It’s really easy to over estimate the Windows user base. I have a family member who has gotten so pissed that the start menu moved from the left to the center that she refuses to use it. Functionality is more or less the same but apparently that’s enough for her to not want to use Windows 11.
And no she won’t use Linux.
She hates when Facebook changes it’s UI and stopped using that a few years ago (probably a good thing).
I agree with their sentiment, I like my menu on the side, the middle of my screen is busy showing me what I was doing. I don’t want it covered up because I opened the start menu.
I’m the minority in my family I suppose, because the kid doesn’t know better and can barely tell the difference between raspberry pi OS and Windows and the wife “kinda likes it in the middle”. I’m also the only one who uses Linux. I feel dirty if I ever have to do something on their computers. I keep a liveUSB of opensuse tumbleweed to minimize my interactions with Windows at home.
I have a family member that’s similar - they get really mad at inconsequential changes on the computer. But they also refuse to learn anything, so they’re just mad all the time. They also treat their phone like a capricious deity- they’re afraid to touch anything.
On the other hand, I have another family member that spends a lot of his time tinkering with linux. Years ago I got fed up fixing his windows machine I slapped xubuntu on his machine, and he took to it. He’s done several updates and fresh installs since.
Both of them are retired, so it’s not like they’re hurting for free time.
They also treat their phone like a capricious deity- they’re afraid to touch anything.
Considering that there was a MIUI bug that would soft-brick the phone if you set minimum width to a too large value (smaller display size), or if you disabled “MIUI optimization”, or perhaps even installed a bad update, maybe better to be careful. But MIUI was really on the extreme with bugs.
I didn’t personally experience those, though I only played with the display size and only updated once, as MIUI 13 had way too many known bugs. But I found there was some, though not large chance of SD card corruption if I didn’t “Eject” it before reboot.
But to be fair, the optimization and minimum width are both in Developer settings.
As for (possibly) permanent things, from my mind:
Basically anything in MTK Engineer mode or other dialer-accessible secret menus (hidden just like Developer settings)
That time Samsung disabled band mode selection with an update, but the settings wouldn’t reset thus remaining locked however they were set by the user (probably not used by regular users, but just like with MTK EM, there were apps to access this without special codes)
And lastly one that may actually impact regular users who utilize eSIM adapters (e.g.: eSTK, JMP, 5ber, 9esim):
eUICC is recognized and listed by internal SIM manager; switching profiles on a sysmoEUICC1-C2T resulted in an error which made that plastic eUICC disappear from both the built-in SIM manager as well as EasyEUICC-SGP.26. Moving that same eUICC to another phone works just fine. However, moving that eUICC back to the Pixel 4a 5G shows the problem persists. Even another sysmoEUICC1-C2T would not even be recognized by EasyEUICC anymore. Its almost as if the plastic-eUICC functionality has been bricked
Heh, that sounds like… me.
Yeah, I know it can be moved. But what I missed more was fullscreen start menu. Then again, my favorite Windows version is 8.1.
I was also postponing updates (for months) when there was a switch from Plasma 5 to Plasma 6. And I wish I could have kept it for a while on Arch, but partial upgrades always eventually catch up on me.
8.1, not 8.
8.1 had a regular desktop as well, but it was really well optimized.
I tried it on some really old laptop, and it even beat Windows XP and Linux Mint in speed. Probably because it was mostly meant for stuff like tablets.
I get it honestly. The reason I’ve never bumped from windows 10 to 11 is because of the taskbar changes, it’s a single issue killer for me. There are a lot of reasons to ditch windows in general though so now I’m moving to Linux. It isn’t my daily driver yet but I’m getting there. I can have whatever taskbar I want with Linux
I forget the name of it right now, but Stardock has a bunch of diiferent Windows customization software one of which modifies the start bar to be more like 10.
Also my favorite bit of “productivity” software - Fences.
You can move the taskbar back to the left, it’s a setting in the context menu. But by all means, please don’t let that drag you away from Linux. Windows is going to get a lot worse in other ways soon. It always does.
It’s really easy to over estimate the Windows user base. I have a family member who has gotten so pissed that the start menu moved from the left to the center that she refuses to use it. Functionality is more or less the same but apparently that’s enough for her to not want to use Windows 11.
And no she won’t use Linux.
She hates when Facebook changes it’s UI and stopped using that a few years ago (probably a good thing).
I agree with their sentiment, I like my menu on the side, the middle of my screen is busy showing me what I was doing. I don’t want it covered up because I opened the start menu.
I’m the minority in my family I suppose, because the kid doesn’t know better and can barely tell the difference between raspberry pi OS and Windows and the wife “kinda likes it in the middle”. I’m also the only one who uses Linux. I feel dirty if I ever have to do something on their computers. I keep a liveUSB of opensuse tumbleweed to minimize my interactions with Windows at home.
I have a family member that’s similar - they get really mad at inconsequential changes on the computer. But they also refuse to learn anything, so they’re just mad all the time. They also treat their phone like a capricious deity- they’re afraid to touch anything.
On the other hand, I have another family member that spends a lot of his time tinkering with linux. Years ago I got fed up fixing his windows machine I slapped xubuntu on his machine, and he took to it. He’s done several updates and fresh installs since.
Both of them are retired, so it’s not like they’re hurting for free time.
Hey, that first part exactly describes my uncle. We might be related!
Considering that there was a MIUI bug that would soft-brick the phone if you set minimum width to a too large value (smaller display size), or if you disabled “MIUI optimization”, or perhaps even installed a bad update, maybe better to be careful. But MIUI was really on the extreme with bugs.
I didn’t personally experience those, though I only played with the display size and only updated once, as MIUI 13 had way too many known bugs. But I found there was some, though not large chance of SD card corruption if I didn’t “Eject” it before reboot.
But to be fair, the optimization and minimum width are both in Developer settings.
As for (possibly) permanent things, from my mind:
Basically anything in MTK Engineer mode or other dialer-accessible secret menus (hidden just like Developer settings)
That time Samsung disabled band mode selection with an update, but the settings wouldn’t reset thus remaining locked however they were set by the user (probably not used by regular users, but just like with MTK EM, there were apps to access this without special codes)
And lastly one that may actually impact regular users who utilize eSIM adapters (e.g.: eSTK, JMP, 5ber, 9esim):
https://osmocom.org/projects/pysim/wiki/UE_behavior_with_plastic_eUICC
TIL MIUI as in Xiaomi User Interface
Heh, that sounds like… me.
Yeah, I know it can be moved. But what I missed more was fullscreen start menu. Then again, my favorite Windows version is 8.1.
I was also postponing updates (for months) when there was a switch from Plasma 5 to Plasma 6. And I wish I could have kept it for a while on Arch, but partial upgrades always eventually catch up on me.
8.1, not 8.
8.1 had a regular desktop as well, but it was really well optimized.
I tried it on some really old laptop, and it even beat Windows XP and Linux Mint in speed. Probably because it was mostly meant for stuff like tablets.
I upvoted you for your bravery.
I get it honestly. The reason I’ve never bumped from windows 10 to 11 is because of the taskbar changes, it’s a single issue killer for me. There are a lot of reasons to ditch windows in general though so now I’m moving to Linux. It isn’t my daily driver yet but I’m getting there. I can have whatever taskbar I want with Linux
I forget the name of it right now, but Stardock has a bunch of diiferent Windows customization software one of which modifies the start bar to be more like 10.
Also my favorite bit of “productivity” software - Fences.
You can move the taskbar back to the left, it’s a setting in the context menu. But by all means, please don’t let that drag you away from Linux. Windows is going to get a lot worse in other ways soon. It always does.