Windows 11 incoming

Apparently Windows 11 is going to be announced today. So far, news articles have been about superficial changes. Hope there is more substance to this iteration. At the very least, don’t make me go through layers of menus and clicks just to do something simple, which has been the biggest annoyance for me post-Windows 7. I know, community—I should go entirely FLOSS. Let’s see if this makes me do it. :safety_vest:

I thought Microsoft said Win 10 was the last version of windows and it would just be forever rolling?

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@afre I think its mostly a UI rework. There is promise of the Linux GUI support in the fall. It runs on dev versions and some features to enhance remote working but I don’t think its a massive leap forward in any direction from the early things I have read…

I think Apple dropping the OS X name for marketing reasons lead MS to do the same here. If they’re on OS 12 or whatever Windows 10 starts to look behind. Same reason Firefox started following the Chrome vesioning scheme. Does anyone else remember Slackware Linux jumping from version 4 to 7 back in the day to not look left behind?

TL;DR: marketing wank.

Won’t effect me any as I don’t use Windows nor MacOS err I mean macOS (sorry that’s a hold over from the 90s when I was a teenager) outside of when work requires it of me.

I am grateful to the devs who make a lot the this graphics software that allows me to live a free software life and still make nice photos. Even if I argue with them sometimes. :slight_smile:

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Oh dear, it is as I feared. The emphasis was mostly on the aesthetics, which don’t get me wrong is important to many people, but is kind of hollow for marketing reasons. Point updates and legacy drops.

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Yea I read a few articles it is all mainly looks of the GUI and trying to attack Apple by providing a open store and ecosystem. So some android apps will run on Windows and now all the money from app sales in the Microsoft store goes to the devs of the apps they are no longer taking a cut.

Outside of that it is basically Windows 10 with a new skin and probably more telemetry then ever before.

I run Win 10 and have no desire right now to upgrade to 11 without a compelling reason. I’d want to understand if there’s any potential impact of Windows 11 on our FOSS. Will DT, RT, ART, GIMP be forward compatible and will future Win 11 versions be backward compatible?

I suppose we won’t really know until the new OS hits the street.

There may be some gains for those that have integrated GPU’s other than that I am not sure about any major performace boosts…

An interesting point at 8:10 in that video - Windows 11 requires secure boot to function. For anyone dual booting, could this cause issues for some Linux distros?

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@priort I enjoyed the video. Keeping it positive with several digs. Everything he talked about still doesn’t matter to me. :stuck_out_tongue:

@Soupy I am sure that it is possible to get around. When I bought a laptop for my mother several years ago I recall having to install Windows first and using its boot loader to load grub2. Slows startup substantially but seemed to me at the time the easiest workaround.

Most Linux distros work just fine with secure boot.

For example: I have two laptops on my desk right now in Linux with secure boot on. My personal laptop, Dell XPS 13 (9360), dual-boots with Windows 10 (not often, as it’s in Linux (Fedora 34 Workstation) 99.9% of the time). My work laptop, a Lenovo T460s is purely Linux, running Fedora 34 Silverblue.

The summary: Secure boot is often fine on the major Linux distros.

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Ya he is a character…but a strait shooter…mostly a gaming oriented youtuber but for hardware etc he does some good reviews and he is pretty funny…

With one major caveat for many people: nVidia drivers.

At least in Fedora and Debian the binary drivers in RPMFusion and the non-free repos respectively are not signed and you have to manage that yourself. Not sure about Ubuntu.

My score is 5/11. :sweat_smile:

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I’m a noob. Would nvidia proprietary drivers on debian or ubuntu based distros have an issue?

There are instructions floating around online. It may depend on your distribution and hardware. Maybe start a thread with this question with the details of your setup.

The free upgrade for WIndows 10 users will come only in 2022, not that I am in a rush. But most likely it won’t run on my hardware anyway. I even don’t bother to run the test.

I have 4 PC’s and several at work. Running W10 home and Pro versions. Since 2017?? I can’t recall really any crashes on any of them. I keep them clean and don’t install a lot of crap on them but really it has been the best version of windows for me. Its likely going to be like trying to get people from 7 to 10 and now it will be trying to get them to go 10-11. I am grateful for the time and effort to provide a Windows version of DT. I do way too much work for work in the WIn OS environment to ditch it and have that version just makes it easy. I have had dual boot setups and run DT in WSL2 Linux running Ubuntu in windows but I keep coming back to my WIn version. When I retire and don’t have access to all the free Microsoft software I will likely convert over Linux. I think Win10 is supported to 2025 so that should get me there :slight_smile:

MS strategy: show UX updates for several years. Get free flak and backtrack. Reveal 11. Get free flak and backtrack. Rinse and repeat.

Ignore top menu bar. I think it is macOS.