Microslop is going to spend 2026 improving Windows 11. It comes after Windows update quality issues and complaints about the operating system.
I have a strong feeling they won’t be removing the spying, AI everywhere, ads, and bloatware. Microsoft views those as positives.
Tech has long been in the era of surveillance capitalism. Windows, Chrome, MacOS/iOS(iAds, NewsApp, notarization security, mediaanalysisd, and the most locked down hardware on earth), Android, the majority of all of the apps in the various walled gardens are all out to extract, analyze and monetize every aspect of our digital lives… which is a lot of our waking hours.
As users of these services we all need to ask ourselves if the companies who now make up the lion-share our retirement savings, who collectively dictate how we view and interact with the world really have anything but their own best interests in mind.
Most people would say no but “what am I supposed to do?”. People really need to understand that power like the kind that these mega-corps have is only taken and basically never surrendered willingly. Vote with your dollars now and for as long as it takes to see the fall of these vile companies.
Seems they’re figuring out you can’t sell ads and AI on your platform if nobody wants to use your platform.
If Microsoft walks back their use of AI in the development of Windows, that would be a major admission of failure on their part.
But it will probably help prolong their market dominance a great deal. Because up until they started destroying their own OS, all they needed to do to remain on the top was literally nothing.
Plus getting closer with the govt contracts to allow private data to be surveillance.
As positives for them ;)
By the time they fix it, it’ll be Windows 12. We see the pattern over and over again, but this time they tried strong arming people onto 11. Those people aren’t going back.
Windows 11.1
Reminds me of Vault 111, where the overseer is the friendly dictator that knows best and should never be questioned. Seems like a fitting version number
Marketing bullshit. Microsoft isn’t going to actually reverse any of the enshittification it’s inflicted on Windows.
If you don’t have any customer mandated software that requires Windows, I’m looking at you AutoDesk, then do yourself a favor and go ahead take the week to install and learn Linux Mint.
Enshittification, as always, is the word here. It’s important to point out because to disenshittify(?) the product would need to turn back the wheel, including profits. Line go down.
With all the other lines going down, they literally cannot course correct here in any way that would matter to the consumer to rebuild trust. So much of their model is built off of force feeding users and directing their behaviors, the thing they absolutely hate.
I’ve been wanting to install Linux, but I don’t have a drive large enough to back up my windows installation.
Do you really need the entire installation? Would only the user folder(s) (C:\Users) suffice?
Alternatively, you could install Linux mint on a large enough USB stick and run it off there, if you don’t mind the longer read/write times. You’d also need to change the boot order for it too.
You can install on an external USB drive. As long as it’s USB 3, there will be little performance difference vs an internal HD (SSD likely slower, but good enough for everyday work)
… but it was already too late. They alienated their users completely and Linux is soooo nice.
Okay, that’s easy: remove all the LLM slop. That’ll start fixing it. Then get the ads out of the UI. Get rid of the MS account requirement, and make all updates optional. For a stretch goal, go back to making an OS that only does what the user tells it to, and doesn’t have any function to phone home without direct user input.
Too funny. They’d need to go back to Win95 for all that.
XP would be enough.
Think back… XP had many complaints at release too, wasn’t till sp2 or sp3 it was actually decent.
XP is also when they introduced the activation server.
Also true
You couldnt unzip 2 files at once. Not untill service pack 1.
Wait, you didn’t just use PKWare zip & unzip? Or WinRAR?
Tip: use 7-zip, it is the best on windows by far. https://www.7-zip.org/
On Windows, yes. PKWare is for DOS.
I couldn’t afford WinRAR
I think there might be around 10 people in the whole world that has ever bought WinRAR. The rest of us just kept closing the nag box and used the free trial indefinitely.
No, man. Windows 7 for lyfe!
I think W7 would be the very last option, everything after that has been shit, and getting worse. I still prefer XP though, except for the hideous UI.
I thought it’s the best version out there.
Don’t get me wrong, it is (Jesus, I have a hard time using this word for ANY Winblows, but I can’t think of anything else before coffee) good, no real complains other than the ridiculous resources usage, and the UI certainly beats the hell out of XP. But resources use is my issue, unnecessary background shit running all the time, whereas XP remained way lighter. As I said, anything after 7 has been consistent crap and has just been getting exponentially worse.
Anyway, Linux and Gnu has been my life for way too long now. I only know about Winblows issues because I come in here and hear my circle of acquaintances complaining, which only makes me laugh because they choose to keep dealing with that crap when there are so many options.
98SE would mostly work.
Fix the task bar!!!
That’s the secondary goal. I feel like there’s enough 3rd party tools to fix that, that I want the repairs done in the backend and trust power users and user-devs to handle the UX.
No there’s not. I tried several things, for my use there’s no fix. It’s not the point though.
I think we want the same thing ♥️.
It should not be hard to browse local files on a computer.
Why are you using local files when you have a cloud???!
-Microsoft
Thanks. I think I just puked in my mouth.
“Everything will be a service. You will own nothing. You will accept this reality”
You will not just accept, you will embrace. You will feel cold and empty when you taste freedom, for you will not understand it or know what to do with it.
I mean, kind of. Not owning anything or being able to do what we want with our PCs will really free up a lot of time for other hobbies such as hunting billionaires for sport.
remote wipes ur db of billionaire addresses
They’ll never read nor act on this feedback, but here’s my list:
- drop the AI
- drop the ads
- stop pushing services, namely cloud
- stop requiring Microsoft accounts
Honestly win10 was great when it dropped. Not sure why we needed 11.
To be fair, I think they knew that. Which is why they said up front that windows 10 was the last windows you’d need. And then for some reason they kept going…
Somehow my 11 feels that way, being in EU, having it installed with the W7 license key that came with my laptop. Still, there are bugs that seem ludicrous to me, from a company like them, especially in the file explorer that cannot manage keyboard shortcuts properly when you move between tabs, or that don’t highlight the proper file or folder you’ve selected. Same thing with how buggy Excel has become, especially with rendering when you switch between multiple files. Selections are offset from were the mouse is, that’s crazy. Best solution I’ve found is a quick CTRL-N, CTRL-W that seems to reset it. Anyway, I’ve been using windows since 2.0 on MS DOS 3.30 or 5.0, Excel for about 20 years most of my life at work, and things are really not improving.
I guess I have to thank MS for pushing me into using Linux Mint. And I love it.
They were so successful in pushing, I installed Linux Mint on my 3 PCs, laptop, wife’s laptop and friends laptops. Not a single complaint so far (it’s been about a year).
I wake up to a bright flashing of my phone.
It is 3am, damn I forget to turn my phone to silent.
I can’t resist the urge, who would text me this time of night??!?
“hey I have been thinking about you, you know I think we could work it out together. I will spend 2026 improving myself I promise. Please baby I miss you”
“go to bed Microslop, you are drunk and you are the one that wanted the divorce because you left me for Al” I text back frustratedly and turn my phone to silent.
I want a divorce and I’m keeping Clippy
King/Queen (whichever you prefer, frigging royalty)
I prefer to use Linux. Arch Linux.
You dropped this:
Btw
No one is impressed by arch users.
I’m impressed. He uses arch
How often do they clean install? ;)
it’s a joke dum dum
MS is about to learn how hard it is to build trust in commercial markets, and why it’s a terrible decision to set that on fire for a short term profit. Honestly, it’s hard to find a better example of a company that had a more comfortable and ideal position in their market, that just decided to disrupt itself without any pressure or prompting. You wanna gamble, you gotta be ready to lose.
Meanwhile, Valve…
So true
Hey Satya, just give us Win10 back and fuck off, you bald fraud.
We have that. It’s called Linux
I use both Windows and Ubuntu/Mint for personal use, WSL for personal dev environment (because MS SQL Server on Docker limits what I do), Ubuntu/Redhat for dev/test/prod environments.
I like Linux but it can be a hassle with little things so Windows.
Nah, windows 10 was still sluggish spyware/adware.
I would only ever consider switching back to windows if they updated windows 7 with the latest kernel/security updates.
No apps, ads, ai, or shitty UI frameworks.
A functioning offline-only search, a cohesive/responsive UI, and control over if/when updates get installed.
Thought about that but some newer storage and network connections may not be supported.
Good luck with that - you would need to scrap the entire operating system.
And a lot of leadership and investors
There was a theory that Microsoft could just release a Linux distro with a first party windows skin on it
If planned obsolescence wasn’t a concern this would be a decent way to improve - use the Linux kernel, ported or recreated interface and a compatibility layer for games or whatever it is that keeps people on Windows.
They can’t scrap their whole operating system: the only thing keeping people on Windows is its backwards compatibility.
Rebuild trust?
- remove all telemetry
- remove all ai bullshit
- remove ads
- open source the whole code
Then, and only then, we might start to trust again.
To add to this list
- Remove WebView apps. Eat our own dogfood and use MAUI.
- Go back to the classic Start Menu. Use API to make the whole UI available for customizations
- Get rid of the whole shitty “Settings” menu and go back to the Control Panel.
- Drop backwards compatibility for a bunch of crap. Stop pulling the 1980s forward, let that shit die.
- Address real modern issues with compatibility and performance with current CPUs
- Undo all the vibe coding.
- Focus on stability and performance, not trying to be “An experience”. Windows runs apps, make it do that the best it can.
- For the love of everything holy, take a risk and modernize the OS. This goes back to 8. But as someone who makes Windows Server golden images for multiple platforms, FUCKING CHRIST. Having to use the Autounattend to even get anything started, and that’s often (Even in Azure) just a minimal thing to get some client to do the real work, should tell you there’s a problem. The Autounattend is poorly documented. I learned more from just building a basic VM on different providers and seeing what they figured out. I could write a god damn novel on the shortcomings of the initial installation and customization of Windows, but it’s especially embarrassing for their Server platform
- Stop dropping support for the crap that works. Just so you can sell an inferior subscription version. WSUS being sunset is stupid. Having on-prem WSUS is always going to be faster and easier. You should focus on making that better instead of letting it limp along and then “Oh, we have an overpriced and slower option!” Get bent.
- Azure Local is a really fucking cool idea. That was an god awful pricing as far as I can tell. But neat.
- Renew support for Windows 10.
I thought of some of those, but decided to add my point (4) and allow the community to do it right.
Oh no doubt, same. There’s so much to be said. More than any one person should.
Please dont do step 4. Devs will get heart attacks left and right if they see that piece of shit code.
No, it’s a long-known fact that the Windows code has been shit for decades. That’s been known since at least XP days I think. Pretty sure I first heard about it on TechTV
Hahahahahaha!! No, no, you’ve got a good point
GLP2 at least and reproducible builds or bust.
They can’t open source their code because then people would rather rapidly discover all the backdoors they’ve built in for various US LE and Intelligence agencies.
