Windows 12

Windows 12: Paintbrush now comes with ads to Microsoft's subscription AI Paintbrush service. Also bucket fill is now a $0.49 DLC.
- "What to make quick copies of certain areas of the image? Buy 100 packs of both 'Copy' and 'Paste' tokens now on sale in the Microsoft store! Each use of Copy or Paste function uses only 1 token. Make sure you stock up for 'Back to School'!"
  
  And don't forget! you have to pay to shut down your pc!
  
  That's despicable. Us real users will subscribe to Windows (I'll subscribe to the basic package with the CMD/powershell add-on package). Windows will bundle the subscription with my Office 365 subscription so I only have one easy monthly payment! Plus my Fusion 360 and Photoshop subscription, Backblaze subscription, Google Drive subscription......
- That's going to be in the free upgrade to Windows 10 and 11. Back porting some critical features to old, but still supported releases, is an essential part of good customer support.

Remember when Microsoft said Windows 10 will be the last version of Windows?
- Technically it was just a Microsoft Tech Evangelist that said that, in a non official capacity, and I'm pretty sure the sales people took him to the torture chamber after that.
  From a technical point of view, there was nothing stopping Microsoft from making Windows 10 a rolling release, so I can see how some naive fools might have convinced themselves that their employer wouldn't be shitty to their users for the first time ever.
  
  It wasn't just a tech evangelist. Our Microsoft sales people were telling us that feature updates would mean no more major os versions.
  
  at some point we'll be renting windows, not buying it. so there will be a "last windows you'll ever buy". if microsoft had their way, we'd be at that point now (they've run trials on subscription-based windows way back in the early win7 days). but us lowly users are probably 'safe' until whatever's after 12.
- Tbf, Windows 11 is just Windows 1X…
  
  Why didn't Microsoft name it Windows 10++? Are they stupid?
  
  Windows X11
  
  With NT kernel.

Don't let your guard down. Maybe this time they'll fully pull the TPM/UEFI trigger and make it impossible to install any other OS on new PCs... they have lots of leverage over manufacturers to tighten the screws on the BIOS and boot process.
- The European Commission would appreciate the multi billion euro "donation" from Microsoft if they did something so obviously anti competitive.
  
  I agree, but also when has a threat of a fine ever stopped a capitalist from doing what they want? They just call it the cost of doing business.
- Time to learn how to hack motherboards I guess
  
  Time to not buy from shitty OEMs that agree to do this
- I don't think they would hard shoot themselves in the foot like that thankfully/sadly? idk my opinions on it. They would start with company graded devices before doing a consumer lockdown, since they are less apt to get massive backlash from that, they have tried already and backtracked iirc with lenovo systems
  
  I hope you're right. But the only reason it hasn't gone as far as it has it because everyone watches them and pushes back. I remember the ARM-based Windows laptops they tried pushing, which had fully-locked bootloaders (WinRT?) That's their endgame...
- That's never gonna fly as long as the EU exists. They'd never allow it.
  
  I sincerely hope you're right :)

Win 12 is obligated to be good due to the "every other version of Windows" rule, which has been true forever.
- Let's agree on "less bad".
  
  I was speaking relatively haha
- Windows 11 has tabbed file explorer, a package manager, it's quick, the interface looks nice and feels nice, and it's been really stable for me. I don't know where the complaints are at, it's been great. All they need to do is regress all of the ads-in-your-OS stuff from 10. Bring back the start menu that doesn't hang for 30 seconds looking something up online before showing you your installed programs.
  
  (They're not going to regress that)
  (They'll add more)
  
  Glad to see Microsoft has finally caught up to Fedora circa 2009.
  
  Honestly I just assumed it was bad because of the forced update from Win10 thing lol. Well, that and ads baked in.
- Is Windows 11 worse than 10? I honestly haven't noticed much difference (after moving the taskbar icons to where they belong on the right).
  
  The issue is that Win11 requires a computer with TPM built in and that only applies to computers from the last couple years. Just speaking from personal experience, most of my friends with PCs can't upgrade to 11 even if they wanted to.
  
  It might as well be the same but with more features moved to registry
- Whats wrong with windows 11
- 8 was better than 10
- Windows 11 was better than 10 aesthetically tho?
  
  I'll take an ugly OS that works properly over a gorgeous one that doesn't any day of the week.
  
  Vista was better aesthetically than Windows xp, it was still dog shit.
  Also, heavily disagree. Literally the only good thing windows 11 did imo was finally unifying some of the settings that were split between the settings app and the OG control panel.
  
  Reddit hivemind is back to downvote any opinion that they disagree with. Like the other commenter said, I prefer functionality in place of design.
  Even though I found 11's UI far more polished, the UX is a disaster with yet another refresh of elements that didn't need any changes.

Okay I'm not very technical but I hate Microsoft with every fiber of my being and want desperately to break from them but can't bring myself to switch my regular and gaming PCs to Linux. It just feels like too much work like I'd be starting over and most of all I just fear change. Is there a good YT series/channel or blog or something I can check out that might make things a little less intimidating?
- Dude, with the exception of Gamepass, Linux gaming is really easy.
  If you're okay with Redhat/Fedora, using Nobara Linux (it's a spin-off, unofficial, but by the guy who does a lot of the Proton [magic compatibility sauce] stuff, GloriousEggroll, who AFAIK is a dev at RedHat) literally installs everything you need.
  Steam → Steam
  GoG/Epic → Heroic Launcher
  Amazon/Blizzard → Lutris
  Gamepass → You have to use the cloud version with Edge browser
  Click, install, game.
  There's only a few Anticheat PITA titles still (I believe Valorant is one) that won't work.
  
  Notable to the list of titles that won't work is Destiny 2.
  Having said that, I've been using Linux as my daily driver for everything, including gaming, since June, and I haven't run into many issues. It's certainly worth the minor hassle entailed to get some titles to work, if only to get away from Windows 100%. You can always dual boot.
  If you aren't very technical, I would also consider Linux Mint. You won't always have access to the latest and greatest, but it's simple and very easy to learn if you're coming from Windows.
  
  Heroic Launcher recently added support for amazon, a lot easier to set up than Lutris.
  
  Heroic has Amazon games
  
  That’s really great if you don’t play online games, but 90% of what my gaming pc is used for is online, competitive gaming that doesn’t work on Linux.
  Pretty much any game with an anti-cheat is a non-starter since anti-cheats being Linux compatible tends to mean they’re less effective. (Yes EAC is a config switch, but it runs at a less effective level on all platforms if enabled)
- hit me up and I'll walk you through it if you want. there's tons of online resources but I know it's always easier to have a helping hand from someone who's done it before. I'm no expert, but I've been daily driving Linux for years.
  
  Could I take you up on that offer? ( eventually^tm )
- Folks have mentioned dual boot before but you can also run Linux directly from a usb stick, without changing anything on your computer. You can try it to see what it's like and when you remove the stick it'll be like it was never there.
- I saw something about dual booting. I know you want to game but start small. Try a virtual machine. They aren't difficult to setup and there are hundreds of easy tutorials. Get a feel for Linux. See how you feel and then dual boot. When you are comfy then migrate the truth is this community pushed Linux hard and that's because it is mainly FOSS and it is private or more private rather.
  However, no matter what anyone wants to tell you. Linux absolutely has its quirks and sometimes they get technical. There is a learning curve and some issues can divulge into multiple problems. This kind of thing can be frustrating but shouldn't stop you from learning and experimenting. I like Linux but I also appreciate that Windows for an average consumer does what it needs to.
  The other thing is there is one OSX and up. There is one Windows version. There is an insane amount of Linux distributions. The easiest to learn are Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and if you want something more lightweight and true to force you to learn then you can just install Debian.
- You can have multiple operating systems installed and choose which one you want to use during boot. So just install GNU/Linux on a separate partition or a separate drive (a bit easier). Then try to use GNU/Linux as your main system. Install everything you need on it and configure it they want you want. Only switch to Windows when you absolutely have to. So you don't have to be a GNU/Linux expert right away and you can choose when to remove Windows. It can be a gradual change.
  I don't know any good videos for beginners, but you can just look up answers to specific problems when you need them. If you will still have Windows, there is nothing to worry about. You can always ask for help here as well. So don't wait and install GNU/Linux today! Choose the distribution you want to use, find a video on how to install it and start using it.
  Here is a link to a video explaining the Free Software movement if you are curious why this operating system was created https://youtu.be/Ag1AKIl_2GM. Maybe it will motivate you.
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/Ag1AKIl_2GM
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
- Dualboot Ubuntu and experiment there. That is what I did and loved the OS
- Look at protonDB for game compatibility and try out a live USB with some easy to use linux version like Ubuntu. Most games will work except if they have anticheat.
- Linux Mint is as easy as Windows to set up imo. Maybe try that on a stick
- Depends what you need to do, there are apps abd games that if you can't leave behind you'll either won't be able to run or you will have to do a lot of work to get running. If you don't use the Adobe suite and your games are officially supported on Linux (check them out on protondb.com) then you're good to go.
  If you want distro suggestions I can tell you my opinionated selection.
  Sorry, I have watched so many videos, yet I don't remember exactly who goes in depth and presents with a simple step by step guide
- You've got some time to plan out your transition :)
  I'd pick up a Raspberry Pi 400 or a renewed Steam Deck depending on your budget. Those devices have amazing communities and both will build familiarity and confidence with the environment just through play. Find a project that interests you with one of those devices and follow along trying to re-create it. That's where you'll find most of your blog/YT stuff. I'd be happy to help try and find a project if you'd be up for talking about some of your interests or hobbies.
  IMO the most important thing is to start using cross platform applications (E.g. LibreOffice, the GIMP) on Windows as well as you start learning the Linux environments. Especially if you are coming from the windows 7 or earlier era of gaming PC building, actually installing Linux is a piece of cake. Once you have confidence with the programs you'll be using and the resources available you'll have conquered a lot of the fear.
  Honestly you'd be fine starting out with installing linux yourself 90% of the time, but I think it's worth the peace of mind to start out with a pre-installed distro on a well standardized platform like the rPi 4 or the Steam Deck.
  
  Or just create a VM.
- I'd suggest setting up linux in a virtual machine first to get familiar with it first. There's many many distros out there and if you don't like the one you're trying, just try another one. When you have one you like, you can install it for real.
  It's not nearly as hard as people make it out to be. For most distros you'll likely have a system with a browser, libre office, steam (except games aren't going to work well in a VM), etc. up and running in about an hour or two. It only really gets tricky if you're trying to get some janky hardware working.

Windows 12 dev employee: what if ... what if... We break the taskbar into bits.
Wait wait wait.... I think we can uh... maybe just maybe not add bloat... Turns around to see the employer.... Gulp
Turns back to screen... Adding bloat is always the answer... Right boss?
- I am waiting for an taskbar, entirely replaced by bing chat. You will never find anything with seconds of the delay, besides internet websites and is horrible to use with bad internet. Offline mode will also not be available anymore, because Microsoft needs funktion critical telemetry
- The Start menu will now be hosted in SharePoint Online so that your shortcuts are available everywhere!
- If they break it into bits, maybe they can allow it to move to the side of the screen!
  Then I can move directly from 10 to 12.
  
  Didn't use win11 for some time, TIL this is not allowed (at least not easily)
- I do love polybar, though.

Kindof proud to say I never installed anything after Windows 10, including that.
- Same after Windows 8.1 ! 🥳
  I've had to use Windows 11 a tiny bit for work and it was the most painful experience I had for a while. Most apps I used on there had obvious bugs, like the VPN chosen by my company requiring me to reboot every time it goes to sleep ...
  
  Actually I totally forgot 8.1 existed. 😀 Same here in that case!
- XP for me!
- I quit after Windows 2000. XP seemed like it just added bloat to force you to buy a new computer without adding anything useful and my computer wouldn’t run it. I used 2000 until I couldn’t any more then got an Ubuntu disc when they used to mail them out for free and never looked back.
  
  Windows 2000 was a low-key disaster, but I get not wanting to use the fisher-price interface.
  But man, did Win2k fanboys beat that one point to death to try and slander XP . 😂
  (to be fair: XP before SP2 was an unmigigated disaster as well. It just got a fix eventually, but 2k never did)

Windows 10 will be the last version of Windows.
- ..before the year of the Linux desktop
  
  I think we reached a singularity here...

Probably only supports chromium browsers, such as the only browser you'll ever need Microsoft ~~Explorer~~ Edge™

Used Ubuntu for a year and while initially it was nice, I got tired of having to spend two weeks learning which magic spells to chant at my computer every time I wanted to install a given application.
I'd use Mac again, except that it tries to punish you every time you go outside the Apple box. For me, Windows is the right balance of ease of use, scaling degrees of complexity, and ability to boldly go where I have no damn business going.
Your experience may vary, and that's good, because you shouldn't have to like what I like, and vice versa.
- I've actually started to find Windows to be more difficult than Linux for many things.
  Simply because windows requires using config user interfaces and they keep on changing where the setting UI I need to use can be found. When I search for instructions on how to do something, many times the instructions are for a different version of windows so I have to spend a lot of time trying to find where they've moved the setting to.
  Sure some bash command can seem basically like a magic incantation. But I've learned enough to understand bash well enough to know when an incantation is suspicious, the rest is just copy and pasting text into a terminal window.
  And really "apt install" is what I'm doing 99% of the time. Sure it's not clicky clicky, but it's consistent.
- Yup. I've been using linux off and on since middle school - just installed Arch on my laptop because I felt like tinkering and such, but I've tried dozens of distros over the years, even fully switching for months at a time, and for a daily driver Windows is still unbeatable for me - sometimes I do feel like messing with my computer, but not all the time.
  I rarely have to tinker with Windows more than a bit to get it doing what I want.
  However, I do wanna get to the point where I'm as comfortable/knowledgeable with Linux as I am with Windows, but it's definitely a wildly different beast.
- I find it wild that your experience is that Linux is difficult to install software, but that said: I'm not constantly trying to install Windows software.
  
  It’s probably why windows 12 will continue to remove words and replace actions with icons. Eventually the whole OS will be hieroglyphs for buttons.
- I'd use Mac again, except that it tries to punish you every time you go outside the Apple box
  I'll admit I haven't used a Mac for a little over 5 years now, but when I did use one this did not match my experience at all. I never had any trouble getting it to do what I wanted, and I rarely used any Apple ecosystem stuff because I was always Apple laptop + windows desktop + Android phone and needed cross-platform tools.
  It's not as free as Linux for sure, but all these people talking about a walled garden feel like they've hardly used a Mac at all and are just assuming it must be similar to iOS, because nothing about my experience felt like a walled garden.
  
  Mac is definitely the lowest wall in Apple's garden. Most people should be able to step over.

I have no idea what Windows 11 contains...
- Ads
- it's basically just windows 10 but reskinned, rebranded and released as a "new operating system"
  
  They added android apps, they're slowly switching to Linux. It's going to be EdgeOS, maybe based on arch instead of gentoo? :-D
- A start button that by default is not in the corner.
  
  That's not the worst part. The worst part is how I can no longer move my taskbar to my second monitor. It is now locked to my first.
  
  There is so much to critic about win 11 But that really is just personal preference..
- Each new version of Windows is just Microsoft trying to further tighten the screws on its captive userbase.
  They've not brought anything of real value to customers in years.
  
  They’ve not brought anything of real value to customers in years.
  They made some half-decent BASIC interpreters for 8-bit computers. That's about it.
- Malware, Adware, Spyware
- outside of the more neutral/negative features people mentioned, some of the major additions is better windows snap management (presets for organizing windows on a screen, and adjusting window sizes), and tabbed folders. It's also meant to be used for windows subsystem for android for android app usage, but you can technically do that with windows 10 with some workarounds.
- It's W10 but they moved the start bar to the middle so it looks more like a Mac.
- More ways to direct you to Bing, trash political news and celebrity gossip
- The only interesting feature is WSL2 with the possibility to "natively" mount Linux filesystems.

10's my last one. I'll be going on a linux journey here soon enough - maybe keep a dual boot of 10 on a separate SSD for the games I absolutely can't get to work in linux, but they can keep their Windows 11/12.
- I'm right there with you.
  Microsoft (and honestly a lot of mainstream software) has been slowly evolving over the years from providing robust, full-featured products that allow you build your own workflows to shipping things with an inherent "paradigm" or "ideology" on how they should be used. Mostly (unsurprisingly) to the ends of data collection, ad serving, and profit driving. Gross, gross, gross.
  
  Data collection will only intensify as microsoft saw the gold rush in AI and plans to integrate chatgpt-like assistant to the next iteration of windows.
- I'm sticking to my win10 LTSC vm whenever something doesn't run on wine. I dont like it when candy crush appears on the start menu.

It might be a problem to many of us if they do something stupid to GitHub...
- They did already
  Switch to gitea
  
  True, the access tokens instead of logging in is a pain, and it's probably a grasp to force users to use their shitty interface rather than do everything in the terminal and just push it to the repo. The free storage do be convenient tho...

Ugh, 12 is announced already? Seems like we just got 11!
- I seem to remember them saying 10 was going to be the last one, too

Microsoft stinks, I use Windows because I'm lazy. MAC is so much worse though, why have I never heard a Linux user criticize MAC?
- Most of us used Windows before and a Mac is a lot closer to Unix (many Terminal applications and stuff work well) but from a usability standpoint the completely walled garden is awful and bashing Apple is one of my favorite hoppies, iOS and their hardware are just even better attack surfaces and I like low hanging fruits!
- /me waves from thé back.
- Id wager few have used a Mac compared to Windows. Windows was always more ubiquitous, and its usually the default in work and school settings so it has a lot more chances to disappoint
  
  Exactly. During my 4 years in University I have not even seen Mac from far. Most of the computers were cheap Dell mini pc and the rest was desktop computers. I couldn't hate on something I haven't seen...
- Here you go
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/0saKpm5g8iU
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
- We're busy criticizing Apple as a whole.
- Because Mac is tonnes better than windows still despite inflated hardware costs.
  
  How Mac is better? It is just worse variant of Windows.

Homer should be labeled "Red Hat" in this day and age.

Since switching to Linux in 2007, I have touched Windows only when paid to do so. Each successive move by Microsoft has affirmed for me that I made the correct decision. At this point, I would just not use a computer at home if my only way to do so was with Windows on it.
- My only use for Windows at home is for Zwift, an online virtual cycling community, and I use a dedicated computer for that purpose. But someone figured out how to get it to run under Linux using Docker, so I figure when I can no longer use Windows 11, I'll switch to Linux on that computer.
  Supposedly that computer isn't compatible with Windows 12, which I assume means that security chip or whatever is turned off (the computer is new enough - 2021 - that I assume it has it). I assume I could turn it on in BIOS, but...eh.

Ever hear of Secure Time Seeding? It’s real, and fits this meme perfectly.

Windows 11 is my favorite Windows release ever. They finally focused their efforts on modern, forward thinking design.
Fight me.
- They did improve the design for sure. Also the features. It only took them 15 years to implement tabs in Windows Explorer and over 20 years to include a package manager.
- In terms of functionality it's not bad, but still, it's Windows

I'm so excited

- Windows is the default. Linux takes time and effort to learn and has negative aspects beyond that. I think it’s worth it, much like I assume everyone here does. But it’s not a sign of a lack of intelligence to decide it isn’t worth it for you. My wife is smarter than me and a programmer who has come to the conclusion that as it is linux is too much effort for not enough gain.
  Being a condescending prick keeps people away from it.