Still on Windows 10 here.

I'm glad to hear they are extending the ESU officially. I'm sure they are aware of people using various methods to manually activate the 3-year ESU program (October 2028) that is normally exclusive to enterprise customers. Microsoft is already doing the work of updating Windows 10 until at least that date, all they have to do is flip a switch so that non-enterprise users get the updates too. That is what they have done here for one extra year.

I have used Windows 11 on several computers and I have yet to find anything I prefer about it. I have heard that it has slightly better handling of multi-monitor configs... basically allowing the cursor to blend smoothly from one screen to the other, but I haven't tested this myself.

I have said it before, but, the last four years since Windows 10 had its last feature update to 22H2 has been the SMOOTHEST and least problematic period of computing for me for as long as I can remember. Everything just works. I never get garbage installed automatically on my system. I have never had anything related to Copilot or AI installed automatically on my system. Drivers do not auto-update. It just does things when I tell it to, and I get security updates as they come out. I haven't had an issue with any updates on my machine aside from the Defender update that finally put an end to programs freely using WinRing0 (which has been a good thing, since it is a security risk and most programs seem to have moved on to alternatives- FINALLY).

I'm sure Windows 11 is slowly improving, but I just have no reason to switch at this point. I remember reading about some kind of responsiveness-focused update they were planning to do recently... did that actually fix the sluggish context menus finally? On the one Windows 11 system I have in the house (a game server that doesn't get used much - i7 8700, 16GB DDR4, NVMe) I did all of the tweaks I could find and the context menu still has this weird short delay when opening which just makes the whole system feel slightly sluggish. In Windows 10 I can drag my mouse across the desktop and right click as fast as humanly possible and it will open the context menu every time. On Windows 11 there was always a slightly delay so this isn't possible. If they fix that at least it would be a step in the right direction.

The start menu is also horrible. It has so much wasted space once you turn off all of the garbage, and the shut down menu being toward the middle rather than the left side is strange. I also dislike the new layout of task manager. The icons they recycled from other parts of the OS don't really make any sense so are not very intuitive and I find them distracting (a speedometer\fuel gauge for startup?). There is so much wasted space compared to the task manager in Windows 10, and nothing has changed in the actual functional parts of the window.

So, yeah... I don't see any reason to switch on most of the PCs in my house. I really only see downsides to using 11 since no one in my home really wants or cares about OS feature updates. We just want the OS to shut up and exist, securely, while we run the programs\games we actually want to run without being interrupted or prevented from doing so.

Until things genuinely stop working properly because of a lack of support, I'll be sticking to 10, but that will probably take a while since 10 and 11 are not that much different under the hood. If 11 gets some really amazing new feature that would actually benefit me, I'll wait to see how it impacts everyone to determine whether it is worth the upgrade. No sense being a guinea pig.

Realistically, LTSC is the only sane option. Both for Windows 10 and 11.

The Serpent Rider wrote on Today, 18:37:

Realistically, LTSC is the only sane option. Both for Windows 10 and 11.

I make no claims as to my sanity or that of anyone else I know, but I don't know of anyone personally (not on the internet) using LTSC. It's probably fine, but it is hardly the only option for a stable Windows experience.