From what I know, it only has minor under-the-hood changes from Win10, while having MASSIVE regressions to UI/UX. Increased ads, increased spying, and while certainly subjective, I think the largest regression is how much it's trying to imitate MacOS.
News flash to Microsoft, there are a lot of users that use Windows because it's not MacOS.
I can't think of a worse UI change than what Microsoft did to the right click menu. I'm ok with UI changes and will randomly try different WMs on Linux but that change was just SO frustrating. Zero benefit, loads of friction.
The worst offense is that the taskbar, which now is forced into removing labels and forcing grouping of tasks. Gone are the days of clicking Firefox(Window 1) and Firefox(Window 2), they've just copied the mac dock.
Yes you can use registry hacks/tools from github to get the functionality back... but this is just unacceptable.
For what it's worth, some of the spying can be disabled with O&O's ShutUp10 [1] One needs to run it after each windows update and it will show you what if anything under its purview has changed. Disabling some telemetry can make the desktop a little snappier as it is not phoning home every time an application is launched.
There are also a bunch of PowerShell scripts on github that do the same things but some of them change risky options that can break things so I will not link to those.
I've heard a rumor that much of the modern windows UI is planned out by designers whom are all apple ecosystem. Looking at the win 11 settings menu, and at the surface laptop, it's clear they're copying the success of Apple. This is what happens when there's not a central vision for a product. It's all user studies and data psuedo science that just reflects what average users want - apple products.
It's fine. I only use Windows to play games and Auto HDR is a decent feature.
But it's just riddled with design inconsistencies, PM driven "features" like Teams in the taskbar, and advertisements. I've been pointing family members at Chromebooks.
Windows is a mess. When I boot into it once every 5 years I'm floored by how bad it is. The touch controls in Internet Explorer don't even work consistently
The Windows 11 release event was top cringe. It was like the Hide-the-Pain Harold version of Windows 95's release. Like nobody there believed Windows 11 was an actual improvement but they desperately wanted you to.
Strangely comforting to see they're still struggling to convince people.
Windows 11 was the last straw that made me switch my day-to-day computer from a Windows laptop to a MacBook. Unfortunately, I still have to use a Windows desktop for some limited purposes (mainly gaming and computationally intense activities that I cannot do on my laptop) but that will be running a heavily locked-down configuration of Windows 10 until I die.
I look forward to Microsoft policy settings that disable all of Windows 11's clunky, privacy-invading features the moment governments have to or decide to upgrade, or when consumers eventually wake up and stop taking their nonsense.
I bought a Steam Deck to get away from Windows entirely.
I'm not a huge fan of Apple for a lot of reasons, so eventually I'm looking to move to a Linux development environment, but at this point I don't think it's ready.
To be honest, I'm not sure what to do anymore. I hate the modern Operating ecosystem. I find little value in the additions, and the ever encroaching privacy issues is really problematic.
For now I can keep it at bay with MacOS and SteamOS. But where do I go after this?
There is almost nothing that would make Windows desirable. It looks a bit different, but there is no compelling reason to switch, so far. Therefore I'm not surprised.
Fortunately if can't or don't want to meet the arbitrary requirements you can use tools like https://www.rufus.ltd/ to bypass all of them when writing the iso to a usb
When Windows 7 was the latest, people said that about Windows XP. When Windows XP was mainstream, people said that about Windows Server 2003 with the classic theme.
Hrm. Don't know about anyone else, but Windows 7 was the first ms os I felt genuinely impressed by since DOS 6.2. (also the last) The big difference is the migration away from native apps. There are numerous reasons why getting out from underneath decades of MFC and old C++ dependencies needed to occur, but the choice to go the electron/react-native route seems to have left them with a 50-cent-bin-at-the-dollar-store UX.
If you're running a windows install you are a "geek" normal people buy a whole computer usually. Also, this is HN so it was a fair assumption on my part.
Or they will get it via that thing called Windows Update. Got Windows 11 only ARM laptop, every other computer was updated automatically if it was eligible.
until Microsoft wants to stop supporting W10 and change that key with an update.
Sooner or later it will turn into the w8.1>>W10 shitshow where most people end up accidentally accidentally upgrading their OS even if they tried really hard NOT to do it.
$1400 windows laptops still all come with home edition, have terrible build quality, low battery, are non repairable, get junked after a few years, and are outperformed by the M1, a first gen chiplet.
The end game is vertical integration. Microsoft lost because they can not produce competitive hardware, and other vendors make their business on building low quality hardware.
I'd still upgrade but Windows migration tool says my CPU (which is supported) isn't supported because it isn't modern enough (it's a core i7). So the upgrade just fails.
Fair although my one is like 3 years old. Anyhow it's moot as my PC has recently caught a bout of "can't stay on for long enough to boot" and I haven't got around to fixing it yet.
Could it be that TPM is disabled in the bios? Could just be that the machine has all the supported hardware, just that the hardware is inaccessable in software.
There are ways to bypass the TPM and Secureboot checks and install 11 even on unsupported CPUs / lack of TPMs (Saying its an i7 so it should be supported doesn't help because the first i7 was release in 2008 iirc) by using things like https://github.com/AveYo/MediaCreationTool.bat to skip windows 11 upgrade checks. You just don't get support for the features requiring TPM/secure boot and no guarantees that things won't break in the future.
I do not believe the migration tool checks the class/Intel brand of CPU (i3, i5, i7, i9) but the generation, which seems to be 10th gen and higher. You can search this list to see if your generation of Intel processor is supported.
News flash to Microsoft, there are a lot of users that use Windows because it's not MacOS.