It still is if you're an enterprise customer. The retail users aren't Microsoft's cash cows, so they get ads and BS in their editions. The underlying APIs are still stable and MS provides the LTSC & Server editions to businesses which lack all that retail cruft.

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zppln 19 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'm an enterprise user and I find Windows 11 a complete disaster. They've managed to make something as trivial as right-clicking a slow operation.

I used to be a pretty happy Windows camper (I even got through Me without much complaint), but I'm so glad I moved to Linux and KDE for my private desktops before 11 hit.

	▲	p_ing 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If anything, right click is faster thanks to dumping the ability for 3rd parties to pollute it with COM controls that needs to be init'ed.

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63282836292919 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In my day job, Explorer still freezes every second day, GUI interactions take several seconds and the sidebar is full of tabloid headlines and ads.

	▲	layer8 12 hours ago \| parent [-]
		At least with regard to the last point, your enterprise admins must be doing a bad job.

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bnastic 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Everything after Win 2000 was a bad idea. Enterprise or not.

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GeekyBear 18 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Windows 2000 was the last version where Dave Cutler was fully in charge of Windows.

Things started going downhill after that.

	▲	whoknowsidont 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Windows 2000 was a bug riddled, poorly architected punching bag for malware. Things definitely went up-hill AFTER Windows 2000. What on earth would cause someone to say Windows 2000 was a good release? It wasn't even a good release when it came out, and it definitely didn't stand the test of time.

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robotnikman 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

7 was pretty good. But I may be looking through the glasses of nostalgia and my love for the frutiger aero style

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dontlaugh 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

XP was arguably better.

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shepherdjerred 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

https://massgrave.dev/windows_ltsc_links

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materialpoint 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The problem with Windows after Windows 7 isn't really ads, it's the blatant stupid use of web view to do the most mundane things and hog hundreds of MB or even GBs for silly features, that are still present in enterprise versions.

	▲	antonkochubey 19 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Start menu search requires 7 web browser processes that consume ~350 MB of RAM to be constantly running.

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lelele 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Do you mean Windows 1x Pro/Enterprise?

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hypeatei 20 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes. Enterprise, Pro, and Home are the enshittified, retail editions. Enterprise just adds a few more features IIRC but still has ads. The other versions I mentioned above don't have any of that.

	▲	r_lee 19 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Enterprise is not retail and is usually done via volume licensing, but probably without any additional configuration it might have that stuff intact. But you can use group policy etc. freely. I don't know how Win 11 is though