how to make windows 11 suck less

[essplode]

okay. i use windows. i like windows, or at least, i'm used to it. i tried linux and got spooked. and i don't have mac money

but god. windows 11 sucks! windows 10 sucked too, but windows 11 is somehow worse. it's just not good! it's ugly and doesn't seem to like its own users
how can i make this god-forsaken operating system suck less? any suggestions? anything cool i can download or any settings i can change?

thanks

[Rynn]

I'd really recommend giving Linux another swing if you can. Windows hasn't released a decent OS since 7, and by all appearances it's only going to continue to go downhill. Dedomeido has a pretty nice article on Windows 11, though personally if Windows ever nuked my bootloader like that after an update it would be removed from my system immediately.

Like Windows, Linux has it's issues but they're generally issues you either resolve or avoid. I've been using primarily Linux for over a decade now and find it quite painful when I have to use Windows for work.

[Anachronism]

i tried linux and got spooked.

Try Ubuntu Budgie on an USB

[Starfighter]

windows 11 sucks! [...] it's just not good! [...] how can i make this god-forsaken operating system suck less?

Personally I love W11 for a lot of reasons but that's not what this thread is for (so I save my list of "Cool Things Windows Now Does" for another time), tell us a bit more about how you think it sucks. Is it the looks? Is it the features (or perhaps specific lack thereof)? Privacy concerns? Performance issues? Let us know what you're not happy with so our suggestions can be relevant.

[essplode]

thanks for the help y'all
... i just ended up switching to linux

[Ray]

windows 11 sucks! [...] it's just not good! [...] how can i make this god-forsaken operating system suck less?

Personally I love W11 for a lot of reasons but that's not what this thread is for (so I save my list of "Cool Things Windows Now Does" for another time), tell us a bit more about how you think it sucks. Is it the looks? Is it the features (or perhaps specific lack thereof)? Privacy concerns? Performance issues? Let us know what you're not happy with so our suggestions can be relevant.

As someone who's still on Win10 and have only heard dreadful things about 11, I'd be curious to hearing more from both sides, honestly!

[Starfighter]

As someone who's still on Win10 and have only heard dreadful things about 11, I'd be curious to hearing more from both sides, honestly!

I'd be happy to share my thoughts and I guess this thread is as good as any to host this discussion (the topic title is sure to get clicks at least ). What dreadful things have you heard? Let's see if I concur!

My main reason for liking W11 is that I've been able to uninstall a lot of third party apps that let me do things Windows now lets me do natively, but there's more things. In no particular order (small things, useful things, pretty things etc):

• Tabs in Explorer (still no split view though)
• Improved Start menu (both visually and for organization)
• Native support for mounting ISO files
• Native support for zipping and unzipping files
• Improved tools to keep the drives clean from unnecessary files
• Streamlined settings (very easy to switch between audio sources both in and out for example)
• Much better default apps (Photos, for example, is great)

[Ray]

What dreadful things have you heard? Let's see if I concur!

The thing that stuck with me the most was that when it launched, there was no option to drag and drop files into a software via the taskbar. This stuck with me bc had I made the switch, this would've impaired my workflow! Searched this up today and it seems it got fixed though, which is good!

Another issue I heard of a lot is the fact they're including advertisment in their paid OS, which if it's still going on, I think it's genuinely shitty.
This trend was already apparent from Win10 - which I enjoy using a lot. But it tries to push you into using a Microsoft account, using Edge, using Cortana, wants to push "personalized" news in your face, there's no way of completely opting out of whatever "windows hello" was about, etc. This is stuff I don't expect a proprietary OS I supposedly shelled more money for to do!

Some other stuff I heard have mostly to do with the taskbar? Users resporting how previously easy actions as changing the volume or finding a folder now require more clicks than before. I also remember something about lack of customisation?

• Native support for mounting ISO files
• Native support for zipping and unzipping files

Oh these things were introduced in Win10 afaik! Or at least I've always been able to do them on 10 natively, which I agree is SUPER handy. Photos on 10 also got a major upgrade from 7, been enjoying it a lot.
The tabs in explorer sound promising and something that would be genuinely helpful!

Overall, personally - I really like Windows as an OS generally but am not fond of how Microsoft has been handling certain stuff. I feel more and more like being taken advantage of - someone who is being constantly marketed to, constantly being made to adopt their products and workflows. I am a stubborn little creature, and I dislike that :p

But when 10 becomes obsolete, I too will have to make the switch and see for myself! There's drawing software I use that only runs natively on Win or Mac, and if possibly, I like Apple even less. I remember upgrading from an OS to another has always been painful! I heard the worst about 10, until I tried it and decided it was actually pretty damn nice, except for that stuff I mentioned. So I'm open to the fact I might find 11 really good once I try it myself, too!

[Starfighter]

Another issue I heard of a lot is the fact they're including advertisment in their paid OS, which if it's still going on, I think it's genuinely shitty.
This trend was already apparent from Win10 - which I enjoy using a lot. But it tries to push you into using a Microsoft account, using Edge, using Cortana, wants to push "personalized" news in your face, there's no way of completely opting out of whatever "windows hello" was about, etc. This is stuff I don't expect a proprietary OS I supposedly shelled more money for to do!

I believe everything (hints, ads, suggestions, phoning home at every keystroke and so on) can be disabled, at least I haven't seen an ad or anything like that at all since I turned everything like that off. But why it's on by default I'll never understand. It's just... Intrusive.

Some other stuff I heard have mostly to do with the taskbar? Users resporting how previously easy actions as changing the volume or finding a folder now require more clicks than before. I also remember something about lack of customisation?

This sounds like something they must have patched away. Finding folders, files and settings is easier now than ever before, I'd say. Changing volume (both global for different sources) is incredibly easy and where I used to have third party apps doing that I now have vanilla W11 doing the things. Customisation is also much easier now, even if it's still not enough for me (I love changing things to my liking and while W11 let's me change a lot of stuff, my setup on the whole looks very similar to every other persons setup ).

Oh these things were introduced in Win10 afaik! Or at least I've always been able to do them on 10 natively, which I agree is SUPER handy. Photos on 10 also got a major upgrade from 7, been enjoying it a lot.
The tabs in explorer sound promising and something that would be genuinely helpful!

Oh, you're probably right, I can't really remember what was in W10 since I switched quite a while ago. But the Photos app is even better this time around, I used to have a third party image viewer (nomacs) so I could get it to look nice and do the things I wanted.

Overall, personally - I really like Windows as an OS generally but am not fond of how Microsoft has been handling certain stuff. I feel more and more like being taken advantage of - someone who is being constantly marketed to, constantly being made to adopt their products and workflows. I am a stubborn little creature, and I dislike that :p

I understand! I'm a bit like that as well, but I think I've come to terms of their new approach. The more Microsoft is trying to create their own ecosystem (much like Apple) the less choices are up to the end user. But we're still allowed to tweak things enough to get the OS to a really nice state (in my opinion, but every person's needs and threshholds are different).

[Rynn]

• Native support for mounting ISO files
• Native support for zipping and unzipping files

Oh these things were introduced in Win10 afaik! Or at least I've always been able to do them on 10 natively, which I agree is SUPER handy. Photos on 10 also got a major upgrade from 7, been enjoying it a lot.
The tabs in explorer sound promising and something that would be genuinely helpful!

While it's true that Windows10 did add support for zipping/unzipping files, the front end UI for it is horribly clunky, and really only has full support for standard zip files as far as I know. A lot of other archive formats either have limited or no compatibility with it. To this day in Windows 10, 7zip is still one of the first programs I install.

[Ray]

While it's true that Windows10 did add support for zipping/unzipping files, the front end UI for it is horribly clunky, and really only has full support for standard zip files as far as I know. A lot of other archive formats either have limited or no compatibility with it. To this day in Windows 10, 7zip is still one of the first programs I install.

Oh, absolutely same! 7zip is the best. But also, I get to deal with some alternative archive formats because I'm a little bit of a geek, compared to most people. I remember when I was a kid I had to install winrar or whatever it was of my friends families' pcs because they didn't know how to open zips lol
Would it be better if windows natively supported more archive formats? Yeah, absolutely. Is this still a step in the right direction for most users? I think so, too! I don't think it counts as something windows 10 or 11 is doing worse.

[Starfighter]

really only has full support for standard zip files

This is true for W11 as well. Anything other than zip requires 7z, pretty much. It's just a pity 7z is so boring to look at... I used to use PeaZip instead of 7z just for the better looks.

[amagicmuffin]

windows 11 sucks! [...] it's just not good! [...] how can i make this god-forsaken operating system suck less?

Personally I love W11 for a lot of reasons but that's not what this thread is for (so I save my list of "Cool Things Windows Now Does" for another time), tell us a bit more about how you think it sucks. Is it the looks? Is it the features (or perhaps specific lack thereof)? Privacy concerns? Performance issues? Let us know what you're not happy with so our suggestions can be relevant. :)

As someone who's still on Win10 and have only heard dreadful things about 11, I'd be curious to hearing more from both sides, honestly!

Been using Win11 as soon as it told me to update to it. I've just been using it exactly like win10. Moved the taskbar to the left and everything. I prefer the Win11 start menu, looks less cluttered, but aside from that, I don't really see many differences. There's been a relatively new window tiling with the mouse update (drag it up to the top and put it in a preset template to tile it) but i just use windows key + arrow key to tile anyways, so that doesn't effect me. (see https://ibb.co/DWR5p7H)

[newredstone02]

i tried linux and got spooked.

Try Ubuntu Budgie on an USB

Budgie sucks !use XFCE instead