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Microsoft rolls out Windows 11's movable and smaller taskbar 5 years after killing it (hands on experience)
(www.windowslatest.com)
/me laughs in KDE
this post was submitted on 16 May 2026
171 points (99.4% liked)
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+1 in KDE, with a customized menu icon no less.
The fun thing with kde is i dont even need to move tge bar. Its already where I like it
That's one of the best feeling when using a Linux distro IMO - you have the power to do anything you want with what's installed, but because the devs are people and not marketers or rent-seekers, you're given a sane layout out of the box that feels comfortable.
There's just nothing Microsoft can do to bring me back. I don't need Windows anymore, so why would I ever choose it?
I mean, there’s always the chance you suffer a massive stroke? That’s probably the only reason I’d switch back for my own PC.
At work, where I’m forced to still use Windows 11 - it’s become almost a daily occurrence that someone in my team of ~10 or so will loudly curse Microslop for the entire department to hear.
Or because my fucking laser burner software dropped Linux support and it doesn’t run on wine so I have to use this damn giant piece of shit OS (or at least keep it around for dual boot)
You might give a VM a chance by sharing your laser burner with the Windows inside the VM but from my experiences, Windows-only peripherals most of the time don't work like that. They sometimes work.
Yea I tried that, software uses a lot of low level drivers. Annoying that they used to have a Linux version but dropped it,.
You might bundle the old Linux driver with its dependencies into an Appimage, unless it's too old I guess.
MS: we are rolling out this new feature in Windows 11.
Everyone else: oh you brought back the thing we could do in every previous version of windows.
MS: yes but we also made it much slower and consume 1GB of RAM by running it as a web app inside a webview
The most requested regression fix of windows 11 has finally been implemented after five years at the top spot. At this rate, we’re getting an operable operating system by 2057
Users: We'd like a movable task bar and OS wide dark mode.
Microslop: We hear you loud and clear! So now we're implementing AI info notepad and paint along with tracking everything you do.
Still can figure out why they're hated
It's not even only MS, McDonald's can't figure out why they're losing revenue. You're a fucking BUDGET fast food place, stay in your lane.
Just in time for Windows 13 and for them to EoL 11
Only took them 5 years and a team of a thousand engineers. I f****** hate windows
Don’t forget the millions in Claude tokens
Adds massive gestapo level user tracking and surveillance.
Makes taskbar resizeable when users complain.
Right.
Sorry, dumbasses, switched to Linux Mint and I'm never coming back. Tootles.
Linux: The only official OS of the PC Master Race. Because you can't achieve high frame rates when your OS is dragging you down.
Same here. So glad I got rid of all that spyware and bloat. All my games run so much better now.
Can you run most games on Linux now? I literally just want to play Rimworld and Age of Mythology
Yes. If it's not a AAA multiplayer game, you can basically just assume it works at this point. I don't bother checking if a game runs now. They always do, unless it's by EA, Ubisoft, or from China. In fact, I've found older games have an easier time than on Windows. WINE handles compatability better than Windows does, and does a better job faking older versions of Windows.
If you need to check, protondb is where you check. Again though, I don't even bother checking anymore. Everything works.
Oh look, they are going to finally give people what they have been asking for.
MS: Please don't leave us! We promise not to fuck you over again until Windows 12!
All I want is the calendar popup to work from the taskbar clock on every screen LIKE IT ALREADY DID on W10
Microsoft implementation: You can click the clock on any taskbar, but the calendar opens on the primary monitor
Wait, what does Win11 do when you click on clock?
It brings up the calendar popup, but only on your primary screen. On other screens it does nothing.
I see. That's weird but not unexpected from Microslop.
Hold the phone! Just angrily tested it and it seems to no longer be the case. Calendar opens on all screens. Not sure when that update rolled out, but fair play. I'll admit my info was outdated.
Well, to be fair they being fixing things doesn't matter for the people who got out of the Matrix anyway. Good for the people who stay or has to stay on Windows though.
Of course, even giving this small amount of credit, always recommend quarantining MS to necessary work devices.
Sprays you with water
I'm convinced it's just spyware that makes it so slow.. Cos you just cannot have it so poor as it is.
I thought it was an old install that made it slow, that was Monday, I got a new image for work and was like hey, this is nice, not too bad. Windows is good again...
and I finished work Friday and fuck it was terrible again, already. Absolutely unbelievable.
I'm on a thinkpad t480s from 2018 (i5, 16gb) with nixos and then a i9,32gb dell 5570 for work and its just bad bad bad. Embarrassing
Five years to fix a problem they caused. I guess this is what "Nowhere to go but up" looks like.
I've been purchasing separate start menu software since Microslop killed it in Windows 8. Start 11 from Stardock is worth the cost for me.
But KDE is free?
I tried a few alternatives, but ultimately decided that the Stardock product offered the kind of customization I wanted along with ease of use. I think it was a good exchange of value for ten bucks.
Wow, just in time for me too. I was very close to paying for a 3rd party software which fixes this. I'm still using its trial version on my work laptop.
Who actually wants a smaller Taskbar? What we (as a former Windows user who uses Windows 11 at work) want(ed) is(was) a more functional Taskbar.
As a happy Mac user, I like how macOS (and some Linux distros, and some Windows shell replacements) do it, with the status bar (what Windows users call the system tray) in the top right corner, and the icons front and centre on the bottom. To be fair, I could take or leave the menu bar (what macOS has in the upper left), I think it's kinda dumb that menus don't follow windows, they're anchored to the top. It allows for some creative freedom in designing windows, but you never really see that happen, and the look only works when a window is maximised (or "zoomed" in Mac speak; I'll never not call it "maximised" though).
Another thing Windows does a little better than macOS is indicating which window is active on the Taskbar (vs the Dock on macOS. I love the Dock, I think it's great... and I use a hack that makes it act more like the Taskbar in a couple ways.
I think the Start Menu is a piece of shit that needs to die. Give Windows users a functional Dock (or Taskbar or whatever) and put a search icon on it. Move the applications and recents to Windows Explorer (the latter already exist there). Windows-only users, imagine, if you will, your Favourites now includes "Applications" and it's just a list of every application installed on your computer. And you can sort it into folders, it doesn't matter. Maybe you can even browse to %APPLICATIONS% and it's the same area. The Start Menu has been trash for a while, but if you think about it, if you look at how a more elegant OS has done it... it's kinda unnecessary. And the pro Mac users just use Spotlight (⌘+Space) and start typing to get apps, files, folders, settings, whatever. Windows doesn't have Spotlight but Everything is a free app that imitates it. Duck.ai says it cannot launch applications, which sucks. Spotlight absolutely can. When you have that, you can take everything off your Taskbar (Dock) that you don't use daily and just launch it by typing its first few letters. So much cleaner. Especially when you're old school and have the Taskbar set to always expand the text by the icon if it's active.
What hack do you use that makes the Mac dock act more like the taskbar? Asking for a friend for his work computer…
Supercharge. And it doesn't make the Mac dock act completely like the Taskbar, just to be clear. It has a bunch of tweaks and some of them make the Dock (and other parts of macOS) a little more familiar to Windows expats.
Fixing their own failures, years later...
Wow. I've been ignoring Windows 11 for 5 years now?
I started with Linux off and on back during windows 8. Don't be trapped in the whims of Microsoft's profit motive. It's easier today than ever. Fedora KDE and rely mostly on the flatpak/rpm software store GUI. At this point I'm comfortable enough to not care whether it's debian, fedora, or arch based. Firefox, Steam, and Flatpaks cover 99% of my GUI program needs
It's giving taking out the headphone jack and then bringing it back as a new feature in the next release.