Windows 11 leak reveals new UI, Start menu, and more (UPDATE - added source for Windows 10 retirement date)

Lakados said:
Microsoft has to spend the next 5-10 years baby-stepping its way to what Apple and Linux already have. They can't just flip a switch and kill off all those legacy applications because if they do why stay with windows, you're replacing all your software anyways maybe they go elsewhere as a thank you for making them change their whole workflow. It's going to be all about the little harassment windows like this one, to gradually get the windows developers to adopt better practices so when they do flip that switch 99% of the marketplace is already there.
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Your probably not wrong that they can't just mandate a massive major change in one update cycle. I'm not so sure Microsoft really has 10 years though... I actually doubt they have 5. If they walk it that slow... they are likely to loose the majority of their market share anyway. The vast majority of their customers don't actually care about legacy support anymore. The truth is most people that say they must have legacy aren't even being honest with themselves. The major software developers that still matter and aren't cloud based... can move mostly pretty fast. Just have to look at all the M1 support catching up, it seems clear with in another year nothing won't run on M1.

As a Linux user I tell people all the time that I have better legacy windows support then they do. (not that windows compatibility tools are bad... but man a lot of older windows stuff runs better in wine)

I don't think MS needs to panic and make windows 11... a Windows -s affair with no other option or anything. I just don't think they really have 5 years to get it right. If they drag their feet they risk google getting their shit together and partnering with a Nvidia and or Valve or something and releasing a killer ChromeOS devices designed to battle M1 sans windows at all.

I mean if most people could buy a ChromeOS device that could install the steam store and game on some Nvidia ARM SOC on par with M1...
I know its not the year of the Linux desktop and next year isn't going to be either. Having said that Microsoft is lucky the Google is a scatter brained company. If they where competent ChromeOS would already be 25% of the market.
 
ChadD said:
I'm not so sure Microsoft really has 10 years though...
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You're making the mistake here in assuming that consumer Windows means anything to MS from a financial standpoint. It doesn't. Even if Windows goes TU entirely, MS will live just well enough (though a TON of people will be out on the street looking for dev jobs).
 
Smoblikat said:
Wow, looks like some combination of crapples garbage UI paired with a driverless video card, considering theres MAYBE 8 colors total on that screenshot, and theyre all washed out pastels. I might lose it if they move the start button from the lower left corner, opening start and showing the desktop are some of the most convenient operations as you dont really need to be accurate. Opening the start menu just means moving the mouse as low and left as it goes, and showing the desktop is doing the same on the right side, pretty easy.
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You use the mouse for the start menu?

1623894209565.png
 
ChadD said:
As a Linux user I tell people all the time that I have better legacy windows support then they do. (not that windows compatibility tools are bad... but man a lot of older windows stuff runs better in wine)
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I use Linux as my primary OS and I find Wine to be a disaster. Almost nothing works in it, and it is brutally painful to set up.

The onyl time I have found running any Windows applications under Linux to work well was back with the old Crossover-Office application, that actually made Ms Office run really well under Linux. I can't seem to find a modern version that works well though.

I feel like they developed on top of Wine and took that disaster and made it actually work in most cases.
 
MaZa said:
Because when something is "simplified" it just matters to people who use their PC's just for browsing the web and launching games. But for power users or even just enthusiasts who are not on power user level but do occasionally need to go deeper into the Windows settings such "simplification" just means things you need are more hidden away. Good example of this is the Sound Control Panel in Windows 10. Previously I could just right click the Speaker icon in bottom right and open it. Now I have to right click it, open a DIFFERENT Sound Settings window (which is absolutely useless for anything else but switch output device), STRETCH THE BLOODY WINDOW BIGGER until I see the blue hotlink for the good old Sound Control Panel on the right.

So much for the "simplification", FFS.
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IMHO every single thing they have done in Windows 10 to move things away from the classic control panel has been a step in the wrong direction.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I use Linux as my primary OS and I find Wine to be a disaster. Almost nothing works in it, and it is brutally painful to set up.

The onyl time I have found running any Windows applications under Linux to work well was back with the old Crossover-Office application, that actually made Ms Office run really well under Linux. I can't seem to find a modern version that works well though.

I feel like they developed on top of Wine and took that disaster and made it actually work in most cases.
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To be honest I haven no idea how wine works for windows office software... I would never really even try. Likewise with software that has insane copy right schemes that hook into low level system.

Wine does work very very well on all that old legacy software people are always saying they must have.
 
Honestly, I was hoping for more from Win 11. I like the new design, but it seems like it's still the same old system with a fresh coat of paint.

Though MS hasn't focused on Windows for a while, that is still their bread and butter. If Windows failed, then macOS or Linux could fill the void, and that might hurt their cloud business as well.
 
ChadD said:
I understand what your saying now. I agree if MS was to 100% lock their package manager to a certified by MS type program it would be terrible for such things. IMO if MS was smart and Win 11 is happening they would create a package manager AND a store. Then no one can accuse the PM of being a store. I think users should have the ability to install customized things that are not rubber stamped. I simply believe doing so should require changing of some settings in the PM... and things like Admin passwords to continue. (not just a simple dialog box to click off).

Your right it could be a big mess for tons of companies if a certification process was required for any installation.
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I can feel both sides of this.

The truth is that most Windows exploits don't come from the OS itself, but rather come from vulnerabilities in installed software. (*cough* Adobe *cough*)

Installed software may update itself, but it also may not, and if it does, each little piece of software needs to have its own updater that runs in the background, which is generally obnoxious.

For over a decade I have been suggesting that this is one of the primary benefits with Linux when it comes to security. Every distribution comes with a package manager, and that package manager serves as a unified repository that keeps everything up to date, and prevents old software from lingering with unpatched vulnerabilities.

It's not like Linux users never have to install software that isn't in the default package manager, but this need has drastically dropped in the last 10-15 years compared to where it was before. Usually, if you want a popular software package, it is in the default package manager. If it isn't, the project maintainer probably has a PPA or equivalent that can add third party sources to the package manager (though people generally don't exercise even nearly enough caution before adding these, as they are a real attack vector)

If Microsoft were to do something similar with windows in a way that doesn't stifle small developers, or try to control the process too much, it would go a long way towards making the platform much more secure.

The funny part is that projects like Snap, Flatpak and and AppImage seem hellbent on ruining this benefit Linux has with the central package manager. By putting dependencies in the Snaps (and others) they are not only more wasteful with system resources, but now you are depending on the package developer to make sure that they are using patched dependencies in their Snaps, which you know won't be true for all of them.
 
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cybereality said:
Kind of crazy people are downloading some leaked ISO and logging in with their Microsoft account.

I mean, it could easily have all sorts of malware hidden inside, seem reckless.
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1.) Always use officially licensed software

2.) Always use local machine accounts only. Never sign up for a Microsoft Account.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I use Linux as my primary OS and I find Wine to be a disaster. Almost nothing works in it, and it is brutally painful to set up.
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Really? I install Wine, I double click the .exe and install software - I'd say about 70% of desktop applications work fine.

As for Windows 11, that looks good *cough*..Not.
 
Some people waiting for Linux to become more popular than Windows maybe in the last 15 years.
Each OS has pros and cons... use what you like, it's simple.

If this "leak" is true and the Start Menu is in the center, will be the first time that I will start to use theme manager to change UI ever since I using windows...
 
Linux, as a desktop distro, will never be more popular than Windows is today. However, Linux as a kernel is already far more popular.

If you include Android and ChromeOS, which are technically Linux-based, then Windows has already been surpassed.

On top of that, Microsoft is using a lot of Linux in their cloud products, once we add servers into the picture, Linux is leaps and bounds the winner.

To get back to Windows 11, yes, you can move the start menu to the left if you want, no mods needed.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
You use the mouse for the start menu?

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I almost exclusively use the mouse, up until recently I usually ripped the start buttons off the keyboard before I even plugged it in. Have you ever waited an hour for gmod to load on your 733mhz P3, just so you could enjoy a DX9 slideshow, only to have the entire process grind to a halt because you accidentally hit the keyboard start button, which naturally causes at least 20 more minutes of some combination of half showing a broken desktop, and half showing a window trying to close. You just give up at that point, hold the power button down, and buckle in for at least another hour and a half minimum. Thats only if youre lucky, what most likely happens is the full disk compressor youre running (just so you have the space for HL2 lost coast AND nukepack) gets corrupted and you actually need to re-image the machine, should only be 2 or 3 more hours.

Youre now at least 6 hours deep into this thing, youve seen the title screen, the loading screen, and maybe 4 seconds of GM_flatgrass, and thats it. So what do you do? Rip the effing buttons off of my effing keyboard so I can crash the game the correct way, the way god intended, with several nuclear blasts going off at once inside a PHX box.

Plus my laptop has a function key between ctrl and start, and with my pinky always on ctrl, its physically less effort to use the mouse as my hand is already in the right spot :p
 
I don't know why they even bother with the start menu. First thing I do on 10 installs is install open shell. Done.
They do like making things that took 1 click take 2 or 3 or more now. Look what they've done with Server versions. When 2012 came out I couldn't believe they had that metro crap on it. I miss the days of just knowing where something was and clicking on it. Now I'm searching for it. Same for phones. Ugh!
 
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Smoblikat said:
I almost exclusively use the mouse, up until recently I usually ripped the start buttons off the keyboard before I even plugged it in. Have you ever waited an hour for gmod to load on your 733mhz P3, just so you could enjoy a DX9 slideshow, only to have the entire process grind to a halt because you accidentally hit the keyboard start button, which naturally causes at least 20 more minutes of some combination of half showing a broken desktop, and half showing a window trying to close. You just give up at that point, hold the power button down, and buckle in for at least another hour and a half minimum. Thats only if youre lucky, what most likely happens is the full disk compressor youre running (just so you have the space for HL2 lost coast AND nukepack) gets corrupted and you actually need to re-image the machine, should only be 2 or 3 more hours.

Youre now at least 6 hours deep into this thing, youve seen the title screen, the loading screen, and maybe 4 seconds of GM_flatgrass, and thats it. So what do you do? Rip the effing buttons off of my effing keyboard so I can crash the game the correct way, the way god intended, with several nuclear blasts going off at once inside a PHX box.

Plus my laptop has a function key between ctrl and start, and with my pinky always on ctrl, its physically less effort to use the mouse as my hand is already in the right spot :p
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I have never accidentally hit the Windows key on any keyboard in my entire life.
 
Well, I gave Win 11 a try. The experience with local account is extremely limited. MS really wants to you use the online account.
Also with the new reskinned UI, they still have not fixed all the inconsistencies with UI elements. Some are new, some are old, some are still ancient and ugly. Bleh.
 
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Wouldn't mind if they if they integrated a lot of features you get from extra software. eg. snapping windows to a specific location with shortcuts. Could also add OLED burn-in reduction features. Those would be of value.
 
I'll be 50 by then possibly retired or fired. last thing I will need to like worry about is Windows 11 looking like Windows 8. Alot can happen by rather including user feedback mainly everyone is on Android anyway.
 
ashmelev75 said:
Well, I gave Win 11 a try. The experience with local account is extremely limited. MS really wants to you use the online account.
Also with the new reskinned UI, they still have not fixed all the inconsistencies with UI elements. Some are new, some are old, some are still ancient and ugly. Bleh.
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It's also a prerelease product, so keep that in mind. I wouldn't be surprised if the limiting of local accounts extends to retail, though, at least for the Home version if they're still doing separate Home and Pro versions.
 
what bothers me more about this is why are they calling this version 11, with what is essentially (at first glance at least) windows 10 with just a slightly different gui
what exactly is improved or better (not in subjective aesthetics) compared to windows 10 that warrants a new version number?
 
Mazzspeed said:
Really? I install Wine, I double click the .exe and install software - I'd say about 70% of desktop applications work fine.
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For me Wine hardly works, which is a problem for someone who plans to run Linux in place of Windows. I only have one PC that runs Windows 10 and the introduction to Windows 11 may be a good reason to make the switch to Linux. But Wine is the biggest problem by far and lots of games still don't work correctly. Photoshop still has menus that render glitched. I don't plan to migrate to Windows 11 unless it's free, and I have a feeling that Windows 11 is going to introduce something that will fuck with people to extract money. Microsoft is due for making a big mistake.
 
ashmelev75 said:
Well, I gave Win 11 a try. The experience with local account is extremely limited. MS really wants to you use the online account.
Also with the new reskinned UI, they still have not fixed all the inconsistencies with UI elements. Some are new, some are old, some are still ancient and ugly. Bleh.
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Yeah I’m not entering any credentials I don't mind being stolen into that for sure. Almost guaranteed it’s been modified by the people that leaked it. But yeah new elements have the new UI, stuff copied from win 10 or older have their old UI’s but who knows what ultra prebuild version this is. The scheduler changes are interesting when I enable dynamic memory on the VM I have running it the usage numbers drop to basically nothing when it’s idling. If that doesn’t change this stands to be a very VDI friendly OS.
 
Lakados said:
Apple figured out how to build a store than wrap an OS around it, Microsoft doesn't have that luxury. They tried and got roasted for it, Microsoft doesn't have the necessary control over the developers out there to pull it off so even their new OS's are hampered by software from 15 years earlier and until they can find a solution for that, this is the sorts of UI's we're going to g
Zarathustra[H] said:
I would disagree that XP is painful.

The only thing I'd miss if using XP gold release would be the start menu "Instant Search". Granted, that's pretty big, but everything else I liked better in XP than in Win10.

Strictly from a UI perspective that is. Apart from the UI, Cloud Integration, Cortana, spyware/keylogger and forced ecosystem, Win10 - under the hood - is the best OS they have ever made.
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Forced ecosystem? Not sure what you mean since I've yet to buy an App from the Microsoft store. All of my applications are available directly from the producers. Firefox, Thunderbird, jEdit, Affinity Photo, VueScan, SageTV, Libre Office, g++, etc. Except for Affinity Photo, it's all available on Windows AND on Linux.
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If that is all MS has got, I will stick with Linux. I'm using Ubuntu, but I recently installed KDE, and that fixed many of the issues I was having.

And the desktop looks great. Far more customization options, I can really get things to look how I want.

Yes, you have to make some compromises (like not having Photoshop) but overall things are working nicely.
 
GotNoRice said:
That would be quite nice, since Vista was actually one of the most innovative versions of Windows that Microsoft ever made. A LOT of very GOOD changes happened under the hood with Vista. Windows 7 was basically Vista with some minor UI tweaks, yet somehow 7 was remembered as one of the best desktop versions of windows. People hated Vista because they were coming from XP (which was a very lean OS in comparison to a modern OS) and freaked out at the extra resources that it used, especially with many computers still only having 1-2 cores at that time. Vista also required new drivers, some of which weren't available or mature right away. But Vista is the OS that legitimized 64-bit, in part when Microsoft forced vendors to supply 32-bit AND 64-bit drivers in order to get WHQL certification. That created a huge pool of mature 64-bit drivers by the time Windows 7 came out, and many of those 64-bit Vista drivers are still usable even on Windows 10 if there is no newer driver. Windows 7 was only good because Vista laid the foundation. If they had jumped directly from XP to 7, people would have hated 7 just as much as they hated Vista, for mostly the same reasons.
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vista got the bad rap because too many people with garbage computers were trying to run it and it was slow. that and driver changes killed people using their 10 year old printer or whatever. Vista was never a problem, bad computers made it that way.
 
I liked Vista and never had any issues with it. I never had any issues with 8 or 8.1 either. 10 has been the most problematic version of Windows I've used since moving to NT. The weird divide between the legacy parts of the OS (control panel and such) vs. the settings menu ensures that nothing is easy to find/access, too.
 
Bigbacon said:
Vista was never a problem, bad computers made it that way.
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That and even OEM were selling it on machines that didn't meet the minimum specs for Vista. I remember there were a couple of things they did in particular to get around Microsoft's requirements, like installing Vista as an "upgrade" option on top of XP, so technically they were selling an XP machine specced for XP. They would also install a flash drive and call it "memory" to bluff the RAM requirement, and they were also enabling Aero Glass on machines that didn't meet the Vista "Premium" requirements.

But all casual users knew was that they switched to Vista and everything ran like dog shit. Even though Vista gave us Media Center and a whole new level of Direct X unlike anything anyone had seen before.
 
Vista had it's issues, mainly the thrashing of hard drives, but overall it was a good OS. It was the last time MS actually made significant changes to the underlying OS, since then it's mostly been UI updates.
 
Axman said:
That and even OEM were selling it on machines that didn't meet the minimum specs for Vista. I remember there were a couple of things they did in particular to get around Microsoft's requirements, like installing Vista as an "upgrade" option on top of XP, so technically they were selling an XP machine specced for XP. They would also install a flash drive and call it "memory" to bluff the RAM requirement, and they were also enabling Aero Glass on machines that didn't meet the Vista "Premium" requirements.

But all casual users knew was that they switched to Vista and everything ran like dog shit. Even though Vista gave us Media Center and a whole new level of Direct X unlike anything anyone had seen before.
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Wasnt that called readyboost? I had a buddy specifically buy a "high end" flash drive (USB2, 8gb) just to use it for readyboost on an XP laptop he put vista on. IIRC it still wasnt enough, and he just went with a vista skin on XP until 7 came out.
 
Smoblikat said:
Wasnt that called readyboost? I
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Yep. And you're right, it wasn't enough to make up for actual RAM. But it was a great feature otherwise, and it's actually in Windows 8-10, too.

Even when SSDs started to enter the picture, they had some benefits. Now if you're running a PCIe NVME drive it will tell you no, you can't use this feature, which makes sense.
 
Running it on my laptop as a VM.
I actually like it!
Open Shell doesn't work after installing (no surprise there) but the start menu isn't half bad and right clicking on the start button has everything there. Well except the control panel.
 

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DukenukemX said:
For me Wine hardly works, which is a problem for someone who plans to run Linux in place of Windows. I only have one PC that runs Windows 10 and the introduction to Windows 11 may be a good reason to make the switch to Linux. But Wine is the biggest problem by far and lots of games still don't work correctly. Photoshop still has menus that render glitched. I don't plan to migrate to Windows 11 unless it's free, and I have a feeling that Windows 11 is going to introduce something that will fuck with people to extract money. Microsoft is due for making a big mistake.
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Yeah, i know a lot of people claim hat gaming world just fine under Linux, but I have found it to be nothing short of half-assed.

Games may run, but they usually do so at much lower framerates, which is a real problem when the fastest GPU on the market is only barely getting you 60fps at 4k in new titles.

Because of this I have been dual booting for two decades. I keep windows more or less 100% for games, and do everything else in Linux. It also has the side benefit of being able to dedicate the OS to just games so there isn't a bunch of other junk rubbing in the background.

Other than games, pretty much the only think keeping me from going Linux full time is a fully functional MS Office Package and Exchange compatible email/calendar client like Outlook. That and maybe MiniTab. Does GoToMeeting have a Linux client? I've center even tried.

Don't get me wrong. Libre Office is great, if everyone else you are working with also uses Libre Office. If you have to keep switching back and forth compatibility and rendering issues wind up being a major nuisance.

I would love to just get rid of windows all together, but for the time being I still need a dedicated game install on my personal desktop, and a windows install on my work machine.
 
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