For me the strange and unproductive direction Windows is going towards in encapsulated in the right-click menu in the file manager (Explorer). 11 has a shiny new menu that shows up when you right click. But it is a new coat of paint over the ones from 10 or before. Additional options from for example 7zip don't show up in it. You have to click "more options" at the bottom which them reveals the old menu. There is no benefit to the new menu except for the fact that it is aesthetically more "modern" to its detriment.
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 had been Windows user since Windows3.1. More than 3 decades straight. After a few years of working with Linux, installed Debian on home PC about a year ago and couldn't be more happier since then.
I was a fan, user, then developer from the DOS days-pre Windows 3.0–to Windows 10 without a single gap.
When they threatened
Windows 10 EOL last year (?), that’s when I took a day to do a clean install of Mint and port my games and LLM tinkering over.
Because I knew MS was doubling-down on the user-hostile experience.
I thought I’d miss Windows but Steam, Wine, and Radeon made it delightful.
Windows is now only on my company-issued laptop. I predict that will also go away, as Windows 11 has introduced backdoors to circumvent company controls and install their BS.
Are you saying that any Linux install you've tried in let's say, the past decade, has actually failed for you? I've not seen that and I've put it on many dissimilar machines with success. I use Ubuntu, and now Kubuntu, perhaps you could name the distro that gave you issues?
The relation is tangential at best. Microsoft's management was a personification of corporate rot for a long while now, AI or no AI.
They view Windows as a straw to suck users into their higher value products through, and are seemingly unaware of what "UX" is, or how their decisions affect it. Which is how Windows 11 ended up being such a clusterfuck.
> “It appears my post generated far more attention than I intended… with a lot of speculative reading between the lines.. Just to clarify… Windows is NOT being rewritten in Rust with AI.
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.
It's been a death by a thousand cuts over the years. The only reason I still had a Windows partition was to play specific games that couldn't run using Proton on Linux. The start menu's inability to be moved to the left side of the screen was the last straw for me. It sounds pedantic, but that's where I've had my start menu forever, and I'm not about to change yet another thing in my workflow.
At this point, if a game won't run under Proton because of an intrusive rootkit, I'd simply rather not play it.
Edit: I specifically mean the start bar vertically aligned on the left side of the screen, with the start button in the top-left corner, not at the bottom-left.
It’s been fine? Are you completely immune to attention grabbing features? I absolutely cannot use win11 as it comes on a stock lenovo. Maybe you got your hands on some corporate version with some of the standard settings off? But between the news feed and the advertising in the start menu I find stock installs to he maddening, and I loath needing to boot my win11 partition.
I didn’t run any scripts or utilities. When I encountered something I didn’t like I just found the setting to turn it off.
I prefer a clean system, but I’m not the kind of person who gets triggered into rage when the OS pops up a suggestion after fresh install or has something on by default. Spending some time customization the OS and desktop environment is part of the drill any time I do a clean install, whether it’s Windows, Linux, or Mac.
I finally updated a couple of months ago after putting it off forever and it's been fine for me too. I'm on Pro version and I just used this as the first step after upgrading: https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat
No issues so far, no ads, none of the complaints others are seeing. I'm a power user too: I do gaming, programming, music production, video editing, etc. All of those things are fine.
My only real problem was not being able to have two rows on the taskbar, which I solved with Windhawk's "Multirow taskbar for Windows 11" mod. Done and done.
The average home user probably won't know what power shell and GitHub are.
I can't run the scripts you are talking about on my work pc.
I can sympathise with your point of view but it does feel a bit like "works for me because I know what I'm doing". Also how long before another Windows update that undoes what the scripts do.
I used to be very pro windows simply because of backwards compatibility and hardware support was ridiculously good. I can't recommend Linux to relatives as they'd be utterly confused.
Dave Plummer, ex windows kernel dev does a good job of explaining what the issues are:
Give it a few undocumented updates that change your settings in the background, and come back to give us an update. Even my Win10 extended support is getting CoPilot shoved down the pipeline silently.
I’m not this person, but I installed win11 a month or two after launch and have lived through many many updates.
I’ve never had a single setting switched from what I set it to. Nor have I had AI shoved down my throat. My guess is that since I set it up with a local account originally and have never added a MSFT account, that insulates me from a lot of the issues others have seen.
I really hate what they've done to notepad. The entire point of the program was that it was extremely basic. There's zero reason to use it now over something much better like notepad++
The absolutely insane addition of the Copilot button aside, new Notepad did have some improvements that I liked. Tabs are one, but another overlooked feature is that it now keeps track of its state and maintains all the unsaved files that are open in it, allowing me to use it as a momentary place to jot down things that I want to remember but that I don't want to save in a txt file. Basically, like more full-fledged and convenient sticky notes.
I’ve been using Windows 11 constantly since release over multiple machines after decades with Ubuntu as my primary OS. In that time, I’ve had a number of undocumented updates and found a few settings that changed, but it wasn’t a very big deal or maybe I’m just significantly better at error handling than the average user. I choose not to follow the herd and in this case, the herd is angrier than need be.
Granted, I’ve never released perfect software in my life, have no intention of starting and tend to be sympathetic towards others who share my flaws. Maybe that’s a sign that I’m actually better at handling errors than the average person.
Is it Win11 Pro? I'm wondering if it's different than Win11 Home.
A friend of mine got a new PC as a present and it had Win11 on it. Found out it was Win11 Pro. I turned it on without it connected to my router, used the Shift+F10 trick to bypass OOBE and setup a local account, and ran a debloat script, and things seemed OK. The debloat script had removal commands for a lot of default apps and I think only the Xbox ones were on there. I believe Recall is not active. It has 16GB of RAM, 6 cores/12 threads, and Win11 didn't seem sluggish. I used a .reg file to disable the new context menu.
It was an upgrade from her old Surface Go 2 which came with Win10 on it, had only 8GB of RAM and was super sluggish after upgrading to 11 even after debloating. But this was Win11 Home since the original Win10 was Home edition too.
I keep hearing things like it's not possible to disable stuff in Win11 Home and I'm sure Win11 Home has more default apps and stuff enabled. I don't keep up with it. This is the only Win11 system here and other than my worklife I'm all Linux.
When I first installed Windows 11 about 2 years ago, I had a similar experience. One of the things I noticed quickly was that much of the preinstalled crap that comes with Windows 10 can be easily uninstalled from the Settings menu or Control Panel, no PowerShell tricks required. It felt like Windows 11 was actually less bloated than Windows 10 at the time.
But, going through the same process now I notice a lot more of the cracks. Windows 11 nags a lot more, whether it's about OneDrive or Copilot or whatever new thing Microsoft is trying to push. My same Windows 11 install from 2 years ago kept reinstalling and re-enabling the same crap I originally got rid of, and I feel like it's only getting worse.
In short I think Windows 11 was actually really good when it first launched, minus the UI quirks at the time. But, in classic Microsoft fashion, it was totally ruined and has woefully lost my trust as something I can depend on for even just basic computing.
It would be interesting to see you compare notes with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46446021. You both seem to have similar uses for windows, but totally opposite experiences.
After long-term usage, my environment on MacOS (laptop issues mainly!!!) stutters and becomes less-usable. Perhaps Windows, or Linux, or JUST NO COMPUTER WHATSOEVER would be better?
MacOS is less for power users. On my Mac (macbook pro with Notch) I can no longer see menu-bar apps, since I have 11 icons up there which are not from Apple. The 12th / 13th are simply inaccessible. Added Tailscale this week .. Annnnnd it is not visible...sigh. Looking into purchasing "notch optimizer" apps, but am disgusted every time I restart searching for the right tool.
MacBook Pro is less for power users. The miniscule builtin RAM "because we use RAM so much more efficiently" is causing my machine to chug. I continue to feel pain, then search + find, and pound-down apps that use more RAM than I need at this moment.
It's like being a computer user in 1988. And I wish it were more like 2025. AAPL is ridiculously successful .. maximizing profits.
> 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.
Well yeah, maybe lead with that.
It seems like you don't actually need windows other than being a launcher for some very specific apps.
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.
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).
The cost is rolled into your PC when you buy it. Its not free.
Your $10 licenses are not legal. Sorry. Those are sketchy grey market keys. Though Microsoft likely won't go after you for it, so I'm not sure it matters.
You should have just saved the $10 and downloaded a cracked copy.
Here's hoping that Apple can correct-course from this path. Last time I daily-drove macOS (Sequoia) it was pushing adverts in my face with every native app I launched.
There are certainly ads for Apple services if you don't already use them (or in the case of Apple Music, sometimes even if you do use it because the app is pretty bad), and there are sponsored ads in the App Store now.
I wouldn't say it's in any way equivalent to Windows 11, but it does feel like Apple is following a similar path as Microsoft, just with a little more Apple design on top.
iOS and macOS will nag you regarding iCloud if you don't sign up/in. Apple advertised... something, I forget what it was, via an Apple Wallet notification this past year (?). Might have been for the F1 movie when it was in theaters.
It's by design completely self serving. It's no longer a product for the users the users are the product.
Unfortunately I think it can and it will get a LOT worse before the push back will make any difference.
After all most users are not tech savvy and will be stuck with whatever is installed when they buy the machine and for the corporate there aren't any real alternatives.
Have you tried using OnShape? One of the reasons that I switched to OnShape recently is that I can run it on my MacBook. This makes switching between my mechanical design & app development workflows seamless. There are some things to get used to with the transition to a cloud system, but knowing what I know now I would make the same decision again.
At this point I'm using Windows almost exclusively for gaming (and it sounds like non Windows options have been getting better recently, so I may be able to step away from the Windows ecosystem entirely when that machine eventually dies).
I think if Dassault et. al. released a version of their software for Linux or Mac OS then the only excuse I have left to boot Windows would be gone completely. Hell even if it worked somewhat reliably as a viewer on Valve's Proton I'd be happy.
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.
So basically rented mainframes like IBM did in the '60s but with ads?
I agree about free software but that only works as long as the hardware doesn't get too closed down. At some point even reverse engineering won't keep up with it. We need more free/libre hardware.
Imagine all buildings in New York replaced with mainframes, people living and working inside the mainframes. An Ad on every wall, every floor, internal and external. Actually it sounds kind of cool.
The rented mainframes were, imo, far less egregious than what's awaiting all of us. It'd probably be less "massive B2B transactions to cut down on costs and outsource operating a hugely complex machine to its manufacturer", and more "everyone participating in society making mandatory perpetual payments to be allowed to use tightly-controlled devices that they must manage their entire lives through".
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 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.
I found it ironic that after reading an article about all the stuff in Windows 11 that no one asked for, the site hijacked my back button to show me more articles I might want to read.
Compared to us nerds, people aren't leaving Windows "to fight the evil Empire and join the rightful FOSS fight" or whatever pretentious bullshit de jour.
They're leaving for the same reason most people stopped buying Roombas or Sonos Soundbars: New versions kinda suck, they have become expensive (if they have to buy a new device if they can't upgrade to Windows 11) and Knockoffs (Sure, linux isn't a knockoff but bear with me) or alternatives like macOS are good enough.
If your laptop is just a big window into Notion, Clickup, Jira, Slack or your web mail client, your OS has become entirely disposable.
If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will of course frantically try to clamber out. But if you place it gently in a pot of tepid water and turn the heat on low, it will float there quite placidly. As the water gradually heats up, the frog will sink into a tranquil stupor, exactly like one of us in a hot bath, and before long, with a smile on its face, it will unresistingly allow itself to be boiled to death.
The drug is the dream of replacing their serfs (you) with robots. They feel like what passes for AI is sooo close, and they're willing to destroy everything and anything to make their dream reality, but I think they're going to be disappointed. Until they face reality we're all going to increasingly suffer.
Not even really "Until they face reality". I think "we're all going to increasingly suffer" suffices. Not to be too provocative, but I think that even if LLMs don't quite pan out for what they dream of using them for, there's still about a billion other things that can be tightened up to make your life more miserable and their lives more profitable. More ads, more abusive trickery, more 'attestation'/'safety'/'integrity', more subscription services, more discontinuations of old software and features that worked perfectly fine, more total oversight and tracking. It's the trajectory we've been on for a very long time, and there's no reason for it to change.
The C-suites are there to please the shareholders more than the customers. The shareholders hear how much AI companies are supposedly making and believe money is being left on the table lest their co-owned companies invest in AI too. The C-suites then go after AI as none of them wants to be told they haven't done anything to profit off it.
To be fair to Nvidia, they're only selling the pickaxes in this gold craze. It's smart for them to focus on the market that pays the most. When the AI bubble pops, they'll still be in a great position and they'll be able to return to gaming.
Are they only selling pickaxes? I thought they were also investing in prospecting firms, who then turn around and buy more pickaxes. Seems kind of dodgy, but also a lot riskier than just selling pickaxes.
Hum. Windows has been ridden with bugs forever. I don’t see how this is connected to Microsoft abandoning windows in favor of AI.
Windows code base is just too heavy to maintain. They need to break compatibility with older products like MacOS often does, so that Windows can be manageable again… but that goes against Microsoft philosophy it seems.
I mean, define now. Windows has been progressively getting more buggy for a long time, before windows 11 or even 10. Windows 11 is pretty bad but it's been bad. Since day 1 the taskbar crashes for me a few times a day, file explorer crashes, and random things have stupid amounts of lag.
I only used Windows at work and for games in a VM, so take that with a grain of salt:
Older Windows bugs seemed fair: mostly edge cases, weird UI interaction, or stuff that only came out under heavy workload (also, windows file system).
This past few year, the bugs are incomprehensible. I understand non-professional versions are considered as Beta since Win10, but what it felt like is that Home version are actually alpha, and windows pro seems more and more like a beta.
NT4 had many serious BSODs. SP6 was so problematic due to a critical bug in LSA that it was re-released as SP6a.
Windows bugs have moved more and more into the 'edge case' territory. Not that major issues don't crop up for "everyone" today, but BSODs used to be much more common. Part of that was due to the architecture, thus drivers, but the other side of it was core Windows functionality that just had bugs.
That's not the whole story. The challenges associated with legacy app support have nothign to do with ads, telemetry, reCall and jamming AI into every crevice. Microsoft is doing both things wrong and 11 is a hot mess for that.
Arguably, Nvidia has a point, probably more than the other companies, because they really are at the heart of the current buildout gold rush. So it's more actual economics for them than the FOMO it feels like for the other companies.
Pretty much all the lower price cards are a bad buy. Nvidia is only competitive on performance at the absolute top end, where they have no competitors. In every other price bracket they lose to AMD and Intel.
> The $300 to $500 cards are actually fine for normal gaming unless you demand to play at 4K at high settings.
I don't think that wanting to play games at the native resolution of your screen without changing settings from their defaults in order to make the game look and perform much worse is a very unreasonable "demand".
That used to be possible without spending as much money and it's also not unreasonable for people to point that out
> I've been hearing this from Gamer's Nexus for decades
I liked the idea of Gamer’s Nexus at first when it was supposed to be a data-first rigorous independent journalism.
Somewhere along the way it turned into a constant grievance and outrage channel. I guess audience capture pays the bills and YouTube Drama is hard to ignore. I haven’t bothered with that channel since they tried to go to war with Linus Tech Tips. I don’t even watch LTT and I certainly don’t want to watch two channels go to YouTube war against each other when I’m just trying to hear how the latest coolers perform or something.
I think a lot of the ultra cynical HN comments about how it’s the end of computing or how gamers have been abandoned are coming from these channels, though.
Sure, that makes sense. I don't think anyone ever treated Nvidia like the "pure raster" competitor though. Sacrifices have been made for CUDA for 10+ years, when the Nintendo Switch shipped it was with automotive grade SOCs. Gamers have been chopped liver for decades, but they still get GPU releases and software products.
Looking at the flip side, Apple, AMD and Intel all eschewed compute performance for raster and have nothing to show for it. No "DLSS killer" in sight, no CUDA alternative, nothing. It seems like the gaming revenue is a ball-and-chain holding back profitable applications.
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.
The incentives for improving Linux are driven only in part by commercial interests, and those interests are not completely centralized. Windows' fate is entirely in the hands of the current Microsoft leadership, and they seem hellbent on extracting maximum value from their users while ignoring the suffering their "Continuous Innovation" creates.
It's almost as if they want everyone to start looking for the exits, and thankfully Linux is finally at the point in its maturity on desktop to start attracting power users who have no prior experience.
I don't think 2026 is the year of the Linux desktop, but it does feel like we're at the start of a big shake-up in the industry. Once we start seeing the hockey stick pattern in the adoption rates I would expect that more money and developer time will follow to help smooth out the areas where the transition is still difficult, like professional software.
If the heavy WINE support continues, there will never be a Year of the Linux Desktop because all software will continue to be perpetually Win32 -- OS/2 already proved out this path of [full] compatibility.
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.
Tangent: Containerizing one's digital life feels smart - isolating apps and data from exploitation and unhelpful constraints of the underlying systems seems to be more and more necessary. E.g. can't launch my video-conferencing camera on Windows because the camera provider has a conflict with my recent OS updates. I do not want to pay money / attention / energy into the lagging software maintenance of a collection of finger-pointing ("not my fault") companies.
So, if I could bundle up the dependencies, and re-learn my own ability to trust (not "digital trust", genuine trust!), then that would be the future I'd potentially enjoy, using computers.
Sony Playstation, Microsoft Xbox, .. these consoles achieve long term stability for their games because they put effort into making THAT possible. Old games do NOT need updates to run on newer Playstation/Xbox OS updates because the old games can rely upon their APIs working the way they did when the game originally shipped.
Sailing the seas of "my PC supplier wanted to release AI Copilot Online Storage Face Prettifier app 2028 and it broke my camera" is kinda an inhumane way to live.
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.
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.
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?
There's MacOS, which requires expensive dongles (an Apple computer), and has some of its own systemic issues.
And there's Linux, in different subtly incompatible distros, with its own share of problems, and a non-starter if you need and/or want to use many proprietary staples, from the Creative Suite to video, music, and business apps...
The point they were making is that a Windows user generally (Hackintoshing aside) can't just install MacOS in their existing computer; it requires purchasing another, Apple-brand computer.
As in - if you already have a windows PC and someone says "you should try a Mac" you can't just install MacOS, it requires you to buy a whole new PC from Apple. With Linux you can at least just install it in a second partition and use it that way untill you're sure it works for you, zero money required.
For personal use - because I play games that only run on windows(and it's my main social interaction every week so "just play other games" is not a viable option)
For work - because Visual Studio is the best IDE if you're a C++ programmer and if your toolchains only work on windows(so anything to do with PS5/Xbox/Switch development).
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 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.
You've got nothing to lose by trying but time. Time spent learning something new is certainly better than time spent trying to regain control of your OS and workflow after another mandatory "improvement".
Oh, I've run Linux on the desktop before all right, for years. I eventually decided, at the time, that Windows was drastically better at "just working" for desktop applications and it wasn't worth the bother.
Now, though, Microsoft's antics with Windows 11 is starting to make me think that might not be the case anymore.
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.
It is baffling how sluggish windows explorer has become, same with the start menu...
Even worse that there are no end-user settings to turn down what makes both suck... you have to run hacks, tweak registry keys in order to have it working ~normally~
filepilot is a very snappy and feature-rich alternative to the native file explorer.
I wish there was a runner alternative. I love tofi on linux where a tiny bit of config makes it show up with dynamic yet deterministic results in a couple frames (at 60Hz).
Windows users: Linux is too complicated, you have to configure too much stuff and eww command line
Also Windows users: I downloaded this massive collection of registry tweaks and PowerShell scripts that I have to run as admin after every update to undo whatever fresh fuckery Microsoft just forced on me. And there's no guarantee that it won't all be undone with the next update.
I'm being facetious to make a point, but it's always amused me how much effort you have to expend just to keep a moderately sane experience.
Software should adapt to the user, not the other way around.
I truly don’t understand how the world’s most valuable corporations with huge reserves of cash employing tons of developers can exist and NOT make a stable and reliable bug-free product after 30 years. It’s just more bloat and bugs all the time. I think open source projects by contrast get better over time, because they’re not constrained by whatever corporate agenda is that obviously doesn’t prioritize combatting enshittification over chasing fads and enriching shareholders.
Apple has had the same crap, Webkit/Safari is now the sick man of browsers, the entire development stack for Apple is a steaming pile of ad-hoc kludges (from Objective C to Swift to iOS APIs) and they even forgot to renew the certificate to their own app store, breaking all their apps. Twice!
Even today, the new OS they shipped is focused on creating a usability nightmare with liquid glass making everything hard to read and forcing users to use “Accessibility > Reduce Transparency” to try and combad rather than, say, focusing on fixing long-standing bugs and making their browser better. I mean hey, iOS has been around for almost 20 years and their search is still so broken that “Coo” shows a result but then continuing to type “Cool” hides all results including those with the word Cool, for some mysterious reason every search keeps hitting their servers before it can reveal what’s on the local device. The “Spotlight” MacOS indexing sucks more than “Sherlock” did 30 years ago, it never seems to find the files, always appears to only begin indexing only when you search (default setting), the search results interface sucks with everything including previews etc. despite a single guy at Apple literally creating Previews for every major file format! But somehow they can’t be bothered to make it easy to use, but you can hold Option or Shift and then open each found file in a full program to see what it contain. Technically takes literally at most $200K to get this right and rock-solid out of $50 BILLION DOLLARS. One would think they’d care about “user experience”. The old Apple did.
And Siri is nearly as dumb as it was 10 years ago, and ALSO needs to send data to their servers just to, say, find out what time it is on your own device. “I’m sorry Dave, but I can’t do that — I can’t reach my servers right now.” Sigh. This isn’t buildin rockets to Mars, people. You have BILLIONS OF DOLLARS SITTING AROUND and you don’t know what to do with them. This is a failure of basic product management. These corporations KNOW that their users aren’t leaving. They are an oligopoly in devices and browsers. That’s what they use to keep the plebs in line.
I agree with your general complaints about the decline of Apple’s software quality, but what’s your problem with Safari? I’ve never found another macOS browser I like half as much.
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 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.
Yeah, I think it's just a matter of what you know. I recently got a Mac for work and the UI is horrid and I have no idea how people put up with it, it's like designed by people who never actually had to use it afterwards. But clearly it works for people so I strongly suspect it's just the personal bias here.
> 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.
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":
> "As Forbes reports, a whopping 1 billion PCs are still running Windows 10 - despite half of them technically being eligible for an upgrade. During PC maker Dell's November quarterly earnings call, the company's COO, Jeff Clarke, admitted that "we have about 500 million of them capable of running Windows 11 that haven't been upgraded," referring to all PCs, and not just Dell machines."
> In other words, those who own a whopping third of the estimated 1.5 billion PCs worldwide are outright refusing to upgrade, indicating Microsoft is seriously struggling to woo them. That’s likely due to a number of reasons, from simple frustrations over a tweaked and unfamiliar interface to the need to run software that isn’t Windows 11 compatible — and annoying ads.
> In this scenario, going into your update history to see what changed is going to confuse you, because the update that includes the new Start menu was installed on your system weeks ago. You're only seeing the new features now because Microsoft allowed you to see it, which is insane and frustrating beyond belief.
Holy shit that’s insane, what a giant middle finger to users.
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
For me the strange and unproductive direction Windows is going towards in encapsulated in the right-click menu in the file manager (Explorer). 11 has a shiny new menu that shows up when you right click. But it is a new coat of paint over the ones from 10 or before. Additional options from for example 7zip don't show up in it. You have to click "more options" at the bottom which them reveals the old menu. There is no benefit to the new menu except for the fact that it is aesthetically more "modern" to its detriment.
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 had been Windows user since Windows3.1. More than 3 decades straight. After a few years of working with Linux, installed Debian on home PC about a year ago and couldn't be more happier since then.
I was a fan, user, then developer from the DOS days-pre Windows 3.0–to Windows 10 without a single gap.
When they threatened Windows 10 EOL last year (?), that’s when I took a day to do a clean install of Mint and port my games and LLM tinkering over.
Because I knew MS was doubling-down on the user-hostile experience.
I thought I’d miss Windows but Steam, Wine, and Radeon made it delightful.
Windows is now only on my company-issued laptop. I predict that will also go away, as Windows 11 has introduced backdoors to circumvent company controls and install their BS.
When things randomly break in my Linux install, I fire up Claude
Are you saying that any Linux install you've tried in let's say, the past decade, has actually failed for you? I've not seen that and I've put it on many dissimilar machines with success. I use Ubuntu, and now Kubuntu, perhaps you could name the distro that gave you issues?
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.
The relation is tangential at best. Microsoft's management was a personification of corporate rot for a long while now, AI or no AI.
They view Windows as a straw to suck users into their higher value products through, and are seemingly unaware of what "UX" is, or how their decisions affect it. Which is how Windows 11 ended up being such a clusterfuck.
To add they want to rewrite Windows in Rust with AI, which I can only assume they hope will keep the software quality up but I doubt it
It's unfortunate that falsehoods spread so quickly.
https://www.windowslatest.com/2025/12/24/microsoft-denies-re...
> “It appears my post generated far more attention than I intended… with a lot of speculative reading between the lines.. Just to clarify… Windows is NOT being rewritten in Rust with AI.
> My team’s project is a research project. [...]
I don’t believe for a second that it was a mistake. Probably got a call from some C-level and came up with this excuse.
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.
It's been a death by a thousand cuts over the years. The only reason I still had a Windows partition was to play specific games that couldn't run using Proton on Linux. The start menu's inability to be moved to the left side of the screen was the last straw for me. It sounds pedantic, but that's where I've had my start menu forever, and I'm not about to change yet another thing in my workflow.
At this point, if a game won't run under Proton because of an intrusive rootkit, I'd simply rather not play it.
Edit: I specifically mean the start bar vertically aligned on the left side of the screen, with the start button in the top-left corner, not at the bottom-left.
It’s been fine? Are you completely immune to attention grabbing features? I absolutely cannot use win11 as it comes on a stock lenovo. Maybe you got your hands on some corporate version with some of the standard settings off? But between the news feed and the advertising in the start menu I find stock installs to he maddening, and I loath needing to boot my win11 partition.
I didn’t run any scripts or utilities. When I encountered something I didn’t like I just found the setting to turn it off.
I prefer a clean system, but I’m not the kind of person who gets triggered into rage when the OS pops up a suggestion after fresh install or has something on by default. Spending some time customization the OS and desktop environment is part of the drill any time I do a clean install, whether it’s Windows, Linux, or Mac.
I finally updated a couple of months ago after putting it off forever and it's been fine for me too. I'm on Pro version and I just used this as the first step after upgrading: https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat
No issues so far, no ads, none of the complaints others are seeing. I'm a power user too: I do gaming, programming, music production, video editing, etc. All of those things are fine.
My only real problem was not being able to have two rows on the taskbar, which I solved with Windhawk's "Multirow taskbar for Windows 11" mod. Done and done.
The average home user probably won't know what power shell and GitHub are.
I can't run the scripts you are talking about on my work pc.
I can sympathise with your point of view but it does feel a bit like "works for me because I know what I'm doing". Also how long before another Windows update that undoes what the scripts do.
I used to be very pro windows simply because of backwards compatibility and hardware support was ridiculously good. I can't recommend Linux to relatives as they'd be utterly confused.
Dave Plummer, ex windows kernel dev does a good job of explaining what the issues are:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oTpA5jt1g60
> The centered start menu isn’t my favorite, but it’s not like it’s unusable.
You can move the start menu back to the left if you like.
https://www.amandasterner.com/post/how-to-move-your-windows-...
Give it a few undocumented updates that change your settings in the background, and come back to give us an update. Even my Win10 extended support is getting CoPilot shoved down the pipeline silently.
I’m not this person, but I installed win11 a month or two after launch and have lived through many many updates.
I’ve never had a single setting switched from what I set it to. Nor have I had AI shoved down my throat. My guess is that since I set it up with a local account originally and have never added a MSFT account, that insulates me from a lot of the issues others have seen.
> even Notepad now has a Copilot button, which is something literally nobody has ever asked for
AI is like crickets - some people like the sound, some ignore the sound, and some are driven crazy by the sound
I really hate what they've done to notepad. The entire point of the program was that it was extremely basic. There's zero reason to use it now over something much better like notepad++
The absolutely insane addition of the Copilot button aside, new Notepad did have some improvements that I liked. Tabs are one, but another overlooked feature is that it now keeps track of its state and maintains all the unsaved files that are open in it, allowing me to use it as a momentary place to jot down things that I want to remember but that I don't want to save in a txt file. Basically, like more full-fledged and convenient sticky notes.
Notepad has always been a test ground for new features that may or may not make it to other parts of Windows.
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180521-00/?p=98...
I’ve been using Windows 11 constantly since release over multiple machines after decades with Ubuntu as my primary OS. In that time, I’ve had a number of undocumented updates and found a few settings that changed, but it wasn’t a very big deal or maybe I’m just significantly better at error handling than the average user. I choose not to follow the herd and in this case, the herd is angrier than need be.
Granted, I’ve never released perfect software in my life, have no intention of starting and tend to be sympathetic towards others who share my flaws. Maybe that’s a sign that I’m actually better at handling errors than the average person.
It's fine in the sense that certain people are content to browse the web without adblock, or be interrupted by an ad every 30s on YouTube.
For those of us with higher standards, it's not.
Is it Win11 Pro? I'm wondering if it's different than Win11 Home.
A friend of mine got a new PC as a present and it had Win11 on it. Found out it was Win11 Pro. I turned it on without it connected to my router, used the Shift+F10 trick to bypass OOBE and setup a local account, and ran a debloat script, and things seemed OK. The debloat script had removal commands for a lot of default apps and I think only the Xbox ones were on there. I believe Recall is not active. It has 16GB of RAM, 6 cores/12 threads, and Win11 didn't seem sluggish. I used a .reg file to disable the new context menu.
It was an upgrade from her old Surface Go 2 which came with Win10 on it, had only 8GB of RAM and was super sluggish after upgrading to 11 even after debloating. But this was Win11 Home since the original Win10 was Home edition too.
I keep hearing things like it's not possible to disable stuff in Win11 Home and I'm sure Win11 Home has more default apps and stuff enabled. I don't keep up with it. This is the only Win11 system here and other than my worklife I'm all Linux.
> I used a .reg file to disable the new context menu.
Complaints about Win 11 performance abound. Brings back slow context menu.
The purpose of the new context menu is to get rid of the COM init that made it so slow!
When I first installed Windows 11 about 2 years ago, I had a similar experience. One of the things I noticed quickly was that much of the preinstalled crap that comes with Windows 10 can be easily uninstalled from the Settings menu or Control Panel, no PowerShell tricks required. It felt like Windows 11 was actually less bloated than Windows 10 at the time.
But, going through the same process now I notice a lot more of the cracks. Windows 11 nags a lot more, whether it's about OneDrive or Copilot or whatever new thing Microsoft is trying to push. My same Windows 11 install from 2 years ago kept reinstalling and re-enabling the same crap I originally got rid of, and I feel like it's only getting worse.
In short I think Windows 11 was actually really good when it first launched, minus the UI quirks at the time. But, in classic Microsoft fashion, it was totally ruined and has woefully lost my trust as something I can depend on for even just basic computing.
It would be interesting to see you compare notes with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46446021. You both seem to have similar uses for windows, but totally opposite experiences.
After long-term usage, my environment on MacOS (laptop issues mainly!!!) stutters and becomes less-usable. Perhaps Windows, or Linux, or JUST NO COMPUTER WHATSOEVER would be better?
MacOS is less for power users. On my Mac (macbook pro with Notch) I can no longer see menu-bar apps, since I have 11 icons up there which are not from Apple. The 12th / 13th are simply inaccessible. Added Tailscale this week .. Annnnnd it is not visible...sigh. Looking into purchasing "notch optimizer" apps, but am disgusted every time I restart searching for the right tool.
MacBook Pro is less for power users. The miniscule builtin RAM "because we use RAM so much more efficiently" is causing my machine to chug. I continue to feel pain, then search + find, and pound-down apps that use more RAM than I need at this moment.
It's like being a computer user in 1988. And I wish it were more like 2025. AAPL is ridiculously successful .. maximizing profits.
> 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.
Well yeah, maybe lead with that.
It seems like you don't actually need windows other than being a launcher for some very specific apps.
I use the OS for several hours per day for work. I don’t know what more you want.
I added that because this article is complaining about things like the built-in email client or Notepad, neither of which I use.
I bring my own text editor. I don’t care if Notepad has an AI button.
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.
As someone who has been primarily Mac for most of my life, I started using a Windows machine fairly recently for work.
I'm tied down to the Windows eco-system (Teams, Outlook, etc).
I still haven't gotten use to the idea of every link in Microsoft apps opening in Edge regardless of your settings.
This might seem like a small thing, but the entire UX seems to be designed around benefiting Microsoft, not the user.
It is incredibly user hostile. And it's not even free. This is an ecosystem you pay for.
They're treating folks shelling out $200 for an OS as if they were cattle on the adtech train.
Who is actually shelling out $200 for Windows specifically?
It's perceptually free if you bought it with your PC. And it's actually free if you took advantage of the free upgrade offer.
I've picked up a few licenses off MacHeist for like $10
The cost is rolled into your PC when you buy it. Its not free.
Your $10 licenses are not legal. Sorry. Those are sketchy grey market keys. Though Microsoft likely won't go after you for it, so I'm not sure it matters.
You should have just saved the $10 and downloaded a cracked copy.
You’d rather have an unofficial ISO?
Why?
Here's hoping that Apple can correct-course from this path. Last time I daily-drove macOS (Sequoia) it was pushing adverts in my face with every native app I launched.
I spend 8 hours a day on Sequoia and I haven't seen any adverts in any native app?
There are certainly ads for Apple services if you don't already use them (or in the case of Apple Music, sometimes even if you do use it because the app is pretty bad), and there are sponsored ads in the App Store now.
I wouldn't say it's in any way equivalent to Windows 11, but it does feel like Apple is following a similar path as Microsoft, just with a little more Apple design on top.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251488227
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250786208
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254431520
Huh? I use macOS all day every day and I’ve never seen an ad.
iOS and macOS will nag you regarding iCloud if you don't sign up/in. Apple advertised... something, I forget what it was, via an Apple Wallet notification this past year (?). Might have been for the F1 movie when it was in theaters.
With respect - bull.
It's by design completely self serving. It's no longer a product for the users the users are the product.
Unfortunately I think it can and it will get a LOT worse before the push back will make any difference.
After all most users are not tech savvy and will be stuck with whatever is installed when they buy the machine and for the corporate there aren't any real alternatives.
>I'm tied down to the Windows eco-system (Teams, Outlook, etc)
All of them are available for the Mac.
The explanation is one sentence prior.
> I started using a Windows machine fairly recently for work.
Have you tried using OnShape? One of the reasons that I switched to OnShape recently is that I can run it on my MacBook. This makes switching between my mechanical design & app development workflows seamless. There are some things to get used to with the transition to a cloud system, but knowing what I know now I would make the same decision again.
At this point I'm using Windows almost exclusively for gaming (and it sounds like non Windows options have been getting better recently, so I may be able to step away from the Windows ecosystem entirely when that machine eventually dies).
I think if Dassault et. al. released a version of their software for Linux or Mac OS then the only excuse I have left to boot Windows would be gone completely. Hell even if it worked somewhat reliably as a viewer on Valve's Proton I'd be happy.
How did you get used to Solidworks, btw? Any advice? It's an awful experience.
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.
So basically rented mainframes like IBM did in the '60s but with ads?
I agree about free software but that only works as long as the hardware doesn't get too closed down. At some point even reverse engineering won't keep up with it. We need more free/libre hardware.
Imagine all buildings in New York replaced with mainframes, people living and working inside the mainframes. An Ad on every wall, every floor, internal and external. Actually it sounds kind of cool.
The rented mainframes were, imo, far less egregious than what's awaiting all of us. It'd probably be less "massive B2B transactions to cut down on costs and outsource operating a hugely complex machine to its manufacturer", and more "everyone participating in society making mandatory perpetual payments to be allowed to use tightly-controlled devices that they must manage their entire lives through".
The PC as a growth segment was at an end, but that’s because Microsoft cornered the market.
It was good enough and they just needed to make security fixes and tweaks; and I still would have paid for it!
Yet, the leaders at Microsoft found a way to lose their marketshare.
tl;dr; it just needed to remain quiet, boring, but reliable to remain a cashcow.
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 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.
I found it ironic that after reading an article about all the stuff in Windows 11 that no one asked for, the site hijacked my back button to show me more articles I might want to read.
It's a meaningful change in behavior though.
Compared to us nerds, people aren't leaving Windows "to fight the evil Empire and join the rightful FOSS fight" or whatever pretentious bullshit de jour.
They're leaving for the same reason most people stopped buying Roombas or Sonos Soundbars: New versions kinda suck, they have become expensive (if they have to buy a new device if they can't upgrade to Windows 11) and Knockoffs (Sure, linux isn't a knockoff but bear with me) or alternatives like macOS are good enough.
If your laptop is just a big window into Notion, Clickup, Jira, Slack or your web mail client, your OS has become entirely disposable.
If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will of course frantically try to clamber out. But if you place it gently in a pot of tepid water and turn the heat on low, it will float there quite placidly. As the water gradually heats up, the frog will sink into a tranquil stupor, exactly like one of us in a hot bath, and before long, with a smile on its face, it will unresistingly allow itself to be boiled to death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
(From your own link, the story is just a myth that’s not supported by modern scientific evidence. But the point still stands.)
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.
The drug is the dream of replacing their serfs (you) with robots. They feel like what passes for AI is sooo close, and they're willing to destroy everything and anything to make their dream reality, but I think they're going to be disappointed. Until they face reality we're all going to increasingly suffer.
Not even really "Until they face reality". I think "we're all going to increasingly suffer" suffices. Not to be too provocative, but I think that even if LLMs don't quite pan out for what they dream of using them for, there's still about a billion other things that can be tightened up to make your life more miserable and their lives more profitable. More ads, more abusive trickery, more 'attestation'/'safety'/'integrity', more subscription services, more discontinuations of old software and features that worked perfectly fine, more total oversight and tracking. It's the trajectory we've been on for a very long time, and there's no reason for it to change.
The C-suites are there to please the shareholders more than the customers. The shareholders hear how much AI companies are supposedly making and believe money is being left on the table lest their co-owned companies invest in AI too. The C-suites then go after AI as none of them wants to be told they haven't done anything to profit off it.
My youtube ads that I get are all fear about AI "You have to do this or you'll be out of a job!" and so on.
It's madness.
To be fair to Nvidia, they're only selling the pickaxes in this gold craze. It's smart for them to focus on the market that pays the most. When the AI bubble pops, they'll still be in a great position and they'll be able to return to gaming.
Are they only selling pickaxes? I thought they were also investing in prospecting firms, who then turn around and buy more pickaxes. Seems kind of dodgy, but also a lot riskier than just selling pickaxes.
They are training AI models.
They are investing in AI companies (OpenAI).
Hum. Windows has been ridden with bugs forever. I don’t see how this is connected to Microsoft abandoning windows in favor of AI.
Windows code base is just too heavy to maintain. They need to break compatibility with older products like MacOS often does, so that Windows can be manageable again… but that goes against Microsoft philosophy it seems.
>Hum. Windows has been ridden with bugs forever
Windows had a reasonable share of bug analogous to its huge breadth and backwards compatibility needs. Otherwise, it was very stable and mature.
Now it's gotten way worse...
I mean, define now. Windows has been progressively getting more buggy for a long time, before windows 11 or even 10. Windows 11 is pretty bad but it's been bad. Since day 1 the taskbar crashes for me a few times a day, file explorer crashes, and random things have stupid amounts of lag.
Yes, but it happened before ChatGPT. Windows 11 was released in 2021, already with shitty taskbar, search, and start menu.
I only used Windows at work and for games in a VM, so take that with a grain of salt:
Older Windows bugs seemed fair: mostly edge cases, weird UI interaction, or stuff that only came out under heavy workload (also, windows file system).
This past few year, the bugs are incomprehensible. I understand non-professional versions are considered as Beta since Win10, but what it felt like is that Home version are actually alpha, and windows pro seems more and more like a beta.
NT4 had many serious BSODs. SP6 was so problematic due to a critical bug in LSA that it was re-released as SP6a.
Windows bugs have moved more and more into the 'edge case' territory. Not that major issues don't crop up for "everyone" today, but BSODs used to be much more common. Part of that was due to the architecture, thus drivers, but the other side of it was core Windows functionality that just had bugs.
Kernel is almost perfect these days. Can't say the same about user environment. Explorer and shell are buggiest ever.
Explorer is the shell ;)
But Explorer has had it's fair share of issues. I have a 98SE machine to prove the stalls, lockups, lack of refreshing directories, etc...
It more or less worked fine until they fired all the QA staff and bundled Windows with adware.
That's not the whole story. The challenges associated with legacy app support have nothign to do with ads, telemetry, reCall and jamming AI into every crevice. Microsoft is doing both things wrong and 11 is a hot mess for that.
> Nvidia abandons the gaming market
Citation? I've been hearing this from Gamer's Nexus for decades, but Nvidia seems to be fine RAM shortage notwithstanding.
I was thinking about the revenue shift as described in articles like this one: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/big-tech/nvidia-g...
Arguably, Nvidia has a point, probably more than the other companies, because they really are at the heart of the current buildout gold rush. So it's more actual economics for them than the FOMO it feels like for the other companies.
The last 3 generations of nvidia gpus have been a big middle finger to PC gamers in terms of price and power usage
Gone are the days of affordable graphics accelerators in the $300 to $500 range. Now it’s $1000 to $2000. 400 watts now instead of 100.
"Pay more and get less" has been the trend
https://www.xda-developers.com/shrinkflation-is-making-nvidi...
That's even before you get into bullshit like fake frames
> Gone are the days of affordable graphics accelerators in the $300 to $500 range. Now it’s $1000 to $2000.
What are you talking about? nVidia only has two models in the $1000 to $2000 range and they’re clearly premium parts.
The $300 to $500 cards are actually fine for normal gaming unless you demand to play at 4K at high settings.
Pretty much all the lower price cards are a bad buy. Nvidia is only competitive on performance at the absolute top end, where they have no competitors. In every other price bracket they lose to AMD and Intel.
> The $300 to $500 cards are actually fine for normal gaming unless you demand to play at 4K at high settings.
I don't think that wanting to play games at the native resolution of your screen without changing settings from their defaults in order to make the game look and perform much worse is a very unreasonable "demand".
That used to be possible without spending as much money and it's also not unreasonable for people to point that out
> That used to be possible without spending as much money and it's also not unreasonable for people to point that out
That used to be possible when the most common resolution was 1080p and refresh rates weren't pushing 240hz+.
You're right.
People want to pretend fundamentals of economics don't exist AND the company has moral obligations to fulfill to consumers. It's laughable.
It's not just nVidia, I've seen other expensive consumer brands getting the same sentiments.
> I've been hearing this from Gamer's Nexus for decades
I liked the idea of Gamer’s Nexus at first when it was supposed to be a data-first rigorous independent journalism.
Somewhere along the way it turned into a constant grievance and outrage channel. I guess audience capture pays the bills and YouTube Drama is hard to ignore. I haven’t bothered with that channel since they tried to go to war with Linus Tech Tips. I don’t even watch LTT and I certainly don’t want to watch two channels go to YouTube war against each other when I’m just trying to hear how the latest coolers perform or something.
I think a lot of the ultra cynical HN comments about how it’s the end of computing or how gamers have been abandoned are coming from these channels, though.
It's about which market segment gets priority in the company. Doesn't mean they'll stop making gaming cards altogether
Sure, that makes sense. I don't think anyone ever treated Nvidia like the "pure raster" competitor though. Sacrifices have been made for CUDA for 10+ years, when the Nintendo Switch shipped it was with automotive grade SOCs. Gamers have been chopped liver for decades, but they still get GPU releases and software products.
Looking at the flip side, Apple, AMD and Intel all eschewed compute performance for raster and have nothing to show for it. No "DLSS killer" in sight, no CUDA alternative, nothing. It seems like the gaming revenue is a ball-and-chain holding back profitable applications.
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.
Linux ages like WINE, Windows ages like milk.
The incentives for improving Linux are driven only in part by commercial interests, and those interests are not completely centralized. Windows' fate is entirely in the hands of the current Microsoft leadership, and they seem hellbent on extracting maximum value from their users while ignoring the suffering their "Continuous Innovation" creates.
It's almost as if they want everyone to start looking for the exits, and thankfully Linux is finally at the point in its maturity on desktop to start attracting power users who have no prior experience.
I don't think 2026 is the year of the Linux desktop, but it does feel like we're at the start of a big shake-up in the industry. Once we start seeing the hockey stick pattern in the adoption rates I would expect that more money and developer time will follow to help smooth out the areas where the transition is still difficult, like professional software.
If the heavy WINE support continues, there will never be a Year of the Linux Desktop because all software will continue to be perpetually Win32 -- OS/2 already proved out this path of [full] compatibility.
Last year I moved to fedora because tired of adware and forced updates on Windows
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.
I wish you luck!
Tangent: Containerizing one's digital life feels smart - isolating apps and data from exploitation and unhelpful constraints of the underlying systems seems to be more and more necessary. E.g. can't launch my video-conferencing camera on Windows because the camera provider has a conflict with my recent OS updates. I do not want to pay money / attention / energy into the lagging software maintenance of a collection of finger-pointing ("not my fault") companies.
So, if I could bundle up the dependencies, and re-learn my own ability to trust (not "digital trust", genuine trust!), then that would be the future I'd potentially enjoy, using computers.
Sony Playstation, Microsoft Xbox, .. these consoles achieve long term stability for their games because they put effort into making THAT possible. Old games do NOT need updates to run on newer Playstation/Xbox OS updates because the old games can rely upon their APIs working the way they did when the game originally shipped.
Sailing the seas of "my PC supplier wanted to release AI Copilot Online Storage Face Prettifier app 2028 and it broke my camera" is kinda an inhumane way to live.
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
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.
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?
Because there aren't so many great alternatives.
There's MacOS, which requires expensive dongles (an Apple computer), and has some of its own systemic issues.
And there's Linux, in different subtly incompatible distros, with its own share of problems, and a non-starter if you need and/or want to use many proprietary staples, from the Creative Suite to video, music, and business apps...
Windows doesn't require a computer?
The point they were making is that a Windows user generally (Hackintoshing aside) can't just install MacOS in their existing computer; it requires purchasing another, Apple-brand computer.
As in - if you already have a windows PC and someone says "you should try a Mac" you can't just install MacOS, it requires you to buy a whole new PC from Apple. With Linux you can at least just install it in a second partition and use it that way untill you're sure it works for you, zero money required.
For personal use - because I play games that only run on windows(and it's my main social interaction every week so "just play other games" is not a viable option)
For work - because Visual Studio is the best IDE if you're a C++ programmer and if your toolchains only work on windows(so anything to do with PS5/Xbox/Switch development).
Microsoft Office, Paint.NET, Adobe products.
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.
Sadly debloating doesn't fix the numerous bugs and it's a cat-and-mouse game with every major update.
windows 11 was a disaster for 2025, IMHO.
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.
You've got nothing to lose by trying but time. Time spent learning something new is certainly better than time spent trying to regain control of your OS and workflow after another mandatory "improvement".
Oh, I've run Linux on the desktop before all right, for years. I eventually decided, at the time, that Windows was drastically better at "just working" for desktop applications and it wasn't worth the bother.
Now, though, Microsoft's antics with Windows 11 is starting to make me think that might not be the case anymore.
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.
It is baffling how sluggish windows explorer has become, same with the start menu...
Even worse that there are no end-user settings to turn down what makes both suck... you have to run hacks, tweak registry keys in order to have it working ~normally~
filepilot is a very snappy and feature-rich alternative to the native file explorer.
I wish there was a runner alternative. I love tofi on linux where a tiny bit of config makes it show up with dynamic yet deterministic results in a couple frames (at 60Hz).
Windows users: Linux is too complicated, you have to configure too much stuff and eww command line
Also Windows users: I downloaded this massive collection of registry tweaks and PowerShell scripts that I have to run as admin after every update to undo whatever fresh fuckery Microsoft just forced on me. And there's no guarantee that it won't all be undone with the next update.
I'm being facetious to make a point, but it's always amused me how much effort you have to expend just to keep a moderately sane experience.
Software should adapt to the user, not the other way around.
I truly don’t understand how the world’s most valuable corporations with huge reserves of cash employing tons of developers can exist and NOT make a stable and reliable bug-free product after 30 years. It’s just more bloat and bugs all the time. I think open source projects by contrast get better over time, because they’re not constrained by whatever corporate agenda is that obviously doesn’t prioritize combatting enshittification over chasing fads and enriching shareholders.
Apple has had the same crap, Webkit/Safari is now the sick man of browsers, the entire development stack for Apple is a steaming pile of ad-hoc kludges (from Objective C to Swift to iOS APIs) and they even forgot to renew the certificate to their own app store, breaking all their apps. Twice!
https://magarshak.com/blog/if-steve-jobs-still-ran-apple/
Even today, the new OS they shipped is focused on creating a usability nightmare with liquid glass making everything hard to read and forcing users to use “Accessibility > Reduce Transparency” to try and combad rather than, say, focusing on fixing long-standing bugs and making their browser better. I mean hey, iOS has been around for almost 20 years and their search is still so broken that “Coo” shows a result but then continuing to type “Cool” hides all results including those with the word Cool, for some mysterious reason every search keeps hitting their servers before it can reveal what’s on the local device. The “Spotlight” MacOS indexing sucks more than “Sherlock” did 30 years ago, it never seems to find the files, always appears to only begin indexing only when you search (default setting), the search results interface sucks with everything including previews etc. despite a single guy at Apple literally creating Previews for every major file format! But somehow they can’t be bothered to make it easy to use, but you can hold Option or Shift and then open each found file in a full program to see what it contain. Technically takes literally at most $200K to get this right and rock-solid out of $50 BILLION DOLLARS. One would think they’d care about “user experience”. The old Apple did.
And Siri is nearly as dumb as it was 10 years ago, and ALSO needs to send data to their servers just to, say, find out what time it is on your own device. “I’m sorry Dave, but I can’t do that — I can’t reach my servers right now.” Sigh. This isn’t buildin rockets to Mars, people. You have BILLIONS OF DOLLARS SITTING AROUND and you don’t know what to do with them. This is a failure of basic product management. These corporations KNOW that their users aren’t leaving. They are an oligopoly in devices and browsers. That’s what they use to keep the plebs in line.
I agree with your general complaints about the decline of Apple’s software quality, but what’s your problem with Safari? I’ve never found another macOS browser I like half as much.
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".
100% leadership inflicted.
Meanwhile they keep downsizing their workforce while not making personal sacrificed (personal pay) while they chase AI.
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.
Yeah, I think it's just a matter of what you know. I recently got a Mac for work and the UI is horrid and I have no idea how people put up with it, it's like designed by people who never actually had to use it afterwards. But clearly it works for people so I strongly suspect it's just the personal bias here.
Weirdly, Windows Server is a better desktop experience.
It does not ask you to play Candy Crush, for example.
The last 12 months? The last decade.
> 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.
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.
Is Windows usage actually down?
> In this scenario, going into your update history to see what changed is going to confuse you, because the update that includes the new Start menu was installed on your system weeks ago. You're only seeing the new features now because Microsoft allowed you to see it, which is insane and frustrating beyond belief.
Holy shit that’s insane, what a giant middle finger to users.
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