I…didn’t think windows 12 was actually a thing but here we are?
Lol. Remember when W10 was to be the “final” one?
The “10 year OS” that was 2015. Guess profits got in the way.
Oh and 10 didn’t track you enough or put enough ads in the OS.
This is just my own take, but I feel like at least part of the reason they went back to releasing new versions is because of the recent resurgence of macOS. Not only do Macs have the excitement of Apple Silicon, but they have annual “new” OS releases; even if not much has changed, it creates excitement with their fanbase. I think Microsoft realized that it’s not very exciting to just be on Windows 10 forever. So we got Windows 11.
I think that Windows 11 is just a name and even if they hadn’t named it that we would have gotten the same features as an update in Windows 10. Windows 11 is nothing more than an update. And Windows 12 probably won’t be much different. Increasing the number version of Windows looks much better to the average user.
Makes you wonder if they’re going to just start implementing the version number on every update, sorta like Chrome does these days. Will we see another Windows 95 eventually?
Well Windows 95 was 1995 and then we had (98,) 2000 so I imagine yes, we’ll probably have Windows 95 followed by Windows (98) 3000!
Well, Win10 Home and Pro EOL is late 2025, so it’s tecnically correct…
It wasn’t the profits or ads that got in the way.
It was the security that got in the way. (remember the whole TPM module thing?)
Iterating the version number was just a convenient excuse to throw more ads, and tracking in.
They meant it was going to be the final one worth installing
Actually XP was supposed to be the last one. Service Packs were supposed to be the future of OS updates/upgrades.
Apparently the source of that wasn’t an official statement by Microsoft. It was some offhand comment in a dev conference that kind of got out of control.
It might be for me. Not sure when I’ll refresh my hardware to something with TPM but I’m not feeling any rush.
The final one with the number 10, obviously.
Huh, and I’ve never even used Windows 11…
I didn’t even know it had released yet. And at my job they’re still using 10.
11 is almost just a reskin of 10
Except with a lot of features removed.
In fairness I’ve been a Mac user since 2007, but even with my occasional flirtations with Windows, I’ve not used anything higher than 10.
My wife’s machine is running 10. I heard her trying to install 11 via a VM the other day to see how she got on with it, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone swear at a computer quite so much in quite so short a period of time.
Her machine is still running 10.
At my job there are many computers with Windows 7 still. I guess it doesn’t really matter as long as the software we need keeps working.
Are those computers connected to the internet? Security updates for windows 7 were stopped in 2020.
Microsoft will support 7 patches if you pay them
That ship just sailed.
What are the coverage dates for the three Windows 7 ESU SKUs?
- Windows 7 Extended Security Updates 2020: January 14, 2020 - January 12, 2021
- Windows 7 Extended Security Updates 2021: January 13, 2021 - January 11, 2022
- Windows 7 Extended Security Updates 2022: January 12, 2022 - January 10, 2023
It really doesn’t to businesses. Many places I’ve worked didn’t upgrade the OS until they did a hardware refresh.
Neither of my old Windows boxes will run 11, so they won’t run 12 either. And I’m oh so broken up about it.
Looks like your boxes will soon need to meet a new antarctic friend.
Most of my machines, including my daily driver, run Linux. I’ve got one old windows laptop that I use (via NoMachine) to run Fusion360 on. And we have a 5+ year old Surface Pro that my wife uses for Dice Maker (a windows only program).
I used it for about 6 months, and I just couldn’t take it. I wiped it and installed Windows 10.
with a 64-bit chip operating at a frequency of at least 1000 megahertz continuing to meet the requirements
Wrong. The requirement for Windows 11 is “processor introduced on the market after the year 2018, with absolutely no regards on its computational power” (with a single exception to the specific CPU of the $3500 Microsoft surface studio because they continued to sell the machine with the same old processor for five years)
For example an i7-7700K is “unsupported” but the much slower and with less features atom-based Celeron j4005 is “supported”.
The hardware requirements are completely artificial and clearly decided in agreement with Intel and AMD in order to sell more new computers
Is 2018 maybe when TPM modules started going on every motherboard?
No, most tpm implementation nowadays are integrated in the CPU. And Intel 6th gen onwards have tpm 2.0 in the CPU, but they’re not supported for “reasons”
Tpm was definately included in the 7000 series intels, along with nvme support etc.
That said tpm 2 is a bit more recent and more secure. That said. It’s lazyness on the part of Microsoft to require tpm 2
The i7-7700k is my exact CPU, and I was wondering why my update screen always claimed I was out of spec for Win 11. Then I did some digging and it seems that some CPUs are more equal than others in that regard. Then I got Win 11 on my work computer and didn’t want Win 11 anymore.
Remember when Windows 10 was “the last operating system”?
Yeah, it was supposed to be a subscription model that they would continuously update. They have not lived up to that promise…
They probably did a user survey and found out that moving windows to a subscription would cause 100% of users to switch to Mac / Linux
Here’s a good article about that: https://www.pcworld.com/article/394724/why-is-there-a-windows-11-if-windows-10-is-the-last-windows.html
Apparently that wasn’t really ever Microsoft’s official stance.
Pepperidge farm remembers. I had the same thought. lol
KDE developers: okay so we’re gonna switch to a floating taskbar so we look less like a Windows clone
Windows developers: hey guys I have a crazy idea
Already??? Windows 11 just came out
2 years ago? That’s seems like a normal cadence for OS releases.
Well, we had Windows 10 for over 5 years before Windows 11. 10 was supposedly the last version they were doing, so it’s a little surprising they’re back to regular major releases now.
Too many people turned off telemetry data. They couldn’t get enough of it to just upgrade under the 10 banner. They’re forcing more and more online bits and slowly not letting you turn the other stuff off.
Huh, outside of a few outliers, I guess major Windows releases generally come quicker than I thought
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_Windows_versions
2-3 years is actually a reasonable time for Windows releases, going by historical dates. I think we’re all used to the long gap between Windows 10 and Windows 11
For home use, maybe. It will upset corporate customers to no end with a 2-3 release cycle. The app vendors won’t keep up, keeping the workplace a mess and well behind the new release curve. Deal with this on the Windows server side of things all the time. We’re trying to drag our app vendors off Windows 2012, and they are only coming kicking and screaming. Most only support up to 2016, which we find insane.
Key features include subscription fees, only-online capacity, baked in popup ads in every folder and directory, is slower than windows 7, and also streams your webcam to anyone who pays them enough.
/hj
Nah, this is pure speculation. The only source is Microsoft saying they are working on some next gen stuff, could just as well be a major upgrade to W11.
Are they going to let us move the damn taskbar this time?
Maybe in 3 years. They only just brought ungrouping taskbar icons back in the beta lol
They are necessitating 8GB of RAM. for what?! Like, it would be a struggle to find a machine with less than 8GB still being sold new, sure, but why does the OS need that RAM?
Microsoft: “Gotta keep all of the telemetries and AI running 24/7 of course!”
Every day I’m closer to trying Linux again.
Please do? What is stopping you anyway?
As someone who has moved from Windows to Linux and has been using it as primary OS for everything and gaming; it’s not ready.
I love Linux. But it’s not there. It’s for tech savvy people. It’s simply not user friendly enough for the “normies”. I hope it’ll happen one day.
I’m no “normie” but Linux is so damned ass backwards my brain just can’t cope, some of the times I was unsure if I was asking the OS to change directory or summon Moloch to bring a thousand years of darkness to the world.
I get how you feel. A lot of your existing Windows knowledge is not applicable to Linux so you feel like an old fart that doesn’t understand computers when you first start using it.
That being said. Now that I’m over that hump, I get why all the linux nerds are so militant about it. It is an objectively better experience if you compare it to Windows from a power user level. It’s a lot like gaming on a PC. Yes, you have to build it. Yes, you have to tinker with games to get them to run “just right”. But it is a better experience once you get there.
Linux always had the problem of highly technical people building wonderful things with a GUI that looks like it was designed by a third grader. Mainly because the majority of Linux contributors think the GUI is some fad that will blow over soon. I’m exaggerating of course, the last 10 years has seen some massive improvements. But the GUI being an afterthought still has a bit of truth to it.
You exaggerate but only slightly.
How is Linux with flight sticks? With Steam now available in Linux, lots of game compatibility is taken care of, but I would love my peripherals to work as well.
Fedora linux: If Microsoft does this why not us?
It’s not that the OS needs that amount of RAM, it’s that it’s lifting the floor for what a modern PC will have, which is a good thing. I can’t wait for the day windows requires an SSD.
I mean, Windows 10+ should only be used on an SSD for the OS install, even if it’s not explicitly required.
So long as it doesn’t outright block us from doing what we choose to on our PC’s, there should be a recommended settings minimum that differs from the minimum.
Maybe because most programs you’d use (browser, word processor, spreadsgeets, etc) requires 8+ gb, and the non-windows side of MS wanted the requirements so edge, word, excel, etc are guaranteed to actually work on every computer that ships with those programs?
To be honest, I think 8 GB is a more realistic requirement for light tasks nowadays, but not because of Windows - even Windows 10 would struggle with Chrome, Word, Excel, etc on just 4 GB, and I can’t imagine that W11 is any better. Increasing the requirements would ensure that OEMs won’t put Windows 12 on shitbox PCs with 4 GB and call them usable, just because they meet the bare-minimum standards.
Yeah, I guess. It seems wasteful to need 8GB just to run an OS and browser especially after Microsoft was pushing server core specifically to go the opposite route with resource utilization on servers.
According to the source, Microsoft wants to make the taskbar appear to float above the desktop by separating it from the desktop and rounding off the corners.
…why?
To bridge the gap to Windows 13, which will put it in the middle of the screen.
The Taskbar is the screen in Win 13
My cynical take - it’s what MacOS looks like and they’ve been throwing away their own identity to copy Apple for years now.
I don’t see why this is cynical. They fell pretty flat on their face with windows 8 (no explanation necessary) and then made a Frankenstein job out of windows 10. I have zero idea what the plan is here.
In an effort to make the user experience even shittier? Or maybe one of the suits saw their kid with a custom linux desktop and was like: we need to get these kids off that linux crap, and clearly the floating task bar is the clincher! *does a giant rip of cocain *
I can see a few reasons for this.
-
Whenever Explorer.exe crashes, it takes down the desktop including the taskbar. They are probably trying to separate the taskbar from the desktop.
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It’s a new style and people expect to see a unique style with every Windows version change. Of course, if you really want to you can make Windows 11 look like Windows 98 with a few button presses afaik.
3 a) It potentially looks like they might start auto-hiding the taskbar by default which could be interesting. If they are and they allow applications to maximize to the full borders of your monitor, that could potentially be awesome.
3 b) auto-hiding the taskbar frees up real estate and if you put on a tin foil hat you can say that Microsoft is going to use that newfound real estate to show ads to users and will justify it because they only take up less space than you were missing before, it’s no big deal, right? (This is highly unlikely and Windows as an OS hasn’t really shown people ads yet. The most it’s done is shipped with minor bloatware apps.)
They are probably trying to separate the taskbar from the desktop.
I’m 99.9% sure this is only visual, without major changes under the hood.
Windows as an OS has absolutely been showing ads for a long time. Ads for their own stuff for the most part, but those are still ads. They pop stuff up all over the place advocating for paid OneDrive plans or Office 365 or whatever.
Those aren’t ads embedded in the OS. Those are ads because an app is installed. It’s also fairly easy to uninstall them. Also, all over the place is a bit silly. It’s like once via the notification system when you first install the OS.
iTunes/Apple Music has joined the chat.
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Why do they insist on dicking around with the taskbar?
The Windows 10 taskbar is just better. The Windows 11 taskbar moves things to the middle by default for some reason, violating Fitt’s law, and removes several features of the Windows 10 taskbar without improving anything as far as I can tell. The new taskbar in the screenshot makes it even harder to click things by making them farther from the bottom of the screen, and makes the right side of the taskbar take up more space.
The new system tray is laughable. The icons cannot be that size. Imagine 16 icons of that size, but half of them are 24x24 or smaller icons scaled up.
One possible improvement with the new taskbar is that even though they have useless search and task switch buttons and the date+time takes up an unnecessary amount of horizontal space, they don’t have any of the other visual clutter like news and weather tickers.
The only reason I could possibly think a middle aligned taskbar is better would be for ultra wide setups. But even then, just make it a non default drop-down in settings and only a default if an ultra wide resolution is used.
Personally on a 1440p monitor or better I think middle aligned is better 🤷
That would make sense. Ive always played at 1080P or 4K (upscaled). So realistically…i have no baseline.
Just that 1080p is fine to have it left aligned.
Change for the sake of change. If it didn’t look significantly different, users would question why the upgrade. Doesn’t matter if they made significant, positive (being charitable here) change if the user experience didn’t change. Been there, done that.
Tired of windows messing their UI every next monday? You will love linux!
Yes sir, until you update your video driver and never see your screen again. I jest a little bit, but watching linus do that cracks me up every time.
Yeah! There it’s you fucking up your UI every next Monday because you’re not mentally well, and you can’t let good enough be good enough
There needs to be some middle ground between so much control that simple things that should be obvious breaking your computer isn’t as possible as it currently is.
Linux has a learning curve yes, it also has several hurdles that seem to be an unnecessary byproduct of having total control over your OS.
The Gnome desktop is a pretty good middle ground in my opinion. It is in my opinion even simpler than Windows to use and allows enough customizability with extensions. People in the Linux world love to dunk on it for using slightly more RAM and not having the same amount of customizability as other desktops like KDE Plasma.
there is some immutable distros, but I wouldn’t like that it becomes the norm
Meanwhile, Xbox Series S/X:
So 2025 is the year I finally move my desktop to Linux and run windows in a VM I guess. I still have a few apps that just do not play nicely in Wine that would make transitioning fully more difficult, but I’ve been full Linux on my laptop for years. Maybe I can finally make the jump on PC.
My last one left is PCVR with the Quest 2. I wonder whether that works through a VM.
When you’re using a Facebook VR headset and accompanying software, Windows is probably not your biggest concern
You might want to give ALVR a try. I don’t use it since I have an Index but I heard good things about it.
Which apps are those? Just curious - I know there are others in this situation and I’m always interested in hearing what apps are the blocking ones for a transition from Windows.
Photoshop for me. Yeah I can get it running under Linux, but it keeps crashing, or is buggy.
And no, Gimp is not a good replacement if anyone goes there.And no, Gimp is not a good replacement if anyone goes there.
This always makes me laugh when people suggest it. Like, CMYK support didn’t get introduced to Gimp until 2022 ffs, and it’s not even full support.
For me it’s Fusion 360. The launcher for it opens your browser to log you in via the Web. Wine doesn’t seem to support that.
DCS has some sort of time/zone issue preventing me from logging in.
My MX Master scroll wheel behaves oddly.
Other than that it’s been not awful since I switched to Linux last month.
Mine is the Affinity suite of image manip software. I don’t use it often, but I do use it often enough that I maintain a Windows box to be able to do so. That and I play a few games occasionally (at this point pretty rarely) that just work better/at all under Windows rather than Linux. Like 90% of what I do with my computers is great under Linux, but those last few elements make me not want to dump Windows entirely.
I’m not usually a “Windows is terrible” kind of peron, but dramatically changing the main UI every 2 years is the fastest way to get me to change to Linux on my daily driver.
I’m already using Linux as mine. I pretty much only use windows for gaming at this point
I use my PS5 for gaming. I wonder if it’s time to make the jump.
