Windows 11 just isn't enticing Windows 10 users to upgrade, and its market share is actually falling
Windows 11 just isn't enticing Windows 10 users to upgrade, and its market share is actually falling
It's not winning the hearts and minds.
Windows 11 was what finally forced me over to linux for good, no more dual booting. I know it sounds strange, but the straw that broke its back was the taskbar. I have an ultrawide monitor, so I ALWAYS have the taskbar vertical on a side. It makes zero sense to have it at the bottom. Massive waste of space. Windows 11 DID NOT HAVE THE ABILITY TO MOVE THE TASKBAR. I was flabbergasted. This is a feature that has existed for decades in every OS. I just couldn't comprehend the stupidity, so I just didn't. Formatted the drive and went to Arch, then to Tumbleweed. Couldn't be happier.
Yeah, this sounds like Louis Rossmann's "rapist mentality" that he's been harping on for a while. They think they own your hardware just because they make software, so they'll force you to do whatever they think is "best" for you (which is probably using more of their products).
Just say no.
Software should give you an incentive to upgrade. I use Linux 100%, and I'm excited to use the next version because it'll fix issues and add features that I'll actually want to use. I'm on openSUSE, and here are some things that I've been excited about recently:
- KDE 6 - fixed Wayland for me, so I was able to switch back from GNOME
- reproducible builds - I can now theoretically verify that everything I install is built properly instead of having to trust them
- cockpit is coming to Leap 15.6 - YaST on the CLI is cool, but clunky; this sounds like I'd get largely the same thing, but through a web browser (i.e. access a port via SSH tunnel, no remote GUI required)
Software should entice you to upgrade, not force you to upgrade. That has never been the case for me for Windows, so I bailed and now use Linux, where it absolutely is the case.
Windows 11? Let's see here...
Spyware/malware since that infamous Windows 7 update sending everything (including passwords) to Microsoft. Ads spread across the UI in W11. Simple features hidden or disabled. Bing Internet search results in the Start Menu that can't be disabled unless you edit the registry. Search engine in the Start Menu cannot be changed. Numerous other previously simple settings changes that now require registry edits. Menu items gone, and others that still exist but inexplicably have been removed from the Start Menu search. Edge browser forced down your throat no matter what you set as the default browser. Upgrades that you can't do at your convenience and forced restarts that happen even if you have open files that you're editing. Long (sometimes really long) upgrade restart times. Forced Microsoft account use to install and use the OS & Internet access required to even install the OS. Absurdly inflexible hardware requirements that make no sense for most people. A taskbar that can't be moved. Numerous programs and garbage spread through the OS that cannot be removed or disabled.
Besides that, what's not to like?
Its a downgrade. It offers nothing but ads. Who wants ads? Why do they feel the need to keep altering the interface? If microsoft manufactured automobiles they would switch the brake and gas pedals every other year.
I had to help my sister keep her 8 year old Mac going or buy a new secondhand (cheap) machine. With the options out there and with the state of Windows, I didn't even consider it.
She's ended up with her same 8 year old Mac with Ubuntu 24.04, and I've been really impressed with how it's actually great for non-technical users these days! And works really well on old hardware.
This should give her another few years of life out of the thing without worrying about software support.
It's frustrating. There's a lot of Windows 11 that I do actually like: Massively improved HDR support, far better DPI scaling features, tabbed file browsing, a unified control panel again (yes I know if you look hard enough you can find legacy panels), configurable snapping regions for Windows, gaming focused features with screen recording, intelligent capture, etc. On the power user side: the terminal, winget, built in ssh support and broader compatibility with Linux development toolchains, and if you're the kind of person with a family or friends you do tech support for regularly the Quick Assist's current iteration is a godsend.
But then the tradeoff is ads, increased telemetry, AI integrations, inability to move the taskbar, a piss-poor local file search, increasingly restrictive desktop customizations via third party tools, shorter support periods for Windows feature updates, and generally a lack of overall feature control due to low level integration with core Windows services.
I don't think Windows 11 is a bad operating system in the sense that I believe it to be a marked improvement on a feature by feature comparison to Windows 10. But it feels like two development arms at Microsoft are consistently at war with eachother. Some want to implement really cool features and tools for end users, and the others are hellbent on locking the system down and forcing this Apple philosophy of "use it like we want you to".
I keep checking videos on YouTube from time to time about whether it is worth upgrading to Win 11 now (which people keep releasing regularly). Keep deciding it's not worth changing.
Then I sold my laptop and had to use my Steam Deck for a couple of months. At that point I thought if I'm going to learn a different OS, then I might as well go all the way and jump over to Linux. Been very happy with OpenSUSE ever since.
Huh. So shitting on your customers is a bad thing?
Wow who would have thought….
I use Linux at home exclusively (Linux Mint Debian Edition).
Don't need Windows for anything but when I worked Enterprise IT the move to Windows 10 was a massive pain but we finally got it working and it wasn't too bad as an OS. There is no reason why you'd want to upgrade.
As for home users, from my experience people don't like change. If you move a single shortcut on the desktop , they are lost and panic .
So changing the entire look of the UI is not something people want. Plus Windows 10 auto update borked some windows 7 systems so users with that memory won't be keen to repeat it by upgrading to 11.
Good. Windows 11 is trash.
We see this everytime a new Windows comes around.
You'll have your hopeless Windows users who're equally as bad as Apple cultists. Screaming at you to upgrade because "THE SECURITY! THINK OF THE SECURITY! YOUR SYSTEM WILL FUCKING DIE IF YOU DON'T GET YOURSELF SECURED!1!1" when all you fucking do is just check e-mail, oh my god. /s
But the fight to resist upgrading has gotten longer and will get longer. Going by the Windows OS global stats of it's marketshare, 3% are still clinging to Win7. 23% hopped to Win11. 70% is still Windows 10.
By the time Windows 10 loses it's extended support (that isn't the Enterprise edition), we're going to see the changes then.
I can vouch for that I have windows 11 and I want to go back to windows 10
I'm still having troubles to understand why'd they even want Windows 11 to happen and I'd really like some more informed people to help me out.
They had massive mergers as an unpredicted expense. I also don't know many people who bought the last XBOX unlike previous gens or ever used MS Store. Is that sweet lobbying money from hardware producers? I thought they planned Windows X as the peak Windows platform to then sell internal products (game-as-a-service but OS), so did this plan failed?
Windows 11 looks like an afterthought and the centered taskbar may be intentionally put there to make it look different from Win10 while it's probably the least changed new release as I learnt after a brief encounter with it (after XP, I don't know much about earlier OSes).
Had they just run out of money?
lol
Geez Microsoft, I wonder why? If a product is good, then it doesn't need to be pushed onto consumers.
It slowed down my desktop experience significantly. Like it makes no sense at all. One day I'm working I solidworks on windows 10 and old computer at acceptable speed, the next I get assigned a new, bastly improved computer, with windows 11 and solidworks latest version, and it's slow as fuck! I just want to end it sometimes. It lags, it crashes, it's worthless! SW is worthless on its own, but with windows 11 its like 10 times worse. I think they are actually serving it on a server secretly and we are just remoting into it. It behaves almost exactly as when using remote desktop. It's terrible and I want it gone!
Bro I moved to Linux years ago. I dont use Windows at all
I think Win10 already is everything what I need.
I have gotten a small feel of 11 from my girlfriend's laptop - it feels alright.
But I think I won't have reasons to upgrade. I haven't studied 11 at all so I don't even know am I missing something lol
That's weird. Do people not want ads in the computers they paid for begging them to subscribe to their own hardware? Do people not want LLM models watching everything they do and reporting back to headquarters? So perplexing. Welp, the users have spoken, hopefully Microsoft can figure out how to iterate. Maybe they want more ads and AI all over?
Nested right click Windows are a deal breaker on their own before any real issues even pop up
Honestly, Windows 11 works quite well, as a Windows system, but it feels unfinished. It feels like Microsoft pushed out a pre-release built and it trying to rush out fixes and completion patches.
And it's not even as if I care one much one way or another, I moved away from Windows ages ago (decades, really). I only keep a partition around for the odd game, and it's just staying around so that I can setup my Oculus CV1 again one of these days. It got upgraded to Win11, but probably hasn't booted in over a year.
I boot Windows sometimes on my laptop where I kept a small 200MB partition, mostly to see what it looks like nowadays. I'm not certain the various updates are making the experience better (at least judging from my quick twenty minutes, tour, so that's admittedly not worth much).
That thumbnail looks almost exactly as I would expect Zombie Jamie Hyneman to look like.
My daughter has a Windows 10 notebook for school. We haven't seen a reason to upgrade yet. If Windows made a "never bother you again about anything you don't want to be bothered about" version of Windows 11, we'd upgrade because that's so fucking annoying. I hate Windows.
Honestly, windows gamers upgrade to windows 11, Linux users stay on Linux, and everyone else is on android/ios and in no hurry to do anything about the laptop collecting dust most of the time.
Companies are also more likely to pay the extended support a year or two and update when the computer is replaced.
Its only on here on the fediverse people have time to complain about windows 11. (well some of the gamers might but more likely due to unstable systems on the newest i9 chips, since you launch steam, discord and a browser and alt tab between them.. ignoring the start menu)
Once, I was asked if I wanted a special offer on Microsoft Office on boot up. Explorer freezes so often for me when I right-click a file and select Open With that it's made me twitchy. Frequently image icons stop displaying. For a long while, every time I've installed Windows on a computer, I've had to go through and disable all the awful misfeatures Windows tries to put in the taskbar. I also always have to set OneDrive so it doesn't redirect folders like Desktop and Documents into its cloud storage area. Now Windows 11 is threatening to put CoPilot on my desktop, and I'll have to disable it too.
I'm positively longing for Linux now.
I want to just convert to using my Fedora 40 KDE install, but there are just too many blockers for me, both hardware and software.
The problem would be the push they are doing on corporations to move to 11. I know multiple cases they are struggling to do so because the mess windows 11 does with other custom applications.
I have Windows 11 on a couple of machines and honestly it's just Windows 10 with a somewhat slicker taskbar and control panel. Functionally it is almost identical. I'm sure there is a random bunch of changes on the periphery but it's really not a compelling proposition if someone has Windows 10 and is happy with it.
What a joke 🤣
Windows 8 was enough whatever-the-opposite-of-enticing-is to make me drop windows and go linux full time.
Oh no. This is terrifying.
I don't have an issue with win 11 since I disabled the ads. But these news smell like new and unnecessary "advancements", to make it more marketable. They'll ruin it completely...
too bad you have no choice soon good luck
