still exists, too. It could be that MSFT targets only the common scenarios and the fallback ends up being old utils/PowerShell at some point. This was new in 2025, so it is still moving over.

As far as I know, to modify the audio Exclusive Mode settings and view jack information, you still need to use mmsys.cpl from the Control Panel. And I think many operations like converting MBR to GPT still require the Disk Management control panel.

Re: 2025 was a disaster for Windows 11

#207

Post by sedatk » Wed, Dec 31, 2025, 9:06 PM UTC

I love Windows 11. I'm sure some of my code still lives in Windows 11 from my days at Microsoft. But, the hasty and haphazard ways that some teams at Microsoft treat it sadden me.

I specifically despise Microsoft Accounts being forced down our throats because, among all other things, they make certain workflows impossible. For instance, you can't schedule tasks to run as your user when you're not logged in[1]. It won't work because your Microsoft account doesn't have a password in the traditional sense. You basically can't do anything that requires you to enter your Windows user credentials. I also had problems with making Remote Desktop connections to my other computers at home in the past and maybe it's related to this too.

Another thing; I don't like seeing multiple WebView-based apps running on my system all the time either. WebView or Electron screams lazy to me. Because some dev team didn't want to bother to write a decent and lightweight GUI frontend with numerous GUI frameworks Microsoft had released, 1.5 billion Windows users have to pay the price to have an extremely heavyweight layers of layers of abstractions on their system running all the time. I can't imagine the waste at this scale. Something basic like "Start menu search" should never be a WebView, but it is[2].

[1] https://bsky.app/profile/ssg.dev/post/3m7vpkshbgc2p

[2] https://bsky.app/profile/ssg.dev/post/3m2wt3cyrv22q

Re: 2025 was a disaster for Windows 11

#208

Post by gregors » Wed, Dec 31, 2025, 9:07 PM UTC

As Win10 is officially unsupported now, non-tech people have come to me to ask me what they should buy as a new laptop. So far I've been successful in installing Ubuntu or having them install Ubuntu and go on about their life. The vast majority of these people live in a browser. Sometimes I get asked "what's a good app for x?"

People who are hard-tied to Windows for some program aren't the ones asking for my input. If they don't want Linux I point them towards a macbook, which no longer scares people who use iphones all day long. If they do that, I ask if I can repurpose their old computer with linux and donate it to someone.

Re: 2025 was a disaster for Windows 11

#209

Post by p_ing » Wed, Dec 31, 2025, 9:08 PM UTC

odie5533 wrote: post #206

p_ing wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regular volume management can be done entirely within the Settings app. So can sound settings. There's probably an outlier that diskmgmt does better, I'm sure. But diskpart still exists, too. It could be that MSFT targets only the common scenarios and the fallback ends up being old utils/PowerShell at some point. This was new in 2025, so it is still moving over.

As far as I know, to modify the audio Exclusive Mode settings and view jack information, you still need to use mmsys.cpl from the Control Panel. And I think many operations like converting MBR to GPT still require the Disk Management control panel.

You're correct, and those are likely all little-used in the grand scheme of Windows users (MBR -> GPT for certain).

Re: 2025 was a disaster for Windows 11

#210

Post by gregors » Wed, Dec 31, 2025, 9:10 PM UTC

slekker wrote: post #73

yoyohello13 wrote: post #20

Microsoft in 2025: We fired a bunch of engineers and mandated AI usage. 90% of our code is now generated by AI. Also Microsoft in 2025: Record setting bugs and anti-features released. Case study in code quantity is not equal to code quality.

To add they want to rewrite Windows in Rust with AI, which I can only assume they hope will keep the software quality up but I doubt it

A perfectly crafted turd ....is still a turd.