Two years after launch Windows 11 adoption is still waaaay behind Windows 10

[UnknownSouljer]

Or consider this, iPad with the Logitech keyboard case and a USB-C docking station.
Apple Business Manager has tie-ins for Google Workplace and Azure, so that when you sit down and sign it it just maps your profile from the MDM and it will automatically configure email, applications, and the works.
So on the device enrollment, you can specify the base must-haves for the devices, and then you can customize it further based on specific users to enable or disable other applications.

It's not a $200 device but closer to $650 Canadian + Monitor, and accessories.

I'm basically there. My 12.9" M2 Pro is a bit more expensive. But I am using the Logitech Combo Touch. Other than build quality issues (I went through 3 of them before I could get one with only minor defects... which even saying that kinda sucks) it is a fantastic setup. Really to be complete for what I want, I need a Thunderbolt Dock, but most general users would only need a USB-C one.

It does mean it's closer to the setup of a 15" MBA (or maybe slightly more expensive than the base 15" MBA), however there are significant advantages to the light weight OS, the quality of the screen (120Hz, Dolby Atmos HDR capable, 1600nitts, capable of being used to grade HDR), the size/weight/portability, and similar battery life. In order to just get a similar display, it would require moving to the 14" Macbook Pro.

Add on security certificates with an always-on VPN configuration and now your employees are 100% mobile, and even if they are using a shitty hotspot at crapy motel the data is relatively secure and since it will deal with the online file storage during the sync process nothing is technically on the devices, use a Buffalo NAS locally to work as the intermediary between the users and the cloud storage provider of choice and when in the building you aren't chewing up data with immediate file syncs, and when they are out of the building none of your data is leaving the building.

I'll admit to being an admin n00b. But stuff like that just sounds amazing to me. It's just like having your cake and eating it too.

But it's why a lot of schools are ditching Chromebooks and going back to Apple Education because the management and setup are vastly better and Privacy Impact is way better on Apple than it is on Google.

And Apple provides very simple instructions they keep updated with pictures on how to do all that, as well as has agents who can hand hold you all the way through it.

I agree.

Honestly if Windows 11 "just" stopped pushing ads, got rid of all telemetry, and allowed admins to control how and when software updates are installed, then I'd likely be "okay" to reasonably happy with Windows 10/11. Granted it becoming a more bloated system sucks and all of the legacy crap holding it down isn't great, but it would still be a reasonable OS without most of the headaches that it currently has.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I'm assuming this is only for win 11 pro? I haven't seen this option on any of my laptops with win11 home.

Honestly I don't recall this even being in pro, but then again, I've never had a domain to join, so domains have been pretty irrelevant to me. At least on the LAN.

When I did a test install of Win 11 pro, I had to start the install, but stop it on one of the first screens (before it prompts you to log in) use a hidden key shortcut to access the command prompt, and from there disable the network stack using console commands, otherwise it just would not bypass the Microsoft login screen.

Edit:

To clarify, it forced me to connect to the internet in order to start the install. There was no option to skip either plugging in an Ethernet cable or connecting to a wifi network. So since this was a modern laptop without an Ethernet port, I had to connect to wifi.

After that at some it takes you to the "sign in with microsoft account" screen which cannot be bypassed either, and there is no way to disconnect from wifi. (the laptop didn't ahve one of those old school phsycial airplane mode switches either)

The trick mentioned above allowed you to disconnect from the internet between these two checks.

 

[Markus Guitarus]

The lack of ability to add custom toolbars to the Taskbar is the only reason I haven't moved to Windows 11. I have four toolbars divided into different categories, and I launch all my programs from there. I also use the Taskbar Tweaker app, and apparently it doesn't work with W11.

 

[Lakados]

I agree.

Honestly if Windows 11 "just" stopped pushing ads, got rid of all telemetry, and allowed admins to control how and when software updates are installed, then I'd likely be "okay" to reasonably happy with Windows 10/11. Granted it becoming a more bloated system sucks and all of the legacy crap holding it down isn't great, but it would still be a reasonable OS without most of the headaches that it currently has.

This part you can easily do with O365 and Azure AD with Intune, in 10 and 11 that's where you configure the telemetry, advertising, blah blah blah, you can do it through GPO as well but if you try with just registry changes you are gonna have a bad time.

And yeah the Always on VPN thing is kinda awesome because then all network usage can be controlled and monitored and yeah I know all big brother bad blah blah blah, but then you can set internal network rules as strictly as you can external ones, and then you can essentially have all devices connected to a guest network, in that the default gateway is a separate interface on the firewall so you can do full firewall rules for incoming and outgoing traffic but then you can also have full rule sets from the user interface to the internal ones based off the usernames collected through the VPN so even if a machine is infected there is nothing to crawl and no local resources to target. and any internal network resources are closed off, making for very small attack surfaces and very mobile work groups. Wanna work from home grab your shit and go, decided on a working holiday in Italy go for it, but for security reasons, I do have a list of Sketchy countries and VPN exit nodes that if any traffic is coming from or directed to regardless of the user or supposed initiator of the traffic it is dropped and logged and alerts generated because I don't care if you are visiting your family in Pakistan and their internet is clean, that traffic isn't coming back and no I won't disable always-on VPN for your stay there and I don't care if you didn't bring a different device, buy a cheap ass tablet at the airport and take your F'ing holiday deal with the work when you get home, now let me get back to sleep you ass you realize there is a 12.5h timezone difference between us and it's 3 in the f'ing morning... God, I am glad that manager isn't here anymore... such a drama queen.

 

[Bigbacon]

You add icons to the taskbar, you click icons on the task bar. What more is there?

Becuase its hust annoying icons i csnt ungroup. I want words nit kiddie icons.

 

[sleepeeg3]

Linux on the desktop has been ready for 10 years. Only reason it doesn't work is because it requires critical mass. You need enough other people out there running LibreOffice so your documents are fully compatible. I feel like that will sadly never happen.

I don't think I can say this is true. Configuring drivers in Linux and installing software can still be a major pain in the ass.

I've worked exclusively with an Ubuntu VM command prompt, Ubuntu GUI based OS and Linux Mint. Finding and configuring a Broadcom driver for my WiFi adapter was a bunch of guesswork. I also had all kinds of problems with getting nVidia drivers to run correctly. Then it would randomly start to fail on boot, potentially either because the core was being auto-upgraded (that may be a Mint/Ubuntu issue), a driver was being upgraded or corruption issues - I haven't had to deal with frequent OS corruption issues since XP. I'm dual-booting Linux/Windows and finally just gave up and started using the old version of Windows. Forget Windows 10/11 and their spyware.

Now I've been using computers for a long ass time. You can't expect the average grandma/grandpa to deal with troubleshooting this kind of shit. Linux isn't there yet.

 

[The Mad Atheist]

I don't mind Windows 10, I can make it feel like 7 so I'm leaving it on my gaming rig, but Windows 11 is shit and IDK why they felt like F-ing around w/ the whole interface. Shame they couldn't have an option to switch the looks back and report back to MS letting them know what their users like.

 

[Lakados]

I'm assuming this is only for win 11 pro? I haven't seen this option on any of my laptops with win11 home.

Few more than 3...
Start-->Settings-->System->About-->Domain or workgroup-->Change

but if you are on anything but home then its there.

 

[lopoetve]

Got Win 11 in an VDI beta testing environment, for when I have to migrate that (the semi-prod environment will stay 10 till we have to move; by then we should have a grasp on how stable updates work with 11). Got it on one hybrid (12th gen) box that runs occasionally as a workstation, the rest stay on 10 till it's time to move (forced to), or the hardware lifecycle will end it before then and the rebuild will pick up 11.

I don't ~mind~ 11 - there are some ok things, some dumb things (a lot of the right click context menu), and some pretty nice things (the new scheduler is good). I use every OS out there at times, so it's just another one - it has fewer complaints from me than 8.0, and about the same as 8.1 did, which I also used. It's not Vista, but it's also not 7/10, which tended to be "good" in my mind.

 

[GotNoRice]

Few more than 3...
Start-->Settings-->System->About-->Domain or workgroup-->Change

but if you are on anything but home then its there.

We're talking about using the "Domain Join" option during setup in order to create a local account. No one is actually talking about joining a domain. There is no start menu during the middle of setup.

Here's the first click:

Here's the 2nd click:

Here's the 3rd click:

Now create your local account username:

Rocket science?

 

[Lakados]

We're talking about using the "Domain Join" option during setup in order to create a local account. No one is actually talking about joining a domain. There is no start menu during the middle of setup.

Here's the first click:
View attachment 603436

Here's the 2nd click:
View attachment 603437

Here's the 3rd click:
View attachment 603438

Now create your local account username:
View attachment 603439

Rocket science?

Oh that part yeah, that one is there, I thought we were still on about the UI not the OOBE.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

This part you can easily do with O365 and Azure AD with Intune, in 10 and 11 that's where you configure the telemetry, advertising, blah blah blah, you can do it through GPO as well but if you try with just registry changes you are gonna have a bad time.

That's great if you are an enterprise user with an enterprise version and an AD controller.

That's not most of us. That's not even a tiny fraction of us.

 

[AlphaQup]

I'm divided on Win11/Win10 (Home vs Work respectively) on my primary 2 devices and my main 3 gripes about Win11 are of course the telemetry (how much more deader can we beat this horse... and don't take this as I'm fine with it, but man, some of you guys write novels on it every OS-related thread), the interface, and the continued division between Control Panel/Settings. I actually love the under the hood benefits of the OS, but I get why those 3 hold a lot of folks up personally...

Usually at work, a global team will approve an OS for deployment (be that a new Win10 Feature update, or a new OS entirely) to our Pioneer group after it's passed all the security checks and whatnot in their Stage environment (I rarely get invited to this prior, which is funny given the below....). This is when I finally receive their attempt at stripping the OS down (removing telemetry), disabling interface items I find annoying, cleaning up the taskbar/start menu, and genuinely make the bare-bones/almost OOBE thing I just got provided much better.

I'll go to town on this and get all this added to our personal MDT server's Dev TS via VBS/PS (we have a separate TS we run after we get the initial MECM image put down to put all the "extra" stuff I do in place, some of it BU-required, some of it is personal preference), and then I demo it for these central teams. Most of this stuff I demo for them gets adopted over the next 6 months into their TS/GPO... they take what I wrote and "alter" it for there use.... I always get a chuckle out of that initial incompetence. They do have to cater to a MUCH larger audience, I get it, but at the same time they let some glaringly obvious stuff through and take forever to implement change. All these work changes are what I eventually take home and tweak my own OS experience.

But anyway, I still have not received this initial Win11 image from my global team, and we're a F200 company. I imagine we are not alone in our space when it comes to large companies, and from what I hear, our Security Council is pretty afraid of it and keeps delaying it's initial release to Pioneers. Their hand will eventually be forced by the 2025 Win10 EOS deadline, and we'll be scrambling to replace/upgrade as needed.

Same thing that happened with XP > 7, and 7 > 10. Honestly this is nothing new. I'm not worried about the low initial adoption rates, even if they're lower then years past. I've ridden this horse before

All the above apprehension could explain the slow adoption rate (at least at a corporation level), on top of the TPM/Chipset requirements (HW level). Did they ever relax those? Honest question. I worry for our MFG floor machines if they have not...

 

[Lakados]

That's great if you are an enterprise user with an enterprise version and an AD controller.

That's not most of us. That's not even a tiny fraction of us.

gpedit.msc
Dont need to be joined to a domain to do that

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I don't think I can say this is true. Configuring drivers in Linux and installing software can still be a major pain in the ass.

Configuring what drivers?

I haven't had to do this since the earlty 2000's.

The drivers are in the kernel, load on boot, and require no user-interaction to just work.

If you need proprietary drivers different distributions do it differently, but Ubuntu based ones - for instance - have a GUI driver installer that is recommended to run on first boot if compatible hardware is found, that allows you to select propietary drivers from a list, which are then installed and used after a reboot.

It's literally easier than in Windows, or at least easier than Windows used to be prior to 10, when they started using some of the same methodology to grab some (but not all) drivers automatically.

The only exception here is if you have hardware that just isn't compatible with current kernel drivers and isn't enterprise or commonly used with Linux so the manufacturer hasn't written Linux drivers for it. Then the best you can do is install the latest vanilla kernel (which also is very easy and GUI these days) and hope for the best. Sometimes the latest vanilla kernel doesn't have the driver for your hardware, but this is thankfully pretty rare these days though, unless you are absolutely bleeding edge on the hardware front, and even then, most of the common stuff (CPU, chipset, and AMD GPU) is pushed to upstream kernels before it is even launched or (Nvidia GPU) available in the driver manager.

Maybe I've just been lucky because I tend to buy more premium hardware and don't use junk chipsets integrated on the motherboard very often, but I literally have not had a problem like this since probably ~2009 and I daily drive Ubuntu/Mint in the house on at least 7 different machines.

 

[pendragon1]

Configuring what drivers?

Finding and configuring a Broadcom driver for my WiFi adapter was a bunch of guesswork. I also had all kinds of problems with getting nVidia drivers to run correctly.

 

[zandor]

It's behind because this time around MS doesn't have hordes of people chomping at the bit to get off of Windows 8 like they did when 10 came out.

 

[Gorankar]

11 is not all that much better, some would argue it's worse, and it has some UI changes that some find annoying. Change for change's sake typically receives push back. As they EOL 10, 11 will take over though.
The "lets make everything look and work like a 3rd rate mobile app" school of UI design still baffles me.

 

[Lakados]

It's behind because this time around MS doesn't have hordes of people chomping at the bit to get off of Windows 8 like they did when 10 came out.

8 didn't get usable until 8.1, before that... oof that was a tough go.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

My bad, I jumped to answer mode before reading.

I've worked exclusively with an Ubuntu VM command prompt, Ubuntu GUI based OS and Linux Mint. Finding and configuring a Broadcom driver for my WiFi adapter was a bunch of guesswork.

Wifi chips (other than intel ones) is still a weakness. For whatever reason they don't always get updated as quickly, but I haven't personally had this on any laptop I've used in a long time. It's much less common than it used to be. It's still wise to select your hardware based on the fact that you want to run Linux, and not just install it on any random hardware.

Still, I have done the latter, and it has just worked for me thus far, across five laptops (three of mine, my fiance's and my mother in laws) though. One of them even came with an eye-roll worthy "Killer" wifi chip, and it just worked out of the box.

I also had all kinds of problems with getting nVidia drivers to run correctly. Then it would randomly start to fail on boot, potentially either because the core was being auto-upgraded (that may be a Mint/Ubuntu issue), a driver was being upgraded or corruption issues - I haven't had to deal with frequent OS corruption issues since XP.

I've never seen this before. Been using a variety of Nvidia binary GPU drivers for like 20 years and never had an issue.

it automatically detected that I had an Nvidia GPU, and offered up the compatible drivers it has as an option.

Just click the one you want, apply changes to automatically download and install the driver, and then reboot and you are up and running.

Looks like there is a new version I haven't installed yet.

It doesn't get much simpler than that...

 

[StoleMyOwnCar]

My work's IT department forced us onto Windows 11 quite a while ago. For the most part, I don't really care. I just installed Open-Shell and it was similar enough to how I had Windows 10.

Main gripe is that damned context menu. "Open with" is used pretty commonly by me, and it being hidden is really freaking annoying.

gpedit.msc
Dont need to be joined to a domain to do that

Pretty sure group policy editor is Pro and above only? Unless they changed that with this generation.

 

[pendragon1]

Main gripe is that damned context menu. "Open with" is used pretty commonly by me, and it being hidden is really freaking annoying.

does yours not look like this? im on insider..

 

[philb2]

there is 1 major reason to hold off...most likely Windows 12 will be released in the next 2 years...so people can continue to use W10 and then jump directly into W12

That's my plan. For me and for my wife. All systms in our LAN.

 

[philb2]

Everything in MacOS is fine, if all you want to do is do things "the Apple Way" and not stray from the happy path at all ever.

I'm a Windows guy and an iOS guy. I'm pissed at the way that iTunes no longer does a good job of syncing Outlook to iOS apps.

Though the biggest problem with MacOS is not the software, it is the hardware.

Even with the new CPUs?

I really wish there were a big push to go Desktop Linux.

That would have/should have/could have happened years ago. But it hasn't. What is there in the marketplace to change that fact for the average Joe/Jane? Nothing that I can see.

Linux on the desktop has been ready for 10 years. Only reason it doesn't work is because it requires critical mass.

See above. Which it doesn't have and likely will never have.

You need enough other people out there running LibreOffice so your documents are fully compatible.

Except that companies will never adopt LibreOffice and drop MS Office and more than they will drop Oracle or SQL Server.

I feel like that will sadly never happen.

Yup.

 

[philb2]

I can only speak to myself, not the market as a whole.

The same will happen with Windows 10 in 2025. When it does, I will need to decide if I "upgrade" to Windows 11, or if I just ditch windows all together.

If you do, you will have a lot of migration pains. Do you really want to sign up for a multi-month severe migraine?

 

[philb2]

But really I'll be honest Linux for the desktop has never been better, it's ChromeOS, ChromeOS is what Linux on the desktop was always going to end up looking like, 15 years ago Linux Desktop proper had its best shot at going mainstream with Ubuntu but the community decided that having one major distro take over was a bad thing and they sabotaged it from the inside forked it to high hell and split resources killing any chance it had and that's the end of that.

A replay of the UNIX wars of the 80s and 90s. Then was IBM AIX, HP HP-UX and Sun Solaris. And they all died off in the face of free Linux, warts and distro confusion and all.

 

[1_rick]

Its not a driver, its an app. Its a game optimizer. It installs through the app store silently because there is no option to stop Windows from doing that. Telling the app not to run on startup doesn't work, because its hooked to DX and turns itself on if you launch a 3D program. It doesn't ask me if I want it or not.

Figure out where it's installing. Uninstall it. Recreate the directory. Mark it read-only. Boom! The installer will (probably) fail.

 

[zandor]

If you do, you will have a lot of migration pains. Do you really want to sign up for a multi-month severe migraine?

I didn't really notice anything when I switched my personal machines to Win11 or when I switched my work laptop at my previous job other than the start menu getting rearranged again. Current job issues Macs. I've been meaning to make a "second coming of the Fat Mac" meme since the 16" Apple Silicon MBP is heavier than the last 16" Intel model and I have an original Fat Mac in a box in my basement. Wonder if it can still power up. It was built in 1984. I honestly can't figure out what's really different between 10 and 11 aside from MS rearranging the start menu again. Even my not officially supported on client Windows server NIC still works and I didn't have to type a bunch of voodoo stuff into powershell to reinstall it like I did to get it working in the first place.

 

[philb2]

Supposedly Alder/Raptor Lake will work better on Win11 because the scheduler knows the difference between P and E cores, while Microsoft deliberately didn't add that functionality to Win10. I haven't bothered to look for any corroboration or debunking; I have an Alder Lake mini PC that I bought this spring that came preinstalled with Win11, and the 12600K desktop I built last year has it for the same reason. I've passed on upgrading my 4800HS laptop and 5800X desktops, though.

how about for AMD CPUs?

 

[1_rick]

how about for AMD CPUs?

Well, they're still all using a single core type, so there's no value there in 11 vs 10.

 

[Jailer]

without all of the bloat, ecosystem crap, AI nonsense and cloud integration that came with Windows 10 and newer

Tiny 10 and/or Tiny 11.

 

[zandor]

Tiny 10 and/or Tiny 11.

Or just get a rig that doesn't suck. Once upon a time I had a dual socket dual core Opteron rig with 4GB ram and a high end vid card in it. Vista ran really well on that machine. Win11 runs very nicely on the i7-8565U/16GB/512GB laptop I bought in 2019. So almost 4yo laptop I got for $800 almost 4 years ago. I haven't noticed a performance difference vs. Win10 on it, but then again I don't really push that machine.

 

[GotNoRice]

I'm assuming this is only for win 11 pro? I haven't seen this option on any of my laptops with win11 home.

Yeah it's just for Pro. My condolences to anyone using Home as it's just an overall worse experience compared to pro in quite a few ways. I have not personally ever bothered with Home outside of a VM. Although it takes more time, I think the easiest way to do a local account on Home is to do a fresh install of Windows 10 Home instead of Windows 11 Home. Install 10 without internet so it allows the local account. Then upgrade to Windows 11 Home. When you do the upgrade from Windows 10 to 11, the local account will be preserved. Or just use Pro.

 

[Lakados]

Yeah it's just for Pro. My condolences to anyone using Home as it's just an overall worse experience compared to pro in quite a few ways. I have not personally ever bothered with Home outside of a VM. Although it takes more time, I think the easiest way to do a local account on Home is to do a fresh install of Windows 10 Home instead of Windows 11 Home. Install 10 without internet so it allows the local account. Then upgrade to Windows 11 Home. When you do the upgrade from Windows 10 to 11, the local account will be preserved. Or just use Pro.

You can also just download the Microsoft Windows 11 media creation tool, use it to download the latest iso, then use Rufus to build a bootable thumb drive and choose the custom options to remove the online account requirements.

 

[paradoxical]

You can also just download the Microsoft Windows 11 media creation tool, use it to download the latest iso, then use Rufus to build a bootable thumb drive and choose the custom options to remove the online account requirements.
View attachment 603483

"Everything in MacOS Windows is fine, if all you want to do is do things "the Apple Microsoft Way" and not stray from the happy path at all ever."

 

[pendragon1]

Weird, I don't need a third party tool to do that in MacOS.

try putting sonoma on a 2012 macbook pro.

 

[paradoxical]

try putting sonoma on a 2012 macbook pro.

Try finding a 2012 Dell still operational to put any version of Windows on. We have an original 13in Macbook Air in a production environment at work running our inventory room access software (barcode scanning in and out, etc). Used every day and works perfectly.

 

[pendragon1]

Try finding a 2012 Dell still operational to put any version of Windows on. We have an original 13in Macbook Air in a production environment at work running our inventory room access software (barcode scanning in and out, etc). Used every day and works perfectly.

way to move the posts, but we've got them, HPs too. i can get you a pic tomorrow if you really need one. loaded 10 edu onto a 2013 lenovo today too, but the 2013 macbook air i reloaded is stuck on catalina

 

[Tengis]

I cant even be bothered to read all the posts in this thread. I rarely, if ever, see valid arguments for not liking the next version of Windows except for trying to avoid change.

Its the same thing, every time. The transition from XP to Vista to 7 to 8 to 8.1 to 10 to 11 have all been the same:

 

[GoldenTiger]

8 didn't get usable until 8.1, before that... oof that was a tough go.

8 was fine, just like 7 but with a full screen start menu. I just typed a few letters like always and pressed enter........ 8.1 added a shortcut icon to the full screen start menu, not really a big deal.