Leaks confirm low takeup for Windows 11

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 385 points – Leaks confirm low takeup for Windows 11
theregister.com

Leaks confirm low takeup for Windows 11::Time to rethink Windows 10 support cycle then?

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Windows 10 replaced 7 for most people because 8 was a piece of junk. Windows 7 was old by the time 10 came out so there was pent up demand and 10 was a pretty solid showing.

There’s not much that’s compelling about 11 and they’ve introduced unwanted things. It shouldn’t be surprising that people prefer to stay on 10, which is one of the better operating systems Microsoft has ever released. Combine that with the dominance of Linux in the server space and what seems like increased adoption on the desktop and it’s a recipe for poor numbers. For a lot of developers, it’s easier being on a Linux desktop when Linux is the deployment target.

Is there even any actual positive for upgrading? I haven't heard a single good thing about Windows 11 vs 10

Yeah mostly I've only heard people defending Windows 11 with "It's not that bad, guys!"

I actually love Windows 11 personally (no I'm not paid by MS). I get an extra hour of battery life on 11 somehow, and finally like 2 years in the right click menu is getting support from 3rd party apps so it's not just in the way and is actually nice and fast unlike a bloated legacy right click menu.

Windows 11 has a lot of issues, but most of them are carry overs from windows 10. The same work arounds work for 11 as 10 so if you do an upgrade you don't even have to deal with them.

Thanks, I've disabled the right click Win 11 menu on launch as it was terrible, missed a lot of functions, but good to know it's better now.

Windows 11 Pro is pretty good!

Windows 11 Home is pretty stinky!

I use 11 for work and 10 for my personal usage still.

I'm the same, but I would actually like 11 on my home gaming pc though. I've grown tired and sometimes frustrated with 10 after spending so much time with 11 now. 10 feels so clunky at times. And with me using startisback on my 11 pc i would say the whole interface of my 11 pc is way better than my 10 pc

For anyone reading this, you can easily upgrade your windows installation locally for free with "windows activation scripts" (hosted on GitHub).

It even has a oneliner you paste into a command prompt which guides you through.

And yeah it sure sounds shady, but it works great and Microsoft will only get money from selling my data as they would do anyways even if I paid.

No idea. I haven’t heard anything positive either. It’s been like 3 years since I’ve touched a Windows machine. I had to use Windows 10 at an old job and it was a solid OS. Stable, reliable, can’t really say anything negative about it. I prefer Linux though.

Rounded corners lmao. But actually the UI makes the OS feel more complete and polished compared to Windows 10. You can never know how much you missed out until you try it.

Given that I pretty much only use my windows PC for gaming, I think I'll pass on upgrading for round corners lol

Yeah, I'd never upgrade. Got a new laptop for work. It has 11. It's ostensibly the same thing. It opens my programs. It came with shit that I had to get rid of. Not that unlike 10.

My PC has 10. Windows 11 would have to be the second coming of Christ for me to upgrade, mainly because I don't have a need to upgrade. When I build a new one, I'll more than likely get whatever is current, and I'll scour the Internet for little secrets of how to improve my experience. At the end of the day it'll make no difference. It's not ME or anything. It's just an OS.

The UI is still missing basic features. The start menu is fucked.

The OS is fine, the Desktop is under cooked.

I saw in my old line of work that most business over a certain size just have a few key programs that need to work and could not give two shits about whatever new OS was out if it could not run those programs. The fact that in places like the banking sector many of the programs are UNIX era and need emulation just to use on a desktop and not being spied is often a requirement it would make no sense what so ever to upgrade. I have also seen an uptick in Linux and Mac workstations as both are looking more attractive then the wild ride windows has become.

Oh and in case people think security on older OS is a concern for companies I know for a fact that several ATMs in north America are still running on XP (upgraded about 7 years ago from 2000).

My last gig was as a CIO in a fairly large organization and we had stringent infosec requirements due to the industry we were in. Old operating systems and software are absolutely an issue, although it still doesn’t stop some companies from running them.

Most of the malware going around exploits patched vulnerabilities. It literally takes seconds and not exactly a high skill level to compromise a machine that’s missing security updates. Regular patching is without a doubt one of the best controls you can have in place. The other big issue was social engineering. If you don’t effectively tackle those two things it doesn’t matter what else you do because you will be breached.

Besides that, you’re mostly right. We were all over the security updates but didn’t care for other upgrades because they introduce instability. It’s the last thing you want with thousands of endpoints and a bunch of shitty enterprise apps. Run it until the wheels fall off or it’s approaching EOL for security updates.

Oh sorry if it came across as old software not being a security issue just that most places don't care or plan around it (those ATMs running XP are running a very stripped and locked down version).

I remember quite a few places paying extra for a little bit longer for updates just due to how rough the change was going to be. I think most of the time when something did go wrong at a place it was (in this order):

  • Social engineering
  • Some sort of update that was not tested enough (or at all)
  • A new roll out going bad (this happened way more then it should have)
  • Hardware failure (often because a sales guy did not know the difference between "redundancy" and "reduced failure rate"
  • Actual disaster (I remember getting calls about a bank networking device calling home with fan errors as the building it was in was floating down the river)

For sure social engineering. That eventually becomes the most serious threat. The jackpot is getting to a user. They are the ones with access to money, confidential data, etc. and it often won’t set off alarms because it doesn’t look out of the ordinary. Get them to do something on your behalf or grab their credentials and you basically get to bypass security.

Yeah no way to make an alarm for say looking at their own confidential files. The key to social engineering working is having someone stupid with credentials, and you can not fix stupid. Oddly enough a lot of the issues I saw where on the call centre side (I guess paying people nothing to do that job may have been a mistake). Then again you you get access to a single helpdesk person you get a silly amount of access everywhere.

You’d be surprised at how effective some hackers are. I was in an industry where we generally employed smart and educated people. I always told them the person on the other side doesn’t eat if they don’t fool someone. We would push education and protocols. For example, multiple approvals for a wire transfer over different channels and verbal verification of the account number after positive identification.

These people are submitting phony job applications with infected resumes. They email back and forth posing as a prospective client and will even talk on the phone before sending infected documents. They send fake invoices. They call the help desk. They forge checks. They try impersonation wire transfer scams. They send you fake marketing type packages or gifts with infected USB drives. They try to set up bogus interviews for articles or award nominations and pump you for information. They pose as vendors like printer repair. Or someone with some bullshit excuse asking an office manager in a remote office to unlock the server room. Some asshole showed up once and tried to get a receptionist to plug in a thumb drive. They will try to exploit every function of an organization. They are relentless and whenever you think you’ve seen it all there’s something new.

Windows XP is also not actually that insecure. You just have to not download malware really. It's not like just having an XP machine gives hackers free reign by default.

Even more so when used in a device that does not have a user.

banking sector many of the programs are UNIX era

Somewhere in the distance a mainframe sysop with blue tie is protesting that statement but nobody's hearing him over the noise of the rotating drum.

Not allowed to wear the ties anymore (due to the rotating drum).

Windows 10 replaced 7 for most people because 8 was a piece of junk.

Mostly true; most people who wound up with 8 or 8.1 did so by buying a computer during that brief period of time, few people wanted it, few people liked it, and many people avoided using it. Especially computer enthusiasts did in fact go from 7 to 10.

Windows 7 was old by the time 10 came out so there was pent up demand and 10 was a pretty solid showing.

That's not how I remember events. When Windows 10 was young it was not very popular; they got a lot of backlash for that "Upgrade to Windows 10! [yes] [not yet]" pop-up that took no answer as a yes and installed the OS on idling computers overnight.

Maybe that was an issue with Windows 10 on the consumer side. I don't have experience with the home versions. In any case, it was a good upgrade and it provided more secure desktops for most people. On the corporate side, we were pretty happy to go to 10 and it was a smooth process. We had to do it in phases and we got a lot more calls from users wanting to move higher on the list than complaints. There were only a few asking to be last and the only real problem we had was one guy who demanded we buy him a refurbished Surface that had a specific old version of 8 pre-installed because it was "the best version ever".

You forgot Vista. Nobody wanted Vista because it was a piece of junk. 8 was ok, but since 7 was still supported and people hate change they stuck with 7. The worst thing about 8 was the dumb full screen start menu... once that was gone after 8.1 I enjoyed it just fine and was pretty close to windows 10.

Same goes for 11 for me. I don't mind it, I hate the tracking and built in news and ads but it's pretty easy to stop a lot of that. I think the thing I hate the most is the small stuff they release for 11 that 10 could easily have but they will never release it for 10. Like tabbed notepad, or window arrangement, and now built in winrar support. I love these things, but hold them back from 10 just to get people to switch without realizing it's not enough for people to care that much.

Vista was pretty bad. That was another one most people skipped. They had 2 excellent releases prior to that - 2000 and XP - and then shit the bed with Vista. I still think 8 was worse though. But 2000 was my personal favorite Microsoft OS so what the hell do I know.

People seem to forget about how with 8 Microsoft tried to make everything fullscreen squares, the desktop also being a square but by changing settings you can get away with using the "Desktop" square exclusively.

I had a laptop that came with Win8.1. I forget exactly why I refused to upgrade to 10, partially because I had switched to Linux by then.

Windows 8/8.1 was a bit of a brainfuck, because they introduced that tile-based UI which opened apps in single-tasking full screen mode like a phone or tablet OS. The traditional Windows desktop was treated as one of those full screen apps. As were several of the baked-in default utility programs, to include the fucking PDF reader. So if you were working on an essay or something in Word on the desktop, and then went to open a PDF as a reference, instead of opening a new window, the entire screen turned orange, and then the PDF loaded full screen without any way visible way to get back to the desktop.

Such "apps" could be tiled, but in a different way via a different system than window tiling on the desktop. The desktop itself could be tiled.

There's one other thing I always hated about the Windows 8 Tile Hell: The tiles intermittently moved. Weird connection: You know that weird horror game Roberta Williams made, Phantasmagoria? There was a sequel second game in that franchise made that bore little resemblance to the first other than it was a horror/confrontingly adult FMV game made by Sierra. In it, you play as a guy slowly going insane, and one way they simulate going insane is they make you sit at a computer and read work documents, except sometimes some of the words flash for a brief moment to a scarier word like "murder" or "stab" or something. That's the effect that Tile Hell had. While you were trying to find the app you wanted, the labels of some of them would change in your peripheral vision, drawing your attention to them.