Windows 11 - First Time User

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My younger brother got some money together and bought me a new PC. Goodbye Windows 8.1.

It's running smoothly so far as I redownload all my currently played games, editing and recording softwares.

Windows 11 is very new to me and I'm not without my usual worries. What flaws and advantages can I expect from this OS?

I'm surprised you didn't jump on the free Windows 10 update on your old machine. You can still do it and it's totally worth it. Windows 11 may also be possible.

I completely skipped over 8.x myself but I've seen others suffer.

Well at the time, it meant that a lot of older games on my PC wouldn't be playable. I had yet to experience Quake 1 and it would be years before it would get updated with everything.

Been using 11 since launch, much better launch than 10 was, no issues yet with gaming or VR applications.
In saying that 10 is the best released probably ever, and I've used every version since 3.11.
Consider 11 a skinned 10 with prettier icons and taskbar etc.

disliked 11 when I tested it due to it being slower and removal of stuff like taskbar on any side of screen or drag and dropping files to it. don't use windows anyway myself anymore for personal machines. also the requirement for a Microsoft account now seems ridiculous, what happens if u need to install windows in a area without internet?

I tried updating to Windows 11 back in March but my computer wasn't stable on it and kept crashing so I reverted back to Windows 10.

I'd been a lifelong Microsoft user (and software developer) from the early days of DOS, through Windows 3.1 to 8.1 at which point I jumped ship as I hated it so much and have used Linux since then. Been using Linux Mint for a decade now. Will never go back to using Windows.

You can install Windows (or run it the first time) w/o having to create an ms account. The instructions are google-able. Basically, don't turn on, plug in, or use any networking stuff while installing & setting it up. Leave the wi-fi disabled. Continue as if it weren't. When windows/installer can't connect, it'll let you default to creating a local user.

I was really digging Windows 11 (I've only had it for a few months due to getting a new laptop) until the 22H2 update killed my touchpad. I think this is a Lenovo-specific problem, but having to rollback was a little bit of a bummer.

Dragging and dropping remains annoying as heck, though.

I was just a windows 7 holdout till I absolutely had to switch. I've been tempted to hop to Linux as well but honestly don't feel like devoting the time to learning it on top of everything else right now. Have you tried any distros besides Mint?

I dont think Windows 11 is all that different. I have machines running both so I go back and forth and barely notice.

Subsystem for Android is probably my favorite feature so far; I now have like a billion android apps installed that otherwise would never be able to run on a PC. Fun times

I nursed a dying laptop with Windows 7 for two years until Windows 10 came out. Local branch of PC World sold their Windows 8 machines at a heavy discount with free upgrade to 10 included, so I nabbed one. For the single hour I had Windows 8, I knew I was right to avoid it. Basically a badly-designed smartphone interface that made doing literally anything at all into a huge song-and-dance routine.