Timely. I was recently force upgraded to Win11. Today in fact.

Last week I force-downgraded after I got an exception because it is my busy time of year. That exception was not respected and I realized fighting it weekly would be the same time investment as fixing compatibility issues.

"What compatibility issues? Win11 is fine, I have had no problems." My coworkers say.

Well on Day 1, 2 pretty important pieces of software crashed and exited on first run. And then the screen snipping tool failed to take a snapshot and helpfully suggested I reinstall the OS.

I actually really like the MSFT stack, but I know enough to avoid any totally new release for a while. I actually feel confident enough that I no longer try and skip major releases (like I skipped Vista, 8).

forgotmypw17

I loved and lived Windows for a decade and felt so cozy and at home in it, but when the first force-upgrade happened, I knew it was time to move along.

Just cannot accept things changing without my consent on my workstation.

jart

Mac and Linux do the same thing. I know people who still prefer the OSX 10.3 and the GNOME2 GUIs, or for instance the way nytimes.com looked back in 2010. That's the problem with making GUIs the thing you love. Some goons stop by your home every few years and toss up the furniture. Apple is the gold standard since it pretty much looks the same as it did in the 80's and each major version tunes subtle things. Microsoft makes big changes to look, but at the end of the day its substance is the same. Then there's Linux where each GUI update is a radical break with tradition that continually reinvents its own identity.

saghm

> Mac and Linux do the same thing

The earlier responses in the thread were talking about forced upgrades. I'm not sure about MacOS since I don't use it much, but most Linux distros do not forcibly apply upgrades like Windows does; you can continue to use old packages and even reboot the machine indefinitely. Sure, you might not get security fixes or keep unrelated packages up to date beyond a certain point, but that's not at all the same thing as updates being applied without actually being invoked by the user.

AnIdiotOnTheNet

> I'm not sure about MacOS since I don't use it much, but most Linux distros do not forcibly apply upgrades like Windows does;

Eh, not very accurate in my opinion. If you want to use the latest software you are very much forced to upgrade Linux because they have no concept of separating the platform from the applications that run on it. Either everything is bleeding edge or nothing is. Or you compile things from source like it is 1979.

There are Windows programs released today that will run just fine on Windows 7. How many Linux programs released today will run on Karmic Koala without recompilation?

jart

Karmic Koala is within the support vector of Actually Portable Executable. Since if you can get it to run on that, it'll most likely run on all the other distros too. Plus these binaries run on Windows 7, Mac, and BSDs too. They even run without an operating system. No need for recompilation. No virtual machine required. They aren't bloated either since the binary footprint starts at 12kb. See https://justine.lol/ape.html and https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan Best part is you can still use the compiler that comes with your Linux. All it does is reconfigures the compiler so that, rather than producing a binary that can only run on one version of one distro of one operating system, your program magically becomes capable of running on all of them.