This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
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.
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
I bought a Dell XPS for work with a 12th gen Intel Evo CPU that came with Windows 11 and it ran like absolute dog shit. Slow, poor battery life, etc. I reinstalled 11 from scratch with an MS ISO to remove any Dell bloatware and it was actually worse. I ran the "old" Windows 10 Media Creation Tool and downgraded (through the upgrade option, ha) and it has been running great for months ever since. The Evo platform isn't even supposed to work fully on 10, and definitely not run faster or with better battery life. That's the inverse of what should have happened. Also, the bugs went away and I got a functional Windows Explorer back without having to pay for fucking third-party start menu software.
E: clarity
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.
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 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.
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.
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
I wonder if they will provide a "Windows 13" after that.
And another thing in Windows I am waiting for is the moment when they encrypt all your data "for security", then blackmail you into a subscription service where you can only access your files while you pay your monthly dues. And how long it will take for this being hacked in a way that hackers, microsoft, and the relevant government agencies can all read your data, and you can not.
Any bets on this Refresh not supporting 8th-gen and below Intel chips except the Surface Studio for “reasons”?
rumored to be an enterprise tier "windows in the cloud" solution . But that doesn't mean there won't be an offline solition personal OS where u have basic functionality with ads on the desktop. If you know win11 and xbox new startmenus, expect more of those unmovable ad spots...sorry recommendations
~~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.
