Chiming in as a new user who jumped from XP to 11 (also tried rolling it back to 10 just to see, and reverted it to 11)
Windows has always been to me a "make it work" experience, from 95 to XP at least. Critical aspects have always been broken, a fresh install always started from wiping everything clean, removing junk, going into the registry and adding third party tools to make it viable. And then backing it up, because as some point it will need to be wiped again.
In that respect, Win 11 doesn't feel that different to me. I also was frustrated by the side dashboard, and there's tool suites to remove it quickly. Most of the eggregious stuff can be worked around, getting rid of Edge is the only tough part.
Now, Windows 11 comes with a linux subsytem, Amazon's android subsystem is also promising, touch support is actually workable, hdpi support is good, and using windows on a tablet is actually doable. That's a very long way from the win 2000 area where multi-language support was seen as a cutting edge feature.
Modern windows didn't have to cut down on lots of old features, but they did anyway to appeal to Mac crowd. They got rid of classic theme few versions back, cut down on lots of customizablity. There are lots of useful and convenient features which could have all co-existed, but no, they have be trying to become Mac both in UI and a closed eco system where they can do whatever they want to their users leaving them as little choice as possible.
Windows has always been to me a "make it work" experience, from 95 to XP at least. Critical aspects have always been broken, a fresh install always started from wiping everything clean, removing junk, going into the registry and adding third party tools to make it viable. And then backing it up, because as some point it will need to be wiped again.
In that respect, Win 11 doesn't feel that different to me. I also was frustrated by the side dashboard, and there's tool suites to remove it quickly. Most of the eggregious stuff can be worked around, getting rid of Edge is the only tough part.
Now, Windows 11 comes with a linux subsytem, Amazon's android subsystem is also promising, touch support is actually workable, hdpi support is good, and using windows on a tablet is actually doable. That's a very long way from the win 2000 area where multi-language support was seen as a cutting edge feature.