Version 11 didn’t make that market share happen. It inherited that from win XP

My work laptop is only allowed windows 11 [*]
At least I wait for it on company time.

Dunno, my Linux boots that fast.

I remember finding this out a while back. I tried to install it, but had some problem I don't recall. I'll try again. Thanks.

EDIT: Ah, right. It doesn't find my mounted drives nor my shared drives from my server. Nor does it show previews of any filetype but images (which IS nice), just a big icon for text files, for instance.

I suppose there are fixes for these things, but I didn't find anything in configuration or in the help section of the website after a quick search. That's as far as I'm willing to dive into this, because I know I could spend hours on this, and still not find a solution from past experience.

Thanks, anyway.

Maybe it’s because I neutered my W11 and only dual boot to launch the occasional game or Windows specific driver, but… I haven’t had significant issues with W11? Not that I can remember over the past two years.

No broken updates, no weird copilot things, no excessive background usage, nothing. The only maintenance I do is manually updating graphics drivers.

It wastes none of my time.

The one issue I had was the LG monitor debacle, that tried to install Mcafee, but that was LG’s fault (and I’m never, ever buying an LG display again, as long as I live. I hope you’re happy, LG marketing).

I find this remarkable, because to me it means, Windows doesn’t have to be junk, yet they deliberately configure it that way, and make it extremely difficult to undo. I used a slew of tools neuter it, but I’d have no idea where to start without them.

And to be clear, I use Linux 90% of the time, so I’m not advocating for Windows or anything.

Yes, all those XP machines kept upgrading...

No, the actual market share of Windows 11 specifically, even against other Windows OS's, far surpasses Linux.

I have experienced all of that on my work machine. Its a mess of breakage and glitches and background stalls. Group policy initially stopped copilot but now its back again... And its always just enough to mess up your mouse flow

Any neutering tool recommendations?

All our work Teams calls are colleagues swearing because their Bluetooth is messed up, or Windows changed their default audio device (again)

I think a lot of the issues people experience on windows can be mitigated by disabling certain things or as you said "neutering" it. Back when I used windows 10 as my main OS, I did a lot of modification to make it better and it was alright, but windows 11 has also experienced a lot more bugs and criticism just being generally worse. Worse resource management, less user freedom, more tracking, more ai, newer CPU requirements, and that's all just off the top of my head.

I know this is a Linux space, and I love Linux but my Windows 11 box runs just fine. I haven't had any problems with it.

I have a 'helper' PC that monitors and downloads and catalogues. I wanted to go to Linux, but after battling with network share access for days I just gave up. Linux needs to be more 'works out of the box' but I'm patient.

a lot of the issues people experience on windows can be mitigated by disabling certain things or as you said “neutering” it.

Wouldn't it be great if an operating system just worked properly out-of-the-box?

There are Arch distributions that do that better than Windows 11. What's Microsoft's excuse?

Preaching to the choir man. I ditched Windows and am better for it. No excuse for microslop to be this bad.

Then you’re lucky. Win11 virtually pushed me to Linux, I was a windows fanboy before.

I'm still primarily on windows myself, about 80% of the way to pulling the trigger on switching to Linux as my main driver, but I haven't been able to work out all the things I need to be able to do yet, and dual booting really isn't that viable for me because the amount of shit I typically have going at once means rebooting isn't a trivial process. I've found a lot of shit on Linux to actually be pretty simple to accomplish once you know where to look for information, but finding that information can be tricky and that's what makes the process so frustrating. That said my windows system is starting to have enough problems just running stably that it might force the issue before long.

true

Yea Linux users don't seem to value their time. I spent every other evening for a week trying to install fedora. Multiable downloads, different pen drives, formatting using fadoras own tool. I even tried with a different PC. Nothing. Read the forms to see if there is any known issue. Nobody's got time for that. I'm back with Linux mint on my gaming setup. It hasn't had that many issues. But the gaslighting people seem to say Linux will run on anything with any thing makes me miss trust anything those people say. I don't want a suprise failed update or to spend an evening working out the low level boot issue.

I tried to get Nobara working on my pc and couldn't do it. I have installed soany forms of Debian/ubuntu and arch. I did get bazzite working, but I didn't like how locked down that os is.

I run two different RPM distro machines. Took me less than forty minutes to install on each (my internet is slow), and one of them is an eight-year-old laptop with an i3 and 8 gigs of memory. All runs fine, had issues with the Bluetooth antenna on one (just drivers).

I had to help a family member set up a W11 laptop, took hours (pre-installed) to sift through all the bullshit settings to make it even function without disrupting every session or literally spying on them.

So, I dunno, maybe you pissed off some witch and got cursed, seems like a pretty exceptional experience you had.

Yeah Bazzite is irritatingly restrictive, Fedora or Cachy are honestly worth the little extra effort it takes.

I am all in on Cachy. I have installed it on all of my machines and even my friend's. Cachy just works so well, I stopped shopping around.

I hope you don't mind me asking, but how is Bazzite locked down? I have never run any Linux as a primary desktop, though I'm relatively familiar with Linux in general from my years of general nerdiness. I recently installed bazzite on a whim on an old laptop as a first step of potentially shedding Windows (because I like games and bazzite says it's for gaming). I very limited use it seemed fine, but that's basically been installing a few things and testing a few games.

I’m not a fanboy, I just use whatever works

I like Mint and Fedora myself

There's a good one called Ubuntu.

I'm a linux user but this is so cringe.

To be fair Dolphin's defaults are insane, they seemed to have approached it as 'how can we allow file/folder navigation but hide as much information as possible'. If you're a minimalist you might like it, if you want to use a file manager to manage files I can't really see how the defaults are useful.

I actually have to ask: what is something that 'works out of the box '?

Mounted drives

They should show up in the bottom of the Places pane on the left, in the "Devices" section. If it literally cannot find them, then I can't say anything about what is wrong.

Shared drive

You should be able to add a network folder in Places (the left pane) > Network > Add Network Folder (in the top menu). If that wizard doesn't work, you should be able to do it manually by typing sftp://trackendakracken@192.168.1.123 or whatever into the URI bar and press enter.

Enable text preview

Menu (the three lines button in the top right) > Configure Dolphin > Interface > Previews > Text Files

I mean, yeah. Though that's less recommended these days. I run Debian on proxmox for different server needs. And my laptop is fedora bluefin.

Desktop, as infrequently used as it is, still runs Windows for the few times a year when I absolutely need Windows on bare metal. Plus I keep a Windows 10 VM on the server for the one every month or two that I need it. Try as I might to get away from windows, when you're part of a team, and the only one running Linux, sometimes you get weird incompatibilities, and you just need to do it on Windows 🤦‍♂️

Maybe it’s because I neutered my W11 and only dual boot to launch the occasional game or Windows specific driver

Yes, it's that. If you'd use it as your daily driver, you would notice. I do tech support at work and there's hardly a month that goes by without a Win 11 machine sitting on my desk that has - miraculously! - fucked-up drivers or other issues after an "update".

I spent every other evening for a week trying to install fedora.

Skill issue.

Dolphin is plugin based. So there's plugins for adding previews for more file formats. For network share stuff you may want to check if "kio" is installed and any optional dependencies on your distro for more functionality

Personally have had more issues with the windows installer than any Linux installer I've ever used (on multiple different systems)

Let's put it this way. To map a network drive in windows: go to PC, select drive and advanced sharing, add user. Then click network, click PC, right click drive and map drive.

Now do that in Linux.

Windows 11? I haven't had a serious issue in years.

Yeah, only that piece of shit will silently set up the bootloader on a whole different drive, leaving you a nice surprise once you remove it some time down the line...

People kept using and buying what they already knew, it's not that hard to understand. Even if the new installment is shit, it's still familiar, and for many that goes above any other argument.

Bazzite is an Atomic system. Most of it's files are immutable, and can only be modified with a system update. That's great for stability and working from a system exactly as tested, but lots of software needs (or wants) to add extra files to the system. In Bazzite you should basically spin up a VM for that (or a toolbox, those are cool), or "layer" it into the system which reduces the stability you get from the Atomic system.

Both VMs and Layering are extra steps and can be complex depending on what you need, so it's more difficult to do otherwise routine things if you're not well versed already.

Always has been

Windows 10 was the last actual Microsoft OS.

AtlasOS

Same. Ubuntu didn't run on my tower only Debian did and then I removed the entire OS and downloaded windows 10 from Microsoft and googled up a product key.

Sometimes you can't escape the dog shit.

Windows updates the computer and I swear my ram speed went down.

Honestly I don’t know which projects are up to date, so I’m afraid to recommend what I vaguely remember.

Search GitHub/Gitlab for “windows debloat” or similar concepts, and sort the results by date updated (e.g. the most recent commit). This is precisely what I’d do with a fresh Windows install, anyway.

On top of that, I go through running services one by one and disable the ones I don’t need.

I disable Defender active protection (except for the firewall/anti tamper) as well, as it absolutely tanks the performance of many applications. As one example I measured, it multiplies the startup time for modded Rimworld, and dramatically slows game ticks. It seems to slow Cyberpunk 2077 as well, but not as reproducibly.

Most “debloaters” won’t do this, as it’s generally not a good idea. But I treat my Windows partition as disposable: nothing sensitive stored, no sensitive data accessible on drives nor networks, data on a separate partition. If it was infected, I could wipe it and reinstall without a care.

There are issues with that of course, but for my fedora, Pidoras tools helped identify and fix the compatibility issue

It was probably a compatibility issue. I'm sure if I was more invested I would find a way. I was distro hoping so I wasn't going to put myself through it. if it had installed it would be a different matter.

except for the embedded license revenues the multitudes keep paying.

1. I'm not putting 11 on anything of mine after dealing with it at work and on the laptop I ended up switching to Bazzite. It's atrocious.