Are people switching to Windows 11?

[Borderland]

Unless you have proprietary apps you absolutely need and can only use on Windows, Linux Mint is the easy escape hatch. You can even install desktop themes to make it look ~80% like Windows.
You can burn it to a USB and even try it out before installing, albeit a slightly slower and more limited version of what actually gets installed.
I'd strongly recommend at least trying it on USB without the install, since it won't actually change anything on your system and will at least give you something different to try out briefly.

Windows, with each new version, just becomes worse and worse malware/spyware. It's like slow-boiling a frog, and most don't realize the level of stuff going on in the background.
Draining resources like a hog, data logging basically everything you're doing. Computing just doesn't have to be this painful or privacy invasive but, to each their own.

Windows, with each new version, just becomes worse and worse malware/spyware.

That's how I see it. I was just fine with Win XP. I don't ever upgrade. I've never had a better experience with an upgrade, just more suck. I think MS hit the wall with 11. The only reason it lives is because it gets installed on new machines. Not very many people trusted MS to upgrade to 11. I've never heard anyone say it was better.

[gringop]

I added a Win 10 workstation to my collection a month ago, it took me a few weeks to get it working correctly. Turned off Cortana and all automatic updates and added OpenShell to get back to a more classic start menu and file explorer.

I'm still finding things that I need to do to make it better. While adding a backup job in the Task Scheduler, I found the popup reminders for updating Brave and MS Edge, they are now disabled. No more reminders from Brave and Edge. I'm sure I will find more things to disable in Task Scheduler in the future.

I would not update to Win 11 until Win 10 is no longer supported. MS never slims down and makes it new releases more efficient and less intrusive but always does the opposite.

Gonna be putting the newest version of Ubunto on a old desktop soon, we'll see how much of a PITA that will be.

Gringop

[ST911]

Bought several laptops with 11 installed, came in S mode which prevented almost everything useful. First thing was to get them out of S. After that, it was a laborious process to deinstall or turn off the wide array of extra "features", error-reporting, etc that are on board. I still find one here and there. Overall, functionality and reliability is fine or at least no worse than any other windows OS.

[Sig_Fiend]

Windows has a metric ton of telemetry running in the background, which is definitely problematic for people that value privacy. Calling it "spyware" is a little hyperbolic, however. Microsoft is primarily focused on spotting problems in its technical ecosystem rather than monetize what it knows about its users... for now.

Admittedly, I intentionally use rhetorical hyperbole when talking about Windows, if only to help wake people up to other possibilities that might improve their lives. Thanks for telling the other side of it, though.
In truth, it makes sense from a business standpoint that you'd want as much data as possible to best understand how users utilize your products. It helps you improve them and develop better products.

That said, MS and most large companies these days take it way too far IMO, and the potential for abuse is always there. The amount of hardware power people increasingly need to do even basic things is kind of ridiculous.

Also, both MS and Apple have made their OS' moving targets. It's maddening to have your OS configuration, features, location of things, etc periodically changed as if they pulled the rug out from under you.
I have to imagine lots of others feel the same way. Such are automatic updates with those two companies.

Much of what I complain about with Windows also has to do with the advertising realm, at least in some peripheral way.
This is not limited to MS, of course, and is unfortunately a general problem with most websites and apps. It's a more philosophical issue with personal data sovereignty. Here's an example:



Again, to Chance's point, that example is nothing sinister, per-se. Largely telemetry, apparently also some advertising angles, update checks, etc. A lot of perfectly valid stuff going on. My point is, it's all pretty excessive and unnecessary IMO.

A perfect example of this would be to visit any MSM news website, open up "Developer Tools" in the browser (this is built into most modern browsers), click the "Network" tab, and watch the sheer amount of HTTP requests and resources loaded... all to largely display text on a page, a few images, maybe a video.

The privacy issue is critical for my profession. Do you know if QuickBooks, SolidWorks eDrawing viewer and other
Windows programs will work on Linux Mint?

Does Microsoft Exchange email raise the same privacy issues?

Thanks!

I just took a quick look and, sounds like QuickBooks and SolidWorks eDrawing viewer don't have an option for Linux unfortunately.

As far as email, I'm not an expert in that realm and wouldn't feel competent in making a recommendation for someone in your situation.

[hufnagel]

It's funny. I was in the IT industry back in the 90s (still am, just doesn't involve end-user devices) and the big complaint about Windows was infrequent updates (mainly via Service Packs) and that users could ignore them. Now we have frequent updates that are automatically applied and people complain.
Chris

The issue has been since Windows 8, is that the updates are poorly tested and frequently break important things (like keyboards, wireless adapters, mice, cause BSOD's, etc.)
Maybe if their updates weren't such shit, people would do them more often.

[Borderland]

deleted....

[That Guy]

I'm not sure what it's supposed to do better

It's supposed to make Microsoft more money.

Not that it's doing a great job of it thus far, but hey - the date Windows 10 support ends keeps ticking closer.

As for the original question in this thread, at work it looks to me like we're going to do the standard upgrade protocol - which is to say, do nothing until the last minute, panic at the last minute, and then it'll be a huge hassle to get everything updated. At home, I upgraded our computers to Mint years ago and shall continue to do so with any future computers we acquire.

[mtnbkr]

The issue has been since Windows 8, is that the updates are poorly tested and frequently break important things (like keyboards, wireless adapters, mice, cause BSOD's, etc.)
Maybe if their updates weren't such shit, people would do them more often.

I haven't had to deal with Windows professionally (as in being responsible for user or production systems) since Windows ME, so I've missed a lot of the nonsense in the corporate space since then. However, as a home user with anywhere from 3-5 Windows systems at a time (me, wife, kids, etc), I can probably count on one hand the number of times an automatic update has caused a problem and I don't recall any being a critical issue that couldn't quickly be mitigated. As for BSODs, I can't recall the last one I had. The situation is sooo much better than what I dealt with in the 90s. Stability is better, updates are easier, and security is no longer an afterthought.

I don't think MS gets enough credit for supporting the absolutely insane variety of hardware and combinations of hardware that can exist. The fact that I can fill a cart at Microcenter with a random collection of parts, come home and slap it together, and have a very high likelihood of successfully installing Windows should count for something.

MS could take the Apple approach and only support a narrow range of hardware (especially that produced by them) and greatly improve reliability of the system and subsequent updates, but that's not what people want.

Chris

[Borderland]

I've heard through friends that MS isn't a good place to work. My impression is, if the person working there is above average in capability they find employment elsewhere.

I've never worked there but know engineers who have.

[SLUZENE]

Not a fan of Win11 based on the limited time I have on it. However, some software is starting to have issues with Win10, or so I have been told.

If I had to use Win11 in 5/2023, I'd try for Win 11 Education N edition.

Main workstations and laptops usually have some flavor of Ubuntu LTS, but in the past I have used Arch, Manjaro, Mint, Debian and other linux distros. When I have more free time, I slide back to Arch.

If you must use Windows 10 and have basic skills to install it, this version is great. Has 10 years of security updates since it's creation (2031). I use it as a virtual machine (if needing software like quicken), often with networking disabled. Minimal to no bloat and other crap that comes with consumer editions. Keys can come up for sale, even on ebay, resellers, make friends with a sysadmin, etc.

sha256 a0334f31ea7a3e6932b9ad7206608248f0bd40698bfb8fc65f14fc5e4976c160  en-us_windows_10_iot_enterprise_ltsc_2021_x64_dvd_257ad90f.iso

Typical mods after install include disabling automatic updates, not using microsoft sign in, reducing the telemetry setting, removing edge browser, turning off hibernation to save space and the typical low bloat software such as foobar2000, notepad++, windows subsystem for linux, etc.

There's also Tiny11 builder, but I haven't tried it on bare metal. https://github.com/ntdevlabs/tiny11builder

As someone else said, encourage your kids to use libre software such as Linux and BSD. It will give them more computing freedom. Many people, including myself, have watched Windows turn from a product for work and play to more of a half baked force-fed sandwich of junk.