Is it now worth trying Windows 11?

[50ShadesOfDirt]

One doesn't need an online account to use Win10/Win11 ... if you do as MS wants you to, and go online (or think you have to), then your choice of trade-offs begin.

I tend to create a "dummy" account for those online services that are going to harvest my data. It's not perfect, but it is a way to stop some/most of the data harvesting (keep it generic), along with disabling telemetry. Facebook was a hard one, but I got it done ... I don't use facebook, but it was a challenge to see if I could get past their screening while not giving up my real name. Many of the other services were super easy to "dummify" or "anonimize".

Most of the data-harvesting/ad-targeting madness is for the masses, who, without any effort at some basic research, will be the 80% part of the bell curve (OK, 99%) suffering. If the country allows all this data harvesting followed by ad targeting for the sake of business over the individual (opt out vs opt in), then the only defense I can think of is blocking it out (again, with research into how to do that). It's (business) war, but still winnable for us home users who don't run with the masses ...

Win10/11 remains very useful, once decrapified ...

[james_s]

I can't be bothered to expend the effort to decrapify it. Windows 7 already works fine out of the box, and recently Linux has been meeting my needs.

[SiliconWizard]

To be fair, MacOS is pretty good and with a lot less nonsense, and a lot more consistency than current Windows. Obviously the drawback is being tied to Apple hardware, which, while good per se, I'm not very fond of either. Also, many dev tools (such as FPGA vendor tools) are not available on MacOS. That I know of.

There are ways to install MacOS on PC hardware, but that's pretty much a "hack" and is unsupported, so probably not something you'd be using for any serious work. I'd be curious to give it a shot though.

Linux is great but there's still no desktop environment that really matches the commercial ones. I personally use Linux on my laptop (with a Win 7 dual boot), with Gnome before, and recently switched to KDE. It's not bad, but still not quite there IMHO. Otherwise I have a Linux-based NAS/server and a headless Linux box for running a number of tools over the LAN. My main workstation is still on Win 7 even though it has recent hardware.

[DavidAlfa]

Don't make me laugh about Linux. It's only attributes are versatile and free.
Otherwise? Anything "deep" will need a whole afternoon setting up libraries, dependencies, "oh it's not working", hand-editing tons of files like in 1988.
If you say it's not true, then you didn't use Linux enough.

[Karel]

Don't make me laugh about Linux. It's only attributes are versatile and free.
Otherwise? Anything "deep" will need a whole afternoon setting up libraries, dependencies, "oh it's not working", hand-editing tons of files like in 1988.
If you say it's not true, then you didn't use Linux enough.

DLL hell happens also on windows, nothing new there.
Still, Linux is the most used operating system in the world (even if you take android out of the equation).
Apart from that, ms windows offers WSL(2), look it up. Also, most microsoft azure instances are running Linux.
So, there must be something good about it...
The desktop is the only place where Linux isn't king.

 

[james_s]

Don't make me laugh about Linux. It's only attributes are versatile and free.
Otherwise? Anything "deep" will need a whole afternoon setting up libraries, dependencies, "oh it's not working", hand-editing tons of files like in 1988.
If you say it's not true, then you didn't use Linux enough.

I have a feeling you have not used Linux in 20 years if ever. I don't remember the last time I had to spend hours chasing dependencies like that, maybe a decade ago? Most of the time it's as simple as 'sudo apt-get install xyz' and a few moments later the software is installed and working.

The biggest attributes for me is that it doesn't have constant forced updates and it isn't full of ads. I don't even care that it's free, I can afford to pay for an operating system that works well.

[DavidAlfa]

DLL what?
Install VC, .NET or whatever framework, done, they'll all will coexist together just fine.

I've used Linux specially for the last few years.
apt install 4000 dependencies...ok.. but nothing works, giving thousands of errors.
After a day tearing my hair appart, found libc was updated and wasn't backwards-compatible.
No warning about wrong version, only 4 trillion compilation errors, suddenly all code made before 2020 was useless.
You have to be half-developer to make it work and spend hours searching.

I use linux, it's great while it doesn't break or some shitty update break compatibility with everything.
But I quickly understood why reverse engineering relatively new programs showed they were compiled with GCC 5, Ubuntu 14, Linux is the extreme version of "If ain't broke, don't fix it".
So all your patches, custom code will sudenly be useless and require to spend al lot of time migrating them, it's an endless effort, I can hear the programers -no thanks, I won't fckign update my Linux, thanks again -

[james_s]

I dunno what you're doing but I have Linux on quite a few things and I'm not having the problems you're describing. Even my mom has been using Linux for around 5 years and she is totally technologically inept. I don't think she is even totally aware that it is anything other than some other version of Windows.

[DavidAlfa]

I repeat, for everyday use (Browsing, Email, Office...) It'll be just fine.
The nightmare comes when you try to compile something.
Ex.a great project from 2019 you found somewhere.
Install dependencies, make... Quintillion errors.
Ah, this 50 libraries changed and the code is useless. Great.
So you either spend days or weeks rewriting the code, or have to install a different Linux version everytime.
Probably I'm missing some holy grail that let's you overcome this, but I've spend tons of hours researching with no luck.

[JohanH]

Ex.a great project from 2019 you found somewhere.
Install dependencies, make... Quintillion errors.
Ah, this 50 libraries changed and the code is useless. Great.
So you either spend days or weeks rewriting the code, or have to install a different Linux version everytime.
Probably I'm missing some holy grail that let's you overcome this, but I've spend tons of hours researching with no luck.

So how many Windows applications have you successfully compiled on the Windows side?

It's not weeks rewriting code. In most cases it's changing references to new library versions. Sometimes some libraries do add breaking changes. In these cases they use to keep the old one in parallel, but you still have to change the name, e.g. library1 and library2. Sometimes you have to port it to the new version, but it's rarely something that breaks the application. This would be trivial for the original developer of the software. If you are not a developer, it might not be so easy.

And this isn't exactly an issue or only a Linux issue. A bit different example, but I have a virtual Windows XP machine stored that contains Visual Studio 6, just for an old component that might need changes (I had to do it once a couple of years ago). The component itself runs fine in newer versions of Windows, but good luck trying to compile it on a modern system.

[nvmR]

I believe correct use of dockers should allow you to safely use sudo apt-get update, without destroying the ability to compile your homebrew stuff.

[SiliconWizard]

I repeat, for everyday use (Browsing, Email, Office...) It'll be just fine.
The nightmare comes when you try to compile something.
Ex.a great project from 2019 you found somewhere.
Install dependencies, make... Quintillion errors.
Ah, this 50 libraries changed and the code is useless. Great.
So you either spend days or weeks rewriting the code, or have to install a different Linux version everytime.
Probably I'm missing some holy grail that let's you overcome this, but I've spend tons of hours researching with no luck.

While you seem to be exaggerating the problem a bit, you have a point here. Software distribution is precisely what is the most problematic on Linux currently, mostly due to heavy fragmentation, and what hinders its progression outside of the server world. I'm not the only one saying that - even Linus himself said it repeatedly.

I don't really see a "solution" to that though. It's what comes with freedom. To avoid that, you need an OS that is strictly controlled by one entity. And you'll get yet another Windows.

And, if you need "dockers" to distribute software, that's not a scalable solution. That's huge bloat everywhere.

[Bud]

It's not weeks rewriting code. In most cases it's changing references to new library versions.

Great. Why for eFcking sake should I be doing this as a User? I was told "Linux just works". It turns out there nothing even close to that.

[james_s]

Great. Why for eFcking sake should I be doing this as a User? I was told "Linux just works". It turns out there nothing even close to that.

Because he's talking about compiling code. You're going to have similar challenges on Windows too. Linux does "just work" if you're using the PC like a normal user doing normal user things like browsing the web, emailing, social media, watching videos and such. When you want to build software it's rare that anything "just works", that's why they call developers software engineers.

[JohanH]

Great. Why for eFcking sake should I be doing this as a User? I was told "Linux just works". It turns out there nothing even close to that.

Your complaint is ridiculous. If you download random source code from the Internet and try to compile it, it's up to you to install libraries that it needs. You will certainly have similar issues on any operating system.

[nctnico]

I repeat, for everyday use (Browsing, Email, Office...) It'll be just fine.
The nightmare comes when you try to compile something.
Ex.a great project from 2019 you found somewhere.
Install dependencies, make... Quintillion errors.
Ah, this 50 libraries changed and the code is useless. Great.
So you either spend days or weeks rewriting the code, or have to install a different Linux version everytime.
Probably I'm missing some holy grail that let's you overcome this, but I've spend tons of hours researching with no luck.

While you seem to be exaggerating the problem a bit, you have a point here. Software distribution is precisely what is the most problematic on Linux currently, mostly due to heavy fragmentation, and what hinders its progression outside of the server world. I'm not the only one saying that - even Linus himself said it repeatedly.

I don't really see a "solution" to that though. It's what comes with freedom.

Typically a configure script that should come with source should at least list missing dependancies and -at least on Debian- you can have different versions of libraries installed. But really old source code may need some fixing before it can be compiled using newer libraries.

[nvmR]

And, if you need "dockers" to distribute software, that's not a scalable solution. That's huge bloat everywhere.

SiliconWizard, you don't need dockers to distribute software, you need them to make sure your compile environment is stable and unchanged from your last compile.

[Marco]

Linux is really not much difference from say Macs in breaking backward compatibility at API level, though at least the official stores are a bit better with keeping developers from using internal APIs and statically linking stuff they shouldn't statically link. Going dictator on developers helps a lot.

Microsoft works around shitty devs to make their fragile shit work, Apple takes a baseball bat to their knees to slightly prevent fragility and to just update often ... Linux muddles on. Now everyone just runs software in containers to work around it.

[TimFox]

An excerpt from a recent e-mail from MalwareBytes warning of the impending non-support of Windows 8 (does anyone have that?):
"The slightly less bad version of the worst version of Windows since the last really bad version of Windows is finally being put to rest."

[nigelwright7557]

I wouldn't. From what little experience I've had with it, it's like Windows 10 only worse, and 10 is already virtually unusable.

I have used Windows 11 since it came out.
Plenty of bugs to start with but it has improved vastly over time.

I cant think of any problems I have with it at the moment.

The added security of Win 11 is vital for me having over 30 years of work on my PC.
Secure boot TPM etc etc are good.

[Karel]

I disabled TPM in UEFI/BIOS on all my computers because it's designed to add "security" for third parties,
not for the owner or user of the computer. For example, think of DRM (Digital Restrictions Management),
identification purposes (I want to be in control if an application can identify me or not), etc.
Not only criminals have something to hide, also good people. What can be perfectly ok today, can be illegal tomorrow.

[james_s]

An excerpt from a recent e-mail from MalwareBytes warning of the impending non-support of Windows 8 (does anyone have that?):
"The slightly less bad version of the worst version of Windows since the last really bad version of Windows is finally being put to rest."

I just set up a Windows 8.1 laptop for somebody a few weeks ago. Out of the box it's horrible, but with Classic Shell it is superior to any later versions. You can customize it and it stays customized, it doesn't auto update and "helpfully" revert settings to default or uninstall software it thinks is incompatible.

[aeberbach]

Windows 11 still has some basic issues. I swapped a new bigger m.2 drive into the PC and downloaded a Microsoft Windows 11 image to reinstall. My PC is not supported! Supposedly I need to buy a TPM 2.0 module, 1.x is not secure enough... I didn't bother and just installed Windows 10. One week later, Windows Update happily installed Window 11 like there had never been a problem at all.

Windows 11 looks a little nicer but I don't notice much difference.

[coromonadalix]

Basic issues indeed, received an update

upon reboot  blank screens, only mouse pointer     wow   that's a first

[SiliconWizard]

It's kind of sad to see how badly they have managed to mess Windows up.

I think the main issue with Windows has always been with MS trying to copycat others while consistently failing.

- They wanted to copycat mobile OSs, and they have mostly failed while leaving a lot of crap in Windows along the way from Win 8 to Win 11, the damage looks like forever there,
- Then they wanted to copycat MacOS, and came up with this sinister joke which is W11.

All of this while switching their business model from a software vendor to a data collecting business.