Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:46 Sponsor: TuxCare Radar
02:23 Windows 11 is failing right now
05:20 What’s the job of an OS?
06:51 Updates break systems. Often.
10:53 You have to adapt to it
15:14 It’s highly intrusive
17:44 Debloating tools don’t make it good
20:19 Windows fails at being an OS
21:33 Alternatives are better, but not perfect
27:23 Windows is a sales platform, not an OS
It really is.
I’ve been a Unix maximalist since I can remember, but I’ve never convinced my peers to follow.
Since windows 11 has dropped, every single one of them now has a Linux machine for one purpose or another. Some are now considering a complete purge of MS products, as I have.
It’s happening.
Friend!
It’s been a long road, getting from there to here.
It’s glorious, isn’t it?
Its been a looong time but our time is finally here.
I can feel a change in the wind right now
I can touch the sky.
And they’re not gonna hold me down no more
No they’re not gonna change my mind…
Because I’ve got faith of the heart!
☝️🤝
I’ve experienced something similar. I’ve been telling everyone who will listen how great Linux is for years. It wasn’t until windows 11 that they started listening in big numbers.
Yep, been over a year now on Linux, I’ll never go back.
About a year and a half ago I got a laptop to prepare for moving countries. Figured “I’ll probably distro hop a bit see what I like so let’s start pretty plain with Arch”. I’ve uh never distro hopped, Arch my beloved, great daily driver does exactly what I tell it to
My issue with Arch is all the other stuff it installs when installing packages. It is annoying.
I have to use it for work, and the difference between how my work laptop and my personal laptop (Debian 43) handles basic tasks is stark.
The stuff like “will my headphones work?” has been solved for years at this point. I’m talking even more basic, like rendering the UI and loading menus.
you know what’s funny, is that my noise cancelling headphones started to have serious problems when I ‘upgraded’ to windows 11. it would pick up the noise cancelling mics and decide they were the primary, not my standalone dedicated microphone.
in the process, it would also downgrade the sound quality for some fucking reason. no matter how many ways I disabled them, it would either re-enable them or I’d find a new way to try.
with Linux? just works.
100%. I’m not quite as ardently anti-Windows as most on this community from a UI/UX standpoint, but both Bluetooth and audio device switching are genuinely terrible experiences in Windows. I find myself pairing audio devices from scratch all the time on my work laptop, and it’s painful every time.
Ehh their UI sucks moving copy and paste from the right click menu to the top of the right click menu as icons sucks.
Debian 43?
Then, tell me, how is the future? :D
I’m still on Debian 14 (wip/testing), to be released in more than a year.
“will my headphones work?”
It was Linux the one you had to check if basic peripherals would work.
Now it is windows the one that gives issues with headphones, the one in charge of the equipment at my office is fed up with all of the complaints related to windows and headphones (the ones provided by the employer and the personal ones).
Last Friday windows decided to stop working with the laptop’s webcam, and it was stuck as in use despite even turning off the camera in setttings.
The webcam being stuck on sounds like a Microsoft “feature” that would accompany “We’ve made updates to our EULA” that you’d be forced to accept to start Windows next time. 😬 Lol
All our work Teams calls are colleagues swearing because their Bluetooth is messed up, or Windows changed their default audio device (again)
You still will run into issues with certain Bluetooth headphones on Linux because they either need proprietary codecs that just aren’t available or fall back to really shitty ones. Not Linux’ fault, but users will only see (or hear) that it doesn’t work properly.
Examples you have noted, sir; for awareness’ sake.
I’d have to ask, they weren’t mine. But part of the problem was that it’s either high latency and no mic or very low quality both ways, neither very usable for video conferencing. Was fine on Windows. I’m sure their Thinkpad’s shitty Mediatek Bluetooth module didn’t help either.
What is the future like? knowing the slow cadence of debian you must be from the very far future.
WINDOWS 11 IS GREAT IF YOU DONT VALUE YOUR TIME
Even with that caveat I wouldn’t agree.
But there’s something to it.
For me, a decade of Linux user, having been forced to work with a bunch of Windows laptops recently, even the difference between 10 and 11 was palpable. Not only in resource usage but also in just getting around the system, running updates, trying to disable the stock ticker (?WTF?) etc.
Windows is great! Unless you value privacy…or RAM… or Bandwidth efficiency…or easy networking… or owning your system
Lately I often reminesce on the time SSD has become available. My previous laptop would take 5 minutes to fully open the system, and suddenly BAM! SSD and it was 30 seconds. I remember being blown away. How the fuck did we end up back here. How is it 5+ minutes to start a stupid OS again.
Dunno, my Linux boots that fast.
I remember that too! My crappy old computer. I bought the cheapest SSD they had and it was so much faster.
And I’ve been thinking about the latter too.
BTW I truly hope your Windows takes 5min for a cold boot, and not your Linux, because that would mean there’s something wrong with it or the hardware.
My work laptop is only allowed windows 11 [*] At least I wait for it on company time.
At least I wait for it on company time.
You think I didn’t?
And yes, the story above was about getting them all up to Win11. It’s sad that IT-illiterates see “let’s do what M$ says” as the only option wrt security.
I boot my work PC when I get in, then go off to make a coffee. It boots to log in reasonably well, but then takes a good five minutes to run the start up script that connects it to the company’s shared drives.
When I could use Linux at work the machine mounted the drives at boot so they were available immediately. I’ve gone backwards despite being ‘upgraded’.
trying to disable the stock ticker (?WTF?)
Geeze I should have invested in “?WTF?🔺” years ago. Look how ?WTF?🔺 is everywhere now! Especially the tech industry. 😭
I know this is a Linux space, and I love Linux but my Windows 11 box runs just fine. I haven’t had any problems with it.
Then you’re lucky. Win11 virtually pushed me to Linux, I was a windows fanboy before.
I’m not a fanboy, I just use whatever works
I don’t think it was implied you were.
No, I was a windows fanboy. Just wanted to emphasise, that even someone as loyal as me got pushed away.
It’s all good
Windows 10 was the last actual Microsoft OS.
I disagree. For me it was Win 7. And even in retrospective I’d say the last truly good and clean system was XP. I had to use it at work a month ago to troubleshoot a system and was surprised how well designed XP was for its time – and still is tbh
I think the general consensus is that windows XP was the last clean and well put together microsoft os that’s the rounded cleaner version of windows 2000.
When windows 7 came out I downgraded back to XP, which with the new file system it’s nearly impossible to pull off. I can’t downgrade anything windows 10 and above and I’d have windows xp partitioned if I could.
Yea Linux users don’t seem to value their time. I spent every other evening for a week trying to install fedora. Multiable downloads, different pen drives, formatting using fadoras own tool. I even tried with a different PC. Nothing. Read the forms to see if there is any known issue. Nobody’s got time for that. I’m back with Linux mint on my gaming setup. It hasn’t had that many issues. But the gaslighting people seem to say Linux will run on anything with any thing makes me miss trust anything those people say. I don’t want a suprise failed update or to spend an evening working out the low level boot issue.
I spent every other evening for a week trying to install fedora.
Skill issue.
Yes, that’s the point, very astute of you. It takes time and knowledge to get good at stuff like this.
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Oh hell no it isn’t “once”. I’ve been running Linux machines at home for various purposes for well over a decade and I’m constantly having to learn new shit. Especially because some distros will break things with updates and you’re on your own to figure it out much of the time.
Linux is easier now than it’s ever been but it’s certainly not nearly as user friendly as Windows or Mac. It’s also an intimidating topic to approach with an overwhelming amount of info that the typical the user never needs to think about otherwise (what’s a distro , what DE should I use, how do I install software on my distro, etc). the aggressively unsympathetic community doesn’t help either.
Some of that isn’t the fault of Linux but the truth remains.
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Skill issue.
Personally have had more issues with the windows installer than any Linux installer I’ve ever used (on multiple different systems)
Yeah, only that piece of shit will silently set up the bootloader on a whole different drive, leaving you a nice surprise once you remove it some time down the line…
I run two different RPM distro machines. Took me less than forty minutes to install on each (my internet is slow), and one of them is an eight-year-old laptop with an i3 and 8 gigs of memory. All runs fine, had issues with the Bluetooth antenna on one (just drivers).
I had to help a family member set up a W11 laptop, took hours (pre-installed) to sift through all the bullshit settings to make it even function without disrupting every session or literally spying on them.
So, I dunno, maybe you pissed off some witch and got cursed, seems like a pretty exceptional experience you had.
I tried to get Nobara working on my pc and couldn’t do it. I have installed soany forms of Debian/ubuntu and arch. I did get bazzite working, but I didn’t like how locked down that os is.
I hope you don’t mind me asking, but how is Bazzite locked down? I have never run any Linux as a primary desktop, though I’m relatively familiar with Linux in general from my years of general nerdiness. I recently installed bazzite on a whim on an old laptop as a first step of potentially shedding Windows (because I like games and bazzite says it’s for gaming). I very limited use it seemed fine, but that’s basically been installing a few things and testing a few games.
Bazzite is an Atomic system. Most of it’s files are immutable, and can only be modified with a system update. That’s great for stability and working from a system exactly as tested, but lots of software needs (or wants) to add extra files to the system. In Bazzite you should basically spin up a VM for that (or a toolbox, those are cool), or “layer” it into the system which reduces the stability you get from the Atomic system.
Both VMs and Layering are extra steps and can be complex depending on what you need, so it’s more difficult to do otherwise routine things if you’re not well versed already.
Thank you! I appreciate you taking the time to educate me.
Yeah Bazzite is irritatingly restrictive, Fedora or Cachy are honestly worth the little extra effort it takes.
I am all in on Cachy. I have installed it on all of my machines and even my friend’s. Cachy just works so well, I stopped shopping around.
I like Mint and Fedora myself
I don’t know what you mean by “Nothing” but, I have often failed to have any luck with the automatic partitioning, and I end up doing the partitioning manually. Especially since I almost always separate / and /home onto different physical drives. And doing that, you have to lay out a /boot/efi partition. Without doing that it’ll go through the motions but you won’t get a bootable system.
Same. Ubuntu didn’t run on my tower only Debian did and then I removed the entire OS and downloaded windows 10 from Microsoft and googled up a product key.
Sometimes you can’t escape the dog shit.
There are issues with that of course, but for my fedora, Pidoras tools helped identify and fix the compatibility issue
It was probably a compatibility issue. I’m sure if I was more invested I would find a way. I was distro hoping so I wasn’t going to put myself through it. if it had installed it would be a different matter.
This year alone I had to reinstall 3 Windows systems that were failing to work. Then again, my Windows 11 work laptop also seems to work just fine.
Well that sucks. I hope everything keeps running from now on.
I use MacOS and Win11 every single day. I used Linux for a long time, I still have my CD I got from Canonical with Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake LTS. Naturally, fanboys of all three will talk about each as if it were the obvious choice. IMHO they’re all good in their own respective ways. It’s a Venn diagram made up of adoption/support, simplicity, and openness.
I remember those Canonical cd’s, they’d let you request dozens at a time and shipped for free.
Funny story, they shipped them from a place in Switzerland at the time that used to be the address of Sandoz corp where they made LSD. I got a box in the mail and googled the shipping address wondering what this box is and did a huge WTF lol
Do you work supporting users with windows 11? Print servers? Azure policies?
Windows 11 sucks big donkey dick
They’re isn’t one positive thing to say about it at all. Not even one.
Sure there is: Sometimes it doesn’t boot. And nobody can deny that it’s been great for driving linux adoption!
Of course there is. It’s compatible with almost any software and hardware (if you ignore their arbitrary W11 “requirements” which you can in most cases) that you can get your hands on. Microsoft and Windows deserve most of the flack they’re getting, but we should be honest.
Take Linux as a comparison. Compatibility is pretty good nowadays and is only getting better, especially with all the work going into Proton from both Valve and the community. But certain things are simply not supported which can make it either difficult or straight up impossible to get to work. Not that Linux is to blame for that, of course, but it is reality.
if you ignore their arbitrary W11 “requirements” which you can in most cases
No we cannot. I have a perfectly capable gaming machine, which meets my needs perfectly yet it’s not supported by Windows. It’s not some old work laptop a fricking gaming machine.
I didn’t mean it in a philosophical or ethical sense. Yes, their formal W11 requirements are stupid, but you can literally ignore them.
Some of the requirements are just there on paper and the installer will let you continue regardless. And the rest can be disabled by flashing the ISO with Rufus and toggling that option on. Yes, this risks you not getting updates in the future and may affect certain (not very important) functions, but you absolutely can ignore the requirements if you want to, and as far as I know no one has been denied support so far.
Almost any software or hardware? Better to phrase it as almost all desktop software
Well yes, but this whole thread is about Windows 11 which is a desktop OS, so I thought that went without saying.
Oh did you forget server and embedded?
The depths you have to sink to to get what honestly feels like an attempt at a charity point, but if that wasn’t assumed it wouldn’t have become the product in its position.
If there was an actual push to get compatibility worked out, it very well could. Seems more like a corporate holdback than a technical issue.
There’s one thing Windows does that I miss. The big preview pane in file explorer.
It’s not Millennium Edition?
That would almost count, if it was significantly different at this point.
Uh yeah there is. Which that my games and software run without issue on Windows whereas on Linux I have to constantly fiddle with shit to make it work. But no one’s ever honest about that.
Nah, 98% of my tweaking is because I have a laptop as a daily driver. The last 2% is trying to get pipewire to ignore my headset mic in favour of the built-in mic and breaking things in the process, but I couldn’t even get windows to actually use my headphones for years.
I constantly wanted to fiddle with windows, but couldn’t, and then had unrelated things just decide to break. And this was in the 7 days. Everything after that has actively hated me.
I recently dumped W11 off my wife’s ROG Ally handheld and replaced it with SteamOS. It’s a day and night difference in performance. ASUS is absolutely fucking themselves by shipping it with this vibe-coded trash OS. W11 is total dog shit. The only good thing it does is drive a lot of people into the arms of Linux.
I have an Ally as well and I doubt the night and day difference claims there. Unless something drastic has changed Linux is at best on parity with windows if you change the ACPI settings manually.
https://www.phoronix.com/review/rog-ally-windows-linux/
It’s not a steam deck that was designed around linux.
Maybe I oversold it but I definitely noticed a difference in both performance and battery life. Windows has no profile for handheld devices and assumes they’re a laptop. With SteamOS it seems to have better battery management, with the added bonus of not being spyware vibe-coded garbage. My wife encountered a handful of “yep that’s Windows for you” type issues and now those are reduced to zero.
The ally has its own set of utilities for controlling power that works pretty well. It’s not windows native but then again it’s not native for vanilla Linux either.
I looked at installing Linux on my ally z1 when I first got it. It’s just not a performance boost and you do lose some device specific items as well. It makes some sense with niche specific devices like that.
All that said, if it works for you then great!
I’m a linux user but this is so cringe.
It failed. It’s not failing. The fact that it’s still widely used doesn’t make it successful.
I’m a it ops manager and it’s going to take me years to undo the ball of yarn left by their previous ms certified “professionals” . Ms stack allowed them to be easily hacked last year and I’ve no intention of having that be a me problem.
windows in general has always been a failure. I love how now I can solve most problems
It’s a nice circle jerk, but it has way more market share than Linux (at least on desktop, which y’know it’s a desktop OS), so by that measure it is a “success”.
You have to really stretch to some abstract definition of success to call it a failure.
It’s a market success and a performance failure. Not much of a stretch of any definition.
Version 11 didn’t make that market share happen. It inherited that from win XP
Yes, all those XP machines kept upgrading…
No, the actual market share of Windows 11 specifically, even against other Windows OS’s, far surpasses Linux.
People kept using and buying what they already knew, it’s not that hard to understand. Even if the new installment is shit, it’s still familiar, and for many that goes above any other argument.
Kind of a dubious claim, in the context of Windows not having nearly as much market dominance as they used to, and Linux adoption being far higher than it used to. Linux as a platform now has enough of a userbase that even companies like Epic are beginning to take it seriously.
Meanwhile reviews of Windows these days are so nearly universally poor, they are basically coasting on nothing but the inertia of their own previous success - which is eroding.
Have you watched the video before trying to argue against the title?
Glad I don’t use Win11
It’s a little less terrible if you can use the LTSC IoT version.
true
So I am a linux user, but use Windows 11 for work. I am an accountant in the school system.
Windows works fine for my work purposes. Especially when a lot of applications are being removed for web clients. I still use quite a bit of desktop applications, but I see the writing on the wall; soon all my work can be done on any device.
When the desktop application in work spaces finally die, I am curious if industries will switch to linux since its free and can be run on any hardware essentially. That or maybe owners will force their workers to use their own devices (phones, like Samsung DeX) to do work.
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funny how i never have to deal with “package managers”. i just turn my computer on and use it?
if you want the same proficiency you have on an OS you’ve been using for 30 years, you will have to acquire experience with it too.
make the investment or deal with windows, choice is yours.
Are you crazy? Stick to some stable or semi stable distro with a mainstream DE and you don’t have to deal with any of those. 🤦♂️
Why would people running Linux even care about the success/failure of Windows 11?
