Unpopular opinion that I have no justification for: I don’t mind windows 11 all that much
It’s certainly better than Windows 8 and it’s awful mandatory touch interface.
Other than messing around with the beta for half an hour, I thankfully never had to use it.
I think it’s a boiling frog/straw on the camel’s back situation.
I’ve heard people say both that Microsoft releases a good version of Windows every third time, and that the way Windows works is that Microsoft releases the new one, it’s slightly worse/different from the previous and everybody hates it, then they get used to it by the time Microsoft releases the next version, starting the cycle of outrage all over again.
To me, it seems that the average user experience changes a little between different Windows versions, oftentimes making the experience a little more clumsy (have they finished migrating everything from the Control Panel to whatever the new settings panel is called yet? They started that back in like Windows 7), and the “power users” are the ones who get shafted worse.
For me, 10 will most likely be the last version of Windows that I use. I’ve reached a point in my life where I will happily stop using services/doing business with companies based on some of the stuff Microsoft is doing, like the ad integration, AI nonsense, forced Microsoft account and data harvesting, and the awful security threat that Recall was (and probably will be again when they repackage it and try it again). I’d honestly still be using 7 if it was still supported because I liked it much more than I do 10.
Windows 11 is ok, just like windows 10 was ok. It’s not great, but it’s not satan’s asshole like some people make it out to be. Most use it because they don’t really have a choice due to software constraints, or simply because they’ve been using windows for forever and that’s all they know.
Personally I use linux because I like it more, though I still have a windows install for flightsimming. I think that it’s a perfectly fine operating system for the 80-90% of people who don’t care and just want their computer to be an appliance to get on social media or get work done.
That’s fair, I just like windows and that’s really all there is to it. I’ve had a few Linux installs in the past, but never really found an advantage to anything except compiling this one specific python library, but these days I can do that very easily running WSL, VS code SSH’d to my server or more recently a jupyter server that I can connect to from any device with a web browser.
Now macOS on the other hand, I absolutely despise. It was one of the first OS’s I learnt to use back in primary school, and now that I have to use it for work I have absolutely no nice things to say. Unintuitive, missing basic features and slow to navigate, and I can assure you that none of this is due to unfamiliarity…
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to uninstall OneDrive & Teams from my work computer thanks to a Windows update reinstalling them. My IT director is getting frustrated by it too because he has to keep updating GP and other tools to prevent them from showing up and users inadvertently putting shit into the MS Cloud accidentally because OneDrive likes to insert itself the default documents folder.
I also prefer my start bar to be on the left hand side of my left-most monitor in vertical orientation (I run a tri-montior setup in a tie fighter configuration).
As already stated, the new right-click menu is also ass, and I keep having to fix it to get the actual fucking options I want/need without having to click a button to “show more options” from a menu that loads noticeably slower, or shift-right-click to get the intended menu.
There’s a ton of other little annoyances, like removing or relocating configuration flows with inferior tools that don’t support everything that used to be configurable. AI search in my start bar (so glad for PowerToys Run).
Windows 11 has done a great job at removing user control over their OS by forcing changes (often inferior to the old version/way) and forcing optional software installs (just wait til Recall is sitting on everybody’s machine).
Things that are nice: A better networking stack, blue tooth management, and a powerful built-in windows layout manager (Snap Layouts)
