The most interesting addition we’ve seen in a while is rolling out to users on the experimental Dev Channel now: a modified version of the taskbar with much-improved handling of app icon overflow when users have too many apps open at once. Click an ellipsis button on your taskbar, and a new icon overflow menu opens up, allowing you to interact with any of those extra icons the same way you would if they were sitting on the taskbar.
This would be a big improvement over the current overflow behavior, which devotes one icon’s worth of space to show the icon for the app you last interacted with, leaving the rest inaccessible. That icon will continue to appear on the taskbar alongside the new ellipsis icon. Microsoft says that app icons in the overflow area will be able to show jump lists and other customizable shortcuts the same as any other app icon in the taskbar.
Nice little change, but it seems rather telling that they only got to this now.
Considering they have already announced they are going to have a major release every 3 years, as in Win 12 will be out before Win 10 reaches EOL? Honestly they can paint Win 11 pink and purple polka dot at this point unless they drop the batshit pointless system reqs (like a garbage $99 Atom Walmart special is a “better Win 10 experience” than a Ryzen 1600AF or I7 770K) I’m just gonna treat win 11 as the Star Trek “every other one is crap” release and wait on Win 12.
Or switch operating system as soon as Linux reaches true desktop level.
We’re talking about Windows UI/UX, so on the Linux side what are you referring to : Gnome, Kde, LXQT, LXDE, WFCE, Mate, Unity, Cinnamon ?
Roll the dices ?
Nah, the main issue mentioned about Win 11 doesn’t exist on older incarnations, so the Windows UI/UX is clearly degrading and will reach Linux desktop :p
As for the Linux side, I’m Xfce biased so I won’t comment much.
Except Linux doesn’t work on older hardware either, so its a moot point. want an example? Find me a driver that will give me hardware acceleration for the first gen AMD APUs on Linux…go on I’ll wait…you can’t, they don’t exist.
And there is already a hack that will let you bypass the system reqs for win 11 (and I’m sure one that will let you bypass the reqs for 12 when it comes out) but thanks to Linux refusing to have a standard ABI drivers for Linux only last as long as some poor schmuck is willing to constantly rewrite them for the latest kernel.
This is what always drove me nuts about the Linux crowd, the easily disproved myth of “Linux supports more hardware” which it can easily be proven doesn’t because its lack of a stable ABI means a driver that worked yesterday may not work today, meanwhile I have sound cards from the WinXP era running perfectly fine with full surround sound on Win10-thanks to backwards compatibility. When a Linux user can show me a driver from say Ubuntu 6 that you can download from the web and drop into Ubuntu whatever number they are up to now? THEN we can talk about it being a windows replacement.
Because as it is now I would argue its really more of a MacOS replacement except those with the money to buy the latest and greatest hardware, IE Mac users? Really do not want it, and the odds are if your hardware isn’t supported by Windows anymore the Linux support will be worse.
bassbeast,
It could be interesting if you could cite a scientifically credible study, but your sample size of 1 isn’t statistically significant to your claim. It’s easy to cherry pick parts to push the narrative that “Linux doesn’t work on older hardware”, but that doesn’t mean it is representative.
In my experience in trying linux on haphazardly supplied computers, more than half worked. Of course this is just anecdotal evidence, but even so it’s important to remember that experienced linux users don’t just select hardware at random and if you select supported hardware you’ll naturally have a much better experience.
Ironically I’ve often had more trouble installing windows since the network drivers had to be manually installed. Some users would need a separate computer to download windows drivers to a floppy/cd/thumb drive. I regularly used knoppix (a popular live-cd linux distro) to download windows drivers from manufacturer websites after windows was installed but before it could connect to the internet.
Sorry but Linux is a server OS and NOT a desktop OS. You can put all the lipstick on the pig all you want but at the end of the day you would need somewhere on the order of 100 million to brute force a stable ABI, replace all the CLI kludge with UI all the way down, and to staff a forum with actual tech support instead of “just write your own software loser” maladjusted Linux trolls to replace Windows for the vast majority and that isn’t gonna happen.
And don’t bring in “just try distro X” because ya know what? Been there done that and it never fails unless you have the most current hardware (and that hardware better be the same as 99% of the mainstream users) you can give it up Chuck, Linux support on anything else is p*ss poor at best. say what you want about Windows but I have hardware with Vista drivers working perfectly fine under win 10 (and with the system req bypass they will probably work just as fine on Win 11) but with Linux? You get told to throw the hardware away or write your own driver…which if I have to replace all my hardware anyway why would I not just stick with windows where my thousands of dollars in software works?
@bassbeat. Don’t know about early AMD APUs, but the eariliest Radeons from ATI are still supported.the AMD ones had shitty binary blobs and were only ever half ass supported.
Then again I don’t know why I bother responding as clearly I would not be able to convince you. As far as older hardware is concerned, Linux will still run (with gui) on at least Pentium 3 level systems with 512mb of RAM. Pretty sure the last version of Windows that will work on that is XP.
That is like saying “I know you asked about cars but we have camels”…uhh don’t really care about camels, thanks. Nobody but retro guys care about 15+ year old desktop GPUs, know what many in fact DO care about? That would be LAPTOPS and an insane number of those laptops came with APUs…and none of them work under Linux because as I said a lack of stable ABI makes driver support in Linux a royal clusterf*ck.
And what EXACTLY is your definition of “run”? Because I have seen way too many times Linux users say “Oh that will run Linux” only to find “run” means “half your hardware doesn’t work and the thing stutters like a Pentium 1 running Vista”. BTW you CAN run windows on something nearly that old as I have a Brazos AMD netbook which is probably on par with a late model P3…thanks to Nlite you can download “windows 10 Micro” and use your own key and voila! A Windows 10 that uses less than 600Mb of RAM and less than 3% CPU on the desktop but unlike Linux can run full 720p video thanks to having hardware acceleration which again does not work on Linux because no drivers.
So I’m sorry but as someone who has tried pretty much every flavor of Linux out there I can tell you Linux has as much in common with windows as a Sorny Polystation has to do with a PS5. Sure they may look similar at the shell level but once you start using it? You can tell its a server OS with a half baked poorly thought out kludge of a UI tacked on. Great for server OS, God awful mess of a desktop.
Linux will run with a GUI on systems with as little as 32MB ram… T2 SDE has been gotten running on 40Mhz sparcstations from the early 90s with as under 30MB in use on the desktop with a few terminals and such open.
It is also probably quite possible to run Linux in even less ram I know Slitax supported 16Mb ram booting from HDD not that long ago.
@cb88 KDE runs on a machine with 32MB of RAM ?
@leech
No sure that is a feasible end user desktop configuration, in the past I spent many many hours trying to get ATI Radeon working in various desktop Linux scenarios and gave up, it can work but it’s unreliable and breaks far too easily. I still have one older device using OpenSUSE that is basically constrained to kiosk mode as the later driver updates will kibosh the system. There have been several distros that have offer specific support for such versions but the scope is limited to say the least, and the small subset of gaming that is often cited as a end use case is not valid.
Most distros have now moved on to newer versions at the expense of older hardware, in this regard I do not see a major difference between any OS vendor / distro.
Actually you can relatively trivially run every Linux application since forever on modern Linux…you just need to have a way of supplying old applications with old libraries if they are dynamically linked … static applications have been 100% compatible since about 1998 or so probably maybe even longer.
bassbeast,
This is the opposite of my experience. New hardware can take some time to be supported by FOSS community drivers, which is a con, but once that hardware is supported long term hardware support can be much better than windows. YMMV but even before I switched to linux I had major gripes as a windows user about having to throw out working hardware when the manufacturer wouldn’t support the windows drivers any more.
I don’t know what planet you’re living on, but Linux will absolutely run on older hardware. In fact, it’s usually much better supported than modern hardware, just because there’s been time to write drivers. Sure, you’ll never get it running on a VAX, and you’ll struggle getting it running on an SGI machine, but anything post PII is really where Linux excels. If you really need a *NIX on something truly old and esoteric, BSD is there to bail you out.
In fact, i’d argue that if you need true stability and support, the BSD route is the one to take. The API and ABIs are extremely stable, the licensing is very permissive, and software support is on par with Linux. You just might have to roll your own packages and do some porting. It’s probably only worth the effort if you’re already rolling your own Linux distro and packages anyway.
I use linux as a desktop regularly. But it has been 20+ years, and it ain’t going to be a mainstream desktop replacement for most people.
It’s always going to be easier to get windows going on most x86 desktops than linux, and that is never likely to change at this point.
I recently tried Windows 11 in a VM using a local account only, Within the first couple minutes I discovered you can’t even use widgets without logging into a Microsoft account. I assume you can get around this with some kind of hack or trickery, but you shouldn’t have to because it’s completely idiotic. I get that Microsoft wants to know about and control everything you do, at all times, everwhere, but what possible gain is there in knowing I wanted to check a weather widget?!
Yeah, the only place I have it installed is on my macbook in Parallels. I use it… for like 5 seconds at a time before I find something that annoys me and shut it down. It is by far the worse version of windows since 3.1 (I haven’t used anything before, but they were crappy shells on top of DOS anyhow.)
May i remind you that Windows 8 was a thing
Windows has always followed the Star Trek “every other version sucks” rule so we really shouldn’t be surprised and the fact that they have already said there will be a Windows 12 in 2025 (before the EOL of Win 10) tells me even MSFT knows this version is gonna go over about as well as Windows “Hey have you heard of tablets?” 8 so they are going to use win 11 as a test bed and keep the few things the suckers…err I mean “Beta testers” like while chucking the rest.
> Windows has always followed the Star Trek “every other version sucks” rule
You mean in that some versions suck and other don’t and it is certainly not alterane versions.
Let’s try it out.
Win 2000 – Great! First NT that worked as a copnsumer OS with directx meaning you did not have to play around with the horrible 9x line anymore.
SO…
Win XP – Sucks? Well a lot of people disagree but personally yes it did and was avoided until win 2000 stopped gettign DX updates. (but many disagree and even left the new ui enabled, so we already have 2 paths).
WIn Vista – Great? Well it’s holding up for me still! Why First 64 bit OS so I could actually use my ram and was fine at SP1.
Win 7 – Sucks. Well no it was good, but it since it was little more than Vista SP1a maybe we can call it that to keep it going? (No entry to see here!).
Win 8 – Sucks, Still working (if you discount the hacks). Yes it was bad.
Win 8.1 – Great! Yes it was (and yes is a seperate entry with regards to EOL etc so does need to be here).
Windows 10 version 1507 – Sucks? No 10 was an improvement but again muchly win 8.1a so onward….
Windows 10 version 1511 – Sucks? Can;t remember there were some bad points especiaslly upgrading those horrible windows tablets with no space that they eventually ironed out in later veresiosn but that was probably later.
The other 11 versions of win 10? Dunno, beats me I pretty much kept up to date. Certainly stopped supporting the os being on a spinning disk at some point or required a constant connection to the internet (supporting family machines that were on disks and mostly turned off the os would grind to a halt because it wanted to do updates, a update (or clean) install from the latest version fixed things, or course I never had these issues myself.
Win 11 12H2 – Great? Sucks? Yes there were issues, nothing show stopping, however I was having an issue on win 10 at the tiem so just went to 11 instead (it was eventually fixed but it took ages, the win 10 dev team was probably just a part tiem janitor by this point).
Win 11 22H2 – It’s getting confusing now! But yes I am there running the beta. Yes there are still issues (unless you write it yourself it’s not going to… Well in fact it will becuase you will work around those issues).
Who cares? Run what you want to. Just don’t pretend there is method to what works for everyone. And hey even though my main box is win 11 beta channel, it’s not like I don’t use many other OS’s ervyday. Android (12), ChromeOS, Linux, Win 10.
I’m sure that you had a lot of fun writing this message but I’m sorry to destroy your party. After windows 2000, Microsoft released Windows ME and then XP.
Soo assuming that 2000 was good… Your while reply is invalid 🙂
Windows certainly doesn’t follow the good/bad alternate pattern. Sure, some versions do, but ultimately it doesn’t
Also, it’s largely dependent on use case. NT4 was deemed excellent for many at the time, when used as a server and workstation. But as a hobbyist, it’ll fall flat on it’s face in comparison to 98SE. Same can be argued for the more modern Windows 8. It was a great concept, and worked very well on tablet PC’s, but it was just terrible on desktops. As a fork of Windows, it could have had a great future, but Microsoft’s idea of “One OS To Rule Them All” just patently didn’t work.
The123king,
I agree it’s not 1:1, sometimes it’s 2:1, etc. But it is cyclic and I think it has to be out of necessity to convince people it’s improving. Without the “bad” cycles an ideal WIMP GUI optimized for public needs becomes boring and the improvements become marginal with diminishing returns. I think internally microsoft knows that ups and downs can help them control perception. By controlling the cycle they can exploit people’s buying behavior to buy on “ups” when they otherwise might wait till EOL or longer with only marginal/asymptotic improvements.
Actually this is not quite true.
If you worked in my gig, R&D / Sensors and the like, you’d be going crazy trying to ensure support for legacy devices and hardware. It’s a mishmash of legacy and cutting edge. Users want to a new interface, but they require the old hardware in many cases. The new OS is often easier to use, more secure, more compatible with modern services, etc., etc., but often lacks retrospective hardware support. I appreciate what I refer to is a niche application, but globally there is a lot of us. If we go the way of the dinosaurs so will things like regional MRI and other low cost services that most people take for granted. That is a real world application that doesn’t care about playing hardware accelerate Doom on a 20 year old laptop!
cpcf,
I’ve seen that as well. Sometimes it’s not even a case of “requiring old hardware”, but that replacing it prematurely is needlessly wasteful. Even just for a regular Joe it sucks when serviceable hardware becomes unservicable due to software/driver incompatibilities. There are a variety of ways to tackle these problems and I think many would be effective. Alas the business incentives for manufacturers typically favor obsolescence and short life cycles; this is the real culprit 🙁
Yes, historically this was clearly the case. although now I am starting to see a client based push forcing providers into more sustainable solutions. Planned obsolescence is no longer fashionable, it’s not woke!
But interestingly this also has a side effect, those regional facilities, hospitals, labs, research centres, universities, the ones that lived cheaply on big city hand me downs, have a problem coming when the city favours upgrades and updates ahead of replacements. The low carbon triple baseline greenery is not great for everybody!