I…didn’t think windows 12 was actually a thing but here we are?
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.
Lol. Remember when W10 was to be the “final” one?
Too late. I switched to MacOS.
I got sick of edge hijacking my chrome tabs, and then opening on bootup (despite being set not to).
Selling my Xbox Series X too and swapped to PS5… (Remote Play on PS5 actually works on my computer)
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
Windows 11 still feels like a beta… Have they completely given up on quality?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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’ve tried almost a dozen distros in the last couple of days. Only a couple of them see my second monitor, and none of them pick up my WiFi card. Guess what does every time? Windows 11. It’s been rock solid, fast and smooth.
Now I could put in a usb adapter for WiFi and fiddle around to get the other monitor to liven up, but I shouldn’t have to. I did this for Manjaro, and I was hopeful. On the second day it crapped out.
I didn’t want to like Windows. I used to be a die hard Mac boy, my first computer was a Mac portable. Apple polo shirt, tie and lapel pins, wallet, watch with Apple logo. I even printed my own t-shirts. ‘The box said Windows 95 or better, so I bought a Mac’ etc.
Gave up a few years ago when they became more fashion items than tools.
I’ve tinkered with Linux since Hardy Heron and Mandriva, and Chromebooks since they first came out. It always needed tinkering, nothing just worked for too long. Mac did. Mind you, Windows was crappy back then though.
Perhaps it’s because I’m on the Windows Insider programme but I really have no problem with 11. OK it has some guff that I don’t need but I’ve removed that. And sure it’s not as customisable as Linux distros, then again neither is Mac.
For me 11 just works. It syncs to my phone as soon as it’s in range. KDE Connect never did. I can run Android apps now (yes I know Chromebooks can) so Samsung Notes is my go to Notes app ever since Evernote went down the pan. OneNote is a pile of old fish parts.
I’ll keep trying distros though, I have to as my old HP laptop which dual boots MX Linux (that’s been flawless on the laptop) and Peppermint, won’t run Windows 11. I have a ‘new’ older laptop coming soon and that probably won’t run 12 ;-)
But for now the daily driver is Windows 11.
Blimus, that was longer than I expected 😮
Oh boy, it’ll only run on brand new hardware! Gotta make sure it can run integrated, unswitch-offable OpenClippy GPT or whatever.
it’ll only run on brand new hardware!
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/16811
Unless I missed something that $75 raspberry pi meets the minimum specs for Windows 12
You’re right!
Sorry I was just reading about how there was talk of higher minimum requirements (8gb ram, with 16gb recommended) but that was before official release info.
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.
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.
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.
11 is almost just a reskin of 10
Except with a lot of features removed.
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.
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?
I can see a few reasons for this.
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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.)
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.
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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.
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”
