Which windows are you using? 10 Vs 11

I've been resisting moving to Windows 11 mostly on the basis of "if it ain't broke don't fix it." This is particularly the case with anything MS put out. Recently though I helped my brother set up his new Win 11 PC so with security updates ending soon for Win 10 I thought I might as well bite the bullet and get it done.

So I updated the motherboard BIOS to fix the TPM vulnerability, enabled the TPM module in BIOS and then installed Win 11 over 10. It all went pretty smoothly except Win 11 disabled an Intel comms driver and the AMD Master utility due to security concerns. After I deleted the former and updated the latter everything worked fine.

Doesn't seem much different to Win 10 really and I soon got used to the start menu changes. I do like the more secure log in options with Windows Hello, don't like it tracking me everywhere but I guess that ship sailed long ago. I have got a delay set on updates and will keep an eye out for known issues before letting it install any.
 
jonchaz said:
I've been resisting moving to Windows 11 mostly on the basis of "if it ain't broke don't fix it." This is particularly the case with anything MS put out. Recently though I helped my brother set up his new Win 11 PC so with security updates ending soon for Win 10 I thought I might as well bite the bullet and get it done.

So I updated the motherboard BIOS to fix the TPM vulnerability, enabled the TPM module in BIOS and then installed Win 11 over 10. It all went pretty smoothly except Win 11 disabled an Intel comms driver and the AMD Master utility due to security concerns. After I deleted the former and updated the latter everything worked fine.

Doesn't seem much different to Win 10 really and I soon got used to the start menu changes. I do like the more secure log in options with Windows Hello, don't like it tracking me everywhere but I guess that ship sailed long ago. I have got a delay set on updates and will keep an eye out for known issues before letting it install any.
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There are some simple registry tweaks/scripts that you can run, to make W11 look like W10, for example bringing back the better featured right click menu, and fix some annoyances within the start menu etc, you might want to look into it :)
 
Thanks for the suggestion, I did look into that a bit before making the change. So far though there's nothing I can't learn to live with in Win 11 and I am concerned that registry changes might cause conflicts with some future MS updates so I'll leave it alone for now.
 
jonchaz said:
Thanks for the suggestion, I did look into that a bit before making the change. So far though there's nothing I can't learn to live with in Win 11 and I am concerned that registry changes might cause conflicts with some future MS updates so I'll leave it alone for now.
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You're welcome dude.
Oh and look into Rufus for making the bootable USB, you can remove certain annoyances, such as the mandatory Microsoft account, and the TPM requirement - you can basically tick a couple of toggles, and it'll be able to install on a old hardware like Core2Duo's etc, I have done this myself (I was bored haha).
 
I moved over around the start of this year. There are a handful of neat things like tabbed Windows Explorer, but overall it's not a huge difference.

I do however abhor the new start menu. 10's was absolutely perfect. You had the full list which you could browse everything installed easily, and then the tile shortcuts beside, which were not only customisable in size and position, but also groupable in custom named sections, making organisation great and could completely replace desktop shortcuts. It was literally perfect. 11's is literally just a dump of shortcut icons with no customisation other than position in a fixed grid. You can't even group them into sections of any sort. It's asinine how you could go from something so useful, to something so pitiful, and there's been zero attempt at getting anything close to what it was, despite 11 being out for several years now.

There are other annoyances like the new right click menu, but that is easily reverted with a registry edit.
 
Smeghead said:
I moved over around the start of this year. There are a handful of neat things like tabbed Windows Explorer, but overall it's not a huge difference.

I do however abhor the new start menu. 10's was absolutely perfect. You had the full list which you could browse everything installed easily, and then the tile shortcuts beside, which were not only customisable in size and position, but also groupable in custom named sections, making organisation great and could completely replace desktop shortcuts. It was literally perfect. 11's is literally just a dump of shortcut icons with no customisation other than position in a fixed grid. You can't even group them into sections of any sort. It's asinine how you could go from something so useful, to something so pitiful, and there's been zero attempt at getting anything close to what it was, despite 11 being out for several years now.

There are other annoyances like the new right click menu, but that is easily reverted with a registry edit.
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Wouldn't call 10's Start Menu perfect but it was a step in the right direction with some improvements on the functionality offered by 7 - it still lacked for a decent range of customisation options and proper group management features, etc. 11s is an absolute joke and I have no idea how (a) it shipped in that state (b) if there was some reason like some major bug that meant they had to release it like that they didn't than put major focus on sorting it post release.

They are now finally rolling out an improved Start Menu and initial impressions so far it seems good:

microsoft.design

Start, Fresh — Redesigning the Windows Start menu for you - Microsoft Design

This is the first post in our new Beyond the Surface series, a behind-the-scenes look at how craft comes to life in Windows products and features.
microsoft.design microsoft.design

Though being MS I don't trust them to execute on the concept and actually produce something great but to be fair so far it seems a massive positive step.
 
I like 11 start menu :p after removing all the useless stuff obvs
just put a few of your favourite things there.... everything else - 'windows key' and start typing..
 
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deviation said:
Aren't they discontinuing support for security patches/fixes soon unless you pay for some subscription? Or did that turn out to be lies/scaremongering?
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3 options:

I'm considering my options (and honestly considering the $30, or maybe the backup option) - Use 11 for work and don't particularly like it, plus I've got some music production stuff that was a bit of a pain to get all the plugins installed (mainly just due to the number of them), probably not as bad as I'm telling myself though.
Also not sure how well my older versions of some software will manage.

I'm tempted to try Linux of some variety so may dual boot, but will need Windows for certain games (basically wouldn't want to risk getting accounts banned on anything with Anti-Cheat)
Server PC will almost certainly have to go linux, as long as I can get my game servers running in it (and probably need a Linux hypervisor that will support Windows for occasional self-learning VMs)
 
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monkeyspank said:
everything else - 'windows key' and start typing..
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This comes back to what should be the primary purpose for an OS - something MS seem to have forgotten or just don't care about, enabling the end user. For me personally Windows key and starting typing is not an optimal way of working - for other people and I assume for yourself it might be.

I like having my most used stuff categorised on the Start Menu, a few select things pinned to the taskbar and only going deeper into the menu or searching for things I use rarely.
 
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TrojanWhore said:
3 options:

I'm considering my options - Use 11 for work and don't particularly like it, plus I've got some music production stuff that was a bit of a pain to get all the plugins installed (mainly just due to the number of them), probably not as bad as I'm telling myself though.
Also not sure how well my older versions of some software will manage.

I'm tempted to try Linux of some variety so may dual boot, but will need Windows for certain games (basically wouldn't want to risk getting accounts banned on anything with Anti-Cheat)
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Just come to the dark side and dual boot linux as your main OS, and only use W11 for non linux supported games that have nasty DRM/windows apps required to run ;)
 
deviation said:
Just come to the dark side and dual boot linux as your main OS, and only use W11 for non linux supported games that have nasty DRM/windows apps required to run ;)
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This is likely my preferred option.... but whether that happens in Oct 25 or 26 is a bit up in the air at the moment - I'll probably start with the server PC as Linux to make sure everything I want works ok :)
 
deviation said:
Aren't they discontinuing support for security patches/fixes soon unless you pay for some subscription? Or did that turn out to be lies/scaremongering?
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Windows 10 is EOL 14/10/25 - no more security patches. Corporates have the option for extended support. The goal posts for options for consumers seem to be changing but not the end date itself.
 
TrojanWhore said:
This is likely my preferred option.... but whether that happens in Oct 25 or 26 is a bit up in the air at the moment - I'll probably start with the server PC as Linux to make sure everything I want works ok :)
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Push the boat out, do it on Oct the 24th :P:D Or be dangerous and do it on the 27th :cry:

Yeah that's a good plan dude, you cannot loose either way, are you thinking of using Bazzite or a regular distro?
 
deviation said:
Push the boat out, do it on Oct the 24th :P:D Or be dangerous and do it on the 27th :cry:

Yeah that's a good plan dude, you cannot loose either way, are you thinking of using Bazzite or a regular distro?
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I meant Oct 2025/26 (as in, cave and either pay the ~£22 or backup my settings to OneDrive - I'm already using a MS account to login, unless I got around to fixing that and forgot about it!)

Bazzite is an option although I'm not averse to get my hands dirty - I've setup various game servers/mining things and other stuff on Ubuntu before :)
If I do go custom (i.e. regular distro), probably something Debian based again, if only so I don't have to embarrass myself at every opportunity by telling people 'I use Arch btw' :P
 
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TrojanWhore said:
I meant Oct 2025/26 (as in, cave and either pay the ~£22 or backup my settings to OneDrive - I'm already using a MS account to login, unless I got around to fixing that and forgot about it!)

Bazzite is an option although I'm not averse to get my hands dirty - I've setup various game servers/mining things and other stuff on Ubuntu before :)
If I do go custom (i.e. regular distro), probably something Debian based again, if only so I don't have to embarrass myself at every opportunity by telling people 'I use Arch btw' :P
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Haha, I was going to say he's ballsy running the risk 15 days after the EOL :D

Ah nasty, I just use Rufus to remove that requirement along with TPM. As for OneDrive, that's the first thing I disable then uninstall :P
Are you not tempted to just buy a cheap key elsewhere for W11 and be done with it, and then run off into the unix sunset ;)

Yeah that makes sense, you can't really loose whichever distro you use if it works for you, then it works, I haven't used Bazzite myself, but I was under the impression it does a lot of it for you/is already nearly ready to go, so less faff/learning?
 
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