alt Hacker News2025 was a disaster for Windows 11
Comments
So. Nvidia abandons the gaming market, Microsoft abandons Windows and Google abandons Search, all because AI is supposedly more important.
At some point it starts to feel like a drug for C-suites.
Microsoft in 2025: We fired a bunch of engineers and mandated AI usage. 90% of our code is now generated by AI.
Also Microsoft in 2025: Record setting bugs and anti-features released.
Case study in code quantity is not equal to code quality.
I installed Linux (an arch-based distro) last month. There have been some minor issues but nothing worse than what I experienced regularly on Windows recently. My computer feels fast again and when things randomly break I can at least get to the root cause and fix it myself.
I used to quite like Windows, but it has gotten worse every patch day for years now. The pain of learning a new system is not so bad and at least I own my computer now.
I've been preaching this for a while but the era of PC as in "personal computing" is coming to an end and will slowly but surely be replaced with CC, Corporate Computing, where the corporations own everything, the hardware, the software and only permit you to use their equipment against a monthly fee and only to the extent they allow and permit. Everything you do will be controlled and observed and extracted for data for extra revenue streams. (Ads)
Free/libre software is the only bastion of hope but I'm sure if it would ever become large enough to threat the CC revenue models it'd be locked down, amputated, bought out or silenced by any means necessary. For the time being the technical hurdles and low quality is what keep the majority away from it and gets the job done for the corporations.
I'm a macos / linux user who bought a second-hand windows PC last year for CAD and games. Windows 11 is worse than you think it is.
It's worse than the data harvesting (which required two hours to turn off), irritating ads (for an OS you pay for) and generally schizophrenic UX (don't get me started on the Start menu).
The Windows team has gone far beyond typical bugs. They're introducing new classes of bugs; one day your computer's working fine and the next, your GPU's 3D performance (somehow) drops by a half — you know, the thing I bought the computer for? — https://www.guru3d.com/story/windows-11-kb5066835-update-tri...
The bug impacted CAD too, AFAICT btw, though I couldn't find a publication that tested this update on solidworks / shapr 3D etc.
They shipped a patch that started bricking SSDs, https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ssds/latest-windo... / https://www.pcmag.com/news/pc-building-group-figures-out-why... / https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/reports-...
Another that kept crashing on certain motherboards and processors with integrated graphics, https://windowsforum.com/threads/windows-11-24h2-intel-z890-...
If I didn't have a Solidworks license and Solidworks wasn't Windows only, I'd have switched to Steam OS or another linux distro a long time ago. I'm currently being held hostage by Dassault (and – to a lesser degree — the Windows-Gaming Industrial Complex).
Forget Apple Maps bad, this is Windows 11 bad.
This seems to be a story written for the HN audience, rather than for the core user base. Despite a long trend of predictions of Windows demise, it is still very much here and healthy as a platform for user install.
I could also write the same article about this website, how it was so full of bloat and ads that nobody wants I could barely get it to scroll, and it eventually crashed before getting to the end of TFA due to general resource exhaustion on mobile. None of that predicts the websites financials or “disasters” though.
I'm really hoping that the Linux gaming folks keep making progress on Windows-on-Linux compatibility so that I can transparently and with zero-fussing run any arbitrary Windows application. Unfortunately there's still plenty of professional software that has not been and will never be released for Linux.
Windows 11 isn't too bad after running Win11Debloat, but I get quite annoyed when an update shows "You're 100% there" for more than a second. 100% means done, why aren't you done yet?
When I was working on a deployment dashboard, I made it show ">0%" or "<100%" near the endpoints, to avoid misleading rounding.
I am wrapping up my shift from Windows to Linux. I will have a linux box to replace my Win7Pro/Win10Pro install on an old Dell workstation. I will also be migrating one of my older relative's pc's to an identical linux box to replace their 2008 model ASUS machine running Win10.
Once I have that all comfortably running I am walking away from iOS on the iPhone. I'm a bit tired of lock-in and in a position now where I have free time to manage the various things that interest me and to sort through any issues with data or software compatibility between the old/new OSes.
I've been a pc user since the early 1980's with DOS and my first pc was a 128k MAC which I still have. I won't have any more Microsoft or Apple stuff in a couple of months if all goes well. Wish me luck.
Microsoft was a disaster for Windows 11. They made a product that's such shit that now you've got people who'd rather figure out what linux is or how to work on an apple computer than use Windows 11.
I think 2026 will bring many to Linux because of Steam Machine: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steammachine
100% leadership inflicted.
Meanwhile they keep downsizing their workforce while not making personal sacrificed (personal pay) while they chase AI.
Why does anyone still go through the trouble, for personal use, of buying and fighting against Windows terrible design decisions and crappy implementations, when there are so many great alternatives?
Weirdly, Windows Server is a better desktop experience.
It does not ask you to play Candy Crush, for example.
Windows has been eroding my trust for a decade or so, and I really didn’t like having to make a Microsoft account to setup Windows. However there was that voice in my head whispering “Well, it’s not like you can play games on Linux.” or “See all those tools like Substance Painter and Unreal Engine you like using? Pfff can’t do that on Linux”.
Then the Steam Deck came out, and I was skeptical. I was wrong. Gaming on Linux could happen, it was happening. Proton and the strides made in Wine in the past decade or so have been amazing.
A month ago I installed a few different distros to “try out gaming on Linux”. I was shocked when Cyberpunk with mods worked with a little tinkering. Not only that, but it performed extremely well.
So if you’re on the fence, try it. Also all my tools still work ;).
p.s. Don’t let lack of NVIDIA support stop you if you’ve got an NVIDIA GPU, the latest driver works really well.
Something I've also noticed is a trending "silent exodus" from Windows 11 to Linux and macOS from a bunch of non-technical users.
Compared to the past, where some friend or relative who asked for help into moving from Windows to Linux or Mac usually had a certain ideology-driven strain in their decision, nowadays the requests I receive are along the lines of "look, I'm tired of Windows weirdness, I need something that doesn't change in weird ways between reboots, even if everything is not compatible 100%".
As of late my default answer has been "Do you need Photoshop or Office? Buy the cheapest Apple M-something laptop you can find. Otherwise tell me when you're free so we can install Linux on your machine", usually a bog standard version of Fedora KDE.
I've moved circa 10-12 laptops in the last year to Fedora, and outside of a single case it went way better than I expected. I've asked multiple times if they're ok and at least until now they all were like "yep, fine."
They do their job, expect their work device to never change in meaningful ways, and then forget about it for the rest of the day. Also they are not going to buy a new laptop just because a popup tells them their 3-years old pc can't be upgraded to Windows 11 for whatever reason.
Also we've reached a point where they couldn't care less if something like deCSS or an MP4 codec is missing. Entertainment apps are usually delegated to a tablet or an internet connected TV, as long as Youtube works they're fine.
They're people who don't really care about open source, GNU, Software Freedoms or so on. They're looking for something that doesn't interrupt them with Copilot this or AI Update that while they're having a call or a meeting on slack/teams/whatever.
Truth is linux has become... "Eh, good enough, that'll do it" for most people. Which is a lot more enticing compared to "Pay 400€ for something you already own and spend the rest of the day closing popups".
I've been using Windows since 3.1. I really resent how intrusive it has got. I feel that I am both paying and the product, at the same time.
I disagree with AI being part of the OS. IMO, any desktop OS should have absolutely nothing to do with AI. It's only a platform for managing other applications and resources. Remote AI stuff should be on websites only, available only if I choose to go to them and interact, or in apps specifically designed to be AI, like Claude Code or Antigravity.
All the nonsense in Windows 11 has me thinking about trying Linux desktops again for the first time in decades.
I haven't had a _terrible_ UI experience with Win 11 that Apple hasn't put me through already. But it took away my sideways toolbar. I don't click anything that loads edge, like "Show me more from the web" type links. So I don't see ads. I use firefox and thunderbird.
The telemetry all the way through the operating system sucks ethically. But I'm invested and familiar with Windows and Office. Not being able to make Copilot disappear is annoying.
However, all my games and software that work on Windows won't necessarily work on linux. I am not interested in making a political stand and putting up without abilities and features I currently have.
So, for my own use-case, Win 11 it is.
Clearly not an endorsement, just a data-point.
Once they move product testing to the Engineering group charged with releasing the product, it was inevitable that Release would take priority over Exhaustive Test. Even if bugs surfaced during their sketchy testing, the group would be pressed to release anyway, to meet schedule.
This is obvious to anyone. The management at Microsoft was naive or ignorant to make this process change, take your pick.
> Too many bugs. Too many changes. Too little control. Windows 11's reputation might be at its lowest it's ever been as 2025 comes to a close.
That, sadly, also applies almost perfectly to macOS. And yet, as bad as macOS has become, it is still a distant third in the race to become the worst desktop OS.
Very difficult spot to be in when the entire industry is racing to make desktops awful.
Linux starts to look very interesting, but is held back by the lack of good efficient high quality mobile hardware - the only such devices, Macs and snapdragon x elite devices, have poor Linux support.
The last 12 months? The last decade.
It is clear that Nadella has no clue what he is doing in 2025 and just wants to make another big splash with "AI".
If you force employees to dedicate 100% of their thinking power to agents, prompts, "AI" meetings, working on their necessarily fake "AI" success stories and "impacts", no one has time to do real work. Or have any real new ideas about anything else.
But Nadella doubles down and goes into "startup mode":
https://www.ft.com/content/255dbecc-5c57-4928-824f-b3f2d764f...
Not only Windows 11 got worse, Github got worse, too. So did the free Copilot.
All I wanted was a native tiling windows manager; all I got was shit on by a bloated cloud.
And Microsoft don't care in the slightest, they have lots of market share so they have been pivoting to the enshittification phase especially over the past few years... the UX is still a cluster fuck but hey there's plenty of space for ads and AI integration now
[dead]
[dead]
I did a clean install of Windows 11 when Windows 10 went EOL. From all of the complaints I was hearing from headlines I expected a disastrous experience.
But to be honest, it’s been fine. I’m not a heavy user but I switch to the Windows PC at least once a day for a few hours of CAD, gaming, and one other engineering program that is Windows only.
I don’t click any of the AI buttons. I declined the OneDrive or backup sync or whatever it was and it’s gone. I don’t use the built-in email client or the other features this article complains about and I don’t feel like I’m missing anything.
The centered start menu isn’t my favorite, but it’s not like it’s unusable. I didn’t find it difficult to adjust the interface and hide things I didn’t like in the first few minutes.
On the other hand, my experience with the latest macOS and iOS 26 has been incredibly frustrating. I’m almost to the point where my basic apps have worked around new macOS bugs. My iOS phone is stuttering and laggy for unclear reasons and searches show I’m not alone. I didn’t expect my Windows 11 PC, of all things, to be the smooth sailing computing experience in my house but so far that’s how it’s looking going into 2026.