That… is pretty interesting.
How weird.
Windows 11 Tiny edition is not too bad. It removes a bunch of irritating stuff, but does require some technical ability to install a legal copy.
An illegal copy is also available, but it is much harder to install. We are not allowed to discuss how and why to do this on this board. To be honest, I’d prefer the legal version.
After spending 2 hours trying to control my own fucking start menu and how I pin apps and not being able to fucking rename them and having like literally 16 different road blocks get in my way to a SIMPLE PROCEDURE THAT EVERY OTHER VERSION OF WINDOWS COULD DO EASILY, I have changed my mind. Windows 11 is too dumb to live.
I literally took dozens of troubleshooting steps to no available because windows 11 things you’re too stupid to control your own start menu. It decided ITS categories are what matters, not yours. It decided you can’t rename anything on the start menu. It decided you can’t leave any gaps to organize your start menu by using empty space deliberately. It decided that you cannot expand folder size like every smartphone has down for 15+ years. It decided you can’t right click on the damn things to get a properties tab or to create a shortcut. It’s staggeringly stupid. There’s no user interest being served here, no security, it’s just some fucking idiots at a trillion dollar company that has no idea how to design a UI. They think their users are too dumb to be able to do something like decide where their apps should be pinned or renaming them. I’m not exaggerating when I say this stuff was trivial for apple and android phones in 2010. And windows 7. And windows 8. And windows 8.1.And windows 10. And now Microsoft has set back the start menu customization 20+ years for no reason.
And I’m even using StartAllBack to have extra control over the start menu already! I can’t even use third party utilities designed to unfuck the windows start menu to do basic functions.
The first thing I do with a new Win version is to install the Classic Shell Start Menu
which allows me to set my start menu to resemble that from previous windows
versions.
(Unfortunately, I see it is no longer updated (as from 2017 !), but fortunately
a similar project is availably here.)
It also adds a “Pin to start menu(classic shell)” option in the right-click
menu. Super.
A modernized version of Windows 7 would be ideal. But since no such thing exists, since Microsoft appears to have lost its strategic direction along with its mind, my solution – which is not for everyone – is to continue running Windows 7 on my primary desktop and Windows 11 on a laptop for those very few things no longer feasible on Windows 7. Currently, my tax filing software is the only such example. That’s only because it needs to be up to date every year and it relies on the .NET framework. So that’s Microsoft’s fault, too, not the fault of the application developers.
I switched from windows 7 in 2020 when I put together a new system and there was no windows 7 driver for my new motherboard’s USB controller. Pretty much had to at that point
My last Windows was Windows 2000. I had one application that needed it to run and so I kept it for years.
Eventually, we didn’t need to run that application any more and so I ended up replacing with BSD.
I wish new tech was exactly like old tech but better. Instead new tech gives the impression it’s just like the old tech, but every detail is just different enough to be frustratingly annoying. I feel like this is what Douglas Adams wrote most of his books about.
True innovation requires a lot of work or creativity, or stealing it from others. As for Microsoft Windows, it represents quite a small portion of Microsoft’s revenue, and one has to wonder how much it is worth it to them to improve it. That said, “like old tech but better” does not sound like it would be a high bar to clear.
The Windows 7 source code is completely leaked, by the way, not that it makes a difference either way. But what are you running that requires Windows 7 or Windows 11? The .NET framework runs under Linux. If you like games, the new Steam Machine runs Linux. (Point being, Linux is still being maintained, unlike Windows 7.) There is industrial software out there that does require Windows, but some of it will not work on Windows 7, so you are screwed either way if you use it.
But this important application does not. They list support for Windows 10 and up, Mac OS, and even Android, but not Linux. Support for the latest .NET framework is a necessary but not sufficient condition for running this application and being able to netfile my tax returns.
We discovered this also just happened to my wife’s laptop. She doesn’t recall if there was any warning unfortunately, but overnight her local “Desktop” in her user profile, and all files and folders therein, was now copied/remapped to a “Desktop” on OneDrive, and all of her files that she works on through Office are now default-pathed (when doing Save-As for example) to the OneDrive “Desktop”, and missing or not updated on her local Desktop. MS also extorted her that she had to pay for more OneDrive space to continue to get access to her “Desktop”.
Being more tech experienced, I think I have the syncing behavior turned off now and have restored her local Desktop. She does a lot of work on her local drive, in areas without Wifi, so having everything get moved and defaulted to the cloud screwed up many days of work and we’re still not sure if some files have been irrevocable lost.
It absolutely behaves like ransomware/extortion.
The other day, my niece was at the emergency room with her grandfather and she had me go over and check her desktop for a document listing all of her grandfather’s medicine. I couldn’t find anything at all.
This might explain why not.
The first time I got a laptop with OneDrive as part of Windows, I made the boneheaded mistake of deleting it. I didn’t realize how many things were connected to that folder and IIRC it took me hours to get that mess straightened out.
It reminded me of someone in my high school who, after installing Windows 95, deleted DOS and just wrecked his computer. For a self described computer genius, it struck the rest of the AP Comp Sci class as odd that he didn’t realize that Windows 95 was essentially a skin running over the top of DOS.
Or maybe more similarly, I think also on Windows 95, I ran an older dos based program that couldn’t handle long file names so it truncated them from, from example, LongFileName.exe to LongFi~1.exe. Luckily, at the time, I was familiar enough with most of the files that I could change them back by hand, but that only got me so far. After that it was mostly fixing things as they didn’t work.
Anyways, my workaround for the OneDrive thing is two fold. First, as I mentioned earlier, setting up the computer for the first time without the internet mostly keeps OneDrive at bay. Second, when I set up a new computer for myself, I also make a “My Documents” folder with a shortcut on the desktop and use that instead of the OneDrive file they want you to use.
Forcing OneDrive down our throats is one of the reasons I’m considering the move to something Linux based.
It’s why i did switch my travel laptop to Linux (Ubuntu). It was much less painful than i feared. I did have help. My husband made a bootable thumb drive that i used both to see if it would have the driver’s to handle my hardware, and to do the install from. And I got help here (and in other venues) for the one application i had trouble with.
Man, Windows 2000 Server edition absolutely rocked. So stable, so reliable. And I as a fairly clueless junior software engineer was tasked with maintaining it because my immediate boss (small company!) had no idea… I mean, he had organised a fast (for that era) ADSL line without him realising the first word in that acronym was “asynchronous” so our download speed in the office was vastly faster than the onsite server pushing out our cliients websites.
He was, and still is an excellent graphic designer, but his technical understanding… was largely absent.
You’re lucky to not encounter the problem, but yes, it does exist, on non-corporate versions of Windows. It’s about “Backup”, with no mention of OneDrive until you find out that’s where your data went. See my description here, written a year ago but still valid – it happened to me yesterday, on a Windows 10 VM that supposedly doesn’t even get updates anymore.
Yeah, that OneDrive remote backup thing is a total “footgun” if not outright ransomware. It’s just terrible design, a bad “feature” that can too easily lead to unintentional data loss (at least from the local drive).
Windows is unfortunately most users’ first exposure to Microsoft… which makes every Microsoft product team want to cram their pet project into it to ensure they get their slice of the mindshare pie. It ends up an incohesive, fragmented, and at times user-hostile mess.
It doesn’t have to be this way (as the minified and stripped down variants show), except Microsoft is Microsoft and doesn’t care about you or your experience. You’re just eyeballs for their ads and paid services. Windows is just a tiny fraction of their revenue now and they’re going to weaponize it as much as they can to drive revenue to their other stuff.
Microsoft says they’re listening and will make Windows better: Our commitment to Windows quality | Windows Insider Blog
Uh huh. Totally. 
I’ve installed Windows 11 Tiny edition on a dual boot Macbook, it is a semi-legal torrent download, in that it is not an official source but a valid license is required.
I bought a liegit license, because much of my work is Windows (C#) but I also do Java dev on OSX. As a dual boot machine I want to keep the partions quite separate. They can see and read each other, of course, and yes, Windows Java dev is universally compatible with Java & Mac environments
As you can probably tell, I am a bit of a nerd.
I found that while looking for this:
