Just want to vent regarding this new trash-OS with the name "Windows 11": In my mind a terrible pseudo-mobile OS with PC functions, but not a real PC-OS anymore.

OK, fair enough, but the stuff bugging me hard enough is the fact that MS is forcing us to use Win 11 because they will stop supporting it completely by 2025 and the sells of retail versions has been stopped in my country for very long time already. Totally on purpose so no one can legally get a hardcase retail-version anymore. So, because of this nightmare not to be able to buy a "true retail" anymore, in a emergency you may simply get a OEM-DVD or maybe even one of many fishy codes lurking around on the net... just in order not to have a trash OC forced to be installed on your gamer-PC.

And, if bad luck... the code may not even work anymore, due to many reasons. Either the seller was not clean or even MS itself maybe made a failure at their activation servers... everything possible. Its just a true nightmare and no matter how much you are willing to pay... it is just almost impossible to get a valid version. If you are lucky getting a valid "hard copy" it surely is totally overpriced, for a long time already. Law of supply and demand... almost no supply but a huge demand.

However, there is simply no way around... because this is THE gamer OS and we all know it. Although, Win 10 is no bad OS... it is the policy from MS which is failing so hard; so i just want to bring up my mess i have. Probably not much people care... who knows, at least i do.

However, this basic rule is true: Every time a good OS is released, it will be followed up by a bad OS and everytime MS is trying to force us to get the trash-OS...

ME>bad, XP>good, Vista>bad>, Win 7>good, Win 8+>bad, Win 10>good, Win 11> bad...

So i hope Win 12 is out soon enough, and i hope not to much hardware changes anymore, else it might be difficult to activate my Win 10... which is a true mess. If i have activation issues, MS is telling me "this is your own fault, you was not getting a retail version and bla bla bla"... At this point i really get the urge to kick someones butt at the other end of the line... no excuse, this is my honest opinion.

Finally, the customer is the king and he should be getting the stuff he want, no excuse. If MS is continuing ignoring this hard rule, someday it might have a boomerang-effect in some way, this would be "well deserved".

Well, hope stuff works out somethow... thanks for your time, those reading it.

it has been a pseudo-mobile OS since windows 8 actually. the last good windows was windows 7, windows 12 wont be good especially with rumors of it being a cloud os heavily.

I've noticed that trend too. XP was good, Vista bad, Win7 good again but Win8 was so bad I jumped ship to Linux. I've heard Win10 was better but never bothered trying it. Hope your eventual upgrade to Win12 goes smoothly Xeshra!

The cycle will probably be broken with 12. It's been decent-shit since time immemorial, but we seem to be heading readily towards a shit-shit combo with 11 and 12. Will probably stay on 10 as long as possible and if it doesn't get better by then, which it probably won't, it's probably Linux time for me by 2035.

Windows 11 will be what finally pushes me to Linux completely.

I enjoy the idea of having a Linux with Vulkan API with DRM free games from GoG-era, although i am not so sure this will become realistic any time soon. Microsoft simply got to much trust in the industry and in general the customers are sheeps... they will follow the industrys rope...

As long as Steam, Windows and DX is "supreme" (in the eyes of the majority)... it may not change any fast, because this is simply some hard coded rule the majority seems to support and enjoy this way.

I could even live with Microsofts OS-dominance but they should act way more customer-friendly, else at some point i am out of goodwill.

In theory the industry could always support Linux and Vulkan, including GoG aswell, but it simply will mean additional work for them and it does not seem to pay off for them; so they usually are not bothering. Although, at least the support in general is increasing, it is still nowhere at a spot i would enjoy it to be.

If Microsoft is even going the "Cloud route"... for Win 12, i may even completely abandon Win 12 and i will only play my old games (backed up on my HDD) on Win 10 for compatibility reasons. All the new games however, i may try to emulate from Windows using a Linux OS... It may become very hard making it work in Linux but at least it is worth it to try.

It is all about being customer friendly and respecting the customer, and so far, unfortunately... my feeling are not very good. Although, as long as the majority is on Steam, on Windows and on DX, the issues in general may not change. Acceptance simply means, the policy is valid.... so, in order to make huge changes, the acceptance in general should be gone...and unfortunately, i think this will still be a long way for a majority to stop "saying thanks to DRM and non customer friendly policys".

Besides: The PS5 is running on a Unix based (like Linux) OS, although a custom build in order to move it away from the "Open source policy"... and all the new games are running well on it... so indeed it could be a good OS but it simply will need more support from the industry to make it happen in a large scale.

I am not against Windows in general... still... there can be 2 OS at the same time. However, once again: Microsoft need to act more friendly to the valuable customers, this is critical.

Another one of THESE threads, yay!

That Up/Down trend is only valid if you don't look at the details and ignore what has been between.
No one ever mentions NT4, or ME, treats 98 and 98SE the same.

Windows 8 had a bad start with the new UI, but that was corrected with Win 8.1. The system itself was absolutely ok, no big difference to 10 in fact.
Let's not forget that XP was VERY unstable until SP2. Only with SP3 it is what we remember with pink sunglasses these days.

I like it. Interface feels more modern (except for any advanced setting, which are still that mess of old and new) and it has been very stable for me since I got it. Still no macOS, but fine...

I tested W11 and wasn't impressed. Aside from the single useful feature of Live Captions (that could possibly add subtitles to old FMV games that never had them), almost every other change vs W10 was endless dumbing down (right-click context menu, taskbar, start menu, etc) or fake restrictions ('needs' TPM / SecureBoot, etc). Two tools (Open Shell + Explorer Patcher) are needed instead of one to "de-break" the Taskbar, etc, and even then it doesn't work 100% properly as it did with W10 (eg, can't change taskbar text colour). Of course Microsoft isn't even trying to hide the real end-game here:-

"Another interesting piece of information has been revealed in the FTC vs. Microsoft hearing, the Redmond giant has been discussing pushing more of Windows 11 for consumers onto the cloud, and could eventually make the OS a subscription-only service. As spotted by The Verge, an internal Microsoft document from June 2022 revealed in the hearing mentions a consumer version of Windows 365. The slide, called "Modern Life strategy and priorities," includes a bullet point labeled 'Move Windows 11 increasingly to the Cloud.'"
https://www.techspot.com/news/99227-microsoft-has-plans-make-windows-11-cloud-based.html I hope it isn't given the latest rumours that W12 will need a "Neon" compatibility layer to play "legacy", ie, 99% of non-UWP apps & games. It may also lock down the Windows partition to be "immutable" (read-only = impossible to de-dumb-down using tools like OpenShell, ExplorerPatcher, WinAeroTweaker, O&OShutUp, etc):-
https://www.techspot.com/news/98123-windows-12-different-modular-monster-faster-updates-ai.html

So it's highly probable the "good -> bad -> good -> bad" cycle is already dead. W10 is barely tolerable as a replacement for W7 (but we'll be charitable and call it good because most can be disabled with enough tweaking / Group Policy controls), but W11 -> W12, etc, onwards is just going to be bad -> rent-ware -> rent-ware full-on walled-garden with 'our compatibility layer broke many of your old games'. W10 is likely to be the last good OS that can run offline indefinitely (local KMS activation) + has fewer issues with older games vs W12 "Neon" is set to be, and certainly the last Windows OS I'll be using if they go down that route. As for "2025" support, some versions of W10 (eg, Enterprise 21H2 LTSC IOT) are actually supported all the way through to Jan 2032 (by which time W11 will be long obsolete), and 'KMS tools' exist to activate it offline (necessary for Enterprise where, eg, some factory floor PC's / point of sale / medical equipment running W10 aren't connected to the Internet at all).

Personally, I've already started dual-booting with Linux. It's a learning curve but a lot of games do run. Absolute worst came to the worst (Windows goes full subscription + breaks Win32) = split the online / offline usage between 2x PC's (ie, buy a couple of cheap low-end motherboards & CPU's of the newest gen that work on W10 LTSC and you're still set for an "offline gaming W10" being able to play 99% of old games offline for another +10-20 years or so) whilst the "online" PC could be Linux, Chromebook, MacOS, etc, without ever needing to "upgrade and subscribe" to W11/W12/W365 on either computer.

I think these complaints depend on a lot on what you use your PC for.

I upgraded to Windows 11 and once I moved the taskbar back to the left side I have noticed literally zero difference between 11 and 10. It has not impacted me one little iota. However all I use my PC for is to play games, mod games, normal web browsing and watching premium quality adult entertainment. So I guess I'm just not doing stuff that would show me the changes/downsides.

The unwelcome W11 dumbing down changes were obvious to me in the first 5 seconds of right-clicking on anything in Explorer and seeing that stupefied "modern menu". That's literally the first thing people are disabling en masse and I uninstalled it and put W10 back on because of that). "Windows CoPilot" (aka AI enhanced spyware on steroids) is more than enough reason to not touch it with a barge pole even without the ongoing 'gate off stuff piecemeal to the cloud' fetishism. I was looking at those "Microsoft Surface" devices the other day but a gut feeling says they'll be the first to be converted into "Windows 365" cloud only computers.

Retrogame compatibility-wise, Windows 10 isn't that bad. You can turn the OS into something usable with a couple of free tools - especially with Open Shell Menu.


Windows 11, on the other hand, is UTTER F**KING ABSOLUTE SHIT. I'm forced to use it for work, once per week, and I always feel like shitting on the keyboard and pissing against the screen.

I don't know about under-the-hood stuff, but regarding usability and design, I like 11 better than 10. It's more coherent, more legible, easier to navigate, easier to interact with, and subjectively more visually pleasing as well. It's not perfect by any means on that front (especially not out of the box), but after applying some tweaks it can become bearable and (at least for me) a better productivity-oriented environment than 10 was.

P.S: Gnome is better though :P

Seems a bit extreme, but it's the GOG forum so I guess that makes sense. Can't say I ever noticed a big difference with right-click menus, other than copy and paste now being symbols. That took about three or four tries to get used to, now I couldn't care less.

Nothing "extreme" about it. W10 is still supported (from 2025 to 2032 depending on version installed). I installed W11 to test and didn't like it. It had about 2x positive features, a dozen anti-features and the rest was just the usual Microsoft "we ran out of ideas on how to improve our OS so we just did the usual 'repaint the UI for the 1,000th time to make it look as if we're doing something to justify a release that otherwise would have been called a Service Pack". At the end of the day, W10 (at this stage) is pretty much immune to having chunks torn off and stuffed in the cloud / the subscription model, whilst Microsoft has literally came out and said that's their long-plan for W11-12. I know which one fits DRM-Free gaming better (which is the whole point of the forum...)