PC don't be the first kid on the block to get Windows 11. wait a year.

[The_Great_Sephiroth]

These conversations tend to end up in flame wars which I'm not going to let happen so this is the last time I'm going to comment on this.

I've managed Linux systems for 20 years. It's only a matter of time until you install something and things are going to quit working on you. Then you need to know how scripts work and how to use an editor and a bunch of other things that normal people who don't know anything about operating systems or programming or script writing don't know just to understand what the hell is going on much less how to fix it.

This is just fine if that's what you want to do. But don't switch to unix thinking it's better than windows and you're going to have a better experience using it.

Ditto, I started managing them in 2001, specifically shell-only servers back then. Normally it isn't too bad to figure out something, but when you start adding layers of complexity where this depends on that and that depends on the other, it gets annoying fast. Another reason to avoid systemd. I have done simple updates, rebooted, and something critical is down. It's not that the software is bad, but now I need to do configuration changes or something because that was changed for security/speed/stability/whatever and my current config no longer works. It could be worse. Linux sometimes breaks things just like Windows, only Windows 10 tends to break things often.

The most recent debacle in Linux was the Intel video driver not working right after a specific kernel update. I believe after 5.4 something happened that broke many Intel HD Graphics setups. Fixed now but it was broken for a while.

 

[IndustryStandard]

The amount of users on Windows 10 vs Linux is insanely vast and saying Windows 10 breaks sometimes too doesn't really mean anything. Windows is stable for the majority of its users which is substantial compared to even the total amount of Linux users. Nevermind the ones that aren't having smooth rides. I think linux users forget just how many little nuances and things they do day to day that aren't as straight forward as they would be on Windows.

And if a Windows update breaks then so what, Windows runs a startup repair to fix it or rolls itself back without needing the user input. If it wasn't so insanely user friendly then it wouldn't have had such massively wide adoption and trying to act like Linux can even stand up to that is insane to me.

 

[meganoth]

These conversations tend to end up in flame wars which I'm not going to let happen so this is the last time I'm going to comment on this.

I've managed Linux systems for 20 years. It's only a matter of time until you install something and things are going to quit working on you. Then you need to know how scripts work and how to use an editor and a bunch of other things that normal people who don't know anything about operating systems or programming or script writing don't know just to understand what the hell is going on much less how to fix it.

This is just fine if that's what you want to do. But don't switch to unix thinking it's better than windows and you're going to have a better experience using it.

Sure, if you have immature people in the conversation it tends to go into a flame war. Do you see anyone here get enraged and starting to get personal? But since this discussion is rather fruitless and endless I tend to agree to drop it.

But let me just say you added "it's only a matter of time until something breaks...". But you don't say how that is different to windows. I have seen windows break as well. I hear about windows problems nearly daily. If there is still a vast difference we would need statistics to find them. The gap was noticably big 10 or 20 years ago.

Also you misinterpret what I said. Switching will always mean you go from a system you know already to a foreign system. I never said that that would create a better experience. I also don't say that linux is better. I just said that someone who knew nothing about both systems would have a similar experience. The huge advantage of windows is that people learn using it in young years already and therefore windows almost always gets a headstart. This is why Microsoft as well as Appple do their best to get into schools.

 

[Maharin]

 

[meganoth]

The amount of users on Windows 10 vs Linux is insanely vast and saying Windows 10 breaks sometimes too doesn't really mean anything. Windows is stable for the majority of its users which is substantial compared to even the total amount of Linux users. Nevermind the ones that aren't having smooth rides. I think linux users forget just how many little nuances and things they do day to day that aren't as straight forward as they would be on Windows.

And if a Windows update breaks then so what, Windows runs a startup repair to fix it or rolls itself back without needing the user input. If it wasn't so insanely user friendly then it wouldn't have had such massively wide adoption and trying to act like Linux can even stand up to that is insane to me.

Good arguments. Though linux currently is stable as well for its users. We have to look at the percentage of users with problems and I don't have any hard numbers for you, but neither do you. If you don't go under the hood with a typical ubuntu (i.e. use admin powers to change its inner workings left and right) and just use the GUI for stuff normal users do on their PC, use the office suite, surf on the net, install programs from the ubuntu software store, then the chance that anything breaks is almost nil.

That things are straightforward on windows IS a result of people being used to windows. In my job I have to help secretaries with their problems and the simple fact is: If anything happens that they haven't seen yet they need someone to tell them what to do. If it happens again, then they know how to deal with it if it isn't complicated. This is almost exclusively about being used to a system.

Roll back is a very good point, yes, that feature is worth a lot. Though I doubt the users I was talking about would know how to use it.  But I agree it is a point in favor of windows. Only, it helps in some cases where you break something. But for example in cases where you install a program and it doesn't work and you want that program to work, uninstalling it again won't help you, you would still need outside help as a novice user

The wide adoption of windows is the same case as the wide adoption of facebook or whatsup. 90% of it is that network effects help it to stay on top. When windows was created it was an immedaite success because it was the only one easy to use and cheap (macos came later and was maybe easier to use but too expensive for the masses). After Microsoft practically had the monopoly it just made sure that every PC came pre-installed with windows and every new PC buyer would always start with windows. Windows market share today is not because of easy of use (macos would hands-down win that competition), it is because it is still on every PC you buy and 95% of people you know and can ask use it as well and can help you get the necessary knowledge. It is just network effects.

 

[IndustryStandard]

If you don't go under the hood with a typical ubuntu (i.e. use admin powers to change its inner workings left and right) and just use the GUI for stuff normal users do on their PC, use the office suite, surf on the net, install programs from the ubuntu software store, then the chance that anything breaks is almost nil.

And that is part of the problem, in order to do anything beyond those simple things you no longer are just interacting with the UI. My network issue with Steam for example had Google telling me to adjust a wide number of things involving changing the drivers (no small feat on linux compared to device manager) adjusting configuration settings with the kernal and Steam among other random nonsense that never fixed it. My printer installed but then printed garbled text out which means the driver is bad, guess I'm just screwed because no other driver existed for it. I used to have a laptop for school that had a Qualcomm wireless driver, come to find out that you basically have almost 0 driver support with Qualcomm devices on Linux. These are problems that just don't happen on Windows to this degree.

Windows market share today is not because of easy of use (macos would hands-down win that competition), it is because it is still on every PC you buy and 95% of people you know and can ask use it as well and can help you get the necessary knowledge

Like it or not it doesn't matter why Windows has the massive amount of users at this point. Everyone is familiar with using a Windows machine and if Linux wants a piece of that pie then it needs to do a better job accomodating those trying to swap over. It currently doesn't. Some distro needs to take over and be the face of Linux Home user but I stg for the past 8 years I keep being told a wide range of random Distros that are supposed to be the perfect Windows killer and can't even imagine how confusing that would be for any non tech savvy person.

Even just the act of installing Linux on a system to replace Windows is more complicated than your typical home user at this point.
 

 

[meganoth]

And that is part of the problem, in order to do anything beyond those simple things you no longer are just interacting with the UI. My network issue with Steam for example had Google telling me to adjust a wide number of things involving changing the drivers (no small feat on linux compared to device manager) adjusting configuration settings with the kernal and Steam among other random nonsense that never fixed it. My printer installed but then printed garbled text out which means the driver is bad, guess I'm just screwed because no other driver existed for it. I used to have a laptop for school that had a Qualcomm wireless driver, come to find out that you basically have almost 0 driver support with Qualcomm devices on Linux. These are problems that just don't happen on Windows to this degree.

I'm sure I can list dozens of registry settings recipes, command line recipes and serious going through a jungle of menues recipe on windows as well. This happens when the simple solutions you can directly access in the UI fail, on any OS. An advantage on windows though is for common problems Microsoft develops and publishes fix-programs that do some of those leg-work recipes and in half the cases those even work. 

Linux has holes in his hardware-support and a novice user should probably buy from a vendor who sells hardware and OS bundled (just like it is done with windows). But agreed, in this category linux can not reach the level of support that windows gets from hardware developers, especially peripheral devices, partly that is again a result of windows market share.

Your wlan issue with that laptop you had seems an older story though, I already said wlan wasn't on the level a few years ago that it has today. In the last two years I bought a lot of different laptops for my workplace and many got a linux install and not one had a WLAN problem. Not one.

Like it or not it doesn't matter why Windows has the massive amount of users at this point. Everyone is familiar with using a Windows machine and if Linux wants a piece of that pie then it needs to do a better job accomodating those trying to swap over. It currently doesn't. Some distro needs to take over and be the face of Linux Home user but I stg for the past 8 years I keep being told a wide range of random Distros that are supposed to be the perfect Windows killer and can't even imagine how confusing that would be for any non tech savvy person.

You missed the topic again. I agree completely with your second (highlighted) sentence. Again, that was not my argument and I frankly see no way that linux will ever be able to swap over a significant amount of people, not without very potent help by Microsoft itself. MS sits in a place it can not lose by outside actions, not in the foreseeable future. I'm not here to tell you Ubuntu or some other distro is a windows killer, it is not.

Even just the act of installing Linux on a system to replace Windows is more complicated than your typical home user at this point.
 

Installing linx and windows on a blank PC is very much the same level of difficult. THAT is my assertion, not that replacing a windows someone else already planted on the pc with linux is easier than doing nothing. That is trivially false.

 

[SylenThunder]

A good read on the general Win 11 topic, with some additional info on TPM. The money quote:

Coming back around to this....

I checked my UEFI/BIOS. Under Advanced > AMD fTPM Config I have two options. "Discrete TPM" and "Firmware TPM". I had previously assumed that the hardware module was required for "Firmware TPM", but apparently it isn't. So not sure what benefit the module would give me, or where to configure it. I can't find anything except for information on where it gets plugged in at.

So now by changing that setting to Firmware, I qualify for Win 10.  In a month or so I might give it a try just so I can test the game client performance on it, and look for any bugs with a20 in relation to the OS.

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

Well, i never would. I usually use my OS until the very last day of support. I really can´t stand the whole process of getting everything downloaded and installed again. I generally tend to not use any tech/software on day one and rather wait until the infancy problems are solved.

 

[SylenThunder]

Well, i never would. I usually use my OS until the very last day of support. I really can´t stand the whole process of getting everything downloaded and installed again. I generally tend to not use any tech/software on day one and rather wait until the infancy problems are solved.

I usually wait until they're getting close to Beta for testing on my main systems. I'd be a Day 1 adapter of the dev build if I could run it on my spare PC. Their exclusion of the 7th-gen Intel's knocked that off the list of things to do.

 

[canadianbluebeer]

Replacing Windows with Linux on a DESKTOP (emphasis), is generally a trivial thing.

Did that for my father over 15 years ago. (he hated waiting for the AV software to load and the warnings etc).

Switched him to Ubuntu,   Firefox,  Evolution, OpenOffice (at the time) and all worked fine.

When my mother came to live with me, I switched her over immediately, as she would click on darn near anything.

Same deal. Firefox and Chrome (reasons for both),  LibreOffice etc.  All well.

Was going to change her from the Unity interface to Cinnamon, as closer to a windows feel.

Her response:  " I don't remember what that was like. I don't want to learn anything new".  (she's 80 now)

Wifi cards are an issue still. Had to move her computer,  (after truck hit the house, see the clip).

Got a wifi adapter and 100' ethernet cable as backup.

No go on the card.

Cable made it with about 2' to spare.

So the AVERAGE user, the OS really doesn't make much difference.  Browser, email, print and that's pretty much all many care about.

Besides, how many NON-Techie types can troubleshoot or fix a windows problem?  yeah, not many.

So if that can't fix linux, the call for help, just like in windows.

Oh, it's an absolute bonus treat for the scam calls and fake popups too.

Mother: "Windows Security Center has found ...."  "what should I do?"

Me:  Mom, are you running windows?

Mother: Well, no.

Me:  just click the red X in the corner. It's a scam, and it can't hurt you because I put you on linux.

Mom: oh, ok.

The scam calls, are fun. I string them along looking for what they want.

Sooooo much fun when I say  "oh, did I forget to mention I'm on Linux and not Windows?"

hee-hee.  (serves those bastids right)   

(and no, linux is not perfect, nor is it a panacea for anything)

Oh, I've also been using it since pre 0.99 . Still have the stack of floppies for that. I'm a bit of a packrat for software stuff)

 

[SylenThunder]

I have to say that installing Win11 was..... interesting.  After it finished the file copy I got a black screen with a mouse cursor, and it disabled all the USB ports so I had zero input devices.

Forced a reboot, and it kept saying that it was Windows 10 in the start up options. Had to fix that manually. >.>

Now for the fun of playing with drivers, and then tinkering with games.  As if I had any free time to do this in to begin with....

Posted from a Windows 10 PC.

 

[unholyjoe]

Now for the fun of playing with drivers, and then tinkering with games.  As if I had any free time to do this in to begin with....

and i noticed your arm was being bent forcing you into testing that too.

but seriously.. the best experience in anything... is to just installing it vanilla and learn to use it and not to tweak it so it breaks and gives you a bad experience.

like so many reports/complaints about 7dtd for example (many other games as well), those with the biggest or more complaints are those who tweak them and or their computers and then swear its the games fault.

 

[zootal]

I'm a Linux guy, so I won't be getting it ever. 

I abandoned Winbloze years ago, before Windows 8 came out. I'm a software engineer, yet there is *nothing I need windows for. Linux does it all. Gaming, office work, software dev, website, database, you name it. When I switched to Linux, 95% of my frustration with my operating system went away. Windows really is that bad.

Several years ago I switched my daughter from Windows to Linux. And she got mad at me! Why? "Dad, this is amazing, my computer doesn't crash anymore and is so much faster. I'm mad at you for not doing this sooner".

 

[Maharin]

I abandoned Winbloze years ago, before Windows 8 came out. I'm a software engineer, yet there is *nothing I need windows for. Linux does it all. Gaming, office work, software dev, website, database, you name it. When I switched to Linux, 95% of my frustration with my operating system went away. Windows really is that bad.

Several years ago I switched my daughter from Windows to Linux. And she got mad at me! Why? "Dad, this is amazing, my computer doesn't crash anymore and is so much faster. I'm mad at you for not doing this sooner".

At my old employer I ran Windows in a VM to do things like Outlook and Office, because... rules, I guess (for about the last 8 years or so I worked there).  I did everything else in Linux and have been for probably 12 years now at home, probably more.  I remember going from Windows 7 to Linux but not exactly when in the lifecycle of 7, but it was well before 8 came out for sure.  The first time I dabbled with it was probably 1993 or 1994 and that was without a GUI on a 486 if I remember right.

I was a KDE guy for a long time because of the level of customization but I eventually got sick of the instability.  I've been using Cinnamon on Linux Mint for almost as long as it's been around and have no regrets.  I used Ubuntu for a while and Debian for a few years but finally had to leave it because I needed newer versions of things than Debian could provide all too frequently.  I like Debian though and it is still probably one of my favorite distributions.

My kids are all adults at this point and none of them are inclined to do much beyond gaming on their PCs so they would rather stick with Windows.

 

[The_Great_Sephiroth]

Replacing Windows with Linux on a DESKTOP (emphasis), is generally a trivial thing.

Did that for my father over 15 years ago. (he hated waiting for the AV software to load and the warnings etc).

Switched him to Ubuntu,   Firefox,  Evolution, OpenOffice (at the time) and all worked fine.

When my mother came to live with me, I switched her over immediately, as she would click on darn near anything.

Same deal. Firefox and Chrome (reasons for both),  LibreOffice etc.  All well.

Was going to change her from the Unity interface to Cinnamon, as closer to a windows feel.

Her response:  " I don't remember what that was like. I don't want to learn anything new".  (she's 80 now)

Wifi cards are an issue still. Had to move her computer,  (after truck hit the house, see the clip).

Got a wifi adapter and 100' ethernet cable as backup.

No go on the card.

Cable made it with about 2' to spare.

So the AVERAGE user, the OS really doesn't make much difference.  Browser, email, print and that's pretty much all many care about.

Besides, how many NON-Techie types can troubleshoot or fix a windows problem?  yeah, not many.

So if that can't fix linux, the call for help, just like in windows.

Oh, it's an absolute bonus treat for the scam calls and fake popups too.

Mother: "Windows Security Center has found ...."  "what should I do?"

Me:  Mom, are you running windows?

Mother: Well, no.

Me:  just click the red X in the corner. It's a scam, and it can't hurt you because I put you on linux.

Mom: oh, ok.

The scam calls, are fun. I string them along looking for what they want.

Sooooo much fun when I say  "oh, did I forget to mention I'm on Linux and not Windows?"

hee-hee.  (serves those bastids right)   

(and no, linux is not perfect, nor is it a panacea for anything)

Oh, I've also been using it since pre 0.99 . Still have the stack of floppies for that. I'm a bit of a packrat for software stuff)

Get Linux and your WiFi will work. Ubuntu isn't true Linux. It's got that systemd malware. I have yet to find a wireless NIC that does not work out of the box on Gentoo or PCLOS. Ubuntu has hoops to jump through to make certain hardware work.

You should also correct the final statement. Ubuntu and its derivatives are not perfect, not by a long shot, but there are several distros that come dang close. Remember, using Ubuntu is starting to be using Windows. You get those layers of complexity between your app and the kernel, and it is far more than systemd. No thanks.

 

[Ninja_Freak]

In my experience it's always been best to skip a Micro$oft release

 

[Ripflex]

Well, before they removed the tool to test if your computer allowed to run windows 11, I tested my BRAND new computer and it didn't pass.  Sooo F Microsoft, I'll stick to Windows 10.  Windows 10 good for 2025 I believe, I MIGHT afford a new computer with Win 11 installed then.

With the chip shortage and High prices on computer components, seems a bad time to introduce an OS with stark high system requirements ?  Am I missing something here ?

 

[SylenThunder]

With the chip shortage and High prices on computer components, seems a bad time to introduce an OS with stark high system requirements ?  Am I missing something here ?

And in testing it so far, the only real visual changes are minimal.  According to the documentation on the dev build, I should be able to install this on an unsupported chipset, so I may give it a shot with the i7-7700 laptop. (Based on the way it reads, I should be able to install dev or Beta onto this "un-supported" hardware, but the live build may be locked out.)  I am not at all certain what features of this build would require a newer processor, outside of possible TPM compatibility issues. It really doesn't make a lot of sense.

And so far after three days of using the Windows 11 test, there are only a few things that I have found to be really annoying. One is just a new feature that isn't fully implemented yet, and another is a re-structuring of settings that makes it take 4 extra steps to get to something I used to have a right-click menu for. (Though admittedly, so far it seems to retain the setting I configured in that right-click menu after a reboot. Which is something Win 10 doesn't do, and makes the fast access to the setting important.)

Some things like opening explorer and basic navigation are light speeds faster in Windows 11 than in Windows 10. It could be argued that the difference between the two is a bloated Win 10 installation, however in this case my Win 10 install is relatively clean and fresh. In comparison I am also running the same software bloat between the two systems with one exception. I haven't stuck BitDefender on the Win11 install yet because I'm testing Windows Defender out. (Which so far, looks like it's a pretty big improvement over the previous version. At least it's a lot more optimized and less of a hassle.)

 

[meganoth]

And in testing it so far, the only real visual changes are minimal.  According to the documentation on the dev build, I should be able to install this on an unsupported chipset, so I may give it a shot with the i7-7700 laptop. (Based on the way it reads, I should be able to install dev or Beta onto this "un-supported" hardware, but the live build may be locked out.)  I am not at all certain what features of this build would require a newer processor, outside of possible TPM compatibility issues. It really doesn't make a lot of sense.

And so far after three days of using the Windows 11 test, there are only a few things that I have found to be really annoying. One is just a new feature that isn't fully implemented yet, and another is a re-structuring of settings that makes it take 4 extra steps to get to something I used to have a right-click menu for. (Though admittedly, so far it seems to retain the setting I configured in that right-click menu after a reboot. Which is something Win 10 doesn't do, and makes the fast access to the setting important.)

Some things like opening explorer and basic navigation are light speeds faster in Windows 11 than in Windows 10. It could be argued that the difference between the two is a bloated Win 10 installation, however in this case my Win 10 install is relatively clean and fresh. In comparison I am also running the same software bloat between the two systems with one exception. I haven't stuck BitDefender on the Win11 install yet because I'm testing Windows Defender out. (Which so far, looks like it's a pretty big improvement over the previous version. At least it's a lot more optimized and less of a hassle.)

A different explanation could be that to induce people to get the new version they "accidentally" bloat windows10 through patches. At the end of Win7 there was a lot of talk about Win7 with patch level 2 being a lot slower on PCs than the original Win7. Was that only rumor or fact, not sure? If a fact then the question is whether it was because of security patches costing performance or whether it was deliberate. It would be a form of planned obscolescence and usually that is VERY hard to prove.