Installing Windows today, Win 10 or 11?

Windows 10. With that said, I spend 90% of my time in Linux. Windows is just for games at this point.

Windows 11 + ExplorerPatcher => Win11 which looks almost exactly like Win11
Gone are rounded window corners, gone is new taskbar and start menu no one asked for

I personally went a bit further with my Win11 customization and my desktop has now fancy 3D interface 🤪


Otherwise Windows 11 is needed for proper scheduling on Alder/Rocket Lake so I have little choice on the matter of choice of OS other than going Linux...

XoR_ said:

Windows 11 + ExplorerPatcher => Win11 which looks almost exactly like Win11
Gone are rounded window corners, gone is new taskbar and start menu no one asked for

I personally went a bit further with my Win11 customization and my desktop has now fancy 3D interface 🤪
View attachment 527391

Otherwise Windows 11 is needed for proper scheduling on Alder/Rocket Lake so I have little choice on the matter of choice of OS other than going Linux...

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Has anyone ever tested this "proper scheduling" claim on 10 vs. 11?

I would go windows 11 only because I am a very simple user of the OS and that simple functionality is fine in W11. I will also be using an HDR display device and that is one area where W11 is dramatically better tuned than W10.

XoR_ said:

Windows 11 + ExplorerPatcher => Win11 which looks almost exactly like Win11
Gone are rounded window corners, gone is new taskbar and start menu no one asked for

I personally went a bit further with my Win11 customization and my desktop has now fancy 3D interface 🤪
View attachment 527391

Otherwise Windows 11 is needed for proper scheduling on Alder/Rocket Lake so I have little choice on the matter of choice of OS other than going Linux...

Click to expand...

holy $hit.. look at this..
I'll be checking this out

I would love to do a Win 10/ 11 Theme to match Windows 2000. I love my Windows 2000 install I had on my Pentium III 533 computer I had built back then...clean, fast, stable!

Windows 11 has matured a good bit ever since its release, and I would definitely go with Windows 11, given that 10 is going EOL in just a few more years.

I've done a Windows 11 installation on 3 of my AMD PC's.

PC #1:

Ryzen 5 2600X
16 GB DDR4 memory
4 TB hard drive
AMD Radeon RX 580 (8GB)

This was the first system that got the Windows 11 upgrade. I have not noticed any differences at all in terms of performance, and even though it was built 4.5 years ago, it's still doing fantastically. It was my main home PC, but now will be moved to my research facility to be used as my main PC.


PC #2:

Lenovo Thinkpad E14
Ryzen 5 4500U
16 GB DDR4 memory
512 GB SSD
Integrated Radeon graphics

This was the second system to get the 11 upgrade. Again, no real differences in performance, and this serves as my travel PC as well as my business PC for my Karate dojo.


PC #3:

I just finished building it this week, courtesy of dbwillis' amazing deal.

This is now my main home PC.

Ryzen 9 5900X
64 GB DDR4 memory
2 TB Crucial MX500 SSD
AMD Radeon 6650 XT (8GB)

This was done with a clean installation of Windows 11. No issues with the installation, and after proper driver installation and updates, it's screaming along beautifully. Since I'm still gaming on 1080, I can turn up every detail to the max setting and get very smooth frame rates. Merry Christmas to me!

The only thing that I had to find out the hard way, was that a fresh Windows 11 installation didn't have a Direct X 9.0 library installed, which I needed for some of my older games. That was quickly fixed with a download from Microsoft.

Apparently, my Windows 10 PC's that were upgraded to 11 did have those libraries. It was a bit frustrating to download a 40 GB game update, and not having it work right away, but again, since the solution was straight forward, I'm not losing any sleep over it.

On another note, sadly, there are some Ryzen systems out there that aren't going to be supported (officially) by Windows 11, namely the ones without TPM 2.0.

For someone who has one of them it's probably better to stick with 10 until 10 goes EOL. There's a workaround for it that will allow you to install 11, but I'd be hesitant about that unless the community on this forum can all agree that it's a good idea to do so.

Unabomber said:

There's a workaround for it that will allow you to install 11, but I'd be hesitant about that unless the community on this forum can all agree that it's a good idea to do so.

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yes its fine unless you are wanting its encryption, but you can still use bitlocker. plenty of us have installed it on "unsupported" machines without issue. my sig rig isnt using it and its fine and its really only needed for install. once windows is up and running you can turn it off.

pendragon1 said:

yes its fine unless you are wanting its encryption, but you can still use bitlocker. plenty of us have installed it on "unsupported" machines without issue. my sig rig isnt using it and its fine and its really only needed for install. once windows is up and running you can turn it off.

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Thanks.

I have much more trust for the fellow [H] folks than I do for many of the "review" sites out there.

MrGuvernment said:

I would love to do a Win 10/ 11 Theme to match Windows 2000. I love my Windows 2000 install I had on my Pentium III 533 computer I had built back then...clean, fast, stable!

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I made this screenshot using ClassicThemeTray utility. I also needed to use old desk.cpl from old Windows (Windows 2000 in this case for 100% accuracy) to set colors and delete manually some keys to avoid theme colors changing when using crtl+alt+del.

It doesn't work perfectly in some of the new programs/utilities, eg. explorer has some issues or taks manager.
Task manager I fixed by swapping to one from Windows XP 64. Normal 32-bit XP task manager also worked but it didn't show which program was 32-bit in this case.
Explorer I do not use at all so do not care. Other 'metro apps' I removed anyways so who cares.

Nice thing about this particular mod is that it only disables themes and doesn't disable compositing engine so I still have dwm.exe and with it v-sync and windows do not need to redraw all the time as was the case when using classic themes on Vista or Windows 7.

Summarizing this classic theme mod is not issue-free but for people like myself who didn't ask Microsoft to change Windows looks it is a lot of fun. I like to have classic Windows theme on my modern Windows a lot.

On the other hand disabling rounded corners and doing other Win11 -> Win10 tweaks using ExplorerPatcher seems to work without any issues.
BTW. For people who hate new Windows 11 22H2 task manager it is possible to revert it back to previous windows 11 version.

I'd do 11 on a new build or reinstall. Still running 10 except on my laptop. I don't use the laptop much so I decided it would be my Win11 guinea pig. Seems fine. I just haven't gotten around to upgrading my main rig, mostly due to a lack of any sort of motivation to get around to it. 11's fine but so is 10 and I just haven't bothered. I'm also in the "write code professionally, switch around between different platforms, and just don't care that much" crowd. 10, 11, Linux,.MacOS... whatever. It's fine.

Between the regitry hack to fix the right click menu, the explorer menu spacing option and the new black task manager, I'm probably moving to 11 on the next re-install. I fought it for a long time just based on the right click menu. It's abhorrent.

Hate Win10 and am only using it instead of 7 Ultimate because Adobe shut down the Win 7 activation servers for software that I unfortunately MUST use in my professional life. Last week after my printer installed an update, and then Win 10 installed an update, the computer rebooted and corrupted the user profile for the the Administrator account. I've never before had to deal with Windows corrupting and thus making inaccessible a user profile... let alone for the primary account that runs everything.

Windows 11 looks to be worse, but since I just bought a laptop that comes with 11 pre-installed, I will give it a shot.

Teenyman45 said:

instead of 7 Ultimate

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Who used that but pirates? Your issues are... Unusual with win10.

I bought a retail physical copy of Win 7 Ultimate and multiple OEM installs. My original 7 Ultimate purchase was a bit of a mistake since, at the time, I thought that operating system's virtual legacy mode would still let me use my GPU while running 90's vintage games.

I also have a separate Win 10 Pro retail key, bought from Best Buy of all places (where the "physical" is just a very slow USB stick), because Adobe shut down the Win 7 server AND Microsoft refused to allow a Win 10 upgrade install on that machine's hardware... having changed the specs to cut off Intel CPUs before a certain vintage. Granted, swapping out for a Ryzen 5700G had some real benefits in doing OCR conversions and slightly lowering the temperature in my office, but I'd still rather that machine be on 7.

Teenyman45 said:

I bought a retail physical copy of Win 7 Ultimate and multiple OEM installs. My original 7 Ultimate purchase was a bit of a mistake since, at the time, I thought that operating system's virtual legacy mode would still let me use my GPU while running 90's vintage games.

I also have a separate Win 10 Pro retail key, bought from Best Buy of all places (where the "physical" is just a very slow USB stick), because Adobe shut down the Win 7 server AND Microsoft refused to allow a Win 10 upgrade install on that machine's hardware... having changed the specs to cut off Intel CPUs before a certain vintage. Granted, swapping out for a Ryzen 5700G had some real benefits in doing OCR conversions and slightly lowering the temperature in my office, but I'd still rather that machine be on 7.

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Weird, is it windows 7 based, or they simply stopped supporting the Adobe software you were using? Is this Adobe Acrobat, an older version?

MrGuvernment said:

Weird, is it windows 7 based, or they simply stopped supporting the Adobe software you were using? Is this Adobe Acrobat, an older version?

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I am essentially required to use Adobe Acrobat DC Pro's subscription service so that I always have the absolute latest version of Acrobat Pro because when things periodically go wrong, I can blame Adobe. If instead I were to use any other pdf editor, then if anything were to go wrong the blame would be placed on me for not following the oh-so-helpful how to guides that are premised on using Acrobat. Do you know what sort of hassle it is when a clerk of court files a false affidavit with another court?! I certainly do. Being able to "show my work" while using the recommended program has prevented more than one major black mark on my career. So I am locked in to using that program.

Adobe has periodic license checks, something LTT has complained about when the activation servers go down for any reason and much of the planet can no longer use Creator Suite. These servers are different based on the user's OS and Adobe shut down the Win 7 activation servers, meaning I cannot use Acrobat DC Pro (not even a rolled back version) without reauthorization handshakes which will never come again. Thus, I needed Win 10. Microsoft has updated its terms to refuse license validation on older hardware so I needed a new CPU for that machine.

One of Win 10's updates corrupted the Administrator profile... which caused its own problems.