Several years ago, I had an option for a new work laptop. Either pre-configured for work, or personal with a list of specific apps to use for work which would be monitored as per the school district I work for. I chose personal. Holy sh*t is Windows 11 a hot mess. I left Windows as a daily driver at home 25+ years ago. There were other times over the years I was given a laptop for work, Windows of course (Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10, 11). And I have to say, while 7 was not all that bad… the others were just various versions of SUCK. And now, the latest Windows 11 is an abomination. I mean it’s barely usable. Nothing makes sense. Still a butt load of old XP/Vista/7 code and design everywhere. I’m at a loss as to why anyone would use Windows in 2024 at all.
I’m glad I haven’t had the displeasure of trying 11 yet for any reason.
You’re a lucky man. A dismal mess of an excuse for an operating system.
Comfort, accessibility and the possibility that their work didn’t transition to Linux or what they want to run isn’t on Linux.
I’m talking more of the mess that 11 is, rather than Windows specific apps. But I get your point.n
The last version of Windows I ran on my personal computer was XP. I have used more recent versions at work, currently on 10. Although I choose not to run Windows at home, I don’t see why so many Linux users love to bash it. Windows 7, 8.1 (with classic shell, or whatever that app was that made 8 look like 7), 10 (after a few updates) were all decent. Heck, even Vista was not bad if you threw sufficient resources at it. Most people seem to forget that Windows XP was atrocious when it was first released, and did not become good until after service pack 2 and additional memory was installed. I have not run 11, but I hazard a guess that its not as bad as some would have you believe. When will Linux users just live and let live?
I guess people often forget the past. Admittedly, back with XP, at least Microsoft didn’t want to shove ads in your face constantly, but I do agree that a lot of Linux users love to bash Windows and I don’t see the point of it. I agree that Windows is more clunky once you get used to Linux when it comes to things like installing programs or navigation, but overall, it is fine for most people and I think that shows in the domination that Windows still has.
At the same time, though, Windows 11 is… unnecessary, in my opinion. From what I know, under the hood, there aren’t a lot of changes from Windows 10. I have a hunch that the changes Microsoft made could have been implemented in Windows 10 just as easily and people wouldn’t have complained as much about it.
At work I still use Windows 10…
I guess until next October when it reaches EOL date. I fear that date because I’ve already tried 11 and I don’t understand 3/4 of the design philosophy and decisions in regard.
On my personal machines I haven’t booted into Windows since… probably February, when I purged it out of my Dell laptop. And I don’t look back. Still, 7 was the best Windows version for me and it’s hard to believe how downhill this system has gone.
The only Windows applications I like are Word, Photoshop and Lightroom and I have perfectly usable instances of those running with Wine. They are older versions that do not get updates but still good quality tools. Some of the options are limited but I still find them useful overall.
XP was generally a perfectly serviceable OS, and I didn’t even really mind Vista in all it’s bloated glory, but 7 was the last version of Windows I was really satisfied with using and would consider to be a ‘good’ OS.
8’s bizarre transition into a deep toilet of un-usability seemed to be as a result of them thinking touchscreen and tablet interfaces would be the future for desktop/laptop environments as well as an opportunity to try and mimic Apple’s locked-in app store ecosystem (that they themselves ported in from iOS), resulting in a very clunky experience for just about everybody.
8 is the clear mistake that led them to 10 and 11’s awkward mix of styles for different levels of system setting menus, with no real rhyme or reason about where any particular setting lived, which made maintenance and configuration an absolute nightmare.
10 was a vast improvement over 8 as far as usability went since they finally seemed to accept that M+KB input wasn’t being superseded outside of the portable/tablet space any time soon and put most things back in sensible places, but they continued with the proliferation of unnecessary (read: profit hungry) ad shenanigans and data harvesting ‘features’ which only accelerated with the introduction of 11.
11 over it’s lifetime has only gotten more frustrating with every iteration, up to and including them at some point making it mandatory during setup for a user to either create or link their user account to a valid ‘Microsoft’ account (unless you are privy to the arcane secrets of cmd.exe - shift+F10 during setup,
> OOBE\BYPASSNRO
into the console and one reboot later this mandatory requirement no longer exists… 
)
Even this particularly insidious garbage was drip-fed into the system, with a gradual tightening of the noose - the original OOBE just had a “create local account” option, and then it transitioned to only showing that option if you went out of your way to ensure you weren’t connected to a network during setup, and then one more turn of the screw locked it down to what it is today - I can very easily foresee a future where they close this last ‘loophole’ too and then you’re really snookered.
The final nail for me was the integration of AI garbage along with the announcement of what will almost certainly turn into an absolute circus of data privacy concerns with their Recall ‘feature’.
It’s been a long road but I’ve been clean for the best part of 6 months or so now, and I don’t see a future in which I’ll ever be going back on my personal devices - I do still have to use Windows for work, but it’s on their device with only their data at risk and I don’t work in an IT support function, so I don’t have to worry about any of the integrated spyware since it’s not my data, and when things break and everything goes pear-shaped it’s someone else’s problem 
Same. It’s so cluttered and just doesn’t make any real sense.
I agree completely.
Like I said, it’s a hot mess. Plus, Microsoft has moved completely away from local accounts. For the Windows 11 setup, There is no screen or menu for choosing a local account. Instead, you’re instructed to sign in with your Microsoft account during the setup. If you don’t have one, your only choice is to create one on the spot.
I don’t want “domination.” Just an OS that works. That works without peering into your online life or forcing you to create a Microsoft account just to use it. An OS that visually makes sense without all the Microsoft bells and whistles. If Linux didn’t exist, I’d feel the same way. I sure wouldn’t choose to use it. I’d use MacOS over Windows if there was no Linux.
Use W10 only occasionally, on a Ventoy drive to access 2 gaming Sites that Linux OS’s can’t access because GeoComply isn’t compatible with Linux.
That reminds me, I do have a Ventoy drive with a HBCD PE x64 iso on it, which allows for booting into a livecd-style windows environment.
I use this once in a blue moon for one very specific, incredibly niche purpose - I have a GB/GBA cartridge dumper that doesn’t play nicely with EOS and that I don’t use often enough to justify troubleshooting, and on the rare occasion I need to tinker with that for my other hobbies I’ll just whip the USB out and hold my nose for 5 minutes 
Maybe one day with a ton of free time and absolutely nothing better to do I’ll investigate the issue further. Maybe I’ll just post a thread about it in fact, perhaps someone will have some ideas based on the strange behaviour…
EDIT: No longer true 
Yeah Windows 11 is total carbage I tried it on a friend’s computer and damn it’s sucks!
i switched fully to Linux 2+ years ago(EndeavourOS of course!).
And will purge Windows 10 from my wife’s computer when win 10 goes end of life and install Linux on her PC as well! (EndeavourOS of course!).
Now more Windows or Microsoft products.
Most people don’t seem to have the requirement of “working without peering into my online life”, sadly. Many don’t care really about their online privacy. Most people also don’t seem to have the requirement of a nice visual experience. They just want to do their stuff done.
Most people don’t even know what is Linux, how and in what ways Linux is different from Windows, how to know if it will work for them,etc and thus, they have a very wrong idea about Linux. Because of this wrong idea, they don’t want to try it out, either out of fear or out of disdain. Or, and I feel like this is true for a lot more people than we might think, they don’t even know what is Linux. All of this is a search away, I agree, but they don’t seem to want to get out of there. They just want their computers to work.
I guess Linux is still the somewhat weird OS out there. I don’t mind it, though. It runs great for me.
That is probably why my view of Windows is generally benign, since I only use it at work and the IT dept. there limits my exposure to the more annoying problems. I do not have to install or administer my Windows computer, the corporate settings minimize the advertisement and privacy problems, and it’s not my computer, so I just don’t care. I don’t use the operating system, just the apps I need for work.
And after 90 minutes or so of research and tinkering I just solved the last thing holding me back from saying goodbye to windows in my personal life forever, so I owe @UncleSpellbinder a 
for posting this thread and prompting me to pull my finger out
I suspect my experience with Windows differs quite a bit from many of you. Much of my early use predates Windows (even 1 and 2) - and was corporate in nature for much of the time. At home I was C64/128 and Amiga based (including Unix on the Amiga), as well as Win Millenium on a self-built box. Unusually, I found it to be the best Windows ever (it would run for a week at a time or more without a blue screen - most unusual for previous versions - AFTER I added a little ‘utility’ that freed up RAM whenever it could to make up for MS having forgotten to reclaim RAM after an app closed (the source of the bad rep it had, I’m sure)).
As soon as I saw the EULA for XP, with no guarantee of being able to ignore it, I stopped using it at home, and only wass work-related on NT and some later XP. My sister had a laptop with Win7 - which seemed to be about as reasonable as Win has been recently. It still exists, and might get booted into every other year to reset the wireless keyboard/mouse dongles for Logitech as needed 
.
If Linux (starting with T.A.M.U. in '96) hadn’t come along, not sure what I’d be doing now - but it would NOT be Windows!!
I stuck with Windows 2000 for as long as I could and delayed moving to XP for a similar reason. I cut my teeth on CP/M and AppleDOS in the early 80’s, moving to Mac system 6 and then 7. I only started with Windows in the 3.1 days. I saw OS/2 Warp 3 and went with that over Windows 95. I dual and triple booted Win98, OS/2, and BeOS into the late 90’s and discovered Linux in 1998 with a boxed set of SuSE and then Caldera’s OpenLinux in 2000. For a few years it was dual booting Redhat and Windows 2000, then XP. I finally went solely to Linux in 2005 with Mandriva and then Ubuntu. It’s been a fun journey.