Windows 11 is dying....

[madires]

AI slop/fiction on the rise. In this case it should be for catching your attention to make money from ad revenue. YouTube and Co are becoming more messy. A test for your media literacy.

And regarding Windows 11. Yes, it will die some day after upgrading to Windows 13.

[SteveThackery]

The XP interface was the best.

Actually I think the W7 UI was the best. 😄 To me, it feels like the pinnacle of the WIMP paradigm.

Windows isn't going anywhere and the majority of programs are designed to operate on windows. I thought about switching but I'm too invested in it with CAD, CFD, CNC and countless other windows based programs.

That's exactly where I'm at. The applications ecosystem for Linux is dire, for Windows it is great.

[m k]

Continuing with a retail chain.

But first a small and special one.
Here locally MS is not offering hardware of any kind, but for regular stuff only net access is missing and getting one is trivial.
It changes fast if you have special needs, like static address, VPN tunnel etc, maybe also some special inhouse hardware.
Somebody must maintain all that, despite how little time is needed.

When retail chain is big enough, and its hardware needs regular enough, at some point it starts pulling hardware maintenance back in.
Its retail software is most likely tailored so far from generic product that it needs its own support folks.
But own datacenter, I'd say it's still one step ahead.

The lag or not then.
Very few environment needs a minimum lag, real time is obvious, but what is real time, what kind of thing needs a reaction time like fraction of seconds.
I'd say that any design interface that needs an instant response, or can't do it by exact numbers, is incomplete.
Internet is also not a real time environment.

Now we have a cache memory, why not drag and drop cache.
Original stationary and moving new part are local, current change has coordinates that are calculated at the server side and only drop and its new original is updated locally.

Back in the day Mac used a remote cache/swapfile.

[nctnico]

OK, find me a professional 3D CAD program that runs on linux. Right so that is my employer out.

But you are correct that there is no "professional" 3D cad tool that runs natively on Linux.

I Disagree. Freecad is pretty powerfull these days and very useable as an alternative to Solidworks. I've seen people use Freecad for commercial 3D work. And then there is Blender for more artistic 3D modelling. I've also seen some impessive things from OnShape.

[asmi]

Don't know why, but, WinNT4 sp4 with a 2 cpu motherboard was the fastest most efficient OS I ever used.
Win2000pro SP3 was small and a little slower than NT4 with dual cpus.  I think is was something to do with the scheduling as NT4 had a few multi-threading related bugs solved in 2000pro at the expense of speed.  I rarely rebooted 2000pro if ever.

I'm pretty sure it was something to do with you being much younger and a grass green'er at that time, and very little to do with actual reality. Objectively Win 2000 was crap when it comes to security even after all those service packs, even early releases of XP were a bit of a mess until SP2 arrived, which made a lot of security improvements. Vista introduced a new driver model as well as mandatory driver signing, which defeated a whole host of security problems, Win10 overhauled a WDDM (display driver model) which allowed to recover from some driver crashes, which again improved stability.

[Ranayna]

One aspect there is also the second CPU.
My upgrade from single core to dual core was significantly later, running Windows XP, when AMD dual-core processors became available for socket 939.

That was the second most impactful upgrade i ever made from one pc to the next. The most impactful upgrade was switching to an SSD.

Considering how lightweight Windows NT was, i can imagine how well it must have ran on two CPUs.

I am currently looking at how to emulate NT4 Server, just to feel around in it a bit, since my professional IT carreer barely missed it and i never actually used it. But i'm curious how much NT there still is in Windows 11. There is *a lot* of Windows 2000 in Windows 11 if you look a bit deeper.
Cinsidering that i'm baffled with how little hardware the servers ran back then and how much of a hardware hog windows has become over the years.

[themadhippy]

I Disagree. Freecad is pretty powerfull these days and very useable as an alternative to Solidworks

But it dont follow the corporate ideal. Spend loads, own nothing.

[SiliconWizard]

OK, find me a professional 3D CAD program that runs on linux. Right so that is my employer out.

But you are correct that there is no "professional" 3D cad tool that runs natively on Linux.

I Disagree. Freecad is pretty powerfull these days and very useable as an alternative to Solidworks. I've seen people use Freecad for commercial 3D work. And then there is Blender for more artistic 3D modelling. I've also seen some impessive things from OnShape.

Well FreeCAD is powerful, but I still find it awful to use. The learning curve is atrocious. Also, importing any moderately complex .STEP model makes it ultra-slow, that's nearly unusable. I'd like to say it's on par with Solidworks, but it clearly isn't. My main use case is to work on integration of PCBs and so I use a lot of .STEP models, so clean and fast handling of these is key to me.

Blender OTOH has become pretty good. There's a learning curve as well, but it's not that bad, there are tons of clear tutorials, and the overall experience I have with it is way better than with FreeCAD.

[Electrodynamic]

nctnico

I Disagree. Freecad is pretty powerfull these days and very useable as an alternative to Solidworks.

I love freecad and have been using it for years.

Freecad and Blender are free and can do literally anything I want. I don't buy into all this online/cloud software bs. If I can't run the software on my machine offline I won't use it.

Blender is my goto software for 3D printing and CNC. Blender 3D CAM is by far the best CNC software I have seen to date and it's free.

[shapirus]

I love freecad and have been using it for years.

Cool, I have a real use case question for you. So, say, I'm making a fishing lure. My current flow is: use Inkscape to draw the side profile shape, mark the drilling points etc., also manually draw the top/bottom profile shapes, then print them, cut and proceed to the woodworking fun.

Inkscape isn't too great for all this, because it requires a lot of manual operations and approximations, especially when I try to estimate the volume of the model. Its measuring capabilities are all super basic, "because Inkscape is not CAD software".

I kinda want to make my models 3-dimensional to make things easier and more predictable: calculate surface area (3d and a given cross-section), volume, measure linear sizes etc., not to mention having a proper 3d visualization.

So if I move my workflow to freecad and obviously decide to keep it simple in the beginning, i.e., create the 3d shape by "extruding" a side profile shape and then adding some chamfering on the corners, how steep and long of a learning curve may it require to arrive at that, what do you, as a long-time user, think?

I've been thinking of freecad, but never really even tried to run it (nor any other 3d modelling software actually), and now that I'm reading all these horrors about it, I'm somewhat scared.

[ebastler]

And regarding Windows 11. Yes, it will die some day after upgrading to Windows 13.

And in longstanding Microsoft tradition, the next major version will hopefully be a decent one again. 

Windows NT 4.0
Windows 2000
Windows XP
Windows Vista
Windows 7
Windows 8
Windows 10
Windows 11
Windows whatever is next

Edit: Or maybe this is just the users' psychology. People never like to move away from something they have gotten used to. So MS gives them a new version which everybody agrees to hate -- only to create that shared feeling of relief when we can finally move on to the next iteration. 

[asmi]

Edit: Or maybe this is just the users' psychology. People never like to move away from something they have gotten used to. So MS gives them a new version which everybody agrees to hate -- only to create that shared feeling of relief when we can finally move on to the next iteration. 

Yup, that's exactly it. I've been hearing this for any new major version of Windows.

[ejeffrey]

Edit: Or maybe this is just the users' psychology. People never like to move away from something they have gotten used to. So MS gives them a new version which everybody agrees to hate -- only to create that shared feeling of relief when we can finally move on to the next iteration. 

It's not just that.  In many cases the "bad" revisions introduced major changes, and the subsequent versions fixed a lot of the complaints.  Windows 2000 was the first NT based OS for consumer / desktop use, but it had a lot of compatibility problems with windows 95 code.  XP improved this a ton, plus by then there was a lot more native code.  Windows 8 tried to push the "metro" UI overall, and windows 10 backtracked that a lot.  I think there is a legitimate point that windows vista was primarily disliked because people had gotten used to windows XP.

The only problem I really have with windows 11 over 10 is the mandatory TPM and MS sign in. Partly because it "obsoletes" perfectly good hardware but mostly because it's one more step away from actually owning your computer.

[asmi]

The only problem I really have with windows 11 over 10 is the mandatory TPM and MS sign in. Partly because it "obsoletes" perfectly good hardware but mostly because it's one more step away from actually owning your computer.

How does requirement of having TPM makes your PC less yours? That doesn't make any sense.

[ebastler]

The only problem I really have with windows 11 over 10 is the mandatory TPM and MS sign in. Partly because it "obsoletes" perfectly good hardware but mostly because it's one more step away from actually owning your computer.

I agree on the forced MS account. Why would an operating system need that?! Well, to lock you into the vendor's offering and cloud service, of course...

The other thing that really annoys me is how they force Copilot down our throats. My new Thinkpad has a blessed Copilot key on the keyboard!   And MS have even made it impossible to assign anything but either Copilot or the Search dialog to it. So whenever I accidentally touch it instead of the neighboring AltGr, my typing gets interrupted by a popup Window. Alt Grrr...

[SteveThackery]

Objectively Win 2000 was crap when it comes to security even after all those service packs....

I can certainly accept the truth of that, but in my experience it was pretty quick and very stable.

Well FreeCAD is powerful, but I still find it awful to use. The learning curve is atrocious.

That's exactly what I think. It is typical of open source software: it is developed by geeks, as a hobby, for fellow geeks. They have made no effort to make it beginner friendly because they don't care whether people use it or not. In general, new users are a net negative because they keep distracting the geeks with their "stupid" questions. "If only they'd RTFM!"

Edit: Or maybe this is just the users' psychology. People never like to move away from something they have gotten used to. So MS gives them a new version which everybody agrees to hate -- only to create that shared feeling of relief when we can finally move on to the next iteration. 

Yup, that's exactly it. I've been hearing this for any new major version of Windows.

Oh, god, I hope that's a joke.

[Marco]

Systems are now getting further away from win32 with each version (replaced by WinRT/COM). Unless they do a 180 on a decade of going in the wrong direction it can only get worse now.

[ebastler]

Systems are now getting further away from win32 with each version (replaced by WinRT/COM). Unless they do a 180 on a decade of going in the wrong direction it can only get worse now.

What are the main problems you see with that shift? Provided that they don't repeat the Windows 8 attempt of a "unified, touch-centric UI for the desktop" in parallel, of course.

[ejeffrey]

The only problem I really have with windows 11 over 10 is the mandatory TPM and MS sign in. Partly because it "obsoletes" perfectly good hardware but mostly because it's one more step away from actually owning your computer.

How does requirement of having TPM makes your PC less yours? That doesn't make any sense.

For individual end users it absolutely does.

The point of TPM is to establish a trusted boot sequence from the processor to the firmware to the OS loader to the OS to the drivers to (potentially) the applications so that each of them can refuse to run if the layer above it isn't trusted, and untrusted code can be limited in its access to the computer and the hardware.  This is all fine in principle.  What it does is meant that the control of the computer belongs to whoever holds the keys rather than whoever holds the computer.  And for the most part, microsoft holds the keys.  It's possible to create your own root of trust and build a secure boot system that you control, and large organizations can do that to make their fleet management more secure.  But as an end user, it's not practical to do so.

And it doesn't really provide a lot of added security for the end user.  Currently microsoft allows untrusted applications to run outside of the most privileged parts of the OS.  But those "unpriviledged" parts of the OS are where literally everything I care about lives.  Trusted boot can't protect my actual data against spyware or ransomware because that's all part of the untrusted application layer.  It can protect against malicious firmware rootkits that persist after a OS reinstall, but you know what else can do that?  Simple signed firmware update process from a USB stick that can only be done from within the EFI interface with the hardware physically in your possession, like we have had for ages.  This is impractical for large companies that want to remotely administer firmware updates, but it's ideal for individual users.

The only way TPMs and trusted boot really help protect end user security is (somewhat ironically...) if it's coupled with a microsoft account.  In this case, microsoft can maintain the key management infrastructure that is impractical for an individual, taking the place of your corporate IT staff.  In that case you can have TPM protected full disk encryption, backups, and password/person secret stores, and you can do that because you can use your MS account for key recovery if needed. This is why it drives me crazy when people say "I don't mind the windows 11 requiring a TPM because it's good for security, but I hate the mandatory signing because it's bad for privacy"  -- they work together.

[asmi]

I can certainly accept the truth of that, but in my experience it was pretty quick and very stable.

How about you install it, connect to the Internet and count seconds until some kind of worm or virus infects it?

Oh, god, I hope that's a joke.

It's not a joke. Most people are resistant to change. So much so that they will believe any BS which supports their resistance due to confirmation bias even if there is no objective basis for it.

[paulca]

I drive a cupra born, anyone who see's it tells me how great it looks, it I tell them it's not worth the £40k it costs they will say "but it looks nice". Fact, it is inferior to a renault zoe that comes in at £30k......

I was tempted by a Born or an MG EV4.

Then I got a valuation my car "2017 GT86 Pro" and discovered it still hold 50% of it's value at 7 years old.  Don't make them anymore.  So it's likely to hold it' valve far, far better than any 2025 electric will.

[asmi]

For individual end users it absolutely does.

No it does not because at the end of the day, you can control what's in there and even wipe it if you so please. So all control remains with the user. As for the OS, the mere fact that you run OS presumes that you trust it's vendor since it by definition has access to all your hardware and can control it. So not trusting OS vendor but still running their OS doesn't make a whole lot of sense to begin with. But even despite of that, there are various methods to control what OS can and can not do with some hardware components - like hardware encryption via password/fingerprint protection.
Another big thing is that keys stored in TPM can never leave it, so if you encrypt anything using that key, it can only be ever decrypted on the same machine, which makes stealing drives for the purposes of extracting data pointless (provided it's secured properly). I do agree that a lot of TPM features are more geared towards corporate environments, but I've long held that Windows is designed for those environments first and foremost (those who think it's designed for casuals and housewives are delusional), but all of those features are still available for home users, so dedicated enough user can take advantage of them too.

  Simple signed firmware update process from a USB stick that can only be done from within the EFI interface with the hardware physically in your possession, like we have had for ages.  This is impractical for large companies that want to remotely administer firmware updates, but it's ideal for individual users.

Many UEFI firmwares allow you to lock out firmware upgrades so you can do exactly that if you so please. Again, it's your hardware, so you get to decide what it's running.

[Marco]

What are the main problems you see with that shift?

It encourages maldesign. Using WinRT for high frequency calls is a giant waste of CPU cycles. It's not the only reason modern Windows UI is slow (UWP was faster than WinUI3) but it doesn't help.

https://community.devexpress.com/blogs/wpf/archive/2022/01/24/winui-3-performance-boost.aspx

[ebastler]

It encourages maldesign. Using WinRT for high frequency calls is a giant waste of CPU cycles.

But isn't it such that you are not supposed to perform high-frequency calls, but rather wait for whatever event to come back? More a case of "it punishes bad design" than "it encourages"? Which, of course, is still a problem for the user of a badly designed piece of software.

[Marco]

But isn't it such that you are not supposed to perform high-frequency calls, but rather wait for whatever event to come back?

It's not I/O which is the problem, the dozens of levels of indirection take a toll no matter how many awaits get thrown in.