[gjsman-1000]

> Not sure Microsoft realizes the damage they're doing to the Windows brand.

Microsoft realized after Windows 8 and Windows 10 that literally nobody, outside of niche tech circles, has positive associations with the Windows brand, or views "Windows" as a selling point beyond "runs my old software." As such, it doesn't matter to them anymore.

It's like being the PR department at your local electricity provider or oil refinery. Keep the politicians happy, but people on the ground is a pointless endeavor.

[diego_sandoval]

Pretty much.

I remember when new Windows versions were still an event: you could read about it on the magazines, people would get excited to try them, people would debate about how pretty/ugly the new UI was, etc.

Nowadays new Windows versions are like some unwanted background noise. I don't even know at what point Windows 10 stopped being the new version and 11 came out, but it went totally unnoticed to me until I heard that Windows 10 was close to EOL a couple of months ago. And then you start dreading the moment that you'll have to migrate and uninstall all the Xbox crap again that they force on you, etc.

[high_na_euv]

>I remember when new Windows versions were still an event: you could read about it on the magazines, people would get excited to try them, people would debate about how pretty/ugly the new UI was, etc.

Lol. You can verify your claims in 1 minute just by simply googling

It is still huge topic

[hshdhdhj4444]

I liked Windows 7. I also liked Windows XP SP2 before that.

But you’re right that since Windows 8, Windows is just something I’ve tolerated.

That being said, Windows 11 seems nice, but it looks like Microsoft is pulling the same stuff again.

[fortran77]

Not true. I like Windows 11, and I think it's the best desktop OS out there.

[wslh]

Sincerely curious about why do you think it's the best desktop OS and/or where it excels.

I understand that the Windows kernel is pretty advanced but I find difficult to find that it ends up in a good desktop OS (e.g. UX)

[mastazi]

I'm not parent and Windows 11 is my least favourite desktop OS, but there are some things where I prefer Windows to Mac OS, for example multi monitor user experience, or the way full screen windows work (F11) and the ease of maximising windows without having to double click on the title bar. Also I like the way home/end/pgup/pgdown keys work. I much prefer how it renders text on non hidpi screeens. Finally I like how there is only one taskbar and no top bar, which results in more real estate on small displays.

Some Linux DEs also do these things well BTW. In fact I use Linux for most things at home. (I use Mac at work and my only Win device left is used exclusively for gaming).

[Marsymars]

> Sincerely curious about why do you think it's the best desktop OS and/or where it excels.

Hey, so I'm a different user, and I wouldn't claim it's the best desktop OS, but split between macOS/Windows for desktop use, there are definitely things about Windows I appreciate. Off the top of my head:

* It has pretty approachable "config as code" built-in - with "winget configure" and some yaml files, you can define the apps you want, the Windows config, the registry settings, etc. without the overhead of MDM or something like Ansible.

* UI scaling took a long time to get good, but it's more flexible than macOS now for pixel-perfect output on displays that aren't multiples of 1440p. (e.g. 4K)

[vladvasiliu]

> UI scaling took a long time to get good, but it's more flexible than macOS now for pixel-perfect output on displays that aren't multiples of 1440p. (e.g. 4K)

We can't be using the same windows. At work we have 27" 5k displays which I use at 200%, so a perfect multiple of the usual 100% I use everywhere else. The screen is blurry 99% of the time. The only reliable way to get it sharp is to boot the PC with the screen attached. Of course, if I go to the toilet and the screen turns off, when I come back it's just like hot-plugging it: a blurry mess.

Apparently, updating the graphics driver also works, so I suppose it's enough to restart just that instead of the whole OS. Don't know how to do that, though. The resolution is reported as the correct one, changing scaling options doesn't help. 100% looks sharp enough, but it's unusable for me.

And I don't use any old app, it's mostly new outlook and edge. But even the start menu is blurry! There's also the fact that afterwards, tray icons' menus tend to appear in random places, but I understand that apps draw those, so I guess this isn't completely windows' fault.

My work machine dual-boots Linux, which is what I actually daily drive, and these screens have pushed me to switch to Wayland. Now there are some rough edges there, but the high-dpi is handled perfectly (same setup as windows: everything 100% except for that one screen at 200%). This is using Sway and mainly Firefox, Chromium and Alacaritty. Native GTK apps seem to work fine, too, but I don't use many of those.

edit: not sure about your mac point. I sometimes use a mac and it works at 200% on two separate 4k screens.

[Marsymars]

> edit: not sure about your mac point. I sometimes use a mac and it works at 200% on two separate 4k screens.

200% scaling works if you only want "looks like 1920x1080", but if you have a 27" 4K display, I'd typically want "looks like 2560x1440" or 150% scaling - if you do that on macOS, the desktop is rendered at 5120x2880 and then downscaled to 3840x2160. So you're getting both higher resource draw from rendering the desktop at a higher resolution and losing pixel-perfect rendering.

It won't be a problem for most people, but it's enough of a problem for me that I won't use macOS with scaled displays.

[whyoh]

>The screen is blurry 99% of the time. The only reliable way to get it sharp is to boot the PC with the screen attached.

That sounds like a (graphics driver) bug. It's not something I ever experienced on Windows 10, even when occasionally connecting an additional display set to 150% scaling. I believe you, though, bugs do happen.

>not sure about your mac point. I sometimes use a mac and it works at 200% on two separate 4k screens.

I think his point is that on macOS you pretty much have to use 200%, whereas on Windows it can be any value (though multiples of 25% are recommended).

[vladvasiliu]

> that sounds like a (graphics driver) bug.

It wouldn't surprise me, although this is a bog-standard-fare enterprise laptop, a 5 year-old full Intel affair. No dedicated GPU or anything fancy.

But, for a long time, I had weird issues with display output on Windows. It would refuse to output 4k@60Hz without doing a stupid plug-unplug-replug-just-at-the-right-time dance, even though it worked on Linux. It took a good 3 years for that to work reliably.

And, in the beginning, those 5k screens only worked at 4k for some reason. Again, no issue on Linux.

But when any of the above situations happened, the state was actually correctly reported, as in 4k@30 Hz, or the 5k screen running at 4k. That's not the case now, everything says what it should, but the image is not sharp.

That's the only situation where I use Windows with scaling, so don't have any easy way of figuring which component is broken. All I can say is that the hardware itself seems to work fine.

[icameron]

I like windows 11 family settings. I can let my kids play Minecraft on old corporate castaway Dells, which I setup from bios/pe to do a clean reinstall. Then I can manage screen time limits and content restrictions from an app on my phone. All free.

[eimrine]

And your proprietary vendors manage privacy limits for both of you.