I’d like to offer some perspective from both sides of the curtain, - having used Windows in the past. (With respect I’m not going to denigrate other OS’s with cheap nameshots like “Windoze”, I think we can rise above and be better than that ).
I’m visually impaired. Prior to Windows 8, I had the ability in Windows to customise the UI and theming in a way that allowed me to work well, be flexible enough to adjust to what I needed. Low vision isn’t a binary situation, it can change based on the time of year, month, even day, or the medications you use, or the level of seasonal natural light. Windows 7 was wonderful for that.
And then came Steven Sinofsky, who, in his own words, stated with Windows 8, there were “no compromises”. Except they were for those of us with visual impairment. Obfuscating key components of the UI, and making every aspect of customisation harder, left me unable to work. Windows 8 had compromised on every aspect of support for those who weren’t able to fully operate according to his new paradigm. I raised concerns with direct communication for months. All of it was ignored. I walked away right there.
KDE Plasma has been my home for a long while now. I can create custom themes with large borders and high contrast UIs when needed, depending on my level of vision. Some days are better than others. But it’s there when I need it, - with absolute control over the UI, I have activities in place for personal and work-related content, and then internal to those, multiple desktops assigned to specific applications. It’s much faster for me to action a keystroke to get to a desktop with an app full screen, then try and locate and focus on a mouse cursor. The keyboard wins every time. A great deal of my workstreams are automated with bash scripts, which keep me from the drudgery of repetitive “work”.
My applications are a mix of command line and open source UI-based apps. I use Joe for all text-editing in CLI, it’s by far my favourite application for working with text without distraction. I’ll import content into LibreOffice and then export into pdf for work, ensuring there’s no loss of formatting on files sent out.
Instead of Windows 7 Backup, I have timeshift, which copies my entire home directory to an external drive. Alongside that, I have Synology drive sync to my server, and from there, hyperbackup to an encrypted cloud backup. Everything’s seamless and I haven’t got to worry about it. I know as I get older, my vision will deteriorate further, but it’s just not something I worry about any more. There’s enough flex in Plasma to know that I can adjust as needed. And for that I can’t thank Nate and the team enough.