I did a clean install of Windows 11 when Windows 10 went EOL. From all of the complaints I was hearing from headlines I expected a disastrous experience.
But to be honest, it’s been fine. I’m not a heavy user but I switch to the Windows PC at least once a day for a few hours of CAD, gaming, and one other engineering program that is Windows only.
I don’t click any of the AI buttons. I declined the OneDrive or backup sync or whatever it was and it’s gone. I don’t use the built-in email client or the other features this article complains about and I don’t feel like I’m missing anything.
The centered start menu isn’t my favorite, but it’s not like it’s unusable. I didn’t find it difficult to adjust the interface and hide things I didn’t like in the first few minutes.
On the other hand, my experience with the latest macOS and iOS 26 has been incredibly frustrating. I’m almost to the point where my basic apps have worked around new macOS bugs. My iOS phone is stuttering and laggy for unclear reasons and searches show I’m not alone. I didn’t expect my Windows 11 PC, of all things, to be the smooth sailing computing experience in my house but so far that’s how it’s looking going into 2026.
It's been a death by a thousand cuts over the years. The only reason I still had a Windows partition was to play specific games that couldn't run using Proton on Linux. The start menu's inability to be moved to the left side of the screen was the last straw for me. It sounds pedantic, but that's where I've had my start menu forever, and I'm not about to change yet another thing in my workflow.
At this point, if a game won't run under Proton because of an intrusive rootkit, I'd simply rather not play it.
Edit: I specifically mean the start bar vertically aligned on the left side of the screen, with the start button in the top-left corner, not at the bottom-left.
It’s been fine? Are you completely immune to attention grabbing features? I absolutely cannot use win11 as it comes on a stock lenovo. Maybe you got your hands on some corporate version with some of the standard settings off? But between the news feed and the advertising in the start menu I find stock installs to he maddening, and I loath needing to boot my win11 partition.
I didn’t run any scripts or utilities. When I encountered something I didn’t like I just found the setting to turn it off.
I prefer a clean system, but I’m not the kind of person who gets triggered into rage when the OS pops up a suggestion after fresh install or has something on by default. Spending some time customization the OS and desktop environment is part of the drill any time I do a clean install, whether it’s Windows, Linux, or Mac.
I finally updated a couple of months ago after putting it off forever and it's been fine for me too. I'm on Pro version and I just used this as the first step after upgrading: https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat
No issues so far, no ads, none of the complaints others are seeing. I'm a power user too: I do gaming, programming, music production, video editing, etc. All of those things are fine.
My only real problem was not being able to have two rows on the taskbar, which I solved with Windhawk's "Multirow taskbar for Windows 11" mod. Done and done.
The average home user probably won't know what power shell and GitHub are.
I can't run the scripts you are talking about on my work pc.
I can sympathise with your point of view but it does feel a bit like "works for me because I know what I'm doing". Also how long before another Windows update that undoes what the scripts do.
I used to be very pro windows simply because of backwards compatibility and hardware support was ridiculously good. I can't recommend Linux to relatives as they'd be utterly confused.
Dave Plummer, ex windows kernel dev does a good job of explaining what the issues are:
I was answering with the idea in mind that this is "HackerNews" and most here are not "average" home users, but I see your point.
Does the average home user care about any of these complaints though? In my experience, they don't really, and I'm not even sure how many use desktop operating systems these days considering everything has shifted towards mobile.
I'm not "pro" windows by the way. In fact if you look through my history, you'll see I resisted the change to Windows 10 and have tried migrating to Linux without luck. I would love to move away from Microsoft when given a realistic opportunity to do so. I loathe Microsoft trying to take up real estate within the private boundaries of my life. I just think some of these reported issues are widely exaggerated is all.
Ah ok I see, yeah for the hackernews crowd probably not an issue.
Genuine issue I have is my unbelievably well specced work laptop does not run win 11 nicely. It's not just the adverts.
As for moving away from windows, I've been a Linux user in work before, and a casual user on and off for 20 years but it was a combination of windows 11 pain and buying a steamdeck that finally pushed me to just move at least one of my home computers to Linux. But yeah, not for relatives.
Give it a few undocumented updates that change your settings in the background, and come back to give us an update. Even my Win10 extended support is getting CoPilot shoved down the pipeline silently.
I’m not this person, but I installed win11 a month or two after launch and have lived through many many updates.
I’ve never had a single setting switched from what I set it to. Nor have I had AI shoved down my throat. My guess is that since I set it up with a local account originally and have never added a MSFT account, that insulates me from a lot of the issues others have seen.
I really hate what they've done to notepad. The entire point of the program was that it was extremely basic. There's zero reason to use it now over something much better like notepad++
The absolutely insane addition of the Copilot button aside, new Notepad did have some improvements that I liked. Tabs are one, but another overlooked feature is that it now keeps track of its state and maintains all the unsaved files that are open in it, allowing me to use it as a momentary place to jot down things that I want to remember but that I don't want to save in a txt file. Basically, like more full-fledged and convenient sticky notes.
> another overlooked feature is that it now keeps track of its state and maintains all the unsaved files that are open in it, allowing me to use it as a momentary place to jot down things that I want to remember but that I don't want to save in a txt file.
There are plenty of apps that do exactly this. Sublime was the best of them that I know.
Notepad was great for the opposite reason. It is ephemeral. I can use it as a scratch pad for passwords and what not, with the comfortable knowledge that it’s all cleared away next reboot.
You can bring classic notepad back, it’s still there, so that’s what I do.
I’ve been using Windows 11 constantly since release over multiple machines after decades with Ubuntu as my primary OS. In that time, I’ve had a number of undocumented updates and found a few settings that changed, but it wasn’t a very big deal or maybe I’m just significantly better at error handling than the average user. I choose not to follow the herd and in this case, the herd is angrier than need be.
Granted, I’ve never released perfect software in my life, have no intention of starting and tend to be sympathetic towards others who share my flaws. Maybe that’s a sign that I’m actually better at handling errors than the average person.
When I first installed Windows 11 about 2 years ago, I had a similar experience. One of the things I noticed quickly was that much of the preinstalled crap that comes with Windows 10 can be easily uninstalled from the Settings menu or Control Panel, no PowerShell tricks required. It felt like Windows 11 was actually less bloated than Windows 10 at the time.
But, going through the same process now I notice a lot more of the cracks. Windows 11 nags a lot more, whether it's about OneDrive or Copilot or whatever new thing Microsoft is trying to push. My same Windows 11 install from 2 years ago kept reinstalling and re-enabling the same crap I originally got rid of, and I feel like it's only getting worse.
In short I think Windows 11 was actually really good when it first launched, minus the UI quirks at the time. But, in classic Microsoft fashion, it was totally ruined and has woefully lost my trust as something I can depend on for even just basic computing.
Is it Win11 Pro? I'm wondering if it's different than Win11 Home.
A friend of mine got a new PC as a present and it had Win11 on it. Found out it was Win11 Pro. I turned it on without it connected to my router, used the Shift+F10 trick to bypass OOBE and setup a local account, and ran a debloat script, and things seemed OK. The debloat script had removal commands for a lot of default apps and I think only the Xbox ones were on there. I believe Recall is not active. It has 16GB of RAM, 6 cores/12 threads, and Win11 didn't seem sluggish. I used a .reg file to disable the new context menu.
It was an upgrade from her old Surface Go 2 which came with Win10 on it, had only 8GB of RAM and was super sluggish after upgrading to 11 even after debloating. But this was Win11 Home since the original Win10 was Home edition too.
I keep hearing things like it's not possible to disable stuff in Win11 Home and I'm sure Win11 Home has more default apps and stuff enabled. I don't keep up with it. This is the only Win11 system here and other than my worklife I'm all Linux.
I haven't noticed slowness in the right click menu on <= windows 10. On Windows 11 it's slower simply because I have to open a second menu to get to what I want.
> I’m not a heavy user but I switch to the Windows PC at least once a day for a few hours of CAD, gaming, and one other engineering program that is Windows only.
Well yeah, maybe lead with that.
It seems like you don't actually need windows other than being a launcher for some very specific apps.
It’s an impoverished view of what an OS is. A great OS is also providing APIs that enable a cohesive desktop, integrations that enable apps, and other core services.
For example, iOS has a built-in API for managing calendar events. That means my third-party to-do list can show a calendar view with everything from my iOS-managed calendar. Similarly, iOS has an API that enables third-parties to build apps that interact with Apple Music - so you don’t need to use the default client. Another example is focus modes/contextual computing - the OS enables configuring various settings in an automatable way. Another service is the health-tracking database - all my health apps share a common view of data, so my nutrition app can see my weigh ins, calories burned, and glucose levels - all coming from different devices.
On macOS, it goes beyond being just a launcher by providing rich file system services - for example, features to automate working on directories as contents change. It provides integration points to enable providing actions/services that work on text fields. It lets you configure dictionaries that support right-click/force press to look up. It implements a rich eMacs-inspired shortcut system in text fields.
Windows used to have APIs and integrations to support showing calendar events in the clock area. It was going to have a unified tab system that let you have windows with tabs provided by other apps (Sets).
In other words, an OS isn’t just a launcher. It’s a system.
I'm half content. I don't have issues for the most part with Windows annoyances, am ok streaming movies with ads, shrug when Spotify changes their UI yet again, and browse on my laptop without adblock. On the other hand, I had to pay to upgrade YouTube because I found those ads painful.
If you really must use Windows and Linux is not an option at all for some reason, use a debloating script to remove/disable (most of) the AI cruft and telemetry.
It would be interesting to see you compare notes with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46446021. You both seem to have similar uses for windows, but totally opposite experiences.
I'm glad to hear you say this. Been using Windows 11 daily for a few years, and I don't really have huge issues with it.
- I've shut off the dumb, simplified right click menu.
- StartAllBack solves my issues with the Start button and menu bar.
- I've removed the weather, the ads, anything else dumb.
- Other than that it's just... Windows.
- EXCEPT I haven't had a screen of death... One time in years.
Been using Windows since 3.11, Mac OS since 6, and I just don't get the vitriol.
After long-term usage, my environment on MacOS (laptop issues mainly!!!) stutters and becomes less-usable. Perhaps Windows, or Linux, or JUST NO COMPUTER WHATSOEVER would be better?
MacOS is less for power users. On my Mac (macbook pro with Notch) I can no longer see menu-bar apps, since I have 11 icons up there which are not from Apple. The 12th / 13th are simply inaccessible. Added Tailscale this week .. Annnnnd it is not visible...sigh. Looking into purchasing "notch optimizer" apps, but am disgusted every time I restart searching for the right tool.
MacBook Pro is less for power users. The miniscule builtin RAM "because we use RAM so much more efficiently" is causing my machine to chug. I continue to feel pain, then search + find, and pound-down apps that use more RAM than I need at this moment.
It's like being a computer user in 1988. And I wish it were more like 2025. AAPL is ridiculously successful .. maximizing profits.
I slapped 96GB of ram into my 13 framework laptop last year, when prices were cheap. I'm probably going to upgrade next cycle for fun and give my current laptop away (I'll keep the ram). I'm sure that laptop will last a very long time with linux.
Macbook Pro's are the best laptops I've ever used. But if you go that route you better up front that RAM or you'll be stuck. The one place the Mac destroys the framework is battery usage. It's not a deal killer for me, but it might be for many.
You can disable the notch altogether; in display settings opt+click on scaled to select the resolution list you should see some resolutions that are just a few vertical pixels apart.
Select the one with the smaller vertical value, this will turn the notch off at the cost of that small loss of vertical space.
But to be honest, it’s been fine. I’m not a heavy user but I switch to the Windows PC at least once a day for a few hours of CAD, gaming, and one other engineering program that is Windows only.
I don’t click any of the AI buttons. I declined the OneDrive or backup sync or whatever it was and it’s gone. I don’t use the built-in email client or the other features this article complains about and I don’t feel like I’m missing anything.
The centered start menu isn’t my favorite, but it’s not like it’s unusable. I didn’t find it difficult to adjust the interface and hide things I didn’t like in the first few minutes.
On the other hand, my experience with the latest macOS and iOS 26 has been incredibly frustrating. I’m almost to the point where my basic apps have worked around new macOS bugs. My iOS phone is stuttering and laggy for unclear reasons and searches show I’m not alone. I didn’t expect my Windows 11 PC, of all things, to be the smooth sailing computing experience in my house but so far that’s how it’s looking going into 2026.