New SSD - Windows 10 or 11?

[3sixty]

I've just got a new nVME SSD and after a few years probably time to spring clean and reformat anyway.

The question is should I reinstall Windows 10 or move to Windows 11? PC is mainly used for web browsing and gaming (Valorant & Assetto Corsa mostly). I know when 11 came out it was full of issues but reading around online these seem to be mostly fixed and general consensus is upgrade to Windows 11 "if you want" but its not much of an upgrade

PC specs are not the latest and greatest, Ryzen 2600, GTX 1660 so assume drivers wont be a problem

[Griffith4ever]

I recently upgraded and all I notice is it's a touch prettier with rounded corners. I use it for work and gaming.

If you install 10 it'll just nag you to uograde to 11 :-)

[Jinx]

Problems with win11 - can't move the taskbar (might not be an issue but for my local machine I preferred to have the taskbar at the top - easy to diffentiate between local and remote machines this way).
"Open with" - dear lord how difficult can it be to allow me to pick an app to open a file type with and stick with my choice - win 11 thinks it knows better and frequent defaults to either not opening the file or resorting to the MS default app after an update.
CPU use - win 11 always appears to be doing something and has around 10% cpu use when win 10 would sit around 5% - what is it doing (same machine)?
Advantages - erm direct storage - NVME to GPU - allows faster load times and gpu performance in games that support it and better HDR compatibility if you system supports it.
Thats about it.

[Goaty Bill 2]

No experience of Win10 on a personal machine, but hated using it via Citrix.
I find Win11 slightly less irritating but, I would probably be on NT4 given a choice (and if it could run today's software).
Assuming you're already aware Win11 is 64bit only and that's not an issue?
Using the 'Pro' version.

Installation was painless; the biggest irritation was avoiding the MS account.
Most advice via the internet didn't work on my version.

[Griffith4ever]

Goaty Bill 2 said:

No experience of Win10 on a personal machine, but hated using it via Citrix.
I find Win11 slightly less irritating but, I would probably be on NT4 given a choice (and if it could run today's software).

Wow! Thats dedication to "a" cause! NT4 - what a massive pain in the arse. I ran companies' IT departments with 100s and 100s of NT4 machines. When stable, great, when the slightest issue with a driver - BSOD. Oh the "fond" memories of our NT4 server backup machine running SCSII tape drives.... not! :-)

Moving to windows 2000 was a joy ! :-)

[eeLee]

NT4, a wonderful OS that would not work properly without admin rights.

I'd take Win11 and if you're missing some UI niceness, https://www.stardock.com/products/start11/

[Trustmeimadoctor]

Move to Linux

[130R]

Trustmeimadoctor said:

Move to Linux

I will refer you to the series of videos LTT did on this for gaming

[Trustmeimadoctor]

It isn't that bad if it's a steam game and supported by proton
And seeing valve are 2 feat into the steam deck compatibility is gaining traction fast

[julian64]

Trustmeimadoctor said:

It isn't that bad if it's a steam game and supported by proton
And seeing valve are 2 feat into the steam deck compatibility is gaining traction fast

Yep, yep, any minute linux will be a main stream alternative to windows............says linux fanboys everywhere since windows 98

[Jinx]

julian64 said:

Yep, yep, any minute linux will be a main stream alternative to windows............says linux fanboys everywhere since windows 98

I have two machines running Linux (one x86 one ARM) and 3 running windows (two of which I use for work all x86) . I suspect there might be a bigger move to Linux in 2025 - especially if MS don't abandon the TPM 2.0 requirement for win 11 (or insist on it for windows 12).
Online gaming via EA or Ubisoft pretty much requires windows as the anti-cheat software doesn't like Linux but if that did change I could happily game on Linux. So yes it is a bit of a meme (year of linux on the desktop) at somepoint MS will annoy enough people to make a sizable dent in their own market share.....

[Trustmeimadoctor]

Honestly for most people Linux is fine if using something like pop or mint

Gaming can be problematic if not using steam but seeing as most people use a browser and an office suite Linux would be fine

The amount of chrome books that are out there show normals can use Linux hell I mean all those Macs too (ok Unix based)


Most have easy to follow installers with app stores so you don't need to do installs as such and you really don't often need command line if ever if your a normal user and they don't use all hour data to sell you ads

[RVB]

I used Windows 11 for about a year but it was less compatible with older programs, lots of if felt unfinished and it took me slightly longer to get things done. So I went back to Windows 10.

[Goaty Bill 2]

Griffith4ever said:

Wow! Thats dedication to "a" cause! NT4 - what a massive pain in the arse. I ran companies' IT departments with 100s and 100s of NT4 machines. When stable, great, when the slightest issue with a driver - BSOD. Oh the "fond" memories of our NT4 server backup machine running SCSII tape drives.... not! :-)

Moving to windows 2000 was a joy ! :-)

Setting up networking with multiple nics on NT took 5 minutes.
Win2000 was okayish.
Simply learning to do the same on Win7 64 and making it stick took all day.
Slightly less painfull to setup on Win11 and once set it kept working.
It's the little things that matter.

eeLee said:

NT4, a wonderful OS that would not work properly without admin rights.

Never had to run without admin rights, but as to reliability, I was running two Oracle EBS databases (full install, not VMs) on a homebuilt dual Xeon server (two separate boxes of ultra 320 SCSI drives off bloody awful Adaptec adaptors for over 4 years without ever having to reboot aside from hardware or software changes. Longest stretch was just over 18 months of 5-7 days/week development usage. SP6a of course.
And yes, overall it was about as loud as I imagine takeoff in a Vulcan bomber would be.

WinNT4 WS was also the best OS ever for playing Q3 .
With no more than 10-12 background processes there was less going on that could interrupt the smooth game play.

Still, there is no going back, hardware all but impossible to find now.
The IT business is not kind to Luddites.

[Jinx]

Goaty Bill 2 said:

The IT business is not kind to Luddites.

Erm we perfer to be called "Retro"

[RVB]

Goaty Bill 2 said:

Setting up networking with multiple nics on NT took 5 minutes.
Win2000 was okayish.
Simply learning to do the same on Win7 64 and making it stick took all day.
Slightly less painfull to setup on Win11 and once set it kept working.
It's the little things that matter.

I tried networking some Win11 computers, using one as a WLAN server.
The data flow was stuttery and caused stability issues, something which wasn't a problem with the same computers when they were on Win10, nor was it a problem after they were put back to Win10.

Also in late 2021 I had to uninstall Norton from Win11 computers because every day it caused dozens of very brief freezes of the computers which were especially annoying when the mouse wasn't quite where it should have been, then jumped a few millimetres resulting in clicking on the wrong thing.

In autumn 2021 I moved a good proportion of my computers over to Win11 and gradually found that things ran smoother and more reliably on Win10, so the computers were gradually moved back to Win10 and as of several weeks ago, none have Win11.

[pistonheadforum]

Move to Windows 11 when the next version of Windows comes out and not before.

[dundarach]

I've found 11 significantly better than 10 on my (older) hardware.

11 feels like the improvement 7 was from all the nonsense that was Vista.

I might even go so far as to say the best yet!!

[LordFlathead]

Griffith4ever said:

Goaty Bill 2 said:

No experience of Win10 on a personal machine, but hated using it via Citrix.
I find Win11 slightly less irritating but, I would probably be on NT4 given a choice (and if it could run today's software).

Wow! Thats dedication to "a" cause! NT4 - what a massive pain in the arse. I ran companies' IT departments with 100s and 100s of NT4 machines. When stable, great, when the slightest issue with a driver - BSOD. Oh the "fond" memories of our NT4 server backup machine running SCSII tape drives.... not! :-)

Moving to windows 2000 was a joy ! :-)

I did my first MCSE on Windows NT4 Workstation and Windows NT4 Server SP6. Fond memories of adding hard ware using IRQ assignments. No plug and play back then. Used to run "SCSI wide" with Adaptec card with 8x320GB 10,000 rpm drives in RAID 0.. was a monster back then.. people these days have no idea how complicated it got.. don't get my started on Token Ring

[JulianHJ]

Stick with Windows 10 until Microsoft stop supporting it.