Hi Frameworkers,
I’ve just updated my 11th-gen Intel Framework 13 to Windows 11 after fighting it for two and half hours. The normal error messages that are so vague they’re meaningless, having to run a downloadable installer as admin because Windows Update can’t manage it, freeing up an extra 25GB of disk space, and culling particular background processes before running the tool. I must learn about dual-booting Linux soon, arrrgh!
Now “successfully” running Win11 and running the Framework driver package installer - three times - I have no Bluetooth. This died first when completing Windows updates in preparation for the update, and then is still MIA.
The installer claims to have installed the Bluetooth driver but I can’t see it in device manager, add any devices or turn it on anywhere.
Help? :(
My understanding is Windows is a victim of its own success/monopoly in a way - it has to support so my ancient business applications and such a massively wide variety of hardware that it is a mess.
Not saying Microsoft do a good job, it’s just simpler when the requirements are narrower.
Windows is the only platform with this kind of retro compatibility. If they didn’t have to worry about that, they could just hop on the Core kernel, add a compatibility layer for NT applications and end up with a superior architecture compared to that we have now.
However, that would basically murder retro compatibility support for applications and hardware drivers, and that would be a disaster. So they cannot do that, and they’re stuck on piling up layers over layers of new stuff on top of legacy code that they need to be very careful to change.
Apple fundamentally doesn’t care. They have the clout to be able to tell developers “alright, either you port your program to this new completely arbitrary set of requirements or all your Apple customers are going to be very unhappy”, because their clients aren’t really big enterprise deployments, but individual users. Regular customers, self-employed artists, and design firms. Client laptops for software companies. Nothing too important. This allows them to improve as much as they want with changes as breaking as they want, like moving through 3 different architectures over the lifetime of their desktop OS and having everyone just swallow the pill.
Linux is a different beast entirely. It has frankly not been relevant on the desktop until as of late - and right now it’s in the middle of a bit of a critical period, where development has sprung back up after being fundamentally dead / very slow for a very long time, and the community has finally decided to abandon a lot of legacy that was holding Linux back and replace it with brand new shiny stuff that is much more modern and for most purposes works better: Puleaaudio is being replaced with Pipewire, the 39 years-old X server is being phased out in favour of Wayland compositors, graphical applications are now being shipped through Flatpak, gaining several benefits (isolation, choose different install locations, option to delete all data on uninstall, very easy to install add-ons to a program like OBS through the store, deploy once and have it work on all distros), and it’s doable because the market share of Linux is in that niche where it’s now high enough to be relevant, but low enough that it is still possible to make some breaking changes without too much disruption.
Windows already has the monopoly so it’s kinda… cornered