Windows 11 - first impressions?

[SiliconWizard]

Apparently, none of the machines I own, including a couple just a year or two old, are candidates for upgrade.  Something to do with a missing TPM...  It is rumored that Win 11 will run but that Microsoft won't support it.

You can go through some official "hoops" to force install on a machine that only has a TPM 1.2 module (while TPM 2.0 is normally required), but on a machine with no TPM at all, the hoops are more involved. IIRC, you need to build your own install - some third-party tools exist for this.

Oh and interestingly, related to the other thread about the BIOS issue and TPM, it'll be interesting to see, a few years from now, how many people might get kicked out of their Windows session because they forgot their password and have no way of getting back in whatsoever. I'm smelling that it will happen. I'm pretty sure MS will always help you with that.

[Doctorandus_P]

I've been amazed and astonished by all the stuff you're willing to get shoved down your throats.
I switched to Linux myself quite some years ago and have no intentions to downgrade to windoze.

[ataradov]

LOL. You can't even pick a browser you like anymore - https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-11/259208/windows-11-to-block-windows-11-browser-workarounds


Imagine if OS opened links in the browser you told it to use?

[james_s]

I've been amazed and astonished by all the stuff you're willing to get shoved down your throats.
I switched to Linux myself quite some years ago and have no intentions to downgrade to windoze.

Well it's great when your needs allow that. For better or worse though, Windows is the industry standard and many people have to use it whether they like it or not. If the software you need only runs on Windows then you use Windows, that's just the simple reality of it. I use Linux on most of my secondary machines but I do still do some things that require Windows so I use Win7.

[Ed.Kloonk]

LOL. You can't even pick a browser you like anymore - https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-11/259208/windows-11-to-block-windows-11-browser-workarounds


Imagine if OS opened links in the browser you told it to use?

The US govt should step in and stop them from doing this.

[ataradov]

The US govt should step in and stop them from doing this.

They have enough money to buy the government, sell it, and buy it again. At this point they are pretty much immune and free to do whatever they want. The only force that can shift this are the customers, but this is not happening with commercial customers either.

[MathWizard]

I don't even have a cellphone. All too often, my bank, ebay, amazon, and windows, keep asking for 1. And for ebay for example, I'm sure I tried before to list my landline #, but they would not accept it(they have my LL# already of course)....but I don't have a CP, and I'm not getting 1 just to keep registered on ebay/amazon or with win 10/11.

[Ed.Kloonk]

The US govt should step in and stop them from doing this.

They have enough money to buy the government, sell it, and buy it again. At this point they are pretty much immune and free to do whatever they want. The only force that can shift this are the customers, but this is not happening with commercial customers either.

Um.

 

I was referring to that time when they did in fact tell MS to stop doing that. Yet, here we are.

[ataradov]

I was referring to that time when they did in fact tell MS to stop doing that. Yet, here we are.

Yes, but that was more than 20 years ago, and it did not really work. If anything it made them smarter and taught them to buy their senators in advance to eliminate such snags in the future.

If anything, Europe has much higher chance to do something about it, but I really doubt they will. Microsoft's approach is to limit things in small ways, which are individually insignificant to cause action. But on a whole it is a mess.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Indeed.

[BrianHG]

 

[ataradov]

Yes, seeing that video made me happy, since I know there is a product out there that can undo the crap new UI. If I'm ever forced to use W11, I'm installing that 100%.

Using third-party launcher on Android made all the difference. Google can no longer fuck up my experience with their updates.

[Wuerstchenhund]

So, a few people had played a bit with the leaked Win 11... but now that's it's officially out, is there anyone here who has installed it and uses it as a daily driver?
If so, what are your thoughts?

I have now converted all but one computer to Windows 11. Simply because, in my view, Windows 11 is a much better OS than Windows 10 has ever been. And that was true even for the last beta before release.

I know many people scoff at the UI changes, but the fact is that Windows 11 is the first Windows which has a single UI which works equally well with keyboard/mouse on the desktop and with touch interaction. Windows 8/8.1 was too touch-centric (and there were very few native touch apps back then) and in Windows 10 MS converted that to two alternative UIs of which the touch version was actually made worse over the predecessor version.

I also like the cleaned up settings (the various iterations in Windows 10 were a mess). Plus the system sounds are now a lot less annoying 

BTW, I'm typing this on a 2015 Dell Venue Pro 11" tablet/convertible which is pretty low-spec (Core-M, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD, TPM2) and which was originally sold with Windows 8.1. Using it with Windows 8.1 was OK but the lack of touch-capable apps was a problem, and with Windows 10 the whole user experience just sucks. Windows 11 on the other hand, which I just installed out of boredom, has turned out to be the perfect OS for this thing. The UI works absolutely fine, and for the first time even the changes between the different modes (tablet, laptop, docked/desktop) work seamlessly. The performance is fine for standard web/office/Netflix stuff, the batteries last longer than under Windows 10. Thanks to Windows 11 the tablet is no longer collecting dust but is now in active use by myself and others (without Windows 11 this thing would still be sitting in a drawer, unused).

As to the other PCs I installed Windows 11 on, these are all officially unsupported systems (I did only fresh installs, no upgrades, but also did not use any hacks/workarounds). The oldest PC is a HP z620 Ivy Bridge E XEON workstation with TPM 1.2 and Geforce GTX 770. Windows 11 runs completely fine, including TPM support and even HVCI enabled. There are several Haswell E machines with TPM 2.0 and newer Geforce and Quadro graphics as well. All work just fine and better than Windows 10 ever did. The only exception is one machine running Windows 10 Enterprise, and this one is only waiting for the Win 11 Enterprise version to become released (which will be early 2022).

One thing I should mention is that HVCI, which even on Ivy Bridge only causes negligible performance loss (tested and found less than 5% under various benchmarks), only works when all drivers follow the DCH model. While this is the case even for older Nvidia cards like my GTX 770 (for which there's a Win 11 driver from Nvidia), the drivers of older intel graphics variants seem to be stuck with the classic driver model. As a consequence, HVCI can't be enabled if the system has an intel iGPU, unless it's a newer one (Gen 6 or newer I believe).

[Bud]

Decent guy but gets bigger with every new video 

[BBBbbb]

The US govt should step in and stop them from doing this.

They have enough money to buy the government, sell it, and buy it again. At this point they are pretty much immune and free to do whatever they want. The only force that can shift this are the customers, but this is not happening with commercial customers either.

Um.

 

I was referring to that time when they did in fact tell MS to stop doing that. Yet, here we are.

But times have changed, and not for better.
Why wouldn't MS feel entitled to do this? Just look at the mobile OSes (iOS and Android) they are a forced bundle clusterfuck.
Edge is not that bad (have to use it at work for some company internal tools) but with these moves they trigger people to treat it as a same garbage IE is.

https://xkcd.com/1118/

[themadhippy]

The US govt should step in and stop them from doing this.

And bite the hand that feeds them? Depending which source you look at microsoft is either the second or third most popular stock held by members of congress.

[james_s]

Edge is only halfway decent now because it's just Chrome with a different skin. The original Edge was garbage though, a classic example of the fact that you only get one shot at a first impression and they dropped the ball. It was released half baked and most people hated it. The more they try to force it on people now the more they will resist.

[rsjsouza]

Indeed Edge's release was unbelievably botched: the IE11 compatibility mode was triggered on most websites I visited, leaving the sour taste of lipstick on a pig.

[SiliconWizard]

Agreed. One very annoying thing, though, is that some (fortunately, not many) web sites only work correctly with Edge, and exhibit various bugs using any other browser. I admit the situation was way worse back when IE was popular and had all those non-standard features than web designers were using, but it still happens.

[ataradov]

some (fortunately, not many) web sites only work correctly with Edge, and exhibit various bugs using any other browser.

What sites? Edge has 3-4% market share. Who is going to be crazy enough to design site that only works in that pile of garbage?

[IanB]

Edge is only halfway decent now

I happened to launch Edge on a Windows 10 machine the other day, because I wanted a fresh clean browser with no history, and oh boy, was it annoying! I dropped it like a hot potato and will never launch it again.

[IanB]

As to the other PCs I installed Windows 11 on, these are all officially unsupported systems

Out of curiosity, how did this work? Did the Windows installer just proceed without protest? Or did the hardware actually meet the Windows 11 pre-requisites, even if not documented as such?

[Ranayna]

When you do a blank slate install, many "hard" requirements are actually optional. Either directly without modification, or with slight modifications of the ini.

But there is a catch: While security patches will come in, none of the major upgrades will be able to install automatically. You would have to reinstall the System for each of those, and no one knows when MS will "plug the holes" on the workarounds.
For me, Windows 11 would never be worth *that* hassle.

As long as the taskbar customizations do not come back, i will never install it on any machine under my control. At work i will surely be forced to install it at some point, but i hope that MS fixes the taskbar by that time. I could not care less about the startmenu though. The search works adequately well, and common programs are placed on a custom toolbar on the taskbar.

[SiliconWizard]

some (fortunately, not many) web sites only work correctly with Edge, and exhibit various bugs using any other browser.

What sites? Edge has 3-4% market share. Who is going to be crazy enough to design site that only works in that pile of garbage?

One of my banks, for instance. Very annoying.
Haven't tested all possible browsers of course. But it happens to work fine with Edge, and not with Firefox or Chromium.

[james_s]

I happened to launch Edge on a Windows 10 machine the other day, because I wanted a fresh clean browser with no history, and oh boy, was it annoying! I dropped it like a hot potato and will never launch it again.

I have not actually tried it myself since the early days of Win10 when I was forced to use it at work, I've only casually followed and knew it was now more or less a reskin of Chrome. I almost don't know why they even bother, it's so clear Microsoft lost the most recent browser war. The percentage of Win10 users using Edge is/was in the single digits, despite the fact that it was the default and they went out of their way to make it difficult to switch.