Windows isn’t Unix and as someone who has spent a career coding for Unix and Unix-like systems, Windows just isn’t useful to me. I’m perfectly happy with Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD or even OS X or whatever it’s called this week. The code I write generally runs on any of those and things behave as expected.

I’ve never really used Windows, but I have had to deal with the problems caused by developers using Windows. EOL chars, not putting a trailing EOL char in a file (postconf no like that), a lack of understanding of various Unix things. It’s kind of tedious to deal with, but that’s more the devs than Windows.

It’s virtue signaling. Like in politics. It’s disconnected from real life or common use.

I have to use MS Windows and their office suite daily at work. I can certify they’re crap. And it has been getting worse since 11.

I think the biggest problem is Windows behaves like freeware with it’s ads but it’s not even cheap, let alone free.

I would say upgrading to an SSD is like a magic wand for an ailing system, regardless of OS.

As others have said, at the core the issue is enshittification, be it AI, or Recall, or ads, or Microsoft account requirements.

Truth is, if Microsoft had taken all of that out, left me with something that was functionally very much like what was available in the XP & 7 era, then eh… Windows would probably still be my daily driver. I still have to use it for work. But there has just too much encroachment on the ways I want to use and control what is on my system that I couldn’t justify using it anymore, let alone pay for it.

All my home computers are on Arch or Debian now, and I couldn’t be happier.

Man if you use Makita tools really really well but your coworker hates your tools and does the exact same job but with Milwaukee, does the customer care?

So really, who cares. Tools are tools.

For some people, Linux is their hobby. I wouldn’t dare say someone’s hobby is bad even if it’s not for me.

I use Linux a lot for robotics. I use windows a lot for sysadmin at work. I need both and both work and get out of my way. Ultimately it’s the things I do with my tools that make me consider their value.

It’s like the difference between someone preaching and someone who does. Words are cheap. Actions speak louder than words. People who talk about one or the other should have little influence on your consideration of an os. People who get stuff done, the stuff you want done. They’re the ones you watch.

I’d say Windows 11 is equal parts the best and the worst Windows ever made.

Windows 11 IoT LTSC is very good. I don’t know about the normal consumer version.

Windows 11 has CPU spikes when you search for an app because search-bar runs chrome in the back to render its graphics.

It’s objectively bad as in they did not care about users when programming.

I was a Windows user up until last year. I ditched it for EOS after I got tired of telling Windows NO I DON’T WANT WINDOWS 11 for the 500th time. Between having to manually remove Cortana, Edge, trackers and spyware and having ads shoved in my notifications, I couldn’t stand it anymore.

Now, as an average user they’re not gonna care about any of that. Hell, I didn’t start caring until I upgraded from 7 to 10 (I deliberately skipped 8) and they started enshitification. 10 was good, at first. It’s what they added that made it unbearable.

My biggest praise of Linux over Windows is not having to check for updates for different programs manually. I just hit sudo pacman -Syu and it does it all. Proton just makes my games work and I can do everything I did in Windows. Can I play AAA games with anticheat? Yes, but not all games. The ones I can’t, I really don’t feel the desire to play anymore anyway.

Finally, somebody gets it. Everyone with a bit of IT backbone in them for used to knowing how to deal with Windows and don’t realize it’s something they need to relearn for other OSes.

Windows has been fine for years. It’s being more rapidly enshittified to death recently.

After installing an SSD and a couple of hours of clean-up, it was as fast as new. I guess with proper maintenance it can be good enough.

The reason people say Windows is “crap” isn’t the performance, it’s the ads.

I partitioned 80gb off for work and installed Windows 10 on it. Install was fast, it found all of the drivers itself and had no bloatware using the Windows Media Creation Tool for another machine. Every device I have plugged into it or connected via Bluetooth has just worked. I don’t have a printer, but I imagine if you have an old printer that you will have to fuck around with drivers to get it working if you can’t use a generalized pcl driver for it. The entire OS with LibreOffice, and the work software I need runs on ~48gb with more than 30gb still free if I need random stuff but I don’t think I will as I’ve been using it for 2 weeks already.

I don’t have a Microsoft account signed into anything, and when I went to Windows Updates the first time I clicked the button that said “Don’t upgrade to Windows 11”.

Overall the OS is solid, I think it’s mostly people worrying about bloatware (which often comes from Manufacturers, though Windows does some) and advertisements, and Microsoft trying to monitor people.

I haven’t had a computer running Windows in my home for like a decade or so but I get exposure to it because of working at large corpos. Frankly, LTSC + proper policy set by administrators is okay for day to day work. It is kind of annoying and decaying in terms of usability but the core experience hasn’t changed that much. My partner works at a company that doesn’t use LTSC and that’s a big oof - unwanted features get shoved in your face all the time, breaking basic functionality like search etc. I can’t even imagine how it looks like in a regular consumer version.