I use Linux at home exclusively (Linux Mint Debian Edition).
Don't need Windows for anything but when I worked Enterprise IT the move to Windows 10 was a massive pain but we finally got it working and it wasn't too bad as an OS. There is no reason why you'd want to upgrade.
As for home users, from my experience people don't like change. If you move a single shortcut on the desktop , they are lost and panic .
So changing the entire look of the UI is not something people want. Plus Windows 10 auto update borked some windows 7 systems so users with that memory won't be keen to repeat it by upgrading to 11.
Due to changes in my life and career, the only reason I'm stuck on Windows is gaming. I'm not sure which will happen first, buying a Steam Deck or converting my computer to Linux for gaming, but at least one of those will happen before I upgrade to 11.
I was in your boat a few years ago. I was familiar with a few linux distros because of my job but I was hesitant to switch because the games I was playing didnt have native linux support. Eventually, I started daily driving Ubuntu and after some minor tinkering with steam and lutris, I could play any game I wanted without any issues.
That said, while I think Ubuntu is a great distro over all, there's a part of me that worries that its only a matter of time before it goes to shit... So within the last year, I made the switch to Debian 12 and I flatpak'd everything. It was seriously one of the best decisions I've ever made in the context of personal computing. Seriously, its fucking seamless. Fuck windows 4 lyfe. All my homies hate windows.
By running your applications in Flatpaks, you're isolating them from the rest of your system. Essentially, Flatpaks save you from ruining your system because you installed 10 different copies of the wrong graphics drivers, while following random guides on the internet.
Running games in flatpaks ensures you're using the latest drivers, so you dont really have to worry about it. It makes things SO much easier to manage from a linux gaming perspective.
That said, Flatpaks introduce a different kind of complexity to your system and there might be a bit of a learning curve before you feel confident troubleshooting any issues that come up, especially if you have no experience working in containerized environments.
Personally, I'm coming up on a year of daily gaming in Flatpaks and I've never had any issues.
if you don't play certain multiplayer games that use invasive anti-cheat software, then you really should give it a go! It's gotten to the point where I first buy games and then worry about compatibility. The vast majorityic just work with minor tweaks at the most (setting some launch arguments usually)
Yeah, I've tried a few times before and got stumped with various configuration issues. I actually have a saved post where gaming-specific distros are discussed in the hoped of getting past those issues. Now the big question is time or money. Depending which I have enough of first will determine which one happens first.
You can always dual-boot. Bazzite is a very stable Linux distro, which is optimized for gaming and basically gives you the same experience you would get on a Steam Deck. I highly recommend it.
Yeah, it's really a question of time or money for me. Whichever I have enough of first will decide which option I go with first. I don't expect I'll be buying Windows again.
Time in terms of setting everything up or learning how to use it? Because I can tell you that both are relatively easy. The installation is super easy, no harder than an ordinary Windows setup. The Steam Deck by default uses a desktop environment called KDE, as a Windows user, you should feel right at home. I'd say it's very intuitive to use and easy to learn. As Bazzite tries to mimic the Steam Deck experience as closely as possible, it uses the exact same stuff. Maybe check out this video.
Microsoft is being pushy and has started to enjoy that far too much.
This started with things that could be argued as things that users shouldn't control (like refusing to patch update... you can't really refuse anymore).
It then pushed to things that is a little less defensible (you were asked to update from Windows 7 to Windows 10... but they really don't want you to say no).
Once you are on the newer Windows 10 or 11, features just arrive that you have no say about because Microsoft determined it is better for you (you have AI, now AI on your taskbar, in fact you have an AI key on your taskbar, you will use Microsoft AI... the AI will just sift through your entire computer so that it can jump in front of your face to emphasize that you should use their AI!).
They points all have the same theme. Microsoft knows best, you will do what Microsoft wants, and Microsoft won't really take no for answer but may let you say "bother me later"... maybe. Once you are really pissed off, your only option is to leave a Microsoft operating system... which Microsoft is pretty sure you can't figure out on your own (more reasonably, you won't care to put in the work to learn another way) so Microsoft OS it is! Microsoft is a tad worried that those people are starting to wander off to get Google Chromebooks or just use their Android smartphones... those take less effort and more people are opting for that...
Still, Microsoft is relatively sure that people will just put up with what they are doing. I'm pretty sure they will... until they won't. Microsoft will be fine so long as they don't cross the line into the "until they won't" territory. Once they won't put up with that nonsense anymore, it is far harder to woo them back to a Microsoft OS in the future.
Spyware/malware since that infamous Windows 7 update sending everything (including passwords) to Microsoft. Ads spread across the UI in W11. Simple features hidden or disabled. Bing Internet search results in the Start Menu that can't be disabled unless you edit the registry. Search engine in the Start Menu cannot be changed. Numerous other previously simple settings changes that now require registry edits. Menu items gone, and others that still exist but inexplicably have been removed from the Start Menu search. Edge browser forced down your throat no matter what you set as the default browser. Upgrades that you can't do at your convenience and forced restarts that happen even if you have open files that you're editing. Long (sometimes really long) upgrade restart times. Forced Microsoft account use to install and use the OS & Internet access required to even install the OS. Absurdly inflexible hardware requirements that make no sense for most people. A taskbar that can't be moved. Numerous programs and garbage spread through the OS that cannot be removed or disabled.
Windows 11 sucks ass, but I really get tired of people saying you are forced to use an account. There are multiple ways to make a local account in 11 when doing initial setup. It just sucks that it makes most people think that they have to use an account
Regular users are absolutely forced to use a Microsoft account, no matter how tired you are. People shouldn't have to be techies to keep their information private.
You don't have to be a techie to see it. There's a button right below the email text box saying "Add a user without a Microsoft account" (here's another variation). Sure if you don't care about privacy then you might not notice it, but it's pretty hard to miss if you actually don't want to use an email. It's not hidden behind layers of clicks or a collapsed menu or something, it's a text link that says what it does that's on the same email setup page. Microsoft sucks but don't spread misinformation.
It requires numerous steps to bypass the account requirement or the creation of special installation media. I ran into the Internet and account requirements when installing W11 on a VM in January.
Perhaps the screenshots you posted were accurate at some point or in some situations, but you need to do better research before accusing others of spreading misinformation, and it is you who needs to stop spreading misinformation.
I don't have an issue with win 11 since I disabled the ads. But these news smell like new and unnecessary "advancements", to make it more marketable. They'll ruin it completely...
I'm looking into backing up data so I can make the switch. We're out here. For decades Windows was good enough. But this recent stuff is just ridiculous.
Windows 11 was what finally forced me over to linux for good, no more dual booting. I know it sounds strange, but the straw that broke its back was the taskbar. I have an ultrawide monitor, so I ALWAYS have the taskbar vertical on a side. It makes zero sense to have it at the bottom. Massive waste of space. Windows 11 DID NOT HAVE THE ABILITY TO MOVE THE TASKBAR. I was flabbergasted. This is a feature that has existed for decades in every OS. I just couldn't comprehend the stupidity, so I just didn't. Formatted the drive and went to Arch, then to Tumbleweed. Couldn't be happier.
I downloaded a third party app that re enables the windows 10 taskbar and lets you put it on the side. It's called ExplorerPatcher. Cannot believe you can't dock the win 11 taskbar on the side....what a choice....
I ran a poll a few years ago on Reddit asking people what event made them switch to Linux from some other platform. Interestingly enough it was not the EOL of a preferred version of Windows or MacOS, but the introduction of a dreaded new one. In other words, according to my poll, more people quit using Windows not because Win 7 support ended, but because Win 8 was released. Which was counterintuitive to me.
It feels to me like every second version of Windoof is shit if you start at XP (my first Windoof OS, no experience with earlier ones):
XP guhd
Vista shite
7 guhd
8 shite
10 guhd
11 shite
Until now I was able to skip every second version and could wait until the newer and better one was released. But now it seems that I need to make a complete switch to a suitable gaming Linux OS. I don't have any other use for Windoof.
Your poll results feel therefore relatable to me. I want a system that just works and with which I can do everything I need to. I don't mind testing new features. Often I welcome them. But if I can already expect that I have to adjust to new features which are unavoidable, and from which I can tell – either by reading reviews or testing myself – that I really don't like them, then of course I stay with the system which doesn't have them as long as I can still do everything I need to.
Well, it's been shown with previous releases and this one that Windows gets really pushy about upgrading long before EoL for the previous OS, so I can understand the frustration. Especially annoying if you're running something like a kiosk or a TV app that doesn't have mouse/keyboard readily available.
SAME! I like to have my taskbar at the top of the screen, and seeing that Microsoft had absolutely no intention of allowing it because of their oh so special start menu sent me over the edge. Been full time on Linux Mint for about a year now and I'm loving it. Proton and Lutris have made it surprisingly viable for gaming, to the point where I can runmost games without any troubleshooting.
I had to help my sister keep her 8 year old Mac going or buy a new secondhand (cheap) machine. With the options out there and with the state of Windows, I didn't even consider it.
She's ended up with her same 8 year old Mac with Ubuntu 24.04, and I've been really impressed with how it's actually great for non-technical users these days! And works really well on old hardware.
This should give her another few years of life out of the thing without worrying about software support.
Go for tumbleweed, it's supporting wide range of architectures (including even powerpc so you can still use powerpc macs) and it's rolling release distro on top of that
Windows 7 is good compared to Vista, but bad compared to Windows Xp SP 1 or SP 2 (in my memory at least).
Windows 10 is good compared to Windows 8, but bad compared to Windows 7.
After a couple more years of MS pushing win 11, we'll probably get a win 12 that is less good than win 10, but better than win 11, so thanks to people's short term memory, it will then be considered "good", but anyone with a memory and some critical thinking ability will recognize it as shite.
I beleive a large issue, and I say this as an old man yelling at kids on my lawn, is the difficulty in learning new systems. Most of those bad ones largely changed how to navigate a pc. Most of the good ones were smaller leaps from the prior bad one. So yes, I'm sure that also means the devs had more time in the current style to smooth it out and fix newly broken features, but it also got people exposed to the new style. A huge problem with 8 was that it went to that tablet tile bullshit. 10 tries to be a tablet too, slightly less so, but now we're all accepting it as normal. That's my take, at least as a contributing factor. Whatever was normal in your 20s is the standard for the rest of your life.
I see it with cars. People in my cohort get mad at all the chimey nannies in modern cars, so they yearn for when cars weren't so inundated with technology. Peak automotive design was 1985-2005. And yet, the adults when we grew up would complain those 90s cars are way too complicated with their electronic engine control models and emissions systems.
I'm going to disagree on this one, at least for me personally using the base functions of the different windows versions was never a problem. Even when completely ignoring the UI changes (including the always increasingly messier system configuration pages), Windows has definitely been regressing.
The user transition from win XP to win 7 was completely smooth for me, it didn't feel different at all. It's only after using it a bit that the downsides became obvious: I remember that file search worked less good, they had made a bit of a mess of config screens and the bloat needed more ram. But it came with a smashing chess program. It felt like there was some minor regression, but it wasn't a trainwreck.
Windows 8 upon first startup was awful since that was the first time that MS wanted to force the user to create a cloud account through dark pattern design. Even if I had not grown up in a time when my operating system did not use dark patterns against me, I would still be pissed off when I encountered it for the first time. Once I got past that hurdle, the Os was usable and problems only emerged when I tried to do more things.
Things like closing a stuck full screen game with task manager, which didn't work because the new task manager would not come on top. Or the new store app, which installed "apps" that were not "programs" and could fe not be uninstalled in a normal way.
From my first experiences with windows 10 I remember that out of the box you could not control when it would update. That pc would wake up in the middle of the night despite the settings saying that it shouldn't and I had to dig deep till I found how to make it behave permanently. Then at a later point I also made the mistake of using the recommended OneDrive sync system for my documents folder and nearly lost all my personal files, fortunately I had a backup on an external hard disk. And the main goal of Windows search was no longer to find files, but instead to trick users into opening bing, to boost microsoft quarterly statistics.
Microsoft has been adding more and more dark pattern design into Windows, it's not a case of "old man yells at clouds", it has really been getting worse and worse with each new release.
And Microsoft firing their qa team and using their customers as canaries is definitely not helping either. So many issues that should have never gone life.
we’ll probably get a win 12 that is less good than win 10, but better than win 11,
I wouldn't count on it. MS is moving away from selling desktop-stuff and towards selling cloud stuff (think azure and office356) and consulting. That's why they changed their attitude towards linux (think wsl and c# for linux) and open-source (think github). MS wants companies to use open-source tools (preferably written in c#) and deploy them to azure with the help of MS-consultants.
Enshittifying windows is a step in that direction. For example: The more people have a MS-Account, the easier it is to sell office356. That's why they pressure windows-user into making MS-Accounts.
XP sp1 and 2 were more or less the same as me with an updated UI and non existent 64 bit. However flawed vista was, it added an actual tangible benefit for 7 to further improve on.
I'd argue 7 was the last windows os that could be described as "better" in some way than what came before (which most, even the ones we remember as "bad" at the time, did offer some real step forward which isn't true for 8/10/11).
They put some under-the-hood improvements in 10 that they didn't put in 7, such as a new display driver model and Directx 12.
But that does not make a difference to most people. Industry desupporting of Windows 7 is the biggest con to it.
Eventually, 10 will share 7's fate. So you'll have both 10's regressions and 11's and so forth to live with as long as you're on Windows. You can't stop Microsoft from desupporting and killing their software in the long run.
Microsoft has a multi-decade history of enshitification when they do not perceive any major threats. Internet Explorer, DirectX, Windows Server, etc. all rotted. Some of these are still active and supported, yes, but they all peaked years ago and are aging poorly. Microsoft doesn't really do the labor of love thing much when customers are bagged.
Linux may be able to dethrone them to an extent if it can reach an ease of access/UX that most people are comfy with. And it has made huge strides over the years. It can also run most Windows software very well.
Mac is still priced very high and still feature-limited and a 2nd/3rd-class citizen when it comes to platform targeting. Offering lower priced conputers would make them a pretty big threat I think.
I think ChromeOS is a decent threat to Windows but it loses tons of features vs all the other options. At least it is really cheap and easy to use.
XP fucking sucked. It wasn't good until service pack 3.
You skipped 8.1 which was the good version that fixed the stuff that sucked about 8. It's existence is almost completely forgotten.
Then Windows 10 came out and it was bad.
They then had about a 10 different OS builds that all had the Windows 10 name instead of giving each build a new name or calling them service packs. The OS that exists now (22h2) has almost nothing in common with the OS that came out in 2015.
Windows 11 has also had several major leaps since that name started. What's current (23h2) is much much different than the OS that came out in 2021.
Vista was actually shockingly solid by the end. 7 on release was essentially just Vista Service Pack 3 with a new taskbar skin, because Vista was completely unmarketable by that point and nobody could be convinced to jump to Vista anymore.
Win2K was the last version of Windows I liked. By 2007 I'd had enough of their shit and moved to Linux. Each and every year since then has validated that choice, as desktop Linux has improved and Windows has enshittified further and further.
I agree with everything you write, but I'll also add an unpopular opinion as someone who tested the beta version of Vista and hated it: Vista x64 SP2 was a good OS, which solved most of the issues that existed with the OS.
And into this day, it's the most beautiful Windows UI, at least for me.
Windows 95: Good
Windows 98: Bad
Windows 98 SE: Good
Windows ME: Bad
Windows XP: ~~Good~~ **GOAT**
Windows Vista: Bad
Windows 7: Good
Windows 8: Bad
Windows 10: Good
Windows 11: ?
You're missing Windows 2000, but I guess you can argue that's Windows NT not mainline Windows. That was definitely in the good camp, and I was not alone in sticking with it for many years (until XP got good).
I've honestly haven't had any problems with XP SP1. I've had it on a couple computers back in the day. I remember that the upgrade to SP2 wouldn't always go well. Sometimes requiring a reinstall.
People keep repeating that but it's by far the worst and actually the one that made me bail. What is it that good about it that made it worth sacrificing user choice, privacy, performance, latency, search, startup time, solitaire, and much more?
I have Windows 11 on a couple of machines and honestly it's just Windows 10 with a somewhat slicker taskbar and control panel. Functionally it is almost identical. I'm sure there is a random bunch of changes on the periphery but it's really not a compelling proposition if someone has Windows 10 and is happy with it.
It's frustrating. There's a lot of Windows 11 that I do actually like: Massively improved HDR support, far better DPI scaling features, tabbed file browsing, a unified control panel again (yes I know if you look hard enough you can find legacy panels), configurable snapping regions for Windows, gaming focused features with screen recording, intelligent capture, etc. On the power user side: the terminal, winget, built in ssh support and broader compatibility with Linux development toolchains, and if you're the kind of person with a family or friends you do tech support for regularly the Quick Assist's current iteration is a godsend.
But then the tradeoff is ads, increased telemetry, AI integrations, inability to move the taskbar, a piss-poor local file search, increasingly restrictive desktop customizations via third party tools, shorter support periods for Windows feature updates, and generally a lack of overall feature control due to low level integration with core Windows services.
I don't think Windows 11 is a bad operating system in the sense that I believe it to be a marked improvement on a feature by feature comparison to Windows 10. But it feels like two development arms at Microsoft are consistently at war with eachother. Some want to implement really cool features and tools for end users, and the others are hellbent on locking the system down and forcing this Apple philosophy of "use it like we want you to".
I hate local file search in Windows. So many times I've wonder why my machine is crawling and I go to the taskbar and discover Windows search indexer is killing my machine.
For the other stuff in Windows 11, I wonder if it knows I'm in Europe because I've not seen any egregious advertising - it has the default shit they set up for you like the MSN home page in Edge which is annoying but it can all be changed.
So far, I've not actually had this problem. It was a huge issue in Windows 10, but every setting (aside from audio devices being a little weird due to their own drivers) works pretty much as needed now.
