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[winjer]

There are exploits that can root your system potentially. Newer malware won’t be easily detectable with above methods.

Things like using your system for mining crypto or say being an onion node are straightforward to detect, but installing a keylogger or getting your bank data out is going to be much harder to see.

In general it’s a terrible idea to run unsupported system like that. Better to install Linux or buy a Mac Mini or something. Or install Win11 and debloat/block telemetry (have to do that potentially after each major yearly update as MS reverts things).

As far as attack vectors that could compromise you, there can be all kinds of crap, too many to list.

Something from exploiting say an unpatched router and jumping to your network (don’t run unsupported hardware than can access internet either) to a windows exploit that won’t be patched to many other methods all could occur.

Another option, is to use Windows 11 LTSC.
It's very difficult to get a key for it, tough.
But this is the safest, most stable and fastest version of Windows that MS makes.

 

[PauloRoberto]

To be honest... last Windows operation system that you could use and feel that the machine was better with it was Windows 7. In terms of 'wow' factor, MS never recovered from Windows 8...

 

[phant0m]

Last good Windows was 7. Hell, if you’re listening MS I’d would pay good money for a modern Windows XP. No integrated internet-connected bullshit on everything.

I recently switch my Legion Go to Bazzite and have been so much happier

 

[GudOlRub]

Thankfully my employer still hasn't "upgraded" to W11, I've only used 11 while setting up a pc I gifted to a relative and my god it was so fucking shit.

I still can't believe the way they encapsulated the context menus and worst yet, how they completely destroyed the taskbar, core functionalities of windows that worked pretty okay are now a mess, user experience was also affected in the process since people were used to the old and simple context menus and now they have to get used to navigate sub-menus because "reasons"...
I JUST WANT TO MOVE THE FUCKING TASKBAR TO THE SIDES OF MY MONITOR MICROSOFT, I HAVE PLENTY OF HORIZONTAL SPACE ALREADY, I NEED MORE VERTICAL SPACE YOU FUCKERS.

Anywho, sorry for the rant, I'll only update to 11 when they pull the plug on 10, what a fucking mess of a OS...

 

[nemiroff]

Have had no issues with 11 for a long time. In fact was only the first year. Could never go back to 10. Not that you should because it’ll be dead soon lol.

It’s the same old boring story…a new OS comes out and everyone and their cat hates on it. Eventually they fall in love with it and repeat. I remember everyone hated 10. Once people are forced to actually use it then they will realise it’s not that bad after all.

As someone who's been on computers since before and during DOS (memmaker and bat-files anyone..?) and have a lifetime of experience with every platform and OS under the sun (inkluding some really obscure ones, like TIKO for the Kon-Tiki, and IBM O/S2, etc, I guess I should also include NT which drove me crazy as an engineer back in the days..), including decades as a Linux poweruser, and a decade or so of being an Apple Mac fanboy (man that fucking spinning beachball..).... I have a hard time understanding exactly what some people so desperately want to be doing with their Windows 11 installs (I mean, I am a tinkerer myself, but tinkering isn't exactly a necessity).

Edit: To be fair, I've hit a few switches in the settings to turn off some nagging-shit, like the widget system.

I JUST WANT TO MOVE THE FUCKING TASKBAR TO THE SIDES OF MY MONITOR MICROSOFT, I HAVE PLENTY OF HORIZONTAL SPACE ALREADY, I NEED MORE VERTICAL SPACE YOU FUCKERS.

Well, if you find the menu thing (and other similar UI stuff) is annoying, you could always use Windhawk.. Easy, free, flexible.

 

[Trilobit]

To me Mac OS just feels much better to use for more day to day usage. I mean even the settings on Mac OS is 100x better than what Windows has. Simple and precise on finding what I need.

Infact I'll go into more details on settings on Windows. It's so jumbled up it's crazy. Half the stuff you need isn't even in the normal settings view. It's buried under stuff that goes back to windows xp style UI that has the useful stuff.

This is so true and something that amazed me for a whole year when I got my first Macbook in the 00's. I would just open the settings menu and be amazed at how intuitive it was and how easy it was to find what I was looking for. Windows settings is still to this day cryptic in comparison and that's without bringing up the concept of the control panel which is where you sometimes find the settings you actually were looking for. It's how I would design an OS if I had a secret agenda of making people hate computers.

And what's up with Microsoft taking away customization options for the system tray? I basically had to wrestle the settings in the control panel and quickly reboot my computer to save the changes I wanted. I didn't want some of the icons to be there to make it look cleaner, but I had to do it with the system kicking and screaming at me.

Or just changing icons for different systems folders. Why is that such a problem for W11, while MacOS gladly allows it? I can continue with many more of these details that make me question the talent working at Microsoft.

 

[CharmingCharlie]

i am not ditching one of my perfectly working damn PC's just cos it doesn't have a TPM which windows 11 requires. I will just keep rocking windows 10.

 

[winjer]

 

[GudOlRub]

Well, if you find the menu thing (and other smaller UI stuff) is annoying, you could always use Windhawk.. Easy, free, flexible.

I know there are 3rd party alternatives to fix these issues, still, it's incredibly frustrating and absurd that they removed basic features that have existed on windows since at least windows 95 and now users are forced to either deal with it or look for aftermarket solutions that might completely break at any moment with some random OS patch.

 

[Unknown?]

How can I switch to Linux if it has no Office or my work requires mandatory software that does not even work well in VM?

I tried Linux Mint on my old laptop and I liked it, but boot times were ridiculous.

I really hate that Office compatability sucks on Linux even while using alternative software, otherwise I would switch immediately.

Sorry for off-topic, but since some of you ditched Windows, it is interesting for me to know how you deal with work issues unless you don't have a job that requires a computer.

Doesn't libre office have compatibility with office files? Tbh, I've always had success using wine for .exe files. You could use office with Wine, not aware of any software that doesn't work well in a VM.

Also boot has been lightning fast for me but my laptop uses coreboot which is a lean bios.

 

[xrnzaaas]

I hate this trend of adding features without asking for your consent (like Copilot and all that crap) and the result is OS consuming more resources and running slower even on a newer PC. Not to mention your system is spying on you more and more with every new big update.

 

[Topher]

I hate this trend of adding features without asking for your consent (like Copilot and all that crap) and the result is OS consuming more resources and running slower even on a newer PC. Not to mention your system is spying on you more and more with every new big update.

That's my issue. Microsoft is going to find a way to shove their latest and greatest bullshit "feature" down your throat. They threw in "Copilot" shit everywhere they could in Windows. This is a big reason why I'm hoping Valve is able to create a variant of Arch Linux that has wide support for handhelds, GPUs and games in mind specifically.

 

[The Fartist]

Can't fucking wait for SteamOS, gaming is the only thing keeping Windows on my gaming rig, all of my laptops have fedora and debian since they're not gaming capable. Gaming on Linux is currently a little too complicated for me. I will 100% say goodbye to Windows when SteamOS gets released.

Edit: any content creation I do on my M1 MacBook Air, which I dual-boot MacOS and fedora Asahi Remix

 

[Topher]

 

[Hohenheim]

I'm trying hard to remember if i've had any issues with windows 11 on my gaming rigs.. I have not. Closest thing is the Game Pass app that have some issues that seems to be connected to windows store, and that RTX HDR sometimes gets knocked out by the HDR in windows.

Except these "issues" nothing comes to mind.

 

[WhamBamThankYouMaam]

How the hell can someone use your computer like that without you noticing? You never use task manager or something? You never check what's running in the background? How about performance metrics? How can you not notice all the extra network/CPU/RAM activity, or other use of resources?

I get it, security is important and having an up-to-date OS helps. It's not a bad advice. But you don't have to pitch it with such an over the top fearmongering scenario that involves the worst kind of hacking on the worst kind of user. And if you are such a user, no amount of security updates will save you, your computer is already filled with all kinds of bloat/malware, etc. I have seen this way too many times on the most up-to date systems. It's a user issue.



Don't get me wrong, this isn't a bad advice. But thankfully not everyone has to rely 100% on the OS babysitting them. Some users can handle a few things on their own.

I mean, it's not like updates can some times make things worse but what do i know, let's just rely on Microsoft 100% because they are so reliable and trustworthy.



Look, i don't know you so i would always recommend updating your OS. It's the safe advice to give. Kinda like the "don't do this at home" or a "don't drink this" sticker on a radioactive waste barrel.

Otherwise, if you have some level of awareness and sense, you are a bit careful, don't download every random .exe file, don't click on everything in your path, have some security plugins on your browser, keep backups of your files offline, etc, you will probably be fine.

If you don't check most of these boxes you will most likely get screwed either way, updates or not.

Personally, i use computers since 1999. The only time i almost got in trouble because of a scammer/hacker it was my fault and stupidity, not the OS, it didn't even happen on my computer, that was my (up-to-date) phone.

There is nothing over the top with his explanation, however the normal case is stolen credentials which happens Often.

If you are in an enterprise environment? Well, good luck with w10. And see you for some forensic work later.

Most people having issues with w11 don’t realize, as they have internalized the slowdowns etc as normal.

 

[Shubh_C63]

Otherwise, if you have some level of awareness and sense, you are a bit careful, don't download every random .exe file, don't click on everything in your path, have some security plugins on your browser, keep backups of your files offline, etc, you will probably be fine.

Yeah exactly that's what I figured.
If normal safe browsing habits and Anti Virus can't protect me, I am screwed anyway.

Thank god pendrives are not used anymore like we were in college. Biggest cause of infection in those days.

 

[gothmog]

I run a gaming PC with windows 11 and keep it pretty vanilla with no personal data. Everything else is on a MacBook that I use for any day to day use. I would have stayed mostly windows for personal use, but when I have to run software to remove Microsofts bullshit I knew it was time to move on.

 

[REDRZA MWS]

I haven’t had a single problem with W11, and downloaded it well before it became mainstream.

 

[sigmaZ]

One drive is a nightmare.

Yeah. It worked better back when it was SkyDrive. I nearly lost some music projects I worked really hard on. Now I just use OneDrive as a place to stick archives as backup.

 

[Celcius]

I’ve been using windows 11 since day one. It used to be fantastic but the 24H2 update has been really janky for me.

 

[rodrigolfp]

I hate this trend of adding features without asking for your consent (like Copilot and all that crap) and the result is OS consuming more resources and running slower even on a newer PC. Not to mention your system is spying on you more and more with every new big update.

This happens with every single OS, even Linux and console OS.

 

[hououinkyouma00]

I only upgraded to Windows 11 because the way it handles HDR better. I switch my PC back and forth between a LG C2 and a OLED monitor and while Windows HDR is still trash somehow compared to both current gen PlayStation and Xbox consoles (and honestly last gen as well) it at least seems to work better on Windows 11.

I really fucking hate Windows and that's part of the reason I'm a Mac user (and have been since like 2008 in high school) for everything but gaming. My gaming PC is literally only used for gaming outside of the few times I want to browse and I was already sitting there to play.

I would gladly switch to Linux/SteamOS if game compatibility was better. I mainly say this as a huge battlefield fan (yes even 2042) and until SteamOS/Linux gets full anti cheat support I'm stuck here and I don't feel like using two different OSs for different games.

 

[Loomy]

I just use Windows for gaming+demanding tasks and my M1 MacBook Air for everything else. (Also got a Steam Deck for gaming+Linux, but I don't use it day to day)

To me Mac OS just feels much better to use for more day to day usage. I mean even the settings on Mac OS is 100x better than what Windows has. Simple and precise on finding what I need.

Infact I'll go into more details on settings on Windows. It's so jumbled up it's crazy. Half the stuff you need isn't even in the normal settings view. It's buried under stuff that goes back to windows xp style UI that has the useful stuff.

To setup surround for my speakers I had to bring up the old ass volume mixer. Like why? Settings had my speakers setup as stereo and wouldn't give me *any* options to choose otherwise. But the good ol' volume mixer listed under Advanced,then More Sound Settings had everything I needed for 5.1. Volume mixer should've been added properly in the UI of the new settings to have everything I need, instead of half assing it like they always seem to do when adding new things.

This type of thing is a common issue with multiple things throughout Windows too.

Windows 11 has 2 control panels. Think about that for a moment. It has the UI that's been in Windows forever, and a new UI designed for Windows 11. There's a whole bunch of stuff that's built on top of the exact same stuff from older versions of Windows. Microsoft really needs to spend some time and money actually cleaning it up. Otherwise they're going to keep carrying the same bloat into future versions of windows.

Having said that, it's harder for the them. The amount of businesses/services relying on Windows is massive. They can't make any breaking changes -even temporary ones - on the way to fixing it.

How can I switch to Linux if it has no Office or my work requires mandatory software that does not even work well in VM?

I tried Linux Mint on my old laptop and I liked it, but boot times were ridiculous.

I really hate that Office compatability sucks on Linux even while using alternative software, otherwise I would switch immediately.

Sorry for off-topic, but since some of you ditched Windows, it is interesting for me to know how you deal with work issues unless you don't have a job that requires a computer.

Don't fuck with your livelihood. If work requires Windows, use Windows. 11 is a long way from perfect or great, but it's more than useable for day to day tasks.

I hate this trend of adding features without asking for your consent (like Copilot and all that crap) and the result is OS consuming more resources and running slower even on a newer PC. Not to mention your system is spying on you more and more with every new big update.

To be fair, you're licensing the product. Having said that, you should be able to disable those features.

 

[Codeblew]

Do we have these documented cases covered by news or sorts? I wanna watch them
Not gonna lie, seems unlikely.

How the hell can someone use your computer like that without you noticing? You never use task manager or something? You never check what's running in the background? How about performance metrics? How can you not notice all the extra network/CPU/RAM activity, or other use of resources?

I get it, security is important and having an up-to-date OS helps. It's not a bad advice. But you don't have to pitch it with such an over the top fearmongering scenario that involves the worst kind of hacking on the worst kind of user. And if you are such a user, no amount of security updates will save you, your computer is already filled with all kinds of bloat/malware, etc. I have seen this way too many times on the most up-to date systems. It's a user issue.

Google rootkit.

 

[xenosys]

Been on Windows 11 for a while now. No issues at all.

 

[kevboard]

Yes you can

Windhawk

The customization marketplace for Windows and programs. Customize your programs with available code snippets or create your own customizations.

windhawk.net

 

[nbcjr]

Since I use a bootcamp Mac, I'm stuck on 10

 

[Melon Husk]

Also an option to rebind the useless Copilot button to emojis, right... right?

 

[Danknugz]

i've used win11 and win10 and i still prefer win10 for normal work, it's crazy how MS actually hires and pays people to screw up something as simple and useful as notepad.

 

[LordOfChaos]

Madres mios! As I was reading the beginning of your post my mind wandered to when I first got a Macbook and it came with Snow Leopard and how deliciously fast and amazing that OS was. I am now on Windows 11 and despite having good specs on my laptop nothing feels as fluid and quick as it did back then. Nothing feels optimized and the design choices they've made are real head-scratchers. If I wasn't able to customize the UI with third-party tools I'd be really bummed out.

Snow Leopard was peak, including for Apple

Ever since they switched to a yearly cadence after it's never felt like that rock solid appliance like stability of late Snow Leopard (I know the early release had a major deletion bug which some counter this with, but the point was they kept working on it for long enough for it to get to that rock solid end state before moving on, and then never did that again), and the last OS to still feel relatively ok on HDDs and after that it hammers IO so much it practically required SSDs

Although with brute force hardware in Apple Silicon they do feel very responsive now, best single core performance you can get even just in the base Mac mini M4 that you'd have to overclock with liquid nitrogen to 6.7GHz to on AMD lol

 

[Phobos Base]

I really wish they'd fix the bug where it keeps highlighting the whole thing every time you try and rename a file in Onedrive

 

[Magister]

Doesn't libre office have compatibility with office files?

Its compatability is a nightmare, double spaces in documents when opened in Word, etc. There is no office suite that has 100% compatability on Linux. They all share similar problems. The closest is WPS, but it is Chinese and has a history of being spyware.

 

[Unknown?]

Its compatability is a nightmare, double spaces in documents when opened in Word, etc. There is no office suite that has 100% compatability on Linux. They all share similar problems. The closest is WPS, but it is Chinese and has a history of being spyware.

To be fair, Microsoft products are spyware too.

 

[LordOfChaos]

Its compatability is a nightmare, double spaces in documents when opened in Word, etc. There is no office suite that has 100% compatability on Linux. They all share similar problems. The closest is WPS, but it is Chinese and has a history of being spyware.

I just started using iWork/pages and exporting to Word for personal use. It's slightly annoying in that every time you open and edit a word doc it goes back to saving as pages and then you have to export a new copy to save the changes as Word, but it works and I don't need Office for light personal use.

For actual work though, nothing is replacing hardcore Excel except native Excel

 

[Optimus Lime]

I deeply dislike Microsoft's pivot towards packing as much AI bullshit into everything as they can. No, I don't need Outlook to 'summarise with AI' for me, and I don't need fucking Copilot shit on my taskbar, and I don't need AI search results - I get that they don't want to get fucked over like they did with smartphones, but annoying me into abandoning your software is not the way to do it.

 

[RCX]

Planning to upgrade my card to AMD on the next cycle, at which point I'll be moving onto Linux full time.

Ive been running Mint on my work machines for years, my gaming pc is the last one with Windows on it. And 11 is categorically a much worse OS than 10.

But MS just doesn't have to give a shit. So they don't.

 

[BackBackPunch]

Microsoft products are shit all across the board, and Windows 11 is just part of the pile of shit. I've been using MS stuff for decades, and it's crazy how bad it is.

Windows is fragmented between super old legacy code, and new additions that MS has tacked on top, and it makes it a horrible user experience. And the new additions are stuffed full of bloat. Open MS Edge browser and open the settings and compare it to Google Chrome's settings. There's pages and pages and pages of bullshit...like stupid MS services that nobody wants (like the stupid shopping suggestions that pops up by the nav bar, or the Copilot crap).

They also do incredibly stupid shit with their apps and services that makes no sense. Like, why in the hell are there TWO separate apps for Teams (Personal and Business)? Why in the hell are there two separate apps for OneDrive (Personal and Business)? If you have a personal account and a business account, you have to run 4 apps just to be able to access Teams and OneDrive. Why can't they combine it all?

 

[BackBackPunch]

I only upgraded to Windows 11 because the way it handles HDR better. I switch my PC back and forth between a LG C2 and a OLED monitor and while Windows HDR is still trash somehow compared to both current gen PlayStation and Xbox consoles (and honestly last gen as well) it at least seems to work better on Windows 11.

I really fucking hate Windows and that's part of the reason I'm a Mac user (and have been since like 2008 in high school) for everything but gaming. My gaming PC is literally only used for gaming outside of the few times I want to browse and I was already sitting there to play.

I would gladly switch to Linux/SteamOS if game compatibility was better. I mainly say this as a huge battlefield fan (yes even 2042) and until SteamOS/Linux gets full anti cheat support I'm stuck here and I don't feel like using two different OSs for different games.

Windows 11's HDR support is actually totally broken, and has been totally broken since release. If you need to actually WORK in HDR (like for video production), you're shit out of luck because the color management system doesn't work in HDR. If you're just playing games, then you're not going to notice, but it's totally borked.

 

[Dr.brain64]

Just bought a mac. Goodbye windows forever.

 

[BlueLyria]

7 was the last good windows, 8 was decent but the beginning of the end

 

[Filben]

Sometimes I feel like this is their second OS they programmed. Multi display support is still buggy at times, especially in tandem with HDR. Volume control also has a bug from time to time (changes made won't be saved and the slider immediately jumps back to the previous state).

OP mentioned the latency when doing certain tasks. I feel that. Sometimes right clicking needs like half a second or even longer, same for creating a new folder.

Xbox app is utter trash. Sometimes refuse to respond for seconds and things need to load forever when I click on a game in my library. Shouldn't this be cached or something? Why does it work so much faster in Steam.

At least the OS is stable as fuck in regards of crashes. Haven't had a single blue screen in years of using Win11. I also don't miss the days when alt tabbing was a gamble on crashing your game or when it took forever to switch back to the desktop.

 

[LordOfChaos]

OP mentioned the latency when doing certain tasks. I feel that. Sometimes right clicking needs like half a second or even longer, same for creating a new folder.

Right exactly, all the comments about not having a problem with Windows 11 don't seem to have read this point, it's not that it's blue screening or anything, in fact it seems to have better legs than ever with regards to not bogging down to a terrible degree or having issues like blue screens, but this system latency thing is actually well studied and I guess they just haven't noticed, but nothing feels as fast as modern hardware really should.

Tens of thousands of times faster but in terms of just latency, right clicking a thing and seeing a result, we're losing out to the 1980s 45 years ago!

Computer latency: 1977-2017

Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017) | Hacker News

news.ycombinator.com

 

[twilo99]

The same exact thing happens every time they change the UX ...

winxp release - "no way win98 or death"
win7 release - "no way xp till i die"
Win8 release - "no way win7 til I die"
Win10 release - "no way win8 til death" (ok, maybe that was different lol)
Win11 release - "no way win10 foreva"

"linux is so much better pls switch"

I've said this a million times in threads like this but I don't get what's so bad with Win 11 compared to 10.

Win11 is the best version of the OS to date.

Win11 was essentially a "service pack" to Win10

 

[LordOfChaos]

The same exact thing happens every time they change the UX ...

winxp release - "no way win98 or death"
win7 release - "no way xp till i die"
Win8 release - "no way win7 til I die"
Win10 release - "no way win8 til death" (ok, maybe that was different lol)
Win11 release - "no way win10 foreva"

"linux is so much better pls switch"

Could you list where they or I mentioned the UX

 

[twilo99]

I haven’t had a single problem with W11, and downloaded it well before it became mainstream.

Windows 11 is a solid operating system.

 

[twilo99]

Could you list where they or I mentioned the UX

You want "snappy" right click context menus? Don't use AMD CPUs.

 

[LordOfChaos]

You want "snappy" right click context menus? Don't use AMD CPUs.

Thanks for cursorily reading the op this time, but even the fastest latency Intel CPUs (which are not the newest ones after the little core regression) are perceptually slower than 4 decade old computers, and Windows 11 and all the networking bits has made this problem more pronounced. Spinning up all your drives just to play a media file on your fast SSD is just an extra annoying choice too.

 

[ReBurn]

I love Windows 11 for my corpo job productivity and Azure development. WSL integration is top notch on Windows 11 and it makes the .net and Linux integration portion of my job a lot easier. I'm looking forward to RHEL images for WSL to release.

I haven't used Windows 11 for gaming. The Windows boxes I game on are still on Windows 10 and I don't plan to upgrade them until I absolutely have to. But it wouldn't surprise me to wake up one morning and learn that Microsoft made the decision for me and upgraded them to Windows 11 as part of Windows update that often manages to re-enable itself after I've disabled it. Every time it happens I'm greeted with an upgrade prompt. Sooner or later they'll probably just do it.

95% of my PC gaming is on Steam Deck right now, though. I would consider replacing Windows 10 with SteamOS at some point in the future.

 

[Gaiff]

Yeah, Windows is bloated, should be faster, and has its problems, but by god, you would swear it's unusable judging by this thread. Some of you guys are blowing the issues out of proportion.