Microsoft readies Windows 11 25H2 while Windows 10 circles the drain Microsoft has made Windows 11 25H2 available to Windows Insiders in the Release Preview channel, as market share figures show the company's flagship operating system continues to enjoy a lead over its doomed predecessor, Windows 10. Microsoft made the Windows 11 25H2 announcement at the end of last week, noting that general …
That depends on your outlook. I do remember the sixteen million versions of Vista but, at the same time, it allows updates to be rolled out quickly once the new features have been verified as stable. That way, they can trickle new code out slowly without breaking everything for everyone if one part proves problematic.
Further, if you're on a particularly poor connection it saves one big lump of downloads (the counter being that your connection gets slowly used all the time, possibly with code that will never get enabled). It also spreads out the time to install updates (the counter being that it fills your drive.
While it is potentially abusable, it's not quite the same as a car manufacturer replacing a simple switch and relay on a heated seat with a signal that goes through a computer which only turns your heated seat on if you pay up.
"While it is potentially abusable, it's not quite the same [...] a computer which only turns [...] on if you pay up."
Uh ... yeah ... well ...
Would say "let's not give them any ideas" but honestly it's far far too late by now.
Oh don't worry, there will still be updates.. But Microsoft, having absolved itself of any legal obligation to provide continuing functional support, will only publish 'enshittification updates'. More ads in your Start menu, more fullscreen nag-screens, anything to force lusers to "upgrade".
The only governor on their shitty behaviour will be a goal not to drive too many customers to Linux/Mac/Mobile
Getting away from Windows can be an uphill battle, especially for less technically inclined users or those well and truly locked in to niche applications. Microsoft keeps displaying a belief, which market share numbers help to affirm, that they can weather some losses.
My response is: Help others check if a switch away from Windows could be helpful for their use cases.
It seems to be downplaying how poor this is for Microsoft. Some of us remember the days when there were queues to get the latest OS.
Win 11 has been foisted onto the users for almost 4 years now. A great many PCs have been replaced since then. Any corporate PC older than a year or so at that launch date should probably have churned to an 11 machine by now anyway. An awful lot more have been downgraded to 11 due to MS' sleight of hand or simply through inertia.
And still 11 is largely hanging on the vine.
It's by no means ubiquitous - which by now it bloody well should have been if people wanted it- MS're pushing it onto us for free ffs.
Having spent the afternoon wrestling with a new (to me) installation of W11 and Excel 365, I'm convinced Microsoft are missing a trick. They should be offering a "Windows + Office Classic" build. Guaranteed no retraining required for at least 10 years, only security and "under the hood" upgrades, remove all the gew-gaws and distracting frippery, let folks get on with their work in peace. They could probably charge a premium for not having to be the guinea pigs on the Windows treadmill.
(Yes I know various flavors of Linux could step in, but the institution won't loosen the MS ball & chain...)
>They should be offering a "Windows + Office Classic" build. Guaranteed no retraining required for at least 10 years, only security and "under the hood" upgrades
And like another well known example of the tactic; after release due to insufficient training in the under the hood changes, the (co-) pilots find that their installation is crashing and there's nothing they can do to stop it.
Nadella is not interested in investing nor in Windows nor in Office or other applications. He's interested only in Azure where he can take advantage of open source software to reduced MS own investments.
Since Windows desktop has very little competition but from Apple - which is not for everybody anyway, he can cripple Windows, and still sell it enough, and fire as much people as he likes to fatten his bonuses.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/topic/policy-based-removal-of-pre-installed-microsoft-store-apps-e1d41a92-b658-4511-95a6-0fbcc02b4e9c
"The Policy-Based Removal of Pre-installed Microsoft Store Apps feature streamlines the removal of pre-installed Microsoft Store apps in Windows Enterprise and Education editions"
Enterprise and Education, nothing for Pro / Business. Hooray.
Installed Debian on a few computers and I'm in the process of getting off Windows completely. No thanks on AI invading my privacy. I don't want it. Never asked for it. And won't accept it. Recall is just the latest example of Microsoft not caring at all about what customers want. The oligarchs are trying to turn the world into a total surveillance state. I saw a video the other day by I think it was PC World and the guy in the video said it captured and consumed 75 GB on his hard drive.
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I'm curious as to how much the corporate world has been pushing out Win 11?
I currently work for a large US corp (>100k employees world wide), although I'm based in the UK.
We've had the option to switch from Win 10 to Win 11 (Enterprise) manually for maybe 6 months or so (via Windows update, or a downloadable USB fresh install image). Which of course I ignored.
They started pushing the 'upgrade' onto people, with no option to defer, only about 3 weeks ago. Which of course hit myself. Showed up like a regular Windows update, and I got the usual 'Your company requires you to restart within x days'. The only thing that stood out as unusual, was the number of days tends to be 2 or 3 at most for normal patches, before being forced to restart, this time I had a month!
So I left it to the end of the week (I sleep the machine mid week), and restarted Friday after work, and sure enough, welcome to Windows 11 at some point later in the evening! (I WFH, and just walked away and left it to it, no idea how long it took).
Granted this is a sample size of one US corp, but if others are doing the same, that could be millions of potential users, that have only just started switching over to Win 11.
PS: Hate it (which I knew I would!). Only plus so far is logging in now takes a few seconds, when it was talking multiple minutes previously (the time from entering account details, to having a usable desktop). No doubt corporate and other crud building up on the old Win 10 image (and likely a wipe and re-image of a fresh corp Win 10 image would have resolved it anyway, so I doubt that was specifically a Win 11 fix).
PPS: Outside of $work I use Mint (and other flavours of Linux depending on use case).
Windows 11 has been in use at work for at least two years here. Largely its been painless. Disappearing taskbar icons took a long time to be fixed but I can't remember it being broken for months now.
Virtual desktops are still absolutely awful. Programs will frequently open on the desktop you don't want them to, and switching of desktops without using hotkeys is horrifically slow. Can't stand the updated Notepad.
The only disappearing icon I've had (so far) was for Windows Explorer on the taskbar! Which is just, well odd!! Why would an MS update, remove their own default shortcut, to their own OS explorer? Just odd! Easily re-added via the Start menu (i.e. Hit Start, find Windows Explorer, launched it, and just pinned it, so its now back).
I've ignored the Virtual Desktops so far, I have plenty of real desktop space, don't really need anything virtual there, and I gave up using Notepad years ago (before they added *NIX end line support, otherwise I might have used it longer) in favour of Notepad++. So far, I've never even seen the updated version in Win 11.
Work laptop runs whatever work dictate - which is currently Windows 11.
Main personal browsing and productivity box has been a fanless Wyse box running FreeBSD for at least two years. FreeBSD can be irritating at times, but it's basically working.
Lounge couch gaming PC is running 10, pondering dual boot to Bazzite Linux, see if it can replace Windows (probably not, I have a Rift CV1 and a PSVR2 and they're very Windows oriented)
More powerful workstation (not used very often, basically for gaming and high end virtualisation) is on 10. Going to get another year's support and see if I can move it to FreeBSD with bhyve VMs for Linux and Windows for things FreeBSD can't handle and finally make the switch. Without *some* pain I'll never entirely switch.
I do note that Oasis for Steam is now out, allowing for Window Mixed Reality headsets to run both on 11 and 10, meaning they're no longer bricked by Microsoft discontinuing support. Does require an Nvidia GPU, but that's the only realistic option for VR anyway. Wonder if it runs under WINE.. presume not, but maybe it will soon!
It appears that people always put on rose-coloured glasses for the first or second version of windows they used.
Windows 7 contained malware and spyware, thus clearly it wasn't "perfectly fine";
https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-microsoft.en.html
https://thehackernews.com/2015/08/windows-spying-on-you.html (it's cute that anyone would think uninstalling a few updates would stop the spying).
Not only will I be circling the W10 drain for a long time but I will get stuck in the plughole until M$ brings out a decent operating system.
No I don't expect M$ to bring out a decent OS in my remaining lifetime, by that I mean an OS that doesn't get in the way of me working and isn't full of spyware and adverts.
I'm only clinging on to Windoze for a limited number of regular customers for whom there is not an alternative as I still need a couple of Windows only software packages.
