Ask HN: Windows 10-based devs, are you upgrading to Windows 11?
I have a Lenovo box with Windows 10pro I use on&off, mainly for development and/or testing. Every time I wake it up from sleep it offers me to install or schedule the free upgrade to Windows 11.... and somewhere almost off-screen an option to stay on Windows 10, which is what I have chosen so far. I understand that Windows 10 is still supported, for now, and that there may be some headaches involved with switching to 11. But perhaps I'm missing out on significant improvements too.
Have you upgraded? If so, what are your impressions so far?
59 comments
[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 119 ms ] threadI waited until he was stable enough, other than the taskbar which is easy to fix via a 3rd party program, most of my issues are fixed. WSL2+Windows+MS Code integration is amazing.
Also Windows 10 won't be EOL until October 14th, 2025.
Microsoft already reported it won't be getting any new features and will remain the same for the next 2 years. Windows 11 is the main version now.
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-it-pro-blog/w...
Some people just want to get rid of telemetry & candy crush, not the ability to do math or look at photos on their computer.
https://github.com/GoofGarage/Win11Clean
I went with just text, point-and-click directions initially so people can at least intuit how they’d reverse any changes. I may consider making a scripted solution in the future, but no promises ;)
The majority of things can be done via the Settings app. Some are Local Group Policy settings. There’s a few PowerShell commands to remove pre-installed packages. There’s only 2 or 3 registry tweaks.
If there’s any bugbears, create an issue. I’ll be responding to them every few weeks.
Heck, I’ve used Debian since Debian 1.0.
Most of my home infrastructure is Linux and BSD. I’ve used MacOS very heavily since 2004. I used to daily-drive VMS on both VAXes and Alpha. I still miss parts of Solaris. Amber was the better terminal color.
I do have to use Windows quite a bit in a professional environment - even if simply as a window manager - so when I had to create environments for myself, I made sure it wasn’t ever a hindrance. Moreover, I’ve had people ask to make it easy for them. Historically I distributed guides as a one-off to friends and colleagues, but yesterday finally released it for everyone to take advantage of.
You'd think allocating enough space for text labels to fit (and not overlap with each other, fall off the edge of the container, etc.) in the user interface is "blub"
https://wiki.c2.com/?BlubParadox
so far as Linux enthusiasts is concerned.
Outside of Steam of course. ;)
Might give even more runway to old, legacy Windows applications.
I didn't really like the way Windows 11 was looking (the numerous privacy and control issues discussed many times over), so I told myself if MS ever forced the upgrade from 10 I'd look at Linux again.
I then got a new job that did everything on Linux, so I got some Linux experience and liked it, and switched over my home machines to PopOS. So far it's been pleasant.
There must be a way to monetise it so that more developers spend time building quality apps. The desktop world as a whole is ripe for disruption and linux is just sitting there waiting to be leveraged - a bit like apple leveraged freebsd for macos.
What surprised me the most was the really good usability of something like the KDE Plasma desktop, even in comparison to MacOS.
I remember using KDE for the first time, coming from Windows 10 and I was blown away. I thought to myself, "How are they making better software than a trillion dollar corporation!?"
I am macos rehab and I was blown away.
I gave an install of Ubuntu a try as a daily driver, and I went in super sensitive to anything not Just Working. In the first few weeks: I formatted a usb drive (using the explorer GUI), took my pdfs somewhere to be printed, and they couldn’t access the files on the drive.
I did everything right as a user. Hell, I’m a nerdy software developer. And a simple application I do often in Windows significantly inconvenienced me in my daily life.
I’m not super sensitive to the ads or privacy issues with Windows. I’ve never had basic functionality I expect my computer to do not work for me. It was a poor first experience with Linux as a desktop.
That being said, I daily drive WSL and Docker containers of Linux on my Windows machine. I’m terminal-native, and 90% of my productive activity is spent in Linux. I leave the basic life-stuff to Windows though. For example: using a browser as an interface to the web is a Windows task for me.
I have the same expectation as you that a desktop OS should just work, particularly for basic tasks. I don't have time to hack around. I mean I used to be a mac os user - i didn't even have to install the os or chose the hardware it ran on.
But linux gives you options and alternatives to almost everything and _that_ can be overwhelming. Heck linux is not even an os, it's a kernel, and ubuntu is just _one_ of the many OS' built upon it. That wide range of choice is probably what you experienced with the usb stick (ie are you sure you chose a file system compatible with windows?). Once you get comfortable with this freedom you start liking it.
It's not like back in the day when you had to compile things or hack thousands of config files to make things work. Last time i used KDE was many moons ago when i had the time to compile it on freebsd just for giggles, today i just apt get install it and change my wallpaper. It just works. If a distro doesn't behave to your liking on a live usb stick you can ditch it and try another. I don't want to convince you to switch to linux, I am neither religious about it nor do i think it's the right os for everything under the sun. I'd probably need to know more about your workflow but i suspect everything you do on the WSL console can be significantly sped up and beautified with the right setup in linux. Would likely take a few commands to do so.
> a browser as an interface to the web is a Windows task for me.
Boy would i install openbox and firefox defaulting to full screen upon login for that use case :-)
Also, that’s probably the issue with the formatting yes. Being an irrational human, it’s also disproportionately helpful to have a reasonable explanation about the previous failure.
The reasoning behind it was to not support the anti-consumer practices of Microsoft. What good am I as a tech enthusiast if I support a company with dystopian practices? Windows 11 spits in the face of its users and I did not like that, so I dropped it altogether and I've been happier without it than with it.
For the first time in decades, I haven't had to reinstall the OS again just because it was slow or had software issues. ZorinOS just works™!
I swapped over and it's been no benefit or hindrance.
Time will tell what happens when our work machines are moved over to it, but I suspect very little.
Minor pro - tabbed file explorer.
Minor con - no more checkbox to always show all tray icons.
2. Wow, being able to patch the shell without having to disable all protection and jump through scary hoops. I love that this is still possible in Windows.
As with any Windows, 11 is quite terrible, but it still lets you run your software and you eventually get used to it.
My favorite new bit of user-hostile nonsense is that a fresh install does not detect any of my laptop's network adapters, but still insists that I log in with a Microsoft account.
That tells me they don’t really expect to be able to enforce TPM security upon their user base.
[1] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/ways-to-install-....
My CPU also isn’t on the supported CPU list—-that’s probably the more concerning one now that I think about it (in case they compile assuming instructions my CPU doesn’t support or something).
I also recently watched a nice explanation of how to install/upgrade Windows 11 on a non-supported machine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL_maCWM5bk&pp=ygUTZXhwbGFpb...
Yes, I know I can use a "native" Windows version of Emacs, but to be comfortable I need more than just Emacs itself: I also need a Unix-y environment for it to live in. WSL provides exactly that.
I am still going to run Linux on the laptop long-term, but it's changed my mind for the next corporate refresh cycle. We usually get a choice of a Dell Windows machine or a Mac. I was leaning toward Mac for this next round, but I may stick with the Dell if I can get it in Win11.
https://github.com/microsoft/wslg
The "Apparently" is there because it's not something I've tried myself (I'm a Linux desktop user), instead it's something several of our users have tried and said works:
https://github.com/sqlitebrowser/sqlitebrowser/issues/2142#i...
It's fine. Better than Windows 10 was. My explorer has tabs now, among a few other nice things. Nothing broke.
Professionally, I haven't noticed too many differences since I'm able to use WSL2.
Personally, I'm trying to do some gamedev with Godot. Getting neovim set up was not great, but it's working.
The new terminal app feels good, though I think you could get it with Windows 10. The new task bar and start menu are "fine" and I don't really have any specific problem with them. I like that winget is baseline now.
I do have some nitpicks. For example, I have no idea why think having the centered task bar is a good idea, but that's fixable with a setting. Some of the things I took issue with required more intrusive fixing... which is pretty frustrating. I couldn't tell you exactly what I did to resolve these at this point.
I only use Windows for some of my development, but what I do use from Windows has continued to work without issue.