Win11 support

[Cacodemon345]

Also, some people have commented that Windows 11 will also require these things:
1. Mode-based Execution Control which isn't available on anything earlier than 7th gen Intel and emulating it will be costly.
2. Memory Overwrite Request Control version 2.
3. Drivers compatible with Hypervisor Code Integrity (HVCI, also isn't available on anything earlier than 7th gen Intel).

Looks like I am SOL with my desktop especially with the 3rd point. There also seems to be new unfixable vulnerabilities with 6th gen Intel systems discovered very recently so not even switching to Linux will help. I will need to live with my laptop until next year since I can't even get a Kaby Lake CPU since they have been discontinued.

[Blzut3]

1. Mode-based Execution Control which isn't available on anything earlier than 7th gen Intel and emulating it will be costly.

Not doubting that they want you to have this feature, but even their initial list included Zen+ CPUs which as far as I can tell this was introduced with Zen 2? Not sure about the other two, but I suppose no surprise that the list of supported CPUs fell in line with the CPUs actively supported by the manufactures.

[Cacodemon345]

This is also funny as hell: https://twitter.com/tomwarren/status/14 ... 0878474242

Looks like AMD Zen+ CPUs are being left in limbo right now but they hasn't edited their AMD CPU support list to exclude them specially.

[sinisterseed]

No idea what they're doing, as I said :v.

But I think we've seen enough of this for now. May be worth revisiting in a month or so after both hands are done fighting each other, as right now only more and more confusion and unrest will be caused.

[Cacodemon345]

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3623713 ... ehind.html

Security is the reason for the high system requirements. Also, HVCI can cause BSoDs/problems on systems with some incompatible drivers, so it at least looks like Windows 11 will be Windows Vista 2.0 indeed. Enabled HVCI by the way in my laptop, let's see how it goes later, heh.

[sinisterseed]

So I guess, they're here to stay after all.

Welp, WannaCry Episode Two - Hackers Strike Back starts June 2025. I still don't get the Vista comparisons since it ran even on potatoes, granted it wasn't smooth at all, but it wasn't running well on capable hardware either since it was an unoptimized, overbloated mess.

In recent years I have noticed a surge in positivity regarding Vista, but I do very much believe people are romanticizing it now for something it never was. I have used it since day-1 along with many other people and believe me, it was simply bad, its speed was not even remotely close to being its only issue, it had major stability and software compatibility issues for the first few years after it came out, it only got stable *after* 7 came out - and needless to say, 7 and especially 8.1 + 10 are way faster than it ever was even with all Service Packs installed.

UAC was also overly aggressive under Vista as well. On 10 even setting it to Maximum *still* causes the prompt to show up less often than it did on Vista lol.

[Blzut3]

Welp, WannaCry Episode Two - Hackers Strike Back starts June 2025. I still don't get the Vista comparisons since it ran even on potatoes, granted it wasn't smooth at all, but it wasn't running well on capable hardware either since it was an unoptimized, overbloated mess.

I believe the Vista comparisons are referring to the driver model change rendering a lot of peripherals useless. Vista definitely did have criticism for requiring people to buy, say, a new printer just to use the new OS.

As for the EOL, one of the things I'm interested to find out is how they're going about Windows Server 2022. I don't believe they've said if they're rebasing that off Windows 11 or not. But if it stays Windows 10 then it potentially means there's another, probably final, Windows 10 LTSC that would be supported until 2032. If that happens I wouldn't be surprised if Windows 10's EOL changes. If Microsoft sticks to the aggressive cut off I think it will be really silly for them to be patching Windows 10 anyway but not release the patches to the large number of machines they're leaving stuck on the old OS.

In recent years I have noticed a surge in positivity regarding Vista, but I do very much believe people are romanticizing it now for something it never was. I have used it since day-1 along with many other people and believe me, it was simply bad, its speed was not even remotely close to being its only issue, it had major stability and software compatibility issues for the first few years after it came out, it only got stable *after* 7 came out - and needless to say, 7 and especially 8.1 + 10 are way faster than it ever was even with all Service Packs installed.

No, I don't think it's people romanticizing Vista. I too was here day 1. Although that was coincidentally when I switched to Linux full time, I've built Windows Vista machines for a handful of people and didn't hear any complaints from them. In fact, one of those people literally was using Vista until last year when I finally convinced him to put a new GPU and SSD in his Core 2 Quad Q6600 system to upgrade to Windows 10. (He also bought a Ryzen 3600X/1660 Super system, but he wanted two usable machines hence the upgrade.) Although for a couple years he did "mostly" stop using it because browsers stopped updating and it became largely unusable as the web moved on.

I can't say I recall any major stability problems with Vista (not saying they weren't there I just honestly don't recall them), just people complaining that 1) it was slow, 2) their accessories stopped working, 3) UAC was noisy, 4) some software broke. Points 1 and 2 were in large avoidable by buying sufficiently new/high end hardware. Points 3 and 4 improved over time as developers updated their software (and more drivers were developed), especially after Windows 7 when things were good enough and people started switching thereby increasing demand for fixes. While I'm sure the patches to Vista improved a lot of things over time as well, the reality is Vista today (ignoring the fact that people dropped support for Vista in software really quickly making it much less practical) is not all that different from Windows 7. Which isn't to say that Windows 7 isn't better in enumerable ways, but Vista is definitely no where near as bad as the people who knee-jerk react to every mention of Vista.

Most importantly though what you see as "romanticizing" is largely people just countering the knee-jerk claim that "Vista = Total garbage" when that opinion is largely formed by long invalidated reasons. People have a habit of forming opinions based on first impressions and never changing them. The people saying Vista isn't that bad are saying just that, it's not nearly as bad as people parrot. Most of the criticism was well deserved at the time, but the software and hardware ecosystem evolved rendering many of the complaints moot.

As an aside Windows ME has some similarities in this regards where every mention of it gets a "lol Windows Mistake Edition," but isn't that bad if you have good drivers for it. It's not like there aren't valid criticisms of Windows ME, but like with Vista most people's opinion of it is just based off "I bought an OEM system and it was bad" or "I was told it was bad so I think it's bad." Then are totally confused when people into retro computing sometimes willingly and unironically install it.

UAC was also overly aggressive under Vista as well. On 10 even setting it to Maximum *still* causes the prompt to show up less often than it did on Vista lol.

Lots of software has been changed to no longer trigger UAC prompts. If you're comparing Windows 10 today to Vista prior to Windows 7 showing up then yes that's definitely a true statement.

[Enjay]

Vista definitely did have criticism for requiring people to buy, say, a new printer just to use the new OS.

Although I always thought that Vista got a worse reputation than it deserved*, it could be a lot worse than a printer just not working. Vista actually killed my flatbed scanner. The first (and only) time that I tried to use it with Vista, the light came on (from memory, it seemed strangely bright) and then went out and none of the bits that were meant to move did so. After that, it was dead. It had passed on. It was no more. It had ceased to be. It had expired and gone to meet its maker. It was a stiff, an ex scanner!


*My opinion is that most of the criticism came from people trying to run Vista on unsuitable hardware (including me I guess) but expecting it to work. But then MS did a bad job of informing people what the hardware/driver specs would be, thereby leading to that situation. This effectively trashed Vista's reputation in a way that it could not recover from. By the time 7 came out, most of the problematic older hardware had been replaced (or destroyed!) and so the transition to 7 was far less painful than the transition to Vista because people had suitable hardware and so 7 got a better rep.

Certainly, after the initial problems, I ran vista without any really issues until I upgraded to 7.

[sinisterseed]

Certainly, after the initial problems, I ran vista without any really issues until I upgraded to 7.

I myself never got past the issues for sure, which is why I still hate Vista up to this day, and I was entirely unaware of its reception at the time, it was only years later when I found out that well, shit, other people hate Vista too. So I'm absolutely not circle-jerking the "Oh Vista was bad lololololo" without even touching it in the first place, or saying it's bad because others say that too.

I certainly still think it's garbage in no small part due to the fact that it just never worked fine for me, so there is definitely plenty of bias plaguing my argument. And yet, 7 and 8.1 magically had no issues running on my potato. Until I got my current PC which never ran 8.1 too well either (issues with audio drivers and instability in particular), but once I moved to 10 all my issues magically disappeared.

I'm unironically saying that for as much hate as W10 got, it is by far the most stable Windows OS I have ever used, even more so than 7 and 95/98 - I mean, why not, I used those too and they ran like butter, not to mention they withstood a 5yrs old lad who had no idea what they were doing on them either lmao. Trying to break it but it won't budge, now that, I like.

XP did budge though :v . It was such a comedy of crashes and errors.

[Blzut3]

Vista actually killed my flatbed scanner.

The likelihood that Vista "actually killed" your scanner is somewhere between slim and none. I mean I can't rule out some really weird causal link, but it's far more likely that it was a crazy coincidence. The symptom you remember sounds like somehow a voltage regulator circuit blew in the scanner which is not something I would expect to be software controllable on a scanner.

As an aside, my personal story of hardware no longer working Vista is my video capture card at the time (ATi HDTV Wonder) only has drivers for XP. Fortunately I was lucky and this was one of the cards with a pretty decent Linux driver, which actually solved the latency issues I was having with it under XP as well. My sound card was also unsupported (Sound Blaster Live! 5.1), but the kx project open source drivers worked around that problem.

I'm unironically saying that for as much hate as W10 got, it is by far the most stable Windows OS I have ever used

I definitely can't say the same for the first couple releases of Windows 10. I've had several instances where my start menu just stopped working (click the button or the press the windows key and literally nothing happens). Fortunately that bug seems to be fixed since I haven't had it happen in years now. In terms of just not seeing blue screens I can't say I've had any issues with Vista+, and honestly XP only crashed for me I think because of Creative's drivers. (Given that Vista redid how sound works in Windows I suppose this adds up. Of course like I said I switched to Linux at this time so it could also be because my usage of Windows went down to like a couple hours a quarter.)

That said the hate for Windows 10 and more so Windows 8 is of a different flavor from the Vista/ME hate. In these cases it's more people hate what Microsoft is doing with the OS and less technical problems. Overall I personally find that Windows 10 solves a lot of problems that I've had with Windows, it is unfortunate that at the same time we get to put up with Microsoft pushing their services and what not.

[dpJudas]

That said the hate for Windows 10 and more so Windows 8 is of a different flavor from the Vista/ME hate. In these cases it's more people hate what Microsoft is doing with the OS and less technical problems. Overall I personally find that Windows 10 solves a lot of problems that I've had with Windows, it is unfortunate that at the same time we get to put up with Microsoft pushing their services and what not.

Yes, that's exactly why it annoys me every time someone says this is like Vista. The situation is completely different. Each of the Windows releases I've hated have been for different reasons:

Vista: Microsoft didn't optimize the notifications and services. Before service packs it would constantly be running background services doing all kind of shit. They would constantly annoy you with stupid notifications interrupting your flow. The UAC screen also had not been tweaked. The DWM was brand new and had its share of issues. Lastly the colors in the theme were ugly to me - one of the things that they fixed in Windows 7. I went straight back to XP while waiting them to fix the rushed release.

But that's not what most people were angry about: they are blaming Microsoft for fixing the security holes in Windows and upgrading the Windows graphics driver model from a very obsolete design at the time. Those things meant certain old drivers and apps broke, which generally only happened because they were breaking the rules. Enjay's story is a perfect example of it - if that scanner really died then surely that was the fault of the hardware vendor. Microsoft didn't write the driver or design that hardware. These design changes weren't exactly optional by Microsoft if the OS should survive in an Internet age, so it's not like the random hardware bump we now see with Windows 11.

Windows 8: Tablet user interface forced down my throat. No thanks. Back to Windows 7. Didn't exactly help it had the ugliest theme on the planet. Had they kept this up I would have migrated to Linux eventually.

Windows 10: Functional, but still quite ugly. Every change they did to the UI felt like a regression, but Windows 7 didn't support hidpi monitors so I have to use it. Remove that and IMO Windows 7 was just as stable.

[Enjay]

Vista actually killed my flatbed scanner.

The likelihood that Vista "actually killed" your scanner is somewhere between slim and none. I mean I can't rule out some really weird causal link, but it's far more likely that it was a crazy coincidence. The symptom you remember sounds like somehow a voltage regulator circuit blew in the scanner which is not something I would expect to be software controllable on a scanner.

To be fair, I'll acknowledge that (which is partly why I've never really made a big deal about it and actually defended Vista on several occasions). I realise that the chances are remote but the coincidence was quite spectacular. However, it's also worth stating that, at the time, I did try to read up on Vista compat issues with my model of scanner and several people had also reported their one as no longer working (i.e. actually failing and not working on other machines either, not just not working on Vista). So the possibility remains that Vista could could have killed my scanner.

These days, I don't remember the model of scanner (I remember that it was a HP one) and even by the time that Vista came out it was not an up to date model. The model never got Vista drivers and was never supported by Vista.

[sinisterseed]

I definitely can't say the same for the first couple releases of Windows 10. I've had several instances where my start menu just stopped working (click the button or the press the windows key and literally nothing happens). Fortunately that bug seems to be fixed since I haven't had it happen in years now. In terms of just not seeing blue screens I can't say I've had any issues with Vista+, and honestly XP only crashed for me I think because of Creative's drivers. (Given that Vista redid how sound works in Windows I suppose this adds up. Of course like I said I switched to Linux at this time so it could also be because my usage of Windows went down to like a couple hours a quarter.)

That said the hate for Windows 10 and more so Windows 8 is of a different flavor from the Vista/ME hate. In these cases it's more people hate what Microsoft is doing with the OS and less technical problems. Overall I personally find that Windows 10 solves a lot of problems that I've had with Windows, it is unfortunate that at the same time we get to put up with Microsoft pushing their services and what not.

Oh yeah, the infamous Start Menu bug.

I honestly don't even know if this was ever fully and properly fixed since a subset of users just kept experiencing it even between cumulative updates. Me however, I never had that weirdness. The only bugs I recall having was back when 1803 dropped and it was forced on me on day-1 due to some security issues being discovered just around the time the RTM dropped (lol, but I didn't mind it since it didn't do any damage) and I ran into two very rare bugs which caused the Action Center to become completely silent, which was determined to be caused by having the toggle for apps running in the background turned off, and another keyboard layout suddenly appearing after upgrade which could not be removed or even moved around. Both issues were fixed after two cumulative updates.

Outside of that, rock solid. No BSODs, random crashes, programs suddenly deciding to break, and so on. I only ever had such a stable experience on 7 and 95/98. XP was hilarious with its crashes and errors, Vista was the same but this time around all the fun was left out, and 8.1 driver issues again on my current machine.

Now regarding the visual aspect that dpJudas also mentioned, I honestly never liked much what they did with 7. I loved it at first but I got bored of it real quick due to its overemphasis on transparency effects and started craving for Luna instead. I also found Vista more beautiful and colorful as a result, despite the black taskbar which could take any color in 7. Only aspect I didn't like was the fact that transparency effects did not work for fullscreen/maximized windows, they only ever did for minimized for some inexplicable reason, even more ridiculous that none of the SP ever fixed this either. I find it baffling how Luna gets so much hate nowadays because it was "too colorful" or "too cartoony", whatever that's supposed to mean in an OS.

Especially now in the modern age where the visual design got so grossly oversimplified, to the point of having only two main choices - Light/Dark, and shades of them. Which is what I am generally missing these days in pretty much everything, colors just left us almost entirely.

As for 10's design, I personally think it definitely improved over time, as it introduced Light mode which was more consistent than Dark ever managed to become, and not to mention Start which only now finally looks good with the transparent tiles. Took MS 5yrs to make them transparent... The only aspects of it that I don't like is how limited Dark mode was and never getting much better, I mean MS introduced this but 10 still has the High Contrast theme which works for everything but looks indescribably ugly due to never getting a proper integration into shell and current design language. Could they really not fix it instead? I so doubt that.

And of course, never retiring Control Panel and fully migrating everything to Settings, which 11 is yet to do still, somehow. Old versions of 10 were definitely weird visually, especially the original 1511 release which had that anomaly of a Start Menu that was somehow half-8.1 and half-7, what the hell.

[Enjay]

As far as the 10 start menu goes, I, like other people have said, tend to just use the search most of the time. I know the names of the programs that I use so I just hit the start menu, type the first letter or two of the name and run from there.

In older Windows, I used to spend some time categorizing and sub-categorizing my menu but when that became difficult in 10, I stopped doing it. Having all the programs in one big non-nested menu is an unwieldy mess (so I can certainly understand why many people opt for Classic Shell), and I certainly wouldn't want no menu (that was a disaster in 8) but I'm OK with just typing the name I want for most occasions and visually searching through the list only when I have to.

In saying that, I do use True Launch Bar (and I have for a very long time - back to XP). That allows me to put little, highly customisable menus on my task bar - so all my commonly used programs can be found there nice and quickly. I have menus for my computer, internet related stuff, general utils, my commonly used Doom stuff, music related stuff and a clipboard util:

---

[Blzut3]

I only ever had such a stable experience on 7 and 95/98.

OK, 7 I understand, but are you sure you actually had a stable experience with 9x? I don't know anyone that didn't have "reinstall the operating system" as a thing you just had to do every year or so. I feel like people internalized Windows 9x-isms as normal to the point where on occasion you still see people habitually doing things that no longer need to be done. Even today when the operating systems are only used for retro gaming it's hard to get them to not destroy themselves over time.

I find it baffling how Luna gets so much hate nowadays because it was "too colorful" or "too cartoony", whatever that's supposed to mean in an OS.

I mean that's all personal opinion so neither perspective is wrong. I'm not a fan of Luna at all, but I do like the Windows embedded version of Royale which too this day I personally think is the best official Microsoft theme. Royale itself is an improvement over Luna in my opinion, but I still don't like themes that draw attention to themselves which is the problem with being "too colorful." The embedded theme is more monochromatic so solves that issue for me. The window chrome and widgets exist to get work done, I think they should be designed accordingly. I really like KDE's Oxygen and Breeze themes for this reason.

Of course on WIndows the theme is mostly irrelevant since most apps just toss it aside and do their own thing. Even Microsoft's own apps generally don't use the Windows theme. Definitely doesn't help that these days everyone is making apps with electron.