Linux

After decades of user interfaces and internet access, we’re making things worse rather than better.

Someone at Microsoft realized that hardware will speed up, hiding the fact that the OS is getting bloated and riddled with code that doesn’t directly benefit the user.

The value Windows provides isn’t great enough to deal with this state any longer. In fact, my experience shows it’s slower and just as buggy.

We have technology available to improve experiences, let’s not mix it with profit incentives for once.

• Closed source (has always been bad for an OS, a 1-US-company controlled blackbox at the heart of your "personal" computer)
• Privacy nightmares (and getting worse)
• Forced cloud integrations (and getting worse)
• Forced AI integrations (and getting worse)
• More bloat and ads (and getting worse)
• More restrictions (e.g. local user accounts) (and getting worse)
• More dark patterns to try to annoy the user and get him/her to accept something that MS wants (and getting worse)
• More opt-out, on-by-default bad stuff being added (and getting worse)
• There's probably more...

The question is wrong: it's not why do you "still" hate Windows. I did like Windows 7. It was the last Windows I liked. After that, it's just a downhill enshittification spiral. The only real question is: at which point will it be too oppressive for the common user that even the most common user will try to avoid it entirely. And I fear that there's still more than enough room for MS to make Windows worse before enough people migrate away from it.

Hate is a strong word, i don't feel strongly enough about an os to really hate it. I still use a Windows 10 pc for my music production since all of my vsts work there and continue working there even after updates and whatever else.

My daily driver is running pop os. my main reason for switching was just a personal disagreement with the direction windows was going back around 2021ish when they were talking about integrated advertising in the file explorer. Linux was always something I wanted to get to learning so the timing just seemed right to switch over.

I don't hate Windows, but I find Linux a much more natural way to use my PC. I started with Linux in 1996 and have been daily driving different distros since 2010 on all my PCs and servers. 

Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate how flexible and customizable Linux is. The open-source community is always ready to help, making the experience even better. For personal projects or managing servers, Linux is efficient and reliable, and I’ve grown to depend on it.

On the other hand, I've had to use Windows at various jobs and never found it enjoyable. The constant updates, 'bloatware', and lack of transparency can be frustrating. 

While Windows is user-friendly and compatible with many programs, it often feels less intuitive and more restrictive compared to the freedom I have with Linux. 

Each time I switch back to Windows, I’m reminded why I prefer Linux for both personal and professional use.

I dual boot, but I've been dreading booting back into Windows recently because I upgraded my motherboard/CPU and know they are going to make me buy another license. And I understand Windows is more convenient for a lot of people but I am not one of them.

I can't think of anything that is more convenient for me on Windows other than that I have to use it to run Studio One to record music from time to time. But "software availability" has nothing to do with the operating system itself; market position does. And a company's market position rarely drives my purchasing decisions.

I dislike Windows for all the reasons people here typically state.

Back when I first used a computer we were told if it has ads and pop ups constantly then you have installed a virus. Try using a fresh install of windows....

Windows has basically become malware. It does a fuck ton of tracking, and all of its features are about appeasing shareholders over users.

If we want to get technical: I loathe it because even in the year 2024, it’s the only operating system I’ve witnessed that will absolutely grind to a halt when a third party application stops responding or crashes. There is no valid fucking reason why the parent system should be halted by an application that crashes.

Also, ads in the start panel. Absolutely not, Microsoft. No way in hell am I allowing that to live on a computer I own. Yes, I’m aware third party apps will address that but it shouldn’t be a thing to begin with.

Oh yeah, and it decided to automatically update itself to the latest version on my ASUS ROG laptop while the thing was closed and not in use. So upon booting it up and seeing ads in the UI, I wiped the system clean and installed Nobara. Bye bye. 👋

I own my computer. But on Windows, it doesn't feel like that...

They killed Clippy! Those bastards!

"An unknown error occurred." And you spend hours trying figure it out for it to be something stupid that should just have a distinct error.

One word: Recall

Cool operating system bro. Does it run KDE?

Because the only redeeming quality of Windows is the fact a lot of software works on Windows and only on Windows, which is also exactly the problem with Windows. It's great WINE can exist, but not all platforms support WINE, and as an OpenBSD user first and foremost it means I can't play many of my favorite games on my preferred platform.

Ultimately, Windows sucks and is a standard because our society puts corporate greed and thieves like Microsoft above superior projects; and even if Microsoft were firebombed off the planet tomorrow, they're just a symptom of the problem, and it's only be so long until another thief steps into Microsoft's position and ruins everything again.

3. The joy of "figuring it out" and customizing everything you want to the minutest details

Customization is my reason. I've got a two-monitor setup in KDE with different panels on each one. Each one is highly customized specifically to me, and the customizations can't be done in Windows.

Because for me Windows was not easier to use.

I only got my first proper computer in 2020, and comparing Windows 10 with Linux Mint 20, I found the latter much simpler to use not having used either one prior. Just having to bounce between Control Panel and new Settings, plus a lot of tutorials shown magic with registries...
Also, I had a lot of problems with uninstallers failing or not removing programs completely, and getting permissions to remove files directly was also pain in the ass, even as "Administrator". That often resulted in me booting up live Linux DVD to remove crap programs from Windows.

I gave it a try, but I didn't like it. Perhaps I'd like MacOS though. It seems similar enough. But Windows just feels like 2 decades of hotfixes glued together.

Freedom FTW!

It is not Windows I hate, it is the people how have not idea how people want to use there computer makeing the choices with where it is going.

I don't. I just like Linux.

I don't hate windows, it just annoys me. I've run linux in a VM under windows for years and about 2 years ago it annoyed me enough (I think it was something about a patch breaking things badly enough that I had to restore the system) that I said 'screw it' and switched the arrangement to linux and the few windows programs I really wanted running in wine. I've been skipping back and forth between them since Yggdrasil was a thing, so it wasn't like it was uncharted territory.

And after hearing some of win11's BS, I'm glad I did.

I honestly fully believe that proprietary software is bullshit and all software ought to be Free Software. I'm not saying I don't use proprietary software, but I don't trust it. If I run proprietary software, I go out of my way to try to run it in prison. I don't let my Nintendo Switch connect to the internet except when I have a very specific reason and then I disconnect it immediately after I'm done. When I bought a robot vacuum cleaner, I bought specifically the model that I knew I could hack to not phone home. I bought a phone on which I could run LineageOS without the Google apps. (And, yes, I'm running a proprietary EFI BIOS on my main desktop machine and such. But I do take a lot of steps to limit how much influence proprietary software has on me and my devices.)

Windows is bad and immoral but I can't say I hate it because I almost never use it. Most of the time Windows is just bad news in my feed which makes me anticipate friends asking beginner questions for their GNU+Linux install.

I stopped using Windows when it became clear it's purpose is not to do what I want unless that happens to be what Microsoft wants. It was many things that all added up but I can only remember the last straw which broke the camel's back. I was trying to get something to work and made an online account in desperation - then I struggled/failed to find a way to revert the change and make the user become an offline account again. Faced with a reinstall I couldn't go through clicking "no, don't fuck me" several times to reinstall Windows.

I don't hate. It's just a piece of software. I just use Linux because I like the privacy and I'm a tech savvy person

I don't wanna learn Windows whatsoever, cause I can do everything I need on Linux and it serves me well

It's been a long time since I used Windows myself, however one of the big reasons for switching was the inherent instability. At once point I was developing code in Visual Studio and constantly loading/closing quite a few different programs to test things out. Windows just didn't seem to handle memory-recovery and I would have to reboot every week or two (usually because of the whole OS locking up). In comparison, I run a variety of software on my linux machines which can involve anything from testing code in multiple browsers to image editing to 3D CAD drawings. Sure that tends to drain the memory but when I close something I get that memory back. I'll frequently get down to the last 100K of RAM, close a couple programs that may be holding large caches (Firefox really hates me having hundreds of open tabs), and then I'm right back up and running again. Reboots may occur about every 6 months.

I have to support other people using Windows at work, which reminds me how much I'll never go back to it. My biggest frustration is that Microsoft is constantly changing things. Hell you can't even directly reach the control panel any more, you have to run searches to find the specific item you want. Want to check the settings of a certain printer? Good luck, that doesn't seem to be available in the right-click menu any more. It's just all these idiotic changes making it difficult to actually use or maintain Windows. Why should I have to google how to find something when everything used to be under the control panel or a right-click away?

Because I have to use this shitshow of a software at work because some companies use "license managers" that don't work under Wine.

Well I really dislike updating my computer ~~(and on this topic, Windows Update is inconvenient and slow as balls!)~~ and finding some new BS from Microsoft on it.
One day it's Copilot, which I could just use on the browser if I really wanted to, the next day it'll be Recall, which just.... no.

Know what I mean?

I don't think the ability to destroy your entire system by one command is a good thing for a desktop operating system. On Linux random program with root rights can bring down your entire system by one poorly written script, but Windows at least has multiple mechanisms in place to prevent that.

I started "hating" Windows more recently. I was never a very technical user but I was always someone that could find myself around system configuration and they just keep hiding ways of letting you customize things.

When I started learning programming I was still trying to use only Windows but at some point I got extremely tired of fighting how clunky environmental variables can be. Installing things such as gcc and python was extremely annoying.

Then I did dual boot for a few years, then I started using WSL. WSL is... Awful, lol. It will never ask you if it is okay to stop what you are doing to reboot, I lost count of how many times I was working on something and suddenly my Linux environment was dead.

This year the amount of clutter they are adding to Windows and the existence of Proton just kicked the bucked for me, everywhere you look at Windows is busy and full of stuff I don't want to be there and like I said previously, you either can't remove it or it is difficult because they just want it to be.

I might need to figure out how to run a Windows VM if I need to run something (hasn't happened yet) but that's it, I don't need to deal with all the bs anymore and I can customize things as I like. I love it.

I wouldn't say I hate Windows now, I just kind of despise it after so many years. I wish I heard my professors that kept shitting on Windows so many years ago.

Started using Linux in 2010 on a virtual machine on a Windows XP machine that was really not meant to run it and it was God awful. But I knew that it was the virtual machine not Linux itself. After that I was using my laptop for school and a Windows update completely broke it and I absolutely had to use it for the next class that I was going to in like five minutes and I had a flash drive with a live Linux environment already on it and so I just used that. However, once I was done with class that day, my first thought was why should I even go in and attempt to fix this Windows machine when Linux has been working fine for me all day. And so I just went ahead and wiped the disk and ran the installer. And I've been using Linux ever since. I do generally keep a Windows virtual machine around, just in case, but it's extremely rare that I've ever needed to use it.

I think hate is really too strong of a word, dislike at most for me.
My biggest issue with Microsoft is a lack of trust. Apart from that, I just like my Linux setup more and find it easier to use.
Stuff I want to do works how I want to do it and how I'm (now) used to it.
Regardless, I use Windows at work, manage Windows Servers and Azure. It's just how it is.

I dual boot on my primary/desktop PC, and only run Linux on my laptop and Steam Deck.

I find more often times than not, I feel like I'm either fighting with Windows or it does these small but annoying things that when added up tend to really get on my nerves. For example, one thing that I've been running into a lot (and happened earlier today) is if I put my computer to sleep while its booted into Windows, it'll randomly decide to wake itself up for who knows what reason - flooding my room with light often times while I'm trying to sleep or relax. It does it enough where I should by now remember to just physically turn off my monitors when I put my computer to sleep, but why should I have to? The 95% of the time that I'm booted into Linux, if I put my computer to sleep it stays asleep until I explicitly wake it up, and thus I haven't formed a habit to turn the displays off.

The only reason why I even keep Windows around on this PC is to occasionally play Destiny 2 and some VR stuff with friends every now and then.