new versions of windows just kind of feel like new phones now. It's good but.. who cares?
I can remember as a teen and upgrading from windows 98 to XP felt like jumping into the future.
Or, more recently, getting the first samsung galaxy after having a basic candybar phone.
Just seems like more of the same all while charging an arm and a leg for it.
Then xp to vista happened and it looked pretty but was unusable. Then 7 came out and it solved all the BS and was a relief. Then 8 came out and it looked pretty but was unusable. Nobody is quite sure what happened with 9 but 10 was ok I guess, better than 8. Then I started using Linux because I was sick of the bullshit.
9 was skipped because there was concern with old/lazily coded programs running in compatibility mode for Windows 9x versions.
Basically, when the windows versions went from Win95/98/ME to 2000 and XP, some lazy programmers went “well by the time Windows 2090 rolls around I’ll be dead” and just had their programs check the windows version for a 9 when deciding whether or not to run in compatibility mode. If it detected a 9, then it would run in compatibility for 95/98/ME.
Microsoft wanted to avoid this potential issue, so they just skipped version 9 altogether and jumped straight to 10.
Unrelated but didn't a lot of things about that time skip a few versions to land at 10? Like I don't think there was an iPhone 9 and so on.
Regarding why they just jumped to 10, I subscribe to the theory that enough software that required XP or greater checked for OS compatibility by looking for the string "Windows 9*" to catch both 95 and 98
Funny thing. The reputation of Vista is universal, so I don't doubt it at all. However, I ran Vista starting from beta and never had a problem with it. I must have had the magic hardware combination that worked. My least favourite Windows release was 8.
The stuff that made Vista shitty to most end users wasn't truly fixed with W7. For the most part W7 was a marketing refresh after Vista had already been "fixed." Not saying that it was a small update or anything like that, just that the broken stuff had been more or less fixed.
Vista's issues at launch were almost universally a result of the change to the driver model. Hardware manufacturers, despite MS delaying things for them, still did not have good drivers ready at release. They took years after the fact to get good, stable, drivers out there. By the time that happened, Vista's reputation as a pile of garbage was well cemented. W7 was a good chance to reset that reputation while also implementing other various major upgrades.
W7 was really just a vista service pack, but they had to rebrand it to make people want it.
Isn't windows 11 still... unfinished?
Everything is unfinished in Microsoft world. Not even joking.
I’m not thinking about upgrading until W11 is 50-60% market share and they actually have to take bugs seriously
As long as 10 is supported, I'm not updating. At least I'm not hammered with ads like on 11.
If 10 is sunset, I'll probably switch back to Linux. I rarely game on my laptop anyway.
Out of like 1000 games I can play about 997 on linux, you'll probably be fine on linux even gaming now
I don't understand Linux, but gaming on my steam deck is amazing and occasionally runs games better than my much more powerful windows computer.
Certain things do run better on Linux. So if a game heavily relies on one of those things, it’ll run better. But there’s still a lot of game engine stuff that is experimental or just plain non-functional on Linux, so the games that utilize those are basically unplayable.
Until fairly recently, things like Ray tracing and DLSS were windows-only, because they almost universally used DirectX, which is a windows API.
If you game via Steam, there's a good chance you can use their Proton layer to play Windows games on Linux.
My gaming rig is linux and it’s only sorta inconvenient
How dumb can a person be and still use Linux for gaming? I'm open to switching from Windows but am only marginally technical so I don't wanna bite off more than I can chew
These days it's more "which games don't work on linux?" Rather than "which games work on linux?"
Here is my attempt to answer this genuinely and in detail. To game on Linux, I think you should be able to, or willing to learn how to:
Install operating systems on your computer. There are folks that genuinely can't handle this; they use the OS installed on their computer and if it breaks they either buy a new computer, or it's a trip to the geek squad or the genius bar or their brother that "works in computers." Installing Linux on a PC is practically the same skill as installing Windows on a PC; it asks you things like how you want to partition the drives and such, you have to deal with the BIOS at least a little bit. The main difference is Linux is installed by default on comparably few computers, and even then if you buy a System76, you're going to get Pop!_OS, if you want Mint, you're going to do it yourself. So.
Learn a bit about how to day-to-day administer a Linux system. How to update the system, how to install new software, how to uninstall software. Learn how the Linux file system works and how drives are mounted onto it, things like that. It is done differently than in Windows; some of the concepts transfer over, some don't.
Not completely freak out when you encounter the terminal. I have seen people pitch a complete bitch fit at the very notion that us Linux users do occasionally use the terminal for things. Here's one thing that the terminal is really great for: Your sound isn't working, you ask about this on a forum. Would you rather have someone say "Oh yeah right click the Start button and click Preferences, go to the Devices tab, scroll down and click More Information then a window will pop up, scroll down until you see Sound Card, expand this, then for each entry in there right click, click Properties, go to the Status tab, and then type what it says in there" or "Open a terminal, type lshw | grep -i audio and copy-paste what it spits out." The terminal is just your computer, you run programs by typing their name instead of clicking on an icon, that's all. Don't have a cow, man. Unless it's cowsay.
Play the right games. I have long attributed my success with gaming on Linux in large part to my tastes happening to align with game availability on the platform. I like small studio/indie projects, I like nerdy creative/problem solving/building games, so I play stuff like Zachtronics games and Factorio, and wouldn't you know it those folks tend to release Linux native builds, or their Windows-only games run great in Proton. I play practically no "AAA" games, I haven't bought an EA game since the SNES, and I have never owned a Bethesda game.
When you first install and log into Steam, go to Steam > Settings > Compatibility and turn on the option "Enable Steam Play for all other titles."
Depends on the distro, times have really changed in the last 5 years and even more since the steam deck was released. I distro hop a lot and my recommendation for a newbie would be pop os! Or Ubuntu. I was really impressed with pop, everything just worked right on install. Same with Ubuntu for the most part. Any guide for the current release of Ubuntu will work on pop os.
I've been using EndeavorOS recently and enjoyed it but I wouldn't recommend it to someone new to linux. It's not as hard to use as other distros but might be a bit much for a newcomer.
windows 11 isnt even the majority of installs yet and they're trying to push for windows 12? They tried doing "windows as a service" with Windows 10 but that never really manifested either.
I know people whine that Linux users always harp on about Linux, but there's a better alternative to having a £100 tax on every new laptop you buy, or having to buy a new license every time you upgrade a PC a little too much in one go. Or being locked out of security updates because you dont want to subject your system to adware.
And with the Steam Deck entering the picture, we have a huge company like valve making it even easier to jump ship now. Its the ship jump I used
Microsoft might be leaning into an old reputation. Windows 95 was crap, Windows 98 fixes it. Windows ME was crap, Windows XP fixes it. Windows Vista was crap, Windows 7 fixes it.
They might be expecting that people think Windows 11 was crap in the same way Windows ME or Vista was crap, and they'll flock to Windows 12. But it's not like Windows 11 is horribly broken like that. The actual problem is that Windows 11 doesn't give many compelling reasons to upgrade over 10, and it has a bunch of useless bloat.
As a developer, having WSL2 open up X11 apps without having to jump through hoops of running an X server on Windows is quite nice. Other than that, I don't know why I'd bother.
In actuality 98 was crap until SE and XP was crap until SP2.
I see no compelling reason to accept this "upgrade."
That's why it'll end up beig forced on people. Just like what's happened with 11. And 10 before it. Didn't happen to everyone, but there were lots of complaints about it happening.
If it's forced and also needs a subscription, quite a lot of people will leave for the alternatives.
I haven't even bothered "upgrading" to windows 11 because it still looks terrible.
My work computers have it installed so I use it all the time it's not bad, it just doesn't bring anything good to the table. It's basically a visual update.
The one thing I love is the new snapping options of you hover over the maximize button.
So with zero first hand experience then? You're refusing to upgrade based on memes and conjecture alone.
Sure, you're well within your right to do so, but it's not a great system to live life by. People are far more vocal about bad experiences than good ones. Windows 11 has been awesome for me, and as a developer and gamer, I'm on my PC and Mac far longer than the average user. I've not had any issues with windows 11 since it came out; the issues with the start menu and whatnot. It feels like it's cool nowadays to moan about Microsoft products when the reality just doesn't reflect those complaints.
Try it out for yourself. It's actually a really good OS: I prefer it over MacOS Sonoma anyday. My dad, who is 'afraid' to touch computers in fear of breaking them, told me just last night how much easier Win11 is to use than Win10.
If after all that you still hate it, well, at least then you've made an informed decision!
I have it on my work PC, I was talking about not installing it on my home PC.
That's great, but there are valid concerns about other people's use cases
I can't install it on my laptop because it has a hard drive. Immediately not something you can use - it scans files out of the box, making the system unusable. It doesn't let you just disable it without taking drastic steps, but disabling some features requires group policy. If you use some hacks to disable things, randomly other things break. For example, disabling the firewall breaks Windows Update (?!)
The last good version was Windows 7 where you could actually do 99% of things you wanted with Home edition without any issue.
just because you like it doesn't mean I have to enjoy using the spyware and windows 11 has been way worse for gaming then 10
A new version of windows coming next year isn’t really shocking news.
Fucking fix your bloated background service's, every update they add more and more services and background applications that serve little purpose, like the touch screen service that's running on my fucking desktop that only has a mouse and keyboard
another thing that annoyed me was the useless setting page, when control panel worked fine.
especially since you end up needing to get to control panel to do anything anyway
Any bets on this Refresh not supporting 8th-gen and below Intel chips except the Surface Studio for “reasons”?
~~windows refresh~~ cash grab
Thank god my PC doesn't have a TPM.
Otherwise, I am just waiting for some industrial software to be usable on Linux (they're migrating now!) so I can finally drop Windows for good.
If not 12, an incremental patch release to 11 as a "revamp" version they've done with all the others, but no significant changes. Meh.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
