[pathartl]

I still don't understand all of the hate. In my eyes Windows has never been more capable and stable.

- Windows Terminal is actually pretty dang good

- There's actually a package manager built in now with WinGet

- Hyper-V comes with pro and is incredibly powerful

- While WSL2 isn't great at times, it does fill in a lot of gaps and working with Docker is pretty seamless

- Ever since Windows Defender became standard, cleaning up relative's machines has basically turned into disabling some startup apps and removing spyware-like browser extensions

- With 11 the UI actually feels reasonably consistent for the first time in a long while. There's still some core applications that need a rewrite (Disk Management, Format, RegEdit, Device Manager, Event Viewer), but it feels like real progression when compared to 8/8.1 or 10

- Backwards compatibility is quite simply unmatched

There's some areas that have regressed or have been omitted for _some reason_:

- If you're going to push Microsoft 365 family subscriptions, I never want to have to download TeamViewer, AnyDesk, etc. Give me some capable remote assistance tool. It's obvious this is ignored so they don't piss off partners.

- NTP synchronization shouldn't be behind the location access permission. I understand why it is, but then make location access more granular.

- Disk performance could be much better

- NTFS is so antiquated. It's time for another filesystem. I want native overlay support, checksumming, not-ass permissions (though tbf nobody gets this right)

- Windows + D is just a key shift to the right from ctrl C so I hit it all the time. It would be less infuriating if hitting it again actually put all of the windows in their previous state / stacking order.

- I usually sign in with my Microsoft account when I setup my PC, but ffs let me create a local user. If you want to put signing into my Microsoft account in my face, do it at first login not at first setup.

[neogodless]

Most of those benefits were available in Windows 10, with less of the pain and shortcomings of Windows 11.

I like that list, and appreciate those items. I run Windows... begrudgingly 11.

But why can't I have the above without...

- full screen ads for Microsoft 365 / Copilot

- inserting Copilot everywhere

- changing the UI and removing user choice, such as where you pin your task bar, how you like your start menu to work / look

- forcing your documents and desktop into OneDrive without asking and making it hard to separate them back out

Windows didn't necessarily go backwards with some of their moves, but they confidently went anti-consumer and pro-adware in quite a few of them.

EDIT: Like this... https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2026/03/20/our-com...

(See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47459296 )

[pathartl]

While 10 got a bunch of features back ported, they've started out on 11 and I would argue many of them wouldn't have happened if they didn't learn from the mistakes of 8 and 10. Particularly when it comes to UI uniformity. As for the other complaints, I don't fully disagree, but so much of what you listed can be disabled / customized that it often doesn't affect me past OOBE.

I'm not saying Windows is infallible, but it's actually getting quite insufferable to hear nothing but the Windows hate train day in and day out as if it has no redeeming qualities and the only reason we aren't on Linux is because some game developers want nasty anti cheat/DRM measures. I think the proliferation of this is largely due in part to "Windows sucks" being an actual valid avenue of revenue for creators.

[snielson]

Yeah, I really like Windows 11. I'm not a developer; just an ordinary user. I guess the difference is that I fully embrace the MS ecosystem—i.e., OneDrive, M365 Family account (the storage alone is worth the cost), Power Toys, Edge (sync'd across computers), etc. It works great.

The only problem I’ve had was with a family member who refused to restart the computer. Eventually, something got corrupted. Fixing it was simple—I just reinstalled the current version of Windows. It was so much easier than in the past, when it meant reinstalling everything from scratch or reverting to a saved snapshot.