Microsoft fixes a Windows 11 annoyance as PC revenue declines (arstechnica.com)
27 points by rbanffy 15 hours ago
glimshe an hour ago
The incredible thing is that Windows 10 was already near perfect. It would make sense to increase performance and security, but they changed the UI without improving an iota of user productivity, including removing key features of the product. Almost ever change in the past few years made Windows worse. Windows leadership should be fired and replaced by people who are actually Windows users, not MacOS users.
SoftTalker 29 minutes ago
Win2KPro was the peak. Windows 7 wasn't terrible, and you could select the Windows 2000 UI. It's been downhill since then.
gjsman-1000 44 minutes ago
Pff… remember Cortana?
jensenbox 29 minutes ago
Windows 7 was the perfect OS for me.
SP3269 21 minutes ago
Yes. And Tay.
statenjason 32 minutes ago
Installed Windows 11 on a VM over the weekend for running a specific program. The lengthy multi-reboot updates are just like I remember from Vista. Except now they show advertisements. Grateful 2008 was Year of the Linux Desktop for me.
mrheosuper 2 hours ago
As long as they still require online account to install, nope, not for me. That's stupid requirement.
frankacter an hour ago
If that's important to you, there's an easy option to allow using a local account during setup by dropping to command line and setting a flag. Pretty straightforward if that's your only deal breaker.
I just recently installed Windows 11 on a computer and this is the steps that I followed
https://rtech.support/guides/bypass-11/
You essentially hit a keyboard command to drop to a command prompt and enter a command and it reboots and allows you to create a local mode account.
Microsoft should not have hidden this away like they have and it should be an option for everyone installing Windows, and I recognize this isn't a solution for the non-technical user.. but for you specifically if it's something you're comfortable doing, it's an option to allow you to avoid having to use a Microsoft account when installing Windows.
kencausey 22 minutes ago
I would appreciate a link to the details about 'setting a flag.' The last version of that I used earlier this year stopped working in recent months, and I believe I saw tech news stories to the effect that Microsoft had intentionally closed that path.
For now I just use a customer-supplied email address which I used to setup a Microsoft account, setup Windows and use that account, immediately create a local-only 'admin' account with full rights, delete the online associated account, and start creating user account(s) from there.
frankacter 10 minutes ago
OuterVale 41 minutes ago
I know that a lot of tech folks consider it a non issue because it is 'easy' to fix if you know the bypass and your way around the more inner workings, but broadly this isn't really an answer to the problem.
If we always just say 'Oh, well, if you do XYZ then you can manage to do A despite B' then we're eroding our control and agency. Slowly the bypasses will phase out, as they have slowly been in this case, and then we're really in a poor state.
I had a tech support client who came to be because they valued their privacy and didn't want an account but who had no idea how to make that happen. They didn't even really know what to be looking for.
frankacter 8 minutes ago
superkuh 14 minutes ago
vor_ 10 minutes ago
That doesn't sound like something that counts as an easy option.
frankacter a few seconds ago
nukanse an hour ago
My sister gave me his win 11 laptop to fix. 1 Tb SSD was full. Half of it was windows.old folder after 26h2 update. Windows has 5 different ways to delete that folder and none works. They are all badly documented. It spends 1 hour reading the file list before starting to delete... On a 4 tb/second nvme drive. Then spend a day "deleting" the folder, but doesn't deletes anything.
Finally, booted an Linux rescue distro from USB and deleted the folder.
Then had to clean the winsxs folder, which was full of useless files after an update.
In the end I cleaned 700 gb wasted.
frankacter 44 minutes ago
Settings - > Storage -> Temporary Files
That's the universal way to clean up roll back installs and other Windows update related.
If that's not working for you, there's probably a much larger issue at play on her machine and would be much better off backing up her data, wiping all the partitions and installing fresh. You'll likely reclaim more than 700 GB.
The only time I've seen situations like what you're describing is when these are machines that have been in use for years and have major Windows versions on top of major Windows version stacked on top of each other, not just incremental updates.
eviks 13 minutes ago
> Users will get a “customize menu” button that controls what commands appear when they right-click their mouse
Good, though doesn't seem to be include the ability to control icons, name and accelerator keys, so still a long way to reach the user ergonomic heaven...
opengrass 2 hours ago
Maybe they haven't realized how convoluted their licensing system is, and as Gabe Newell says, piracy is a service issue.
craftkiller 2 hours ago
While I'm sure that would help, I still wouldn't use Windows even if it was completely free and distributed as easily as Linux. Windows has some serious problems with dark patterns like ads in the start menu and telemetry everywhere. The software is slow and bloated. The lack of a package manager makes each application run their own updater (though they did at least put the drivers inside windows update which was a step in the right direction).
raincole 2 hours ago
It has very little to do with piracy. The whole PC market is suffering [0].
[0]: https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/worldwide-pc-shipments-have...
jswelker 2 hours ago
Way too little way too late Microsoft. After 30 years I will never choose Windows again. Got on Windows with 3.1 and off the train with 11. It's not me--it's you.
hx8 an hour ago
What took you so long? I got on Windows 3.1 and off with Windows Vista.
turpentine 38 minutes ago
As maligned as it was... I think Vista was actually servicable if all the extra visual effects and UAC stuff was turned off. It ended up looking more like a plainly styled XP desktop and ran moderately well on laptops just for a win32 C development machine (emacs, gcc/msvc cl.exe). I had this setup for windows builds, with a Linux desktop as my main machine.
At least back then more of the original engineering talent that Microsoft had was still around, and you would even run into them on irc from time to time. 20 years on, I suspect a lot of the foundational personalities that drove engineering decisions have since retired or been made redundant, and that reflects the weird UI fracturing and endless regressions. I doubt they can recover at this point.
dhx 2 hours ago
Trying to understand the original Windows 11 context menu diagram as someone who hasn't used Windows 11 is surprisingly difficult. By contrast, Gnome 51's context menu (or earlier versions as far back as I remember) for a file/folder are unambiguous and easy to understand.
At the top of the Windows 11 context menu are some small icons without text for high usage actions which I assume are:
1. select-for-moving (cut), perhaps Gnome's "Move to..."
2. duplicate-in-place-with-number-appended-to-duplicate-filename or select-for-copying (copy), perhaps Gnome's "Copy to..."
3. something to do with the clipboard--maybe copy contents to clipboard
4. something to do with text entry--maybe rename the file/folder, perhaps Gnome's "Rename..."
5. share via social media applications or cloud file sharing applications, or move the file/folder locally perhaps Gnome's "Move to..."
6. move to recycle bin (delete)
Menu options with text are unambiguous for "Open", "Open with", "Compress to ZIP file", "Properties", although Gnome will state "Open with {name_of_default_app}" to make it clear exactly how a file will be opened without having to guess.
I guess "Copy as path" might just copy the full filesystem path to the clipboard. I can't remember the last time I wanted to do that.
I guess "Always keep on this device" prevents the file/folder being backed up to some cloud storage provider. I'd rather open up an application dedicated to cloud storage backups and be able to review current backup options there all in one place for all types of data/files.
The "Free up space" option I'm less clear on--will a local application pop up and suggest what I can delete within the folder, will a cloud storage provider application pop up and suggest the file not be synchronised with the local device and only be kept in cloud storage, etc.
The bottom option "Show more options" is not expandable so I assume there are so many other options an entire new window is needed to display them all. Maybe it'll give me useful but rarely used options from a list of hundreds available, such as "count how many words are in this file" for text files...?
j16sdiz an hour ago
"Always keep on this device" / "Free up space" only make sense when you understand the "Desktop" and "Document" is now backed by cloud -- the file you have on your local computer is just a cache.
The former meant it have higher priority in caching, the latter is just evicting from cache immediately.
anal_reactor an hour ago
TBH while the menu has glaring issues (half of it is basically an ad for cloud storage), your complaints boil down to "I don't like it because I'm not familiar with it" which is not valid critique, and especially shouldn't be coming from a Linux user if you want Windows users to switch - they don't like Linux because they're not familiar with it.
dhx an hour ago
My complaints are generic to human-computer interfaces. Providing small icons in close proximity is poor design per [1]. Providing icons without text is also poor design, as summarised at [2]. We can argue more about how detailed labels should be--as I would equally complain about Gnome's context labels too. For example, "Open with..." is more useful as a menu with maximum 5-10 other applications to choose from. For example, will "Compress..." replace/remove my original file if I click on this action, or just create a compressed archive alongside the original?
anal_reactor an hour ago
wolvoleo an hour ago
Why would I as a Linux user want windows users to switch? I don't. If many of them do, Linux will become more like windows to appease them, and also because there's more money in the masses.
katzenq an hour ago
anal_reactor an hour ago
DaiPlusPlus 2 hours ago
Meh. It's been 3 years and *gestures broadly* so much else of the Windows 11 UX still leaves much to be desired: making the context-menu slightly-less-awful isn't going to bring me back to the fold when so many other aspects of Win11 are not just unappealing, but actually off-putting.
(I maintain that Windows 11's bad UX is a consequence of MS having to make a single UI for everyone, which means it'll be too dumbed-down, simplified, or inflexible for power-users (XP, Win8, Win11); or too complicated and intimidating for everyone else (Win7, Win10), or just bad for everyone (Vista)).
If Microsoft wants me to willingly buy into Windows 12, then I want the option to keep the Windows 10 UI (File Explorer, Taskbar, Start Menu, and Window Management) - I know it can be done in theory[1], I just want proper support.
bajard 2 hours ago
Linux: Install and use. Windows: Fight 3 days with the installer. Spend 4 weeks tweaking it... And do it all again after any random update.
com2kid 16 minutes ago
> Linux: Install and use.
I mean yes, but an update on my Linux box just installed a new kernel, uninstalled the old video card driver, and didn't install a new video card driver.
I have taken to asking claude "is it safe for me to reboot now?" before restarting after updates. So far 3 times in a row it has come back with "no, your system won't startup".
Edit: I also just woke my desktop up from sleep and the alt-tab service failed to resume. Just... wut.
switchbak 2 hours ago
I installed it on a laptop for a friend after not having used it since the mid 2000’s. What a piece of flaming dogshit that whole platform is. How is this the output of a multi billion dollar company?
Well then you look at a random webpage from CNN and I guess they’re all competing for how trashy they can make their products.
There can’t be any pride left at all in that place.
nukanse 2 hours ago
You just made me check the CNN website. It had black font on black background. Run by incompetents.
toast0 37 minutes ago
pteraspidomorph 2 hours ago
It took me longer than 3 days to set Linux up for my (multi-specialty) needs, but I can see absolutely no reason anyone would ever want to go back to Windows at this point. You know what else lets me customize my menus? KDE.
My last few years of Windows were more frustrating than Linux has ever been. Everything locked down and a never ending string of crashes and issues that are impossible to properly diagnose or repair. At least on Linux, when there's an issue, it's clear what it is and where to report it.
(Disclaimer: I have an AMD GPU and I don't play competitive multiplayer games. All other games have just worked so far.)
the__alchemist 2 hours ago
This is a broad generalization, and inconsistent with my experience. Especially notable as Linux refers to a diverse family of operating systems.
8note 2 hours ago
youve missed the joke, that the descriptions used to be swapped
vor_ 4 minutes ago
anal_reactor 2 hours ago
Linux day 1: whole day looking up which distro is usable.
Day 2: install Linux distro, total process is like 4 hours because at every step you double check that you won't lose your Windows data because it's your first time installing Linux. Realize that your distro doesn't support modern displays and never will. Call it a day because you're mentally exhausted.
Day 3: install a distro that does support modern displays. The process is only 3 hours because you're already familiar with it. Spend the rest of the day looking up which Linux programs are good replacements for Windows ones. Hint: all of them have bugs that affect your particular use cases - KDE shits itself when it sees a folder with 20k images, DaVinci Resolve has lots of issues with audio drivers and video codecs and gives zero error messages, no native Linux audio player supports all exotic music formats in my library so I need to run foobar2000 which obviously crashes when it sees WMA lossless and then UI fails to scale properly, lots of random shit like Wine installation causing system update to fail.
Day 4: connect $DEVICE. Look up drivers.
Day 44: $DEVICE works.
Day 104: $DEVICE works AND survives system update.
In my case that were keyboard (support for extra keys) and steering wheel.
Day 204: invite friends for video games. Spend the entire evening trying to fix controllers because they're fucked - if I first connect Steam Controller and then run Steam, then Steam shits itself. I need to specifically do it the other way around. Also, Xbox One controller drivers have an incompatibility with X360 controllers so I couldn't simply connect the old dongle and play like that.
hexasquid 32 minutes ago
I particularly liked the presence of windows, .WMA and xbox controllers in this.
jswelker an hour ago
Debian+xfce or even lxqt are about as plug and play as you can get with UX straight out of 2002 in the best way. Hell it probably even runs on 2002 hardware.
anal_reactor an hour ago
Varelion 2 hours ago
Something is wrong with you, not Linux
esalman an hour ago
They also finally allowed moving the taskbar to any edge of the screen.
SillyUsername 11 minutes ago
That's the one that made me ditch Win11 for Mint, a top panel + Plank Reloaded.
My entire UI workflow is top right orientated (menus, windows size/close buttons, docks) for muscle memory, so the Win10 stopped security updates forced me to switch.
Ironically a week later they extended security support for Win10.
wolvoleo an hour ago
Pretty insane how a company that knocked out office and visual studio in the scope of a year or so now has problems making a task bar moveable.
orliesaurus 2 hours ago
I wonder if MacOS is also going down the drain - obviously not as fast as Windows - but I believe it doesn't feel as smooth - it feels always more bloated with every updates and I find myself having to install more and more custom little tools for everything:
- Cleaning my drive from unwanted files → One app
- Organizing files based on type → another app
- A good voice-to-text → another app
- A better launcher → another app
- An incredible terminal → another app
I mean is this the way it's supposed to be? Wasn't the whole point - unwrap the macbook, load up Mac OS and LFG?
VladVladikoff 2 hours ago
Please tell of of this better launcher? Spotlight is so bad these days. I used to be able to pull up the calculator with cmd+space..ca[enter] but lately it grabs some other completely ridiculous thing like some random file that throws an error instead. Yeah Apple that’s what I wanted, I wanted to open the Caltable.inf file, or worse if parallels is open it picks the windows calculator first before the macOS calculator? Wtf!
jedbrooke 34 minutes ago
I’ve been using Raycast[0] to replace spotlight. Spotlight index kept randomly losing my /Applications dir, and like 90% of what I use spotlight for is Cmd + space > type in the name of the app I want to switch to/open. So it was a constant annoyance.
They have some AI stuff that they try to push on you during the install, but it can all be disabled so day to day it doesn’t bother you.
SyneRyder an hour ago
Probably Alfred? It's been a while since I used a Mac, but back then Alfred was one of the reasons to get a Mac.
wolvoleo an hour ago
Yeah though spotlight was never meant as a program launcher. KDE has a nice thing that is just that.
jimmyjazz14 2 hours ago
yes and the nonstop notification popups for some iCloud nonsense really drive me crazy.
dfedbeef an hour ago
I assumed people would find shift+right click. It brings up the old right click menu
billybob9911 34 minutes ago
theres a registry key you can edit too, to use the """legacy"" menu on all right clicks
waltbosz 2 hours ago
You can shift+right-click to get the old right click context menu.
eviks 7 minutes ago
What do you need to click to edit it?
conception an hour ago
Can they fix that it runs like trash on 16gb of ram? That’d be cool.
wolvoleo an hour ago
They actually are: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2026/11/03/raisi...
Not that Microsoft isn't a terrible company IMO but they also finally see the need to optimise due to the ram crisis.
CivBase 2 hours ago
I'd rather a setting to go back to the old right-click menu by default. It's possible to do with a registry edit, but not from a user-friendly setting.
newsclues 2 hours ago
Windows 11 is a major regression.
10 was better, but I’d pay for a modern version of windows 2kpro UI. Bring back msn messsenger.
It’s basically a gaming box, everything else is on a Mac or Linux machine, all on my desk.
qn8bdebq 2 hours ago
Actually, it is a substantially worse gaming box too once you've used SteamOS/Bazzite. All it's good for right now is windows-only legacy software and anti-cheat implementations for the time being.
And somewhat excel because excel is badly implemented on mac
nukanse 2 hours ago
The only "game" I could not run on Cachy Os Linux is 3DMark. Some benchmark run, but not all.
fhn an hour ago
Done. This is how easy it is to make money off you people.
gt0 2 hours ago
100%.
I'd pay for this, compatible with Windows 11 apps, but basically works like NT4.
jimmyjazz14 2 hours ago
honestly Linux has gotten pretty good even for gaming, I set up a Linux (Fedora) on my primary gaming rig as a lark and figured I would go back to windows but I have not really had the need to and some games actually even run better on Linux it seems.
speed_spread an hour ago
I assume we still won't be able to make the task bar vertical.
gxs 16 minutes ago
I recently got my hands on a windows machine - I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t actually excited to use windows after a 15 year hiatus
What a heaping pile of you know what. You need Microsoft accounts to download basic apps from the App Store
You get nagged and nagged to enter a windows account
Having grown up with it, it’s an incredibly odd feeling using it. Modern ui…modern ui…modern ui…and then BAM a weird screen directly ported from windows 98 (or 2k, you get the point)
An OS that was always incredibly intuitive to me all of a sudden just felt like a disorganized mess. Want to see your Ethernet adapters? Good luck, you’ll open 10 other settings menus/search results before finally getting to the options you need. Advanced sound settings? Same
My headset wasn’t working, after clicking through a bunch of options at some point I loaded a wizard with very specific questions that I’d never seen before and wouldn’t how how to get back to, it randomly worked
Still a bunch of bloatware, still can’t be on for more than a day without having to reboot, everything I remembered that was bad with made worse by bad ux
These days they even tried to remove the option of installing windows with an internet connection, aka ms account
Just bad, there are a lot of annoyances to fix
vivzkestrel an hour ago
- slghtly offtopic but also covers how to run windows 11 super duper optimally
- here is my production grade setup for agentic ai on windows 11
- setup windows 11 with Rufus boot to disable online MS account creation https://rufus.ie/en/
- [download window 11 x64 iso from here ](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11)
- then download vmware workstation pro (you ll need to create a free account to get the download link on their website)
- install vmware workstation pro
- turn internet off
- plug your pendrive in with the rufus w11 x64 iso on it (mind ya, this pen drive ll first need full formatting before burning a w11 image to it)
- press f2 to reach bios in vmware settings and make it boot from pendrive
- turn internet off on your machine (DO NOT keep it on)
- install w11 (keep a 100gb for vmware)
- without updates it ll load real fast and you wont need an MS account (rufus takes care of it)
- while it installs, download revo uninstaller pro on a separate machine https://onefiles.net/9d170d01078634b5 (latest version 5.4.x) and put it inside a second pendrive / portable hdd
- once w11 loads, it ll ask you to enter a password, keep existing password blank and enter literally anything for a new password
- voila you are done with w11 setup inside vmware
- now connect the 2nd pendrive with revo and install it (need to clean uninstall many tools, hence we need this one)
- now go to search bar and type check for updates and update everything on w11 inside vmware
- next stop get unigetui from ms app store or from here https://devolutions.net/unigetui/ (it is a package manager responsible for installing just about everything else with auto updation of all packages)
- the open unigetui and search for the following packages vlc, winrar, winhance
- winhance is the fully customizable debloater you ll need to turn off all telemetry (we ll debloat after installing all the other requirements)
- next go to ms app store and install python or open powershell and type python
- the open unigetui and search for the following packages vlc, winrar, winhance
- winhance is the fully customizable debloater you ll need to turn off all telemetry (we ll debloat after installing all the other requirements)
- next go to ms app store and install python or open powershell and type python
- mind you this installs a python version manager that lets you install and uninstall multiple python versions
- after this python version manager is setup, install a specific version of python like
``` py install 3.13 ``` - next we need a node.js version manager, use fnm for it
https://github.com/Schniz/fnm - once installed, it may need to be added to environment variables manually
- once again choose a specific version of node.js and install it using
``` fnm install 23.12.0 ``` check fnm --help for commands - next we need a java version manager, use jvms for it
https://github.com/ystyle/jvms
- pretty self explanatory
- now install git and again it ll give you some trouble over environment variables, command not recognized etc, fixable with some gpt help
- at this point, we got git, node version manager, java version manager and python version manager and are ready to rumble
- install vscode/ visual studio whatever
- install codex
- install claude
- install opencode (both cli via npx and desktop app) and check their plans out https://opencode.ai/console/go
- install ghidra , ghidra-mcp (mind you open ghidra-mcp first because it only works with specific versions of ghidra and java) this is the reason we installed a java version manager
- check out setup for rea https://github.com/morluto/rea requires npx setup for rea and ghidra both, read documentation
- run winhance, check recommended settings under optimize and every other tab and restart the vm a few times for full debloat with 0 telemetry services
- congrats you have a full blown agentic environment at this point (if I missed anything i ll come back and update)
jqpabc123 15 hours ago
OpenAI wants all the RAM --- pushing up the price of PCs.
jimbob45 2 hours ago
I still prefer this to burning countries worth of electricity for bitcoin bros.
Ygg2 2 hours ago
Between Microsoft (indirect) contributions to ongoing RAM shortages, and its frankly hostile UI, color me un-fucking-surprised.