Submitted 1 month ago by Pro@programming.dev to technology@lemmy.world
https://htxt.co.za/2025/09/microsoft-still-cant-convince-folks-to-upgrade-to-windows-11/
cross-posted from: programming.dev/post/37265606
My elderly parents got the "your computer cannot be upgraded" and my somewhat tech-litterate mom asked me to move them to Linux.
Microsoft should've realised at some point that the only thing most people need today is a computer that can run a web browser and connect to a printer.
I swear to Torvalds, if the amount of old ladies using Linux because their Fedi relatives installed it on their laptops is accurate we are in the middle of an major demographic crisis.
For every one, there’s the younger relatively who installed it for them, so things are in perfect balance in the end.
the only thing most people need today is a computer that can run a web browser and connect to a printer.
I cannot the life of me get my Linux laptop to use my fucking Canon WiFi printer. It detects the printer, says it’s connected, but it simply will not send a print job to it. Windows, iOS and android all use it just fine…but this fucking Linux machine just won’t, I’ve spent hours fiddling with drivers and nothing works, it’s infuriating!
Yeah that sounds bad :/ All Brother here with no issues. Esp. Linux Mint just autodetects and sets everything up directly.
Eh, my in-laws have the same problem… but on windows
Can u tell ur model of printer maybe I can help I had fight a bit with canon printer too a bit but in the end it started working
We use a Canon at work, behind a print server called UniPrint, or some shit. I figured out how to use it to print from a USB drive long before I finally caved and mailed the guy who maintains it to ask how to get my KDE Neom machine to successfully send a print job. I figured out how to see it, I could check the toner levels, but I could not send a print.
Works now, because he changed a setting.
Bastard printers.
I can get mine to speak to my shitberg printer, but I went and bought bootleg ink cartridges and I have a half-day printer battle on my to do list to reset the ink levels and force the printer to accept non-HP ink into its heart.
Let me tell you:
I’ve been using Linux exclusively since ~2010 and moved my mum over back when XP got canned. Printers always have been and still are the bane of my existence. From what I know from other people working in IT printers are always bad, however of course the driver support situation in Linux is so much worse. My mum used to have a Samsung mfp that would print in Linux (most of the time) but I could not for the life of me figure out how to get it to scan reliably. In the end I’ve set her up with a dual boot with a simple “click here to switch to Windows” button so she could scan in there (saving the scans to a NAS)
From my experience printers mostly either work or don’t work in Linux. If you are looking for a new printer I’ve only had food experiences with Brother. If you already have a printer and it’s not working right I can recommend sxouring through forums for that one wisdom of the ancients that can help (and possibly sacrificing a goat)
I bow also have a Canon printer (it was a gift) and with the official Linux drivers it worked for years. Recently it just wouldn’t print from Linux anymore till I switched the drivers to the generic “Guteprint” now it’s printing fine again …
Tl;dr: printers are evil and Linux drivers are sometimes making them worse
Ironically my fedora computer connected out of the box, but my wife’s windows laptop breaks the printer each time it tries to connect.
If there’s a firmware update available I have to manually update the printer firmware after her computer tries to print.
Mac and Linux work fine 100% of the time.
I’ve been trying to get my MIL’s printer working forever.
Check if you selected the correct driver
My old printer got better support on linux than modern windows. HP has long since took the driver off their website.
(They're now moved over)
It boggles my mind that tablets didn’t take over already as peoples “At home” devices
I moved my MIL to Mint. It runs faster and she hasn’t had any issues accessing Internet and email.
I’m upgrading to Debian 13 instead, since 13 is bigger number than 11 so obviously it’s better
My first pc had windows 95 and it was indeed vastly better then todays corporate shite
Remember how much people HATED Win95? They still moved to it to escape DOS, but still. Loads of hate.
Way ahead of you on Mint 22 or something like that
Fedora 41 is like being decades in the future.
This is why I upgraded my Windows 10 laptop to a Fedora 42 one. 42 is obviously the biggest. And thusly better than Debian.
Just wait until you learn about Windows 2000
Jokin’ aside, I am thinking to upgrading to forky (14), if it gets newer Nvidia drivers, because of a single issue I have with Wayland on Plasma (that is X applications flickering like crazy).
You’ll likely need to purge your Nvidia drivers after upgrading to 13, I had two machines fail to start NvidiaPersistence.d.service (or something like that) which caused the machines to fail on boot-up.
Reinstalled the drivers with sudo apt install nvidia-driver nvidia-cuda-dev nvidia-cuda-toolkit if you’re looking for raytracing don’t forget to install libnvoptix1.
The risk for both general and corporate business users far outweighs any minor inconveniences of moving to a new OS version.
Minor inconveniences like HAVING TO BUY A WHOLE NEW FUCKING COMPUTER.
These people live in a fantasy world.
Other minor inconveniences may include:
Left out being nagged to death about other products and services microsoft thinks you should buy.
What? Don’t you guys have money?
Just stop being poor, duh!
They’re not trying to get me to upgrade my OS, they’re trying to get me to buy a whole new fucking system for no good reason. Every last one of them can die in a fire.
And that’s before we consider that Windows 11 is actually a downgrade.
Makes me miss windows 7.
Windows 7 was peak. I still miss it.
It’s simply the best Windows. Like, it’s still garbage not as good as Linux for anything a bit complex, but at least it’s actually usable, fast, doesn’t feature ads in the start menu, doesn’t have built-in AI shitware, and has a decent customization capability.
Aero was the prettiest UI, I held onto Win7 because of it until EOL 😢
I ran vista from release, never had any probmems with it. Admittedly it did help that I ran it on a brand new pc. Does show that the problem wasn’t the os but rather their aggressive push to get it on PCs that weren’t suitable
Looking at it from a perspective other than “Windows shit, use Linux”, MS’ biggest issue here is that the vast majority have no compelling reason to upgrade. Currently.
To the average punter, W11 offers nothing that W10 doesn’t already have. There’s no new technologies that they care about, no new tentpole software that they’re dying to try. Nothing. It has copilot running rampant through it, but most people don’t know what that is or don’t give a shit.
Give Apple their due, when they announce an OS update, they focus hard on the ways it improves over the current offering. Ways it can interact with your other devices, for example. Or even just a whole new design.
But MS advertise nothing beyond “This is new, come get it!”, then wonder why no one cares.
The biggest problem Microsoft has is that the biggest selling feature of Windows is its ability to be backwards compatible and run on older hardware. The fact that a good number of PCs that aren’t even 10 years old yet can’t even run it is the issue.
Maybe it is worth saying that it isn’t that it can’t run on it, it is that Microsoft is trying to stop it from running on it. Two registry keys and 11 replaces 10 on anything 10 works on. But they don’t want to tell anyone that.
But the premise is sound: to the end consumer they hear “buy a new computer” while the old one works fine, and the new ones price is starting to climb…
I genuinely couldn’t tell you what the current gen Xbox is named, though to be fair I don’t really pay that much attention these days.
But yeah, Windows can’t really have much of a default theme update when there are a good four different window styles throughout the various settings panels.
The biggest problem Microsoft has is that the biggest selling feature of Windows is its ability to be backwards compatible and run on older hardware.
Absolutely, a gazillion percent this. My main desktop doesn’t have TPM. I bought a cheap micro form factor Lenovo that I thought would run Win 11, but it didn’t. It had a 6-year old CPU and that wasn’t supported by Windows 11. 6 years old. I realized then that this eliminated one major reason to get a Windows PC over a Mac. I think that both Mac and Linux are going to make huge gains in market-share in the next months and years.
A lot of people are also questioning why they even have a home PC now. Their Win 10 machine is “out of date” and they need to replace it or else, but their cell phone now does much of what their PC did. Instead of installing Linux and learning a whole new OS, they just cut out their PC and just use their phone.
the biggest selling feature of Windows is its ability to be backwards compatible and run on older hardware
Really? I thought it was supposed to run older software, I don’t think hardware comes into it.
Great point. Their strategy at this point is holding a gun up to your hard drive and saying “upgrade now or your data gets it.”
I thought it was “we are upgrading now and your data gets it”
As a non windows user, I don’t get to interact with Microsoft systems an awful lot, but to me windows 10 felt like a complete system while windows 11 always feels like an early beta for some reason. It has some kind of unfinished, wet paint quality to it.
Ironically, Windows users have generally felt that way with every new Windows version after 7. Vista was painful for a lot of people and 7 was basically Vista but with the problems finally fixed, and every version since then people have complained that the newest version feels unfinished.
And in a lot of ways they have been. In 10, there are at least 2 different UIs for navigating the system and settings. Some options have been migrated over to the newer one, some only exist there, and some still only exist in the old version of the settings. And then 11 made it even worse by moving a number of frequently used options in the right-click menu into a second menu that you have to open after you right click.
People hated 10 at first, too, but by now they’ve gotten used to it and Microsoft has ironed off most of the rough edges people hated. But it’s been building for years and this pattern has seemingly hit some kind of breaking point with the present-day circumstances.
I don’t really use Windows these days. Mostly in a VM to make sure something I’m fiddling with is compatible for the poor folks at work who have to use it. So I can’t say I have any real opinions on 11 one way or the other. I couldn’t really point to one thing that’s vastly different or improved.
I guess, from that point of view, 11 feels mostly like it’s MS adjusting the OS to better suit their revenue stream, rather than improving workflows for the consumer. Which it is, I suppose.
And also, please correct me if I’m wrong, but as far as I know whenever Apple releases a new MacOS version they don’t put fullscreen nag messages on your machine…
They do not. Yet.
Have they tried not being spyware?
Imo, even taking away the spying thing, windows design is just awful and they somehow manage to pile up fuckups and poor choices as they release new OSs.
It pretty much comes down to wanting to monetize the user experience instead of simply wanting to charge for the OS in the traditional way. The user becomes the commodity instead of the software.
How much of this is people not wanting to upgrade vs not being able to upgrade because their PC isn’t supported?
I’m a sys admin in the public sector and the hardware requirements of W11 are a great blessing. I couldn’t have convinced thousands of workers to switch to Linux and get used to another GUI but this forces it on us because there simply is no money to replace all that hardware. Rolling out Mint clients and between this and mobile operating systems Microsoft is finally losing its monopoly on the OS market.
I have been called by friends, family friends, and their friends to help with this and so many have hardware that is not supported, and some are not able to afford a new PC right now. That’s my limited and personal experience about this.
I have reservations about installing Linux Mint/other for these people because I don’t have time to help right now and you do need sometimes help if you are slightly tech aware but not enough to be able to troubleshoot yourself or search for right info. For folks who barely touch any settings and just use it for docs + web it’s easy, but for others not always.
Microsoft is such an ass for doing this.
Microsoft was successful in convincing me to upgrade to Mint however.
Me too. Had been wanting to switch to linux for some time and Windows 11 gave me the final push and it went a lot smoother than expected.
I successfully upgraded from Windows 10 to Linux Mint.
The official support for Windows 10 ends on Oct 14, 2025. Switch now: endof10.org
You can get extended security updates until October 2026
Help! Our unsustainable behavior of screwing over customers in the name of quarterly profits has finally caught up to us! Turns out there are long term consequences of our behavior, and now Linux can truly go toe-to-toe with Windows on a home desktop!
Stop forcing shit no one wants on your users then!
Every fucking update… Hey let’s backup your stuff. Hey wanna backup your stuff? Let’s backup your stuff! We totally won’t hold it hostage if you stop paying us lol!
🤬
Worse drivers, more boat, more “telemetry” (spyware and adware), and it breaks everything.
Why the FUCK would I do that? Just to give microsoft more money? Go and FUCK yourself.
Don’t forget AI shoved down your throat that takes goddamn screen captures without any care of what sensitive infor,ation may be displayed and processes it to reme,bet everything your do. It’s goddamn 1984.
It convinced me to ditch dual booting and to go full Linux
I just went straight to Mint as I had another PC running W11, which I rarely used. And then when I had to use it, W11 would always force me to download a ton of updates that had no positive effects on the PC. After dealing with this about 5 times, I just converted that W11 PC to Mint too, so I’m 100% Windows free now.
I mean, it’s windows 10, but worse
If you have 8gb or less of RAM, it’s constantly swapping and trash your SSD
It always needs to automatically install the fucking updates in the background hogging the CPU and SSD time when you actually need to work/play
When they introduce bugs, they take years to fix them. The taskbar took 3 years to be restored to features that were present since windows 95. One year ago they introduced a new bug that with some display port monitors, when it goes in standby, the resolution switches for a second to 640*480, trashing all windows and desktop layout, super infuriating. Probably this will be fixed in windows 12
Microsoft has given users fair warning, and said that users can get a year of updates for free but eventually the company will have to face facts and extended support beyond October.
We can’t recall a time where Microsoft has done such a thing but these are extenuating circumstances given that most users just aren’t budging.
WTF is this guy talking about? Far as I can tell this is the Win7 playbook all over again. Looking it up, this was the timeline:
Jan. 13, 2015: Microsoft ended Mainstream Support for Windows 7.
Sept. 6, 2018: Microsoft announced the ESUs for Windows 7. The ESU program is a paid service that provides critical security updates for legacy products for up to three years after Extended Support ends. August 2019: Microsoft announced a year of free ESUs, but only for select users, including customers with an Enterprise Agreement or Enterprise Agreement Subscription with active Windows 10 Enterprise E5, Microsoft 365 E5, or Microsoft 365 E5 Security subscriptions. This was limited to only Government E5 stock keeping units. Jan. 14, 2020: Microsoft ended Extended Support for Windows 7. Jan. 10, 2023: The ESUs reached their end of life on the first Patch Tuesday of 2023.
That's almost a decade of post-end of support updates. If anything, MS confirmed ESU support before trying to shut down home user patches this time, so it looks less like terrified backpedalling now. And as the linked article itself admits, the data they're reporting on still shows a significant number of users still on Win7. The article waves it away as just "too many", but the original report says 8.5%.
Because, as it turns out, the kind of people using Kapersky antivirus software and the number of people who would not upgrade from a 16 year old OS that has lost support half a dozen times over the past half a decade show significant overlap. Don't be that guy. On the Steam survey right now Win 7 is only 0.07%, for reference.
While we're at it Win 11 is 60% vs 35% for Win 10. For all the headlines when Steam shows Linux growth you don't often hear over here that Win 11 went up by 0.5% and Windows overall went up by 0.36%.
I've said it before and I'll keep reality checking it: the Win 10 end of support process has been wildly overhyped, particularly among Linux-friendly circles. It is not meaningfully different to moves out of other "good" versions of Windows and it's not a catastrophic crisis point for MS, for better and worse. They'll keep support up for the people who need it for as long as they're willing to pay and most legacy home users won't even know their old Win10 is unsupported because it'll just keep happily chugging along with all the same malware it already has until something breaks and they have to buy a new laptop with a preinstalled Win11 or 12 or whatever.
The most the Win10 death hype is doing to hurt MS is create a flurry of social media posts that can make tech savvy, Linux-curious users who were previously held back by lack of gaming support to give user friendly distros a try.
I’m talking out of my ass, but I believe they couldn’t really convince the non-techies to upgrade from 7 & 8 to 10 either.
The average Joe doesn’t give a shit. They simply booted their computer one day and oops, it had upgraded itself to 10.
Microsoft could have almost this entire userbase on 11 by now without them even knowing, thanks to 10’s automatic updating, but nooooooo they just had to push TPM and whatever.
Wait…
Excluding half of the active PCs or so from upgrade due to arbitrary hardware constraints didn’t push upgrading?
How can this be??? 😯🫢
I upgraded from Windows 11 to EndeavourOS. No regrets, it’s a huge improvement.
It was so unconvincing I switched to Linux
I converted to Linux as soon as one of the shit Windows 11 updates bricked my 5-year old laptop that was working fine previously.
Kubuntu 4 lyfe! ✌️🤪
They can’t convince me to switch to Win 11 because apparently my computer isn’t good enough.
they did convince me to upgrade to linux mint 22 tho
My work computer is on W11. Notifications got much worse, and moved to a harder-to-reach shortcut. There’s a persistent bug with maximization, in which many forms of apps will suddenly take over the region normally reserved for the taskbar (no, I’m not referring to full screen modes) that so far as I can tell can only be fixed by logging out.
The UI is worse, making settings pages even more confusing. Windows Explorer has dived deep into iconography, while still not being clear about what those icons mean. The new context menus are missing options, so they need an extra one to go back to W10’s options.
This is of course setting aside their blatant lies about “It’s not spyware we promise we promise”, among so many other hundreds of problems. I’m doomed to stay on W10 for now to finish a project, but afterwards, I’ll be finding a distro I prefer.
I moved to Linux thanks to their enshittification. I’m kicking myself I didn’t do it years ago. Linux is how an OS should be.
Yeah, because if I did then in another 5 years it would be the same thing with Windows 12. Then 13. And so on. So I’m ditching Microsoft entirely in October and moving onto Mint.
Read the room, Microsoft.
Time to upgrade to Linux.
tanisnikana@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I sidestepped to Mint. Sorry, Microsoft, your shit’s untenable and disappointing.
Rothe@piefed.social 1 month ago
That is what I am planning on doing as well. I am not going to install their ad-, bloat- and surveillance-ware.
biofaust@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I did the same and using Windows at work is slowly becoming unbearable.
Highlandcow@feddit.uk 1 month ago
I did too on my laptop but on pc I’ll probably just stick with windows 10, I’d rather deal with security vulnerabilities then ai in my OS
tanisnikana@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Proton’s good, by the way. If gaming is holding you back, at least.
bobslaede@feddit.dk 1 month ago
If you must use windows, and might want to upgrade to 11, lets say, for certain games, this project Flyoobe will help create a windows 11 install without all that bloat and ai
Passerby6497@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Look into 0patch.com
Keeps you secure without having to pay Microsoft another red cent
Tetsuo@jlai.lu 1 month ago
Take their ESU extension to get one last year of W10 update. At least it gets you time to see if you can migrate on linux maybe.
Kraven_the_Hunter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
Same! Even converted a couple of Surface tablets over as well. Id like to try Pop Linux on one of them just to see, but can’t get em to boot from USB.