alt Hacker NewsHate is a strong word, but I don't like Windows 11
Comments
> Since I already committed to ditching my partner in favor of a more attractive ex…
This was a funny sentence to read, as my first thought as I started the article was “Windows users are starting to remind me of people stuck in cycles of abusive relationships.”
Windows has been in a cycle of abusively bad releases followed by sheepish "sorry, we learned our lesson" releases for nearly thirty years. What is the author’s plan for five years from now, just hope that Windows 12 isn't garbage?
All I can figure is that every generation spawns a new set of users who never knew any better, a segment of them reaching the breaking point, but can't be bothered to influence the next generation.
regardless: this is always who Windows was. Get out and get help.
Hate might be a strong word, but it's natural to feel that way towards a product designed with the primary purpose of increasing LTV per customer per PC.
I'm not being factious, but is there any Linux distro with a desktop experience that matches Windows and macos?
Like, yes, I know there are many flaws with both. A lot of sound, technical issues with windows and macos. A slew of UX ones as well. But despite W11 carrying around remnants of Windows 98 still, both of those OSes _feel nice_.
Multiple desktops work well, nice gestures, simple installers and applications. Stuff often just works.
My experience with the distros and desktops Ive tried in Linux have felt like windows 98 with a janky web interface on top, or have missed a lot of features that commercial OSes have, installing programs is a mix of flatpaks, APKs, and building from source.
Often feels like a thin veil on top of a technically-inclined terminal OS.
Is ther eany OS/desktop where you dont pay the "linux tax" when it comes to how the GUI feels?
> At this very moment of writing this post, I don’t care about the lack of Microsoft support. [...] [U]sing Win10 as a regular desktop OS on a machine connected to the Internet past the last security update, I'm aware that the risk of a compromise only increases as time goes on...
Do they know about LTSC? There is no reason to run Windows 10 without security updates: https://massgrave.dev/windows10_eol (pirate site but you don't have to use their tools, all the information here about update tracks for Windows is still valid)
One thing that is pretty impressive with Windows 11 however is WSL. I can just run a X program and it pops up as its own Window. So for example, I can run Chrome on Ubuntu on Windows, out of the box. On Windows 10, WSL is good for the command line, but Windows 11 takes it much further.
Why indeed is Windows 11 Explorer so slow? Why is file copying so slow?
I started using Double Commander over Explorer and Terracopy for moving files around. Double Commander isn't the prettiest but it works quite well.
The responsiveness of both these apps shows that the problem isn't necessarily the Windows 11 operating system itself.
In addition to the title’s “hate is a strong word”, in the comments we have “hate is a weak word”, “hate might be a strong word”, and “hate is the perfect word”, averaging out to something like hate being ever-so-slightly on the strong side of perfect.
I used Ubuntu at home for years, but went back to Windows when my last Thinkpad died, around the time WSL became a thing. Then I stopped coding and just became a Windows user. But it just got worse every week. Slower and more annoying. I think I'm going to ditch my family Office subscription and install Ubuntu again.
> Disable AI - Disables search engines’ AI features (they don't even run in the background)
I don't mind duck duck go's search assistant.
What they have done with 25H2 should be ILLEGAL. - Forcing AI - Reversing Anti-Adware settings by default
RemoveWindowsAI https://github.com/zoicware/RemoveWindowsAI
ProtonDB The list of AI crap is jaw gobbin massive.
ProtonDB checks known linux game compatibility && login with Steam to check your library! https://www.protondb.com/dashboard
RemoveWindowsAI shows a massive amount of AI crap they are trying to force on us. It removes EVERYTHING and is updated regularly.
I DO HATE Windows 11 and don't trust Microsoft with my data one bit. Every prompt you make lives in their logs no matter what they say - they flat out lie about it. "Oh we made it anonyomous". Sure. Yeah. RIGHT. With AI any data can be made Not-Anonymous.
Hopefully the EU will smash!
I'm trying bazzite (https://bazzite.gg) which is made for gaming.
My official reasons to hate Windows 11 go on and on. Here are a few
Windows 11 REMOVED vertical task bars - the most screen space efficient way to Task! Windows 11 ARBITRARILY limits the number of Apps you can have pinned to your task bar, Windows 11 WASTES a massive number of pixels and forces you to have a blank task bar.
Just typing this is letting the rage flow and I'm embracing the DARK SIDE.
I love AI when it's my choice to give them my data, and I love developing with it, and I love building it into Apps for users who need it as a tool.
Plus 1000% NSA scooping up everything including with moles on site at every major tech company.
hate is the perfect word. you can't even drag anything onto the taskbar icons yet, and maybe never will be able to. just one small example of many, of why hate is the perfect word
win11 is the product of a legion of middle managers. It's embarrassing
It feels like everything is falling apart and getting worse. Yet somehow people are racing to produce AI slop faster. If software eventually collapses under its own weight, things might be so borked we have to bootstrap everything from scratch, staring with assembly.
Windows 11 is so bad that I finally made the permanent jump to Linux. At the end of my time with Windows, it would HARD freeze about twice a week. I thought I was having hardware failures and got really scared.
When I switched to Omarchy, I've had zero crashes. Omarchy gave me a great OS that I spend no time tweaking and fiddling with. Steam works out of the box, and all the games I play work out of the box. Control, Duke Nukem 3D, Blade Chimera, Elden Ring, Ender Lilies, Lorn's Lure, Pragamata, RE 4 Remake, it just works. If you're a gamer don't be scared and give it a try, you will not want to go back to windows.
> why is the UI so slow / explorer slow / bluetooth slow
this is a legitimate complaint, but I see latency absolutely everywhere. my iPhone 17 Pro dropped frames out of the box . now 3/4 unlocks drops frames.
I'm not defending Windows, it's obviously in decline -- but trying to identify root cause. There used to be curmudgeon engineers on staff who would berate team members over blocked UIs, dropped frames, input latency over 30ms . Dave Cutler made a rubber stamp that rejected (then paper) code reviews with "Size is the Goal". That culture has retired.
Web-dev's design interactions targeting 500-2000ms, so to them everything on the OS looks fast . Adding 150ms to right-click is unnoticeable . Like 15kHz audio to a boomer or purple to the color blind .
It's easy to beat up on MS, because most open-source devs have despised them. But Microsoft had a very high bar for engineering until about 10 years ago ( you may laugh, but remember they were writing OS's that last 40+ years) . Apple had an extremely high bar until about 5 years ago.
This isn't just one bad product, but an entire industry lowering its standards.
> However, there are some programs I use daily (like Scrivener) and are essential to me
2026, the killer app for many Windows users is now a text editor that has ran in Wine since 2012.
We're making good progress, folks!
Hate is a weak word, basic stuff like notepad, snipping tool or terminal don't even work today https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/windows-...