You paid me, a long-time Linux user, to use Windows 11 exclusively for a month: here’s how it went
You all donated en masse to have me use Windows 11 for a month, and so I did. What was it like for a long-time Linux user to go back and experience Windows as it exists now? Is it really as bad as we’ve collectively made it out to be? Did my month with Windows 11 consist of nothing but pain and misery, or are there good things to say, too? Or, was it an unexpected pleasant surprise? And ultimately, did I stay with Windows 11, or move back to the Linux world? Donate through Ko-Fi Donate through SEPA transfer* Buy merch from our store Why a fundraiser? *Name: Thom Holwerda – IBAN: SE08 8000 0820 1684 4657 8414 – BIC: SWEDSESS This year, I’m celebrating the milestone of having posted 20000 stories on OSNews during my 21 years as managing editor of OSNews. This is my full-time job, and since nobody is going to give me any bonuses, stock options, or golden pens, we’re running a big fundraiser to keep OSNews going. To add some spice to the whole thing, I added some incentives, with the first being using Windows 11 for a month. We’re slowly but steadily approaching the next incentive, too, which is a proper video tour of my office, (unique) computers, and massive devices collection. There’s a similar incentive to this Windows 11 one, but for macOS. Yikes. The rules for the Windows 11 incentive are simple: use stock Windows 11 for a month for my computing tasks (with the exception of gaming – converting my Linux gaming PC to Windows just to play the same games seemed silly). I wasn’t allowed to use any debloating tools, but as an EU citizen, I do have the ability to remove a ton of Windows stuff thanks to the success of the Digital Markets Act. I also tried to stick to Microsoft’s own applications as much as possible, for that true “ecosystem experience”, and wasn’t allowed to hack my way into a normal local user account. I was all-in. So what was it like? Setting it all up The installation process posed a number of challenges and issues. First and foremost, the Windows 11 installation process is incredibly barebones, and basically assumes no other operating system exists in the world. It has no clue anything other than Windows’ filesystems exist, making it dangerously easy to accidentally damage or outright delete any other operating systems you might have installed. My laptop happens to have two M.2 SSDs in, so I could safely dedicate one of them to Windows 11 without interfering with the other SSD with Fedora installed on it, but if you’re experimenting with Windows 11 on your Linux machine with just one drive, you might want to reconsider. I also had to perform the first portion of the installation process – the WinPE section – with just my keyboard, since apparently, my trackpad was not supported and did not work at all. Once the system went through its first of what would be many reboots to come and loaded into the phase of the installation where you’re actually already running Windows 11, my trackpad came to life, but without any gestures support – so no scrolling. Not a gamebreaker or anything, but definitely annoying. A bigger issue was that the Wi-Fi 7 Intel BE200 chip in my laptop was not supported out of the box by Windows 11. This meant that I had to install these drivers during the installation process, which involves going to the Intel website and finding the correct drivers to use. To make this process more obtuse and less intuitive, you can’t use the normal driver installer; you have to specifically opt for the “Intel® PROSet/Wireless Software and Wi-Fi Drivers for IT Administrators“, download the ZIP, unpack it on a different computer, put the unpacked drivers on a USB stick, and point the Windows 11 installer to this USB stick. Mind you, the BE200 chip was launched almost three years ago, and there’s no excuse for Windows 11 not supporting this chip out of the box – like Linux does. The remainder of the installation process involved dodging a lot of tracking and telemetry prompts, reboots, a lot of waiting, setting up the dreaded online account, waiting some more, and then finally ending up at the desktop. I then set out to enjoy my EU privileges by removing whatever applications I didn’t need and turning off features I didn’t want, as well as making sure all the drivers were up to date. This mostly involved installing the Intel Driver Support Assistant and the Intel graphics drivers. Curiously, this is where I hit a returning issue: after installing the Intel GPU drivers for the first time, as well as afterevery subsequent update, the screen would go black and stay that way, forcing a reboot. Windows’ graphics stack is supposed to be able to gracefully handle driver updates, but clearly, some bug or problem was preventing the updated Intel driver from being reinitialised. Once those initial setup tasks were behind me, I experienced two more problems. First, sleep/wake was entirely broken and simply did not work. It turns out Windows 11 really doesn’t like S3 sleep, and I had to specifically go into my laptop’s Dasharo Coreboot firmware to switch to S0ix get sleep/wake to work on Windows 11. Windows defaults to something it calls “Modern Standby”, which requires the S0ix state to be enabled. You can also disable Modern Standby which would presumably make sleep/wake work with S3 (?), but this is a whole ordeal and clearly not something Microsoft wants you to do. Of course, the correct way of handling this would be for Windows 11 to adapt its sleep/wake settings to what the firmware reports, but alas. Another problem were the laptop’s cooling fans seemingly leading lives of their own, spinning up loudly at entirely random times, irrespective of use. It was so bad and loud I
