News Windows 11 Pro leaks, Build 21996.1 ISO being shared online

I like using Linux OS but Windows 10 Professional is a great operating system and well supported, if Windows 11 is free then great. I've been paying £7.99 a month to Microsoft for Office 365 for a bit now, its been useful to my kids school work. I might give Windows 11 a look when its available on a 2nd pc.

 

And if you didn't have a touch screen, it was the worst interface to have ever graced a desktop monitor.

But Microsoft have a history of doing just that. They shoehorn something in, forcing it on everyone regardless of whether or not it makes sense given the broad spectrum of possible use cases - frankly, while I liked the Tile style for Windows Phone and the laptop I had at the time (Yoga 2 Pro), the new start menu was a PITA on anything which didn't have some sort of touch interface. Which was... most devices that came with Windows 8. The fact that they also forced it on Windows Server was a particularly dumbarse move.

But then, Microsoft have demonstrated that they are either too fast off the block for the world (Tablet PCs), or stubbornly slow (Zune, etc) with frightening regularity. Even those things which probably aren't a mis-step are often so poorly handled (Windows RT) that they basically become a disaster by default. They also abandon things which appear to be doing well like the Sidewinder game controllers (remember those? - they were pretty good, had a broad spectrum of prices and features, and were quite a bit more durable than any controller other than some of the super-pro stuff) and their best mouse, the Intellimouse Explorer.

Honestly, if it wasn't for their business tactics (Windows on every new PC, the WIntel hegemony which caused the ridiculously slow release of XP64, "supporting" standards by basically ignoring them or forcing their own take on a "standard" via their other stranglehold offering, Office) I think Microsoft would have failed a dozen times over by now.

 

Same. Bundled with Motorcross Madness. Good times.

 

Oh man the hours I spent on that game.

 

unlike you and 98%of the world, The computer is not a consumption device it is really the suck, and its just not windows 10 but things like older KDE remakes and to date gnome

What pc desktop makers want is the phone interface, that is great and all but I do like 3 things with my phone and 2 of those are boiled down to web interfaces in an app. Its nice to whip out mah device (hehe) and glance at ebay ... But I work as a full time engineer in real life and on top of that 40% of my free time is also doing ... ding ding ding engineering work. I do not give a flying fk about live tiles and desktops circa windows 98. I need a computer to run the software I want and not deal with "tablet" interfaces

Of course linux would be a choice if I wanted to run buggy software with 20 year old file formats and UI standards but I digress (I can get some things to load a standard issue *step file without shitting its pants 30 something years later)

 

I wish there were serious display drivers for Linux. I found Proton to be really good, but doing GPU overclocking, fan curves, and actually using the cutting edge features of the AMD drivers hard or impossible (and also very hard also to know that they're actually on!)

Although having said that, I did have the odd crash during competitive multiplayer games (kind of a problem) and also easy anti-cheat really doesn't like being run on Linux. One day I'll be able to make the switch for gaming, I hope! My relationship with Windows is very much hate/hate - I can't help but feel that the Linux haters just haven't got over the hump of the initial change from what they're used to.

 

A lil bit of googling and came up with WattmanGTK

 

Ah yes, this brings me back and indeed I was incorrect earlier, I remember getting WattManGTK working. I think the deal-breaker was actually that I didn't know if I could overclock my old monitor (I was considerably extending the freesync range) without that tool available on Windows, and also I couldn't work out how to access the fanciest AMD tools like frame rate target control, image sharpening etc. I do suspect that these things might have become possible, but it would have been much nicer if AMD had just supported their GUI in the same way on Linux as they do on Windows.