At the risk of being unpopular, I think a lot of what people perceive as unintuitive or worse in terms of settings and OS features is just change. I’m on Enterprise Windows 11 at work and I wouldn’t willingly go back to Windows 10.
I think because it’s Enterprise I’m dodging a lot of the worst of it - ads, telemetry, surprise updates, etc - but the unified settings are better once you learn them, tabbed File Explorer is better, dark mode switching is way better - there’s plenty to like.
I want to see the rise of the Linux desktop as much as anyone, but implying Windows 11 is all bad isn’t that fair an assessment.
Change is a big part of it certainly but the fact that Windows is coming dangerously close to only functioning online to serve you as many ads as possible and to extract more and more of your personal data to sell all the while owning a once not for profit AI company gives such megacorp vibes.
I’m really not going to be happy about being forced to switch because a high end pc built years ago is suddenly “outdated”.
By no means is it Ultra 4K HD compatible but it can still run anything AAA just fine. There’s no excuse for what Microsoft is doing in my eyes.
Agree with all of those points, I just don’t love the reductive notion that every change is a bad change and nothing’s been for the better. In several ways it’s a better OS - but as you say, they are also getting more contemptuous of the end user with things like privacy, anticompetitivity, and ads.
I take issue with the settings menu still relying on the old menus while having shuffled things around so I’m forced to look for settings. I don’t really bother with tabbed file explorer because it doesn’t bother saving my last open folders. I can’t speak to dark mode.
I can say that the start menu is horrendously slow, it can take up to 5 seconds for it to load. Sometimes keystrokes disappear in the start menu only to magically appear some time later. They made the right click menu worse and only changeable in regedit. They made RDP credentials only saveable using CMD. They removed vertical taskbars. There are a lot of issues in going to windows 11 for me.
I’m sure there are some improvements but at work we have a wiki page on how to unfuck up windows 11 so it works how you expect it to.
I take issue with the settings menu still relying on the old menus while having shuffled things around so I’m forced to look for settings
This is still an issue, but I feel it’s diminishing as they (annoyingly slowly) do move all of the functionality to the new app. It was much worse in Windows 10, I think.
I can say that the start menu is horrendously slow, it can take up to 5 seconds for it to load.
“Works on my machine” is a profoundly unhelpful answer for me to give, but I’m fortunate enough not to have experienced this. If you’re looking for a workaround and don’t mind a further Microsoft app, the launcher in Powertoys is pretty solid.
Sometimes keystrokes disappear in the start menu only to magically appear some time later.
God, I hate the search from the start menu - but I would say that it’s been profoundly broken since Windows 8 and is marginally better in Windows 11.
They made the right click menu worse and only changeable in regedit.
100% agreed. I do think Windows 10 and earlier had a growing issue with the context menus getting unwieldy (Visual Studio is a great demo of how this can get really out of hand) but the solution Windows 11 have brought is annoying more than useful. I suspect at one point I made the registry change and forgot about it, because I’m back to a big Win10-style list.
They made RDP credentials only saveable using CMD.
Agreed again. That said, you’re a masochist if you’re not using an RDP manager like mRemoteNG! I wish Microsoft had a decent RDP app that wasn’t tied into Azure.
They removed vertical taskbars.
I found vertical taskbars incompatible with hotdesking on desks with different monitor configurations, but I do agree this one sucks.
how to unfuck up windows 11 so it works how you expect it to.
I think “how you expect it to” goes to the core of my point - needing to adapt to change isn’t inherently bad. But I’m not pretending Windows 11 is a wholesale improvement, and I do concede many of your arguments.
I only use windows at work rn so I don’t really get into the guts of it much. It works well enough most of the time but I’ve had to adjust and most of the adjustments are dealing with annoyances like the start menu. I also can’t just install arbitrary apps to solve all the issues. I appreciate the points you’ve made but I’ve largely found the usability of this OS to be meaningfully worse than Windows 10 and incomparably worse than my recent linux experience.
At the risk of being unpopular, I think a lot of what people perceive as unintuitive or worse in terms of settings and OS features is just change. I’m on Enterprise Windows 11 at work and I wouldn’t willingly go back to Windows 10.
I think because it’s Enterprise I’m dodging a lot of the worst of it - ads, telemetry, surprise updates, etc - but the unified settings are better once you learn them, tabbed File Explorer is better, dark mode switching is way better - there’s plenty to like.
I want to see the rise of the Linux desktop as much as anyone, but implying Windows 11 is all bad isn’t that fair an assessment.
Change is a big part of it certainly but the fact that Windows is coming dangerously close to only functioning online to serve you as many ads as possible and to extract more and more of your personal data to sell all the while owning a once not for profit AI company gives such megacorp vibes.
I’m really not going to be happy about being forced to switch because a high end pc built years ago is suddenly “outdated”.
By no means is it Ultra 4K HD compatible but it can still run anything AAA just fine. There’s no excuse for what Microsoft is doing in my eyes.
Agree with all of those points, I just don’t love the reductive notion that every change is a bad change and nothing’s been for the better. In several ways it’s a better OS - but as you say, they are also getting more contemptuous of the end user with things like privacy, anticompetitivity, and ads.
I take issue with the settings menu still relying on the old menus while having shuffled things around so I’m forced to look for settings. I don’t really bother with tabbed file explorer because it doesn’t bother saving my last open folders. I can’t speak to dark mode.
I can say that the start menu is horrendously slow, it can take up to 5 seconds for it to load. Sometimes keystrokes disappear in the start menu only to magically appear some time later. They made the right click menu worse and only changeable in regedit. They made RDP credentials only saveable using CMD. They removed vertical taskbars. There are a lot of issues in going to windows 11 for me.
I’m sure there are some improvements but at work we have a wiki page on how to unfuck up windows 11 so it works how you expect it to.
Good list! We differ on some of them…
This is still an issue, but I feel it’s diminishing as they (annoyingly slowly) do move all of the functionality to the new app. It was much worse in Windows 10, I think.
“Works on my machine” is a profoundly unhelpful answer for me to give, but I’m fortunate enough not to have experienced this. If you’re looking for a workaround and don’t mind a further Microsoft app, the launcher in Powertoys is pretty solid.
God, I hate the search from the start menu - but I would say that it’s been profoundly broken since Windows 8 and is marginally better in Windows 11.
100% agreed. I do think Windows 10 and earlier had a growing issue with the context menus getting unwieldy (Visual Studio is a great demo of how this can get really out of hand) but the solution Windows 11 have brought is annoying more than useful. I suspect at one point I made the registry change and forgot about it, because I’m back to a big Win10-style list.
Agreed again. That said, you’re a masochist if you’re not using an RDP manager like mRemoteNG! I wish Microsoft had a decent RDP app that wasn’t tied into Azure.
I found vertical taskbars incompatible with hotdesking on desks with different monitor configurations, but I do agree this one sucks.
I think “how you expect it to” goes to the core of my point - needing to adapt to change isn’t inherently bad. But I’m not pretending Windows 11 is a wholesale improvement, and I do concede many of your arguments.
I only use windows at work rn so I don’t really get into the guts of it much. It works well enough most of the time but I’ve had to adjust and most of the adjustments are dealing with annoyances like the start menu. I also can’t just install arbitrary apps to solve all the issues. I appreciate the points you’ve made but I’ve largely found the usability of this OS to be meaningfully worse than Windows 10 and incomparably worse than my recent linux experience.