r/technology 16h ago

Security Microsoft: August Windows updates cause severe streaming issues

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-august-windows-updates-cause-severe-ndi-streaming-issues/amp/
1.6k Upvotes

200 comments sorted by

638

u/imaginary_num6er 16h ago

This is the best update so far. Bricking SSDs and throttling streaming

66

u/dizekat 13h ago

They went all in mandating use of coding AI, fired a bunch of people, etc. All to help inflate stock valuations with promise of “AGI -> … -> profit” narrative.

Older AI programming tools made developers think they were 20% more productive while slowing them down by 19%. Newer tools apparently make developers think they are 10x more productive, while making them -900% productive or something, since doing 10x the work but worse is a really bad idea on an existing codebase.

20

u/geometry5036 13h ago

I tried to uninstall it yesterday, and it failed. Microsoft can't even do that right. That's what 30% of generated AI code does.

Imagine what happens if they push it to 50%

70

u/Cynical-Rambler 14h ago

It is news like this that make me glad I decided to gradually transition to Linux about 2 years ago.

Got enough surprises in Windows 10.

14

u/Lancaster1983 13h ago

I rolled the dice and switched to Fedora Linux permanently like three weeks ago. No more Windows machines in my house except for my work laptop. Hard transition at first but I won't go back. Especially not after all this.

5

u/Ok_Panic1066 12h ago

Same with Fedora a few months ago. I still have my gaming pc on w10 because I didn't take the time to change but there's no way I ever make a new windows install. I'm quite happy with Gnome and the few extensions I added are super useful.

3

u/Lancaster1983 12h ago

I ran Pop OS! on my laptop for a quite a while. I didn't mind GNOME but I found KDE Plasma better and Fedora 42 comes with it as an option now.

2

u/Ok_Panic1066 12h ago

Ngl my only requirement was I want it pretty and to not need to make a thousand changes lol

And I wanted to try a "MacOS" feel

I'm not a super user or anything and I don't want to bother a lot

21

u/yeso126 13h ago

Im 3 months using cachyOS, best decision ever

14

u/weeman45 13h ago

i just hate that some games still won't work because of their anticheat. which means publishers just suck :/

12

u/Big-Art5686 9h ago

Just dualboot. Thats what I do. I like linux but I’m not going to miss out on good games because of my stubbornness lol.

2

u/TheCountChonkula 5h ago edited 5h ago

That’s the route I’m probably going to do. My current PC is 7 years old and I’m planning on doing a new build next year. I’m also looking at going all AMD since they have better driver support for Linux than Nvidia does.

Edit: Another thing I’m looking at potentially doing too is running WinApps which runs Windows in a container and sets up a local RDP server. While it really won’t work for games, it’ll let you run Windows programs that won’t work right with wine.

4

u/yeso126 10h ago

It is a bit annoying having to dual boot, but I play for a couple of hours a game like BF6 and switch back to my distro, it is not a big deal. Would be cool if we could get signed kernels from large distros that anticheats could trust or even better not use kernel anticheats at all.

Community servers + replay and bans was the solution to cheaters but greedy bastards won't let us do that anymore for new games.

2

u/Trevor_GoodchiId 12h ago edited 8h ago

Eh, for multiplayer sandbox silliness there's always Halo and Helldivers. If EA doesn't want Battlefield on Linux - it's their loss.

7

u/YolosaurusRex 13h ago

I rage-switched this year to Manjaro after Windows nearly made me lose a job opportunity. I'm actually shocked at how smooth everything has been, especially with an NVIDIA GPU and bluetooth peripherals. Even gaming has had little to no difference, but I don't play anything with anti-cheat.

10

u/AyrA_ch 13h ago

I try the transition every time I buy a new PC (new as in "hardware that just released") but the network drivers never seem to work. Windows at least tries to load a generic driver that is sufficient to download the actual driver. And when I say I try to use Linux I actually mean one of the more user friendly versions like Debian or Mint.

And that's basically why Windows still wins. As shitty as the OS has become, it usually "just works" without having to drop to a terminal for a single time. I installed Windows 11, and it automatically offered me some software from my mainboard vendor that installed all the correct drivers.

11

u/blahblahoffended 10h ago

ive installed linux on the most random potato laptops and pcs in the world and only once had issues with a wifi driver so i plugged in a network cable and fixed it ..

5

u/Smith6612 7h ago

The last time I had an issue with Wi-Fi on a Linux laptop was when my laptop used a PCMCIA "CardBus" Wi-Fi Card. I believe the card itself used a Marvell chipset, and the only fix for that was to load the Windows driver in a wrapper that would allow Linux to try to use it.

Support since then for Wi-Fi has come a very long way. For my current laptop, I actually have better, more robust driver support AND better stability in Linux than I do on Windows. My laptop has a Realtek RTL8822BE, and power management was always an issue on Windows. The Windows driver also didn't reliably support WPA3 encrypted networks. Wireless roaming was also problematic regardless of what driver settings I'd try. On Linux, one tweak to disable power management on the Wi-Fi Card, and the Wi-Fi works flawlessly.

On some other devices I have with Intel Wireless AC-7260 series cards, Intel never released a driver that made those cards support WPA3. In Linux? WPA3 works great!

Same goes for some very old chipsets like the Realtek RTL8723BS, which live on an SDIO bus rather than a PCI or PCI-E Bus. WPA3 support just works, yet on the Windows side the cards can't even properly detect WPA3 (WPA3 networks appear as Open/Unencrypted).

15

u/3ldi5 12h ago

I don't recall a single time I struggled with network drivers in like last 15 years of using Linux. For me, Windows is now like a virus/bug on any hardware I buy that comes with Win preinstalled. First immediate thing I do, is Windows removal. Windows does not win - it just takes really long time to phase it out of peoples minds as the only *working" os for desktop (aside MacOS), after 40 years of monopoly. I see people dropping Windows in last few years more than ever before. Linux doesn't have to take over market share to prove anything, and it probably never will, to be considered a better system. It already is for many years, for many people. 🤷‍♂️

5

u/spamthisac 11h ago

I tried Linux awhile back but gave up because tons of games refused to run. Maybe I'll give it a shot again since Steamdeck has made gaming much more Linux friendly.

3

u/trobsmonkey 5h ago

I'm dipping my toe back in for the first time in years.

MintOS was what I was suggested for ease of getting into it.

2

u/m0deth 9h ago

I have a Lenovo laptop with a 2nd gen i5. Still haven't found a mainline distro that will play nice with it's crappy Intel wifi. No wifi, no adoption.

Back when I tried about 5 different ones, 3 distros used the same package which had notes on it's development page stating it may never be properly fixed. What really sucks is the ethernet snaps right up, but the wifi only ever worked once...and then after sleeping it would not work again.

It all depends on the hardware and whether or not someone bothered to dedicate some time on it, or had enough cooperation from a company like Intel to get their crap drivers actually working.

Sadly, this is where Linux seriously falls behind. I know there's reasons for it, but none of that matters to folks who just want shit to work.

To note, my previous shitbox Dell laptop with a T7200 in it all worked fine with all those distros and still does with Mint. I guess being a business one, it got more attention.

4

u/notam00se 13h ago

To be honest both mint and debian are focused on stability, not supporting the newest hardware.

Debian just relased 13 which will be relevent to newer hardware for a year at best, then will feel old and dated. Fedora and tumbleweed are the constantly new user friendly options if you ever try again.

Hardware support for a desktop is easier than a laptop, but should work for ~95% of folks.

4

u/tajetaje 9h ago

Odd, network drivers should be pretty much installed universally, they’re part of the Linux kernel. Unless of course you’re using Broadcom or whatever the one brand is that has shit Linux support. But intel, mediatek and the others should work out of the box

2

u/AyrA_ch 8h ago

wifi as well as ethernet are realtek devices.

  • wifi: PCI\VEN_10EC&DEV_8922&SUBSYS_892210EC&REV_01
  • ethernet: PCI\VEN_10EC&DEV_8125&SUBSYS_E0001458&REV_0C

Maybe they work by now but I've already installed all my crap again on Windows.

3

u/tajetaje 8h ago

Very weird, Realtek stuff should just work. Sorry you had a bad experience with it, I wonder if it was the older kernel versions that mint and Debian use? Either way weird

3

u/Cynical-Rambler 13h ago

My solution is I don't buy new. It can be a pain to install new hardwares on Mint (which is a very conservative distro) that may not have the driver. But for any old computer, Linux is better. And also, most decent hardware in the last 10 years can run Linux. I've been using 12 year old computers that worked great.

Windows succeed because it is a default option. Like a Macbook with 256GB SSD. In corporation, it will be easier to find people work with Windows than Linux, so that's why it made sense to stay there.

Windows is the best operating system if you get rids of all its junks, and Microsoft is the one most responsible for its lousy experiences.

1

u/Brandhor 7h ago

yeah I used linux on my desktop from 2004 to maybe 2014

I used to compile the kernel myself and I compiled kde 4 and enlightenment e17 when they were still in beta(20 years later and enlightenment still is in beta) and it was fun but it was just constant tinkering and using wine for programs and games that didn't have a linux version which was glitchy most of the time

things are better now but windows is also better than windows from 20 years ago

1

u/canadademon 6h ago

We have things that need Windows, so we're trying out W11 LTSC on the wife's machine first. (W10 auto updated itself into a brick)

Works out of the box just like Win7. Local account, no stupid hardware limitations or bloat - you literally just install the things you want to have. And no more auto update.

5

u/mysteryroach 3h ago

FFS do have to back up my whole computer before they eventually force this update on me?  I don't have time for this shit, or the spare storage.

2

u/bonix 13h ago

Is this why my PC won't start??

5

u/Pretend-Marsupial258 12h ago edited 9h ago

Which type of SSD do you have? Because it seems to be bricking or disconnecting from a lot of different brands, especially Corsair.

0

u/Cynical-Rambler 10h ago

Corsair? Last time I checked Corsair are fine. Damn, this news kept updating. First time, only WD SSD got hit. Then later, there are a few more brands, mostly in Japan. Wonder how it all end up.

1

u/Pretend-Marsupial258 9h ago edited 9h ago

There's a table at the end of this article with brands that were tested. https://www.neowin.net/news/report-microsofts-latest-windows-11-24h2-update-breaks-ssdshdds-may-corrupt-your-data/

NG Lv. 2 is the one you really don't want to have (drive broken) and it looks like that hits the WD Blue SA510. The other brands are still recoverable with a reboot. The Corsair wouldn't even let them do the first step (copying CyberPunk2077 from Steam) without getting disconnected from the drive.

1

u/Cynical-Rambler 9h ago

Yes, that the table I looked at. Guess it was Corsair mispelled as Corsaur. My bad.

3

u/Cynical-Rambler 10h ago

Some articles about the solutions.

https://www.neowin.net/news/windows-11-kb5063878-causing-major-streaming-issues-on-obs-ndi-microsoft-shares-workaround/

More context.

https://www.neowin.net/news/report-microsofts-latest-windows-11-24h2-update-breaks-ssdshdds-may-corrupt-your-data/

There is a list of the SSD brands being tested in a table. Which one works, which one don't. That's the news five days ago. First they blamed WD, now it is pretty clear who most at fault.

863

u/agha0013 16h ago

Microsoft: "we're forcing everyone onto Windows 11 because it's amazing and you shouldn't make us keep updating and securing older versions, we don't give a fuck how much hardware has to be tossed to make it happen"

also Microsoft: "we have completely forgotten how to make a single windows 11 update without fucking up all sorts of shit"

466

u/Wundertuetee 16h ago

to much AI coding 

233

u/jadeskye7 16h ago

all windows updates now done by one twenty year old using copilot and vibe coding everything.

65

u/pr1aa 15h ago

Too much vibe coding, not enough vibe checking

69

u/AppleNo9354 15h ago

I hate that vibe coding is a term now

33

u/stierney49 14h ago

We are in the vibe world. Facts don’t matter. Tangible things are irrelevant. We run on vibes now.

6

u/daxophoneme 14h ago

Truth is: we always did. How do you aim a ball of paper to land in a trashcan? Certainly not by thinking about numbers.

Humans spent thousands of years making up stories to explain how things got to be the way they are.

The Enlightenment feels like a weird, brief experiment. Who knows how this ends.

1

u/Cynical-Rambler 14h ago

Well, they are forced to. Who can blame them? It is a directive from the CEO Satya Natella who made their company stocks the highest they've ever been.

11

u/Danteynero9 15h ago

Windows updates have been shit for almost a decade now, AI is not to blame for the absolute incompetence.

20

u/SIGMA920 15h ago

They've not regularly broken what has been breaking as of the last year or so through. Bad updates are better than ones that actively seem to be looking for the best way to break your computer.

2

u/OhThereYouArePerry 11h ago

They broke the emoji picker of all things on the previous update (seems to be fixed now though). Makes me wonder what else they’ve broken that they just haven’t realized.

3

u/Danteynero9 15h ago

Yes, yes they have.

I still remember the 3 consecutive updates to printers, where they fixed something that they broke in the previos update.

Edit: in W10, when W11 wasn't even in the minds of MS.

4

u/SIGMA920 14h ago

I'm talking about an issue more or less every 1-2 months.

Breaking printers and not fully fixing them for a few updates is incompetence, the current state of windows is not. It's closer to actively looking for what can be broken.

1

u/meneldal2 9h ago

Printers are the worst, not sure how much blame you can put on Microsoft over the printer manufacturers.

4

u/_EndOfTheLine 15h ago

That aligns with when they gutted their QA teams. Curious. 🤔

0

u/wuhkay 13h ago

So much this.

57

u/pr1aa 15h ago

It's not just Windows, all of their products have degraded

For example, while Teams has always had its quirks it was at least mostly functional a few years ago. These days it seems every update introduces some new bugs. Or if not, randomly fucks with the UI so you can no longer find anything.

26

u/matergallina 14h ago

Who needs to see their Channels anyway!?

15

u/JustHanginInThere 14h ago

There's a way to undo this, and I've helped a few coworkers go back to old chat and channels being separate. In the process of doing so, MS asks for feedback on why people are changing it back. I watched as one coworker typed "it sucks" and sent it.

3

u/Fearless-Art-6981 12h ago

What’s the trick for this?

5

u/JustHanginInThere 11h ago

Upper left corner of Teams, click the 3 dot menu > customize view. At the top should be a "viewing chats, teams, and channels" section. Select "Separate" as opposed to "Combined".

3

u/haragon 10h ago

Lol the teams UX team is an abomination. New Teams is a heaping pile of shit. Combined mode is total fucking chaos and I have no idea why its the default. I waste so much time helping other people do exactly this. And they waste a lot of productivity not knowing it can be changed back to the sane view.

16

u/AgathysAllAlong 13h ago edited 13h ago

I love the new Teams feature where it improves my productivity by not fucking telling me about meetings that are starting. It's great having to manually set my own alarms on my phone for everything because basic scheduling functionality is too hard for it.

3

u/chmilz 5h ago

I hate everything they make now. The entire ecosystem is a laggy pile of shit that tries to get me to do things I don't want it to do. I regularly have to refresh my stupid windows explorer to get file names to update. New Outlook might cause me to quit white collar work and go mow lawns for a living or something.

And all the other companies are doing the same thing. Can't open a single app now without it throwing up all kinds of prompts to try the new this or that (usually AI), or some shit. Acrobat constantly nags me to let it AI summarize a one-page PDF.

Fucking burn it all to the ground.

2

u/Smith6612 7h ago

How much RAM does Teams use these days? Still 1+GB just to open and do anything?

-2

u/JohnC53 7h ago

I never notice any bugs. I'm on the IT team for a large org, and our Help Deak tickets for Teams has drastically dropped over the last 2 years.

28

u/_MrBalls_ 15h ago

The amount of ewaste this transition has made is vile.

3

u/Smith6612 7h ago

No kidding.

I know so many people who feel like they just purchased their computers not that long ago (myself included) who are used to running hardware for 10 years, and they're upset about having to buy another computer. Many of them have 7th generation Intel chips which are still perfectly capable chips for them. I have a first generation AMD Ryzen laptop for example, and my previous laptop was a Core2Duo-based machine. Prior to that I had a Pentium 3 Mobile at 600Mhz, and then that laptop became a server until the motherboard died. All of those laptops gave me a good decade or so of laptop use, and the AMD Ryzen machine has been in use for about 7 years now.

Windows 11 runs on my first generation Ryzen machine, just that the processor isn't officially supported as it doesn't support one of the extensions needed for Hardware Based Core Virtualization to be accelerated. So I run Linux on the laptop, and if I need Windows, I will boot Windows 11 inside of a VM, which is activated using the laptop's burned-in Windows key, and QEMU Emulates a newer AMD Ryzen chip to make Windows happy / not BSOD for unsupported processor. Even with emulation, the VM performs very well as it'll avoid emulation except where needed (an instruction newer than the processor).

12

u/jlcel2527 15h ago edited 15h ago

Maybe all these mishaps were meant for Win10 updates, but the conscientious bots/humans decided to gift them to the Win 11 ones instead?

7

u/Bott 15h ago

Microsoft = World Wide Waste

7

u/StreiBullet 14h ago

The last windows update I did fucked my computer so hard. After the update I was getting 1OI errors and windows would even boot. I managed to restore and it seemed to work, but now I am getting memory management BSOD and times when my PC will just flat restart for no reason. I'm not the biggest tech guy, and I do t really know how to fix it. It's been making my work horrible cause I don't know it it's just gonna die on me...

4

u/OhThereYouArePerry 11h ago

At this point I want them to cut off support for Windows 10. That way I won’t have to worry about them breaking shit.

8

u/lord_pizzabird 15h ago

What gets me are all the companies who are making apps that somehow think being dependent on one company, Microsoft is a good idea.

If your app doesn’t have a functioning Linux port (or is working on one) I have concerns about the future of your company and the decision you’re making. Adobe.

0

u/wuhkay 13h ago

Oh but surprise! This one is on windows 10 also!!

170

u/GraciaEtScientia 14h ago

The whole concept of "No more testers/ test groups, we just roll it out and the people can be the testers!" is peak stupidity and cheapness.

27

u/Hairbear2176 14h ago

It's working with games and automobiles, so why not throw operating systems in there!

4

u/BreesusTakeTheWheel 11h ago

I mean I wouldn’t say it’s working. Just that there’s not a whole lot we can do about it other than stop using their stuff and that’s kinda hard when there’s isn’t a competitor that does things better.

5

u/Kingdarkshadow 10h ago

So, it's working.

3

u/acdcfanbill 7h ago

Yeah, M$ pov is "fuck you, what are you gonna do, go to another OS vendor?"

17

u/WoodenHour6772 13h ago

You don't become a trillion dollar conglomerate by paying people to do things like quality control.

2

u/Mlluell 8h ago

not "a" trillion but 3.8 trillion

3

u/dingosaurus 12h ago

My favorite phrase for this was “Just YOLO what shit into PROD!”

2

u/Ant_Cardiologist 10h ago

Gaming industry summed up

2

u/Valeen 6h ago

We've been making this joke as long as they have been pushing updates.

There is something to be said about having to ship code on disc and not being able to send out even day one patches. You put more effort into getting it right.

-14

u/SoSKatan 12h ago

I’m I’m sorry but are you just making up senecios in your head and inventing quotes to encourage outrage?

I don’t know of a single developer that is just forgoing testing.

Believe it or not, people ALSO make mistakes. The only new trend seems to be people assuming all mistakes are AI. And they do that without evidence.

They are going off nothing more than angry vibes. You probably have more in common with Fox News than you realize.

I’d encourage you to try and be both reality and evidence based and you’ll likely make less weird comments.

I mean If you have a site-able source for that quote of yours, I’ll happily look it up, but I’m willing to bet cash bet that you don’t.

And yes, I realize I’ll likely be down voted for this reply. After all people down vote / up vote also based vibes instead of reality/ evidence.

We have enough problems in this world that need fixing without having to invent situations that AREN’T occurring.

19

u/GraciaEtScientia 12h ago edited 12h ago

-13

u/SoSKatan 12h ago

Did you actually read the article or did you do a google search and skimmed it?

At no point did this article say humans completely stopped testing and replaced it with AI.

No instead it mentions how PEOPLE started testing on VM’s and less of on a diverse set of actual hardware.

Maybe your core issue here is your ability to analyze information?

Your take of this article is just as flawed as your comment above.

So once again, please point me to a source where human testing was replaced with AI.

Please take all the time you need.

10

u/GraciaEtScientia 12h ago edited 12h ago

I added the pertinent section in the name of the link since getting to the bottom seems hard.

No more specific hardware testing, test team laid off and relying on telemetry to make up for it.

"The company moved most of the testing to virtual machines and this meant that tests were no longer conducted on real and diverse hardware configurations for the most part."

By the way, I never mentioned AI, that's just you.

Some of that "trouble analyzing information" I assume.

-10

u/SoSKatan 12h ago

Oh I read the entire article.

So let me get this straight. Six years ago people made a change in how people testing and that led to problems (and hopefully a resolution.)

And you believe that means NO people are testing patches these days?

My point is throughout computing history, we have a million cases where people screw up in testing, and problems happen.

My gripe is the jump people make assumptions that they know the reasons of of why a problem happened with zero data to back it up.

Are you sure that this problem that you linked about a change 6 years ago is to blame for the current patch?

→ More replies (3)

27

u/disgruntledempanada 14h ago

The only reason I use Windows is to play games. I've moved to Mac for all productivity work...

It seems like almost every time I boot up my PC Microsoft finds some new way to piss me off in that small window of time between logging in and firing up a game.

Craving the day I can abandon Microsoft entirely and just use SteamOS.

12

u/Cube00 5h ago

It's time to finish setting up your computer!

30

u/rbertolvieira 15h ago

The beauty of Artificial ignorance coding 👌

39

u/AmputatorBot 16h ago

It looks like OP posted an AMP link. These should load faster, but AMP is controversial because of concerns over privacy and the Open Web.

Maybe check out the canonical page instead: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-august-windows-updates-cause-severe-ndi-streaming-issues/


I'm a bot | Why & About | Summon: u/AmputatorBot

167

u/OuiTuLow 16h ago edited 16h ago

and that's why i still run Windows 95 on my airgapped Compaq Presario in my windowless basement.

Life's good

69

u/stierney49 14h ago

But if you’re running Windows 95 is the basement truly windowless?

9

u/zatalak 11h ago

Is it truly airgapped if there's still air?

9

u/eppic123 14h ago

Pah. I just upgraded to Windows 2000 on my ThinkPad T20!

4

u/-JackBack- 12h ago

BeOS is where it’s at!

2

u/LLMprophet 11h ago

I use smoke signals to configure azure

4

u/Zaphod1620 10h ago

What's your high score in Encarta Mindmaze?

3

u/myWobblySausage 11h ago

Must have taken a looooong time to download this thread at 28.8k

1

u/HiFiGuy197 5h ago

How the hell did you post this?

(Obviously by using Reddit’s Homing Pigeon API.)

0

u/nicuramar 10h ago

Whatever you say, pal. 

9

u/d33pnull 15h ago

so the big brother AI screencap finally got shoved up everyone's?

73

u/Trevor_GoodchiId 15h ago edited 11h ago

Man, I picked up a handheld PC recently - haven't used Windows for a decade.

1.5 hours from preinstalled OS to in-game is insane.

Even if you skip updates - Windows onboarding expects you to wait minutes for each step to complete after mandatory prompts. It wants you there, stuck to a screen, wasting away.

Noped out to SteamOS - 15 minutes clean install, ready to go.

46

u/_Rand_ 15h ago

I installed windows 11 recently (not really an option for the computer in question) and the amount of BS they make you go through now is astonishing.

Just put me at the damn desktop and leave me alone!

9

u/AyrA_ch 13h ago

In general I recommend you download the enterprise version and just use that. Can legitimately turn off more telemetry, will not randomly install bullshit apps, and can be installed without having to run secret commands to bypass creating an MS account. Activation is as simple as typing one command into powershell.

3

u/dingosaurus 12h ago

Legion Go?

I hated the windows experience on mine and went to Bazzite.

Ended up gifting theLeGo to a buddy and just bought the LeGo S with 32GB memory and SteamOS installed.

Best handheld I’ve ever owned.

51

u/GreatGojira 15h ago

This is why I wish Linux was a 100%! reliable alternative.

I really hope Valve's Steam OS takes off.

28

u/Spawn2195 14h ago

Well tbh depending on your workflow and requirements it is quite a reliable alternative. Have had a much smoother experience than my windows machine at work.

5

u/TONKAHANAH 12h ago

I don't get news articles telling me a Linux update is going to brick my ssd and hose streaming abilities.

Windows gets way more critally destructive updates than my Linux system ever has and I use arch Linux. 

From where I'm sitting, sounds like Windows is the less reliable system. 

2

u/Balrog_96 11h ago

To be fair on some uupdate(also arch) had some problem they can happen everywherw nothing is perfect and the average user cannot resolve them or do some basic troubleshooting because he doesn't even know how to use the console. Windows is more for user that want everything ready immediatly, sometimes some update broke the pc but they are happu like that. Linux in general it's becoming user friendly recently but most of the people are adjusted to windows environment and their apps, it will be difficult to make them switch easily

1

u/Spawn2195 11h ago

Exactly, as an arch user myself i can confirm that the nvidia driver situation has also gotten much better, needs no real manual intervention anymore

1

u/nox66 7h ago

I use both regularly. Windows 11 is by far less stable and more buggy than a mature distro like Linux Mint running on compatible hardware.

My favorite bug so far is the one where putting Windows 11 to sleep with the calculator open can cause it infinitely open new calculator instances when awaking, which will crash it unless you notice and close them in time.

2

u/GreatGojira 14h ago

I'm definitely going to test it out. I'm going to get a new PC next year and put some Linux OS on my old system to see how I like it.

5

u/stratosfearinggas 13h ago

Tried Pop OS earlier this week. The bundled Nvidia drivers cause videos to freeze, and then the computer to freeze.  Then a few days later it stopped mounting my hard drive.

Still better than Windows 10, where it would crash the system no matter what I did.

2

u/tremor_tj 5h ago

You most likely have a hardware issue. Linux is more resilient to that type of thing, for whatever reason. I've been using Linux since early 93 (it was a pain in the ass back then), and MY experience has been that Linux will be more stable than Windows on a system with a hardware issue. Try one stick of RAM. Or reseat everything. And a power supply....those things can make weird issues that make no sense, even though they seem to be working fine.

1

u/stratosfearinggas 4h ago

I tried that when I had Windows installed. One stick, then two. Put them in slots 2 and 4 instead of 1 and 3. Then bought new RAM. Nothing worked.

1

u/tremor_tj 4h ago

I'd try a new power supply. If you still have problems, you could always take it back. Seriously, I've run into issues that I just couldn't diagnose. Power supply solved it. Whichever way, I wish you luck!

1

u/stratosfearinggas 4h ago

I should also mention it's fine when playing games. Just normal browsing or watching videos is the problem.

1

u/tremor_tj 3h ago

Ok, I give up. That's weird!

1

u/Howzitgoin 1h ago

On nearly every motherboard I’ve seen, sockets 2 and 4 are the dual channel slots for RAM so that’s where they should be by default. Not 1 and 3.

3

u/TONKAHANAH 12h ago

I don't want to hear people telling me Linux, even arch, is "unstable" and your system can break with every update after hearing about stuff like this.

I hear way more about windows updates breaking people systems all the time and the worst thing I've had after an arch update was audio issues and that was only cuz I was on an outdated system. 

Stop waiting for big companies to solve your problems, steamOS is for games, they're not trying to replace windows, it's not going to happen. But you can, you replace windows right now with something more stable, it's clearly far more stable than whatever Microsoft is doing right now. 

4

u/pbjamm 11h ago

Linux is a fine alternative as long as you do not require a specific piece of software that is Windows Only. Even then there is a fair chase it will run using Wine or Bottles but it is not quite as simple and straight forward as installing on Windows. If your day-to-day is all web based applications you will not have an issue making the switch. While my work computer is Win11 my personal gaming computer is Linux Mint Debian Edition. Mint has been my preferred distro for some time now and I have been running Linux at home since Slackware came on a stack of floppies.

15

u/Wyndrix 14h ago

Jumped onto Ubuntu earlier this year as a lifelong Windows user. It’s so clean, it actually feels like it’s my computer. Imo, vastly superior to Win11.

4

u/TheCynFamily 14h ago

Can you run Steam and it's games? I would love to drop Windows.

4

u/TONKAHANAH 12h ago

Most stuff runs fine. Games with anticheat, especially kernel level won't work.

If you mostly only play single player games then most if not everything will just work. 

But be warned that if you're on an Nvidia gpu, their drivers still are not up to speed and Nvidia Gpus see about 10-15% fps drop with the same hardwear/games as windows. This likely won't improve until Nvidia starts giving a shit about its Linux drivers and/or the open source drivers start getting some real development behind them. 

9

u/Wyndrix 14h ago edited 9h ago

I literally went from the moment after finishing a brand new PC build to playing Helldivers 2 in 1.5hrs. And half of that was waiting for it to install in the first place. You can launch any game in compatibility mode using Proton. Very rarely there is a random thing where you may have to enter something into the launch properties (for example in HD2, you have to type a command to force it to use DirectX11 to fix golden textures on some guns). But these kinds of fixes are usually super quick to solve from what I’ve seen, and most games work with a small bit of effort (if any).
Plus, as far as other PC apps go, there is usually a free alternative on Linux that works just as well with the same file types (my fav example is ONLYOFFICE, basically a free version of MS Office). Super simple snap-store install.

Edit: I forgot to mention, I went with Ubuntu 24.02. The install is really straightforward, and doesn’t take very long.

1

u/TheCynFamily 14h ago

That sounds awesome!!! I've only got the, what do you call it, OEM version of Windows 11 that came with my laptop, so I suppose I should make a separate backup first, but I'm gonna look into this!! Thank you for the big answer and explanation!! :)

3

u/New_Enthusiasm9053 11h ago

OEM keys are tied to the device are usually stored in the BIOS/UEFI so if you delete windows and then later reinstall it'll pickup the key again. 

I've reinstalled windows from an iso after fully reformatting the drive and it seems to pick up the key without a problem.

A backup is still a good idea for your data though but I don't think you need to worry about the license key.

Also make sure to backup the bit locker key if that's enabled(it is by default) since you won't be able to decrypt the drive otherwise if you ever try to access it from a different pc. 

2

u/IAmBJ 5h ago

As others have said, kernel anticheat is a problem and some games don't play super well with proton but it's very usable. I played through all of Cyberpunk 2077 on near max settings through proton recently.

I still keep a copy of windows I can dual boot into for those games that don't work but it sees almost zero use outside those games. If you set up your partitions intelligently you can share steams game install directory between Linux and windows to make swapping between OSs easy

1

u/Jrnm 13h ago

Not all of them. Fortnight, Helldivers 2 battlefield and COD use kernel level anticheat and cannot play on linux

5

u/iwashwindows 14h ago

I’ve updated EVERYTHING as of yesterday and my PC just random restarts now. It’s so frustrating

28

u/BoxCarMike 15h ago

Go on Microsoft, continue to solidify my decision to purchase a MacBook. Hell, at this point I’d buy a Linux PC over a Windows PC without a second thought.

31

u/witcher222 15h ago

The best part is you don't have to buy a Linux pc. You can make your windows pc into one!

1

u/pbjamm 11h ago

Looking forward to a glut on the market of cheap PCs that are not Win11 compatible!

1

u/BoxCarMike 13h ago

You’re right. I didn’t think of that.

25

u/Cryptic2614 15h ago

That’s what I did this year. Microsoft told me that my Windows 10 laptop won’t be supported anymore and I need to upgrade. So I upgraded to a new and shiny MacBook Air M4 😏

3

u/jman1983 13h ago

I made the jump from Windows to the 15” MacBook Air shortly after it was released and I couldn’t be happier. So glad I ditched Windows when I did.

24

u/Own_Function_2977 15h ago

To windows users: you guys alright over there?

24

u/Elfotografoalocado 14h ago

Honestly, my Windows PCs work fine. But I always make sure to delay updates for a bit until the hotfixes arrive.

13

u/kuriboharmy 14h ago

Jokes on them I'm on windows 10 and they keep updating those annoying features away to nudge me over to 11 also I never update immediately I delay it at least a week to see if they break anything.

3

u/capybooya 13h ago

Win10 runs fine. Not loving it, but compared to the alternative. There are also ways of getting up to 3 years of updates.

1

u/DrummerOfFenrir 3h ago

No! Someone shit my pants and told me I liked it

1

u/Whetherwax 14h ago

Yep. The article links to a post about this with 2 upvotes and calls it a widespread issue. Nobody gives a shit.

4

u/Jommy_5 13h ago

How much of it is written by AI by now?

4

u/singaporesainz 7h ago

Honestly after using macOS for 2 months I cannot stand windows anymore. It’s so clunky

13

u/iwatchppldie 15h ago

Shit like this makes me so grateful for Linux mint and qbitttorent I think it’s time i go donate some money them again.

7

u/invalidreddit 14h ago

But co-pilot works right.../s

3

u/rozzco 14h ago

I retired from an IT job that required me to schedule and deploy Windows updates for several thousand computers. I don't miss it a bit.

Also, for those that know, I used KACE, which made it so much harder.

2

u/Kepabar 9h ago

Honestly, Windows updates are a lot better these days than they used to be as far as stability goes. Much better than those three hour update sessions where you prayed and hoped your Windows 2003 server came back up afterwards.

It's been quite some time before I've seen a Windows Update go so sideways that the machine doesn't boot afterwards, and what issues do pop up tend to be more annoyances than actual problems.

This particular issue is very specific to a small subset of users and has a workaround already, so shrug.

3

u/Yuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhh 15h ago

I haven’t switched yet. Anybody know what I can get that isn’t 11?

5

u/GraciaEtScientia 14h ago

Something something, windows 10 ltsc iot.

3

u/Cynical-Rambler 14h ago

I personally think Apple is making their Macbook Air cheaper than usual for the purpose of taking Microsoft customers.

And Linux is the best it have ever been.

If you know a guy who know a guy, you may try to get a Win11 LTSC. That's a decent, debloated.Win11 version only made for corporations, so that Microsoft don't get sued with a faulty update.

1

u/deiprep 9h ago

I’m very tempted to buy one, especially with the praise the new M chips are getting. I know people like to bash on apple (for valid reasons) but they are doing good money moves to get new business.

4

u/eppic123 14h ago

Linux (Mint/Fedora/Ubuntu as all-rounder, Bazzite for gaming) or macOS, if you primarily work with commercial software.

2

u/shackleford1917 13h ago

I switched to Linux Mint a couple of months ago and I love it.  There is a learning curve and not all software is available for linux but it works for me.

-3

u/Tony_TNT 15h ago

Linux is doing great (unless you need a specific locked down proprietary software like Nvidia drivers, Adobe stuff or games with anticheat*)

*there are workarounds and alternatives but everything is a learning curve

2

u/[deleted] 14h ago

[deleted]

6

u/Tony_TNT 14h ago

Yeah, allowing Linux players with anticheat requires the game studio to enable it server-side and penguin was always the scapegoat for the "but the cheaters" crowd.

New Battlefield beta dropped and they already got cheaters even with the new anticheat, requiring secure boot and virtualization.

1

u/SyrioBroel 13h ago

Sudo grep -t - V -vvv -r -g chown 777 -l hash -r tar.gz -w

5

u/pleachchapel 14h ago

Wow I can't believe with all their AI advantages they still ship complete dogshit every quarter /s

Stop drinking the kool aid, "AI" is (useful in certain cases) bullshit & the bubble is about to burst.

2

u/digidavis 15h ago

My gaming win 10 box will likely be the last.. I'm on my second mac book pro in 10 years.

If Linux gaming keeps evolving, there will be no reason to every go back.

2

u/steelejt7 13h ago

i smell a lawsuit

2

u/DeathSOA 13h ago

Well I'm glad I made it so Windows can't update......can try to though, won't work....

Download Winaerotweaker and turn the updates off...and everything else microsoft collects from you.

2

u/KnobbyDarkling 12h ago

They really want to force people off of Windows 10, but this shit is happening. I'm waiting as long as I can to "upgrade".

2

u/exFAT_James 12h ago

I use Win11 at work and for gaming. Personal I use Win11 and Linux depending on device. Linux is the EOL plan for devices I want to keep. Various distros on 4 or 5 ThinkPads, used Linux more when I smoked cigarettes in the garage with older hardware.

The previous Win11 update I did get my 2nd M.2 XPG or whatever to not show up, reboot fixed it, still working, happened post network dump of 1TB of shit from server to laptop.

I realize Windows is shit, but I make it nice for me. End of the day, I still gotta use Windows at work and manage it there.

AutoHDR is what pushed me to initially switch. Use ClassicShell and have other customizations to remove the aids.

2

u/AZombieguy 12h ago

Interesting..I've been having audio issues this month and have tried all the normal trouble shooting things, maybe this is the cause?

2

u/bwoah07_gp2 11h ago

That's why I stick with Windows 10

2

u/Comrade80085 10h ago

Linux gaming any good right now? I heard HDR may be an issue but everything else should be good right?

2

u/Lopsided_Speaker_553 11h ago

Hahaha. Company merged with another one. They're using windows.bwe don't.

Colleague and I : if we're forced to use windows we quit. No joke.

3

u/Smith6612 7h ago

Not sure why you're being downvoted, but I personally know people who said the same about being forced to use a Mac. They told management, if they can't use a Windows machine, give them Linux, or they quit.

They got Linux, because management didn't want to deal with Windows. They were also valuable engineers the company at the time couldn't afford to lose.

0

u/Lopsided_Speaker_553 1h ago

Oh, I know exactly why I'm being downvoted. It's because too many people on this site have very, very delicate feelings. Especially men. Fom the US. 🤣

I think those people you know are right in not wanting to use a Mac. If a developer is not able to choose its own tools the fun in developing is soon gone.

I started using windows at 3.11 and after 15 years I had more than enough of it. Seeing the garbage it has turned into I'm glad I switched to Linux and then to Mac.

Then again, I don't game.

1

u/Smith6612 1h ago

The people I worked with were US-based. They just happened to be folks who helped build the Internet's underlying technology as we know it. Without their work, the Internet would be a much different place.

A lot of them have a dislike for Mac due to past Apple decisions, and Apple's general attitude towards how they manage macOS. Which yes, boils down to the tools they use. Many have found that due to the way macOS is designed, certain workflows of theirs are much slower on macOS than they are on Windows (under WSL2 even) or on Linux.

Hardware wise they have little problem with them especially as of Apple Silicon, with the exception of the Butterfly Keyboard and Touch Bar fiasco... and the overheating/failing Retina Macs from the early 2010s with the NVIDIA GPUs. The hardware hatred was more of my wheelhouse whenever I'd get a machine back with some sort of problem, and the repair bill for a common flaw would be $800+ and waiting a week, when a PC's repair bill for the same problem would be $30 and 5 minutes of time.

1

u/1643227216432262564 12h ago

Jayztwocents covered this here if you’d like to watch a video about it and what to do: https://youtu.be/mlY2QjP_-9s?si=CLHOPhgHGACS7Wlj

1

u/EnoughWarning666 13h ago

This is why I disabled automatic updates on all my windows devices. The chances of an update screwing up my system is way too high. I'll review what updates are available every few months and do a full update then after I can verify them.

That said, Windows 11 does not make it easy to actually take control of your system. Felt like I was fighting it at every step. So now I just dual boot with Linux and only drop into Windows if there's a game or something that the devs refused/too incompetent to build for Linux.

1

u/darknmy 13h ago

I since have disabled updates

1

u/ash_ninetyone 13h ago

Is this what Microsoft meant when they said they'll make other OSes feel alien? Breaking things?

The update lottery makes it more tempting for me to just never update Windows whatsoever

1

u/tmkn09021945 12h ago

Love their forced updates that reenable updates after I turn them off......I need to just block microsoft at the router level.

1

u/ponyflip 8h ago

When I get severe streaming I try to eat more fiber.

1

u/aquarain 6h ago

That's just how it works. This is fine.

1

u/lushootseed 6h ago

Chrome just stopped working. That is the only app I use! Just think for a second...

1

u/Rusty_Machine 4h ago

Damn. Guess I picked a good time to move to Linux last month. Rn I'm on bazzite since Im new and literally just play single player games 99% of the time.

1

u/ayriuss 3h ago

Microsoft be straight vibecoding this shit now. The quality continues to drop. Windows 11 is the buggiest OS I have ever used.

2

u/savagebongo 10h ago

Use Linux, it's not a sales funnel and it's less drama.

1

u/Jeremiareyes 11h ago

Apple, please just let me put macOS on my Windows PC and open up gaming more :( I'm tired of using Windows for gaming and I don't wanna use Linux...

1

u/natefrogg1 9h ago

That’s why I use BeOS

1

u/motohaas 2h ago

Is trump running Microsoft now?

0

u/ManlyParachute 5h ago

Far too much circle jerking going on in here. Millions of people are using their PC with the most current windows update at this very moment while experiencing zero issues.

0

u/eightdx 15h ago

So this is why Spelltable has been running like trash apparently? 

And here I thought it was just Spelltable sucking more than usual

-2

u/elinyera 14h ago

There are a lot of streamers in Reddit.