It seems to me that Windows, which used to be reasonably stable (say, between XP and 10), as Microsoft systems go, has gone into beta status with Windows 11 and is now slipping into a kind of perpetual alpha.
Disclaimer, I haven’t used Windows seriously for decades (now and then for the odd game or for VR) and only boot it every other month to see what it looks like.
XP was good but definitely unstable, Vista was very unstable at the beginning. Shit, it was essentially broken on release for months for Nvidia users, even.
[E: to be clear, this was actually Nvidia’s fault. But MS should have known that expecting every hardware manufacturer to completely rewrite drivers in such short notice was a bad idea!]
It was only late Vista and throughout 7 when windows became pretty stable.
Windows 8 wasn’t unstable, I guess, just a major step down for usability (accessing the “charms bar” on a mouse was so bad an unintuitive that I’m shocked it made it past the focus group stage).
Early 10 was pretty stable, but very quickly deteriorated as they continued to shovel more bloat into Windows, spent more and more time working on spying/ads at the expense of other aspects of the OS, and had the bright idea of firing most of their testing team, because beta testing with end users is cheaper and what are they going to do if their PC is unstable? Install another OS? Lmao most people don’t even know Linux exists.
Windows 11 is basically the same in that regard. The instability of late-stage Win10, just with a lick of paint.
Well, I said it was stable for a Microsoft system.
I understand that it’s strange to people used to windows, but we had computers that just didn’t crash. Ever. Then everything moved to PC with windows and it all went to shit. Now it’s mostly back to unix which while not crashproof is at least reasonably resilient and a proper system.
Xp was almost a nightmare on launch. But got fixed (security not withstanding) switching everyone over from DOS to NT was no simple feat, and there were a lot of issues.
Vista wasn’t great, but the change to drivers made it a nightmare.
7, 8, and 8.1 were fine.
But 10 was a nightmare for the first 5 years. Every other update would break things. And those came out about twice a year.
Windows 11 has been surprisingly issue free for me. 24H2 seems to be the buggiest update since so I’ve been holding back. But I updated to 22 and 23 and I never had any issues, nor did I hear too much complaining. Every major update has some minor issues, and that’s largely why MS staggers their releases.
I’m honestly surprised MS took this long to pause the rollout with how bad it’s been.
I’ve had the odd stability issue every now and then. (There was one ongoing issue with my wifi that was caused by a bug in my manufacturer’s driver, but that was years ago on Windows 10, and they eventually fixed it.) But I honestly haven’t had any issues caused specifically by Microsoft recently that I can recall.
Any problems caused by major features updates are usually solved by simply reinstalling the driver. (And I haven’t had any of those sorts of problems in at least a couple years.)
It seems to me that Windows, which used to be reasonably stable (say, between XP and 10), as Microsoft systems go, has gone into beta status with Windows 11 and is now slipping into a kind of perpetual alpha.
Disclaimer, I haven’t used Windows seriously for decades (now and then for the odd game or for VR) and only boot it every other month to see what it looks like.
I’m not sure I agree.
XP was good but definitely unstable, Vista was very unstable at the beginning. Shit, it was essentially broken on release for months for Nvidia users, even.
[E: to be clear, this was actually Nvidia’s fault. But MS should have known that expecting every hardware manufacturer to completely rewrite drivers in such short notice was a bad idea!]
It was only late Vista and throughout 7 when windows became pretty stable.
Windows 8 wasn’t unstable, I guess, just a major step down for usability (accessing the “charms bar” on a mouse was so bad an unintuitive that I’m shocked it made it past the focus group stage).
Early 10 was pretty stable, but very quickly deteriorated as they continued to shovel more bloat into Windows, spent more and more time working on spying/ads at the expense of other aspects of the OS, and had the bright idea of firing most of their testing team, because beta testing with end users is cheaper and what are they going to do if their PC is unstable? Install another OS? Lmao most people don’t even know Linux exists.
Windows 11 is basically the same in that regard. The instability of late-stage Win10, just with a lick of paint.
Well, I said it was stable for a Microsoft system.
I understand that it’s strange to people used to windows, but we had computers that just didn’t crash. Ever. Then everything moved to PC with windows and it all went to shit. Now it’s mostly back to unix which while not crashproof is at least reasonably resilient and a proper system.
Rose tinted glasses.
Xp was almost a nightmare on launch. But got fixed (security not withstanding) switching everyone over from DOS to NT was no simple feat, and there were a lot of issues.
Vista wasn’t great, but the change to drivers made it a nightmare.
7, 8, and 8.1 were fine.
But 10 was a nightmare for the first 5 years. Every other update would break things. And those came out about twice a year.
Windows 11 has been surprisingly issue free for me. 24H2 seems to be the buggiest update since so I’ve been holding back. But I updated to 22 and 23 and I never had any issues, nor did I hear too much complaining. Every major update has some minor issues, and that’s largely why MS staggers their releases.
I’m honestly surprised MS took this long to pause the rollout with how bad it’s been.
Yeah we got that just by reading the first part of your comment…
I never had stability issues in years of being on W11, Bazzite on the other hand, has locked up on me twice in the 2 weeks I’ve used it.
I’ve had the odd stability issue every now and then. (There was one ongoing issue with my wifi that was caused by a bug in my manufacturer’s driver, but that was years ago on Windows 10, and they eventually fixed it.) But I honestly haven’t had any issues caused specifically by Microsoft recently that I can recall.
Any problems caused by major features updates are usually solved by simply reinstalling the driver. (And I haven’t had any of those sorts of problems in at least a couple years.)