Ask HN: Windows 10-based devs, are you upgrading to Windows 11?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35805158

by BruceEel • 3 years ago

21 59 3 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

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?

IronWolve2• 3 years ago

Win10 is EOL, Win11 has been out for a few years now, already used by major corporations. For engineers, WSL2 is actively being pushed by nvidia and other companies as the standard for LINUX development.

I 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.

BruceEel3• 3 years ago

Sounds good. WSL2 is something I've been wanting to try for a while!

xcjs• 3 years ago

WSL 2 is available on Windows 10 already just in case the above comment made it sound like it wasn't.

Also Windows 10 won't be EOL until October 14th, 2025.

lozenge• 3 years ago

Actually, it's two and a half years from EOL.

IronWolve2• 3 years ago

It is indeed EOL, It's in its bed waiting to die.

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...

sneed_chucker• 3 years ago

I suspect Win10 will be supported longer than the 2025 cut off on account of there being so many systems out there that don't meet the Win11 system requirements for one reason or another.

PaulHoule3• 3 years ago

Yes. I had to turn off numerous annoyances but it works fine.

BruceEel3• 3 years ago

Right. Any particular resource/list of known Win11 annoyances you've used as reference or did you just tackle them one by one?

isanjay112• 3 years ago

Youtube Channel "Chris Titus Tech" has few videos on removing bloat in Windows.

PaulHoule3• 3 years ago

1 by 1. Whenever I see an ad I turn it off.

GoofGarage2• 3 years ago

I’ve put a text-based guide out on GitHub for people to follow. It covers both the initial installation, as well as all my post-install recommendations. It eliminates I believe all the tracking, adware, suggestions, Cortana, feeding the Bing/ChatGPT machine, telemetry, etc. Absolutely nothing breaks. I’ve had some seniors at some very prolific companies vet the guide by using it themselves — should be straightforward and to-the-click/keystroke for Windows 11 22H2 as of 2023-05-02.

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.

nailer• 3 years ago

I mainly use WSL and Windows Terminal. 11 is fine. So is 10. The tiling WM in Windows 11 is nice.

pcdoodle• 3 years ago

No, they come through our shop and still fully patched, glitch out in the most ridiculous ways related to start menu, search, etc. Also not very happy about all the ewaste this is going to create, our customers were fine with the performance of 2-7th gen cpus. The only good thing about it: still executes legacy software.

gumballindie9• 3 years ago

I’ll add another comment here as i am rather blown away by how far linux has come - why not recommend linux to your clients? They’d save money and get a better experience. If all they do is browse the web or read emails then linux is perfect for them. Let alone it can play steam games and runs some windows apps rather well these days. It will also reduce ewaste and give them better security and privacy.

justinclift2• 3 years ago

Wonder how well Steam's "Proton" would work for Windows business applications?

Outside of Steam of course. ;)

Might give even more runway to old, legacy Windows applications.

marklar423• 3 years ago

I was a big Windows user both at home and work, doing mainly .NET stuff.

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.

gumballindie9• 3 years ago

Linux is absolutely awesome as a desktop os. It looks and works better than windows, not to mention it’s garbage free and privacy friendly.

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.

atoav• 3 years ago

And it is customizable as heck!

What surprised me the most was the really good usability of something like the KDE Plasma desktop, even in comparison to MacOS.

comfypotato2• 3 years ago

I’ll insert a complaint here in a bid to have you convince me to give it another shot.

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.

NayamAmarshe3• 3 years ago

Same. Earlier I used to dual boot Windows 10 and KDE Neon but after I tried Windows 11, I just swore to never install Windows ever again and ZorinOS has been serving me well.

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™!

Night_Thastus• 3 years ago

To me, Win11 is basically identical to Win10. Some minor cosmetic differences, maybe some under the hood changes. Nothing noteworthy.

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.

antonyt• 3 years ago

This has been my experience as well, it makes basically no difference.

Minor pro - tabbed file explorer.

Minor con - no more checkbox to always show all tray icons.

chrismeller• 3 years ago

I agree. I do like some of the UI changes, but functionally it hasn't changed anything for me as a .Net for-the-web dev.

thesh4d0w• 3 years ago

Once you add https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher to fix the start menu / task bar, 100%.

xp842• 3 years ago

1. Is there a better description somewhere of what that does? (its vague README leaves me in the dark)

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.

stodor89• 3 years ago

It's not like MS will support Win10 until 2030 and you have a choice, is it?

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.

schemescape2• 3 years ago

I’m surprised there haven’t been any comments about not even being able to upgrade. My computer doesn’t have a TPM, so I’m stuck on Windows 10. I’m not sure what I’m missing out on, other than the taskbar being smaller and centered.

G3rn0ti2• 3 years ago

Even MS themselves explain how to bypass the TPM check on their support page (by means of a dedicated registry key „AllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU“). [1]

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-....

schemescape2• 3 years ago

Thanks! I hadn’t seen that before.

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).

jdboyd• 3 years ago

The start bar now has an option to move it back to the left.

heywire• 3 years ago

I recently got a new work laptop that came with Windows 11. I haven’t really noticed any differences aside from the new Windows Terminal (which I like a lot and have integrated with git bash), new Task Manager, and some visual changes. I still prefer to run Linux on my personal systems.

8note• 3 years ago

So far no, but I'm sure I won't have a choice eventually

ElevenLathe3• 3 years ago

I recently got a new laptop that came with Win11. I decided to test-drive it before wiping it and installing Linux. Honestly, once you set it up with a local account, it's much better than Win10 for one reason: it's easy to run Linux GUI programs alongside native Windows ones. This is possible on Win10 by installing a Windows Xll server and so on, but it's enough of a pain that I use the Cygwin W32 port of Emacs (my IT department no longer supports Linux workstations). With Win11 I can just use the real, Linux Emacs GUI from Ubuntu, which is a major improvement.

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.

Our_Benefactors• 3 years ago

WSL exists in windows 10 also. What’s the advantage of 11?

ElevenLathe3• 3 years ago

AFAICT there's no easy way to run Linux GUI apps in Win10 -- you need to run an X server in Windows and have the GUI apps connect over the "network". In Win11 it just works.

kevinherron• 3 years ago

I have 2 work laptops, an M1 MBP and a XPS 15 that I upgraded to Windows 11 a while back.

It's fine. Better than Windows 10 was. My explorer has tabs now, among a few other nice things. Nothing broke.

miamijoeboy• 3 years ago

lowly sysadmin/devops engineer here.

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.

lholden• 3 years ago

I switched to Windows 11 early on and honestly haven't really had any problems with it. It feels like Windows 10, but with a UI refresh. I mostly like what they've done with the refresh, though some things feel a bit bolted on (like the new right click menus).

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.

Ask HN: Windows 10-based devs, are you upgrading to Windows 11?

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