I’ve been out of the loop keeping up with release information and expectations for Windows 11. What are some positive things you have heard that may entice me to upgrade from Win 10 sooner then later?
OR what are some concerns, ie stability, security, that could keep me away from it?
Typically I am an everyday user, media consumer, and gamer (mid level in terms of performance expectations) but want to know what I am getting into beforehand.
The ability to run Android apps, though that feature will not ship immediately.
Is there a timetable somewhere of feature releases?
But we’ve had Bluestacks for a long time now.
I think this is the way Microsoft gets mobile device telemetry. In before their own mobile OS and device announcement on 2027 
. Its gonna be AOSP based and it will be their method of embrace, extend, and extinguish for the mobile market. Google probably wont allow it to happen.
there is a video from one of the linus tech tips channels that goes over 11, unfortunately there has not been to much in-depth investigating .
personally im not thrilled about the forced hardware requirements and foresee it as bad news in the future . and while you will be able to bypass these. their stringent nature, to me at least forbears possibly further restrictions that will be at microsofts whim.
other wise it seems like a routine update to the os adding more unneeded features that should be provided by third party devs. All the while providing no real improvements to the windows kernel and or subsystems that makes a damn difference performance wise . yeah maybe a bit more secure in the short term but dont fool yourself, it as unsecure as any other os floating around out there in the wild.
while not as big as deal as moving from 7 to 10. it is still a unfriendly upgrade to the consumer.
but much is the way of things these days you dont own shit and be thankful for what the corps let you have …
Having played around with Win11 on a colleagues laptop, it is a lot like MacOS in the sense of it looking good-ish but being horrible to use.
At least you can (as of now) make it so the task-bar left aligns…
Using it on a Surface Pro X, switching from a “desktop use” to a “tablet use” is seamless. Windows just increase a little the spacing between everything when removing the keyboard, without being ugly or losing the functionality and look of the desktop mode (looking at Windows 10 horrendous tablet mode). But selection of text on touch is still a pain in the butt sometime.
And the setting menu is more useful than in Windows 10. Still didn’t had to go on the legacy menu.
The update to Win11 is so underwhelming that I decided to upgrade to Linux instead. It’s more or less a Win10 2.0 with a facelift and new features that are more trouble than worth. If I didn’t go for Linux, I would stick to my Win10 copy. Stagnation isn’t worth the trouble.
I heard good things about the new Windows Server 2022 though.
Realistically, Google may be shipping Fuschia by then.
I have decided I am going to begin using Linux more often through the end of the year. I will compare which distro I want to potentially move forward with come the new year. For Win10/11 use cases I will just run a VM and get more proficient with virtualization and such
in the end most distros are basically the same, try to avoid distrohopping if you can, it’s just a waste of time
for people who want more up to date repos there is fedora and arch (and derivatives as endeavour and manjaro)
for normies and windows drop-outs there is ubuntu
for people who wants max reliability there’s debian
focus more on the desktop environment, those vary a lot
I’ve been starting with kubuntu and xubuntu. I haven’t tried a debian version yet but am interested. Is it possible or “easy” to change from one desktop environment to another within the same realm? ie xubuntu to kubuntu etc?
IIRC you can switch DE on a session basis, the vanilla installer (netinst) for debian lets you choose multiple DE’s
then when you login you choose which one
I find it counter-productive, but for weak computers I use xfce and modern ones I go KDE or gnome (when I’m in the mood for a bit of suffering)
Next step for me is going to be creating a list of comparative programs so that my transition can be as seamless as possible.
If you dont distrohop, how will you know what DE experience is good enough for you?
I’ve tried linux in the decades past and I did really like the idea and simplicity of XFCE. When I did a full linux jump few years ago, watching youtube and other fullscreen videos was a really bad experience with its screen tearing issues (unsure how it is these days).
Even if you did settle with a DE, how will you know if your distro has the better implementation than the rest? What if the best DE implementation was on a regular update cadence but you want a rolling release distro?
New users will have to distrohop, unfortunately. Its not really a waste of time for newcomers because its their time to:
Would recommend cinnamon if you want something between gnome and kde
Can confirm. I hopped from arch anywhere, to antergos, to manjaro, to opensuse, but settled with fedora. I found that fedora was a good middle ground. I got more stability than manjaro/antergos if I don’t update for a week and newer drivers compared to opensuse
Do you not see the inherent contradiction here? You’ve outlined a bunch of differences that you’d only experience by distrohopping, and also pointed out that some distros are better for people who are coming straight from Windows than others. Judging people for not diving straight into Arch seems weird, especially given that there are people who are equally happy to judge you for not jumping straight into FreeBSD. Aside from any of this, trying new things is fun and is probably a large part of what brought people to Linux in the first place.
I do plan to distro hop a bit. But I think hoping within VMS is the go to method for me before taking the plunge. It will be easy enough to do 90+% of my daily work that way.
I am daily driving Windows 11 on my work XPS13. Runs fine and has been reliable. Some nuances with the way they changed things like right click menus but so far so good.
I had enough of windows shenanigans. I switched (for now) to Ubuntu as my main system (for about a year now). I use my home system mostly for gaming and websurfing. I only had to give up one game i was playing due to anti cheat problems. I “banned” windows into my work laptop.
So far I am happy. The inconsistent User interface from Windows 10 which got even worse and confusing in Windows 11 preview is a sign for me that the team around the microsoft windows product line isnt really working together in order to get a decent user expierence. I mean windows has its place in my work live for sure. But in recent years MacOS and various linux distros made such a great leap forward that they in my eyes overtook windows in the private sector.