The part about it not being a huge pile of shit like 10 or it not being too shabby? I was expecting it to be worse than 10. I begrudgingly installed 11 and expected the worst. I haven't had the issues many seemingly have. Maybe it's the timing since they've had time to get it more dialed in or maybe I got lucky. The games I play run helluva lot better than they did on 10 and I've had zero crashes. Even the games themselves aren't CTDing like they were on the previous rig that has Windows 10. I also chose not to install or enable all the tracking functions.

The only downside so far is the aesthetic of the OS. It has taken some time getting used to.

@rubberbabybuggybumpers: Actually, partial "never mind". Just because I can trace back my game related issues to specific problems with the games themselves; such as the original Saints Row The Third not launching when MSi Afterburning was running, Burnout Paradise Remastered crashing when tryiny to connect to EA's servers when OBS was installed, adding certain mods to Skyrim and Fallout 4, playing games that involve Games for Windows Live or other pieces of DRM that makes games completely unplayable on Windows Vista and newer, or bad ports like Nier Automata needing FAR to smooth out the frame pacing issues until Square finally fixed that a year ago... I didn't have your rig over the past seven years, so the best I can do is press X to doubt that games crashing at fault of the OS misfiring in one way or another.

But, as someone who creates digital art and edits videos, I kinda need thumbnail previews for my image and video folders, which 10 has but 11 doesn't for some odd reason. Having to go though additional menu navigation to adjust settings like sound and display or bring up Task Manager on Windows 11 compared to 10 and 7. And, unless Linus lied to me, knowing that 11 is basically 10 with some UI changes and promised upcoming features, at least as of the time I'm posting this... well, just let me know when thumbnails come back since I kinda need those to make my work less tedious, and I'm willing to spend $25 for a TPM module so that my old Haswell system can be an HTPC.