Linux

I straight up think they did it because they want everyone on co-pilot.

I use windows for 2 things - personal pc to play games, work laptop dualboot for excel usage if some super old messy sheets. everything else linux.

I think they should be able to choose their OS. If they choose something you see as shitty, so be it.

I absolutely hate it. I have to use windows for my job and I'm used to moving and resizing windows with the. "super" key and i press it by instinct on windows the ad tiles viewer rears it's ugly head. I feel like beating it with a stick.

That bad?

Last time I used Windows on my own was back in the XP days. I saw some of the early Vista and it was even worse. I can't imagine what the recent versions are like.

Both windows and macos have gone down the drain. Or linux just caught up.

Windows has improved a lot. I was committed to using Linux before windows 95 and that era was a complete shit show. They couldn't even connect to the internet, play cds or other media without third party software and Windows crashed if you looked at it the wrong way. People thought it was the hottest shit ever. Even after the move to the NT kernel it was a shitshow of instability and massive security flaws for years. I think I could daily drive modern windows if there was no alternative. They have come a long way with stability and a lot of FOSS software is ported.

Windows still benefits a lot from network effects which makes it desirable for some people for the same reason they use Xcrement and Meta. It doesn't bother me what OS other people use anymore than what they do in their bedrooms or churches. Let's not act vegan over an operating system.

honestly i don't know what you did to mess up a windows install like that, but i agree overall that linux is easier. However there are quirks that can arise for a new user that will eat time or seem daunting.

I have a Windows partition on my workstation. It serves really two purposes, some manufacturers issue firmware upgrades that you can only install from Windows and games. Recently that partition got scribbled and I had to re-install. The most recent Windows ISO would NOT install for me from a USB, I HAD to burn a double sided DVD to get it to install. Then within two weeks of installation it runs into an update that keeps failing. Gotta fucking love it. And this is Win10, I am not ever upgrading to Win11.

I am probably the only person on the planet who never had an issue with either W10 or W11 and their installation. The only Windows that truly sucked in my life were W95, WME and 8. I occasionally dual boot OpenSUSE with xfce for some dev stuff, but Windows has always been my daily driver and I'm so used to it I have bloody tears in my eyes when I look at your KDEs and Gnomes, which are in my opinion absolutely horrible environments. These days I more often than not use WSL2 from under Windows even, might as well just use Linux cli tools if their GUI stuff sucks so bad.

I think windows 11 wouldn't be nearly as bad if it didn't force an online account on you. Yes, I know there are sometimes ways around it, but they are not for the average user to pull off. Especially the OEM laptops that ship win11 s-mode, where if it's not the right patch, you gotta do bios edits, registry edits.

Even just installing windows is pretty bad. They include jack shit for default wifi drivers and won't let you complete the installation without an internet connection (and a stupid Microsoft account to complete their data mining 1984 tracking system) unless you use secret command line bullshit.

There are exactly 2 things keeping me from switching to Linux full time.

Microsoft Office (I am aware of open/LibreOffice and the web version, but all are still lacking some feature or another)

Parsec hosting (I started doing weekly remote movie nights over the pandemic and parsec is basically the perfect drop-in solution for that)

Never used W11. W10 works about 100x better than Linux and doesn't require me to memorize commands to punch into the CLI for mundane tasks or have 11 different types of program install processes.

I daily Linux for privacy reasons but you're delusional if you think Linux is easier to use.

When I tried the early free upgrade from Window 10 to 11, half my games wouldn't work, and I couldn't fix the UI to what was comfortable. Also all the control panels had another layer of simplified facade before it would let me see the Windows XP control panel window.

Also the games that worked had a significant framerate drop.

I swtched back after a day of frustration and every once in a while my Windows 10 nags me to try upgrading again because Win11 is much better.

I need to stop being a coward and make my switch to Linux.

I'll need to find an equivalent to Autohotkey though. I'm left handed and depend on keyboard profiles to play games.