Is it now worth trying Windows 11?

[Monkeh]

Win 11 has some aggressive boot structure "auto repair" policies.

You still have not established that this is Windows behaviour and not a process injected by third party tooling which is making mistakes. And, of course, you're still proceeding with a supplied OS install of unknown provenance when it's trivial to start from scratch with a known image and open tooling to bypass the checks for unnecessary hardware functions.

[IanB]

Win 11 has some aggressive boot structure "auto repair" policies.

You still have not established that this is Windows behaviour and not a process injected by third party tooling which is making mistakes. And, of course, you're still proceeding with a supplied OS install of unknown provenance when it's trivial to start from scratch with a known image and open tooling to bypass the checks for unnecessary hardware functions.

Notwithstanding that, it has been reported that Windows updates have "repaired" dual boot installations and made them boot directly into Windows while losing access to the Linux partition.

[Monkeh]

Win 11 has some aggressive boot structure "auto repair" policies.

You still have not established that this is Windows behaviour and not a process injected by third party tooling which is making mistakes. And, of course, you're still proceeding with a supplied OS install of unknown provenance when it's trivial to start from scratch with a known image and open tooling to bypass the checks for unnecessary hardware functions.

Notwithstanding that, it has been reported that Windows updates have "repaired" dual boot installations and made them boot directly into Windows while losing access to the Linux partition.

That would be a fairly natural consequence of updating any boot related code on a non-UEFI system. It would, I suppose, be nice if they cared to check before writing, but then they have no reasonable way to ensure Windows boots. Again, not really a concern any more, UEFI has done away with the notion of a single bootloader.

[Karel]

I am mulling over whether to install Windows 11. Is it too early, or should I wait another year? I heard Windows 11 has been plagued by bugs,
driver problems and compatibility issues. I need to look at the risk versus benefit of upgrading the OS.

Here's your answer: (a bit late but maybe it can be of help to others)

Microsoft's push to turn Windows into a showcase for generative AI and chatbots is colliding with a far more immediate
concern: reliability. Over the past two years, users have been forced to wade through a steady stream of increasingly
unstable Windows updates, raising uncomfortable questions about whether Microsoft's focus on AI is coming at the
expense of the operating system millions still depend on every day

https://www.techspot.com/news/110978-microsoft-rushes-out-emergency-updates-fix-broken-windows.html

[iMo]

Hmm, perhaps there are many version of win11 there..
I've been running win11 (from 24H2 to 25H2 latest), 10y old i3 stuff, unsupported hw, absolutely no issues yet, faster than win10 I had here (subjective), running tons of stuff on it (technical stuff).

I do not see any AI here (I uninstalled some stuff long time back, though)..
Only AI I see is when I open firefox with YT, or chatgpt.

My last update is from 12.12.2025, I've been updating now to see what happens if it installs the 13.1.2026 one.

PS: only issue so far was last week when firefox got a bug with chatgpt in v147.00, they fixed it in 147.01.
So again - are there several win11 versions around?

PPS: below the update I've got just now. I do allow the updates every 2-3w or so..

[AndyC_772]

That's interesting, I wondered what was up with ChatGPT. Had to keep closing and reopening Firefox after every exchange, very annoying.

[iMo]

Firefox has introduced a new algo for compressing the traffic and chatgpt was not happy about it. Symptoms - chatgpt was not responsive (you cannot log in etc.).
There was a quick fix:

Change "network.http.dictionaries.enable" to "false" in about:config until Mozilla fixes the bug.

They fixed it within 3 days or so.

[AndyC_772]

Compressing traffic? Seriously?

Everything that takes any significant bandwidth - audio and video - is compressed already. Also, I have a symmetrical 1 Gbit FTTH connection.

WTF is being compressed, and why?

[iMo]

feature allows web servers to use a shared, pre-negotiated dictionary to compress HTTP responses more efficiently,

[AndyC_772]

Thanks. Sounds like a solution looking for a problem to me, I do wish the general trend were towards *less* complexity rather than more.

[paulca]

Thanks. Sounds like a solution looking for a problem to me, I do wish the general trend were towards *less* complexity rather than more.

We wish.  However large scale stuff like the big walled gardens are handling obscene amounts of load.  What to the end browser consumer looks like a pointless 5% compression improvement overall, adds up to millions for them in infra over a year.

Consider that Facebook has over a billion active users or that YouTube accepts 100s of hours of video footage per minute.

Simple "straight" processes don't work.  Things have to be distributed.  Distribution is difficult, so it has to be divided up and made simple within layers, which ultimately adds to overall compelxity - you can't win.

Compression and caching are riddled throughout these layers.

[Zondar]

Notwithstanding that, it has been reported that Windows updates have "repaired" dual boot installations and made them boot directly into Windows while losing access to the Linux partition.

I used to dual-boot Linux and W10. I stopped because W10 repeatedly trashed my linux partition. Windows insists that it's the only OS.

My answer to the original question is "hell no!" W11 will never reside on any of my machines.

[soldar]

You still have not established that this is Windows behaviour and not a process injected by third party tooling which is making mistakes. And, of course, you're still proceeding with a supplied OS install of unknown provenance when it's trivial to start from scratch with a known image and open tooling to bypass the checks for unnecessary hardware functions.

I used to dual-boot Linux and W10. I stopped because W10 repeatedly trashed my linux partition. Windows insists that it's the only OS.

My answer to the original question is "hell no!" W11 will never reside on any of my machines.

Zondar is correct. MS Windows is well known and infamously known for not playing along with Linux and for messing up the boot process. I learned this the hard way some years ago and panicked at first believing the Linux partition had disappeared but with help from the Linux forum I managed to rebuild the UEFI table and the Grub something or other and got my Linux back. That is one of the reasons I got rid of Windows.

Windows and MS are well known for trying to create incompatibilities with Linux. In the same line I remember SMB protocol being changed by MS for the same reason. Linux tries to find and create compatibility and soon after MS comes along and breaks it.

[iMo]

Afaik for dual boot windoze and linux you have to a) use separate disks, and, b) first install windoze, and, c) disconnect windoze disk when installing linux..

[themadhippy]

Afaik for dual boot windoze and linux you have to a) use separate disks, and, b) first install windoze, and, c) disconnect windoze disk when installing linux...

A-false,B-true,C-false

[paulca]

Its something on my list to visit again.  Dual booting a PC. Steam/Proton is getting more and more capable for running games in Linux, but none of my linux machines have a decent GPU.

The lazy part of me wonders I have a free M.2 slot and I can just stuff another drive in.  The less lazy part reminds me that the windows 10 install is well past it's date for a reinstall anyway.

Last time I used a custom EUFI boot menu before Windows or Linux got installed.  Prior to that I added Linux to the WIndows bootloader... which survived over windows updates.  Prior to that I used grub and MBR and windows would overwrite it at will.  I kept a small USB recovery key and a script in /root to fix it.

You can still install Windows 10 offline and then still activate it can't you?

[dbator]

Hello,

this thread got my attention because also I do not like descending quality of operating systems coming from Microsoft which force users to change their operating systems for apparently newer, better which actually cause more problems like privacy issues, incompatibility etc. I am using personal computers since Windows 98 and Windows XP. Windows XP was the last good operating system from Microsoft. August 2018 I decided to migrate to Linux and since then I have dual boot on my both old Dell laptop and PC, one with Windows XP Professional 32-bt and currently Linux Ubuntu server and one with Windows 7 Professional and Linux Mint. I also used Linux Ubuntu desktop in the past.
My BIOS is still Legacy BIOS, but current Linux distribution support also UEFI.
I'm not sure I understand concerns about dual boot - please correct me if I misunderstood, you think for dual boot with Linux a second disk is required. I admit, I did not read all post because I simply do not have that much time for that. But second disk is not required. But yes, Microsoft operating systems do not respect any other systems on disk so they simply do not care whether there is something other installed on disk than a Microsoft OS. That is, Linux MUST be installed on a disk drive with existing Windows partition.
I know, it requires courage, patience, careful acting, humility and willingness to learn Linux, because any mistake can cause trouble. However, that trouble force you to learn and make experience with these operating systems. And when one reaches such a skill level you can solve issues self is rewarded than with satisfaction. And that's a great feeling to maintain an operating systems, for most people it a secret. Operating systems which are considered to be very safe systems.
For those who use Linux operating systems I have an advice, instead of choosing being comfortable, just do as much as you can do in console using commands instead of desktop environment which so or so as limited possibilities and do not give up to early. Having dual boot and Linux as your secondary OS at the beginning of the adventure will reduce loss in case anything goes wrong. Although there are forums one can search for a solution or create a new thread.

But what with compatibility?
There are options to emulate Windows applications on Linux which I admit still do not work as we expect. There is more and more software created by vendors directly for Linux platforms, but sometimes backwards compatibility is the issue - due kernel/header difference. As for drivers for hardware Linux community is handling them very well, but I would lie if I told you there are no issues. But using Linus I feel more free.

I am using Linux only for internet, documents, music and movies, but there are graphics or video programs available for Linux and many more. However, their availability depends on the distribution ans sometimes you have to dig more to add an archived repository to be able to install a software which is not available for the specific distro, use older libraries etc.
I only use Windows for older games and music production software. Although nowadays more and more games are available for Linux.

That's probably not all I could share here, but it's what comes in my mind right now. Good luck for those who dare and go for Linux.

[Simmed]

he said it
current windows is trash

[Karel]

Microsoft confirms boot issues with its latest Windows 11 update





https://www.theverge.com/news/869199/microsoft-windows-11-unmountable-boot-volume-issue-january-2026-update

https://admin.cloud.microsoft/Adminportal/Home?source=applauncher#/windowsreleasehealth/:/issue/WI1221934

[AndyC_772]

I just spent a happy afternoon swapping my wife's W10 laptop to Linux Mint. It's an older machine that works perfectly, but doesn't meet W11's hardware requirements.

The installation itself was easy enough; thankfully the SSD is removable, so I was able to physically swap out the original drive for a spare, so at least we can roll back if there are any show stoppers.

Clearly there's a lot of work gone into making first time setup way easier than it used to be. I remember having to jump through all sorts of hoops to get wireless networking working at all, but now it just comes up and works straight away out of the box. That's real progress.

Next step? Map a few network drives to the NAS so she can access all her files. So... where's that option?

Anywhere?

Nope. Grok tells me I have to open a command window, create a credentials file, chmod it, then sudo nano /etc/fstab and add the mount point and path to each drive, plus some cryptic options.

Because, of course that's how it's done. Obvious, and perfectly welcoming to new users who have decided to give Linux a chance.

Nothing about the process was especially complicated, or even difficult for someone who has used Linux as their everyday desktop OS in the past (as I have). But the justification for leaving this out of the UI completely escapes me. It's 2026 and I really don't think a mainstream, non-technical user who just wants to browse the web and use office applications should have to know what an /etc/fstab is.

If I didn't have Grok to just answer the question, I'd be right back in the hell hole of community "support", but fortunately it's absolutely brilliant at this. It answered my questions directly, didn't tell me to "do a search" or "RTFM" or make any other dismissive comment. Instead it gave me step-by-step instructions that were absolutely correct, and that saved me a huge amount of time and frustration.

Thanks to AI, it might actually be easier (read: possible) to "just" switch to Linux than ever before.

[dbator]

Not mounted drives is default due security reasons I believe.
I don't trust AI because it makes mistakes and it is used by some in a way which causes bad things. And by the way, I don't want it asks me someday for my clothes, boots and motorcycle
Congrats, but next time try to solve the issue without AI.

[bson]

AFAICT they cannot tell if I am on a VPN+RDP. How could they tell?

They'll just geoip your IP address.  It will tell them where you are or if you're on a VPN, and if so which provider.  All major commercial GeoIP products, like MaxMind, offer a VPN ASN DB product or addon.

[paulca]

Next step? Map a few network drives to the NAS so she can access all her files. So... where's that option?

Anywhere?

Actually there are a range of different ways to achieve that.  Grok gave you one, probably the preferred one.

Consider:

The "Network" Remote library works about as well as it does in Windows.  ie.  Not unless you have a proper WINS setup.

The smb:// protocol is only one of many supported by the default, out of box filemanager.  At least on KDE.

You can also pass credentials in the URL, if it's playing nicely, bookmark them etc.

However, some smb share setups which involve joining a proper windows domain/forrest with modern auth etc might give you some more headaches.


Oh...  I did just find this in the "Network" library.


It works.  The "SSH" feature is nice as it lets you access the remote filesystem entirely using ssh or sftp protocols.

EDIT:  As you 'have' got so many options in Linux, you can ask the question, "What do I need this network share for?"  If the answer is storing bulky files on a NAS, like MP3s and Movies, "Samba" or "Windows network drive" is fine.

If however you want to run a development folder on it, where things like compilers and build tools will operate on it with high concurrency...  you would be better off with something like NFS.  The samba protocol is synchronous, authenticated and usually TCP based.  NFS is asynchronous in transmission, highly concurrent, often distributed (dont go there!) and the kernel level drivers will ensure transactional consistency at the lower levels.  Windows NFS support exists, but varies in quality, so I just use local git checkouts for windows based dev.

[nctnico]

I just spent a happy afternoon swapping my wife's W10 laptop to Linux Mint. It's an older machine that works perfectly, but doesn't meet W11's hardware requirements.

The installation itself was easy enough; thankfully the SSD is removable, so I was able to physically swap out the original drive for a spare, so at least we can roll back if there are any show stoppers.

Clearly there's a lot of work gone into making first time setup way easier than it used to be. I remember having to jump through all sorts of hoops to get wireless networking working at all, but now it just comes up and works straight away out of the box. That's real progress.

Next step? Map a few network drives to the NAS so she can access all her files. So... where's that option?

Anywhere?

Nope. Grok tells me I have to open a command window, create a credentials file, chmod it, then sudo nano /etc/fstab and add the mount point and path to each drive, plus some cryptic options.

On Debian / Gnome accessing network shares follows the same logic as you'd use on Windows: use the file explorer utility to access network drives. No need for command line. In my experience technical advice from AI is plain wrong in 99% of the cases.

[AndyC_772]

For the record it was, objectively, absolutely 100% correct down to the letter.

There may have been an easier way. I didn't find it.